The US is “destroying” the established world order, Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK and former military chief has said.

Criticising the new Trump administration’s way of handling foreign policy, Valerii Zaluzhnyi said the White House had “questioned the unity of the whole Western world”.

His comments come amid an apparent cooling of tensions between Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and his US counterpart Donald Trump, after a public falling-out between the two in the Oval Office on Friday.

Kyiv has made attempts to mend relations with Washington in recent days, after the US paused its military aid to Ukraine and intelligence sharing in a bid to bring Zelensky to the negotiating table.

• Follow updates
• What pausing US intel means for Ukraine

But Mr Zaluzhnyi’s remarks at a conference at Chatham House in London on Thursday suggest there remains discontent over the US’s actions.

He told an audience: “We see that it is not just the axis of evil and Russia trying to revise the world order, but the US is finally destroying this order.”

The Ukrainian envoy added that talks between the US and Russia – the latter of which was “headed by a war criminal” in President Vladimir Putin – showed the White House was making “steps towards the Kremlin, trying to meet them halfway”.

Mr Zaluzhnyi, who took over as Kyiv’s ambassador to London in 2024 following three years as commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, also suggested that Nato could cease to exist as a result of Washington’s change in posture, and warned that Moscow’s next target “could be Europe”.

While Zelensky has expressed a wish to bring the war in Ukraine to an end swiftly, Kyiv has voiced concerns about the Trump administration’s handling of talks and the concessions to Moscow that may be made without security guarantees for Ukraine.

Trump vowed during the US election campaign to bring the war to an end quickly, and a US delegation met with a Russian one for preliminary talks in Saudi Arabia last month – without European or Ukrainian representatives present.

The US’s decision to halt its assistance to Ukraine has been cast by Trump administration officials as a means of getting Kyiv to co-operate with the US-led peace talks.

• Zelensky’s conciliatory letter to Trump suggests he’s out of options
• Timeline of Trump and Zelensky’s fraying relationship

Zaluzhnyi said the pause in intelligence sharing, as well as an earlier decision to oppose a UN resolution condemning Russian aggression in Ukraine, were “a huge challenge for the entire world”.

His comments come as Politico reports that members of Trump’s team held discussions with some of Zelensky’s political opponents, after Trump allies suggested the Ukrainian president should stand aside.

Citing unnamed sources in the US and Ukraine, it says talks were held with opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko and senior members of Petro Poroshenko’s party, who preceded Zelensky as president.

Independent opinion polls in Ukraine suggest Zaluzhnyi has the most public support with at least 70%, Zelensky has 57% support and Poroshenko about 20%. Tymoshenko and Poroshenko both have their own red lines and share a pro-European stance.

Responding to the report, Tymoshenko said her team was talking with “all allies who can help ensure a just peace as soon as possible”, while noting elections cannot be held under Ukraine’s constitution while it is under martial law.

Poroshenko wrote in a lengthy statement that his party worked “publicly and transparently” with the US, and that meetings have focused on supporting Ukraine’s war effort.

While criticising Zelensky’s government over its political decisions and communications with the US, he too stressed that elections could only take place after a ceasefire was signed.

While the Politico article suggested the Trump administration may be seeking an alternative to Zelensky, these meetings appear to be long-standing and predate both the war and the recent straining of ties with the US.

Fifteen people in South Korea were injured, two of them seriously, after a pair of fighter jets accidentally dropped eight bombs in a civilian district on Thursday during a live-fire military exercise, local media reported.

The incident involving the Air Force KF-16 aircraft, in the city of Pocheon near North Korea, was part of routine drills held by the South to maintain combat readiness against potential attacks from the North.

South Korea’s Air Force said that it was investigating the incident and apologised for the damage, adding it would provide compensation to those affected.

While shells from live firing exercises sometimes land near civilian residences, they rarely cause injuries.

According to local media reports, two people suffered fractures to their necks and shoulders.

A 60-year-old who was driving when the explosion happened had shrapnel lodged in their neck, Yonhap reported.

“I was driving when I heard a ‘bang’,” they said. “When I woke up, I was in an ambulance.”

“Our KF-16 (fighter jet) abnormally dropped eight shells of MK-82 bombs. It landed outside of firing range,” said Korea’s Air Force in a statement to the BBC.

The military said the pilot of one of the jets inputted the wrong coordinates by mistake, causing the bombs to drop in the civilian community.

Investigators have yet to determine why the second jet dropped its bombs, the military said, adding all live-fire exercises will be suspended.

One church building and houses were also damaged as a result of the incident.

Images published on local media show a broken window of a building and damaged roof of the church.

A local resident told Yonhap that he had been watching television at home when the explosion, which sounded “like a thunderclap”, shook the house.

The director of a nearby senior citizen care centre said that the building’s windows shattered and one of their teachers was taken to hospital with injuries. While no seniors were hurt, they said, “they were so frightened that we sent them all home”.

Pocheon authorities told the BBC earlier on Thursday that residents had been evacuated while a bomb disposal team worked on safely disposing any unexploded bombs.

But authorities later said they did not find any unexploded bombs at the scene, Yonhap reported.

The defence ministry said the training on Thursday was related to a joint drill with US forces.

South Korea and the US are set to run combined drills from March 10 to March 20 – the first since US president Donald Trump’s return to the White House. This comes at a time when the two countries are increasingly wary of the growing alliance between North Korea and Russia.

During another joint drill by South Korea and the US in 2022, troops fired a short-range ballistic missile which malfunctioned and crashed on a golf course in the military base. While the warhead did not explode, it still burst into flames and sent panic rippling across residents in the area.

A man accused of helping to plan the Kabul airport bombing during the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 appeared in court on Wednesday.

The US Department of Justice (DoJ) said it had charged Mohammad Sharifullah with providing support and resources to a foreign terrorist organisation, which resulted in death. He faces a maximum penalty of life in prison.

US officials accused Sharifullah of being a member of IS-K, a group that took credit for the attack and that has been proscribed as a terror organisation by governments around the world.

At least 170 Afghans died alongside 13 US service members in the attack, which resulted in intense criticism for then-US President Joe Biden.

Current US President Donald Trump, who often blamed Biden and Former Vice-President Kamala Harris for the service members’ deaths, announced Sharifullah’s arrest in his address to Congress on Tuesday.

“He is right now on his way here to face the swift sword of American justice,” Trump told his audience.

The next day, Sharifullah appeared in court wearing a blue jail jumpsuit, according to CBS News, the BBC’s US partner. He stood at about 5ft tall (150cm), wore a surgical face mask and communicated in a packed courtroom via an interpreter.

After a brief hearing that discussed his lack of assets and need for a defence lawyer, the federal judge overseeing the case ordered Sharifullah to be held in custody until a formal detention hearing on Monday.

Several justice department officials who were recently appointed to office by Trump praised the president for the arrest, and FBI chief Kash Patel shared an image of him in custody.

“Under President Trump’s strong leadership on the world stage, this Department of Justice will ensure that terrorists like Mohammad Sharifullah have no safe haven, no second chances, and no worse enemy than the United States of America,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said.

A family member of two Afghans who died in the aftermath of the attack said he was upset with Trump after the speech.

“He talked about the 13 US soldiers killed but not anything about us,” he told the BBC. “We want the Americans to pay attention to us and take us to America as they promised,” the man added.

The bombing of Abbey Gate at the Kabul airport occurred in the final days of the chaotic US military withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. The attacker triggered a bomb in a crowd of thousands of Afghans who had gathered at the airport in hopes of being evacuated before the Taliban took full control of the country.

Congressional criticism of the Biden administration spiked in the aftermath, and it caused a decline in the public’s confidence in the then-president.

The justice department alleged that Sharifullah “admitted to helping prepare for the Abbey Gate, including scouting a route near the airport for an attack” during an interview with the FBI.

Sharifullah allegedly admitted to his involvement in several other attacks during the interview, including a June 2016 suicide bombing attack on the Canadian embassy in Kabul and the March 2024 gunmen attack on Crocus City Hall near Moscow, Russia.

Russia arrested four gunmen in connection with the attack in which it accused Ukraine of being involved.

“Sharifullah admitted that, on behalf of ISIS-K, he had shared instructions on how to use AK-style rifles and other weapons to would-be attackers. Sharfiullah also admitted to recognizing two of the four arrested gunmen as those he had previously instructed,” the justice department said.

A UK-based aid worker said he, his friends and colleagues were “so lucky to be alive” after they narrowly escaped a Russian missile attack on a hotel in central Ukraine on Wednesday night that left at least four dead.

Karol Swiacki, a Polish national and founder of the Bournemouth-based charity Ukraine Relief, was at the Central Hotel in Kryvyi Rih having dinner with friends when the missile struck.

“We are all safe we didn’t have a scratch, it is incredible,” he told BBC News, adding “we still don’t know how we survived this, honestly.”

Dnipropetrovsk regional head Serhiy Lysak said 32 people, including two children, were wounded in the attack on President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown.

The charity worker – who has previously won a BBC award – is in Ukraine carrying out aid relief work including delivering sports equipment and renovating a school for 550 children.

He is also visiting shelters and orphanages with Ukraine Relief’s trustee, Marc Edwards – a British national who now lives in the US.

The duo were having dinner with friends at the hotel restaurant at the time of the strike. The dining party included two US volunteers, two workers from a Ukrainian charity foundation, a young boy and his pregnant mother.

“We’d just put our stuff in our rooms and went to eat with our local Ukrainian contacts and the cell phone alarm went off so we ran to the shelter,” said Mr Edwards.

Mr Swiacki added: “We took two steps and there was a big boom, absolute nightmare, everything just within seconds changed into a very apocalyptic news screams, alarms.”

• Live coverage and analysis
• Aid worker in Ukraine survives hotel missile strike

Video sent by Mr Swiacki to the BBC showed smoke filling the restaurant with half-eaten meals and takeaway boxes on tables.

“There was so much stuff that we couldn’t see where we were going,” said Mr Swiacki.

Mr Edwards confirmed that the blast “took out all the windows” and they had to climb out of the restaurant through a broken window.

The duo went back into the hotel to see if anyone else was hurt, and retrieve some of their belongings.

They also went outside to look for their vehicles, which were “full of aid” but were “all destroyed”, Mr Edwards said.

Mr Swiacki’s van, which he had parked outside the hotel, was “smashed completely to pieces”.

“We heard some noises we don’t want to hear again. Somebody was trapped under the rubble next to our van and didn’t make it. Someone was hit from shrapnel and didn’t make it. I’m numb,” he said.

Mr Swiacki described the scene as “crazy, absolutely nightmare”.

He said the restaurant was on the ground floor, and believes that it is the only room – or at least one of the few rooms – that didn’t collapse.

The men are still in Kryvyi Rih and despite the shock of the explosion, Mr Swiacki said he has not been deterred him from continuing his aid work in Ukraine.

“I will never stop helping people after this,” he said.

The attack happened ahead of a European security summit on Thursday which Zelensky is attending.

Reacting to the attack, Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said it showed “why Ukraine needs defence capabilities: to protect human lives from Russian terror”.

The wind has been kicking up along the Gold Coast and so too has the swell. But while authorities have been warning residents to stay indoors as Cyclone Alfred approaches, die-hard surfers have been throwing caution to the increasing wind.

“This is what we look forward to,” said Jeff Weatherall as he waited for a jet ski to pick him up from Kirra beach and carry him into the big waves. “This is the fifth day straight – I’ve done nothing but eat, sleep, surf and do it again.”

Kirra beach is famous for its breakers and this week has been busy as surfers wait for Cyclone Alfred.

The cyclone is expected to make landfall as a category two system late Friday or – more likely – early Saturday morning.

Its path has slowed in recent days and has been moving “erratically” according to weather experts, which is why landfall has been delayed from earlier predictions.

“A category two system means winds near the centre up to 95km/h (59mph), with gusts up to 130km/h,” says the Bureau of Meteorology’s Matthew Collopy.

Four million people are in the firing line of Cyclone Alfred. It’s expected to hit between the Sunshine Coast and the Gold Coast – a stretch of Australia known for its beautiful beaches and top surf – as well as Brisbane, Australia’s third-biggest city.

The past few days in Kirra have been “crazy”, said resident and keen surfer Donnie Neal.

“It’s pretty serious, there are people that are going to lose their houses, but at the moment, you’re taking the good of it all – this is just crazy surf.”

As well as strong winds, Cyclone Alfred is expected to dump as much as 800mm of rain in the coming days, affecting a large area of southern Queensland and northern New South Wales. Flash and riverine flooding is the biggest concern in low-lying areas.

“These are tough times, but Australians are tough people, and we are resilient people,” said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Thursday, echoing the Gold Coast’s acting Mayor Donna Gates, who has said Cyclone Alfred is a “scary proposition” for the region.

Nearly 1,000 schools have closed, public transport has been suspended and airports are shut. Flights aren’t expected to resume until Sunday at the earliest. Elective surgeries have also been cancelled.

While Queensland isn’t a stranger to cyclones – it’s the most disaster-prone state in Australia – it’s rare they come so far south.

The last time it happened was in 1974, when Cyclone Wanda hit in January and then two months later, Zoe crossed the coast.

Flooding though, is more common. In February 2022, thousands of homes were damaged along much of Australia’s east after heavy rain. Authorities have been keen to prepare communities ahead of Cyclone Alfred. The council opened sandbag depots across the region to help residents protect their homes.

“It’s surreal. We know it’s coming, but it’s very quiet,” said Anthony Singh, a resident of the Brisbane suburb of West End. He waited for four hours on Wednesday to pick up sandbags to protect his home.

Fellow resident Mark Clayton, helped to co-ordinate the sandbag collection, shovelling more than 140 tonnes of sand.

“I think people are a bit apprehensive,” he says. “Are the buildings going to stay up, are the roofs going to stay on? People expect a lot of trees to come down and to lose power for an extended period of time.”

With supermarkets now shut and people mostly sheltering at home, there’s a lot of uncertainty as Australians wait for the storm to hit.

Caroline Darian, the daughter of Dominique and Gisèle Pelicot, is pressing charges against her father, accusing him of drugging and raping her – something he has always denied.

Last December, Dominique Pelicot was sentenced to 20 years in jail for drugging his ex-wife, Gisèle, raping her and inviting dozens of men to also abuse her over nearly a decade.

Pelicot filmed the rapes of his wife, collecting hundreds of videos he neatly catalogued on a hard disk.

Among them were also two photos of his daughter, in which Ms Darian, 46, says she is clearly unconscious, sleeping in an unfamiliar position and wearing underwear she doesn’t recognise.

Dominique Pelicot has offered conflicting explanations for the photos, but has always denied sexually assaulting his daughter.

Ms Darian has long said the photos are proof her father also drugged and raped her.

“I know that he drugged me, probably for sexual abuse. But I don’t have any evidence,” she told the BBC in January, when she also talked about the shock of being shown those pictures by police for the first time.

The heated courtroom exchanges between Ms Darian and her father were some of the most dramatic in the 16-week trial that shocked France and the world. “I never touched you, never,” Pelicot pleaded to his daughter during one session. “You are lying!” Ms Darian shouted back.

Ms Darian has previously said she felt she was the trial’s “forgotten victim” as, unlike in her mother’s case, there was no record of the abuse she is convinced was inflicted upon her.

She told Elle France earlier this week that the charges she is pressing against her father were “symbolic” but “in line with what I have said since the start: that I am a victim of chemical submission [drug-facilitated assault] but was never recognised as such”.

She has hired lawyer Florence Rault to represent her.

For many years, Ms Rault has been fighting for justice for two women who were the victims of violent ordeals in the 1990s.

One, a young property agent known by the pseudonym Marion, was the victim of an attempted rape in 1999, which Pelicot has admitted to.

The other – also an estate agent in her 20s – was raped and murdered in 1991. Pelicot is currently being investigated over that case, but has always denied any involvement.

Ms Darian said she saw similarities between her and Marion. “We look strangely alike. She is blonde, her hair is bobbed, we were born the same year… I wanted to meet her lawyer and hear all the details,” she told Elle France.

In her police complaint, which was quoted by French media, Ms Rault lamented that Ms Darian had never been offered gynecological examinations nor had she been tested for the drugs Pelicot used on his wife.

Ms Rault said the investigation had only focused on Gisèle Pelicot and that her client had been treated as a “peripheral victim”. She asked the authorities to launch a fresh “serious and in-depth” inquiry.

Béatrice Zavarro, Dominique Pelicot’s lawyer, told French media that Ms Darian’s decision to press charges was “unsurprising given her statements and beliefs during the Avignon trial”.

She also said that the prosecutors in Avignon, in south-eastern France, said there were insufficient “objective elements” to accuse Pelicot of raping and using chemical submission on his daughter.

Forty-nine men were sentenced in December alongside Dominque Pelicot. All were found guilty of at least one charge – rape or sexual assault – against Gisèle Pelicot.

Seventeen initially said they would appeal the charges against them, but seven of those have since changed their minds.

Those who decide to press ahead with their appeals will go on trial at the end of the year in Nîmes, southern France.

The first trial – which lasted from September to December 2024 – garnered worldwide attention thanks to Gisèle Pelicot’s decision to waive her anonymity and open the trial to the public and the media.

New Zealand has fired its most senior envoy to the United Kingdom over remarks that questioned US President Donald Trump’s grasp of history.

At an event in London on Tuesday, High Commissioner Phil Goff compared efforts to end the war between Russia and Ukraine to the 1938 Munich Agreement, which allowed Adolf Hitler to annex part of Czechoslovakia.

Mr Goff recalled how Sir Winston Churchill had criticised the agreement, then said of the US leader: “President Trump has restored the bust of Churchill to the Oval Office. But do you think he really understands history?”

His comments were “deeply disappointing” and made his position “untenable”, New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters said.

His comments came after Trump paused military aid to Kyiv following a heated exchange with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office last week.

He contrasted Trump with Churchill who, while estranged from the British government, spoke against the Munich Agreement as he saw it as a surrender to Nazi Germany’s threats.

Mr Goff quoted how Churchill had rebuked then UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain: “You had the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, yet you will have war.”

Peters said Mr Goff’s views did not represent those of the New Zealand government.

“When you are in that position you represent the government and the policies of the day, you’re not able to free think, you are the face of New Zealand,” local media reported Peters saying.

“It’s not the way you behave as the front face of a country, diplomatically,” he said, adding that he would have taken the same course of action no matter which country was being spoken about.

Mr Goff is a veteran politician who had been high commissioner since January 2023. Before that, he served for two terms as mayor of Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city, and was leader of the Labour Party from 2008 to 2011. He had also held several ministerial portfolios, including justice, foreign affairs and defence.

Peters, who is also deputy prime minister, told reporters that he had made the decision to sack Phil Goff without first consulting Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.

When it was pointed out that Luxon was the leader of New Zealand, Peters responded: “I know he’s the prime minister, I made him the prime minister.”

The 79-year-old, who has previously worked with Mr Goff in government, leads the New Zealand First political party – which joined Luxon’s National Party and the Act Party in 2023 to form the current ruling centre-right coalition government.

Luxon, for his part, said Peters’ decision to fire Mr Goff without first consulting him was “entirely appropriate”.

Former Prime Minister Helen Clark was among those who criticised Mr Goff’s sacking, saying it was backed by a “very thin excuse”.

“I have been at Munich Security Conference recently where many draw parallels between Munich 1938 and US actions now,” she wrote in a post on X.

Under the 1938 Munich Agreement, Hitler took control of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland. The deal failed to stop Nazi Germany from advancing deeper into Europe and World War Two began when he invaded Poland in 1939.

North Korea has stopped tourists from visiting, just weeks after the first Western tourists entered the country for the first time in five years.

North Korea sealed itself off at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020, and started to scale back restrictions in the middle of 2023.

It opened up to Russian visitors in 2024, but it was only last month that Western tourists were allowed into the remote, eastern city Rason.

However several tour companies now say that trips to the reclusive country have been cancelled until further notice. Pyongyang has not given a reason for the sudden halt.

“Just received news from our Korean partners that Rason is closed to everyone. We will keep you posted,” China-based KTG Tours, which specialises in North Korean tours, said Wednesday on Facebook.

Young Pioneer Tours and Koryo Tours were among the other agencies that have announced the suspension.

Those planning tours in April and May should refrain from booking flights “until we have more information”, Young Pioneer Tours said in a Facebook post.

On 20 February, the first Western tourists started arriving in Rason, a city earmarked by the North as a special economic zone, to trial new financial policies.

Tour operators told the BBC the visitors’ movements were even more restricted than on pre-pandemic trips – they had fewer opportunities to wander the streets and talk to locals.

Phone signals and internet access were also not available in the hermit state.

One tour leader said he suspects Rason was picked because the area is relatively contained and easy to control.

Earlier this week, Koryo Tours said it was accepting international applications for the Pyongyang Marathon for the first time in five years. The event is scheduled for 6 April but it is now unclear if these can still be processed.

North Korea saw some 350,000 foreign tourists in 2019, of whom 90% were Chinese, according to media reports.

Canadian provinces pulling US alcohol off store shelves in response to Trump trade policy is “worse than tariffs”, the boss of Jack Daniel’s maker Brown-Forman has said.

Several Canadian provinces, including Ontario, which is by far the most populated, took action this week in retaliation for US tariffs on Canadian goods.

The Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO), one of the largest buyers of alcohol in the world, removed US-made alcoholic drinks from its shelves on Tuesday.

Brown-Forman boss Lawson Whiting said the Canadian response was “disproportionate” to the 25% levies on Canadian goods imposed by the Trump administration.

“I mean, that’s worse than a tariff, because it’s literally taking your sales away, completely removing our products from the shelves,” Mr Whiting said.

In response to the tariffs, Canada has retaliated with 25% levies on goods imported from the US, including beer, spirits, and wine.

Some provinces also took action themselves, including Ontario and Nova Scotia.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford said the LCBO sells nearly $1bn of US alcohol per year. “As of today, every single one of these products is off the shelves,” Mr Ford said on Tuesday.

The LCBO is the exclusive wholesaler in Ontario, which means other retailers, bars and restaurants in the province will no longer be able to restock US products, Mr Ford said.

Nevertheless, Mr Whiting said Canada makes up only 1% of Brown-Forman’s total sales, so the firm can withstand the hit.

Canadians are being advised by the LCBO to buy products made in Canada. Some Canadians have been turning to local goods anyway in response to the Trump tariffs.

Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, criticised the US tariffs on Tuesday, saying imposing them was “a very dumb thing to do”.

He also accused the US president of planning “a total collapse of the Canadian economy because that will make it easier to annex us”.

Trump has made a number of remarks about making Canada the 51st state of his country, which Canada’s Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly has said she takes “very seriously”.

Washington has also placed 25% tariffs on Mexico, although Trump has said he will temporarily spare carmakers in both Canada and Mexico from the taxes.

Mr Whiting said Brown-Forman is also going to see what happens in Mexico, which accounted for 7% of its sales in 2024.

Spanish prosecutors have demanded a retrial in the case of former football federation president Luis Rubiales, who was found guilty of sexual assault for kissing player Jenni Hermoso without her consent.

In February, Rubiales was fined €10,800 (£9,052) for that offence but found not guilty of coercion over allegations he pressured Hermoso into publicly saying the kiss was consensual.

Prosecutors have called for Rubiales to be jailed and appealed that verdict, seeking a retrial with a different judge after alleging the original was biased in Rubiales’s favour.

Rubiales grabbed Hermoso by the head and kissed her on the lips as Spain’s players received their medals for winning the 2023 World Cup.

The incident, which occurred after Spain defeated England in Sydney, was witnessed by millions on television and in the stadium, and triggered protests and calls for Rubiales’s resignation.

The 47-year-old previously said he will appeal against the guilty verdict.

Three of Rubiales’s former colleagues were also accused of colluding in the alleged coercion.

Jorge Vilda, coach of the World Cup-winning side, Rubén Rivera, the Real Federación Española de Fútbol (RFEF)’s former head of marketing, and Albert Luque, former sporting director, were all cleared.

The court’s ruling also banned the former football president from going within a 200m radius of Hermoso or communicating with her for one year.

During the trial, Rubiales told the court he was “absolutely sure” Hermoso had given her consent before he kissed her.

He described the kiss as an “act of affection”, adding that in the moment it was “something completely spontaneous”.

In her testimony, Hermoso insisted she had not given her consent and said the incident had “stained one of the happiest days of my life”.

She told the court in Madrid: “My boss was kissing me and this shouldn’t happen in any social or work setting.”

The incident gave momentum to a Me Too-style movement in the Spanish women’s game, in which players sought to combat sexism and achieve parity with their male peers.

Rubiales resigned in September 2023 following weeks of resisting pressure to stand down and after he was suspended by Fifa.

Prosecutors first filed a complaint from Hermoso about Rubiales to Spain’s high court in the days prior to his resignation. He was formally charged in early 2024.

US pop star Olivia Rodrigo and British band The 1975 will headline the Glastonbury festival this summer, organisers have announced.

They will be joined by five-time Brit Award winner Charli XCX – who will top the bill on the festival’s second stage on Saturday 28 June.

There will also be debut Glastonbury performances by Alanis Morisette, Noah Kahan, Gracie Abrams, Lola Young and US rap phenomenon Doechii, who will headline the West Holts stage. Returning favourites include Wolf Alice, Wet Leg, Fatboy Slim, Loyle Carner and Scissor Sisters.

Rock legend Neil Young has already been announced as the Saturday night headliner, with Rod Stewart playing the Sunday afternoon “legend slot”.

• Sidetracked podcast: Annie Mac and Nick Grimshaw react to Glastonbury’s headliners

Cheshire’s The 1975 are festival veterans, who have headlined the Reading and Leeds festival three times since 2016 – but this will be their first time at the top of Glastonbury’s line-up.

Balancing hooky dance-rock with more experimental forays into electronica and even ambient music, they pepper their lyrics with references to online relationships, chemical dependency and wry, self-aware humour.

Frontman Matty Healy is known for his provocative, and often divisive, actions. On their recent tour, he has been spotted chewing raw steak, berating security guards via Auto-Tune, and passionately kissing fans in the front row.

More seriously, the band are being sued by organisers of a Malaysian festival, which was shut down after Healy kissed one of his bandmates on stage.

The singer said he was protesting at the country’s anti-LGBT laws, under which homosexual acts can be punished by 20 years in prison.

“I feel like they’ll be great headliners,” said BBC 6 Music’s Nick Grimshaw, speaking on the Sidetracked podcast.

“They have great taste and great vision – and they’re a band who will think about do a bespoke show.”

Rodrigo is the first Glastonbury headliner to have broken through in the 2020s – and the second-youngest solo headliner of all time, after Billie Eilish, who was 20 when she topped the bill in 2022.

Like Eilish, the 22-year-old will play the Pyramid Stage with just two albums to her name, but she has a solid armoury of fist-pumping pop-punk singalongs (Good 4 U, Brutal, Get Him Back), alongside lighters-aloft ballads like Driver’s License and Vampire.

An accomplished live performer, her 2024 Guts tour banked $186m (£144m) in ticket sales; and she will also headline the BST festival in London’s Hyde Park two days before Glastonbury.

Rodrigo last played the festival in 2022, drawing a huge – and noticeably young – crowd to the Other Stage.

During that performance, she brought out Lily Allen to perform the expletive-laden track F You, dedicating it to the US Supreme Court justices who had, a day earlier, ended the constitutional right to abortion in America.

Rumours that Rihanna would play the Pyramid Stage turned out to be wishful thinking for the second year running.

But Charli XCX will cement her position as one of the UK’s biggest pop stars with her set on the Other Stage.

She returns to the festival after winning five Brit Awards for her deliberately trashy seventh album, Brat.

Playing the Other Stage will release her from the requirement to tone down her set for audiences on BBC One, and indulge in the frenetic, hedonistic club sounds that made her name.

“The Other Stage is traditionally more of a home for electronic music,” said Annie Mac on Sidetracked. “It makes so much sense for her to counteract the Neil Young set on Saturday night.”

Charli’s set also mark’s the latest step in the star’s journey through Glastonbury’s smaller stages, starting at the Silver Hayes dance arena in 2014.

“I was really ill and I forgot to wear a bra on stage, which was good!” she later told the BBC about her debut..

“[Radio 1 DJ] Huw Stephens came on during the last song and told me I was singing live on the radio. I lost my voice and it was all a bit crazy, but it was fun.”

Hopefully she’ll avoid the lurgy this summer.

Other acts announced for Glastonbury 2025 include Ezra Collective, Jorja Smith, The Libertines, The Maccabees, Franz Ferdinand, Kae Tempest, Beabadoobee, Kneecap and The Prodigy.

Pop star Raye will also play just before Neil Young on the Saturday night, following her breakthrough set at lunchtime on the Pyramid Stage just two years ago.

The line-up so far includes:

Friday 27 June

• The 1975
• Loyle Carner
• Biffy Clyro
• Alanis Morissette
• Busta Rhymes
• Maribou State
• Gracie Abrams
• Four Tet
• Wet Leg
• Anohni & The Johnsons
• Badbadnotgood
• Blossoms
• Burning Spear
• Cmat
• Denzel Curry
• En Vogue
• English Teacher
• Fatboy Slim
• Faye Webster
• Floating Points
• Franz Ferdinand
• Glass Beams
• Inhaler
• Lola Young
• Myles Smith
• Osees
• Pinkpantheress
• Self Esteem
• Supergrass
• Vieux Farka Touré
• Wunderhorse

Saturday 28 June

• Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts
• Charli XCX
• Raye
• Doechii
• Deftones
• Ezra Collective
• John Fogerty
• Amyl & The Sniffers
• Amaarae
• Beabadoobee
• Beth Gibbons
• Bob Vylan
• Brandi Carlile
• Caribou
• Father John Misty
• Gary Numan
• Greentea Peng
• Jade
• Japanese Breakfast
• Kaiser Chiefs
• Kneecap
• Leftfield
• Lucy Dacus
• Nick Lowe
• Nova Twins
• Pa Salieu
• Scissor Sisters
• Tom Odell
• The Script
• TV On The Radio
• Weezer
• Yussef Dayes

Sunday 29 June

• Olivia Rodrigo
• Rod Stewart
• The Prodigy
• Noah Kahan
• Nile Rodgers & Chic
• Wolf Alice
• Jorja Smith
• Overmono
• The Libertines
• AJ Tracey
• Black Uhuru
• Celeste
• Cymande
• Future Islands
• Girl In Red
• Goat
• Joy Crookes
• Kae Tempest
• Katy J Pearson
• Parcels
• Pawsa
• Royel Otis
• Shaboozey
• Snow Patrol
• Sprints
• St Vincent
• The Brian Jonestown Massacre
• The Maccabees
• The Selecter
• Turnstile

More acts will be announced before the festival opens its gates on 25 June.

Tickets, which cost £373.50 plus a £5 booking fee, have already sold out. A limited resale will take place in April.

After this summer, the event will take a “fallow year” before returning in 2027.

US President Donald Trump has issued what he called a “last warning” to Hamas to release the hostages being held in Gaza.

“I am sending Israel everything it needs to finish the job, not a single Hamas member will be safe if you don’t do as I say,” Trump said in a lengthy post on his Truth Social platform.

Hamas accused the US president of encouraging Israel to break the ceasefire deal currently in effect between the two sides.

Trump’s statement came just hours after the White House confirmed it was holding direct talks with Hamas over the remaining hostages.

Washington has until now avoided direct engagement with the group, and there is a longstanding US policy against having direct contact with entities it lists as terrorist organisations.

• One day, three crises and Trump’s free-wheeling foreign policy
• Gaza food prices spike after Israel halts aid deliveries
• Stories of the hostages taken by Hamas from Israel

In his social media post, Trump said there would be “hell to pay” if the hostages were not released, while not specifying the nature of the support he was sending Israel.

“Release all of the hostages now, not later, and immediately return all of the dead bodies of the people you murdered, or it is OVER for you,” he added.

“For the leadership, now is the time to leave Gaza, while you still have a chance.”

He also appeared to issue a wider threat: “Also, to the People of Gaza: A beautiful Future awaits, but not if you hold Hostages. If you do, you are DEAD!”

Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said in a statement that such threats “complicate matters regarding the ceasefire agreement and encourage the occupation [Israel] to avoid implementing its terms”.

It’s not the first time Trump has threatened Hamas. In December, he said there would be “all hell to pay” if hostages were not released by the time he took office.

The post came after Trump met with a group of hostages in the White House who had been recently released under the ceasefire.

Meanwhile, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the US has been negotiating directly with Hamas to try to secure the release of the hostages.

Israel had been consulted prior to the talks, she added.

President Trump believed in doing what was in the best interest of the American people, Leavitt told reporters.

The work of the special envoy for hostages, Adam Boehler, work was a “good faith effort to do what’s right for the American people”, she added.

“Two direct meetings” have taken place between Hamas and a US official, “preceded by several communications”, a Palestinian source told the BBC.

News of the talks was first reported by Axios, which said the two sides were meeting in Qatar to discuss the release of US hostages as well as a wider deal to end the war.

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

At least 48,440 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Israel says there are still 59 hostages being held in Gaza, with up to 24 believed to be alive.

Five US citizens are among the captives. One of them, Edan Alexander, is believed to be alive and the other four are presumed dead.

A former US deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for the Middle East said the US needs to be “more proactive” about getting its citizens back.

Mick Mulroy, who is also an ex-CIA paramilitary officer, added that “it could complicate the Israelis’ ability to get their citizens back if not tightly coordinated”.

Israel’s prime minister’s office said in a statement it has “expressed its position” regarding the direct talks, but did not provide any further information.

According to reports, Boehler met with Hamas representatives in the Qatari capital, Doha, in recent weeks.

Hamas has had a base in Doha since 2012, reportedly at the request of the Obama administration.

The small but influential Gulf state is a key US ally in the region. It hosts a major American air base and has handled many delicate political negotiations, including with Iran, the Taliban and Russia.

Alongside the US and Egypt, Qatar has also played a major role in talks to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second presidential term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

Six weeks into his presidency, Donald Trump came to a US Capitol controlled by his Republican Party to take a lengthy victory lap.

“We have accomplished more in 43 days than most administrations accomplished in four years or eight years, and we are just getting started,” he told the joint session of Congress.

In typical Trumpian hyperbole, he said that “many” believed his to be the most successful start to a presidency in US history. He noted what he said was a change in the national mood toward “pride” and “confidence”. He compared himself to George Washington, and boasted about the size of his electoral victory.

The whirlwind start to his presidency offered plenty of material for Trump to cover, and he didn’t shy away from it.

He ticked through a lengthy list of tangible accomplishments – hundreds of executive orders and actions, a freeze on foreign aid, lower levels of illegal border crossing, and the withdrawal from international organisations and agreements.

He also spoke at length about his ban on transgender athletes in women’s sports and moves to get “woke ideology” out of US schools and the military.

“Wokeness is trouble. Wokeness is bad. It’s gone, it’s gone, and we feel so much better for it, don’t we?”

Meanwhile, Democrats – who filled up half the audience in the House chamber – sat in icy silence, as the president repeatedly blamed them, former President Joe Biden and “radical left lunatics” for all the nation’s ills.

Several dozen responded by holding up small black signs with words like “false” and “lies”.

The president seemed to enjoy putting the “bully” in the presidential bully pulpit.

He needled his political adversaries, mocking their refusal to cheer his remarks, dusting off his “Pocahontas” nickname for Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, and wryly noting that attempts to prosecute him “didn’t work out” for his opponents.

Texas congressman Al Green was not around to see any of that, however.

At the very start of Trump’s speech, the Democrat had harangued the president, his mostly inaudible comments punctuated with repeated thrusts of his cane. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson called for decorum and the House Sergeant-at-Arms escorted the congressman from the chamber.

Green would tell reporters outside the Capitol that he was protesting proposed cuts to the government-run Medicaid health insurance for low-income Americans.

• LIVE – latest updates and analysis
• Six takeaways from Trump’s speech

After about half an hour of touting his opening actions, Trump turned to the tasks he still needed to accomplish. That made up the bulk of a speech that stretched for more than an hour and 40 minutes. It was standard presidential address fare, and Trump’s rhetorical flourishes began to blur together.

While he said “small business optimism” was up, he blamed Biden for the current state of the economy – including high egg prices. He promised to “rescue” the economy and make getting “dramatic and immediate relief to working families” his highest priority.

He called out Elon Musk in the audience, and said his Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) would reduce inflation by cutting wasteful spending and fraud, prompting him to recite a laundry list of purported examples in foreign aid and other government programmes.

Trump leaned heavily into promises of further progress on immigration enforcement and offered an animated defence of his tariff policies, saying that they were “protecting the soul of our country”, even if most economists warn they will lead to higher prices for American consumers.

The president acknowledged that adding a tax on imported goods from Canada, Mexico and China might cause a “disturbance” and that US farmers might feel a “period of indigestion”.

But nothing in his comments suggested that he was backing away from a budding trade war that has roiled the stock market in recent days – in fact, he promised to move forward with reciprocal tariffs on all US trade partners next month.

• What are tariffs and why is Trump using them?

Trump once again promised to balance the budget, prompting a round of applause from Republican legislators. He provided no details about the kind of steep cuts such a promise would require, however.

In fact, he quickly turned to discussing the tax cuts he hopes Congress will enact – including his campaign promises of no taxes on tips, overtime or Social Security. Any of those, if enacted, would add hundreds of billions of dollars to the current nearly $2tn budget deficit.

Foreign policy is rarely front and centre in these presidential addresses, and that was the case this time despite how Trump has shaken up global politics in the first weeks of his second term.

He repeated his desire for an American annexation of Greenland, promised American control of the Panama Canal and only made brief mention of Gaza and the Middle East.

• Why does Trump want Greenland?

The president spoke more extensively about negotiating with Russia for peace in Ukraine. And he took pleasure in reading from a letter he said he’d just received from Volodymyr Zelensky – which was similar to a message the Ukrainian leader posted on X earlier in the day.

“He said: ‘My team and I stand ready to work under President Trump’s strong leadership to get a peace that lasts. We do really value how much America has done to help Ukraine maintain its sovereignty and independence.’

Trump added that Zelensky had said he was ready to sign an agreement on minerals and security “at any time that is convenient for you”.

“I appreciate that,” Trump told the chamber, offering a hint of a possible cooling of the acrimony between the two leaders.

By the time Trump wrapped up and Democrats practically sprinted for the exits, his speech had set a modern record for the longest presidential address to Congress. Much like the first six weeks of Trump’s presidency, there was plenty for his supporters to love, and lots for his critics – at least those who tuned in – to jeer.

Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second presidential term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

US President Donald Trump declared “the American Dream is unstoppable” as he addressed a raucous joint session of Congress for the first time since he returned to power.

In the longest presidential speech to lawmakers on record, he outlined his vision for his second term, as Republicans applauded a high-octane six weeks that has reshaped domestic and foreign policy.

Trump was heckled by Democrats and he goaded them in turn during the rowdy primetime address, during which he said his administration was “just getting started”.

The Republican president has moved to slash the federal workforce and crack down on immigration, while imposing tariffs on the US’s biggest trading partners and shaking up the transatlantic alliance over the war in Ukraine.

Here are six of the key takeaways.

Following a second day of market turbulence, Trump played down the potential economic fallout from a trade war he ignited this week, including 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada, and an additional 10% on Chinese imports.

But in contrast with the ovations that greeted his other policy objectives, many Republicans remained seated, a sign of how Trump’s import taxes have divided his party.

“Tariffs are about making America rich again and making America great again,” he said.

“And it’s happening. And it will happen rather quickly. There’ll be a little disturbance, but we’re okay with that. It won’t be much.”

Trump added that reciprocal tariffs tailored to US trading partners would “kick in” on 2 April.

Earlier in the day, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Fox Business that Trump could announce a trade deal with Mexico and Canada as soon as Wednesday.

• Trump will ‘probably’ cut tariffs, says commerce chief
• What are tariffs, and why is Trump using them?

Trump said he had received an “important letter” from Ukraine’s leader earlier in the day, which appeared to match what Volodymyr Zelensky posted publicly on social media.

Ukraine’s president had said he was now ready to work under Trump’s “strong leadership” to end the war and “come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer”.

“I appreciate that he sent this letter,” Trump told lawmakers.

Zelensky offered the olive branch a day after Trump paused all military aid to the beleaguered US ally.

It followed an acrimonious Oval Office meeting last week when the two leaders argued in front of TV cameras, before cancelling plans to sign a minerals deal that would allow the US to profit from an economic partnership involving Ukraine’s natural resources.

Trump was reportedly hoping to announce during his speech to Congress that the deal had finally been sealed. But it did not materialise.

• Live updates: Trump ‘appreciates’ Zelensky’s message
• Trump and Zelensky’s fraying relationship, in their own words

Despite most of his 99-minute speech focusing on domestic issues, Trump’s worldview also came more sharply into focus.

There are places in the world he wants to expand US influence and others where he wants to withdraw.

Repeating his desire for the US to acquire Greenland, he vowed “we’re going to get it – one way or the other”. And he said his administration would “reclaim” the Panama Canal.

There were several mentions of African countries when he rattled through a long list of aid programmes funded by US taxpayers that he portrayed as ridiculous.

Liberia, Mali, Mozambique and Uganda were all places where he suggested money had been wasted.

But his most pointed remark was about Lesotho, which he said was a country “nobody has ever heard of” despite receiving $8m (£6.2m) to promote LGBT rights.

The government there quickly responded.

“To my surprise, ‘the country that nobody has heard of’ is the country where the US has a permanent mission,” Foreign Affairs Minister Lejone Mpotjoane told the BBC.

• Nine things to know about Lesotho
• Why does Trump want Greenland and what do its people think?

Early on, Trump name-checked his billionaire adviser Elon Musk, who was watching from the gallery.

The tech mogul’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) taskforce has moved to fire tens of thousands of federal workers, cut billions of dollars in foreign aid and slash programmes across the US government.

The SpaceX and Tesla boss, wearing a dark suit with a blue tie, stood and acknowledged the cheers from the crowd.

“Thank you, Elon,” the 78-year-old president said. “He’s working very hard. He didn’t need this.”

Musk’s cuts have sparked some angry scenes at town hall meetings and his instructions to federal employees have at times been overruled by members of Trump’s cabinet.

In the chamber, Democratic lawmakers held up signs saying “Musk steals” and “false”.

Doge claims to have saved $105bn already, but that figure can’t be independently verified. Receipts have been published for $18.6bn worth of savings, but accounting errors have been reported by US media outlets that have analysed the figures.

• Young Republicans cheer Trump on from Texas watch party

Within the first five minutes of the address, Al Green of Texas was escorted out of the chamber by the sergeant-at-arms after refusing to comply with the House Speaker’s demands that he stop heckling the president and take his seat.

As Trump spoke, other Democrats held up signs saying: “This is a lie.”

With Republicans in control of the White House, House of Representatives and Senate, Democrats have been largely leaderless as they work to hone their message and counter the blitz of activity from the Trump administration.

Many Democratic women arrived in the House chamber wearing pink pantsuits in protest. Dozens from their party – some of them wearing the words “Resist” printed on the backs of their shirts – exited the chamber during the speech.

“There is absolutely nothing I can say to make them happy,” Trump said, appearing to revel in the partisan rancour.

Democratic leadership chose Elissa Slotkin of Michigan – a first-term senator elected in a battleground state that Trump won in November – to deliver the party’s official response.

She accused Trump of an “unprecedented giveaway to his billionaire friends” and warned that “he could walk us right into a recession”.

Trump pledged to voters that he would beat inflation on his return to office and he used the speech to say his focus would be to reduce the cost of energy, by opening up the country to new oil and gas drilling.

“We have more liquid gold under our feet than any nation on earth, and by far, and now I fully authorize the most talented team ever assembled to go and get it. It’s called drill, baby, drill.”

The soaring cost of eggs has been headline news in recent weeks, and Trump made clear who he felt was responsible.

“Joe Biden especially let the price of eggs get out of control – and we are working hard to get it back down,” he added.

Egg prices rose as the Biden administration directed millions of egg-laying birds to be culled last year amid a bird flu outbreak, though prices have continued rising during the early stages of Trump’s second presidency.

Inflation was slightly elevated at 3% last month, but way down from its peak of 9.1% in 2022.

Only one in three Americans approve of Trump’s handling of cost of living, according to a Reuters/Ipsos survey on Tuesday.

• Fact-checking Trump’s address to Congress

Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second presidential term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

Elissa Slotkin, a US Senate Democrat, gave her party’s response to Trump’s congressional address, taking the new Trump administration to task for bringing with it chaos and recklessness.

Early in her remarks, she attacked the White House on the economy and warned that if Trump was “not careful, he could walk us right into a recession”.

Slotkin also took a shot at the Department of Government Efficiency, the cost-cutting project led by Elon Musk, saying change is needed “but doesn’t need to be chaotic or make us less safe”.

Speaking from Michigan before a backdrop of US flags, Slotkin was much more concise and much less animated than the president, who regaled Republicans on the House floor for an hour and 40 minutes.

She made a quick reference to Democrats’ stinging election defeat in November, but then quickly pivoted to Trump.

“Americans made it clear that prices are too high and that government needs to be more responsive to their needs. America wants change,” she said.

“But there is a responsible way to make change, and a reckless way. And, we can make that change without forgetting who we are as a country, and as a democracy.”

Throughout the election, voters frequently said the economy was their number one concern, and Democrats’ defeat was blamed on not addressing it sufficiently.

Weeks into Trump’s presidency, economic concerns remain high, as prices of a number of goods have not dropped, and prices on some items, like eggs, have risen.

“Grocery and home prices are going up, not down – and he hasn’t laid out a credible plan to deal with either,” she said.

Slotkin also talked about immigration, another topic where Democrats poll worse than Republicans, highlighting a lack of empathy by the Trump administration toward undocumented immigrants.

“The border without actually fixing our broken immigration system is dealing with the symptom not the disease. America is a nation of immigrants,” she said.

She cited the public berating of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday during a meeting withTrump and Vice-President JD Vance, too.

“That scene in the Oval Office wasn’t just a bad episode of reality TV. It summed up Trump’s whole approach to the world,” she said.

“He believes in cozying up to dictators like Vladimir Putin and kicking our friends, like Canada, in the teeth.”

For many, Tuesday night was their first time meeting Slotkin, who won the US Senate seat in the swing state of Michigan last year.

A former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analyst, Slotkin became the youngest Democratic woman elected to the Senate at 48, when she won her seat in a state that former Vice-President Kamala Harris lost last November.

Slotkin gave her speech after Trump’s, which is not a traditional State of the Union address but was expected to serve the same purpose.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer called Slotkin a “rising star” in the party last week as he announced her as the pick to provide the Democratic Party’s rebuttal. He said she was “great on both economic and national security” topics.

Slotkin is new to the Senate, but she served in Congress as a member of Michigan’s delegation to the House of Representatives. She was first elected in the Democrats’ 2018 wave of success, flipping a Republican seat.

Prior to her political career, she held a variety of government jobs. She held national security positions in Presidents George W Bush and Barack Obama’s administrations.

She served in Bush’s National Security Council, and, under Obama, she served as acting assistant secretary of defence for international security affairs and in the State Department.

The CIA recruited Slotkin, who is fluent in Arabic and Swahili, shortly after she earned a graduate degree in international affairs at Columbia University in New York City. She served three tours in Iraq as a CIA analyst.

The moderate Democrat focused her 2024 Senate campaign on lowering costs for Americans, a move that helped propel her to a narrow victory over former Congressman Mike Rogers, even as Trump won the state.

Slotkin is a member of the committees on Armed Forces; Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs; Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry; and Veterans Affairs.

In his address to Congress, which ran for more than an hour and a half, President Donald Trump made a series of claims about the state of the US under his predecessor Joe Biden and the achievements of his first weeks in office.

He returned to key campaign themes including illegal immigration, rising prices and what he called “appalling waste” in government spending.

BBC Verify has looked into the facts behind some of his key claims.

Trump said he inherited an “economic catastrophe” from Biden.

This is misleading. The US economy was growing at an annual rate of 2.3% in the final quarter of 2024 under the previous administration. It expanded by 2.8% over 2024 as a whole according to official US statistics.

The International Monetary Fund estimates that the US growth rate in 2024 was faster than any other nation in the G7.

On rising prices, Trump added “we suffered the worst inflation in 48 years, but perhaps even in the history of our country”.

Inflation under Biden peaked at 9.1% in June 2022 – the highest level since 1981 – so not quite as far back as Trump claimed.

The 2022 peak was in the context of high inflation in the rest of the world in the wake of the Covid pandemic and a global energy shock. The inflation rate had dropped to 3% by the time Trump took office.

Inflation has also been much higher than 9% at several other points in US history, including the 1940s and 1920s.

Trump went on to blame Biden for egg prices, claiming he “let the price of eggs get out of control”.

Prices are high, but this has been linked to a bird flu outbreak in the US.

Egg prices rose under Biden in 2023, and in January a dozen eggs averaged over $5, according to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). That is 53% above the average for the whole of 2024.

The USDA has said a bird flu outbreak has led to US farmers having to kill millions of chickens, creating egg shortages, and has announced a $1bn (£780m) plan to help combat the issue.

The outbreak started in February 2022 and last year the Biden administration allocated more than $800m to tackle it.

The Trump administration recently fired a number of USDA officials who worked on the government’s response to bird flu as part of cost-cutting measures by the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge). They are now reportedly attempting to rehire some of them.

Trump praised Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) and claimed the advisory body had found “hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud” in federal government spending.

No evidence has been provided for this figure.

On its official website, Doge states that it has saved an estimated $105bn, from fraud detection, contract and grant cancellations, real estate lease terminations, asset sales, workforce reductions, programmatic changes, and regulatory savings.

However, that figure cannot be independently verified as, so far, Doge has only published “receipts” for contract, grant and real estate lease cancellations on the website. These add up to about $18.6bn. We have asked the White House for evidence of the remaining $86bn of savings.

US media outlets have also highlighted some accounting errors. For example, Doge initially listed its largest saving of $8bn from scrapping an immigration agency contract – it later corrected this to $8m.

Speaking about his actions to tackle illegal immigration, Trump said that “as a result, illegal border crossings last month were by far the lowest ever recorded”.

This is true.

In February 2025, 8,326 encounters of migrants at the south-west border with Mexico were recorded by US Border Patrol.

This is the lowest level since monthly records began in 2000.

By comparison, there were 140,641 encounters by US Border Patrol at this border in February last year under Biden.

Numbers fell to 47,316 in December 2024.

Continuing with illegal migration, Trump claimed: “Over the past four years, 21 million people poured into the United States”.

There is no evidence for a figure this high.

Encounters with migrants at the borders – a measure of illegal migration – reached 10 million under Biden but this does not mean this many people stayed in the US.

It is impossible to know exactly how many illegal immigrants have come to the US, as many will have evaded law enforcement agencies, but several estimates put the number at around half what Trump stated.

A report published by the Office of Homeland Security last year estimated the number of illegal immigrants living in the US, as of January 2022, at 11 million.

It says about a fifth of them arrived in 2010 or later but the majority arrived before this time, some as early as the 1980s.

On US aid to Ukraine, Trump claimed: “We’ve spent perhaps $350bn… and they [Europe] have spent $100bn. What a difference that is.”

BBC Verify is unable to find any evidence for Trump’s $350bn claim and some figures suggest Europe has spent more as whole when all aid to Ukraine is included.

The US is, by some margin, the largest single donor to Ukraine. But Europe combined has spent more money than the US, according to the Kiel Institute think tank.

It calculates that between 24 January 2022 and the end of 2024, Europe as a whole spent $138.7bn on Ukraine, while the US spent $119.7bn.

• How much has the US given to Ukraine?
• Fact-checking Elon Musk’s claims in the Oval Office

The US Department of Defense has a higher figure of $182.8bn – taking into account a broader range of US military activity in Europe – but this is still considerably less than Trump’s figure.

We have asked the White House where it comes from.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

Two years ago, on his bank adviser’s suggestion, Rajesh Kumar pulled out his savings – fixed deposits included – and shifted to mutual funds, stocks and bonds.

With India’s stock market booming, Mr Kumar, a Bihar-based engineer, joined millions investing in publicly traded companies. Six years ago, only one in 14 Indian households channelled their savings into the stock market – now, it’s one in five.

But the tide has turned.

For six months, India’s markets have slid as foreign investors pulled out, valuations remained high, earnings weakened and global capital shifted to China – wiping out $900bn in investor value since their September peak. While the decline began before US President Donald Trump’s tariff announcements, they have now become a bigger drag as more details emerge.

India’s benchmark Nifty 50 share index, which tracks the country’s top 50 publicly traded companies, is on its longest losing streak in 29 years, declining for five straight months. This is a significant slump in one of the world’s fastest-growing markets. Stock brokers are reporting that their activity has dropped by a third.

“For more than six months now, my investments have been in the red. This is the worst experience in the last decade that I have been invested in stock market,” Mr Kumar says.

Mr Kumar, 55, now keeps little money in the bank, having shifted most of his savings to the stock market. With his son’s 1.8 million-rupee ($20,650; £16,150) private medical college fee due in July, he worries about selling investments at a loss to cover it. “Once the market recovers, I’m thinking of moving some money back to the bank,” he says.

His anxieties reflect those of millions of middle-class Indians who have poured into the stock market from cities big and small – part of a financial revolution.

The go-to investment route is Systematic Investment Plans (SIPs), where funds collect fixed monthly contributions. The number of Indians investing through SIPs has soared past 100 million, nearly trebling from 34 million five years ago. Many first-time investors, lured by the promise of high returns, enter with limited risk awareness – often influenced by a wave of social media “finfluencers” on platforms like Instagram and YouTube, a mixed bag of experts and amateurs alike.

Meet Tarun Sircar, a retired marketing manager, and you get a glimpse of India’s new investor.

When his public provident fund – a government-backed tax-free investment – matured last year, he sought a way to secure his retirement. Burnt by past stock market losses, he turned to mutual funds – this time with an adviser’s help and a buoyant market.

“I’ve put 80% of my savings into mutual funds, keeping just 20% in the bank. Now my adviser warns me – Don’t check your investments for six months, unless you want a heart attack!”

For now, Mr Sircar isn’t entirely sure if moving his retirement fund into the stock market was the right decision. “I’m both ignorant and confident,” he says with wry candour. “Ignorant about what’s happening and why the market is reacting this way, yet confident because Instagram ‘experts’ make investing sound like a fast track to millions. At the same time, I know I might be caught in a web of deception and hype.”

Mr Sircar says he was drawn to the markets by TV shows hyping stocks and excited chatter in WhatsApp groups. “The TV anchors talk up the market and people in my WhatsApp group boast about their stock market gains,” he says.

In his sprawling apartment complex, even teenagers discuss investments – in fact, during a badminton game, a teenager gave him a hot tip on a telecom stock. “When you hear all this around you, you start thinking – why not give it a shot? So I did, and then the markets crashed.”

Mr Sircar lives in hope. “My fingers are crossed. I am sure the markets will recover, and my fund will be back in green.”

There are others who have taken more risks and already lost money. Lured by get-rich-quick videos, Ramesh (name changed), an accounting clerk from a small industrial town in western India, borrowed money to invest in stocks during the pandemic.

Hooked to YouTube influencers, he dived into risky penny stocks and trading in derivatives. This month, after losing over $1,800 – more than his annual salary – he shut his brokerage account and swore off the market.

“I borrowed this money, and now creditors are after me,” he says.

Ramesh is one of 11 million Indians who lost a combined $20bn in futures and options trades before regulators stepped in.

“This crash is unlike the one during the Covid pandemic,” says financial adviser Samir Doshi. “Back then, we had a clear path to recovery with vaccines on the horizon. But with the Trump factor in play, uncertainty looms – we simply don’t know what’s next.”

Fuelled by digital platforms, low-cost brokerages and government-driven financial inclusion, investing has become more accessible – smartphones and user-friendly apps have simplified market participation, drawing a broader, younger audience seeking alternatives to traditional assets.

On the flip side, many new Indian investors need a reality check. “The stock market isn’t a gambling den – you must manage expectations,” says Monika Halan, author and financial educator. “Invest in equity only what you won’t need for at least seven years. If you’re taking on risk, understand the downside: How much could I lose? Can I afford that loss?”

This market crash couldn’t have hit India’s middle class at a worse time. Economic growth is slowing, wages remain stagnant, private investment has been sluggish for years and job creation isn’t keeping pace. Amid these challenges, many new investors, lured by rising markets, are now grappling with unexpected losses.

“In normal times, savers can take short-term setbacks, because they have steady incomes, which keep adding to their savings,” noted Aunindyo Chakravarty, a financial analyst.

“Now, we are in the midst of a massive economic crisis for the middle-class. On the one side, white-collar job opportunities are reducing, and raises are low. On the other, the real inflation faced by middle-class households – as opposed to the average retail inflation that the government compiles – is at its highest in recent memory. A stock market correction at such a time is disastrous for middle-class household finances.”

Financial advisers like Jaideep Marathe believe that some people will start taking money out of the market and move them to safer bank deposits if the volatility continues for another six to eight months. “We are spending a lot of time telling clients not to liquidate their portfolios and to treat this as a cyclical event.”

But clearly, all hope is not lost – most believe that the market is correcting itself from previous highs.

Foreign investor selling has eased since February, suggesting the market downturn may be nearing its end, says veteran market expert Ajay Bagga. Following the correction, valuations for many stock market indices have dipped below their 10-year average, providing some respite.

Mr Bagga expects GDP and corporate earnings to improve, aided by a $12bn income-tax giveaway in the federal budget and falling interest rates. However, geopolitical risks – Middle East and Ukraine conflicts, and Trump’s tariff plans – will keep investors cautious.

In the end, the market meltdown might serve as a hard lesson for new investors.

“This correction is a much-needed wake-up call for those who entered the market just three years ago, enjoying 25% returns – that’s not normal,” says Ms Halan. “If you don’t understand markets, stick to bank deposits and gold. At least you have control.”

US President Donald Trump has hit China with a second tariff in as many months, which means imports from there now face a levy of at least 20%.

This is his latest salvo against Beijing, which already faces steep US tariffs, from 100% on Chinese-made electric vehicles to 15% on clothes and shoes.

Trump’s tariffs strike at the heart of China’s manufacturing juggernaut – a web of factories, assembly lines and supply chains that manufacture and ship just about everything, from fast fashion and toys to solar panels and electric cars.

China’s trade surplus with the world rose to a record $1tn (£788bn) in 2024, on the back of strong exports ($3.5tn), which surpassed its import bill ($2.5tn).

It has long been the world’s factory – it has thrived because of cheap labour and state investment in infrastructure ever since it opened its economy to global business in the late 1970s.

So how badly could Trump’s trade war hurt China’s manufacturing success?

Tariffs are taxes charged on goods imported from other countries.

Most tariffs are set as a percentage of the value of the goods, and it’s generally the importer who pays them.

So, a 10% tariff means a product imported to the US from China worth $4 would face an additional $0.40 charge applied to it.

Increasing the price of imported goods is meant to encourage consumers to buy cheaper domestic products instead, thus helping to boost their own economy’s growth.

Trump sees them as a way of growing the US economy, protecting jobs and raising tax revenue. But economic studies of the impact of tariffs which Trump imposed during his first term in office, suggest the measures ultimately raised prices for US consumers.

Trump has said his most recent tariffs are aimed at pressuring China to do more to stop the flow of the opioid fentanyl to the US.

He also imposed 25% tariffs on America’s neighbours Mexico and Canada, saying its leaders were not doing enough to crack down on the cross-border illegal drug trade.

Yes, analysts say.

Exports have been the “saving grace” of China’s economy and if the taxes linger, exports to the US could drop by a quarter to a third, Harry Murphy Cruise, an economist at Moody’s analytics, told the BBC.

The sheer value of China’s exports – which account for a fifth of the country’s earnings – means that a 20% tariff could weaken demand from overseas and shrink the trade surplus.

“The tariffs will hurt China,” Alicia Garcia-Herrero, chief economist for Asia-Pacific at Natixis in Hong Kong, told the BBC. “They really need to do much more. They need to do what Xi Jinping has already said – boost domestic demand.”

That is a tall task in an economy where the property market is slumping and disillusioned youth are struggling to find high-paying jobs.

Chinese people have not been spending enough to recharge the economy – and Beijing has just announced a slew of stimulus measures to boost consumption.

While tariffs can slow Chinese manufacturing, they cannot stop or replace it that easily, analysts say.

“Not only is China the big exporter, it is sometimes the only exporter like for solar panels. If you want solar panels you can only go to China,” Ms Garcia-Herrero said.

China had begun pivoting from making garments and shoes to advanced tech such as robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) long before Trump became president. And that has given China an “early mover” advantage, not to mention the scale of production in the world’s second-largest economy.

Chinese factories can produce high-end tech in large quantities at a low cost, said Shuang Ding, chief China economist at Standard Chartered.

“It’s really difficult to find a replacement… China’s status as a market leader is very difficult to topple.”

China has responded with counter tariffs of 10-15% on US agricultural goods, coal, liquefied natural gas, pick-up trucks, and some sports cars.

And it has targeted US firms in aviation, defence and tech with export restrictions and announced an anti-monopoly investigation against Google.

China has also spent years adapting to tariffs from Trump’s first term. Some Chinese manufacturers have moved factories out of the country, for instance. And supply chains have come to rely more on Vietnam and Mexico by exporting from there to bypass the tariffs.

And yet, Trump’s recent tariffs on Mexico would not hurt China too much because Vietnam is a bigger backdoor for Chinese goods, Ms Garcia-Herrero said.

“Vietnam is the key here. If tariffs are imposed on Vietnam, I think it will be very tough,” she said.

What concerns China more than tariffs, analysts says, is US restrictions on advanced chips.

These restrictions have been a major sticking point between the two countries but they have also fuelled China’s determination to invest in homegrown tech that is independent of the West.

It’s why Chinese AI firm DeepSeek shocked Silicon Valley and unnerved Washington when it released a chatbot that rivals OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The firm had reportedly stockpiled Nvidia chips before the US began cutting off China’s access to the most advanced ones.

Although this could “impact China’s competitiveness, I don’t think that would affect China’s status as a manufacturing power,” Mr Ding of Standard Chartered said.

On the other hand, any ground China gains in advanced tech manufacturing will boost its high-value exports.

It happened because of state support, an unrivalled supply chain and cheap labour, analysts say.

“The combination of globalisation, as well as China’s pro-business policies and market potential, helped to attract the initial wave of foreign investors,” Chim Lee, an analyst at The Economist Intelligence Unit, told the BBC.

The government then doubled down, investing heavily in building a sprawling network of roads and ports to bring in raw materials and take Chinese-made goods to the world. What also helped was a stable exchange rate between the Chinese yuan and the US dollar.

A shift in recent years towards advanced tech has made sure that it will continue to be relevant and ahead of its competitors, analysts say.

China already has plenty of economic clout from being a manufacturing powerhouse. But there is also a political opportunity as Trump’s tariffs upend America’s relationship with the world.

“The door is ajar for China to position itself as an advocate of free trade and a stable global force,” said Mr Cruise of Moody’s.

But that is not easy, given Beijing has been accused of flouting international trade norms, such as imposing a tariff of more than 200% on imports of Australian wine in 2020.

Analysts say China must also look beyond the US, which is still the top destination for its exports. China is the third-biggest market for US exports, after Canada and Mexico.

Chinese trade with Europe, South East Asia and Latin America has been growing, but it’s hard to imagine that the world’s two biggest economies can stop relying on each other.

The UK was once ranked the best country in the world for end-of-life care – but that’s not the case any longer. And according to experts, the problem runs far deeper than money

The people closest to Terry Leader remember him as a man who was always laughing. He emigrated to the UK from the Caribbean island of St Kitts as a child, and was sporty, representing the junior Great Britain martial arts team in the 1970s.

Later he became a father of three and worked as a metal spinner and enjoyed spending time with friends and family. Then in 2021, shortly after he retired, everything changed. Terry discovered he had terminal stomach cancer.

His final wish was to die at home, surrounded by family. But despite being referred for specialist end-of-life care support, Terry and Gillian, his partner of 27 years, were left to navigate his final months largely alone.

Apart from medication from Terry’s GP and a couple of visits from district nurses, “there was nothing”, says Gillian.

“I couldn’t understand why – we kept asking but it was hard to get to the bottom of it. I really didn’t know what to do and was doing my best to care for him.”

“He was in agony at times – crying out in pain and crawling around. It was so difficult to watch and feel helpless.”

As the months passed, Terry deteriorated and was eventually taken to hospital. “I slept on a Z-bed bed next to him, trying my best to look after him,” says Gillian.

He died just over two weeks later. He was 67.

“It was not how he wanted to spend his last days,” she tells me today. “I want to see changes so others do not have to go through what we did.”

Terry and Gillian’s story is far from unique – and this has become a factor as MPs debate a bill that would allow terminally ill adults in England and Wales to seek to end their own lives.

Some opponents of changing the law have highlighted what they describe as the inadequate state of palliative care – the services that provide support at the end of life to manage pain and other symptoms.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who is against the bill, has warned that people nearing the end of their lives may feel “coerced” by a lack of better alternatives.

Like Terry, the overwhelming majority of people say they would like to die at home, Office for National Statistics figures suggest, but in reality just over a quarter do. Instead, the most common place of death is in hospital.

It is estimated that at least three-quarters of the 650,000 people who die every year in the UK require palliative care. But a recent report by end-of-life charity Marie Curie suggested more than a fifth of those who need it in England and Wales do not receive any.

And overall, half of families said they were unhappy about the care their loved ones receive in their final months.

But this hasn’t always been the case – until recently the picture was very different.

As recently as 2015, the UK was ranked the best country in the world for end-of-life care by the Economist Intelligence Unit. However, Association for Palliative Medicine president Dr Sarah Cox says: “That’s not the case any longer. We’re not getting the funding we need. But it is not just about money – it is the way services are organised.”

There are many reasons people end up dying in hospital when they would have preferred to have done so at home. Palliative care staff I have spoken say when people are in their final weeks some decide they need to go to hospital as they become frightened or do not want to be a burden on their loved ones, while in other cases families believe that being in hospital will help prolong their relative’s life.

But, ultimately, the lack of palliative care is thought to be the crucial factor in most cases, experts say. And so accident and emergency departments in hospitals become the safety net.

• ‘Palliative care is not good enough – there’s no plan to fix it’
• ‘Focus on palliative care not assisted dying’
• ‘We felt on our own looking after mum in her last days’

The Marie Curie report found around half of people in England and Wales end up going to A&E at least once in their final three months, and one in eight spend 30 days or more in hospital. And a hospital death is not always in the relative comfort of a bed on a ward.

Hospital palliative care doctor Dr Rachel Clarke says she can spend whole days in A&E trying her best to care for patients dying in resuscitation areas and in corridors. “It’s a travesty people end their lives like that.”

Specialist palliative care is actually provided by a range of different organisations. “People receive it from hospitals, from community NHS teams, from social care and from hospices,” says Dr Cox.

“But families tell us that there is a lack of coordination between the different parts of the system. People struggle to get the help they need and end up in hospital.”

This is exactly what happened to Terry, who was rushed to hospital in an ambulance because of a fluid build-up related to his cancer two weeks before he died and never returned home. With better support at home, it is quite possible he would never have needed to be admitted.

On top of the financial pressures felt by the rest of the NHS, experts say that a combination of demographic changes, different parts of the system acting in isolation and cash being spent in the wrong places have all brought the palliative care system to this point.

And the problems are becoming more acute each year. For the 30 years up to 2011, the number of people dying in the UK was falling but that has changed as the people born during the boom in births following World War Two have grown old. Over the next decade, the number of deaths a year is expected to increase by 12%.

Where it works well, palliative care makes all the difference to those who use it. Hospices are a major provider of care, supporting 300,000 people a year – mainly in the community, not just inside their own buildings, contrary to popular belief.

St Christopher’s Hospice in south London is helping more than 1,700 people with terminal illnesses across five London boroughs. It receives referrals from GPs, district nursing teams and hospitals.

Palliative care nurse Grace Larder says she provides many types of support to her patients, who have a range of conditions from motor neurone disease and Parkinson’s to liver failure. This includes pain control and care for other physical problems, along with helping them with psychological and financial needs.

“We really develop relationships with people,” she says. “There’s one patient I’ve been working with for nearly two years. You want to do your best.”

Most people she cares for tell her that they want to die at home, she says – but that’s only possible if they get the right care.

But many hospice services are in financial difficulties. Only around a third of St Christopher’s funding comes from the NHS; the rest comes from fundraising and charitable donations.

Any drugs the hospice provides has to come from their own funds too so they try to anticipate what their patients will need in advance and work with the patient’s GP to have them prescribed on the NHS.

A parliamentary report warned the current approach to funding is not sustainable.

“What other health service has to get by like that?” says Helen King, who manages the team of nurses at St Christopher’s. She points out that they are fortunate to have an affluent local community that donates generously.

“[But] the fact remains we get more money from our shops – from selling second-hand clothing – than we do from the government.”

The government has recognised there is a problem and provided an extra £100m of funding this year to the sector – although hospice services have said this will mostly go on the rising costs they are facing.

As for hospitals offering palliative care, audits show that four in 10 hospitals, for example, do not have specialist services available seven days a week – despite this having been set as a national standard in 2004.

In practice, that means there is no specialist palliative care support from doctors or nurses available during evenings and weekends either in person or on-call, says Dr Clarke. “You would never have that for other specialities like cardiology or renal so why should it happen for palliative care?”

This is compounded by the fact that palliative care training is “virtually non-existent” for the other staff who pick up the burden, who often lack the confidence to speak to patients and families about dying and prescribe the right drugs, she says.

“We will come into work and find patients really suffering – in pain, breathless, agitated or with nausea and vomiting. It is hard to over-state how lamentably badly-resourced palliative care services are.”

Meanwhile, in the community, GPs are left to pick up the pieces. But Dr Catherine Millington-Sanders from the Royal College of General Practicioners says that, given an “unrelenting workload” and staffing shortages, it is difficult to provide the care patients need, particularly home visits.

“Families and unpaid carers bear the brunt,” she says.

So what is the solution? More money would help, but it wouldn’t fix everything.

Earlier this year the Health Economics Unit and Nuffield Trust think-tank found that plenty was being spent on people in the final year of their life. Nearly £12bn was going on their healthcare, the report found – that works out at in excess of £18,000 per person for everyone who dies.

But the overwhelming majority of that £12bn – 85% – goes on hospitals and emergency care, rather than support in the community.

It is, essentially, a false economy, as support in hospital tends to be more expensive.

Dr Sam Royston, executive director of research at the charity, says these findings go a long way to explaining why “too many people are dying in places where they don’t want or need to be”.

He adds: “There must be a clear long-term ambition for all UK governments to shift health expenditure on people at the end of life from hospital to community.”

According to Dr Royston, just shifting 20% of the money spent caring for dying people in hospital would be transformative for community services as it would double current spending.

What would a better system look like? First of all, more could be done to identify people’s needs before they are admitted to hospital, Dr Royston believes.

He points to a service in Bradford called React which works in emergency departments to identify and assess patients and diverting them towards teams in the community who can support them instead.

A study found it reduced average unplanned bed days in patients’ final year of life from 38 to 18.

But to reduce the number of people going to hospital in the first place, there needs to be greater co-ordination of services too, given the complexity of support and variety of providers, says Dr Cox.

She says there need to be electronic records that detail the wishes of people who are at the end of life that health and care staff can access: “These electronic systems are available in some areas but not others,” she says.

She also argues providing a central hub or phone line to help people navigate and coordinate care would be transformational.

She points to a system that has been set up in Cambridgeshire between a local hospice service, NHS 111 and the local ambulance service. It provides people at the end of their life with access to a specialist nurse 24 hours a day, simply by calling the NHS 111 advice line.

“A service like this can make a huge difference, providing equipment, responsive visits as well as telephone advice and signposting to other services,” adds Dr Cox.

And better training for non-specialist staff is also essential, Dr Cox and Dr Clarke agree.

“My utopia would be that you don’t actually need lots of specialist palliative care services because everybody is so good at supporting patients at the end of life,” adds Dr Clarke.

“If we were able to support people in the community properly, it would be better for them and would actually cost the NHS less.”

She adds: “We need to prioritise this – you only die once.”

After years of speculation, Tesla could finally be making its India debut.

The American electric vehicle (EV) giant has begun hiring for a dozen jobs in Delhi and Mumbai. It is also reportedly hunting for showrooms in both cities.

Asia’s third largest economy offers an interesting growth opportunity for Tesla’s futuristic cars as its global EV sales plummet and competition from Chinese manufacturers gets more intense.

But there’s a million-dollar question – can Tesla compete in India’s price-sensitive market?

Tata Motors currently holds pole position in India’s EV market – with over 60% market share. MG Motors – jointly owned by India’s JSW and a Chinese firm – is second at 22%. They are followed by Mahindra and Mahindra.

EVs made by these companies cost less than half of what consumers will have to shell out – around $40,000 (£31,637) – for just the base model of Tesla. It will, therefore, be seen as a luxury car, competing with higher-end EVs made by Hyundai, BMW and Mercedes.

Simply in volume terms, this will make India a tiny market for Tesla chief Elon Musk, unless the company introduces a low-cost model specifically for the country.

Besides price, India’s road conditions could pose a challenge.

Tesla cars have very low ground clearance – or the distance between the lowest point of the car’s undercarriage and the ground. This will make adapting to Indian roads difficult. To operate in the country, existing models may have to be re-engineered – which would drive up manufacturing costs.

Will Tesla do this just for one developing market where it could have only a small presence?

“It’s been a challenge even with other global original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) at the high end with small volumes. You can’t justify these major engineering changes,” Hormazd Sorabjee, editor of Autocar India magazine, told the BBC.

Also, amidst all the hype, it is easy to forget that EV sales still make up less than 3% of overall passenger vehicle sales in India. Even critical ancillary infrastructure, like charging stations, have taken years to come up. While they have picked up pace, there are only around 25,000 charging stations across India.

In effect, Tesla will be jostling for space in a very small, albeit growing, EV market.

But at a policy level, India appears to be making every effort to woo the carmaker.

The country has outlined an ambitious national vision to go electric. It plans to have 30% of private cars, 70% of commercial cars, 40% of buses and 80% of two and three-wheelers go electric by 2030. Most provincial governments have also established their own EV policies to incentivise demand and supply.

Subsidies offered by India on electric cars are also the highest among major economies, according to HSBC Securities. They amount to as much as 46% of the price of the country’s top-selling electric car model.

It’s no surprise then that passenger EV sales have grown astronomically by over 2,000% in less than five years – going from a low base of 4,700 annually to a 100,000 cars.

“The price difference between regular cars and EVs has reduced a lot, making customers rethink their choice,” says Jyoti Gulia, founder of JMK Research.

In April last year, India also cut import taxes on EVs for global carmakers which committed to investing $500m (£400m) and starting local production within three years.

Tesla and other imported electric vehicles costing over $35,000 (£27,550) can now enjoy a lower import duty of 15% on up to 8,000 vehicles. This came after Musk complained that high import duties had prevented the firm from launching its cars in the world’s fastest-growing major economy.

“It’s quite clever, as it forces a global player to localise – which is the way the game works: come and build in India,” says Sorabjee.

The proposed policy could put Indian domestic carmakers at a disadvantage, however, given that the investment requirement for foreign players is “not significant” compared to Indian players in this segment, an HSBC research paper warns.

Import duty of 15% is also “much lower” than the tax on comparable combustion engine cars in India which also pay an additional road tax, according to HSBC.

Domestic EV players say having a “level playing field” is important, but appear unperturbed by Tesla’s impending entry for now.

“We welcome competition,” Rajesh Jejurikar, Mahindra and Mahindra’s Executive Director and CEO, told the BBC. His company feels that more players will strengthen India’s existing EV ecosystem and is working to improve the appeal of their offerings.

Critical issues like “range anxiety” – the worry whether an EV’s battery charge will be enough to complete a journey – have been addressed through “robust battery integration and rigorous real-world testing across diverse road conditions”, says Mr Jejurikar, adding that the brand is deploying cutting-edge technology into their product.

It will be hard to beat Tesla’s edge in this area though, and coupled with sturdier batteries and a better user interface, it will certainly differentiate Tesla cars from others in the market, says Sorabjee.

What might also give Tesla tailwind is the rising share of premium vehicles in the Indian auto market. As a global brand with a perceived “cool quotient”, owning a Tesla will be a status symbol for the young, aspirational Indian population.

But none of this – India’s EV policy or the growing demand for premium cars among India’s affluent – has yet led to a commitment from Tesla to put manufacturing dollars into an EV facility.

For now, it appears the carmaker will only ship units from its factories abroad.

When that changes will depend on a lot of things – how quickly India’s affluent consumer base widens, and what tariff structures look like once India completes trade negotiations with the US.

President Donald Trump has already voiced displeasure over Tesla potentially building a factory in India to avoid high tariffs. In an interview with Fox News recently, he said that this would be “unfair” to the US.

Could Trump’s ‘America First’ policy diminish Musk’s appetite for starting manufacturing units in India then?

The question is moot, but for now it does look like India will first get glitzy Tesla showrooms for its rich, rather than job-creating Tesla factories for its under-employed masses.

President Donald Trump is considering an executive order that would shut down the US Department of Education – a long-cherished goal of conservatives.

The move would deliver on a promise he made on the campaign trail.

Trump plans to end some of the department’s programmes, while others would be housed within different parts of the government, according to US media reports.

The Republican president will direct his newly confirmed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Education Department” based on “the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law”, according to a draft of the order seen by the Wall Street Journal.

Abolishing the department entirely requires an act of Congress, however.

Established in 1979, the Department of Education oversees funding for public schools, administers student loans and runs programmes that help low-income students.

Trump and his allies have accused the agency of “indoctrinating young people with inappropriate racial, sexual, and political material”.

In December, he nominated former World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) CEO and his transition co-chair, Linda McMahon, as his pick for education secretary. The Senate has yet to schedule confirmation proceedings for McMahon.

A common misconception is that the Department of Education operates US schools and sets curricula – that responsibility actually belongs to states and local districts.

The agency does oversee student loan programmes and administers Pell grants that help low-income students attend university.

It also helps fund programmes to support students with disabilities and for students living in poverty.

And the department enforces civil rights law designed to prevent race or sex-based discrimination in federally funded schools.

The department’s allocation was $238bn (£188bn) in fiscal year 2024 – less than 2% of the total federal budget.

The agency says it has about 4,400 employees, the smallest of any cabinet-level department.

Most public funding for US schools comes from state and local governments.

In 2024, the Education Data Initiative estimated that the US spends a total of just over $857bn on primary and secondary education – the equivalent of $17,280 per pupil.

On his own, no.

Not only would Trump need congressional approval to get rid of the department, but he would also probably need a supermajority in the US Senate – 60 out of 100 senators.

Republicans have a 53-47 majority in the Senate, so they would need at least seven Democrats to vote to abolish the agency – a political longshot.

Even in the House of Representatives, Trump would struggle to gain necessary support.

A vote last year to abolish the education department – which was attached as an amendment to another bill – failed to pass as 60 Republicans joined all Democrats in the House to vote no.

Trump has moved to shrink other government departments in recent weeks, despite questions about the legality of those moves.

An earlier draft of Trump’s order to dismantle the education department, obtained last month by the Washington Post, acknowledged that only Congress can get rid of the agency outright, but executive action could direct the agency to begin to wind itself down.

Education department employees are among those who are the focus of the administration’s efforts to shrink the federal workforce.

The idea of eliminating the education department has been floated by Republicans for nearly as long as it has existed.

During Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign, he pushed for it to be dismantled.

Republicans have historically pushed against centralising education policy, believing that it is best left up to individual states and localities.

More recently they have accused the education department of pushing what they describe as “woke” political ideology on to children, including on gender and race.

Trump’s allies also want to expand school choice, which would allow students and families to use public money to select private or religious alternatives to public schools.

Conservatives argue that other education department functions, such as administering loans, should be handled instead by the US Department of Treasury, and that civil rights infractions are the Department of Justice’s domain.

On Wednesday, in a series of high-stakes diplomatic episodes around the globe, Trump’s free-wheeling attitude toward foreign policy was on full display, playing out in real time through posts on his Truth Social account.

For his supporters, it was the president’s “art of the deal” in action, using every negotiating tool and tactic at his disposal.

For critics, it was another day of disruption for its own sake – with little apparent concern for the risks involved or the potential consequences.

Wednesday began with news that the US is directly negotiating with Hamas leaders for the release of American hostages still in Gaza. Contacting a group designated a foreign terrorist organisation by the US since 1997 represents a dramatic shift away from decades of US policy.

The Biden administration relied on intermediaries during its attempts to end the Gaza war. And Trump previously condemned Hamas for committing “atrocities against humanity” during its 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, calling its members “vicious and violent”.

• Fact-checking Trump’s address to Congress
• China says it is ready for ‘any type of war’ with US

But for Trump, it seems, the old playbook wasn’t working – and he was willing to risk appearing hypocritical, of bypassing US ally Israel, and of sitting down with a designated terror group to advance his deal-making goals.

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office responded with a terse statement, saying only that it had “expressed its position” on the talks.

By the end of the day, after meeting in the Oval Office with some previously released American hostages, Trump again turned up the heat on the group. He took to Truth Social to call it “sick and twisted” and issue a “last warning” that if members didn’t release all the hostages there would be “hell to pay”.

“I am sending Israel everything it needs to finish the job,” he wrote, “not a single Hamas member will be safe if you don’t do as I say.”

Laura Blumenfeld, a former senior Israeli-Palestinian policy adviser to the US state department, told the BBC that Trump’s message to Hamas was an ultimatum.

“The deal, though, with these ultimatums is you have to deliver,” she said, “and we saw last month when Trump said you’ve got a high noon deadline on Saturday, release the hostages, or else, there was no or else.

“And Hamas called them out. They said, President Trump, your threats have no meaning.”

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt had earlier placed the president’s dramatic changes of course into the context of Trump’s larger foreign policy, telling reporters that “dialogue and talking to people around the world” is a part of his “good faith effort to do what’s right for the American people”.

The White House has employed similar logic to Trump’s recent efforts to thaw US relations with Moscow, including dispatching high-level administration officials to Saudi Arabia to meet directly with a Russian delegation.

That dramatic diplomatic about-face accompanied sharp criticism of Ukraine and its President, Volodymyr Zelensky, which culminated in Friday’s heated meeting in the Oval Office. An announcement followed this week saying that the US had suspended arms shipments, and another on Wednesday said intelligence-sharing with the war-torn nation was paused.

• Six takeaways from Trump’s big speech
• Lesotho shocked by Trump’s remarks that ‘nobody has heard of the country’
• Young Republicans cheer Trump on from Texas watch party

Trump’s actions left America’s European allies rattled – and the consequences of that may not yet be fully appreciated. But his efforts to exploit Ukraine’s pressure point – withholding aid and information – appear to have produced the intended result.

Zelensky on Tuesday sent a conciliatory letter to Trump proposing a limited ceasefire, and US and Ukrainian officials resumed talks on Wednesday about a mineral deal to compensate America for aid expenditures.

If Trump’s goal is to encourage Ukraine and Russia to enter peace talks, he has effectively brought Zelensky to heel, even as it remains unclear what concessions he is asking Russian President Vladimir Putin to make during those negotiations.

Sometimes, even with Trump, the pressure points go in the other direction.

A month ago, he announced sweeping new tariffs on Canada and Mexico, only to back away from them at the last moment. This week he allowed those 25% levies to go into effect – at least for a day.

After two days of sharp declines in the US stock market, the White House appeared to dial back the severity of these tariffs somewhat, announcing that it was granting a one-month exemption for automobiles imported from Canada and Mexico.

US car manufacturers warned that the new tariffs could devastate the industry, leading to plant closings within a matter of weeks.

Trump spoke with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Wednesday, and offered his own readout – via Truth Social – on what he said was a “somewhat friendly” call, even as he accused the “governor” of Canada of using the trade issue to “stay in power”.

While Zelensky quickly backed down under White House pressure and the Hamas talks are only beginning, Trudeau and the Canadians, for their part, appear to be settling in for a longer fight.

Trump’s convention-breaking playbook may be shaking things up this week, but it’s far from clear if they will deliver the kind of wins he wants.

• What are tariffs and why is Trump using them?

Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second presidential term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

US President Donald Trump’s pause on military aid and intelligence sharing for Ukraine has left the war-torn country’s residents uncertain about their futures and rattled America’s European allies.

But it also hit far closer to home in Scranton, Pennsylvania, a city about 4,700 miles (7,560km) away from Kyiv that has played its own small role in the conflict.

Scranton is known as the setting for the American version of The Office television show, and as the birthplace of former President Joe Biden – one of Ukraine’s biggest backers.

But after Russia invaded Ukraine, it has become known as the home of the Scranton Army Artillery Plant among those who have followed the conflict closely.

Owned by the US government and operated by defence contractor General Dynamics, the plant produces the 155mm artillery rounds – a key munition that has helped the Ukrainians keep Russian advances at bay. These rounds are used daily, as the conflict grinds on into First World War-style trench battles and artillery strikes.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky toured the plant during a whirlwind trip to Scranton in September 2024, shaking hands with staff and observing its machinery.

Scranton is one of three plants in Pennsylvania that has increased production of the 155m rounds since the start of the Ukraine-Russia conflict.

Between 2009 to 2017, they collectively produced about 9,000 rounds per month. By the time of Zelensky’s visit last year, the facilities had ramped up their output to 36,000 rounds monthly, the US Army said.

During the Oval Office meeting that caused the Trump administration’s relationship with Ukraine to collapse, Vice-President JD Vance cited the tour to accuse Zelensky of campaigning “for the opposition” during his visit.

• Follow live: Zelensky heads to Brussels to meet European leaders
• One day, three crises and Trump’s free-wheeling foreign policy on display

Despite all the politicial drama, this Pennslyvania community continues to see its work as representing the US commitment to Ukraine, said Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti.

“We have multiple Ukrainian churches here. We have quite the diaspora of Ukrainian Americans,” Cognetti said.

St Vladimir Ukrainian Catholic Church in Scranton has raised funds for the war effort and hosted Ukrainian soldiers at community events.

“Scranton has a very proud history of supporting Ukraine,” Cognetti told the BBC, “and it’s been a really tough couple of weeks here, as we see that support erode from the US administration.”

Cognetti was unsettled by the Oval Office argument between Trump, Zelensky, and US Vice-President JD Vance last Friday.

“To see US policy shift and potentially to have the US really turn its back on Ukraine is really appalling,” she said.

The Scranton artillery plant “ensures warfighters have the ammo when and where needed, and continues to bolster US stockpiles around the globe,” said Lt Gen Chris Mohan, deputy commanding general and acting commander, in a statement about Zelensky’s visit.

Cognetti said that the plant had added “many dozens” of jobs and increased capacity during the Ukraine war, estimating that about 400 people worked there when Zelensky visited.

But with the Trump administration now pressurising Zelensky to end the war, Scranton’s role in geopolitics could be winding down.

US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz confirmed on Wednesday that the White House had paused intelligence sharing with Kyiv, telling reporters: “We have taken a step back.”

The Trump administration is reviewing “all aspects of this relationship”, he added.

Republican lawmakers have backed Trump’s recent actions, which they see as key to negotiating an end to the war.

“I think the president just wants to get everybody to the table, and I think he’s making progress,” South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds told reporters.

There are different estimates for how much military aid the US has given Ukraine, a BBC Verify analysis found.

The German-based Kiel Institute estimated the total at $119.7bn (£94.3bn). The US Department of Defense provided a total of $182.8bn, which includes spending on Operation Atlantic Resolve – a response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Fedir Venislavsky, a member of the Ukrainian parliament’s defence committee, told the BBC that without US military aid, front-line soldiers would be able to last “maybe six months.”

• How pausing US intelligence impacts Ukraine’s military operation
• What pause in US military aid could mean for Ukraine
• Ros Atkins on… President Trump’s history with Ukraine

The region is home to multiple military manufacturing plants, including a Lockheed Martin facility and the larger Tobyhanna Army Depot, which also produces some supplies for Ukraine.

Representatives for the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant declined to comment on how the pause could impact the plant and jobs. On Tuesday, cars pulled into the secure facility as usual, and its car park appeared full.

Any effect would be minor for Scranton’s economy, local officials said.

The plant “is not the largest employer by any stretch,” said Bob Durkin, president of the non-partisan Scranton Chamber of Commerce. “But it’s a very important employer. The jobs are really high quality jobs. They are well paying, family sustaining jobs.”

Outside the plant’s gates, Scranton’s perspective on the war remains divided. Though Scranton, in north-east Pennsylvania, is a historically Democratic area, Republicans have made political gains in the region.

In the 2024 presidential election, Trump won the state, but narrowly lost Lackawanna County, where Scranton is located, to then-Vice-President Kamala Harris. However, in the House race, Republican Rob Bresnahan ousted Democratic congressman, Matt Cartwright, by just 6,200 votes.

Trump campaigned against US spending on Ukraine, a pledge that resonated with his base.

On Tuesday, just before his speech before Congress, denizens at the local Poor Richards dive bar were split on Ukraine – and what role Scranton ought to play on the world stage.

“I feel really angry about the way Trump handled the meeting with Zelensky,” said Brandon Lux, 35, who worked in mental healthcare in Scranton. “Halting all government funding to Ukraine right now, I think that that will definitely have implications for what happens here in our city.”

But other residents felt Trump was correct to pressure Zelensky and to reassess Biden’s support of the embattled country.

“We don’t have money to give them, we have to take care of our people first,” said Fran Fitzgerald, who described herself as a “big fan” of Trump.

Ms Fitzgerald said she hoped the Trump administration could direct the funds being used in Ukraine to projects like fixing Scranton’s “terrible roads” and potholes.

Mike Pierson, an electrician, voted for Trump but does not necessarily agree with all his actions so far. The self-identified independent worried that Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency taskforce would endanger his Social Security benefits. He hopes to retire within the next five years.

But Mr Pierson echoed the president’s argument that the US should not be spending money abroad on conflicts like Ukraine, but back at home.

“We’re the world’s bank, we’re the world’s insurance policy,” he said. “We need to stop.”

At home she is a loving grandmother who enjoys spending time with her grandkids but at work Mabel has to watch the internet’s most “abhorrent” child sex abuse.

She works for one of the few organisations licensed to actively search the internet for indecent content to help police and tech firms take the images down.

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) helped remove a record almost 300,000 web pages last year, including more artificial intelligence (AI) generated images than ever as the number of these types of images have increased almost fivefold.

“The content is horrific, it shouldn’t ever have been created in the first place,” said Mabel, a former police officer.

“You don’t ever become immune to it, because at the end of the day these are all child victims, it’s abhorrent.”

Mabel – not her real name – is exposed to some of the most depraved and horrific images online and said her family were her main motivation for carrying out her analyst role.

Mabel calls herself a “disruptor” and said she likes obstructing criminal gangs who share abuse footage and images to make money.

The foundation’s analysts are given anonymity so they feel safe and secure from those who object to their work, such as criminal gangs.

“There’s not many jobs where you go to work in the morning and do good all day, and also irritate really bad people, so I get the best of both worlds,” said Mabel, originally from north Wales.

“When I remove an image, I’m physically stopping the bad people accessing those images.

“I have children and grandchildren and I just want to make the internet a safer place for them.

“On a wider scale, we collaborate with law enforcement agencies all around the world so they can form an investigation and maybe put gangs to bay.”

The IWF is one of only three organisations in the world licensed to actively search for child abuse content online and last year helped take down 291,270 web pages which can contain thousands of image and videos.

The foundation, based in Cambridge, also said it helped take down almost five times more AI-generated child sexual abuse imagery this year than last, rising to 245 compared to 51 in 2023.

The UK government last month announced four new laws to tackle images made with AI.

The content is not easy for Tamsin McNally and her 30-strong team to see but she knows their work helps protect children.

“We make a difference and that’s why I do it,” the team leader said.

“On Monday morning I walked into the hotline and we had over 2,000 reports from members of the public stating that they had stumbled across this kind of imagery. We get hundreds of reports every single day.

“I really hope everyone sees this is a problem and everybody does their bit to stop it happening in the first place.

“I wish my job didn’t exist but as long as there are spaces online there will be the need for jobs like mine, sadly.

“When I tell people what I do quite often people can’t believe this job exists in the first place. Then secondly they say, why would you want to do that?”

Many tech firm moderators have ongoing legal claims as employees claimed the work had destroyed their mental health – but the foundation said its duty of care was “gold standard”.

Analysts at the charity have mandatory monthly counselling, weekly team meetings and regular wellbeing support.

“There’s those formal things, but also informally – we’ve got a pool table, a huge connect four, jigsaw corner – I’m an avid jigsaw fan, where we can take a break if needed,” added Mabel.

“All these things combined help to keep us all here.”

The IWF has strict guidelines making sure personal phones are not allowed in the office or that any work, including emails, are not taken out.

Despite applying to work there, Manon – again, not her real name – was not sure if it was a job she could do.

“I don’t even like watching horror films, so I was completely unsure whether I’d be able to do the job,” said Manon, who is in her early twenties and from south Wales.

“But the support that you get is so intense and wide-ranging, it’s reassuring.

“Every way you look at it, you’re making the internet a better place and I don’t think there are many jobs where you can do that every single day.”

She studied linguistics at university, which included work around online language and grooming, and that piqued her interest in the work of the foundation.

“Offenders can be described as their own community – and as part of that they have their own language or code that they use to hide in plain sight,” said Manon.

“Being able to apply what I learnt at university to then put that into a real world scenario and be able to find child sexual abuse images and disrupt that community is really satisfying.”

• If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article, you can visit BBC Action Line

A new part of the immune system has been discovered and it is a goldmine of potential antibiotics, scientists have said.

They’ve shown a part of the body known to recycle proteins has a secret mode that can spew out an arsenal of bacteria-killing chemicals.

The researchers in Israel say it transforms our understanding of how we are protected against infection.

And gives a new place to look for antibiotics to tackle the growing problem of superbugs that resist our current drugs.

The discovery centres on the proteasome – a tiny structure that is found in every cell of the body.

Its main role is to chop up old proteins into smaller chunks so they can be recycled to make new ones.

But a series of experiments, detailed in the journal Nature, shows the proteasome detects when a cell has been infected by bacteria.

It then changes structure and role. It starts transforming old proteins into weapons that can rip open the outer layer of bacteria to kill them.

Prof Yifat Merbl, from the Weizmann Institute of Science, told me: “This is really exciting, because we never knew that this was happening.

“We discovered a novel mechanism of immunity that is allowing us to have a defence against bacterial infection.

“It’s happening throughout our body in all the cells, and generates a whole new class of potential natural antibiotics.”

The research team went through a process they called “dumpster diving” to find these natural antibiotics.

They were tested on bacteria growing in the laboratory and on mice with pneumonia and sepsis. The researchers said they were getting results comparable to some established antibiotics.

And when the researchers took cells in the laboratory and disabled the proteasome they were far easier to infect with bacteria like Salmonella.

Prof Daniel Davis, the head of life sciences and an immunologist at Imperial College London, said the findings were “extremely provocative and very interesting” as they changed our understanding of how our body fights infection.

“What’s really exciting about this, is it’s a totally undiscovered process by which anti-germ molecules are made inside our cells, it feels profoundly important and surprising.”

But he cautioned that turning this into a new source of antibiotics is an idea that “still needs to be tested” and that will take time.

More than a million people a year are estimated to die from infections that are resistant to drugs like antibiotics.

But despite the need, there has been a lack of research into developing new antibiotics to keep up with demand.

Against that bleak background, having somewhere new to look is a source of optimism for some scientists.

Dr Lindsey Edwards, a senior lecturer in microbiology at King’s College London, told the BBC: “It’s a potential goldmine for new antibiotics, that’s quite exciting.

“In previous years it’s been digging up soil [to find new antibiotics], it is wild that it’s something we have within us, but comes down to having the technology to be able to detect these things.”

She also says there could be fewer issues with developing them into drugs because they are already products of the human body so the “safety side of it might be a lot easier”.

A PhD student who has been convicted of drugging and raping 10 women “may turn out to be one of the most prolific sexual predators that we’ve ever seen in this country”, according to the lead detective on the case.

Chinese national Zhenhao Zou, 28, attacked two women who have been identified and another eight who have yet to be traced, his trial at Inner London Crown Court heard.

The University College London (UCL) student filmed nine assaults as “souvenirs”, and kept a trophy box of victims’ belongings including jewellery and clothing.

Judge Rosina Cottage said Zou was a “dangerous and predatory” offender and warned him he faces a “very long” jail term when he is sentenced on 19 June.

The Met Police’s Cdr Kevin Southworth said the video evidence showed there may be as many as 50 further victims, whom they are “desperate to trace”.

“Such is the insidious nature of these offences, I think there is a possibility that many more victim survivors may not even know that he has, in fact, raped them,” he said.

Following the trial and as a result of the media coverage, the Met confirmed that one woman had already been in touch about Zou.

As well as 11 counts of rape, Zou was found guilty of voyeurism, possession of extreme pornographic images and false imprisonment.

The crimes he has been convicted of took place between 2019 and 2024.

Hidden cameras were discovered by the Met Police in his bedroom, as well as ecstasy and an industrial chemical the human body turns into the “date-rape” drug GHB.

Seven of the rapes happened during the pandemic in China. The evidence of those attacks was videos shown to the jury that Zou kept of him having sex with unconscious and semi-conscious women. Police have never identified them.

Four of the rapes took place in London. Two women were identified and gave evidence; the other two rapes were of the same woman, but she has never been tracked down.

Jurors had to watch footage of nine of the rapes during court proceedings, appearing visibly upset and being given regular breaks as the material was shown.

Some of the attacks were filmed at his flats in Bloomsbury and Elephant and Castle, others at an unknown location in China.

The prosecutions relating to attacks in China were possible because foreign nationals who are living in the UK can be charged with an offence committed abroad that is also illegal in the country where it took place.

In his defence, Zou told the jury he had discussed sexual preferences with one of the women he filmed, and she had said she liked “uniform role play”.

“We specifically discussed the kinds of role play I like, which was rape role play,” he said. He told the court this was how the videos came to be made.

The student comes from a wealthy family, and had enough money to afford a Rolex watch, a wardrobe full of designer clothes and cosmetic procedures including a hair transplant and facial surgery.

He paid £4,000 a month in rent.

Zou moved to Belfast in 2017 to study at Queen’s University before heading to London in 2019 to do a master’s degree and then a PhD at UCL.

The Met Police has launched an appeal to find any other victims.

“If you’re a woman who’s in any way had a one-on-one encounter with this man Zou, then we would like to hear from you,” Cdr Southworth said.

The force said it was particularly keen to hear from women from the Chinese student community who may have met Zou and were living in and around London between 2019 and 2024.

The Met said it would also like to speak to potential victims who may have met Zou while he was living in China. Reports to the force can be made online via the Major Incident Public Portal.

UCL president Dr Michael Spence said:  “We have been appalled by these horrific offences.

“Our thoughts are with the survivors and we wish to pay tribute to the bravery of the women who reported these crimes and gave evidence at the trial.”

Saira Pike from the Crown Prosecution Service said: “I’d like to express my heartfelt thanks to the courageous women who came forward to report Zhenhao Zou’s heinous crimes.

“They have been incredibly strong and brave – there is no doubt that their evidence helped us to secure today’s verdict.

“Zou is a serial rapist and a danger to women.”

The jury found Zou guilty of:

• 11 counts of rape, with two of the offences relating to one victim
• Three counts of voyeurism
• 10 counts of possession of an extreme pornographic image
• One count of false imprisonment
• Three counts of possession of a controlled drug with intent to commit a sexual offence

He was cleared of two further counts of possession of an extreme pornographic image, and five counts of possession of controlled drugs to commit a sexual offence.

New Zealand has fired its most senior envoy to the United Kingdom over remarks that questioned US President Donald Trump’s grasp of history.

At an event in London on Tuesday, High Commissioner Phil Goff compared efforts to end the war between Russia and Ukraine to the 1938 Munich Agreement, which allowed Adolf Hitler to annex part of Czechoslovakia.

Mr Goff recalled how Sir Winston Churchill had criticised the agreement, then said of the US leader: “President Trump has restored the bust of Churchill to the Oval Office. But do you think he really understands history?”

His comments were “deeply disappointing” and made his position “untenable”, New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters said.

His comments came after Trump paused military aid to Kyiv following a heated exchange with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office last week.

He contrasted Trump with Churchill who, while estranged from the British government, spoke against the Munich Agreement as he saw it as a surrender to Nazi Germany’s threats.

Mr Goff quoted how Churchill had rebuked then UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain: “You had the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, yet you will have war.”

Peters said Mr Goff’s views did not represent those of the New Zealand government.

“When you are in that position you represent the government and the policies of the day, you’re not able to free think, you are the face of New Zealand,” local media reported Peters saying.

“It’s not the way you behave as the front face of a country, diplomatically,” he said, adding that he would have taken the same course of action no matter which country was being spoken about.

Mr Goff is a veteran politician who had been high commissioner since January 2023. Before that, he served for two terms as mayor of Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city, and was leader of the Labour Party from 2008 to 2011. He had also held several ministerial portfolios, including justice, foreign affairs and defence.

Peters, who is also deputy prime minister, told reporters that he had made the decision to sack Phil Goff without first consulting Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.

When it was pointed out that Luxon was the leader of New Zealand, Peters responded: “I know he’s the prime minister, I made him the prime minister.”

The 79-year-old, who has previously worked with Mr Goff in government, leads the New Zealand First political party – which joined Luxon’s National Party and the Act Party in 2023 to form the current ruling centre-right coalition government.

Luxon, for his part, said Peters’ decision to fire Mr Goff without first consulting him was “entirely appropriate”.

Former Prime Minister Helen Clark was among those who criticised Mr Goff’s sacking, saying it was backed by a “very thin excuse”.

“I have been at Munich Security Conference recently where many draw parallels between Munich 1938 and US actions now,” she wrote in a post on X.

Under the 1938 Munich Agreement, Hitler took control of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland. The deal failed to stop Nazi Germany from advancing deeper into Europe and World War Two began when he invaded Poland in 1939.

US President Donald Trump said he would temporarily spare carmakers from a new 25% import tax imposed on Canada and Mexico, just a day after the tariffs came into effect.

The announcement by the White House came even as Trump continued to blast Canada for not doing enough to stop drugs from entering the US.

“Nothing has convinced me that it has stopped,” Trump wrote on social media after a phone call with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about the economic disruption caused by new trade tariffs.

News of the relief helped to boost US shares, which closed higher after two days of declines that had wiped out gains the S&P 500 had seen since the presidential election in November.

The tariff exemption is for cars made in North America that comply with the continent’s existing free trade agreement.

That deal, which was negotiated by Trump during his first term, sets out rules for how much of a car must be made in each country to qualify for duty-free treatment.

• China says it is ready for ‘any type of war’ with US
• What are tariffs and why is Trump using them?

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump had backed a one-month exemption to the tariffs for the car industry after pleas from Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, which have supply chains that stretch across North America.

The new tariffs – which are a tax applied as goods enter the country – were poised to disrupt a third of car production in North America within a week, according to analysts at S&P Global Mobility.

Shares in Ford were up by more than 5% after the announcement, while General Motors shares rose more than 7%. Stellantis shares in the US rose more than 9%.

“The president is open to hearing about additional exemptions,” Ms Leavitt added. “He always has open dialogue and he’ll always do what he believes is right for the American people.”

Ford said in a statement the company will continue to have a “healthy and candid dialogue with the administration” and touted its investment of billions in the United States.

Goods worth billions cross the borders of the US, Canada and Mexico each day and their economies are deeply integrated.

The Canadian Chamber of Commerce warned that affordability would be hurt and business relationships would suffer, despite the chances for targeted relief.

“We’ve seen this movie before. President Trump puts tariffs in place and then doles out exemptions one at a time,” said Matthew Holmes, the organisation’s chief of public policy. “That is not how a long-lasting trade alliance is built.”

Ontario Premier Doug Ford told Canadian media that the one-month reprieve for automakers would not alter his plans for retaliation, which have already included a halt to sales of US liquor in the province.

Trump’s moves, and his threats to impose “reciprocal” tariffs on countries around the world, have raised fears of a wider trade war.

As well as Mexico and Canada, he hit goods from China with an additional tariff on Tuesday, raising levies to at least 20% and prompting the country to retaliate against US exports, including agricultural products.

Canada also responded with its own retaliatory import levies on US goods after Washington’s 25% tariffs on its two neighbours came into effect on Tuesday, affecting items including peanut butter, oranges and wine.

Mexico also said it would respond, including with its own tariffs.

“I don’t know where we go with this and how it ends. I just hope that it ends quickly,” said Iowa farmer Bob Hemesath, the board president for lobby group Farmers for Free Trade, which has raised concerns about the tariffs.

Big retailers in the US have already warned the measures will lead to higher prices on goods such as avocados within days, while economists are forecasting economic recessions in Mexico and Canada triggered by the tariffs.

Trump has acknowledged his moves may lead to short-term economic pain in the US, but said he wants to protect US industry and boost manufacturing.

He has cast the tariffs this week against goods from America’s two neighbours, as well as China, as a response to the flow of migrants and fentanyl across the border.

Writing on social media on Wednesday, Trump said he had told Trudeau that the situation was not improving.

“He said that it’s gotten better, but I said, ‘That’s not good enough’,” Trump said.

Trudeau has called called Trump’s claims about drugs a “completely bogus” justification for tariffs on his country.

White House officials have said Trump still intends to move ahead on 2 April with plans for reciprocal tariffs on other countries around the world that he sees as treating the US unfairly.

“There are going to be tariffs – let’s be clear – but what he’s thinking about is which sections of the market that maybe he’ll consider giving them relief until we get to, of course, April 2,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Bloomberg on Wednesday.

A private US company will attempt to land a spacecraft close to the Moon’s South Pole on Thursday, carrying scientific instruments including a hopping robot and the first lunar mobile communications antenna.

Intuitive Machines is working with US space agency Nasa to look for evidence of water and ice on the lunar surface.

Lunar landings are very difficult, and the company will be hoping for a smooth touchdown after its first craft landed on its side last year.

The spacecraft Athena is currently orbiting the Moon and will attempt to land at 1730GMT (1230EST).

Athena is aiming to land 100 miles (160km) from the South Pole in an area of the lunar highlands called Mons Mouton.

If all goes well, the craft will have 10 days to complete scientific observations and measurements.

The instruments on board include a jumping robot called Micro Nova Hopper or Grace, which will leap and fly across the Moon’s surface to reach a large crater that is in permanent shade.

The hopper should be released from the main spacecraft in coming days and fly up to 100m in altitude.

It will travel up to 1.2 miles (2km) and after five leaps, it should land inside the crater with a camera to take the first images of the interior.

The crater is in permanent shadow from the Sun’s rays, so it has very low temperatures and is considered an ideal place to look for ice.

Intuitive Machines, who made the hopper, say it can travel to places that other machines, like robots with wheels, can’t reach or would take a very long time to get to.

“These hoppers are really suited to the lunar environment because there’s no atmosphere there, practically speaking, so doing a series of controlled leaps is a great way to move around,” says Prof Simeon Barber, a lunar scientist with the Open University.

The IM-2 mission is also carrying three scientific instruments made by Nasa.

A drill called Trident will churn up rocks to reach the surface under the Moon to see if there is evidence of ice.

Then an instrument called a mass spectrometer will analyse any gases that are released.

And a type of antenna mast developed with Nokia should also be planted on the Moon that uses the same 4G cellular technology as on Earth.

The mission is part of Nasa’s long-term goal to take humans back to the lunar surface, as the agency hopes to send astronauts in 2027 with the Artemis programme.

“This is another step towards assessing the viability of the lunar South Pole as a place to go and set up future bases for humans,” says Prof Barber.

Experts want to explore options for building settlements and find out if there are reserves of water that could provide drinking water and potentially be turned into oxygen.

“A lot of planning of future exploration is being predicated on the presence of water ice, but if you want to use it, you need to know where it is and how much there is,” says Prof Barber.

Nasa is partnering with a range of private companies that transport spacecraft and instruments to the Moon. It says this is cheaper than developing and blasting off their own missions.

Intuitive Machines successfully landed a craft called Odysseus on the Moon in February last year, but it tipped over during the descent, meaning not all the scientific work could be carried out.

Space agencies globally are competing to build human settlements on the Moon in a race to exploit resources and advance scientific understanding of other worlds.

In the US, the Moon mission is seen as a stepping stone for the longer-term and much more ambitious goal of human settlement on Mars.

The IM-2 mission could also help to answer broader questions about why there is ice in the inner solar system, closer to the Sun’s warming rays.

“The permanently shadowed regions on the Moon are kind of a store and archive of ancient water that might have been delivered to the Earth-Moon system after their formation,” explains Prof Mark Fox-Powell at the Open University.

The arrest of an army general from South Sudan’s main opposition is a “grave violation” of the peace deal that ended a five-year civil war, an opposition spokesperson has told the BBC.

Gen Gabriel Duop Lam was arrested earlier this week, along with other senior officials of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement in Opposition (SPLM-IO).

The detainees are all allies of Vice-President Riek Machar, whose rift with President Salva Kiir sparked a devastating war in 2013.

On Thursday morning, Machar’s spokesperson said that the SPLM-IO did not know how their officials were or where they were being held.

“We are doing our best to avoid any escalation to the situation, however we need our partners in peace to demonstrate the political will to assure that this country will not go back to war again,” Puok Both Baluang told the BBC’s Newsday programme.

President Kiir has insisted that South Sudan will not return to war, government spokesperson Michael Makuei told reporters in the capital Juba on Wednesday.

Makuei added that the opposition figures were arrested because they were “in conflict with the law”.

South Sudan is the world’s newest nation, after seceding from Sudan in 2011. But just two years later, a civil war erupted when Kiir sacked his entire cabinet and accused Machar of instigating a failed coup.

After five years, with 400,000 lives lost, and 2.5 million people forced from their homes, a peace deal was agreed in 2018.

But it has been fraught ever since.

Gen Lam is in charge of the military wing of the opposition party, which is yet to be integrated into the army. He was taken into custody on Tuesday.

Another Machar ally, Oil Minister Puot Kang Chol, was taken by security forces in the middle of the night.

Machar’s house in the capital, Juba, was surrounded by troops from the South Sudanese army overnight before they were later withdrawn.

All other senior military officials allied with Machar have been placed under house arrest, the BBC understands.

The arrests follow reports that the White Army militia had seized a strategic town in Upper Nile state close to the Ethiopian border, after clashes with government troops.

The White Army fought alongside Machar during the civil war.

Some in the army, loyal to Kiir, have accused Machar’s allies of supporting the rebels.

Machar’s spokesperson told the BBC that the current fighting between the White Army and security forces “would have been avoided” if the leadership of the national army had abided by the peace agreement.

The UN and African Union have warned that the violence in this area could potentially spread.

Ter Manyang, head of the Juba-based Center for Peace and Advocacy, told Reuters that the fighting in this area could threaten the peace deal.

“The country is likely to slide to war unless the situation is managed by the top leadership of the country,” he said.

The country has never held an election – these are now due to take place in 2026 after years of delay.

• Curfew and deaths in South Sudan after revenge attacks on Sudanese
• Mystery in South Sudan after sacked spy boss mired in gun battle
• ‘Dying of thirst’ as climate-driven floods mix with oil

The Brit Awards ceremony last weekend prompted 825 complaints to media watchdog Ofcom, with the majority involving Sabrina Carpenter’s pre-watershed opening performance and Charli XCX’s outfit.

US star Carpenter opened the awards show at The O2 in London on Saturday evening with a mash-up of her hits Espresso, Bed Chem with Rule Britannia!, while wearing a red sparkly military-style mini-dress with matching stockings and suspenders.

She was also seen having a close encounter with a dancer dressed as a soldier wearing a bearskin hat during the show, broadcast live on ITV.

Essex star Charli XCX, who won five awards, wore a see-through black dress and addressed the controversy over her outfit during one of her speeches on the night: “I heard that ITV were complaining about my nipples. I feel like we’re in the era of ‘free the nipple’ though, right?”

An Ofcom spokesperson said: “We are assessing the complaints against our rules, but are yet to decide whether or not to investigate.”

These complaints numbers are not huge by Ofcom’s standards.

The most complaints the watchdog has received was 58,000 in 2021, about Piers Morgan’s criticism of the Duchess of Sussex on Good Morning Britain. Ofcom found ITV was not in breach of broadcasting rules.

An episode of Celebrity Big Brother on Channel 4 got 45,159 complaints in 2007 and the same show, but this time on Channel 5, got 25,327 complaints in 2018.

The television watershed is 21:00. It marks the time when TV programmes which might be unsuitable for children can be broadcast from. The Brits began at 20:15 GMT and ended at 22:40.

Charli XCX won album of the year for her summer hit Brat. She also picked up best dance act, song of the year for her track Guess, featuring Billie Eilish (who was the first non-Brit to appear on a best song-winner), plus songwriter of the year.

Carpenter was honoured with the recently resurrected global success award.

The prize was originally created in 2013 to recognise British acts who had sold millions of records and concert tickets abroad. The previous recipients were One Direction (2013-14), Sam Smith (2015), Adele (2016-17) and Ed Sheeran (2018-19).

Six years ago it was abandoned altogether, but it may have been brought back to lure Carpenter to perform.

This isn’t the first time the Brit Awards have prompted complaints.

• In 2020, Ofcom received 309 complaints that rapper Dave’s performance at the awards was racist against white people, but this was rejected by the media watchdog. Dave had performed the song Black, but Ofcom said it was “likely to be within most viewers’ expectations of this well-established awards ceremony”.
• Ofcom received 74 complaints in 2018 about Kendrick Lamar’s performance at that year’s ceremony – he was muted 10 times while performing Feel and New Freezer. His set also included a man taking a baseball bat to the windshield of an expensive-looking sports car. Some people complained this might incite criminal behaviour and property damage, and some complained about implied bad language.
• In 2015, Ofcom dismissed 151 complaints about offensive language and race discrimination or offence raised about Kanye West’s language, during his performance at the awards. Parts of the rapper’s song All Day were muted by ITV, and Ofcom said the broadcaster had tried to cut out offensive language by airing the ceremony with a short delay.

Canadian provinces pulling US alcohol off store shelves in response to Trump trade policy is “worse than tariffs”, the boss of Jack Daniel’s maker Brown-Forman has said.

Several Canadian provinces, including Ontario, which is by far the most populated, took action this week in retaliation for US tariffs on Canadian goods.

The Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO), one of the largest buyers of alcohol in the world, removed US-made alcoholic drinks from its shelves on Tuesday.

Brown-Forman boss Lawson Whiting said the Canadian response was “disproportionate” to the 25% levies on Canadian goods imposed by the Trump administration.

“I mean, that’s worse than a tariff, because it’s literally taking your sales away, completely removing our products from the shelves,” Mr Whiting said.

In response to the tariffs, Canada has retaliated with 25% levies on goods imported from the US, including beer, spirits, and wine.

Some provinces also took action themselves, including Ontario and Nova Scotia.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford said the LCBO sells nearly $1bn of US alcohol per year. “As of today, every single one of these products is off the shelves,” Mr Ford said on Tuesday.

The LCBO is the exclusive wholesaler in Ontario, which means other retailers, bars and restaurants in the province will no longer be able to restock US products, Mr Ford said.

Nevertheless, Mr Whiting said Canada makes up only 1% of Brown-Forman’s total sales, so the firm can withstand the hit.

Canadians are being advised by the LCBO to buy products made in Canada. Some Canadians have been turning to local goods anyway in response to the Trump tariffs.

Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, criticised the US tariffs on Tuesday, saying imposing them was “a very dumb thing to do”.

He also accused the US president of planning “a total collapse of the Canadian economy because that will make it easier to annex us”.

Trump has made a number of remarks about making Canada the 51st state of his country, which Canada’s Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly has said she takes “very seriously”.

Washington has also placed 25% tariffs on Mexico, although Trump has said he will temporarily spare carmakers in both Canada and Mexico from the taxes.

Trump has accused both Canada and Mexico of failing to do enough to stem the flow of the fentanyl opioid into the US, an argument that has been rejected by both countries.

Mr Whiting said Brown-Forman was going to see what happens in Mexico, which accounted for 7% of its sales in 2024.

The US is “destroying” the established world order, Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK and former military chief has said.

Criticising the new Trump administration’s way of handling foreign policy, Valerii Zaluzhnyi said the White House had “questioned the unity of the whole Western world”.

His comments come amid an apparent cooling of tensions between Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and his US counterpart Donald Trump, after a public falling-out between the two in the Oval Office on Friday.

Kyiv has made attempts to mend relations with Washington in recent days, after the US paused its military aid to Ukraine and intelligence sharing in a bid to bring Zelensky to the negotiating table.

• Follow updates
• What pausing US intel means for Ukraine

But Mr Zaluzhnyi’s remarks at a conference at Chatham House in London on Thursday suggest there remains discontent over the US’s actions.

He told an audience: “We see that it is not just the axis of evil and Russia trying to revise the world order, but the US is finally destroying this order.”

The Ukrainian envoy added that talks between the US and Russia – the latter of which was “headed by a war criminal” in President Vladimir Putin – showed the White House was making “steps towards the Kremlin, trying to meet them halfway”.

Mr Zaluzhnyi, who took over as Kyiv’s ambassador to London in 2024 following three years as commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, also suggested that Nato could cease to exist as a result of Washington’s change in posture, and warned that Moscow’s next target “could be Europe”.

While Zelensky has expressed a wish to bring the war in Ukraine to an end swiftly, Kyiv has voiced concerns about the Trump administration’s handling of talks and the concessions to Moscow that may be made without security guarantees for Ukraine.

Trump vowed during the US election campaign to bring the war to an end quickly, and a US delegation met with a Russian one for preliminary talks in Saudi Arabia last month – without European or Ukrainian representatives present.

The US’s decision to halt its assistance to Ukraine has been cast by Trump administration officials as a means of getting Kyiv to co-operate with the US-led peace talks.

• Zelensky’s conciliatory letter to Trump suggests he’s out of options
• Timeline of Trump and Zelensky’s fraying relationship

Zaluzhnyi said the pause in intelligence sharing, as well as an earlier decision to oppose a UN resolution condemning Russian aggression in Ukraine, were “a huge challenge for the entire world”.

His comments come as Politico reports that members of Trump’s team held discussions with some of Zelensky’s political opponents, after Trump allies suggested the Ukrainian president should stand aside.

Citing unnamed sources in the US and Ukraine, it says talks were held with opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko and senior members of Petro Poroshenko’s party, who preceded Zelensky as president.

Independent opinion polls in Ukraine suggest Zaluzhnyi has the most public support with at least 70%, Zelensky has 57% support and Poroshenko about 20%. Tymoshenko and Poroshenko both have their own red lines and share a pro-European stance.

Responding to the report, Tymoshenko said her team was talking with “all allies who can help ensure a just peace as soon as possible”, while noting elections cannot be held under Ukraine’s constitution while it is under martial law.

Poroshenko wrote in a lengthy statement that his party worked “publicly and transparently” with the US, and that meetings have focused on supporting Ukraine’s war effort.

While criticising Zelensky’s government over its political decisions and communications with the US, he too stressed that elections could only take place after a ceasefire was signed.

While the Politico article suggested the Trump administration may be seeking an alternative to Zelensky, these meetings appear to be long-standing and predate both the war and the recent straining of ties with the US.

New Zealand has fired its most senior envoy to the United Kingdom over remarks that questioned US President Donald Trump’s grasp of history.

At an event in London on Tuesday, High Commissioner Phil Goff compared efforts to end the war between Russia and Ukraine to the 1938 Munich Agreement, which allowed Adolf Hitler to annex part of Czechoslovakia.

Mr Goff recalled how Sir Winston Churchill had criticised the agreement, then said of the US leader: “President Trump has restored the bust of Churchill to the Oval Office. But do you think he really understands history?”

His comments were “deeply disappointing” and made his position “untenable”, New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters said.

His comments came after Trump paused military aid to Kyiv following a heated exchange with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office last week.

He contrasted Trump with Churchill who, while estranged from the British government, spoke against the Munich Agreement as he saw it as a surrender to Nazi Germany’s threats.

Mr Goff quoted how Churchill had rebuked then UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain: “You had the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, yet you will have war.”

Peters said Mr Goff’s views did not represent those of the New Zealand government.

“When you are in that position you represent the government and the policies of the day, you’re not able to free think, you are the face of New Zealand,” local media reported Peters saying.

“It’s not the way you behave as the front face of a country, diplomatically,” he said, adding that he would have taken the same course of action no matter which country was being spoken about.

Mr Goff is a veteran politician who had been high commissioner since January 2023. Before that, he served for two terms as mayor of Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city, and was leader of the Labour Party from 2008 to 2011. He had also held several ministerial portfolios, including justice, foreign affairs and defence.

Peters, who is also deputy prime minister, told reporters that he had made the decision to sack Phil Goff without first consulting Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.

When it was pointed out that Luxon was the leader of New Zealand, Peters responded: “I know he’s the prime minister, I made him the prime minister.”

The 79-year-old, who has previously worked with Mr Goff in government, leads the New Zealand First political party – which joined Luxon’s National Party and the Act Party in 2023 to form the current ruling centre-right coalition government.

Luxon, for his part, said Peters’ decision to fire Mr Goff without first consulting him was “entirely appropriate”.

Former Prime Minister Helen Clark was among those who criticised Mr Goff’s sacking, saying it was backed by a “very thin excuse”.

“I have been at Munich Security Conference recently where many draw parallels between Munich 1938 and US actions now,” she wrote in a post on X.

Under the 1938 Munich Agreement, Hitler took control of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland. The deal failed to stop Nazi Germany from advancing deeper into Europe and World War Two began when he invaded Poland in 1939.

US President Donald Trump’s pause on military aid and intelligence sharing for Ukraine has left the war-torn country’s residents uncertain about their futures and rattled America’s European allies.

But it also hit far closer to home in Scranton, Pennsylvania, a city about 4,700 miles (7,560km) away from Kyiv that has played its own small role in the conflict.

Scranton is known as the setting for the American version of The Office television show, and as the birthplace of former President Joe Biden – one of Ukraine’s biggest backers.

But after Russia invaded Ukraine, it has become known as the home of the Scranton Army Artillery Plant among those who have followed the conflict closely.

Owned by the US government and operated by defence contractor General Dynamics, the plant produces the 155mm artillery rounds – a key munition that has helped the Ukrainians keep Russian advances at bay. These rounds are used daily, as the conflict grinds on into First World War-style trench battles and artillery strikes.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky toured the plant during a whirlwind trip to Scranton in September 2024, shaking hands with staff and observing its machinery.

Scranton is one of three plants in Pennsylvania that has increased production of the 155m rounds since the start of the Ukraine-Russia conflict.

Between 2009 to 2017, they collectively produced about 9,000 rounds per month. By the time of Zelensky’s visit last year, the facilities had ramped up their output to 36,000 rounds monthly, the US Army said.

During the Oval Office meeting that caused the Trump administration’s relationship with Ukraine to collapse, Vice-President JD Vance cited the tour to accuse Zelensky of campaigning “for the opposition” during his visit.

• Follow live: Zelensky heads to Brussels to meet European leaders
• One day, three crises and Trump’s free-wheeling foreign policy on display

Despite all the politicial drama, this Pennslyvania community continues to see its work as representing the US commitment to Ukraine, said Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti.

“We have multiple Ukrainian churches here. We have quite the diaspora of Ukrainian Americans,” Cognetti said.

St Vladimir Ukrainian Catholic Church in Scranton has raised funds for the war effort and hosted Ukrainian soldiers at community events.

“Scranton has a very proud history of supporting Ukraine,” Cognetti told the BBC, “and it’s been a really tough couple of weeks here, as we see that support erode from the US administration.”

Cognetti was unsettled by the Oval Office argument between Trump, Zelensky, and US Vice-President JD Vance last Friday.

“To see US policy shift and potentially to have the US really turn its back on Ukraine is really appalling,” she said.

The Scranton artillery plant “ensures warfighters have the ammo when and where needed, and continues to bolster US stockpiles around the globe,” said Lt Gen Chris Mohan, deputy commanding general and acting commander, in a statement about Zelensky’s visit.

Cognetti said that the plant had added “many dozens” of jobs and increased capacity during the Ukraine war, estimating that about 400 people worked there when Zelensky visited.

But with the Trump administration now pressurising Zelensky to end the war, Scranton’s role in geopolitics could be winding down.

US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz confirmed on Wednesday that the White House had paused intelligence sharing with Kyiv, telling reporters: “We have taken a step back.”

The Trump administration is reviewing “all aspects of this relationship”, he added.

Republican lawmakers have backed Trump’s recent actions, which they see as key to negotiating an end to the war.

“I think the president just wants to get everybody to the table, and I think he’s making progress,” South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds told reporters.

There are different estimates for how much military aid the US has given Ukraine, a BBC Verify analysis found.

The German-based Kiel Institute estimated the total at $119.7bn (£94.3bn). The US Department of Defense provided a total of $182.8bn, which includes spending on Operation Atlantic Resolve – a response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Fedir Venislavsky, a member of the Ukrainian parliament’s defence committee, told the BBC that without US military aid, front-line soldiers would be able to last “maybe six months.”

• How pausing US intelligence impacts Ukraine’s military operation
• What pause in US military aid could mean for Ukraine
• Ros Atkins on… President Trump’s history with Ukraine

The region is home to multiple military manufacturing plants, including a Lockheed Martin facility and the larger Tobyhanna Army Depot, which also produces some supplies for Ukraine.

Representatives for the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant declined to comment on how the pause could impact the plant and jobs. On Tuesday, cars pulled into the secure facility as usual, and its car park appeared full.

Any effect would be minor for Scranton’s economy, local officials said.

The plant “is not the largest employer by any stretch,” said Bob Durkin, president of the non-partisan Scranton Chamber of Commerce. “But it’s a very important employer. The jobs are really high quality jobs. They are well paying, family sustaining jobs.”

Outside the plant’s gates, Scranton’s perspective on the war remains divided. Though Scranton, in north-east Pennsylvania, is a historically Democratic area, Republicans have made political gains in the region.

In the 2024 presidential election, Trump won the state, but narrowly lost Lackawanna County, where Scranton is located, to then-Vice-President Kamala Harris. However, in the House race, Republican Rob Bresnahan ousted Democratic congressman, Matt Cartwright, by just 6,200 votes.

Trump campaigned against US spending on Ukraine, a pledge that resonated with his base.

On Tuesday, just before his speech before Congress, denizens at the local Poor Richards dive bar were split on Ukraine – and what role Scranton ought to play on the world stage.

“I feel really angry about the way Trump handled the meeting with Zelensky,” said Brandon Lux, 35, who worked in mental healthcare in Scranton. “Halting all government funding to Ukraine right now, I think that that will definitely have implications for what happens here in our city.”

But other residents felt Trump was correct to pressure Zelensky and to reassess Biden’s support of the embattled country.

“We don’t have money to give them, we have to take care of our people first,” said Fran Fitzgerald, who described herself as a “big fan” of Trump.

Ms Fitzgerald said she hoped the Trump administration could direct the funds being used in Ukraine to projects like fixing Scranton’s “terrible roads” and potholes.

Mike Pierson, an electrician, voted for Trump but does not necessarily agree with all his actions so far. The self-identified independent worried that Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency taskforce would endanger his Social Security benefits. He hopes to retire within the next five years.

But Mr Pierson echoed the president’s argument that the US should not be spending money abroad on conflicts like Ukraine, but back at home.

“We’re the world’s bank, we’re the world’s insurance policy,” he said. “We need to stop.”

Fifteen people in South Korea were injured, two of them seriously, after a pair of fighter jets accidentally dropped eight bombs in a civilian district on Thursday during a live-fire military exercise, local media reported.

The incident involving the Air Force KF-16 aircraft, in the city of Pocheon near North Korea, was part of routine drills held by the South to maintain combat readiness against potential attacks from the North.

South Korea’s Air Force said that it was investigating the incident and apologised for the damage, adding it would provide compensation to those affected.

While shells from live firing exercises sometimes land near civilian residences, they rarely cause injuries.

According to local media reports, two people suffered fractures to their necks and shoulders.

A 60-year-old who was driving when the explosion happened had shrapnel lodged in their neck, Yonhap reported.

“I was driving when I heard a ‘bang’,” they said. “When I woke up, I was in an ambulance.”

“Our KF-16 (fighter jet) abnormally dropped eight shells of MK-82 bombs. It landed outside of firing range,” said Korea’s Air Force in a statement to the BBC.

The military said the pilot of one of the jets inputted the wrong coordinates by mistake, causing the bombs to drop in the civilian community.

Investigators have yet to determine why the second jet dropped its bombs, the military said, adding all live-fire exercises will be suspended.

One church building and houses were also damaged as a result of the incident.

Images published on local media show a broken window of a building and damaged roof of the church.

A local resident told Yonhap that he had been watching television at home when the explosion, which sounded “like a thunderclap”, shook the house.

The director of a nearby senior citizen care centre said that the building’s windows shattered and one of their teachers was taken to hospital with injuries. While no seniors were hurt, they said, “they were so frightened that we sent them all home”.

Pocheon authorities told the BBC earlier on Thursday that residents had been evacuated while a bomb disposal team worked on safely disposing any unexploded bombs.

But authorities later said they did not find any unexploded bombs at the scene, Yonhap reported.

The defence ministry said the training on Thursday was related to a joint drill with US forces.

South Korea and the US are set to run combined drills from March 10 to March 20 – the first since US president Donald Trump’s return to the White House. This comes at a time when the two countries are increasingly wary of the growing alliance between North Korea and Russia.

During another joint drill by South Korea and the US in 2022, troops fired a short-range ballistic missile which malfunctioned and crashed on a golf course in the military base. While the warhead did not explode, it still burst into flames and sent panic rippling across residents in the area.

The wind has been kicking up along the Gold Coast and so too has the swell. But while authorities have been warning residents to stay indoors as Cyclone Alfred approaches, die-hard surfers have been throwing caution to the increasing wind.

“This is what we look forward to,” said Jeff Weatherall as he waited for a jet ski to pick him up from Kirra beach and carry him into the big waves. “This is the fifth day straight – I’ve done nothing but eat, sleep, surf and do it again.”

Kirra beach is famous for its breakers and this week has been busy as surfers wait for Cyclone Alfred.

The cyclone is expected to make landfall as a category two system late Friday or – more likely – early Saturday morning.

Its path has slowed in recent days and has been moving “erratically” according to weather experts, which is why landfall has been delayed from earlier predictions.

“A category two system means winds near the centre up to 95km/h (59mph), with gusts up to 130km/h,” says the Bureau of Meteorology’s Matthew Collopy.

Four million people are in the firing line of Cyclone Alfred. It’s expected to hit between the Sunshine Coast and the Gold Coast – a stretch of Australia known for its beautiful beaches and top surf – as well as Brisbane, Australia’s third-biggest city.

The past few days in Kirra have been “crazy”, said resident and keen surfer Donnie Neal.

“It’s pretty serious, there are people that are going to lose their houses, but at the moment, you’re taking the good of it all – this is just crazy surf.”

As well as strong winds, Cyclone Alfred is expected to dump as much as 800mm of rain in the coming days, affecting a large area of southern Queensland and northern New South Wales. Flash and riverine flooding is the biggest concern in low-lying areas.

“These are tough times, but Australians are tough people, and we are resilient people,” said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Thursday, echoing the Gold Coast’s acting Mayor Donna Gates, who has said Cyclone Alfred is a “scary proposition” for the region.

Nearly 1,000 schools have closed, public transport has been suspended and airports are shut. Flights aren’t expected to resume until Sunday at the earliest. Elective surgeries have also been cancelled.

While Queensland isn’t a stranger to cyclones – it’s the most disaster-prone state in Australia – it’s rare they come so far south.

The last time it happened was in 1974, when Cyclone Wanda hit in January and then two months later, Zoe crossed the coast.

Flooding though, is more common. In February 2022, thousands of homes were damaged along much of Australia’s east after heavy rain. Authorities have been keen to prepare communities ahead of Cyclone Alfred. The council opened sandbag depots across the region to help residents protect their homes.

“It’s surreal. We know it’s coming, but it’s very quiet,” said Anthony Singh, a resident of the Brisbane suburb of West End. He waited for four hours on Wednesday to pick up sandbags to protect his home.

Fellow resident Mark Clayton, helped to co-ordinate the sandbag collection, shovelling more than 140 tonnes of sand.

“I think people are a bit apprehensive,” he says. “Are the buildings going to stay up, are the roofs going to stay on? People expect a lot of trees to come down and to lose power for an extended period of time.”

With supermarkets now shut and people mostly sheltering at home, there’s a lot of uncertainty as Australians wait for the storm to hit.

US President Donald Trump has issued what he called a “last warning” to Hamas to release the hostages being held in Gaza.

“I am sending Israel everything it needs to finish the job, not a single Hamas member will be safe if you don’t do as I say,” Trump said in a lengthy post on his Truth Social platform.

Hamas accused the US president of encouraging Israel to break the ceasefire deal currently in effect between the two sides.

Trump’s statement came just hours after the White House confirmed it was holding direct talks with Hamas over the remaining hostages.

Washington has until now avoided direct engagement with the group, and there is a longstanding US policy against having direct contact with entities it lists as terrorist organisations.

• One day, three crises and Trump’s free-wheeling foreign policy
• Gaza food prices spike after Israel halts aid deliveries
• Stories of the hostages taken by Hamas from Israel

In his social media post, Trump said there would be “hell to pay” if the hostages were not released, while not specifying the nature of the support he was sending Israel.

“Release all of the hostages now, not later, and immediately return all of the dead bodies of the people you murdered, or it is OVER for you,” he added.

“For the leadership, now is the time to leave Gaza, while you still have a chance.”

He also appeared to issue a wider threat: “Also, to the People of Gaza: A beautiful Future awaits, but not if you hold Hostages. If you do, you are DEAD!”

Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said in a statement that such threats “complicate matters regarding the ceasefire agreement and encourage the occupation [Israel] to avoid implementing its terms”.

It’s not the first time Trump has threatened Hamas. In December, he said there would be “all hell to pay” if hostages were not released by the time he took office.

The post came after Trump met with a group of hostages in the White House who had been recently released under the ceasefire.

Meanwhile, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the US has been negotiating directly with Hamas to try to secure the release of the hostages.

Israel had been consulted prior to the talks, she added.

President Trump believed in doing what was in the best interest of the American people, Leavitt told reporters.

The work of the special envoy for hostages, Adam Boehler, work was a “good faith effort to do what’s right for the American people”, she added.

“Two direct meetings” have taken place between Hamas and a US official, “preceded by several communications”, a Palestinian source told the BBC.

News of the talks was first reported by Axios, which said the two sides were meeting in Qatar to discuss the release of US hostages as well as a wider deal to end the war.

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

At least 48,440 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Israel says there are still 59 hostages being held in Gaza, with up to 24 believed to be alive.

Five US citizens are among the captives. One of them, Edan Alexander, is believed to be alive and the other four are presumed dead.

A former US deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for the Middle East said the US needs to be “more proactive” about getting its citizens back.

Mick Mulroy, who is also an ex-CIA paramilitary officer, added that “it could complicate the Israelis’ ability to get their citizens back if not tightly coordinated”.

Israel’s prime minister’s office said in a statement it has “expressed its position” regarding the direct talks, but did not provide any further information.

According to reports, Boehler met with Hamas representatives in the Qatari capital, Doha, in recent weeks.

Hamas has had a base in Doha since 2012, reportedly at the request of the Obama administration.

The small but influential Gulf state is a key US ally in the region. It hosts a major American air base and has handled many delicate political negotiations, including with Iran, the Taliban and Russia.

Alongside the US and Egypt, Qatar has also played a major role in talks to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second presidential term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

Spanish prosecutors have demanded a retrial in the case of former football federation president Luis Rubiales, who was found guilty of sexual assault for kissing player Jenni Hermoso without her consent.

In February, Rubiales was fined €10,800 (£9,052) for that offence but found not guilty of coercion over allegations he pressured Hermoso into publicly saying the kiss was consensual.

Prosecutors have called for Rubiales to be jailed and appealed that verdict, seeking a retrial with a different judge after alleging the original was biased in Rubiales’s favour.

Rubiales grabbed Hermoso by the head and kissed her on the lips as Spain’s players received their medals for winning the 2023 World Cup.

The incident, which occurred after Spain defeated England in Sydney, was witnessed by millions on television and in the stadium, and triggered protests and calls for Rubiales’s resignation.

The 47-year-old previously said he will appeal against the guilty verdict.

Three of Rubiales’s former colleagues were also accused of colluding in the alleged coercion.

Jorge Vilda, coach of the World Cup-winning side, Rubén Rivera, the Real Federación Española de Fútbol (RFEF)’s former head of marketing, and Albert Luque, former sporting director, were all cleared.

The court’s ruling also banned the former football president from going within a 200m radius of Hermoso or communicating with her for one year.

During the trial, Rubiales told the court he was “absolutely sure” Hermoso had given her consent before he kissed her.

He described the kiss as an “act of affection”, adding that in the moment it was “something completely spontaneous”.

In her testimony, Hermoso insisted she had not given her consent and said the incident had “stained one of the happiest days of my life”.

She told the court in Madrid: “My boss was kissing me and this shouldn’t happen in any social or work setting.”

The incident gave momentum to a Me Too-style movement in the Spanish women’s game, in which players sought to combat sexism and achieve parity with their male peers.

Rubiales resigned in September 2023 following weeks of resisting pressure to stand down and after he was suspended by Fifa.

Prosecutors first filed a complaint from Hermoso about Rubiales to Spain’s high court in the days prior to his resignation. He was formally charged in early 2024.

Denmark’s state-run postal service, PostNord, is to end all letter deliveries at the end of 2025, citing a 90% decline in letter volumes since the start of the century.

The decision brings to an end 400 years of the company’s letter service. Denmark’s 1,500 post boxes will start to disappear from the start of June.

Transport Minister Thomas Danielsen sought to reassure Danes, saying letters would still be sent and received as “there is a free market for both letters and parcels”.

Postal services across Europe are grappling with the decline in letter volumes. Germany’s Deutsche Post said on Thursday it was axing 8,000 jobs, in what it called a “socially responsible manner”.

Deutsche Post has 187,000 employees and staff representatives said they feared more cuts were to come.

Denmark had a universal postal service for 400 years until the end of 2023, but as digital mail services have taken hold, the use of letters has fallen dramatically.

Fifteen hundred workers facing losing their jobs, out of a workforce of 4,600.

“It’s a super sad day. Not just for our department, but for the 1,500 who face an uncertain future,” employee Anders Raun Mikkelsen told Danish broadcaster DR.

Denmark ranks as one of the world’s most digitalised countries.

There’s an app for almost everything: few people use cash, and Danes even carry drivers’ licences and health cards on their smartphones.

Bank statements, bills, and correspondence from local authorities are all sent electronically.

Public services send communications via a Digital Post app or other platforms and PostNord Denmark says the letter market is no longer profitable.

Letter numbers have fallen since the start of the century from 1.4 billion to 110 million last year.

The decision will affect elderly people most. Although 95% of Danes use the Digital Post service, a reported 271,000 people still rely on physical mail.

“There are many who are very dependent on letters being delivered regularly. These include hospital appointments, vaccinations or decisions regarding home care,” Marlene Rishoj Cordes, from (DaneAge) told Denmark’s TV2.

PostNord has weathered years of financial struggles and last year was running a deficit.

Danish MP Pelle Dragsted blamed privatisation for the move and complained the move would disadvantage people living in remote areas.

The introduction of a new Postal Act in 2024 opened up the letter market to competition from private firms and mail is no longer exempted from VAT, resulting in higher postage costs.

“When a letter costs 29 Danish krone (£3.35; $4.20) there will be fewer letters,” PostNord Denmark’s Managing Director, Kim Pedersen, told local media.

He said Danes had become increasingly digital and the decline in letter volumes had become so pronounced that it had fallen by as much as 30% in the past year alone.

The company said it would switch its focus to parcel deliveries and that any postage stamps bought this year or in 2024 could be refunded for a limited period in 2026.

PostNord also operates in Sweden. It is 40% Danish-owned and 60% Swedish-owned.

A Rangers fan has died in a road accident in Istanbul ahead of the club’s match in the Turkish city.

The club said it was “devastated” to have learned of the death, which happened overnight.

Rangers play Fenerbahce in a Europa League tie on Thursday night.

Reports in the Turkish press suggest that the man was crossing the road in the early hours of the morning when he was hit by a car before being run over by a second vehicle.

A statement on the Rangers website said: “The immediate thoughts of everyone at the club are with their family and friends at this incredibly difficult time.

“We are remaining in constant contact with both the Turkish and British authorities over this tragic incident.”

A Foreign Office spokesman said: “We are aware of the death of a British man in Turkey and are in touch with the local authorities.”

Fenerbahce stated it extended “heartfelt sympathies” to the man’s family and Rangers.

A Rangers fan has died in a road accident in Istanbul ahead of the club’s match in the Turkish city.

The club said it was “devastated” to have learned of the death, which happened overnight.

Rangers play Fenerbahce in a Europa League tie on Thursday night.

Reports in the Turkish press suggest that the man was crossing the road in the early hours of the morning when he was hit by a car before being run over by a second vehicle.

A statement on the Rangers website said: “The immediate thoughts of everyone at the club are with their family and friends at this incredibly difficult time.

“We are remaining in constant contact with both the Turkish and British authorities over this tragic incident.”

A Foreign Office spokesman said: “We are aware of the death of a British man in Turkey and are in touch with the local authorities.”

Fenerbahce stated it extended “heartfelt sympathies” to the man’s family and Rangers.