A British diplomat and the spouse of another diplomat are being expelled from Russia, the country’s domestic security service has said, in what is being seen as the latest tit-for-tat escalation.

The two men are accused of “intelligence and subversive work” by the Federal Security Service (FSB) which said they had been stripped of their accreditation and ordered to leave Russia within two weeks.

The UK Foreign Office said: “This is not the first time that Russia has made malicious and baseless accusations against our staff.”

Last month, the UK expelled a Russian diplomat – an action taken in response to Moscow’s expulsion of a British diplomat in November 2024.

The Russian Foreign Ministry had said then that it intended to retaliate to the expulsion.

In the past year alone, there have been seven British diplomats expelled from Russia with Moscow accusing them of espionage – allegations denied by the UK.

Relations between the UK and Russia have deteriorated to post-Cold War lows in the years following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In Monday’s reported action, Moscow said it was expelling the diplomats on grounds of espionage.

In a statement the FSB said the two had declared “false information about themselves when receiving permission” to enter Russia.

Russia’s foreign ministry said on Monday it had also summoned a representative of the British embassy “in protest”.

The pair appear to be the first western diplomatic expulsions by Moscow since Russia and the US held talks on restoring relations last month – the first time in three years since the start of the Ukraine war.

But relations between Britain and Russia have been further strained as Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has resolutely stood by Ukraine.

He has pledged to increase defence spending and called on countries to join a “coalition of the willing” to deter Russia from further invading Ukraine in the event of a peace deal.

He has committed the UK to putting boots on the ground and planes in the air to help maintain a peace. Moscow has criticised the idea of a foreign peacekeeping mission.

A pro-Palestinian activist who took a lead role in last year’s student protests at Columbia University in New York City is being held in immigration custody in Louisiana, records suggest, after he was detained at the weekend.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents told Syrian-born Mahmoud Khalil they were revoking his student visa and green card when they detained him at his university-owned apartment in Manhattan on Saturday, says his attorney.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that the former student had “led activities aligned to Hamas”.

The Trump administration announced last week it was rescinding $400m (£310m) in federal grants to Columbia, accusing it of failing to fight antisemitism on campus.

Mr Khalil was initially taken to an immigration holding facility in New Jersey, according to ICE’s online locator. But when his wife tried to visit on Sunday, she was told he was not there, according to his lawyer.

The system indicated on Monday that Mr Khalil was being detained at a facility in the town of Jena, Louisiana.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said that Mr Khalil had been taken into custody “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting antisemitism”.

Amy Greer, his attorney, said her client is a legal permanent resident with a green card and married to an American citizen, who is eight months’ pregnant.

When ICE agents arrived at the campus building on Saturday, they also threatened to arrest Mr Khalil’s wife, according to the lawyer.

Columbia said in a statement that law enforcement agents can enter university property if they produce a warrant.

On Sunday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted a news story on X about the arrest of Mr Khalil, commenting: “We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported”.

Columbia was the epicentre last year of pro-Palestinian student protests nationwide against the war in Gaza and US support for Israel.

Mr Khalil was lead negotiator for Columbia University Apartheid Divest when its protesters set up a huge tent encampment on the university lawn in protest against the Gaza war.

Some students also took control of an academic building for several hours before police entered the campus to arrest more than 100 protesters. Mr Khalil was not in that group.

He later told the BBC he had been temporarily suspended by the university, where he was a graduate student at the School of International and Public Affairs.

Some Jewish students at Columbia have said that rhetoric at the demonstrations at times crossed the line into antisemitism. Other Jewish students on campus have joined the pro-Palestinian protests.

President Donald Trump pledged earlier this month to halt federal funding for universities that allow “illegal” protests.

In a post on Truth Social, he also added that “agitators” would be “imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came”.

Jacob Hamburger, a visiting assistant professor at Cornell Law School, told the BBC that US authorities sometimes detain a lawful permanent resident if they have committed certain crimes.

But he said that “targeting individual protesters just for protesting … is highly unusual and something that we haven’t seen before, even under the first Trump administration”.

Speaking on Fox News, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan alleged that Mr Khalil had violated the terms of his visa by “locking down buildings and destroying property”.

“We’re going to send a strong message – anyone here on a foreign visa, you’re given a great – a right – to come to the greatest country on earth and study in our colleges, but when you come to study you have to obey the laws of this country,” he said.

The Israeli military launched its campaign against Hamas in response to an unprecedented cross-border attack into Israel on 7 October 2023, which left about 1,200 people dead and 251 taken hostage.

More than 48,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed in Israel’s military action, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Residents of Greenland head to the polls on Tuesday in a vote that in previous years has drawn little outside attention – but which may prove pivotal for the Arctic territory’s future.

US President Donald Trump’s repeated interest in acquiring Greenland has put it firmly in the spotlight and fuelled the longstanding debate on the island’s future ties with Copenhagen.

“There’s never been a spotlight like this on Greenland before,” says Nauja Bianco, a Danish-Greenlandic policy expert on the Arctic.

Greenland has been controlled by Denmark – nearly 3,000km (1,860 miles) away – for about 300 years. It governs its own domestic affairs, but decisions on foreign and defence policy are made in Copenhagen.

Now, five out of six parties on the ballot favour Greenland’s independence from Denmark, differing only on how quickly that should come about.

The debate over independence has been “put on steroids by Trump”, says Masaana Egede, editor of Greenlandic newspaper Sermitsiaq.

The island’s strategic location and untapped mineral resources have caught the US president’s eye. He first floated the idea of buying Greenland back during his first term in 2019.

Since taking office again in January, he has reiterated his intention to acquire the territory. Greenland and Denmark’s leaders have repeatedly rebuffed his demands.

Addressing the US Congress last week, however, Trump again doubled down. “We need Greenland for national security. One way or the other we’re gonna get it,” he said, prompting applause and laughter from a number of politicians, including Vice-President JD Vance.

In Nuuk, his words struck a nerve with politicians who were quick to condemn them. “We deserve to be treated with respect and I don’t think the American president has done that lately since he took office,” Prime Minister Mute Egede said.

Still, the US interest has stoked calls for Greenland to break away from Denmark, with much of the debate focused on when – not if – the process of independence should begin.

Greenland’s independence goal is not new, Nauja Bianco points out, and has been decades in the making.

A string of revelations about past mistreatment of Inuit people by the Danes have hurt Greenlandic public opinion about Denmark. Earlier this year, PM Egede said the territory should free itself from “the shackles of colonialism”.

But it is the first time the subject has taken centre stage in an election.

Inuit Ataqatigiit (IA), the party of Prime Minister Mute Egede, favours gradual steps towards autonomy. “Citizens must feel secure,” he told local media.

Arctic expert Martin Breum says Egede’s handling of the challenge from Trump and strong words against Denmark over past colonial wrongdoings “will give him a lot of votes”.

Smaller rivals could also gain ground and potentially shake up alliances.

Opposition party Naleraq wants to immediately kick-off divorce proceedings from Copenhagen and have closer defence dealings with Washington.

Pointing to Greenland’s EU departure and Brexit, party leader Pele Broberg has said that Greenland could be “out of the Danish kingdom in three years”.

Naleraq is fielding the largest number of candidates and has gained momentum by riding the wave of discontent with Denmark.

“Naleraq will also be a larger factor too in parliament,” predicts Mr Breum, who says party candidates have performed well on TV and on social media.

However, the centre-right Demokraatit party believes it is too soon to push for independence.

“The economy will have to be much stronger than it is today,” party candidate Justus Hansen told Reuters.

Greenland’s economy is driven by fishing, and government spending relies on annual subsidies from Denmark.

Talk of Trump and independence has overshadowed other key issues for voters, says newspaper editor Masaana Egede.

“It’s an election where we should be talking about healthcare, care of the elderly and social problems. Almost everything is about independence.”

According to recent polls, almost 80% of Greenlanders back moves towards future statehood.

About 44,000 people are eligible to vote, and given the low numbers and few polls, results are difficult to forecast.

Even though a majority of Greenlanders favour independence, a survey has shown that half would be less enthusiastic about independence if that meant lower living standards.

One poll found that 85% of Greenlanders do not wish to become a part of the United States, and nearly half see Trump’s interest as a threat.

One fear among some Greenlanders, says Masaana Egede, is how long the Arctic island could remain independent and whether it would break off from Denmark only to have another country “standing on our coasts and start taking over”.

Experts say it is this worry that could steer votes towards keeping the status quo.

Although Greenland’s right to self-determination is enshrined into law by the 2009 Self-Rule Act, there are several steps to take before the territory could break away from Denmark, including holding a referendum.

This means getting full independence could take “about 10 to 15 years,” says Kaj Kleist, a veteran Greenlandic politician and civil servant who prepared the Self-Rule Act.

“There is lot of preparation and negotiations with the Danish government before you can make that a reality,” he adds.

Whatever the election’s outcome, experts do not believe Greenland could become independent before Trump’s second term is over in 2028.

The results are expected in the early hours of Wednesday.

Syria’s defence ministry says it has completed a military operation in the country’s western coastal region, after days of violence in which hundreds of people have been killed.

Security forces had “neutralized” loyalists of former president Bashar al-Assad in several towns in Latakia and Tartous provinces and were “paving the way for life to return to normal”, a ministry spokesman said.

A monitoring group says more than 1,400 people have been killed since Thursday, including 973 civilians.

Gunmen loyal to the Sunni Islamist-led government have been accused of carrying out revenge killings against members of Assad’s minority Alawite sect following a deadly ambush on a security patrol.

The interim President, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has said he will set up an independent committee to investigate the killings and insisted the perpetrators would be held accountable.

The violence is the worst in Syria since Sharaa led the lightning rebel offensive that overthrew Assad in December, ending 13 years of devastating civil war in which more than 600,000 people were killed and 12 million others were forced to flee their homes.

• Syrians describe terror as Alawite families killed in their homes
• Syria leader vows to hunt down those responsible for bloodshed
• ‘We are still at war’: Syria’s Kurds battle Turkey months after Assad’s fall

Defence ministry spokesman Hassan Abdul Ghani announced on X that the security operation in Latakia and Tartous had ended after “achieving all the specified objectives”.

“Our forces have neutralised the security cells and remnants of the former regime from the town of al-Mukhtareyah, the town of al-Mazairaa, the area of al-Zobar, and other locations in Latakia province, as well as Dalia town, Tanita town, and Qadmous in Tartous province, resulting in the thwarting of threats and securing the area,” he said.

He also said that public institutions in the region were now able to resume their work, adding: “We are preparing for the return of normal life and working to reinforce security and stability.”

Abdul Ghani promised that security forces would also “give the investigating committee the full opportunity to uncover the circumstances of these incidents, verify the facts and deliver justice to the oppressed”.

The government launched the operation in Latakia province in response to a growing insurgency by Assad loyalists in recent weeks. The region is the heartland of the Alawite sect, to which many of the former regime’s political and military elite belonged.

On Thursday, security personnel were ambushed by gunmen in the town of Jableh as they tried to arrest a wanted Assad regime official. At least 13 officers were reportedly killed.

Security forces responded by sending reinforcements to the region, who were joined by armed supporters of the government. Over the next four days, they stormed many Alawite towns and villages, where residents said they carried out revenge killings and lootings.

A widely shared video showed the bodies of at least two dozen men in civilian clothing, piled in the yard of a house, in al-Mukhtareyah. Elsewhere, accounts emerged of fighters searching for Alawite members and killing entire families on the spot.

Hiba, an Alawite woman in Baniyas, told the BBC that Chechen fighters loyal to the government had attacked her neighbourhood.

“Our neighbours were killed including children. They came and took everything, gold, everything… They stole all of the cars in the neighbourhood. They even went to the supermarket and they took everything from the shelves.”

“We were waiting for our turn. We didn’t know when it would come. We saw death, we saw people dying in front of us and now all of our friends, our neighbours, are gone,” she added. “They killed innocent people in cold blood who had nothing to do with any of this.”

An Alawite man whose family lives in Baniyas said in a voice message that a relative was kidnapped from his home by gunmen from Sharaa’s Islamist group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), who went door to door searching for Alawites.

“His mother made a mistake opening the door when she did. An HTS member fired between her legs… so she screamed,” he said. “Her son… ran to see what happened with her. When they [saw] him, they took him with them and disappeared. And they didn’t return.”

He also said residents of Alawite neighbourhoods of Baniyas were still hiding in their houses on Monday morning because they were too afraid to venture outside to see if it was safe.

The bodies of those killed had been buried in a mass grave near a shrine on the outskirts of the town, while those who were kidnapped had not yet returned, he added.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, reported that more than 1,450 people have been killed in Latakia, Tartous, Hama and Homs provinces.

They included 973 civilians, who it said had died as a result of “killings, field executions and ethnic cleansing operations” by security personnel or pro-government fighters, as well as 231 security personnel and 250 pro-Assad fighters.

Security sources also told Reuters news agency that 300 security personnel had been killed.

The BBC has been unable to independently verify the death tolls.

State news agency Sana said a mass grave containing the bodies of security personnel had been found in the former president’s hometown of Qardaha on Sunday. Turkey-based Syria TV cited residents as saying Assad loyalists had buried police killed in the recent fighting there.

UN human rights chief Volker Türk said his office had received “extremely disturbing reports of entire families, including women, children and hors de combat fighters, being killed”.

“There are reports of summary executions on a sectarian basis by unidentified perpetrators, by members of the caretaker authorities’ security forces, as well as by elements associated with the former government,” he added.

He demanded swift action by Syria’s interim authorities to protect civilians and hold those responsible for the killings and other violations to be held to account.

Hundreds of foreign tourists have left a Unesco heritage site in southern India in the past few days after two women – an Israeli tourist and an Indian homestay owner – were gang-raped and a man was murdered.

The three were stargazing with two other male tourists near the town of Hampi in Karnataka state last Thursday when they were attacked by three men following an argument over money, police said.

All three suspects wanted in connection with the crime have been arrested.

The incident, which made global headlines, sparked fear among tourists and sent shockwaves through India.

Once the capital of the Hindu Vijayanagara kingdom, Hampi is described as an open-air museum, filled with magnificent stone ruins on the banks of Tungabhadra river. It was declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco in 1986.

Thursday’s assault took place in Sanapur village, which is about 28km (17 miles) from the main ruins of Hampi.

Located on the other side of the river from Hampi, the village is “a very isolated area”, says Ram Arasiddi, the superintendent of police of the district.

Many tourists, especially from Israel and Europe, who visit Hampi stay at Sanapur, which also has towering ruins and a famous Hindu temple.

“Overall, about 100,000 or more foreign tourists visit the area every year,” says Virupaksha V Hampi, general secretary of the Karnataka tourist guides’ association.

However, since the news of the attack, most visitors have either cancelled bookings or left.

“Almost 90% of the tourists, most of whom are Israelis, have vacated homestays and left the area after Thursday,” Syed Ismael, a tour guide, told BBC Hindi.

Mr Ismael added that those who were staying had been advised to move in groups and avoid venturing too far out.

Some said they’ve had to make last-minute changes to their plans.

“The incident is really scary and we are concerned about our safety. We had plans to stay here until [the Hindu festival of] Holi, but now we will be heading to Rajasthan state,” Talia Zilber, a 21-year-old Israeli tourist, told The Indian Express newspaper. Mr Zilber left the guest house where he was staying with his five friends on Sunday.

State minister Shivaraj Tangadagi has also cautioned people against travelling late at night in the area.

According to one survivor’s testimony, the group was stargazing near a temple when three men arrived on a motorcycle and asked where they could get petrol.

They gave them directions but the men then demanded 100 rupees ($1.15; £0.90) from them.

The group initially refused as they didn’t know the men, but one male tourist eventually gave them 20 rupees.

The men then began arguing with the tourists which led to a confrontation.

The attackers pushed the three men into a nearby river canal before raping the women, Mr Arasiddi said on Saturday.

Two men swam to safety while the third, from Odisha state, drowned.

Police say they have filed a case for attempted murder, robbery and rape based on the survivors’ testimony.

Two suspects were arrested on Saturday while a third man was arrested from neighbouring Tamil Nadu state on Sunday. He is being brought to Karnataka on Monday.

Violent crimes against women continue in India despite tough laws. The 2012 gang rape and murder of a medical student by a group of men in the capital Delhi drew global attention and triggered large-scale protests.

The incident prompted authorities to introduce stricter rape laws in 2013. Yet, tens of thousands of cases are reported each year. The National Crime Records Bureau reported nearly 32,000 rapes in India in 2022.

Experts believe many rapes go unreported because of social stigma, distrust of police and lack of confidence in the justice system.

In 2023, public outrage followed the alleged gang rape of a Brazilian-Spanish tourist in Jharkhand state. The victim and her husband shared their ordeal on Instagram, but later removed their posts.

Hackers thought to be working for the North Korean regime have successfully converted at least $300m (£232m) of their record-breaking $1.5bn crypto heist to unrecoverable funds.

The criminals, known as Lazarus Group, swiped the huge haul of digital tokens in a hack on crypto exchange ByBit two weeks ago.

Since then, it’s been a cat-and-mouse game to track and block the hackers from successfully converting the crypto into usable cash.

Experts say the infamous hacking team is working nearly 24 hours a day – potentially funnelling the money into the regime’s military development.

“Every minute matters for the hackers who are trying to confuse the money trail and they are extremely sophisticated in what they’re doing,” says Dr Tom Robinson, co-founder of crypto investigators Elliptic.

Out of all the criminal actors involved in crypto currency, North Korea is the best at laundering crypto, Dr Robinson says.

“I imagine they have an entire room of people doing this using automated tools and years of experience. We can also see from their activity that they only take a few hours break each day, possibly working in shifts to get the crypto turned into cash.”

Elliptic’s analysis tallies with ByBit, which says that 20% of the funds have now “gone dark”, meaning it is unlikely to ever be recovered.

The US and allies accuse the North Koreans of carrying out dozens of hacks in recent years to fund the regime’s military and nuclear development.

On 21 February the criminals hacked one of ByBit’s suppliers to secretly alter the digital wallet address that 401,000 Ethereum crypto coins were being sent to.

ByBit thought it was transferring the funds to its own digital wallet, but instead sent it all to the hackers.

Ben Zhou, the CEO of ByBit, assured customers that none of their funds had been taken.

The firm has since replenished the stolen coins with loans from investors, but is, in Zhou’s words, “waging war on Lazarus”.

ByBit’s Lazarus Bounty programme is encouraging members of the public to trace the stolen funds and get them frozen where possible.

All crypto transactions are displayed on a public blockchain, so it’s possible to track the money as it’s moved around by the Lazarus Group.

If the hackers try to use a mainstream crypto service to attempt to turn the coins into normal money like dollars, the crypto coins can be frozen by the company if they think they are linked to crime.

So far 20 people have shared more than $4m in rewards for successfully identifying $40m of the stolen money and alerting crypto firms to block transfers.

But experts are downbeat about the chances of the rest of the funds being recoverable, given the North Korean expertise in hacking and laundering the money.

“North Korea is a very closed system and closed economy so they created a successful industry for hacking and laundering and they don’t care about the negative impression of cyber crime,” Dr Dorit Dor from cyber security company Check Point said.

Another problem is that not all crypto companies are as willing to help as others.

Crypto exchange eXch is being accused by ByBit and others of not stopping the criminals cashing out.

More than $90m has been successfully funnelled through this exchange.

But over email the elusive owner of eXch – Johann Roberts – disputed that.

He admits they didn’t initially stop the funds, as his company is in a long-running dispute with ByBit, and he says his team wasn’t sure the coins were definitely from the hack.

He says he is now co-operating, but argues that mainstream companies that identify crypto customers are betraying the private and anonymous benefits of crypto currency.

North Korea has never admitted being behind the Lazarus Group, but is thought to be the only country in the world using its hacking powers for financial gain.

Previously the Lazarus Group hackers targeted banks, but have in the last five years specialised in attacking cryptocurrency companies.

The industry is less well protected with fewer mechanisms in place to stop them laundering the funds.

Recent hacks linked to North Korea include:

• The 2019 hack on UpBit for $41m
• The $275m theft of crypto from exchange KuCoin (most of the funds were recovered)
• The 2022 Ronin Bridge attack which saw hackers make off with $600m in crypto
• Approximately $100m in crypto was stolen in an attack on Atomic Wallet in 2023

In 2020, the US added North Koreans accused of being part of the Lazarus Group to its Cyber Most Wanted list. But the chances of the individuals ever being arrested are extremely slim unless they leave their country.

A former Thai police chief who was jailed for life three years ago for torturing a drug suspect to death has been found dead in his Bangkok jail cell, authorities said.

Thitisan Utthanaphon, who was nicknamed Joe Ferrari for his many luxury cars, died by suicide, according to a preliminary autopsy.

In 2021, a leaked video showed Thitisan and his colleagues wrapping plastic bags around the head of a 24-year-old drug suspect during an interrogation, leading to the suspect’s death.

The video sparked national outrage at that time over police brutality in Thailand. It has made fresh rounds on social media in the wake of Thitisan’s death.

Thailand’s justice ministry has launched an investigation into his death after his family expressed doubts that he killed himself. Further tests were needed to confirm that he had indeed died in a suicide, authorities said.

Justice minister Tawee Sodsong said on Monday that all evidence related to Thitisan’s death should be disclosed, and urged prison authorities to cooperate with investigators.

The family said Thitisan was previously assaulted by a prison staffer. They said officials did not allow them to see his body, which was found in his cell on Friday.

But on Sunday authorities said “no prison officer or inmate has harmed or caused [his] death”.

A previous raid on Thitisan’s house revealed that he owned a dozen luxury sportscars. Authorities believe he owned at least 42, one of them a rare Lamborghini Aventador Anniversario, of which only 100 were made, priced in Thailand at 47 million baht ($1.45m; £1.05m).

As a police colonel, Thitisan was paid about $1,000 a month.

There were allegations that he demanded bribes from the suspect in the viral video, Jirapong Thanapat, while suffocating him. Thitisan denied this.

Thitisan surrendered in 2021 following a manhunt.

Besides Thitisan, five other police officers were convicted of murdering Jirapong and were also sentenced to life in prison in 2022.

“It’s like he has paid off the karma he committed,” Jirapong’s father said in an interview on local media on Saturday.

The Department of Corrections said they had been investigating a previous complaint filed by Thitisan’s family alleging that he had been bullied and assaulted by prison officers earlier this year.

Thitisan had consulted doctors over anxiety issues and trouble sleeping, the department said.

His family visited him on the day that he died and prison staff did not notice any “abnormalities”, it said.

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A sell-off in the US stock market gathered steam on Monday, fuelled by rising concern about the cost of the trade war to the world’s largest economy.

The S&P 500, which tracks the biggest American companies, fell about 2% in early trade, while the Dow Jones dropped 0.9% and the Nasdaq sank more than 3.5%.

The falls came after President Donald Trump ducked questions about whether the US economy was facing a recession or price rises as a result of tariff moves, warning instead of a “period of transition”.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, however, insisted there would be no contraction in the US, although he acknowledged that the price of some goods may rise.

New tit-for-tat tariffs from China, which target some US farm products, came into effect on Monday.

Speaking to Fox News in an interview broadcast on Sunday but recorded on Thursday, Trump responded to a question about a recession: “I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America. That’s a big thing.”

“It takes a little time, but I think it should be great for us,” he added.

Last week, the US imposed new 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada but then exempted many of those goods just two days later.

Trump also doubled a blanket tariff on goods from China to 20%. In response, Beijing announced retaliatory taxes on some imports of agricultural goods from the US.

From today, certain US farm products going into China – including chicken, beef, pork, wheat, and soybeans – face new tariffs of 10 to 15%.

Han Shen Lin, China country director at consultancy firm The Asia Group, told the BBC’s Today programme: “You’re seeing a lot of tit for tat between both sides to demonstrate that neither side will back off easily.

“That said China has realised it probably can’t export its way to GDP growth in the way that it used to so it is focusing a lot more on the domestic economy right now.”

The US president has accused China, Mexico and Canada of not doing enough to end the flow of illegal drugs and migrants into the US. The three countries have rejected the accusations.

Stocks on Wall Street have fallen since Trump sparked a trade war with the US’s top trading partners.

Investors fear tariffs will lead to higher prices and ultimately dent growth in the world’s largest economy.

Speaking on NBC on Sunday, Lutnick said: “Foreign goods may get a little more expensive. But American goods are going to get cheaper”.

But when asked whether the US economy could face a recession Lutnick added: “Absolutely not… There’s going to be no recession in America.”

Former US Commerce Department official, Frank Lavin, told the BBC that he thinks the trade war is unlikely to escalate out of control.

Tariffs will eventually “fade a bit” but still be an “extra burden on the US economy,” he said.

Rachel Winter, investment manager at Killik & Co, told the Today programme she thought the US was likely to have a period of higher inflation.

“Tariffs are theoretically inflationary and the level of tariffs that Trump is imposing, I think no doubt, will have to cause inflation somewhere down the line,” she said.

A caravan found packed with explosives in outer Sydney earlier this year was part of a “fabricated terrorism plot” concocted by criminals, Australian police have said.

The caravan, which was found in north-western Sydney on 19 January, contained enough explosives to produce a 40m-wide blast, along with a note displaying antisemitic messages and a list of Jewish synagogues.

Its discovery, following a spate of antisemitic attacks in Australia, triggered widespread panic.

But on Monday, Australian Federal Police (AFP) revealed that they knew “almost immediately” that the caravan was “essentially a criminal con job”.

AFP’s deputy commissioner of national security, Krissy Barrett, said investigators within the New South Wales Joint Counter Terrorism Team believed that the caravan was “part of a fabricated terrorism plot”.

Authorities arrived at that belief based on information they already had, the ease with which they found the caravan and the visibility of the explosives contained inside – as well as the fact that there was no detonator.

Yet police refrained from telling the public that they believed the plot was fake “out of an abundance of caution”, as they continued to receive tip-offs about other related terror plots. They are now confident that these tip-offs were also fabricated, Ms Barrett said.

The fake caravan plot involved several people with different levels of involvement, according to police. Between them, they had planned to purchase a caravan, load it with explosives and antisemitic materials and leave it in a specific location, before informing law enforcement about “an impending terror attack against Jewish Australians”.

Ms Barrett described it as “an elaborate scheme contrived by organised criminals, domestically and from offshore”, adding that the leader of the plot maintained a distance and hired alleged local criminals to carry out parts of the operation.

That individual is a known organised crime figure, Ms Barrett confirmed. She also added that while no arrests had been made in relation to the incident, police have a number of ongoing targets both in Australia and offshore.

“Too many criminals are accused of paying others to carry out antisemitic or terrorism incidents to get our attention or divert our resources,” Ms Barrett said. She also noted that police believe “the person pulling the strings wanted changes to their criminal status”.

Criminals in these kinds of scenarios often leverage the exchange of information into law enforcement for some kind of personal gain, mostly around sentence reduction, Ms Barrett explained.

BBC News contacted AFP for more details on the suspected agenda of those behind the caravan hoax, but received no further comment.

“Regardless of the motivation of those responsible for this fake plot, this has had a chilling effect on the Jewish community,” Ms Barrett said in her statement.

“What organised crime has done to the Jewish community is reprehensible, and it won’t go without consequence. There was also unwarranted suspicion directed at other communities – and that is also reprehensible.”

Separately, New South Wales police arrested 14 people on Monday morning as part of Strike Force Pearl: a police operation established in December 2024 to investigate antisemitic hate crimes across Sydney.

The establishment of the Strike Force followed a string of antisemitic attacks in Australia in late-2024, including the vandalism of a Jewish school in Sydney’s eastern suburbs and the arson of a childcare centre, which was set alight and sprayed with antisemitic messages.

Speaking to the media on Monday, police said they believed all those incidents had a “common source” with the caravan plot.

“The caravan job was orchestrated by the same individual or individuals that were orchestrating the Pearl incidents,” said NSW Police deputy commissioner David Hudson.

Mr Hudson further noted, however, that “none of the individuals we have arrested during Pearl have displayed any form of antisemitic ideology.”

“I think what these organised crime heads have done is play to vulnerabilities in the community,” he later explained.

“Obviously there have been antisemitic attacks of a lower nature, and a lot of anger and angst in the community – we’ve seen that since October 7th, 2023… And I think these organised crime figures have taken an opportunity to play on the vulnerability of the Jewish community.”

If a passenger dies on board a flight, cabin crew members like Jay Robert have to think fast.

“We go from service to lifesaving to mortician, dealing with dead bodies and then doing crowd control,” the 40-year-old says. “We’re having to calculate: ‘Okay, we still need to serve 300 people breakfast or dinner and we have to deal with this’.”

Jay, a cabin manager for a major European airline and a former crew member for Emirates, has more than a decade’s experience working on planes. Like all cabin crew, he has been trained to deal with passenger deaths, but has only experienced one himself.

He says deaths on planes are “very uncommon” and that people are more likely to die on longer flights because of the physical toll of being immobile for a long period. Some flight crew don’t experience an on-board fatality during their entire career, he says.

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2013 concluded that dying on a flight was “rare”. The study, which looked at emergency calls from five airlines to a medical communications centre between January 2008 and October 2010, found that 0.3% of patients who had an in-flight medical emergency died.

Last month, an Australian couple spoke about their “traumatic” experience of sitting next to a body on a plane from Melbourne to Doha after a woman died during the flight.

Mitchell Ring and Jennifer Colin said cabin crew placed her corpse, covered in blankets, next to Mr Ring for the remaining four hours of the flight without offering to move him. Qatar Airways said it followed appropriate guidelines and apologised for “any inconvenience or distress this incident may have caused”.

BBC News has spoken to cabin crew and other aviation experts about how mid-air deaths are usually handled, what the rules are around storing corpses on planes and what it’s like to work on a flight when someone has died.

Flight crew themselves can’t certify a death – this has to be done by medical personnel. Sometimes, this happens on the plane if there’s someone qualified on board but more often, it is done upon landing. Most airlines follow the International Air Transport Association’s (IATA) guidelines on what to do if a passenger has been presumed dead, though policies vary slightly by airline.

In a medical emergency, cabin crew would administer first aid and seek help from any passengers who were medical professionals, while the captain would use a telecommunications system to get instructions from emergency doctors on the ground, says Marco Chan, a former commercial pilot and a senior lecturer at Buckinghamshire New University. If necessary, the captain would divert the flight as soon as possible.

But it’s not always possible to save a passenger.

If a passenger is presumed dead, the person’s eyes should be closed and they should be placed in a body bag, if available, or otherwise, covered with a blanket up to the neck, according to the IATA guidelines.

Planes have very limited space, and it’s a challenge to find a suitable spot to place the body without disturbing other passengers and compromising the plane’s safety. Per the IATA, the body should be moved to a seat away from other passengers or to another area of the plane, if possible. But if the plane is full, they would usually be returned to their own seat.

In a narrow-body plane – those typically used for short-haul flights across the UK or within Europe – there isn’t enough room on board “to really shield a passenger from what has happened”, says Ivan Stevenson, associate professor in aviation management at Coventry University.

Space on these planes is “very, very confined”, he says. “If someone dies on board an aircraft like that, it’s quite likely they will need to be placed in a seat.”

Prof Stevenson acknowledges it’s “very unfortunate, very unpleasant” but that crew have to put the plane’s safety first.

Crew will “try to give some decency to the dead body” by placing it on an empty aisle and using curtains, blankets and dim lights, Jay says, but they might not have much choice.

The body can’t be placed in the galley in case it blocks an emergency exit. It also can’t be left in the aisles in case there is an emergency evacuation, Jay says, or placed in the crew rest area on a long-haul flight.

It’s also hard to physically manoeuvre a body in such a confined space, Jay says. This is what happened in the Qatar Airways case, when Mr Ring said the deceased passenger couldn’t be carried down the aisle.

A plane would divert to save a passenger’s life in the event of a medical emergency – but it usually wouldn’t if they were already presumed dead, aviation experts and cabin crew say. There’s “no point diverting”, Mr Chan says.

The captain would inform both the airline’s operations centre and air traffic control of the passenger’s death as soon as possible, and the plane would be met by local authorities, Prof Stevenson says. Either local authorities or a representative from the airline would contact the passenger’s family if they were flying alone.

Ally Murphy, who hosts the Red Eye Podcast where she interviews flight attendants, experienced one passenger death during a flight in her 14 years working as cabin crew.

A male passenger who had been travelling alone from Accra, Ghana, to London passed out in his seat. After being alerted by the passenger in the seat next to him, the crew realised he wasn’t breathing normally and didn’t have a pulse.

The crew moved the man to the galley to perform CPR. “You’re kind of trapped in a tin can that’s not designed for roaming around,” Ally recalls. But there was more space than usual in the galley because the carts were out for meal service.

Ally and another crew member performed CPR for 40 minutes without success. The captain then decided to divert the plane to Lyon, France, and though Ally and her colleague knew they should have strapped themselves in for landing, they continued performing CPR the whole time, she says.

“We didn’t want to leave him.”

After landing, paramedics took the passenger away. He was declared dead, having suffered an abdominal aortic aneurysm, Ally recalls.

“I held him in my arms for the final moments of his life,” she says. “He probably would have chosen someone else for that, but he got me.”

After the plane set off again following the diversion, the passengers were “quite quiet and sombre,” she says. But on arrival at their destination airport, one passenger from the flight started shouting at her because he missed his connecting flight.

“That’s the one and only time that I’ve ever told a passenger where to go,” she says.

Witnessing a passenger dying was a traumatic experience for Ally.

“I went home and sat in the bath and I cried. I could taste the man’s breath for about a week afterwards,” she says. “It was a little traumatising for a while. I couldn’t watch anything with CPR for a long time.”

Cabin crew are offered support after a passenger dies, including therapy and the option to have their rosters cleared for a few days so they can process what has happened, Jay says.

Ally and her colleagues had a debrief with her airline after the passenger died where they were given “reassurances that we did everything that we could”. Afterwards, she was able to schedule her shifts with a friend for a month because she felt “a bit shell-shocked”.

Because cabin crew aren’t used to passenger fatalities, it can be an especially harrowing experience when a passenger does die on board, Jay says.

“We are not doctors, we are not nurses,” Jay says. “While we are trained to deal with it, we don’t face it every day, so we’re not really immune to it.”

A shorter winter has literally left Nitin Goel out in the cold.

For 50 years, his family’s clothing business in India’s northwestern textile city of Ludhiana has made jackets, sweaters and sweatshirts. But with the early onset of summer this year, the company is staring at a washout season and having to shift gears.

“We’ve had to start making t-shirts instead of sweaters as the winter is getting shorter with each passing year. Our sales have halved in the last five years and are down a further 10% during this season,” Goel told the BBC. “The only recent exception to this was Covid, when temperatures dropped significantly.”

Across India as cool weather beats a hasty retreat, anxieties are building up at farms and factories, with cropping patterns and business plans getting upended.

Data from the Indian Meteorological Department shows that last month was India’s hottest February in 125 years. The weekly average minimum temperature was also above normal by 1-3C in many parts of the country.

Above-normal maximum temperatures and heatwaves are likely to persist over most parts of the country between March and May, the weather agency has warned.

For small business owners like Goel, such erratic weather has meant much more than just slowing sales. His whole business model, practised and perfected over decades, has had to change.

Goel’s company supplies clothes to multi-brand outlets across India. And they are no longer paying him on delivery, he says, instead adopting a “sale or return” model where consignments not sold are returned to the company, entirely transferring the risk to the manufacturer.

He has also had to offer bigger discounts and incentives to his clients this year.

“Big retailers haven’t picked up goods despite confirmed orders,” says Goel, adding that some small businesses in his town have had to shut shop as a result.

Nearly 1,200 miles away in Devgad town on India’s western coast, the heat has wreaked havoc on India’s much-loved Alphonso mango orchards.

“Production this year would be only around 30% of the normal yield,” said Vidyadhar Joshi, a farmer who owns 1,500 trees.

The sweet, fleshy and richly aromatic Alphonso is a prized export from the region, but yields across the districts of Raigad, Sindhudurg and Ratnagiri, where the variety is predominantly grown, are lower, according to Joshi.

“We might make losses this year,” Joshi adds, because he has had to spend more than usual on irrigation and fertilisers in a bid to salvage the crop.

According to him, many other farmers in the area were even sending labourers, who come from Nepal to work in the orchards, back home because there wasn’t enough to do.

Scorching heat is also threatening winter staples such as wheat, chickpea and rapeseed.

While the country’s agriculture minister has dismissed concerns about poor yields and predicted that India will have a bumper wheat harvest this year, independent experts are less hopeful.

Heatwaves in 2022 lowered yields by 15-25% and “similar trends could follow this year”, says Abhishek Jain of the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (Ceew) think tank.

India – the world’s second largest wheat producer – will have to rely on expensive imports in the event of such disruptions. And its protracted ban on exports, announced in 2022, may continue for even longer.

Economists are also worried about the impact of rising temperatures on availability of water for agriculture.

Reservoir levels in northern India have already dropped to 28% of capacity, down from 37% last year, according to Ceew. This could affect fruit and vegetable yields and the dairy sector, which has already experienced a decline in milk production of up to 15% in some parts of the country.

“These things have the potential to push inflation up and reverse the 4% target that the central bank has been talking about,” says Madan Sabnavis, Chief Economist with Bank of Baroda.

Food prices in India have recently begun to soften after remaining high for several months, leading to rate cuts after a prolonged pause.

GDP in Asia’s third largest economy has also been supported by accelerating rural consumption recently after hitting a seven-quarter low last year. Any setback to this farm-led recovery could affect overall growth, at a time when urban households have been cutting back and private investment hasn’t picked up.

Think tanks like Ceew say a range of urgent measures to mitigate the impact of recurrent heatwaves needs to be thought through, including better weather forecasting infrastructure, agriculture insurance and evolving cropping calendars with climate models to reduce risks and improve yields.

As a primarily agrarian country, India is particularly vulnerable to climate change.

Ceew estimates three out of every four Indian districts are “extreme event hotspots” and 40% exhibit what is called “a swapping trend” – which means traditionally flood-prone areas are witnessing more frequent and intense droughts and vice-versa.

The country is expected to lose about 5.8% of daily working hours due to heat stress by 2030, according to one estimate. Climate Transparency, the advocacy group, had pegged India’s potential income loss across services, manufacturing, agriculture and construction sectors from labour capacity reduction due to extreme heat at $159bn in 2021- or 5.4% of its GDP.

Without urgent action, India risks a future where heatwaves threaten both lives and economic stability.

South Korea’s impeached president has been released from detention after a court in Seoul overturned his arrest on technical grounds.

Yoon Suk Yeol walked free on Saturday to cheers from his supporters – but still faces trial on insurrection charges after his failed attempt to impose martial law in December.

He was arrested in January in a dawn raid at the presidential palace after a tense fortnight where he had resisted being taken in and there were clashes between his security detail and police.

But he walked free on Saturday after 52 days in custody. “I bow my head in gratitude to the people of this nation,” he said in a statement distributed by his lawyers following his release.

After waving to supporters outside the centre, he was driven in an official convoy back to the presidential compound in Seoul, where he was greeted by more supporters.

More than 50,000 protesters staged rallies in his support in the capital on Saturday, while there was also a slightly smaller counter-protest, Yonhap reported.

Mr Yoon’s lawyers secured his release after arguing it was illegal to hold him in custody. The courts agreed, based on a number of legal technicalities, although the prosecutors described the ruling as “unjust”.

He is due to stand trial later this year for the attempt to put the democratic country under martial law. It only lasted six hours – but polarised the nation.

If convicted he could face life in prison or even the death penalty.

Although currently suspended from office, Mr Yoon is still South Korea’s president in name.

He also faces a separate Constitutional Court ruling which will decide on whether to uphold his impeachment and formally strip him from office. The judges’ decision is expected in the coming days.

Despite the court cases, Mr Yoon’s supporters have rallied around him – and authorities are bracing themselves for unrest.

A man drawn into the world of having sex while high on illegal drugs has described how he became a “zombie” whose life was slowly deteriorating.

Chris – whose name has been changed – told the BBC he started to take part in chemsex, short for chemical sex, which helped mask “the shame and guilt” he said he felt growing up gay.

The Londoner said after becoming addicted to chemsex – which typically involves men who have sex with men using the drugs crystal meth, methedrone and GHB/GBL to enhance their sexual experience – he faced a “wall of silence” from helplines and others within the community.

Campaigners say support is “patchy” due to gay sex stigma and has called for this to change. The government says it is aware of the harm caused by chemsex and has issued guidance to local authorities on managing the issue.

Chris was initially offered drugs at a party, but it was not until a few months later that he then began to actively seek it out more and find people who were taking drugs.

He said at first it took away “a lot of the shame and guilt you have about growing up being gay. It’s kind of quite liberating”.

However, that quickly changed.

“No-one really speaks about it. Everyone is slightly ashamed about it. It’s all behind closed doors. It doesn’t really spill out into the real world. It’s very secretive,” he said.

Chris said his friends told him he was almost like a “zombie”.

“Slowly, your life starts to deteriorate because you are missing work on a Monday. And then your work is obviously not up to standard.

“You can’t do much until Wednesday. And then it all starts again on a Friday,” he said.

“You have to eat, you have to sleep, you have to get on with your life but all you’re really doing is looking forward to the next time you can take drugs,” he added.

“Which is to escape the horror that is your life, the misery that is your life which you’ve created but, in a way, you don’t seem to see that because all you want to do is take drugs.”

Campaigners have said chemsex among some gay men has a stigma attached that meant many were not seeking the help they needed.

Ignacio Labayen De Inza, chief executive of the London-based charity Controlling Chemsex, is calling for people to start a conversation around chemsex to help change that stigma.

He said: “Chemsex is very available but not everyone has access to reliable information.

“Not just the government but no-one is doing very much. People think there is nothing we can do because it’s going to carry on happening, but people could make sure that they set boundaries and to keep safe.”

He said there was a stigma attached to it because “we are talking about sex, we are talking about gay sex, we are talking about drugs”.

Philip Hurd, a specialist adviser at Controlling Chemsex, was involved in chemsex 12 years ago and said it took a near-death overdose for him to realise he needed to stop.

He said: “You get close to the criminal justice system, and you start doing things that are dangerous.

“And then I had a near-death overdose. The doctors said I was very lucky to survive, and I had to get my parents down from the country in their early eighties. That was the point I thought I can’t do this; I’m going to die.”

Mr Hurd, who lives in London and now volunteers at Controlling Chemsex, uses his personal experience to help others.

“I think it’s possible for a person with good psychology, sociology skills to support somebody coming out of chemsex but nothing can replace having been there knowing,” he said.

An Opinium Research poll of 2,000 people for the charity found that 76% of those surveyed were not familiar with chemsex.

Just over a third of those who identified as gay/lesbian were not familiar with the risks of chemsex, the study also found.

Veronika Carruthers, a lecturer at Portsmouth University, has been looking into the current support available across the south of England and found it was still “pretty limited” and “patchy”.

“We consider this to be a bit of a postcode lottery,” she said.

She explained that some people did not know the right services to turn to.

“Particularly if we look at it from a divide of drug counselling services and sexual health clinics, while sexual health clinics are preferred there is still an element of staff not having the appropriate knowledge of what chemsex actually is and in turn not being able to provide the most effective support,” she said.

“In regards to drug counselling services, quite often we have recovery workers who have never actually heard of chemsex and therefore they’re not able to provide any form of support and individuals often don’t feel that is the most appropriate place for them.

“As a result people don’t want to call for help or support from particular organisations over others.”

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said in addition to issuing guidance to local authorities, it had boosted the Public Health Grant by almost £200m.

“Local authorities can use this to improve drug and alcohol treatment and recovery interventions, including for people involved in chemsex,” the spokesperson said.

“We continue to work with substance misuse commissioners and sexual health commissioners to improve access to support services for those who use drugs in this context.”

Six months ago, a viral TikTok trend made us obsessed with being very demure and very mindful – but now, modesty has taken a back seat among celebrities who have made see-through outfits all the rage on red carpets and catwalks.

At the Brit Awards last week, big winner Charli XCX went full brat as she wore a sheer black dress, prompting hundreds of complaints to media watchdog Ofcom.

She used one of her acceptance speeches to address the controversy of her outfit. “I heard that ITV were complaining about my nipples,” she said. “I feel like we’re in the era of ‘free the nipple’ though, right?”

The nearly naked look has been a talking point at other award ceremonies – including last Sunday’s Oscars and the Grammys in February, when Kanye West’s wife Bianca Censori dropped her coat on the red carpet to reveal an almost entirely invisible dress.

The love for transparent textiles has continued at London and Paris fashion weeks, with many of the celebrities watching on also getting the memo.

At Stella McCartney’s Paris show, US actress and Michael Jackson’s daughter Paris Jackson wore a translucent black off-the-shoulder maxi dress with only a nude-coloured thong underneath.

Rapper Ice Spice sported a black lace catsuit with a feathered coat at the show.

Naked dressing was a key trend in some designers’ spring/summer collections, and the theme has continued in autumn/winter looks too.

As Vogue wrote in January: “For a period of time, sheerness was few and far between, but nowadays, ‘naked dressing’ is commonplace every season.”

Dior’s latest collection embraced see-through material and presented it in an ethereal way, with intricate detailing and gender-fluid silhouettes.

Creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri described her collection as “demonstrating how clothing is a receptacle that affirms cultural, aesthetic and social codes”.

The trend divides opinion but is certainly part of a wider movement – last summer Charli XCX’s definition of being a brat included wearing “a strappy white top with no bra”.

Sheer dressing is a nod to the minimalist looks of the 1990s – think transparent blouses and Kate Moss wearing a thin slip dress – and with our love for nostalgia fashion, it’s no wonder it is taking off again.

The trend also had a resurgence a decade ago. The “free the nipple” movement was everywhere in the early 2010s, with Rihanna stirring up headlines with her sheer crystal-embellished dress at the CFDA awards in 2014.

Charli XCX’s Brits outfit was praised by some on social media. “Stop policing women’s bodies,” one person wrote, while another said she looked comfortable in her outfit so “why is society judging?”

But many found it too risque for prime-time TV. Ofcom received 825 complaints about the Brits ceremony, the majority relating to Charli’s outfit and Sabrina Carpenter’s eye-opening pre-watershed performance.

“Maybe think about putting this on at a time when kids ain’t gonna be watching,” one person wrote on social media.

Fashion stylist and CEO of clothing brand Mermaid Way, Julia Pukhalskaia, calls the choice to wear revealing dresses a “provocative statement”, but says it’s a “way to reclaim the right to govern one’s body”.

The controversy around it feeds into a wider dialogue about women’s rights and double standards when it comes to dress codes, she adds.

Abhi Madan, creative director of fashion brand Amarra, believes the trend “is about embracing freedom and boldness in fashion”.

The idea of freeing the nipple “isn’t just about exposure – it’s a movement towards body positivity and challenging conventional fashion norms”, he argues.

“Designers are now integrating sheer elements not just for shock value but to create a refined and elegant silhouette that empowers wearers.”

It seems many Hollywood stars this year were feeling empowered as chiffon, lace and tulle were in plentiful supply at the Oscars.

Shock value is surely a factor for some, too, though.

At Vanity Fair’s Oscars afterparty, Julia Fox wore a mesh dress with only long wavy hair to cover some of her modesty.

There were other interpretations of the naked dress – Megan Thee Stallion wore a green dress with strategically placed foliage and nipple coverings, while Zoe Kravitz opted to cover up the front but expose the back as a beaded mesh panel revealed her buttocks in her Saint Laurent dress.

“This year, naked dressing seemed to particularly thrive at the event,” the New York Times noted.

However, not everyone is on board. The Times fashion director Anna Murphy wrote that she’s over the trend because “it’s only women who do this”.

“It is not an equal opportunities endeavour. It is, rather, a manifestation of the kind of thing that keeps this world unequal. That women’s bodies are for public consumption and men’s, usually, aren’t,” she wrote.

Some men have been embracing the nearly naked trend, though. In 2022, Timothée Chalamet wore striking a backless red top at Venice Film Festival, and at the 2023 Grammys Harry Styles freed the nipple in a plunge harlequin jumpsuit.

It’s the women who will continue to cause more of a stir on runways and red carpets – and society will still be split on whether it’s redefining conventional notions of modesty in fashion, a product of misogyny, or simply seeking attention.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Elon Musk have clashed with Poland’s foreign minister over the use of the tech billionaire’s Starlink satellite internet system in Ukraine.

Musk said on X that Ukraine’s “entire front line” would collapse if he turned the system off. Radoslaw Sikorski responded, saying his country paid for its use in Ukraine and a threat to shut it down would result in a search for another network.

Rubio dismissed Sikorski’s claims and told him to be grateful, while Musk called him a “small man”.

The exchange appeared to lead to Polish PM Donald Tusk calling on his country’s allies to show respect for their weaker partners, rather than arrogance.

Starlink’s system is part of SpaceX’s venture to provide high-speed internet to remote and underserved areas. It has been used extensively by the Ukrainian military.

Sunday’s exchange started when Musk posted that Starlink was the “backbone of the Ukrainian army” and that “their entire front line would collapse if I turned it off”.

Sikorski then responded, saying that Poland was paying for the service.

“Starlinks for Ukraine are paid for by the Polish Digitization Ministry at the cost of about $50 million per year,” Sikorski wrote. “The ethics of threatening the victim of aggression apart, if SpaceX proves to be an unreliable provider we will be forced to look for other suppliers.”

In response, Rubio said Sikorski was “just making things up… no-one has made any threats about cutting Ukraine off from Starlink”.

“And say thank you because without Starlink Ukraine would have lost this war long ago and Russians would be on the border with Poland right now,” he added.

Musk later responded to Sikorski’s post calling him a “small man”.

“Be quiet, small man. You pay a tiny fraction of the cost. And there is no substitute for Starlink,” he wrote.

On Monday morning Polish Prime Minister Tusk, without specifying who or what he was referring to, wrote on X: “True leadership means respect for partners and allies.

“Even for the smaller and weaker ones. Never arrogance. Dear friends, think about it.”

The Starlink terminals are key to Ukraine’s army operations and have been used since the start of the Russian invasion in February 2022.

There are tens of thousands of terminals in the country, including up to 500 bought by the US Department of Defence in June 2023.

Starlink is one of, if not the most, reliable means of communication for Ukrainian troops.

It is used for reconnaissance drones, which stream troops real-time battlefield data that allows for quick reactions to attacks.

This compensates for Ukraine’s disadvantages in manpower, as the military does not need to keep large numbers of soldiers along the entire defensive line.

Drone footage also helps to direct artillery fire and identify targets for kamikaze drones.

Requesting evacuation or providing the exact location of a target would also be much slower and more complicated without Starlink, as regular radio stations may be out of range, jammed or compromised.

The Conservatives say they will push for salary thresholds for all work visas to be raised to £38,700, by tabling changes to the government’s immigration bill currently going through Parliament.

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said the party wants to “bring to an end the era of mass migration”.

It also is proposing changes to marriage visas, introducing a rule that immigrants will not be able to bring partners to the UK unless they have been married for two years, are both aged 23 years or older, and are not first cousins.

Responding, a Home Office source said: “The Tories had 14 years to reform immigration and asylum, yet they left a system in chaos and our borders weaker.”

Since April 2024, applicants for work visas have to earn at least £38,700 – an increase of nearly 50% from the previous £26,200 minimum – but the threshold does not apply to some jobs, such as in health and social care.

The previous Conservative government rowed back on plans to hike the salary needed to bring family members to the UK, and an increase to a £29,000 threshold was set.

Philp said the previous Conservative government had announced plans for £38,700 salary threshold for UK-based immigrants wishing to bring a foreign spouse, but claimed this had been suspended by Labour.

Too many people arriving on work visas end up in minimum wage jobs, Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, so a new focus should be on “a much smaller number of very high-skilled migrants, rather than mass low-skilled migration”.

“For 20 or 30 years now, we’ve seen huge numbers arriving in the UK, often coming to work on low wages and in low-skilled jobs and it’s time, we think, that ends,” he said.

“We think actually it’s bad for the taxpayer, because recent OBR analysis shows that people coming here on lower wages actually cost the general taxpayer money because they consume more in services than they pay in tax.

“It obviously puts pressure on public services, and in some cases, can undermine social cohesion as well.”

During the initial debate on the bill, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told MPs the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill would be effective, unlike the Conservatives’ plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, which Labour ditched as “a failed gimmick”.

The Border Security Bill sets out Labour’s plan to treat people smugglers like terrorists and repeals most of the Conservative’s Illegal Migration Act 2023, which laid the legal groundwork for the Rwanda policy.

A Home Office source said that the Conservatives had the opportunity to introduce all the measures they’re now suggesting during the party’s 14 years in government “including the three they passed whilst Chris Philp was a Home Office minister”.

“The Labour government is getting a grip on the system,” they said.

“As part of our Plan for Change, Labour’s Border Security Bill will bring in counter-terror style powers to disrupt the criminal smuggling gangs making millions out of small boat crossings, as well as ensuring police and immigration officers have the powers they need to act where anyone poses a public safety threat.

“As with all proposed amendments to government bills, these will be examined as part of the Parliamentary process.”

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Jayne’s excessive hoarding after her husband died got so bad that she could only sleep on one half of her bed.

“The other half was three to four foot high of boxes,” said the mum-of-two, who started collecting to fill the gap left behind after her husband took his own life.

Jayne is one of an estimated one in 20 people in the UK thought to have a hoarding disorder, and is trying a new technique to release the “millstone” around her neck.

With hoarding relapse rates very high, instead of the usual method of throwing it all away, Jayne is getting help to reuse and repurpose her stuff so she doesn’t hoard again.

The 75-year-old said hoarding became a small way to find pleasure in life again after being left a widowed single mum with two teenage children.

The items Jayne holds on to, including her large collection of ornamental cats, gave her the enjoyment she said she was missing after her husband’s death almost 30 years ago.

”I think I cried every day for years,” said the retired librarian.

”I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”

Jayne said going on shopping trips and buying “nice things” helped her grief.

“I was looking for pleasure in my life,” she recalled.

“I had money and had to keep myself occupied. I overcompensated but that’s the way I dealt with it.”

Jayne said she “never felt happier” when she came home from a shopping trip with “so much stuff in my car that I couldn’t get anything else in it”.

But when she found herself sleeping on half of her bed because the other half was piled 4ft [1.2m] high with boxes, she thought to herself things needed to change.

“It was like a millstone around my neck,” said Jayne.

“I was sleeping in half of my bed because the other half was three to four foot high with boxes,” she said.

“This room was about six foot high with stuff, the whole house was like that. You realise this is an addiction.”

Jayne is now being helped by an organisation who find new uses for her hoarded items and stop them going to landfill.

The animal lover has started boxing up her collectables and giving them away – like to a school not far from her in south Wales.

She said being a home owner has saved her from forced clearances but she’s heard many stories about them from the people at the support group she attends every week.

“I’ve got so much stuff I’m attached to, I don’t know how I would’ve coped with someone coming in and throwing all my stuff away,” admitted Jayne, who lives with her dog and eight cats in Newport.

“But if somebody gets some pleasure out of my stuff, I’m quite happy for it to go now.”

Jayne was referred to Holistic Hoarding two years ago to help, and now gives away boxes week after week, something which the charity says 12 months ago would have been “impossible” for her.

“If you value every single item in your home and somebody comes in with no care and just throws it in the bin – how would that make you feel?” said sustainability officer Celeste Lewis.

“If we can show them that other people can find value in their items, they have pride instead of shame.”

Hawthorn Primary School in Cardiff is one of the recipients of the objects and their headteacher Gareth Davies said it gave the children “equipment we would never be able to afford within the budget”.

Without supported intervention, experts estimate nearly all people with hoarding behaviours who are forced to clear their homes will relapse.

“We are looking at a 97% relapse rate of enforced clearances without therapeutic intervention,” said Holistic Hoarding founder Kayley Hyman.

Support workers can spend up to two years working with someone and Holistic Hoarding, which covers parts of south-east Wales, get at least two new referrals for help every day.

“This is a very hard-to-reach population,” said Prof Mary O’Connell, a University of South Wales lecturer who researches hoarding.

“I think there is a massive idea that if you can’t cope with a bit of washing up, keep up with keeping your house clean then somehow, you’re failing. It’s a very private disorder.”

Jayne said she appreciated the support she has had and hopes people can be more understanding of hoarding and why people do it.

“You’re just trying to keep yourself as happy as you can in the circumstances,” she said. “I feel more positive because I can see the wood from the trees now.”

A 17-year-old boy has been jailed for life for murder after strangling and stabbing his sister.

Mali Bennett-Smith had told police he killed 19-year-old Luka in Bristol on 20 October last year because he felt she had been bullying him.

Sentencing him at Bristol Crown Court on Monday, Judge William Hart said their parents had effectively lost two children.

“The horror of the loss of their daughter at the hands of the son they still love is beyond even the worst nightmares,” said the judge, lifting reporting restrictions on Bennett-Smith’s name.

The court heard Bennett-Smith held Luka in a headlock before stabbing her repeatedly at their home in Cromwell Road in the St Andrews area of the city.

He rang emergency services 20 minutes later and told police his sister was “annoying” and he had wanted to kill her.

The court heard Bennett-Smith moved to the UK from New Zealand with his sister and mother after his parents divorced.

He joined the Army through a college course but later dropped out, the court was told.

In a prepared statement he gave to police after the murder, Bennett-Smith said he felt his sister bullied him.

“After watching a video, I went downstairs to the lounge and I asked Luka if I could practice a headlock on her,” he told officers.

“She agreed, we have done this before and when she needed me to stop we had an agreement where she would tap me on the arm.

“On this occasion I had decided I was not going to stop, I wanted to kill her, I had enough with regards she had been treating me over the years and recently.”

Avon and Somerset Police said Bennett-Smith was arrested at his home and charged with murder two days later.

Ray Tully KC, defending, said Bennett-Smith spent a lot of time gaming and would become dissociated from the real world.

Mr Tully added Bennett-Smith has severe dyslexia and dysgraphia – learning disabilities that affect reading and writing.

He told the court: “Mali did not know how to manage his increasing feelings of frustration and resentment towards Luka.”

He said Bennett-Smith had “genuine remorse” for his actions.

Judge Hart said: “The killing was shocking and brutal. It has deprived Luka of her life, your parents in effect of two of their children, and will deprive you of your liberty.”

After the sentencing, Det Insp Nadine Partridge of Avon and Somerset Police, said: “Our thoughts remain fully with Luka’s family at this difficult time.

“They continue to be updated and supported by specially trained family liaison officers.”

Bennett-Smith was jailed for life with a minimum term of 10 years and five months.

A caravan found packed with explosives in outer Sydney earlier this year was part of a “fabricated terrorism plot” concocted by criminals, Australian police have said.

The caravan, which was found in north-western Sydney on 19 January, contained enough explosives to produce a 40m-wide blast, along with a note displaying antisemitic messages and a list of Jewish synagogues.

Its discovery, following a spate of antisemitic attacks in Australia, triggered widespread panic.

But on Monday, Australian Federal Police (AFP) revealed that they knew “almost immediately” that the caravan was “essentially a criminal con job”.

AFP’s deputy commissioner of national security, Krissy Barrett, said investigators within the New South Wales Joint Counter Terrorism Team believed that the caravan was “part of a fabricated terrorism plot”.

Authorities arrived at that belief based on information they already had, the ease with which they found the caravan and the visibility of the explosives contained inside – as well as the fact that there was no detonator.

Yet police refrained from telling the public that they believed the plot was fake “out of an abundance of caution”, as they continued to receive tip-offs about other related terror plots. They are now confident that these tip-offs were also fabricated, Ms Barrett said.

The fake caravan plot involved several people with different levels of involvement, according to police. Between them, they had planned to purchase a caravan, load it with explosives and antisemitic materials and leave it in a specific location, before informing law enforcement about “an impending terror attack against Jewish Australians”.

Ms Barrett described it as “an elaborate scheme contrived by organised criminals, domestically and from offshore”, adding that the leader of the plot maintained a distance and hired alleged local criminals to carry out parts of the operation.

That individual is a known organised crime figure, Ms Barrett confirmed. She also added that while no arrests had been made in relation to the incident, police have a number of ongoing targets both in Australia and offshore.

“Too many criminals are accused of paying others to carry out antisemitic or terrorism incidents to get our attention or divert our resources,” Ms Barrett said. She also noted that police believe “the person pulling the strings wanted changes to their criminal status”.

Criminals in these kinds of scenarios often leverage the exchange of information into law enforcement for some kind of personal gain, mostly around sentence reduction, Ms Barrett explained.

BBC News contacted AFP for more details on the suspected agenda of those behind the caravan hoax, but received no further comment.

“Regardless of the motivation of those responsible for this fake plot, this has had a chilling effect on the Jewish community,” Ms Barrett said in her statement.

“What organised crime has done to the Jewish community is reprehensible, and it won’t go without consequence. There was also unwarranted suspicion directed at other communities – and that is also reprehensible.”

Separately, New South Wales police arrested 14 people on Monday morning as part of Strike Force Pearl: a police operation established in December 2024 to investigate antisemitic hate crimes across Sydney.

The establishment of the Strike Force followed a string of antisemitic attacks in Australia in late-2024, including the vandalism of a Jewish school in Sydney’s eastern suburbs and the arson of a childcare centre, which was set alight and sprayed with antisemitic messages.

Speaking to the media on Monday, police said they believed all those incidents had a “common source” with the caravan plot.

“The caravan job was orchestrated by the same individual or individuals that were orchestrating the Pearl incidents,” said NSW Police deputy commissioner David Hudson.

Mr Hudson further noted, however, that “none of the individuals we have arrested during Pearl have displayed any form of antisemitic ideology.”

“I think what these organised crime heads have done is play to vulnerabilities in the community,” he later explained.

“Obviously there have been antisemitic attacks of a lower nature, and a lot of anger and angst in the community – we’ve seen that since October 7th, 2023… And I think these organised crime figures have taken an opportunity to play on the vulnerability of the Jewish community.”

Athol Fugard, who has died aged 92, was widely acclaimed as one of South Africa’s greatest playwrights.

The son of an Afrikaner mother, he was best known for his politically charged plays challenging the racist system of apartheid.

Paying tribute to Fugard, South Africa’s Arts and Culture Minister Gayton McKenzie hailed him as “a fearless storyteller who laid bare the harsh realities of apartheid through his plays”.

“We were cursed with apartheid, but blessed with great artists who shone a light on its impact and helped to guide us out of it. We owe a huge debt to this late, wonderful man,” McKenzie added.

Fugard wrote more than 30 plays in a career that spanned 70 years, making his mark with The Blood Knot in 1961.

It was the first play in South Africa with a black and white actor – Fugard himself – performing in a front of a multiracial audience, before the apartheid regime introduced laws prohibiting mixed casts and audiences.

The Blood Knot catapulted Fugard onto the international stage – with the play shown in the US, and adapted for British television.

The apartheid regime later confiscated his passport, but it strengthened Fugard’s resolve to keep breaking racial barriers and exposing the injustices of apartheid.

He went on to work with the Serpent Players, a group of black actors, and performed in black townships, despite harassment from the apartheid regime’s security forces.

Fugard’s celebrated plays included Boesman and Lena, which looked at the difficult circumstances of a mixed-race couple. Having premiered in 1969, it was made into a film in 2000 starring Danny Glover and Angela Bassett.

His novel, Tsotsi, was made into a film, winning the 2006 Oscar for best foreign language movie.

The premier of South Africa’s Western Cape province, Alan Winde, said that Fugard had a “penetrating, sharp wit”, and his “acute understanding of our country’s political and cultural make-up is unmatched”.

“He will be sorely missed,” Winde added.

Other well-known plays by him include Sizwe Banzi Is Dead and The Island, which he co-wrote with the actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona, in a powerful condemnation of life on Robben Island, where anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela was imprisoned.

In a simple tribute on X, Kani posted: “I am deeply saddened by the passing of my dear friend Athol Fugard. May his soul rest in eternal peace. Elder 🌹”

Fugard won several awards for his work, and received a lifetime achievement honour at the prestigious Tony awards in 2011, while Time magazine described him in the 1985 as the greatest active playwright in the English-speaking world.

“Apartheid defined me, that is true… But I am proud of the work that came out of it, that carries my name,” Fugard told the AFP news agency in 1995.

Fugard feared that the end of apartheid in 1994 could leave him with little to do, but he still found enough material to write.

In a BBC interview in 2010, he said that he shared the view of the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu that “we have lost our way” as a nation.

“I think the present society in South Africa needs the vigilance of writers, every bit as much as the old one did.

“It is a responsibility that young writers, playwrights, must really wake up to and understand that responsibility is theirs, just as it was mine and a host of other writers in the earlier years.”

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Hundreds of foreign tourists have left a Unesco heritage site in southern India in the past few days after two women – an Israeli tourist and an Indian homestay owner – were gang-raped and a man was murdered.

The three were stargazing with two other male tourists near the town of Hampi in Karnataka state last Thursday when they were attacked by three men following an argument over money, police said.

All three suspects wanted in connection with the crime have been arrested.

The incident, which made global headlines, sparked fear among tourists and sent shockwaves through India.

Once the capital of the Hindu Vijayanagara kingdom, Hampi is described as an open-air museum, filled with magnificent stone ruins on the banks of Tungabhadra river. It was declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco in 1986.

Thursday’s assault took place in Sanapur village, which is about 28km (17 miles) from the main ruins of Hampi.

Located on the other side of the river from Hampi, the village is “a very isolated area”, says Ram Arasiddi, the superintendent of police of the district.

Many tourists, especially from Israel and Europe, who visit Hampi stay at Sanapur, which also has towering ruins and a famous Hindu temple.

“Overall, about 100,000 or more foreign tourists visit the area every year,” says Virupaksha V Hampi, general secretary of the Karnataka tourist guides’ association.

However, since the news of the attack, most visitors have either cancelled bookings or left.

“Almost 90% of the tourists, most of whom are Israelis, have vacated homestays and left the area after Thursday,” Syed Ismael, a tour guide, told BBC Hindi.

Mr Ismael added that those who were staying had been advised to move in groups and avoid venturing too far out.

Some said they’ve had to make last-minute changes to their plans.

“The incident is really scary and we are concerned about our safety. We had plans to stay here until [the Hindu festival of] Holi, but now we will be heading to Rajasthan state,” Talia Zilber, a 21-year-old Israeli tourist, told The Indian Express newspaper. Mr Zilber left the guest house where he was staying with his five friends on Sunday.

State minister Shivaraj Tangadagi has also cautioned people against travelling late at night in the area.

According to one survivor’s testimony, the group was stargazing near a temple when three men arrived on a motorcycle and asked where they could get petrol.

They gave them directions but the men then demanded 100 rupees ($1.15; £0.90) from them.

The group initially refused as they didn’t know the men, but one male tourist eventually gave them 20 rupees.

The men then began arguing with the tourists which led to a confrontation.

The attackers pushed the three men into a nearby river canal before raping the women, Mr Arasiddi said on Saturday.

Two men swam to safety while the third, from Odisha state, drowned.

Police say they have filed a case for attempted murder, robbery and rape based on the survivors’ testimony.

Two suspects were arrested on Saturday while a third man was arrested from neighbouring Tamil Nadu state on Sunday. He is being brought to Karnataka on Monday.

Violent crimes against women continue in India despite tough laws. The 2012 gang rape and murder of a medical student by a group of men in the capital Delhi drew global attention and triggered large-scale protests.

The incident prompted authorities to introduce stricter rape laws in 2013. Yet, tens of thousands of cases are reported each year. The National Crime Records Bureau reported nearly 32,000 rapes in India in 2022.

Experts believe many rapes go unreported because of social stigma, distrust of police and lack of confidence in the justice system.

In 2023, public outrage followed the alleged gang rape of a Brazilian-Spanish tourist in Jharkhand state. The victim and her husband shared their ordeal on Instagram, but later removed their posts.

A sell-off in the US stock market gathered steam on Monday, fuelled by rising concern about the cost of the trade war to the world’s largest economy.

The S&P 500, which tracks the biggest American companies, fell about 2% in early trade, while the Dow Jones dropped 0.9% and the Nasdaq sank more than 3.5%.

The falls came after President Donald Trump ducked questions about whether the US economy was facing a recession or price rises as a result of tariff moves, while warning instead of a “period of transition”.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, however, insisted there would be no contraction in the US, although he acknowledged that the price of some goods may rise.

Investors fear that tariffs – which are taxes on goods applied as they enter the country – will lead to higher prices and ultimately dent growth in the world’s largest economy.

“The level of tariffs that Trump is imposing, I think no doubt, will have to cause inflation somewhere down the line,” Rachel Winter, investment manager at Killik & Co, told the Today programme.

Economist Mohamed El-Erian said investors had been optimistic about Trump’s plans for de-regulation and lower taxes, while under-estimating the likelihood of a trade war.

He said the recent falls in the stock market, which started last week, reflect the adjustment of those bets.

“It’s a complete change in what the market expected,” he said, noting that investors are also responding to signs that businesses and households are starting to hold off on spending amid the uncertainty, which could hurt economic growth.

Tesla shares fell about 8% on Monday, while tech stocks Nvidia and Meta were both down more than 4%.

Speaking to Fox News in an interview broadcast on Sunday but recorded on Thursday, Trump appeared to acknowledge the concerns, responding to a question about whether the US was facing recession: “I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America. That’s a big thing.”

“It takes a little time, but I think it should be great for us,” he added.

The US president has accused China, Mexico and Canada of not doing enough to end the flow of illegal drugs and migrants into the US. The three countries have rejected the accusations.

He imposed new 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada last week, but then exempted many of those goods just two days later.

Trump also doubled a blanket tariff on goods from China to 20%.

The US is now facing retaliation, including new tit-for-tat tariffs from China targeting US farm products that came into effect on Monday.

They mean US exports including chicken, beef, pork, wheat, and soybeans face new tariffs of 10% to 15%.

Ontario premier Doug Ford, who leads Canada’s most populous province, also said he was going forward with a 25% surcharge on energy exports to the US, announced in retaliation for the tariffs.

If Trump escalates, “I will not hesitate to shut the electricity off completely,” he warned.

Speaking on NBC on Sunday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick acknowledged: “Foreign goods may get a little more expensive”.

“But American goods are going to get cheaper,” he said.

But when asked whether the US economy could face a recession he added: “Absolutely not… There’s going to be no recession in America.”

Former US Commerce Department official, Frank Lavin, told the BBC that he thinks the trade war is unlikely to escalate out of control.

But while tariffs will eventually “fade a bit” they will still be an “extra burden on the US economy,” he said.

Han Shen Lin, China country director at consultancy firm The Asia Group, told the BBC’s Today programme: “You’re seeing a lot of tit for tat between both sides to demonstrate that neither side will back off easily.

“That said China has realised it probably can’t export its way to GDP growth in the way that it used to so it is focusing a lot more on the domestic economy right now.”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Elon Musk have clashed with Poland’s foreign minister over the use of the tech billionaire’s Starlink satellite internet system in Ukraine.

Musk said on X that Ukraine’s “entire front line” would collapse if he turned the system off. Radoslaw Sikorski responded, saying his country paid for its use in Ukraine and a threat to shut it down would result in a search for another network.

Rubio dismissed Sikorski’s claims and told him to be grateful, while Musk called him a “small man”.

The exchange appeared to lead to Polish PM Donald Tusk calling on his country’s allies to show respect for their weaker partners, rather than arrogance.

Starlink’s system is part of SpaceX’s venture to provide high-speed internet to remote and underserved areas. It has been used extensively by the Ukrainian military.

Sunday’s exchange started when Musk posted that Starlink was the “backbone of the Ukrainian army” and that “their entire front line would collapse if I turned it off”.

Sikorski then responded, saying that Poland was paying for the service.

“Starlinks for Ukraine are paid for by the Polish Digitization Ministry at the cost of about $50 million per year,” Sikorski wrote. “The ethics of threatening the victim of aggression apart, if SpaceX proves to be an unreliable provider we will be forced to look for other suppliers.”

In response, Rubio said Sikorski was “just making things up… no-one has made any threats about cutting Ukraine off from Starlink”.

“And say thank you because without Starlink Ukraine would have lost this war long ago and Russians would be on the border with Poland right now,” he added.

Musk later responded to Sikorski’s post calling him a “small man”.

“Be quiet, small man. You pay a tiny fraction of the cost. And there is no substitute for Starlink,” he wrote.

On Monday morning Polish Prime Minister Tusk, without specifying who or what he was referring to, wrote on X: “True leadership means respect for partners and allies.

“Even for the smaller and weaker ones. Never arrogance. Dear friends, think about it.”

The Starlink terminals are key to Ukraine’s army operations and have been used since the start of the Russian invasion in February 2022.

There are tens of thousands of terminals in the country, including up to 500 bought by the US Department of Defence in June 2023.

Starlink is one of, if not the most, reliable means of communication for Ukrainian troops.

It is used for reconnaissance drones, which stream troops real-time battlefield data that allows for quick reactions to attacks.

This compensates for Ukraine’s disadvantages in manpower, as the military does not need to keep large numbers of soldiers along the entire defensive line.

Drone footage also helps to direct artillery fire and identify targets for kamikaze drones.

Requesting evacuation or providing the exact location of a target would also be much slower and more complicated without Starlink, as regular radio stations may be out of range, jammed or compromised.

Mark Carney’s elevation to the top job in Canada is of particular significance at this moment when his country is at the frontline of a North American trade war. He becomes the “anti-Trump” on the US president’s doorstep.

The former Bank of England governor chose to lean strongly into resisting Donald Trump’s policies at his acceptance speech. He said the US president had brought “dark days” from “a country we can no longer trust” and that he was “proud” of Canadians resisting the US “with their wallets”.

While on trade specifically Mr Carney vowed to keep the retaliatory tariffs “until Americans show us respect”, it was clear that the general threats against Canadian sovereignty are equally as important in his thinking.

Trump has repeatedly said he will use economic power to encourage Canada to become the 51st state of the US, but Carney hit back. “The Americans want our resources, our land, our water, our country… Canada will never be part of America in any way, shape or form,” he said.

Behind the scenes, Carney has been encouraging a very robust response to Mr Trump. As he told me last month in his only UK interview during his campaign to succeed current Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, it was necessary to “stand up to a bully”.

He ridiculed Trump’s allegations of Canada’s involvement in fentanyl trade, and the US president’s suggestion that Canada has ripped off the US. Canada’s trade deficit is caused “entirely” by its exports of subsidised oil, Carney told me, and “perhaps we should ask for that subsidy back”.

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He follows in the footsteps of former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi as a former top central banker who became a G7 leader. It is an otherwise rare path, but it may be good timing when Canada’s nearest neighbour has suggested using economic power to take over.

Carney has experience in this area having dealt with a number of acute political-economic crises, such as the banking crash, the eurozone crisis, sterling’s sharp slide after Brexit, and the start of the pandemic.

He has also regularly attended G20 meetings at leader level, including in the presence of Trump, as chair of the Financial Stability Board, an international economic body. At one such meeting, the Trump team threatened to leave the International Monetary Fund.

Carney believes that Trump only respects power. Of any attempt to mollify Trump, he said “good luck with that”. He will focus further tariff retaliation on bringing inflation and interest rate rises to Canada’s “southern neighbour”.

The Canadian election is due by October, but Carney might call an earlier one. Depending on that, he is on course to host Trump in Canada at the G7 Summit in June.

His rise to the top job raises the stakes for the UK. On the one hand, a more robust approach from an allied G7 leader stands in contrast to the UK’s attempt to hug the White House closely.

On the other hand, Carney also hinted at wanting to diversify trade towards “more reliable” partners, which would include the UK and EU. Canada might send its subsidised energy to Europe, rather than the US.

The bigger strategic point is that Carney’s background means a focus on international solidarity, and defence of the existing multilateral system. He says Canada can “stand on its own feet” but sees merit in creating a more coherent international alliance to focus the minds of Congress and tariff-sceptics in the Trump administration.

Canada’s new leadership expects support from its Commonwealth ally, the UK. After my recent interview with him, Carney turned the camera to the portrait on the wall of the office from which he was talking to me: King Charles. The message was clear. Canada and the UK should be on the same side in this new world era.

The prime minister of Vanuatu has ordered the cancellation of a passport issued by the island nation to fugitive Indian businessman Lalit Modi, who is wanted by Delhi in a corruption case.

The order came three days after India confirmed that Mr Modi had got citizenship of Vanuatu, a string of more than 80 islands in the Pacific Ocean.

Mr Modi, the former chief of the Indian Premier League (IPL), is wanted for allegedly rigging bids during his tenure as the head of the world’s richest cricket tournament.

Mr Modi, who has been living in the UK since 2010, has always denied the allegations.

India has made several unsuccessful attempts to extradite him.

On Friday, India’s foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal told reporters that Mr Modi had applied to surrender his Indian passport in London.

“We are also given to understand that he has acquired citizenship of Vanuatu. We continue to pursue the case against him as required under law,” Jaiswal had said.

The news of Mr Modi becoming a Vanuatu citizen had made headlines in India, where he was once the face of the glamorous, cash-rich IPL tournament. He was a regular presence on the social scene, rubbing shoulders with Bollywood stars and India’s elite.

But on Monday, Vanuatu’s Prime Minister Jotham Napat announced that his country had decided to cancel Mr Modi’s citizenship.

Napat said a Vanuatu passport was a “privilege” and that “applicants must seek citizenship for legitimate reasons”.

“None of those legitimate reasons include attempting to avoid extradition, which the recent facts brought to light clearly indicate was Mr Modi’s intention,” a media release quoted Napat as saying.

He said that background checks and Interpol screenings conducted during Mr Modi’s application for a passport had shown no criminal convictions.

But, he added, that in the past 24 hours, he had been made aware that Interpol had twice rejected India’s requests to issue an alert notice on Mr Modi, citing a lack of “substantive judicial evidence”.

“Any such alert would’ve triggered an automatic rejection of Mr Modi’s citizenship application,” the release added.

The move is likely to bring relief to Indian authorities. Unlike the UK, Vanuatu does not have an extradition treaty with India.

Extradition treaties allow repatriation of people accused of crimes between countries.

A day earlier, Mr Modi wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that there were no cases pending against him in any court in India and accused the media of peddling “fake news” about him.

Mr Modi was instrumental in founding the IPL in 2008, which has now become a multi-billion-dollar industry.

The main accusations against Mr Modi relate to rigging bids during the auction of two team franchises in 2010. He was also accused of selling broadcasting and internet rights without authorisation.

In 2013, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) banned Mr Modi from any involvement in cricket activities for life.

Residents of Greenland head to the polls on Tuesday in a vote that in previous years has drawn little outside attention – but which may prove pivotal for the Arctic territory’s future.

US President Donald Trump’s repeated interest in acquiring Greenland has put it firmly in the spotlight and fuelled the longstanding debate on the island’s future ties with Copenhagen.

“There’s never been a spotlight like this on Greenland before,” says Nauja Bianco, a Danish-Greenlandic policy expert on the Arctic.

Greenland has been controlled by Denmark – nearly 3,000km (1,860 miles) away – for about 300 years. It governs its own domestic affairs, but decisions on foreign and defence policy are made in Copenhagen.

Now, five out of six parties on the ballot favour Greenland’s independence from Denmark, differing only on how quickly that should come about.

The debate over independence has been “put on steroids by Trump”, says Masaana Egede, editor of Greenlandic newspaper Sermitsiaq.

The island’s strategic location and untapped mineral resources have caught the US president’s eye. He first floated the idea of buying Greenland back during his first term in 2019.

Since taking office again in January, he has reiterated his intention to acquire the territory. Greenland and Denmark’s leaders have repeatedly rebuffed his demands.

Addressing the US Congress last week, however, Trump again doubled down. “We need Greenland for national security. One way or the other we’re gonna get it,” he said, prompting applause and laughter from a number of politicians, including Vice-President JD Vance.

In Nuuk, his words struck a nerve with politicians who were quick to condemn them. “We deserve to be treated with respect and I don’t think the American president has done that lately since he took office,” Prime Minister Mute Egede said.

Still, the US interest has stoked calls for Greenland to break away from Denmark, with much of the debate focused on when – not if – the process of independence should begin.

Greenland’s independence goal is not new, Nauja Bianco points out, and has been decades in the making.

A string of revelations about past mistreatment of Inuit people by the Danes have hurt Greenlandic public opinion about Denmark. Earlier this year, PM Egede said the territory should free itself from “the shackles of colonialism”.

But it is the first time the subject has taken centre stage in an election.

Inuit Ataqatigiit (IA), the party of Prime Minister Mute Egede, favours gradual steps towards autonomy. “Citizens must feel secure,” he told local media.

Arctic expert Martin Breum says Egede’s handling of the challenge from Trump and strong words against Denmark over past colonial wrongdoings “will give him a lot of votes”.

Smaller rivals could also gain ground and potentially shake up alliances.

Opposition party Naleraq wants to immediately kick-off divorce proceedings from Copenhagen and have closer defence dealings with Washington.

Pointing to Greenland’s EU departure and Brexit, party leader Pele Broberg has said that Greenland could be “out of the Danish kingdom in three years”.

Naleraq is fielding the largest number of candidates and has gained momentum by riding the wave of discontent with Denmark.

“Naleraq will also be a larger factor too in parliament,” predicts Mr Breum, who says party candidates have performed well on TV and on social media.

However, the centre-right Demokraatit party believes it is too soon to push for independence.

“The economy will have to be much stronger than it is today,” party candidate Justus Hansen told Reuters.

Greenland’s economy is driven by fishing, and government spending relies on annual subsidies from Denmark.

Talk of Trump and independence has overshadowed other key issues for voters, says newspaper editor Masaana Egede.

“It’s an election where we should be talking about healthcare, care of the elderly and social problems. Almost everything is about independence.”

According to recent polls, almost 80% of Greenlanders back moves towards future statehood.

About 44,000 people are eligible to vote, and given the low numbers and few polls, results are difficult to forecast.

Even though a majority of Greenlanders favour independence, a survey has shown that half would be less enthusiastic about independence if that meant lower living standards.

One poll found that 85% of Greenlanders do not wish to become a part of the United States, and nearly half see Trump’s interest as a threat.

One fear among some Greenlanders, says Masaana Egede, is how long the Arctic island could remain independent and whether it would break off from Denmark only to have another country “standing on our coasts and start taking over”.

Experts say it is this worry that could steer votes towards keeping the status quo.

Although Greenland’s right to self-determination is enshrined into law by the 2009 Self-Rule Act, there are several steps to take before the territory could break away from Denmark, including holding a referendum.

This means getting full independence could take “about 10 to 15 years,” says Kaj Kleist, a veteran Greenlandic politician and civil servant who prepared the Self-Rule Act.

“There is lot of preparation and negotiations with the Danish government before you can make that a reality,” he adds.

Whatever the election’s outcome, experts do not believe Greenland could become independent before Trump’s second term is over in 2028.

The results are expected in the early hours of Wednesday.

A couple who discovered a migrant had clung to the back of their vehicle all the way home from France have been issued a £1,500 fine.

Adrian and Joanne Fenton said they called police when they found the person zipped inside the cover of a bike rack at their home in Heybridge, Essex, in October.

They later received a fine from the Home Office for failing to “check that no clandestine entrant was concealed” in the motorhome. The pair said they were drafting an appeal.

The Home Office said penalties were “designed to target negligence rather than criminality”.

“At no point did I believe I would be fined by taking correct and moral action,” said Mr Fenton, writing in an email exchange to the Home Office, seen by the BBC.

“This action taken by Border Force to impose a fine only encourages travellers [or] holidaymakers in this position not to call the police but to let the stowaway abscond.”

Speaking to the JVS Show on BBC Three Counties Radio, Mrs Fenton said the pair had been travelling in France with friends and returned to the UK via ferry on 15 October.

The 55-year-old said border officials in Calais and the UK had not inspected the bike rack or the cover before or after the crossing.

Retired firefighter Mr Fenton, 57, had been at the wheel for the six-hour journey before the pair arrived home at 22:15 BST.

Mrs Fenton said her husband unzipped the “really tight” cover they had been using for their bicycles on the back of the motorhome.

“He sees two trainers… goes to have a look, and there’s two legs attached to it,” she recalled.

“He’s gone ‘Jo, you need to phone the police. We’ve got a stowaway.'”

Mrs Fenton said she offered the young man a bottle of water, to which he said “thank you”.

She said he told police he was from Sudan, and that he was 16 years old.

The Essex couple were travelling in Australia over Christmas when they received an email from the Home Office with details of the offence and fine.

It said they failed to “check that no clandestine entrant was concealed in the vehicle”, but Mrs Fenton contested that technically he was clinging to the outside rather than aboard the motorhome.

The email also said the “entrant” was found by an authorised search officer, despite the couple saying they called the police the night they found him.

The fine referenced asylum and immigration legislation.

Maldon Conservative Sir John Whittingdale – their local MP – has written to the Minister for Border Security and Asylum Dame Angela Eagle, asking her to review their concerns.

Hackers thought to be working for the North Korean regime have successfully converted at least $300m (£232m) of their record-breaking $1.5bn crypto heist to unrecoverable funds.

The criminals, known as Lazarus Group, swiped the huge haul of digital tokens in a hack on crypto exchange ByBit two weeks ago.

Since then, it’s been a cat-and-mouse game to track and block the hackers from successfully converting the crypto into usable cash.

Experts say the infamous hacking team is working nearly 24 hours a day – potentially funnelling the money into the regime’s military development.

“Every minute matters for the hackers who are trying to confuse the money trail and they are extremely sophisticated in what they’re doing,” says Dr Tom Robinson, co-founder of crypto investigators Elliptic.

Out of all the criminal actors involved in crypto currency, North Korea is the best at laundering crypto, Dr Robinson says.

“I imagine they have an entire room of people doing this using automated tools and years of experience. We can also see from their activity that they only take a few hours break each day, possibly working in shifts to get the crypto turned into cash.”

Elliptic’s analysis tallies with ByBit, which says that 20% of the funds have now “gone dark”, meaning it is unlikely to ever be recovered.

The US and allies accuse the North Koreans of carrying out dozens of hacks in recent years to fund the regime’s military and nuclear development.

On 21 February the criminals hacked one of ByBit’s suppliers to secretly alter the digital wallet address that 401,000 Ethereum crypto coins were being sent to.

ByBit thought it was transferring the funds to its own digital wallet, but instead sent it all to the hackers.

Ben Zhou, the CEO of ByBit, assured customers that none of their funds had been taken.

The firm has since replenished the stolen coins with loans from investors, but is, in Zhou’s words, “waging war on Lazarus”.

ByBit’s Lazarus Bounty programme is encouraging members of the public to trace the stolen funds and get them frozen where possible.

All crypto transactions are displayed on a public blockchain, so it’s possible to track the money as it’s moved around by the Lazarus Group.

If the hackers try to use a mainstream crypto service to attempt to turn the coins into normal money like dollars, the crypto coins can be frozen by the company if they think they are linked to crime.

So far 20 people have shared more than $4m in rewards for successfully identifying $40m of the stolen money and alerting crypto firms to block transfers.

But experts are downbeat about the chances of the rest of the funds being recoverable, given the North Korean expertise in hacking and laundering the money.

“North Korea is a very closed system and closed economy so they created a successful industry for hacking and laundering and they don’t care about the negative impression of cyber crime,” Dr Dorit Dor from cyber security company Check Point said.

Another problem is that not all crypto companies are as willing to help as others.

Crypto exchange eXch is being accused by ByBit and others of not stopping the criminals cashing out.

More than $90m has been successfully funnelled through this exchange.

But over email the elusive owner of eXch – Johann Roberts – disputed that.

He admits they didn’t initially stop the funds, as his company is in a long-running dispute with ByBit, and he says his team wasn’t sure the coins were definitely from the hack.

He says he is now co-operating, but argues that mainstream companies that identify crypto customers are betraying the private and anonymous benefits of crypto currency.

North Korea has never admitted being behind the Lazarus Group, but is thought to be the only country in the world using its hacking powers for financial gain.

Previously the Lazarus Group hackers targeted banks, but have in the last five years specialised in attacking cryptocurrency companies.

The industry is less well protected with fewer mechanisms in place to stop them laundering the funds.

Recent hacks linked to North Korea include:

• The 2019 hack on UpBit for $41m
• The $275m theft of crypto from exchange KuCoin (most of the funds were recovered)
• The 2022 Ronin Bridge attack which saw hackers make off with $600m in crypto
• Approximately $100m in crypto was stolen in an attack on Atomic Wallet in 2023

In 2020, the US added North Koreans accused of being part of the Lazarus Group to its Cyber Most Wanted list. But the chances of the individuals ever being arrested are extremely slim unless they leave their country.

Tesla facilities across the US are facing protests and vandalism in response to the political role Elon Musk, who owns the car manufacturer, has played in the Trump administration.

Most “Tesla Takedown” protests have been peaceful, but a few have been destructive with fires intentionally set at Tesla showrooms and charging stations in Colorado and Massachusetts last week.

That was followed by six arrests in New York over the weekend when hundreds of protesters occupied a Tesla showroom.

There has also been a spike in Cybertruck vandalism across the US, and some car owners are defacing their own Teslas in protest of Musk.

One woman showed up to a protest outside a Burbank Tesla on Sunday with an expletive and Musk’s name scrawled in chalk across her white Model X sedan. Another car carried an “Anti Elon Tesla Club” sticker.

The protests illustrate a growing unease over Musk’s influence on the US government since President Donald Trump allowed him to create the cost-cutting task force Department of Government Efficiency (Doge).

So far, Doge has fired or offered buyouts to about 100,000 federal employees and gained access to the sensitive personal and financial information of millions of Americans.

Critics have resorted to calling the tech billionaire “President Musk”, arguing that he has too much power in the White House. Some at the protest in Burbank held signs that said “Deport Elon” and “Boycott Swasticar” – with protesters attempting to connect the car to fascism.

Tesla produced the must-have electric cars for many Americans with progressive views, but several protesters said they regretted their purchase after Musk involved himself with Trump and US politics.

Karen Rabwin, a protester at the Burbank Tesla on Sunday, attended just two days after trading in her Tesla for a Cadillac. She had slapped a bumper sticker on her old vehicle that read “Bought This Car Before We Knew” in a veiled reference to Musk, but she felt that wasn’t enough.

“It was embarrassing,” she said of driving the Tesla. “It wasn’t what I stood for. How could I drive that car? I have principles.”

Singer Sheryl Crow donated her Tesla to National Public Radio last month. She posted a video to Instagram waving goodbye to the car as it was towed away.

“There comes a time when you have to decide who you are willing to align with. So long Tesla,” Ms Crow wrote.

Musk has responded to the protests by sharing a video on X – the social media platform he owns – of a Cybertruck customer in Texas marvelling at the vehicle’s full self-driving mode.

“Heartfelt thanks to everyone supporting Tesla, despite many attacks against our stores and offices,” Musk wrote.

The social media platform has many posts of Tesla owners showcasing their electric cars. But there are also now videos showing a growing trend of Cybertrucks vandalized with swastikas, used as skate ramps or covered in garbage.

During Mardi Gras in New Orleans, spectators booed an orange Cybertruck and pelted it with beads, calling the futuristic looking vehicle a “Deplorean” or other unfriendly monikers.

Protesters on Sunday said they want to take down Telsa’s value because they are concerned that Mr Musk is damaging the economy and the the country – and their efforts may be having an effect.

While Tesla’s share price surged after Trump was elected – with Musk by his side on election night in Florida – they have tumbled back to pre-election levels following the backlash to Musk’s political involvement.

Some on Sunday also raised concerns that Musk’s government involvement is benefiting his businesses.

Critics note that the tech entrepeneur’s companies have billions of dollar of contracts with the US government, primarily with Nasa and the Defense Department, which are increasingly reliant on Musk’s SpaceX for satellite launches and space exploration.

Last week, reports claimed the Musk had attempted to get the Federal Aviation Administration to cancel a $2.4 billion contract with Verizon to revamp the agency’s telecommunications system and awarding it to Starlink, a company owned by SpaceX, instead.

SpaceX denied that report, posting on X that “Starlink is a possible partial fix to an aging system. There is no effort or intent for Starlink to ‘take over’ any existing contract”.

Some constituents are furious at Musk’s involvement and the White House’s effort to cut certain jobs and programmes. Many have show up at Republican town halls to protest the cuts and the tech billionaire’s growing influence.

House Speaker Mike Johnson and other Republican leaders urged members of their party to stop hosting events in response, claiming without evidence that they were being disrupted by “professional protesters”.

A British diplomat and the spouse of another diplomat are being expelled from Russia, the country’s domestic security service has said, in what is being seen as the latest tit-for-tat escalation.

The two men are accused of “intelligence and subversive work” by the Federal Security Service (FSB) which said they had been stripped of their accreditation and ordered to leave Russia within two weeks.

The UK Foreign Office said: “This is not the first time that Russia has made malicious and baseless accusations against our staff.”

Last month, the UK expelled a Russian diplomat – an action taken in response to Moscow’s expulsion of a British diplomat in November 2024.

The Russian Foreign Ministry had said then that it intended to retaliate to the expulsion.

In the past year alone, there have been seven British diplomats expelled from Russia with Moscow accusing them of espionage – allegations denied by the UK.

Relations between the UK and Russia have deteriorated to post-Cold War lows in the years following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In Monday’s reported action, Moscow said it was expelling the diplomats on grounds of espionage.

In a statement the FSB said the two had declared “false information about themselves when receiving permission” to enter Russia.

Russia’s foreign ministry said on Monday it had also summoned a representative of the British embassy “in protest”.

The pair appear to be the first western diplomatic expulsions by Moscow since Russia and the US held talks on restoring relations last month – the first time in three years since the start of the Ukraine war.

But relations between Britain and Russia have been further strained as Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has resolutely stood by Ukraine.

He has pledged to increase defence spending and called on countries to join a “coalition of the willing” to deter Russia from further invading Ukraine in the event of a peace deal.

He has committed the UK to putting boots on the ground and planes in the air to help maintain a peace. Moscow has criticised the idea of a foreign peacekeeping mission.