Global stocks have sunk, a day after President Donald Trump announced sweeping new tariffs that are forecast to raise prices and weigh on growth in the US and abroad.

Stock markets in the Asia-Pacific region fell for a second day, hot on the heels of the US S&P 500, which had its worst day since Covid crashed the economy in 2020.

Nike, Apple and Target were among big consumer names worst hit, all of them sinking by more than 9%.

At the White House, Trump told reporters the US economy would “boom” thanks to the minimum 10% tariff he plans to slap on global imports in the hope of boosting federal revenues and bringing American manufacturing home.

The Republican president plans to hit products from dozens of other countries with far higher levies, including trade partners such as China and the European Union.

China, which is facing an aggregate 54% tariff, and the EU, which faces duties of 20%, both vowed retaliation on Thursday.

French President Emmanuel Macron called for European firms to suspend planned investment in the US.

Tariffs are taxes on goods imported from other countries, and Trump’s plan that he announced on Wednesday would hike such duties to some of the highest levels in more than 100 years.

The World Trade Organization said it was “deeply concerned”, estimating trade volumes could shrink as a result by 1% this year.

Traders expressed concern that the tariffs could stoke inflation and stall growth.

In early trading on Friday, Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index fell by 1.8%, the Kospi in South Korea was around 1% lower and Australia’s ASX 200 dipped by 1.4%.

On Thursday, the S&P 500 – which tracks 500 of the biggest American firms – plunged 4.8%, shedding roughly $2tn in value.

The Dow Jones closed about 4% lower, while the Nasdaq tumbled roughly 6%. The US shares sell-off has been going on since mid-February amid trade war fears.

Earlier, the UK’s FTSE 100 share index dropped 1.5% and other European markets also fell, echoing declines from Japan to Hong Kong.

On Thursday at the White House, Trump doubled down on a high-stakes gambit aimed at reversing decades of US-led liberalisation that shaped the global trade order.

“I think it’s going very well,” he said. “It was an operation like when a patient gets operated on, and it’s a big thing. I said this would exactly be the way it is.”

He added: “The markets are going to boom. The stock is going to boom. The country is going to boom.”

Contradicting White House aides who insisted the new tariffs were not a negotiating tactic, Trump signalled he might be open to a deal with trade partners “if somebody said we’re going to give you something that’s so phenomenal”.

On Thursday, Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney said that country would retaliate with a 25% levy on vehicles imported from the US.

Trump last month imposed tariffs of 25% on Canada and Mexico, though he did not announce any new duties on Wednesday against the North American trade partners.

• At a glance: The countries hit hardest by these plans
• Voter reaction: ‘So crazy’ or a ‘necessary evil’?
• Analysis: How will EU respond to Donald Trump’s tariffs?
• Your questions: What next for products like the iPhone?

Firms now face a choice of swallowing the tariff cost, working with partners to share that burden, or passing it on to consumers – and risking a drop in sales.

That could have a major impact as US consumer spending amounts to about 10% – 15% of the world economy, according to some estimates.

While stocks fell on Thursday, the price of gold, which is seen as a safer asset in times of turbulence, touched a record high of $3,167.57 an ounce at one point on Thursday, before falling back.

The dollar also weakened against many other currencies.

In Europe, the tariffs could drag down growth by nearly a percentage point, with a further hit if the bloc retaliates, according to analysts at Principal Asset Management.

In the US, a recession is likely to materialise without other changes, such as big tax cuts, which Trump has also promised, warned Seema Shah, chief global strategist at the firm.

She said Trump’s goals of boosting manufacturing would be a years-long process “if it happens at all”.

“In the meantime, the steep tariffs on imports are likely to be an immediate drag on the economy, with limited short-term benefit,” she said.

On Thursday, Stellantis, which makes Jeep, Fiat and other brands, said it was temporarily halting production at a factory in Toluca, Mexico and Windsor, Canada.

It said the move, a response to Trump’s 25% tax on car imports, would also lead to temporary layoffs of 900 people at five plants in the US that supply those factories.

On the stock market, Nike, which makes much of its sportswear in Asia, was among the hardest hit on the S&P, with shares down 14%.

Shares in Apple, which relies heavily on China and Taiwan, tumbled 9%.

Other retailers also fell, with Target down roughly 10%.

Motorbike maker Harley-Davidson – which was subject of retaliatory tariffs by the EU during Trump’s first term as president – fell 10%.

In Europe, shares in sportswear firm Adidas fell more than 10%, while stocks in rival Puma tumbled more than 9%.

Among luxury goods firms, jewellery maker Pandora fell more than 10%, and LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy) dropped more than 3% after tariffs were imposed on the European Union and Switzerland.

“You’re seeing retailers get destroyed right now because tariffs extended to countries we did not expect,” said Jay Woods, chief global strategy at Freedom Capital Markets, adding that he expected more turbulence ahead.

At least 27 Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli air strike on a school in northern Gaza that was serving as a shelter for displaced families, the Hamas-run health ministry says.

Dozens more were wounded when the Dar al-Arqam school in the north-eastern Tuffah district of Gaza City was hit, it cited a local hospital as saying.

The Israeli military said it struck “prominent terrorists who were in a Hamas command and control centre” in the city, without mentioning a school.

The health ministry earlier reported the killing of another 97 people in Israeli attacks over the previous 24 hours, as Israel said its ground offensive was expanding to seize large parts of the Palestinian territory.

The spokesman for Gaza’s Hamas-run Civil Defence agency, Mahmoud Bassal, said children and women were among the dead following the strike on Dar al-Arqam school.

He also said a woman who was heavily pregnant with twins was missing along with her husband, her sister, and her three children.

Video from the nearby al-Ahli hospital showed children being rushed there in cars and trucks with serious injuries.

A statement from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the site in Gaza City that it struck had been used by Hamas fighters to plan attacks against Israeli civilians and troops.

It added that numerous steps had been taken to mitigate harm to civilians.

Overnight, at least 12 people were killed when several homes in Gaza City’s eastern Shejaiya district were struck, the Civil Defence said.

It posted a video that appeared to show the bodies of two young children being pulled by rescuers from the remains of a collapsed building.

A witness, who asked not to be named, told BBC Arabic’s Gaza Lifeline programme that he had been sleeping when he was “suddenly shaken by a violent explosion and discovered that it occurred at the house of our neighbours, the Ayyad family”.

There was no immediate comment from the IDF, but on Thursday morning it ordered residents of Shejaiya and four neighbouring areas to immediately evacuate to western Gaza City, warning that it was “operating with great force… to destroy the terrorist infrastructure”.

This week, the IDF issued similar evacuation orders for several areas of northern Gaza, as well as the entire southern city of Rafah and parts of neighbouring Khan Younis, prompting around 100,000 Palestinians to flee, according to the UN.

Israel renewed its aerial bombardment and ground offensive in Gaza on 18 March after the first phase of a ceasefire and hostage release deal agreed with Hamas in January came to an end and negotiations on a second phase of the deal stalled.

The IDF’s chief spokesperson, Brig-Gen Effie Defrin, told a briefing on Thursday that its operation had “progressed to another stage” in recent days.

“We have expanded operations in the southern Gaza Strip with the goal of encircling and dividing the Rafah area,” he said. “In northern Gaza, our troops are operating against terrorist targets, clearing the area, and dismantling terrorist infrastructure.”

He added that over the past two weeks Israeli forces had struck more than 600 “terrorist targets” across Gaza and “eliminated more than 250 terrorists”.

Before the strike in Tuffah, Gaza’s health ministry had said that at least 1,163 people had been killed over the same period. A UN agency has said they include more than 300 children.

On Wednesday evening, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli forces were establishing another military corridor that would cut off Rafah from Khan Younis.

He argued that military pressure would force Hamas to release the remaining 59 hostages it is holding, up to 24 of whom are believed to be alive.

However, Hamas said it would not engage with Israel’s latest proposal for a new ceasefire, which is said to have been co-ordinated with the US, one of the mediators in the negotiations.

The Palestinian group said it accepted only the plan put forward by the two other mediators, Qatar and Egypt, for a 50-day truce.

The full details of that plan have not been disclosed, but it is understood the regional proposal would see five hostages being released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from parts of Gaza where they have recently redeployed, and the influx of humanitarian aid. There would also be negotiations on ending the war.

Israel wants a larger number of hostages be released at the start of a new truce.

In another development on Thursday, the IDF said the general staff’s fact-finding mechanism was investigating the killing by Israeli forces of 15 Palestinian emergency workers near Rafah on 23 March, as well as their burial in what a UN official described as a “mass grave”.

“We want to have all the facts in a way that’s accurate and we can also hold accountable people if we need to,” an IDF spokesman said.

A Palestinian paramedic who survived the attack, speaking to the BBC, challenged the Israeli account of how five ambulances, a fire engine and a UN vehicle were fired on while responding to emergency calls.

The military said the vehicles were “advancing suspiciously” towards its troops without headlights or emergency signals. It also said a Hamas operative and “eight other terrorists” were among those killed, but named only one.

The survivor, Munther Abed, insisted that “all lights were on” until the vehicles came under direct fire. He also rejected the military’s claim that Hamas might have used the ambulances as cover, saying all the emergency workers were civilians.

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

More than 50,520 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s health ministry.

Social media influencers pose a “new and increasing threat” for uncontacted indigenous people, a charity has warned after the arrest of a US tourist who travelled to a restricted Indian Ocean island.

Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov, 24, allegedly landed on North Sentinel Island in an apparent attempt to make contact with the isolated Sentinelese tribe, filming his visit and leaving a can of coke and a coconut on the shore.

Survival International, a group that advocates for the rights of tribal people, said the alleged act endangered the man’s own life and the lives of the tribe, calling it “deeply disturbing”.

The US said it was aware and “monitoring the situation”.

Andaman and Nicobar Islands’ police chief HGS Dhaliwal told news agency AFP that “an American citizen” had been presented before the local court and was remanded for three days for “further interrogation”.

AFP, citing Mr Dhaliwal, said Mr Polyakov blew a whistle off the shore of the island in a bid to attract the attention of the tribe for about an hour.

He then landed for about five minutes, leaving his offerings, collecting samples and recording a video.

The police chief told AFP: “A review of his GoPro camera footage showed his entry and landing into the restricted North Sentinel Island.”

It is illegal for foreigners or Indians to travel within 5km (three miles) of the islands in order to protect the people living there.

According to police, Mr Polyakov has visited the region twice before – including using an inflatable kayak in October last year before he was stopped by hotel staff.

On his arrest earlier this week, the man told police he was a “thrill seeker”, Indian media reported.

Survival International said the Sentinelese have made their wish to avoid outsiders clear over many years and underlined that such visits pose a threat to a community which has no immunity to outside diseases.

Jonathan Mazower, spokesperson for Survival International, told the BBC they feared social media was adding to the list of threats for uncontacted tribal people. Several media reports have linked Mr Polyakov to a YouTube account, which features videos of a recent trip to Afghanistan.

“As well as all the somewhat more established threats to such peoples – from things like logging and mining in the Amazon where most uncontacted peoples live – there are now an increasing number of… influencers who are trying to do this kind of thing for followers,” Mr Mazower said.

“There’s a growing social media fascination with this whole idea.”

Survival International describes the Sentinelese as “the most isolated Indigenous people in the world” living on an island around the size of Manhattan.

Mr Mazower told the BBC an estimated 200 people belong to the tribe, before adding it was “impossible” to know its true number.

Few details are known about the group, other than they are a hunter-gatherer community who live in small settlements and are “extremely healthy”, he said.

He added that the incident highlighted why government protections for communities such as the Sentinelese are so important.

The UN’s Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention sets out obligations for governments to protect the rights. India’s government has an initiative focusing on tribal welfare, but the country has come under criticism in recent years for failing to protect against evictions.

It is not the first time an outsider has attempted to make contact with the Sentinelese.

In November 2018, John Allen Chau, also a US national, was killed by the tribe after visiting the same island.

Local officials said the 27-year-old was a Christian missionary.

Mr Chau was shot with bows and arrows upon landing. Reports at the time suggested he had bribed fisherman to take him to the island.

Donald Trump’s blanket tariffs have put the world on the brink of a possible global trade war. The European Union has vowed a united response, and China has threatened countermeasures.

Ratings agencies like Fitch have warned that the mass tariff hikes could result in lower growth, higher inflation and potentially a recession in some parts of the world.

How will India – Asia’s third largest economy – navigate these global tremors?

Trump has dealt the most brutal blow to Asian countries, slapping 34% tariffs on China in addition to the 20% previously levied. Vietnam and Cambodia will have to pay 46% and 49% respectively.

In relative terms, at 27% India has fared better.

But the rate is still steep and will severely affect major “labour intensive exports”, says Priyanka Kishore of the consultancy Asia Decoded. “That will likely have a knock-on impact on domestic demand and headline gross domestic product at a time when growth is already stuttering,” said Ms Kishore.

But the new trade realities also throw up opportunities for India.

Its new tariff differential with Asian peers may potentially lead to some export re-routing. “We can bring the footwear and garments business from Asian peers if we get our act together,” says Nilesh Shah, a veteran fund manager.

This will take time though.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government will thus have to be strategic in how it navigates the situation.

Foremost, the announcement should “give the government a greater sense of urgency in wrapping up a trade deal with the US”, says Rahul Ahluwalia, a public policy expert who previously worked for a government department. “The US is our largest export market, so this is serious stuff.”

India exports some $91bn (£69bn) in goods to the US, which account for 18% of its overall exports. Hectic trade negotiations have been under way with a fall deadline for conclusion. Ahluwalia says that deadline could now be compressed and brought forward.

While doing that, India must also expand export markets beyond the US and focus on regions where tariffs remain low, such as Europe, Southeast Asia, and Africa, recommends Indian trade research agency GTRI.

In the last couple of years, India has shown a renewed appetite for trade deals, launching free trade agreement (FTA) talks with a range of countries and blocs, including the European Union and the United Kingdom.

Last year, Delhi signed a $100bn free trade agreement with the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) – a group of four European countries that are not members of the European Union.

Experts say talks with other partners could now be expedited as cracks deepen between the US and many other global economies over Trump’s actions.

But even as trade negotiations carry on with global partners, the government will need a plan on how it deals with the domestic fallout of Trump’s decision.

Impact on sectors that employ millions of people – like gems and jewellery and textiles – is likely to be significant. The government will need to extend support through means like expanding production-linked subsidies to ensure that India’s domestic industry stays globally competitive and can leverage the new opportunities this has thrown up, according to the consultancy, Ernst & Young

The tariffs are “fundamentally reshaping the global trading system”, says Agneshwar Sen, a trade policy expert at Ernst & Young India. This will require a “fundamental revaluation of trading strategies” as new supply chains emerge, he adds.

India will also have to be mindful of other risk factors that emerge from this – such as “Chinese dumping”, says Mr Shah.

As it becomes more difficult for Chinese goods to enter the US, these will have to find other markets. And there are few others that are as large as India.

“The global South accounts for more than 20% of global consumption and is where the new middle class is being created. This is where China will attempt to sell,” according to Akash Prakash of Amansa Capital, an investment management company in Singapore.

For the moment there’s little clarity and no official word from the government on what its plans are.

India has already reduced tariffs on some goods including high-end motorbikes and bourbon whiskey. Unlike Canada, Mexico or the European Union, Modi’s government has adopted a conciliatory approach to Trump and these announcements are unlikely to trigger a retaliation, say experts.

Indian businesses will now most likely face a period of uncertainty which is unlikely to go away anytime soon.

“Clearly, the (Trump) administration wants even broader and deeper tariff cuts. The question is what, if anything, will satisfy the Trump administration?”, Milan Vaishnav, a senior fellow at Carnegie Endowment told the BBC.

It is a million dollar question, for which there are no immediate answers.

April Hubbard sits on the theatre stage where she plans to die later this year.

She is not terminally ill, but the 39-year-old performance and burlesque artist has been approved for assisted dying under Canada’s increasingly liberal laws.

She is speaking to BBC News from the Bus Stop Theatre, an intimate auditorium with a little under 100 seats, in the eastern city of Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Illuminated by a single spotlight on a stage she has performed on many times before, she tells me she plans to die here “within months” of her imminent 40th birthday. She’ll be joined by a small group of her family and friends.

April plans to be in a “big comfy bed” for what she calls a “celebratory” moment when a medical professional will inject a lethal dose into her bloodstream.

“I want to be surrounded by the people I love and just have everybody hold me in a giant cuddle puddle and get to take my last breath, surrounded by love and support,” she says.

April was born with spina bifida and was later diagnosed with tumours at the base of her spine which she says have left her in constant, debilitating pain.

She’s been taking strong opioid painkillers for more than 20 years and applied for Medical Assistance in Dying (Maid) in March 2023. While she could yet live for decades with her condition, she qualified to end her life early seven months after applying. For those who are terminally ill it is possible to get approval within 24 hours.

“My suffering and pain are increasing and I don’t have the quality of life anymore that makes me happy and fulfilled,” April says. Every time she moves or breathes, she says it feels like the tissues from the base of her spine “are being pulled like a rubber band that stretches too far”, and that her lower limbs leave her in agony.

We meet April as, almost 3,000 miles away, MPs are scrutinising proposals to legalise assisted dying in England and Wales. They voted in principle in support of those plans in November 2024, but months of detailed scrutiny have followed – and further votes in the Commons and Lords are required before the bill could possibly become law.

This week, the BBC witnessed a man’s death in California, where assisted dying laws are far more similar to those being considered in Westminster.

Critics say Canada is an example of the “slippery slope”, meaning that once you pass an assisted dying law it will inevitably widen its scope and have fewer safeguards.

Canada now has one of the most liberal systems of assisted dying in the world, similar to that operating in the Netherlands and Belgium. It introduced Maid in 2016, initially for terminally ill adults with a serious and incurable physical illness, which causes intolerable suffering. In 2021, the need to be terminally ill was removed, and in two years’ time, the Canadian government plans to open Maid to adults solely with a mental illness and no physical ailment.

Opponents of Maid tell us that death is coming to be seen as a standard treatment option for those with disabilities and complex medical problems.

“It is easier in Canada to get medical assistance in dying than it is to get government support to live,” says Andrew Gurza, a disability awareness consultant and friend of April’s.

Andrew, who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, says he respects April’s decision, but tells us: “If my disability declines and my care needs got higher, I’d still want to be here. To know there’s a law that’s saying you could easily end your life – it’s just really scary.”

Before she was approved for Maid, April was assessed by two independent physicians who were required to inform her of ways to alleviate her suffering and offer alternative treatments.

“The safeguards are there,” she says, when we press her about disabled people who feel threatened by assisted dying, or whether Maid is being used as a shortcut to better quality care. “If it’s not right for you and you’re not leading the charge and choosing Maid, you’re not going to be able to access it unless it’s for the right reasons,” she adds.

There were 15,343 Maid deaths in 2023, representing around one in 20 of all deaths in Canada – a proportion that has increased dramatically since 2016 and is one of the highest in the world. The average age of recipients was 77.

In all but a handful of cases, the lethal dose was delivered by a doctor or nurse, which is also known as voluntary euthanasia. One doctor we spoke to, Eric Thomas, said he had helped 577 patients to die.

Dr Konia Trouton, president of the Canadian Association of Maid Assessors and Providers, has also helped hundreds of patients to die since the law was introduced.

The procedure is the same each time – she arrives at the home of the person who has been given approval for Maid and asks if they wish to go ahead with it that day. She says the patients always direct the process and then give her the “heads up and ready to go”.

“That gives me an honour and a duty and a privilege to be able to help them in those last moments with their family around them, with those who love them around them and to know that they’ve made that decision thoughtfully, carefully and thoroughly,” she adds. If the answer is yes, she opens her medical bag.

Demonstrating to the BBC what happens next, Dr Trouton briefly puts a tourniquet on my arm. She shows me where the needle would be inserted into a vein in the back of my hand to allow an intravenous infusion of lethal drugs.

In her medical bag she also has a stethoscope. “Strangely, these days I use it more to determine if someone has no heartbeat rather than if they do,” she tells me.

Some 96% of Maid provisions are under “track one” where death is “reasonably foreseeable”. Dr Trouton says that means patients are on a “trajectory toward death”, which might range from someone who has rapidly spreading cancer and only weeks to live or another with Alzheimer’s “who might have five to seven years”.

The other 4% of Maid deaths come under “track two”. These are adults, like April, who are not dying but have suffering which is intolerable to them from a “grievous and irremediable medical condition”.

That is in stark contrast to Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s bill to legalise assisted dying in England and Wales, which says patients must be expected to die within six months. The Westminster bill would not allow doctors to give a lethal dose – rather patients would have to self-administer the drugs, usually by swallowing them.

Death via intravenous infusion normally takes just a few minutes, as the lethal drugs go straight into the bloodstream, whereas swallowing the drugs means patients usually take around an hour or two to die, but can take considerably longer, although they are usually unconscious after a few minutes.

Dr Trouton told me she regarded the Canadian system as quicker and more effective, as do other Maid providers. “I’m concerned that if some people can’t swallow because of their disease process, and if they’re not able to take the entire quantity of medication because of breathing difficulties or swallowing difficulties, what will happen?”

But opponents argue it’s being used as a cheaper alternative to providing adequate social or medical support.

One of them is Dr Ramona Coelho, a GP in London, Ontario, whose practice serves many marginalised groups and those struggling to get medical and social support. She’s part of a Maid Death Review Committee, alongside Dr Trouton, which examines cases in the province.

Dr Coelho told me that Maid was “out of control”. “I wouldn’t even call it a slippery slope,” she says “Canada has fallen off a cliff.”

“When people have suicidal ideations, we used to meet them with counselling and care, and for people with terminal illness and other diseases we could mitigate that suffering and help them have a better life,” she says. “Yet now we are seeing that as an appropriate request to die and ending their lives very quickly.”

While at Dr Coelho’s surgery I was introduced to Vicki Whelan, a retired nurse whose mum Sharon Scribner died in April 2023 of lung cancer, aged 81. Vicki told me that in her mum’s final days in hospital she was repeatedly offered the option of Maid by medical staff, describing it as like a “sales pitch”.

The family, who are Catholic, discharged their mother so she could die at home, where Vicki says her mum had a “beautiful, peaceful death”. “It makes us think that we can’t endure, and we can’t suffer a little bit, and that somehow now they’ve decided that dying needs to be assisted, where we’ve been dying for years.

“All of a sudden now we’re telling people that this is a better option. This is an easy way out and I think it’s just robbing people of hope.”

So is Canada an example of the so-called slippery slope? It’s certainly true that the eligibility criteria has broadened dramatically since the law was introduced nine years ago, so for critics the answer would be an emphatic yes and serve as a warning to Britain.

Canada’s assisted dying laws were driven by court rulings. Its Supreme Court instructed Parliament that a prohibition on assisted dying breached the country’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The extension of eligibility for those who were not terminally ill was in part a response to another court decision.

In Britain, judges in the most senior courts have repeatedly said any potential change to the law around assisted dying is a matter for Parliament, after the likes of Tony Nicklinson, Diane Pretty and Noel Conway brought cases arguing the blanket ban on assisted suicide breached their human rights.

April knows some people may look at her, a young woman, and wonder why she would die.

“We’re the masters of masking and not letting people see that we’re suffering,” she says. “But in reality, there’s days that I just can’t hide it, and there’s many days where I can’t lift my head off the pillow and I can’t eat anymore.

“It’s not a way I want to live for another 10 or 20 or 30 years.”

Last year, on 17 September, at around 15:30, a pager which a nurse called Adam was given at the start of his shift at a hospital in Lebanon received a message. The devices had been distributed by Hezbollah, the Shia Muslim group, to thousands of its members, including Adam, and he said it was how he and his colleagues expected to be alerted of emergencies or a disaster.

“The pager started beeping non-stop and, on the screen, it said ‘alert’,” Adam, who did not want to use his real name for safety reasons, said. The text appeared to have been sent by the group’s leadership. To read it, he had to press two buttons, simultaneously, with both hands. Adam did it many times, but the beeps continued. “Then suddenly, as I was sitting at my desk,” he said, “the pager exploded”.

On his phone, Adam showed me a video of the room, filmed by a colleague minutes after he was rescued. There was a trail of blood on the floor. “I tried to crawl to the door because I had locked it while I changed my clothes,” he said. The blast had opened a hole in the wood desk. I noticed a beige-like object. “That’s my finger,” he said.

Hezbollah is known for being a powerful militia and is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by countries including the UK and the US. But in Lebanon, it is also a significant political movement with representation in parliament and a social organisation. Here, being a Hezbollah member does not necessarily mean you are a fighter. In fact, many are not. Adam told me he had never been one. People can work in the group’s large array of institutions that include hospitals and emergency services, for example.

Hezbollah had decided to equip members with low-tech pagers for communicating rather than smartphones which it feared could be used by Israel, its arch-enemy, to gather sensitive information about the group. It turned out, though, that the devices which Hezbollah had distributed were part of a years-long elaborate Israeli plan: an explosive compound had been concealed within the pagers, waiting to be activated – and that is what happened on that day.

In the attack, Adam, who is 38, lost his thumb and two fingers on his left hand, and part of a finger on the other. He was blinded in his right eye, which has been replaced with a glass eye, and has only partial sight in the other. He showed me a picture of him in a hospital bed, taken an hour after the explosion, with his face burned, entirely blooded, covered with bandages. Despite his wounds, Adam remained committed to Hezbollah. I asked him how he felt when he looked at himself like that. “Very good,” he said in English. Then, in Arabic, he told me: “Because we believe that the wounds are a kind of medal from God. Honouring what we go through fighting a righteous cause.”

But the group is no longer the force it was since being dealt a devastating blow in Israel’s bombing campaign and invasion of Lebanon, which followed the pager attacks, and faces serious challenges. At home, there is discontent among some supporters over the lack of funds for reconstruction, while the new government has vowed to disarm the group. In neighbouring Syria, the ouster of Bashar al-Assad’s regime has disrupted the route used by Iran, its main supporter, for the supply of weapons and money.

I visited communities in southern Lebanon that were destroyed by Israel’s attacks, and saw that support for Hezbollah appeared undimmed. But, in views rarely expressed to media, others who backed it said the war had been a mistake, and even questioned the group’s future as a military force.

Hezbollah, or Party of God, was created in the 1980s in response to Israel’s occupation of Lebanon during the Lebanese civil war. To this day, the destruction of Israel remains one of its official goals. Their last war had been in 2006, which was followed by years of relative calm. Violence flared up again in 2023 after Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, killing about 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages. When Israel started bombarding Gaza, Hezbollah began firing rockets in around northern Israel, saying it was acting in support of Palestinians. Israel responded with air strikes on southern Lebanon, and tens of thousands of people were forced to flee on both sides of the border.

The pager attacks were a turning point in what had been, until then, an intensifying but relatively contained conflict. The devices exploded as people were working, shopping or at home. About a dozen people, including two children, were killed, and thousands wounded, many of them maimed. The attack caused anger in Lebanon, because of what was seen as its indiscriminate nature. A day later, walkie-talkies used by the group suddenly exploded too. I was at a funeral of some of the victims of the pagers when there was a loud blast. Hezbollah members, desperate, asked us to turn off our cameras or phones, as no-one knew what else could explode.

In the following weeks, Israel carried out a relentless bombing campaign and a ground invasion of southern Lebanon. Across the country, around 4,000 people were killed and almost 18,000 others wounded. For Hezbollah, the conflict proved to be catastrophic. The group’s top leaders were assassinated, many of its fighters killed and much of its arsenal destroyed. Among the dead was Hassan Nasrallah, who had been the head of Hezbollah for more than 30 years, assassinated in a massive air strike on the group’s secret headquarters under apartment blocks in the Dahieh, where Hezbollah is based in Beirut.

At the end of November, battered, the group agreed on a ceasefire that was essentially a surrender.

Southern Lebanon is the heartland of Lebanon’s Shia Muslim community, which is the bulk of Hezbollah’s support base, and one of the regions of the country where the group has traditionally had a significant presence. I travelled to the border town of Kfar Kila, which had a pre-war population of 15,000 and was one of the first to fall when Israel invaded. Israel’s stated war goal was to allow the return of residents to its northern communities, which had been emptied because of Hezbollah’s attacks. In Kfar Kila, there was almost nothing left standing, and yellow Hezbollah flags dotted the huge piles of broken concrete and twisted metal.

A 37-year-old woman called Alia had come with her husband and three daughters, aged 18, 14 and 10. The youngest was wearing a badge with a smiley picture of Nasrallah. “I only knew that this was my house because of the remains of this plant over there, the roses, and this tree,” Alia told me. From the street, she pointed at what she could identify in the rubble. “This is the couch. There, the curtains. That was the living room. And that was the bedroom. That’s my daughter’s bicycle,” she said. “There’s nothing to recover”.

According to the World Bank, costs related to reconstruction and recovery are estimated at $11bn (£8.5bn) across the country. One of Hezbollah’s immediate challenges is to give financial help to people affected by the war, which is crucial to keep supporters on board. Those who lost their houses have received $12,000 to cover for a year’s rent. But the group has not promised money to rebuild what was destroyed or to give compensation for destroyed businesses. The limited support is already fuelling discontent. Aila’s shop had stock worth $20,000, and she was concerned no-one would cover her losses.

Iran, Hezbollah’s backer, is one of the group’s main sources of funds, weapons and training. But Lebanon’s international allies want to cut off any financial support from Iran, to put even more pressure on Hezbollah, and say there will be no help if the Lebanese government does not act against Hezbollah. With the group weakened militarily, critics see this as a unique opportunity to disarm it.

Alia told me: “We don’t want any aid that comes with conditions about our arms… We won’t allow them to take our dignity, our honour, take away our arms just for us to build a house. We’ll build it ourselves.”

It is not surprising that Hezbollah’s supporters remain defiant. For many, the group is a fundamental part of their lives, essential in their identities. But Hezbollah’s power is seen – and felt – beyond its base. Before the war, its military wing was considered to be stronger than the Lebanese national army. A solid parliamentary bloc means that virtually no major decision has been possible without Hezbollah’s consent. Because of Lebanon’s fractured political system, the group has representation in the government. In short, Hezbollah has had the ability to paralyse the state, and many times has done so.

But the war has diminished the group’s domestic position too. In January, the Lebanese parliament elected a new president, former army chief Joseph Aoun, after a two-year impasse that critics had blamed on Hezbollah. In the past, its MPs and allies would walk out of the chamber when a vote was scheduled. But Hezbollah, severely wounded and with its communities in need of help, felt it could no longer block the process, which was seen as vital to unlock some international support. In his inauguration speech, Aoun promised to make the Lebanese army the sole carrier of weapons in the country. He did not mention Hezbollah, but everyone understood the message.

Ultimately, Hezbollah’s future may lie with Iran. One of the reasons for Iran to have a strong Hezbollah in Lebanon was to deter any Israeli attack, especially on its nuclear facilities. This is now gone. Other groups backed by Iran in the region, part of what it calls the Axis of Resistance, have also been significantly weakened, including Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen. And the fall of the Assad regime in Syria has interrupted Iran’s land corridor to Lebanon – and Hezbollah. Even if Iran decides to rearm Hezbollah, it will not be easy.

Nasrallah has been succeeded by Naim Qassem, his former deputy, who is not seen as charismatic or influential. From time to time, rumours emerge of internal disagreements. And whispers of dissent among the rank and file are spreading. In southern Lebanon, I met a businessman who did not want to have his name published, fearing that he could become a target on social media. On the wall of his office, he had pictures of Hezbollah’s leaders. Now, he was critical of the group.

“The mistakes have been huge,” he said. “Hezbollah decided to engage in a war to support Gaza without proper calculations, without consulting the people or the Lebanese state”. (To date, Israel’s war in Gaza has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.) He told me a lot of supporters shared his view. “If Hezbollah don’t do a proper reassessment of the situation… they will destroy themselves and harm us along the way. We brought this destruction on ourselves, and we’re now suffering”.

As part of the ceasefire deal, Hezbollah agreed to remove its weapons and fighters from southern Lebanon, and a Western diplomatic official told me the group had largely done it. Israel was required to withdraw its troops, but has remained in five positions, saying this is needed for the safety of its border communities. The Israeli military has also carried out air strikes on targets and people it says are linked to Hezbollah. Lebanon says the Israeli permanence in Lebanese territory and its attacks are violations of the deal.

Discussions about Hezbollah’s disarmament are likely to be difficult and long. A source familiar with the group told me one of the options was for Hezbollah’s arsenal, believed to still include long-range missiles, to be put under the control of the state, while its fighters, estimated to be several thousand, could be integrated into the Lebanese army.

The businessman told me: “A lot of the families, especially those of wounded and martyred fighters, are totally dependent on Hezbollah. These people won’t disengage from Hezbollah immediately… Without a plan, it would be a recipe for internal conflict. It would drive Lebanese to fight against each other”.

For weeks, I tried to interview a representative from Hezbollah, but no-one was made available.

Adam, the pager casualty, has now returned to his work as a nurse. He no longer does nightshifts, however, as he cannot see well. The explosion also left shrapnel in head and chest. As he gets tired easily, he needs to take constant breaks to rest. Physiotherapy sessions are helping him adapt to using what is left of his left thumb and middle finger.

Prominent in his living room, is a picture he framed, of himself, with his injured hands, holding a pager. He shared with me another picture, of his maimed hand, only now it also bore a tattooed message which expressed that his wounds were a cheap sacrifice in honour of Nasrallah, the late Hezbollah leader. He, like many, still believes in the group’s purpose, and the role it plays.

Hungary is withdrawing from the International Criminal Court (ICC), its government has announced.

A senior official in Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government confirmed this hours after Israel’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who is sought under an ICC arrest warrant, arrived in Hungary for a state visit.

Orban had invited Netanyahu as soon as the warrant was issued last November, saying the ruling would have “no effect” in his country.

In November, ICC judges said there were “reasonable grounds” that Netanyahu bore “criminal responsibility” for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the war between Israel and Hamas. Netanyahu has condemned the ICC’s decision as “antisemitic”.

The ICC, a global court, has the authority to prosecute those accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Hungary is a founding member of the ICC, which counts 125 member states, and will be the first European Union nation to pull out of it. A withdrawal has no impact on ongoing proceedings.

During a joint press conference, Orban asserted that the ICC had become a “political court”. He added the court’s decision to issue a warrant against the Israeli leader “clearly showed” this.

Netanyahu meanwhile hailed Hungary’s “bold and principled” decision to withdraw from the court.

“It’s important for all democracies. It’s important to stand up to this corrupt organisation,” Netanyahu said.

A statement from the Israeli prime minister’s office on Thursday said Netanyahu and Orban had spoken with US President Donald Trump about the decision and the “next steps that can be taken on this issue”.

Earlier Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar thanked Orban on X for his “clear and strong moral stance alongside Israel”.

“The so-called International Criminal Court lost its moral authority after trampling the fundamental principles of international law in its zest for harming Israel’s right to self-defence,” Sa’ar added.

Hungary’s decision aligns with its broader foreign policy stance under Orban, who has cultivated close ties with Israel and adopted a critical view of international institutions perceived as infringing on national sovereignty.

While Hungary’s withdrawal may carry symbolic weight and political implications, it does not significantly alter the ICC’s operational capacity or legal framework.

The court has faced similar challenges in the past and continues to function with broad international support.

But Hungary’s criticism of the ICC as “politically biased” and its decision to withdraw as Netanyahu visits may set a precedent for other nations to question or abandon their commitments to international justice based on political alliances or disagreements with specific rulings.

The US, Russia, China and North Korea are among the nations that are not part of the ICC, and therefore do not recognise its jurisdiction.

Israel is also not part of the treaty, but the ICC ruled in 2021 that it did have jurisdiction over the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, because the UN’s Secretary General had accepted that Palestinians were a member.

Hungary now needs to send written notification to the UN Secretary General to leave the treaty, with the withdrawal taking effect one year later, according to article 127 of the Rome Statute, which established the ICC.

ICC spokesman Fadi El-Abdullah told the BBC: “On the visit of Mr Netanyahu, the court has followed its standard procedures, after the issuance of an arrest warrant. The court recalls that Hungary remains under a duty to cooperate with the ICC.”

Since the warrant was issued, Hungarian authorities should technically arrest Netanyahu and hand him over to the court in the Hague, although member states do not always choose to enforce ICC warrants.

In Europe, some ICC member states said they would arrest the Israeli leader if he set foot in their country, while others, including Germany, announced that Netanyahu would not be detained if he visited.

But Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Thursday Hungary’s announcement was “a bad day for international criminal law”.

“Europe has clear rules that apply to all EU member states, and that is the Rome Statute. I have made it clear time and again that no one in Europe is above the law and that applies to all areas of law,” she added.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the US has condemned the ICC’s decision to issue warrants for Netanyahu’s arrest and he has visited the country since it was issued in November. His visit to Hungary marks Netanyahu’s first trip to Europe since then.

Hungarian Defence Minister Kristof Szalay-Bobrovniczky, greeted Netanyahu on the tarmac of Budapest airport on Wednesday night, welcoming him to the country.

Israel is appealing against the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, and strongly rejects the accusations. It both denies the authority of the ICC and the legitimacy of the warrants.

Netanyahu said at the time that it was a “dark day in the history of humanity”, and that the ICC had become “the enemy of humanity”.

“It’s an antisemitic step that has one goal – to deter me, to deter us from having our natural right to defend ourselves against enemies who try to destroy us,” he said.

In the same ruling, ICC judges also issued a warrant against Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif, who Israel says is dead. Hamas also rejected the allegations.

The visit comes as Israel announced it was expanding its Gaza offensive and establishing a new military corridor to put pressure on Hamas, as deadly Israeli strikes continued across the Palestinian territory.

The war in Gaza was triggered by the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, which killed some 1,200 people and led to 251 hostages being taken to Gaza. Since then, Israeli military attacks have killed more than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed, health authorities in Hamas-run Gaza say.

Tom Cruise has paid tribute to his Top Gun co-star Val Kilmer, who died earlier this week aged 65.

Appearing at CinemaCon in Las Vegas, Cruise led a crowd in The Colosseum theatre in a moment of silence to “honour a dear friend of mine, Val Kilmer”.

“I can’t tell you how much I admired his work, how much I thought of him as a human being and how grateful and honoured I was when he joined Top Gun,” Cruise said of Kilmer, who played his rival Ice Man in Top Gun in 1986.

The 2022 sequel Top Gun: Maverick marked Kilmer’s last movie role. Kilmer, also known for his roles playing Batman and Jim Morrison in The Doors, died Tuesday night in Los Angeles.

In Las Vegas, Cruise bowed his head in the cavernous theatre, which was packed with movie theatre owners and others who work in the industry.

“Thank you, Val – wish you well on your next journey,” Cruise said afterwards.

Cruise was speaking during the Paramount Pictures presentation at CinemaCon. He also showed off a sneak peek trailer of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, which is set to be released later this year, and honoured the film’s director Christopher McQuarrie, who was named CinemaCon’s director of the year.

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The trailer showed Cruise, who is famous for doing his own stunts, in a series of action-packed scenes – on fighter jets, in explosions and wing walking on a vintage plane.

As Hollywood paid tribute to Kilmer, Cruise had been one of the few stars who waited to publicly commented on the actor’s death.

The star has been vocal about how much he enjoyed working with Kilmer. He said on Jimmy Kimmel Live! that he cried having him on set for Top Gun: Maverick.

“I was crying, I was crying. I got emotional,” Cruise said on the show about working with Kilmer. “He’s such a brilliant actor. I love his work.”

Kilmer’s family told US media that he died after coming down with a pneumonia. The actor had two tracheotomies while undergoing treatment for throat cancer.

The procedures forced him to use a voice box to speak, and in the 2022 film, he types on a screen to communicate with Cruise’s character. Toward the end of their scene together, Kilmer’s Iceman gets up from his chair and coarsely tells Cruise: “The Navy needs Maverick”.

The two embrace and then Iceman pokes fun, questioning Cruise about who is the better pilot.

Denmark will not give up Greenland to the US, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has said during an official visit to the Arctic Island.

Responding to repeated threats from Donald Trump, Frederiksen offered closer collaboration on security but told the US president: “You can’t annex other countries.”

Frederiksen stood alongside Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen and his predecessor Mute Egede in a show of support and unity in the face of US threats on Thursday.

Her three-day trip to the territory follows last week’s controversial visit by a US delegation headed up by Vice-President JD Vance, which was widely criticised in both Greenland and Denmark.

During his whirlwind trip, Vance reiterated Trump’s ambitions to bring Greenland under United States’ control for security reasons, criticised Denmark for not spending more on security in the region, and claimed it had “not done a good job” for Greenlanders.

On Thursday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen in Brussels, where he “reaffirmed the strong relationship” between the US and Denmark, the US State Department said in a statement.

Rasmussen said Rubio had acknowledged Greenland’s right to self-determination but added that Denmark would object to “any claims on Greenland”, Reuters news agency reported.

After arriving in Greenland on Wednesday, Frederiksen said: “It is clear that with the pressure put on Greenland by the Americans, in terms of sovereignty, borders and the future, we need to stay united.”

Frederiksen said on Thursday that Denmark was fortifying its military presence in the Arctic and offered closer collaboration with the United States in defending the region.

But she added: “When you demand to take over a part of… Denmark’s territory, when we are met by pressure and by threats from our closest ally, what are we to believe in, about the country that we have admired for so many years?”

Frederiksen rode around the capital Nuuk in a Danish navy patrol boat, alongside Egede and Nielsen.

According to Danish public broadcaster DR, many people cheered at seeing the Danish prime minister, with one resident shouting from a window: “Hey Mette! Thanks for being here.”

Egede, who served as prime minister for almost four years, said the island had cooperated with the US on security for almost 80 years – including the construction of the Pituffik Space Base following a 1951 agreement between Denmark and the United States.

The former leader insisted Greenland was not for sale, but added the island wanted trade with the US, Greenlandic national newspaper Sermitsiaq reported.

Trump first floated the idea of buying Greenland during his first term – and his desire to own the island has only grown with time.

Mikaela Engell, an expert on the Arctic territory who previously served as Denmark’s High Commissioner to Greenland, told AFP news agency “it’s very, very important and it’s very reassuring for Greenlanders to see a Danish head of government.”

Greenland – the world’s biggest island, between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans – has been controlled by Denmark, nearly 3,000km (1,860 miles) away, for about 300 years.

Greenland governs its own domestic affairs, but decisions on foreign and defence policy are made in Copenhagen.

Five of the six main parties favour independence from Copenhagen, but disagree over the pace with which to reach it.

A new Greenland coalition government was formed in March, led by the centre-right Democrats party which favours a gradual approach to independence.

Polls show that the vast majority of Greenlanders also want to become independent from Denmark, but do not wish to become part of the US.

Since 2009, Greenland has had the right to call an independence referendum, though in recent years some political parties have begun pushing more for one.

As US President Donald Trump laid out tariffs on virtually every one of America’s trading partners on Wednesday, he had strong words for Beijing.

“I have great respect for President Xi [Jinping] of China, great respect for China, but they were taking tremendous advantage of us,” Trump said during his roughly hour-long address.

Holding up a chart listing countries and territories that he said had put up trade barriers to US goods, Trump said: “If you look at that… China, first row, 67%. That’s tariffs charged to the USA, including currency manipulation and trade barriers.”

“We are going to be charging [them] a discounted reciprocal tariff of 34%,” he added. “In other words, they charge us, we charge them, we charge them less. So how can anybody be upset?”

But China’s Commerce Ministry immediately called the move “a typical act of unilateral bullying” and pledged to take “resolute countermeasures to safeguard its rights and interests”.

And state news agency Xinhua accused Trump of “turning trade into an over simplistic tit-for-tat game”.

Experts believe Beijing has good reason to be upset.

For one, the latest announcement is an add on to existing tariffs of 20% on Chinese goods.

Secondly, by imposing heavy tariffs on other South East Asian countries including Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos, it has ‘slammed the door shut’ on how China rejigged its supply chains to get around the tariffs imposed on Beijing during Trump’s first term.

There were five Asian nations in the 10 countries and territories hit with the highest tariffs.

Trump has imposed new tariffs on Chinese imports since returning to the White House in January, ratcheting up levies to 20%.

In less than a week, these tariffs will jump to 54%, apart from on products like cars, steel and aluminium, which will be subjected to lower tariffs.

Beijing has also been on the receiving end of other Trump trade salvos.

Earlier on Wednesday, the President signed an executive order to end a provision for low-value parcels from China.

This had allowed Chinese e-commerce giants like Shein and Temu to ship packages with a retail value of under $800 (£617) to the US, without taxes and inspections.

Close to 1.4 billion shipments entered the US under the provision in the last financial year, according to customs data.

The removal of the exemption could force some Chinese firms to pass the extra cost on to customers, making their goods less competitive in the US.

When taken together, this is a worrying picture for Beijing, said Deborah Elms from the Hinrich Foundation consultancy.

“I don’t think the new tariffs are necessarily aimed at China. But when the United States stacks tariffs on top of each other, specifically towards China, the numbers become eye-watering quite quickly.”

“China and the Chinese will have to retaliate. They are not going to be able to sit back and watch this,” she said.

Trump also imposed heavy tariffs, ranging from 46% to 49%, on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

This represents “a full-frontal assault on Beijing’s extended supply chain,” said Stephen Innes from investment firm SPI Asset Management.

“Vietnam… and others in the periphery are collateral damage in what is shaping up to be the most aggressive realignment of US trade policy in a generation,” he added. “This isn’t tit-for-tat – it’s strategic containment via tariff warfare.”

Laos and Cambodia, which are among the poorest countries in the region, are heavily dependant on Chinese investment in supply chain infrastructure. The high tariff rates are expected to hit both countries hard.

China is Vietnam’s largest trading partner. It was one of the key beneficiaries of US-China tensions during Trump’s first term.

In 2018, Trump hit China with tariffs, causing some businesses to rethink where they made their products. Some chose to shift manufacturing to Vietnam.

This has led to an increase of exports from Vietnam to the US, with Chinese companies that have moved production there contributing to that figure.

“Vietnam was clearly targeted [by Trump] due to its role as a conduit for China’s circumvention of previous tariffs”, former US trade negotiator Stephen Olson told the BBC.

While the US remains Vietnam’s biggest export market, China is its largest supplier of goods, accounting for more than a third of imports, according to the latest official data.

Chinese firms were also behind nearly one in every three new investments in Vietnam last year.

Pushan Dutt, a professor at the INSEAD business school, said the new taxes on South East Asia will be “prohibitive” for China.

“China has a problem with demand and in the last Trump administration their firms had nimbly reacted to tariffs by rejigging supply chains and moving them to [South East Asian nations]. This door has been slammed shut,” he added.

But Trump’s taxes on the region will also impact US companies that manufacture goods in South East Asia.

For instance, American businesses including technology giants Apple and Intel, and sportswear giant Nike have large factories in Vietnam.

A recent survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam found that most US manufacturers there expect to lay off staff if tariffs are imposed.

There is the question of what China can do to respond to the new tariffs, given it only has days before they are due to take effect.

Mr Olson said he expects Beijing to have a “forceful” response with tariffs and other measures making it more difficult for US companies to operate in China.

With the Chinese economy already facing challenges, Beijing faces “tough choices” in the days ahead, said Professor Dutt.

“Exporting to other regions threatens de-industrialisation in these destinations – and political leaders there are unlikely to accept this. That means China has to finally unleash domestic demand and the Chinese household,” he added.

The tariffs could also push China to try and build alliances with other Asian nations who have been on the receiving end of the tariffs.

Wang Huiyao, a former China Communist Party member who works with the Center for China and Globalisation think tank, called on Asian countries to “work together to go through this difficult time and fight protectionism”.

“In the end, the US could be losing all the influence and isolate itself,” he added.

Some discussions are already underway. China, South Korea and Japan recently held their first economic talks in five years.

They agreed to speed up talks for free trade agreement – which was first proposed over a decade ago.

The new tariffs could give them added incentive to do so.

However, Beijing could face some short-term pain while talks with Washington take its course.

“Ultimately, the US and China are headed for a negotiating table where they’ll try to reach some type of a grand bargain on a wide range of issues,” Mr Olson said.

“That won’t necessarily happen soon and I expect things to get worse before they get better,” he added.

Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs have shaken global trade, but disruption often creates opportunity.

Starting 9 April, Indian goods will face tariffs of up to 27% (Trump’s tariff chart lists India’s rate as 26%, but the official order says 27% – a discrepancy seen for other nations too). Before the tariff hike, US rates across trading partners averaged 3.3%, among the lowest globally, compared to India’s 17%, according to the White House.

However, with the US imposing even higher tariffs on China (54%), Vietnam (46%), Thailand (36%) and Bangladesh (37%), India “presents an opportunity” in textiles, electronics and machinery, according to the Delhi-based think tank Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI).

High tariffs on Chinese and Bangladeshi exports open space for Indian textile manufacturers to expand in the US market. While Taiwan leads in semiconductors, India can tap into packaging, testing and lower-end chip manufacturing – if it strengthens infrastructure and policy support. Even a partial supply chain shift from Taiwan, driven by 32% tariffs, could work in India’s favour.

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Machinery, automobiles and toys – sectors led by China and Thailand – are ripe for tariff-driven relocation. India can capitalise by attracting investment, scaling production and boosting exports to the US, according to a note by GTRI.

But will India be able to seize the moment?

High tariffs have increased costs for companies dependent on global value chains, hobbling India’s ability to compete in international markets. Despite growing exports – primarily driven by services – India runs a significant trade deficit. India’s share of global exports is a mere 1.5%. Trump has repeatedly branded India a “tariff king” and a “big abuser” of trade ties. With his new tariffs, the fear is that Indian exports will be less competitive.

“Overall, the US’s protectionist tariff regime could act as a catalyst for India to gain from global supply chain realignments,” says Ajay Srivastava of GTRI.

“However, to fully leverage these opportunities, India must enhance its ease of doing business, invest in logistics and infrastructure and maintain policy stability. If these conditions are met, India is well-positioned to become a key global manufacturing and export hub in the coming years.”

That’s easier said than done. Biswajit Dhar, a trade expert from the Delhi-based Council for Social Development think tank, points out that countries like Malaysia and Indonesia are possibly better positioned than India.

“We may regain some lost ground in garments now that Bangladesh faces higher tariffs, but the reality is we’ve treated garments as a sunset sector and failed to invest. Without building capacity, how can we truly benefit from these tariff shifts?” says Mr Dhar.

Since February, India has ramped up efforts to win Trump’s favour – pledging $25bn in US energy imports, courting Washington as a top defence supplier and exploring F-35 fighter deals. To ease trade tensions, it scrapped the 6% digital ad tax, cut bourbon whiskey tariffs to 100% from 150% and slashed duties on luxury cars and solar cells. Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s Starlink nears final approval. The two countries have launched extensive trade talks to narrow the US’s $45bn trade deficit with India.

Yet, India did not escape the tariff war.

“India should be concerned – there was hope that ongoing trade negotiations would shield it from reciprocal tariffs. Facing these tariffs now is a serious setback,” says Abhijit Das, former head of the Centre for WTO Studies at the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade.

One upside: pharmaceuticals are exempt from reciprocal tariffs, a relief for India’s generic drug makers. India supplies nearly half of all generic medicines in the US, where these lower-cost alternatives account for 90% of prescriptions.

However, exports in key sectors like electronics, engineering goods – automobile parts, industrial machines – and marine products could take a hit. It would be especially troubling for electronics, given the heavy investments through India’s flagship “production-linked incentives” (PLI) schemes to boost local manufacturing.

“I’m apprehensive about our exporters’ capacity – many are small manufacturers who will struggle to absorb a 27% tariff hike, making them uncompetitive. High logistical costs, rising business expenses and deteriorating trade infrastructure only add to the challenge. We’re starting at a major disadvantage,” says Mr Dhar.

Many see these tariffs as Trump’s bargaining chip in trade negotiations with India. The latest US Trade Representative report underscores Washington’s frustration with India’s trade policies.

Released on Monday, the report flags India’s strict import rules on dairy, pork and fish, requiring non-GMO certification without scientific backing. It also criticises India’s sluggish approval process for genetically modified products and price caps on stents and implants.

Intellectual property concerns have landed India on the ‘Priority Watch List’, for which the report cites weak patent protections and a lack of trade secret laws. The report also frets about data localisation mandates and restrictive satellite policies, straining trade ties further. Washington fears India’s regulatory approach is increasingly mirroring China’s. If these barriers were removed, US exports could rise by at least $5.3bn annually, according to the White House.

“The timing couldn’t be worse – being in the middle of trade negotiations only deepens our disadvantage. This isn’t just about market access; it’s the whole package,” says Mr Dhar. Also, gaining an edge over Vietnam or China won’t happen overnight – building opportunities and competitive strength takes time.

US President Donald Trump has imposed a 10% tariff on goods from most countries being imported into the US, with even higher rates for what he calls the “worst offenders”.

But how exactly were these tariffs – essentially taxes on imports – worked out? BBC Verify has been looking at the calculations behind the numbers.

When Trump presented a giant cardboard chart detailing the tariffs in the White House Rose Garden it was initially assumed that the charges were based on a combination of existing tariffs and other trade barriers (like regulations).

But later, the White House published what might look like a complicated mathematical formula.

But if you unpick the formula above it boils down to simple maths: take the trade deficit for the US in goods with a particular country, divide that by the total goods imports from that country and then divide that number by two.

A trade deficit occurs when a country buys (imports) more physical products from other countries than it sells (exports) to them.

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For example, the US buys more goods from China than it sells to them – there is a goods deficit of $295bn. The total amount of goods it buys from China is $440bn.

Dividing 295 by 440 gets you to 67% and you divide that by two and round up. Therefore the tariff imposed on China is 34%.

Similarly, when it applied to the EU, the White House’s formula resulted in a 20% tariff.

Many commentators have pointed out that these tariffs are not reciprocal.

Reciprocal would mean they were based on what countries already charge the US in the form of existing tariffs, plus non-tariff barriers (things like regulations that drive up costs).

But the White House’s official methodology document makes clear that they have not calculated this for all the countries on which they have imposed tariffs.

Instead the tariff rate was calculated on the basis that it would eliminate the US’s goods trade deficit with each country.

Trump has broken away from the formula in imposing tariffs on countries that buy more goods from the US than they sell to it.

For example the US does not currently run goods trade deficit with the UK. Yet the UK has been hit with a 10% tariff.

In total, more than 100 countries are covered by the new tariff regime.

Trump believes the US is getting a bad deal in global trade. In his view, other countries flood US markets with cheap goods – which hurts US companies and costs jobs. At the same time, these countries are putting up barriers that make US products less competitive abroad.

So by using tariffs to eliminate trade deficits, Trump hopes to revive US manufacturing and protect jobs.

But will this new tariff regime achieve the desired outcome?

BBC Verify has spoken to a number of economists. The overwhelming view is that while the tariffs might reduce the goods deficit between the US and individual countries, they will not reduce the overall deficit between the US and rest of the world.

“Yes, it will reduce bilateral trade deficits between the US and these countries. But there will obviously be lots of broader impacts that are not captured in the calculation”, says Professor Jonathan Portes of King’s College, London.

That’s because the US’ existing overall deficit is not driven solely by trade barriers, but by how the US economy works.

For one, Americans spend and invest more than they earn and that gap means the US buys more from the world than it sells. So as long as that continues, the US may continue to keep running a deficit despite increasing tariffs with it global trading partners.

Some trade deficits can also exist for a number of legitimate reasons – not just down to tariffs. For example, buying food that is easier or cheaper to produce in other countries’ climates.

Thomas Sampson of the London School of Economics said: “The formula is reverse engineered to rationalise charging tariffs on countries with which the US has a trade deficit. There is no economic rationale for doing this and it will cost the global economy dearly.”

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

The impact of these tariffs on the world economy will be huge.

They can be measured by the lines on a chart of US tariff revenue jumping to levels not seen in a century – beyond those seen during the high protectionism of the 1930s.

Or in the overnight stock market falls, especially in Asia.

But the true measure of these changes will be significant changes to long-standing global avenues of trade.

At its heart this is a universal tariff of 10% on nearly all imports into the US for every country, coming in on Friday night. On top of that dozens of “worst offenders” will be charged reciprocally for having trade surpluses.

The tariffs on Asian nations are truly remarkable. They will break the business models of thousands of companies, factories, and possibly entire nations.

Some of the supply chains created by the world’s biggest companies will be broken instantly. The inevitable impact will surely be to push them towards China.

Is this just a grand negotiation? Well the US administration appears to be claiming the tariff revenue for planned tax cuts. The scope for quick adjustment seems limited. As one White House official said bluntly: “This is not a negotiation, it’s a national emergency”.

The US’s formula for the so-called “reciprocal tariffs” basically just charges a country for having a goods trade surplus with the US, exporting more to America than it imports. Then even if there is no surplus it whacks up the charge at the universal baseline of 10%.

All this reveals two things. The aim of policy is to reduce the US trade deficit to zero. That is a remarkable rerouting of world trade flows and explains the specific punitive focus on Asia.

Secondly it is clearly the case that bilateral negotiations have not made much of a difference, or in fact any difference.

• Live updates: Reaction to Trump’s tariffs announcement
• At a glance: The countries hit hardest by these plans
• The full story: Trump charges high tariffs on ‘worst offenders’ globally
• Explainer: What are tariffs, and why is Trump using them?

Deficits and surpluses are a normal part of a functioning trade system where countries specialise in what they are the best at making. The US has now spectacularly ended that logic.

But shifting factories will take years. Tariffs at this scale on East Asia especially at 30 or 40% will hike prices of clothes, toys and electronics much more quickly.

The question now is how the rest of the world responds.

There are opportunities for some consumers in Europe to benefit from cheaper diverted trade in clothes and electronics. Outside of an inward-looking number one world economy, the rest of the big economies may choose to integrate trade more closely.

As Tesla’s slumping sales may illustrate, only part of this story is about the response of governments. These days consumers can retaliate too. It may be a new sort of social media trade war.

Europe could decide not to continue buying the consumer brands created in the US, and loved across the world.

The monopoly in the provision of social media services by big US tech could be shaken up.

And US authorities may need to raise interest rates to combat the inevitable spike in inflation.

A messy global trade war looks inevitable.

US President Donald Trump announced a sweeping new set of tariffs on Wednesday, arguing that they would allow the United States to economically flourish.

These new import taxes, which Trump imposed via executive order, are expected to send economic shockwaves around the world.

But the US president believes they are necessary to address trading imbalances and to protect American jobs and manufacturing.

Here are the basic elements of the plan.

• Live updates: Reaction to Trump’s tariffs announcement

In a background call before Trump’s speech, a senior White House official told reporters that the president would impose a “baseline” tariff on all imports to the US.

That rate is set at 10% and will go into effect on 5 April.

It is the companies that bring the foreign goods into the US that have to pay the tax to the government, although this could have knock-on effects to consumers.

Some countries will only face the base rate. These include:

• United Kingdom
• Singapore
• Brazil
• Australia
• New Zealand
• Turkey
• Colombia
• Argentina
• El Salvador
• United Arab Emirates
• Saudi Arabia

White House officials also said that they would impose what they describe as specific reciprocal tariffs on roughly 60 of the “worst offenders”.

These will go into effect on 9 April.

Trump’s officials say these countries charge higher tariffs on US goods, impose “non-tariff” barriers to US trade or have otherwise acted in ways they feel undermine American economic goals.

The key trading partners subject to these customised tariff rates include:

• European Union: 20%
• China: 54% (which includes earlier tariffs)
• Vietnam: 46%
• Thailand: 36%
• Japan: 24%
• Cambodia: 49%
• South Africa: 30%
• Taiwan: 32%

The 10% baseline rate does not apply to Canada and Mexico, since they have already been targeted during Trump’s presidency.

The White House said it would deal with both countries using a framework set out in Trump’s previous executive orders, which imposed tariffs on both countries as part of the administration’s efforts to address the entry of fentanyl to the US and border issues.

Trump previously set those tariffs at 25% on all goods entering from both countries, before announcing some exemptions and delays.

In addition, the president confirmed the beginning of a new American “25% tariff on all foreign made-automobiles”.

This tariff went into effect almost immediately, at midnight local time.

• Live updates: Reaction to Trump’s tariffs announcement
• At a glance: The countries hit hardest by these plans
• Watch: Three things to know about Trump’s plans
• BBC Verify: How were Donald Trump’s tariffs calculated?
• Global reaction: How five big economies see new Trump tariffs
• UK: What this means for you and your money
• Explainer: What are tariffs, and why is Trump using them?
• Analysis: Trump’s tariffs are his biggest gamble yet

This week saw a deadly earthquake rock Myanmar, a US senator speak for 25 hours straight, and Newcastle United fans celebrate their first domestic trophy for 70 years.

But how much attention did you pay to what else has been going on in the world over the past seven days?

In the mood for more? Try last week’s quiz, or have a go at something from the archives.

President Donald Trump has said a deal to sell TikTok will be made by 5 April, as questions swirl over whether the app will be banned in the United States.

The platform ‘went dark’ for US users in January as a law took effect which banned the app unless it was sold by its parent company ByteDance.

But TikTok returned less than a day later following Trump’s election win, and he signed an executive order delaying its sale or ban by 75 days.

Tech companies, celebrities and investors have since lined up to buy the app.

An executive order is an instruction from the president which has the weight of the law behind it.

Trump signed such an order regarding TikTok’s sale or ban on 21 January, shortly after his inauguration.

But the president’s order does not overturn the ban.

Instead it tells the US attorney general not to enforce the law for now – something experts had expected would be his first move.

That buys time for his administration to, as the order puts it, “determine the appropriate course of action”.

It allows the president to directly oppose a ruling by the Supreme Court upholding the law to ban TikTok on 17 January.

The Supreme Court’s ruling said the ban was “designed to prevent China – a designated foreign adversary – from leveraging its control over ByteDance to capture the personal data of US TikTok users”.

Trump’s extended deadline for TikTok’s sale or ban gives ByteDance until 5 April to find a buyer.

If no deal is reached the app could once again face a US ban and be pulled from mobile app stores.

However, Trump could allow the law to stand but tell the Department of Justice (DoJ) to continue to ignore it.

The government would be effectively telling Apple and Google they will not be punished for allowing people to download TikTok onto their devices – meaning the law would remain in place but would essentially be redundant.

TikTok returned to Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store in February, after the companies were reportedly told they would not face consequences for hosting it.

Trump has also said he would “probably” extend the deadline, if needed.

ByteDance has long insisted that TikTok is not for sale, and whether that has changed under Trump’s presidency remains unclear.

The president told reporters on 30 March there were “a lot of potential buyers” and “tremendous interest” in buying the app.

He said earlier in March his administration was talking to four different groups about a potential sale.

Trump appears to want to find a compromise that complies with the spirit rather than the letter of law.

He has also floated the idea of TikTok being jointly owned – telling reporters he was seeking a 50-50 partnership between “the United States” and ByteDance.

Meanwhile, several names have been floated as potential buyers of the company.

Trump said he would be open to selling TikTok to Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, as well as Elon Musk.

Previous names linked with buying TikTok include billionaire Frank McCourt and the Canadian businessman Kevin O’Leary – a celebrity investor on Shark Tank, the US version of Dragon’s Den.

Alexis Ohanian, who co-founded Reddit, said in a post on X in March he had joined Mr McCourt’s bid.

“The list of people who do not want to buy TikTok is much smaller than the list who do,” Mr Musk replied.

The biggest YouTuber in the world Jimmy Donaldson – AKA MrBeast – has also claimed he is in the running after a number of investors contacted him following an earlier tweet signalling his interest.

Companies including Microsoft are even among those involved in discussions to buy TikTok, according to Trump.

A US search engine called Perplexity AI has also reportedly offered to merge with TikTok.

The deadline may be only days away, but it has not stopped some firms from making last-minute bids to buy the app.

The New York Times reported on Wednesday that Amazon had expressed interest.

The company declined to comment when approached by BBC News.

OnlyFans founder Tim Stokely has also to offered to buy TikTok under his recently re-launched company, Zoop.

• Buyers circle and rumours swirl as TikTok sale deadline looms

TikTok says it has 170 million US users who spent – on average – 51 minutes per day on the app in 2024.

Experts say rivals such as Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts could benefit if Trump’s efforts to fully restore TikTok don’t succeed.

Users bring advertisers – so this could be a big financial boost to those platforms.

“Chief marketing officers who we’ve spoken with confirmed that they will divert their media dollars to Meta and Google if they can no longer advertise on TikTok,” said Kelsey Chickering, an analyst at market research company Forrester.

Other potential winners include Twitch, which made its name by hosting livestreams – a popular feature on TikTok. Twitch is well known particularly to gamers, though its other content is expanding too.

Other Chinese-owned platforms, such as Xiaohongshu – known as RedNote among its US users – have also seen rapid growth in the US and the UK.

After months of speculation, Nintendo has confirmed the successor to its wildly popular Switch console will be released on 5 June, when it will cost £395.99 to buy in the UK.

But it’s not so much the price of the Switch 2 but its games that have been raising eyebrows, with the new Mario Kart World that is being released alongside it coming in at a whopping £74.99 for a physical copy.

Fans will have to wait weeks before seeing what the new console and game are like – and whether they are worth that sort of money – but here’s what I found when Nintendo gave me a chance to try them both out.

When I first got my hands on the Switch 2, one thing became very clear to me – like the name suggests, Nintendo wants you to know this is a direct sequel to the Switch.

This isn’t like the jump from the Wii to the confusingly named Wii U, swapping motion controllers for a tablet that looked dated even back when the console released.

Instead, the Switch 2 looks and feels just like its predecessor, with buttons in the places you’d expect – and a much larger (and nicer) screen.

It’s fair to say Mario Kart World makes a fantastic first impression, thanks to the console having more power under the hood.

It looks spectacular compared to previous Switch titles, though we’re still talking about cartoony graphics – make no mistake, the console is more powerful but it’s no match for the higher spec PlayStation 5, let alone PS5 Pro.

And in my three races the standout feature wasn’t the swishy new graphics or the controller, it was a trick that is becoming Nintendo’s hallmark: making the new feel familiar.

Despite having never picked up a Switch 2, I stormed my way to consecutive first place finishes, much to the chagrin of those around me.

But it doesn’t come cheap.

The digital version of the game costs £66.99, it’s another £8 on top of that for a physical copy – or pay an an extra £35 for a version of the Switch 2 with it built-in, something which pushes the console price to £429.99.

According to industry expert Christopher Dring, these wallet-emptying prices are down to the costs involved in manufacturing – and President Donald Trump’s tariff blitz.

“These cartridges are exclusively made in Japan, which is a country that’s just been hit with a 24% tariff from the US Government, and the threat of those tariffs may have impacted Nintendo’s pricing decisions globally,” he said.

In the US, Mario Kart World will be priced at $79.99, with the console selling for $449.99 (or $499.99 with Mario Kart bundled in).

But there’s more to the Switch 2 than Mario Kart.

Fans will no doubt have been excited to see the hotly anticipated Metroid Prime 4, the first game in the series in 18 years.

But while they will be familiar with the typical way of playing – moving and aiming with joysticks and shooting with the “A” button – there’s a significant new feature too.

At any point in the game you can rotate the controller, put it on a surface and use it like a mouse. Fans of PC games will immediately feel at home with this, and it’s a neat bit of engineering to be able to switch up on-the-fly without having to enter any menus.

The optical mouse controls pop up elsewhere too, with PC strategy game Civilization VII a game that massively benefits.

But in both cases, I do wonder how long you can play with the controller like this before the ergonomics become an issue. I have to admit I found myself wondering why I wasn’t just playing on my PC with mouse controls and a comfortable resting position.

Still, the fact that this is built in to the hardware means we may see the Switch 2 as the obvious home of future PC ports to home consoles.

And there is another trick up Nintendo’s sleeve – both controllers can be held like this and used as mice, opening up some interesting possibilities. In particular, futuristic wheelchair basketball game Drag x Drive, where both “mice” are pushed to mimic moving wheels.

Elsewhere, Donkey Kong Bananza will be the first time the ape mascot has had a 3D platforming game of his own in 25 years, so there was some pressure on Nintendo to deliver a game which justified the wait.

For lack of a better term it’s a destruct-em-up – you can destroy much of the floor and scenery in each level.

But there’s that dreaded price news again. A digital copy will cost £58.99, while a physical copy retails at £66.99.

It seems Nintendo has a lot to offer Switch fans – but it will be taking a fair bit from them too.

Some other titles I got to see in action were updated versions of Cyberpunk 2077 and Yakuza 0 – both of which big hitters on rival consoles which were deemed too complex to run on the original Switch.

Like the other Switch 2 games, they looked good – and of course they will benefit as the new console, like the original, can play games on the go.

The original Switch created the genre of the hybrid console – one which works on a TV and as a portable system.

But since that launch in 2017, things have changed a bit.

Now, it has a rival in the Steam Deck, a hybrid machine with the power to play most PC games.

Nintendo would say something its rivals don’t have is that long list of exclusive titles.

But there is a bit of a theme here: Nintendo has consciously gone for continuity.

The console is the Switch 2, rather than having a completely new name. Many of those exclusives Nintendo is so proud of are new games in established series, while others are remasters of modern classics.

I had great experiences with these games in the 20 minutes I had with them.

But for fans to get value for those high prices they will want something that holds up over weeks and months of gameplay.

Will the Switch 2’s slick nostalgia hit provide that? We’ll start to find out in June.

South Africa’s coalition government is on shaky ground, with the sharp divisions between its two biggest parties – the African National Congress (ANC) and Democratic Alliance (DA) – exposed in a crucial vote on the national budget.

The centre-right DA voted against the fiscal framework – a key part of the budget – after rejecting an increase in VAT, and demanding a cut in spending across all government departments.

The ANC, which positions itself as a centre-left party, refused to bow to what it called the DA’s demand for an “austerity budget”.

It demonstrated its political acumen by winning the support of a slew of smaller parties – both inside and outside government – to get the fiscal framework through parliament by 194 votes to 182.

The DA filed papers in court to challenge the vote, saying it was “procedurally flawed” while its top leadership is due to meet later to decide whether or not to remain in what South Africans call a government of national unity (GNU).

Professor William Gumede, an academic at Wits University’s school of governance in Johannesburg, told the BBC it was unclear whether the DA would quit the government at this stage.

“It will be asking itself whether this is the tipping-point or whether it should wait – at least until the outcome of the court case,” Prof Gumede said.

The coalition government was formed less than a year ago after the ANC lost its parliamentary majority in elections for the first time since Nelson Mandela led it to power in 1994 at the end of white-minority rule.

South Africa’s business sector lobbied the two parties to enter into a coalition, seeing it as the best option to guarantee economic stability.

But hinting that the DA’s participation was no longer certain, DA spokesman Willie Aucamp accused the ANC of a “serious infraction” and said the party had “crossed a line in the sand”.

DA federal chair Helen Zille said the party would consider all its options, and not rush into a decision.

“We know that being in a coalition requires compromise. You can’t get it all. But the ANC also can’t get it all, and they are refusing, point blank, to share power,” Zille added.

The ANC took an equally tough stand, with its parliamentary chief whip, Mdumiseni Ntuli, accusing the DA of “complete betrayal” by breaking ranks with its partners in the GNU.

“The DA is a member, or was a member,” Ntuli said.

“I don’t know what is going to happen with them now, but the GNU remains,” he added, referring to the fact that other parties in the 10-member coalition remain committed to it.

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s spokesman Vincent Magwenya also threw down the gauntlet to the DA, saying: “You can’t be part of a government whose budget you opposed.”

The DA found itself voting alongside South Africa’s two biggest, and most populist, opposition parties – former President Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party and Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF).

Advocating the nationalisation of key sectors of the economy, these two parties are the implacable foes of the pro-business DA.

But the three parties were united in opposing a VAT increase, believing it would hit the poor hard.

As DA leader John Steenhuisen put it: “The ANC is out of touch with the people, and if they bought their own groceries or filled their own tanks, they would know how expensive life already is.”

But the ANC argued that a VAT increase – set at 0.5% this year and a further 0.5% next year – was necessary to raise revenue, and to offer public services such as health and education.

Crucially, the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) voted with the ANC, signalling the end of the alliance it formed with the DA in the build-up to the election in a failed bid to keep Ramaphosa’s party out of power.

ActionSA – a small opposition party which broke away from the DA – helped the ANC clinch the vote.

It said it had reached a deal with the ANC that would see the VAT increase scrapped, while alternative ways of raising revenue for the government are explored.

“Yesterday’s [Wednesday’s] adoption of the report on the fiscal framework was merely one step in a multi-stage budgeting process before the final budget is approved,” ActionSA said in a statement.

Prof Gumede said the ANC would find it difficult to convince the public to pay more taxes when public services were crumbling.

“The optics don’t look good for the ANC,” he told the BBC.

“The DA has taken the budget as an opportunity to make a big impact, and to show it is pro-poor.”

The dispute over the budget is the latest sign of the sharp differences between the two parties, with the DA also challenging in the courts three other pieces of legislation – including the land expropriation act.

This law was one of the issues that led to US President Donald Trump’s administration cutting aid to South Africa.

The Trump administration has now imposed tariffs of 30% on all South African imports, in a move that is likely to be a huge blow to its already floundering economy.

“They have got some bad things going on in South Africa. You know, we are paying them billions of dollars, and we cut the funding because a lot of bad things are happening in South Africa,” the US president said, before going on to name other countries.

In a statement, Ramaphosa’s office condemned the new tariffs as “punitive”, saying they could “serve as a barrier to trade and shared prosperity”.

But for many South Africans, the tariffs signal the need for the two biggest parties to resolve their differences and work together – or risk seeing the nation sink into a deeper economic crisis at a time when the unemployment rate is already at more than 30%.

• What big business wants for South Africa’s future
• South Africans still battling ‘economic apartheid’ 30 years on
• Race policies or Israel – what’s really driving Trump’s fury with South Africa?

Cosmetics company Lush and car repair chain Kwik Fit are among firms which have warned they will raise prices due an increase in employers’ National Insurance (NI).

Other firms have told the BBC they will reduce how much profit they make, freeze hiring or in some cases cut jobs to cover the higher costs.

From Sunday, employers will have to pay NI at 15% on salaries above £5,000, instead of 13.8% on salaries above £9,100 currently.

The Treasury said the billions raised will be spent on public services, including the NHS.

Lush told the BBC that with 3,600 employees in the UK and Ireland, it would have to find an extra £2.7m per year.

Kasey Swithenbank, Lush’s retail head for the UK and Ireland, said: “We are going to be taking small incremental price changes. We are taking an approach where we look at certain categories at key points of the year so hopefully our customers don’t feel the full burden straight away.”

Kwik Fit, which employs around 7,000 people, estimates the NICs rises will cost it £6.4m.

This will have a knock-on effect on prices, and recruitment, said Mark Slade, its managing director.

“We are really careful to make sure KwikFit is always competitive and benchmarked against the people around us – but the reality is that includes increasing prices.”

He added: “There will be some people who aren’t replaced over the coming year and that will be in the senior levels.”

• The rate that employers pay in contributions will rise from 13.8% to 15% on a worker’s earnings above £175 per week. The government expects about 940,000 firms to pay more, 250,000 companies to pay less, and 820,000 to see no change.
• The threshold when employers start paying the tax on each employee’s salary will be reduced from £9,100 per year to £5,000.
• But Employers Allowance – the amount employers can claim back from their National Insurance bill – has been raised from £5,000 to £10,500.

BBC Breakfast contacted around 200 UK businesses and charities in March, across different industries, from sole traders to large companies to get a sense of the impact of the increase in employer National Insurance Contributions.

Some 121 completed the questionnaire and around 100 of these businesses told us they had at least an approximate idea of how much increases in employer NICSs would cost them.

The costs ranged from £1,000 to £39m depending the size of the business and the number of employees.

Around 60 of the businesses which were planning to increase the staff count before announcement said the Budget had affected these plans.

BBC Breakfast’s questionnaire asked employers to choose from a list of actions they would take to manage increases in NICs.

• 77 said they would pass on costs to customers in price rises

• 68 said they would freeze or reduce hiring

• 81 said they would reduce their profit margins

• 39 said they would manage increases through job losses

Businesses most frequently told us they would choose a combination of these things.

Allison Kirkby, chief executive of BT, said the tax changes, which will cost the firm £100m, will mean it speeds up job cuts it was already planning.

She added that BT is “delighted” with tax relief on infrastructure investment in the Spring Statement and UK planning reforms.

“At the moment, like the country, we are focused on getting BT back to growth,” she said.

“Predictability on taxation, on regulation and on planning is super helpful for the investment that goes into infrastructure like ours, which is the digital backbone of the country.”

Angela Burns is the chief executive of the Webb Hotel Group, a group of four hotels based in Sutton Coldfield in the West Midlands.

It employs just under 300 people, and she says the NICs rises alone will cost £200,000 a year, with additional minimum wage and pension costs taking that to £600,000.

“It’s really tough because our labour force is the main expense in our business,” she said.

“As soon as it was announced in the budget in October, we started to look at restructuring, and as people have left, we haven’t re employed. So we’ve actually cut our workforce down from about 320 to about 280 now to prepare ourselves.”

She said prices would have to be moved “slightly upwards”.

“But it’s a balancing act as to what customers are prepared to pay,” she added.

Greg Strickland, general manager of trampoline activity firm Jump Xtreme in Bolton, said the changes added £30,000 of costs “overnight”.

He said it had cut 16 hours per week off some 40-hour contracts to cover the cost.

Meanwhile Andrew Lane, managing director of Union Industries in Leeds said the firm, which makes industrial doors, shares about half its post-tax profit with employees.

“This is going to hit them,” he said. “There will be less money to distribute to our employee-owners.”

The government has predicted the changes will raise between £14.6bn and £18.3bn a year over five years when compensation for public sector employers is taken into account.

A Treasury spokesperson told the BBC the government was “pro-business” and that it knew the “vital importance of small businesses to our economy”.

They said October’s budget “took difficult decisions on tax to stabilise the public finances, including the NHS which has now seen waiting lists fall five months in a row”.

They added: “We are now focused on creating opportunities for businesses to compete and access the finance they need to scale, export and break into new markets.”

A protest march has been held in Zambia’s capital, Lusaka, against a recent spate of reports of men raping children.

Over the last two months, Zambians have been shocked by several cases of child rape, some of which resulted in death.

Among the most horrific reports was that of a father allegedly raping his seven-year-old daughter while she was admitted to hospital for cancer treatment.

There have also been reports of a five-year-old allegedly being raped by a gang of four men, while another father was jailed for raping and infecting his six-year-old with genital warts, a sexually transmitted infection.

Zambia’s Justice Minister Princess Kasune-Zulu has called for the castration of child rapists as an extreme measure to deter perpetrators and protect children from abuse.

“How low can we go as a nation? How low can we go as a society? What is happening is sickening. It is beyond laws now – it is up to us as Zambians to interrogate why our morals have decayed,” she recently told parliament.

Following the reports, civil society organisations, musicians, and individuals held a protest march on Thursday, calling for the government to amend the law to introduce tougher punishments for child rapists.

In a petition handed to Vice-President Mutale Nalumango, they demanded the law be changed so that those accused of child rape are not granted bail.

In response, Nalumango said the issue concerns everyone and that Zambians must take a stand.

A musician who took part in the protest march told the BBC that “we need to create a safe environment for our children”.

Daputsa Nkhata-Zulu, also known as Sista D, added that child rapists should be castrated “for the safety of children and also to deprive them of the pride of manhood because they don’t deserve it.”

In just the last three months of 2024, Zambia recorded more than 10,000 cases of gender-based violence (GBV) involving children, according to the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation. These were mostly in the capital, Lusaka.

More than 32,000 people received counselling for GBV last year, according to the Zambia Police 2024 annual GBV data analysis.

• One-year-olds among those raped during Sudan civil war, UN says
• Sierra Leone sexual violence: What difference did the national emergency make?
• Kenya femicide: Why men fail to condemn deadly misogyny

Bruce Springsteen is throwing open his archives to let fans hear seven completed, but never-before-released, albums.

The recordings, which date from 1983 to 2018, will “fill in rich chapters of Springsteen’s expansive career timeline – while offering invaluable insight into his life and work as an artist,” said Sony Music.

Among them are working tapes from the sessions that led to rock classic Born In The USA, and an album that experimented with drum loops and synthesisers from the early 1990s.

“I’ve played this music to myself and often close friends for years now,” Springsteen said in a statement. “I’m glad you’ll get a chance to finally hear them. I hope you enjoy them.”

The music will be revealed on a box set of seven CDs (or nine vinyl discs), titled Tracks II: The Lost Albums.

The scale of the release is quite different from its predecessor, Tracks, whose four discs collected random off-cuts and b-sides from the first 25 years of Springsteen’s career.

According to a press release, Tracks II will feature 83 songs, of which 74 have never been officially released in any form.

Many of the tracks, including Fugitive’s Dream and Don’t Back Down on Our Love, have circulated on bootlegs for years, but will finally be heard in studio quality.

Springsteen said the release had been made possible when the Covid-19 pandemic allowed him to “finish everything I had in my vault”.

Fans have known for years that Springsteen’s vault contains hours and hours of unheard material.

Speaking to Variety magazine in 2017, the star admitted: “We’ve made many more records than we released. Why didn’t we release those records? I didn’t think they were essential.

“I might have thought they were good, I might have had fun making them… but over my entire work life, I felt like I released what was essential at a certain moment, and what I got in return was a very sharp definition of who I was, what I want to do, what I was singing about.

“And I still basically judge what I’m doing by the same set of rules.”

In a video trailer for Tracks II, Springsteen added: “I often read about myself in the ’90s as having some lost period or something.

“And I really, really was working the whole time.”

Fans will finally get to hear those “lost” songs in June.

Springsteen said they would offer a glimpse into the home recordings he made after the commercial success of Born To Run and Born In The USA freed him from the pressure of using commercial recording studios.

“The ability to record at home whenever I wanted allowed me to go into a wide variety of different musical directions,” he said in a statement.

That includes the “sonic experimeentation” of Faithless, a film soundtrack to a movie that never got made.

Other unreleased albums include the country-leaning Somewhere North of Nashville, cut in May 1995; and Twilight Hours, an orchestrated pop album that was written and recorded in the same period as 2018’s Western Stars.

There are also the “richly-woven border tales” of Inyo, whose song titles – including The Aztec Dance and Ciudad Juarez – suggest a Latin American influence.

Springsteen described the last disc, Perfect World, as “the one thing on this that wasn’t initially conceived as an album”, instead highlighting several songs he wrote with longtime collaborator Joe Grushecky in the 1990s and early 2000s.

As a first taste of the collection, he released Rain In The River, from Perfect World, whose muscular drums and squalling feedback showcase the raw power of his regular backing band E Street Band.

The announcement comes a month before Springsteen kicks off his European tour, with dates in Manchester, Liverpool, Marseille, Berlin and Prague, amongst others.

The 75-year-old recently vowed to keep playing live “until the wheels come off”, but said he had scaled back his tours after his wife, Patti Scialfa, was diagnosed with myeloma, a rare blood cancer.

US President Donald Trump has said he will get rid of any staff deemed to be disloyal, as it emerged at least three officials at the White House National Security Council had been fired.

“We’re always going to let go of people – people we don’t like or people that take advantage of, or people that may have loyalties to someone else,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One, without confirming names.

It is not clear why the employees were removed, but the decision followed a meeting between Trump and far-right activist Laura Loomer on Wednesday.

Ms Loomer reportedly urged Trump to fire specific employees whom she suspected of lacking support for the president’s agenda. More firings are expected.

The White House told the BBC that the National Security Council “won’t comment on personnel” matters.

Those fired from the NSC on Thursday include Brian Walsh, a director for intelligence; Thomas Boodry, a senior director for legislative affairs; and David Feith, a senior director overseeing technology and national security, reports the BBC’s US partner CBS.

The firings follow a major controversy involving the National Security Council last month when senior officials inadvertently added a journalist to a Signal messaging thread about military strikes in Yemen.

The extent to which that controversy played a role in the firings is unclear.

Trump has so far stood by top officials involved in the incident, including National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, who took responsibility for the Atlantic magazine reporter being added to the Signal chat, and said it was an accident.

According to CBS, a source familiar with the situation said the Signal incident “opened the door” to looking into staff members believed not to be sufficiently aligned with Trump, while Ms Loomer’s visit sealed the fate for those who were terminated.

The administration has been looking at outside meetings held by national security staff, reprimanding some for meeting people not believed to be aligned with the president, according to the source.

Aboard Air Force One en route to Miami, Florida, on Thursday, Trump praised Ms Loomer and confirmed he had met with her, calling her a “great patriot” and a “very strong person”.

“She makes recommendations… sometimes I listen to those recommendations,” he said. “I listen to everybody and then I make a decision.”

In a phone call with the BBC, Ms Loomer said it would be “inappropriate” to divulge details of her meeting with Trump on Wednesday.

“It was a confidential meeting,” she said. “It’s a shame that there are still leakers at the White House who leaked this information.”

She texted a statement that said: “It was an honor to meet with President Trump and present him with my research findings.

“I will continue working hard to support his agenda, and I will continue reiterating the importance of STRONG VETTING, for the sake of protecting the President of the United States of America and our national security.”

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, who posted information in the chat, is now the subject of an internal review into his use of Signal and whether he complied with his department’s policies, the Pentagon’s office of the acting inspector general said on Thursday.

Inspector general offices routinely conduct independent investigations and audits of federal agencies, and look into possible security breaches.

Upon returning to the White House in January, Trump removed many of the government’s inspectors general and has installed acting heads of the watchdogs at the defence, commerce, labour and health departments.

The Duke of Sussex says he hopes the Charity Commission will “unveil the truth” as the watchdog announced an investigation into the bitter dispute surrounding the Sentebale charity he co-founded.

“What has transpired over the last week has been heartbreaking to witness, especially when such blatant lies hurt those who have invested decades in this shared goal,” said Prince Harry.

The watchdog said it had opened a case to examine “concerns raised” about Sentebale, following claims made by its head Sophie Chandauka.

Ms Chandauka told the BBC she welcomed the move by the commission, which comes after she said she had “blown the whistle” on issues including bullying and harassment.

An acrimonious boardroom battle led to Prince Harry, his co-founder Prince Seeiso of Lesotho and trustees resigning from their roles last week, after Ms Chandauka had resisted attempts to remove her as chair.

The duke, speaking on behalf of the former trustees and patrons, welcomed the watchdog’s announcement, saying it would be a “robust inquiry” which “we fully expect will unveil the truth that collectively forced us to resign”.

“We remain hopeful this will allow for the charity to be put in the right hands immediately, for the sake of the communities we serve,” said the prince.

“From the inception of Sentebale nearly 20 years ago, Prince Seeiso and I have had a clear goal – to support the children and young people in southern Africa in memory of our mothers,” his statement added.

The Charity Commission’s “regulatory compliance case” is the first step in assessing the complaints and allegations over what has happened at Sentebale, which was founded in 2006 to help children in southern Africa affected by HIV and Aids.

A statement from the watchdog said it was “in direct contact with parties who have raised concerns” and would gather evidence to see whether those running the charity, past and present, had complied with their “duties and responsibilities under charity law”.

Ms Chandauka previously said she had reported the trustees to the Charity Commission, and made a whistleblower complaint about issues including what she described as an abuse of power, bullying, sexism and racism.

On Thursday, Ms Chandauka said in a statement that the concerns brought to the commission included “governance, administration and management matters”.

The Sentebale head said she hoped the public and donors would now see there was a new board of trustees “acting appropriately to demonstrate and ensure good governance and a healthy culture”.

Insiders have claimed personality clashes and tensions around leadership had added to Sentebale’s challenges – and the watchdog is likely to hear financial concerns from some of those formerly involved with running the charity.

“It is devastating that the relationship between the charity’s trustees and the chair of the board broke down beyond repair, creating an untenable situation,” those trustees leaving the charity said a statement.

Among the likely claims are that £500,000 of Sentebale’s money was spent on consultants in a strategy to get donations from wealthy individuals and foundations in the US, but which sources close to the former trustees say had not delivered adequate results.

The financial fears come despite the charity receiving an extra £1.2m from Prince Harry’s earnings from his best-selling memoir Spare.

A Sentebale spokeswoman rejected the claim that £500,000 had been spent on US consultants – and defended its approach to seeking new funds for the charity. Sources also claim Ms Chandauka had raised funding to cover the cost of the consultants and that her own family had become significant donors to the charity.

Sentebale told the BBC it had hired a US firm called Lebec to help build a new fundraising strategy, and that by October 2024 a team of six consultants had set up 65 key relationships with potential donors, who might help Sentebale in the future.

It said the 12-month deal with Lebec, a women-led strategy firm, had successfully delivered links to “high-net-worth individuals, family offices, corporations, foundations and partner non-profits”.

“Lebec provided the positioning strategy, the tools, and the insights to enter the US market successfully and with credibility,” a spokeswoman for Sentebale said.

The one-off donation from Prince Harry from his Spare book was “incredibly useful” but did not represent a long-term “funding pipeline”, said Sentebale.

The dispute has become increasingly personal.

Ms Chandauka has argued the controversy around Prince Harry leaving the UK had become a barrier to potential donors.

She previously said the “toxicity” of his brand was the “number one risk for this organisation”.

Ms Chandauka also spoke about a dispute over a video at a fundraising polo match, where it had been claimed Meghan was manoeuvring her out of the way during a prize-giving ceremony.

“Prince Harry asked me to issue some sort of a statement in support of the duchess and I said I wouldn’t,” said Ms Chandauka.

Sources close to Prince Harry and Meghan have rejected suggestions there was any conflict or anything negative about how the prize line-up was organised, saying it had been misrepresented.

They say the full video with sound shows Meghan politely helping the group get ready for the photo by asking: “Do you want to come over here?”.

Ms Chandauka says she and her leadership team are focusing on the day-to-day operations of the charity, and looking forward to working with their supporters as “we recalibrate for an ambitious future”.

Tate Modern has announced it has received a major gift from a couple of art collectors in the form of a painting by the US modern artist Joan Mitchell.

It was unveiled on Thursday as one of a group of works being donated by the Miami-based philanthropists, Jorge M and Darlene Pérez.

The six-metre-long triptych, entitled Iva 1973, can now be viewed for free at the London gallery next to Mark Rothko’s Seagram Murals.

Tate director Maria Balshaw said the gift was “one of the most important” it has received, describing the donation as “transformational”.

“To place such a significant and valuable work in public hands is an act of incredible generosity,” said Balshaw.

“It is also an endorsement of Tate’s ability to share our collection with the broadest possible audience,” she added. “And to care for that collection for future generations.”

Mitchell, who would’ve been 100 this year, was one of the most celebrated artists of the abstract expressionist movement.

Arts Minister, Sir Chris Bryant said the “spectacular donation” of Mitchell’s “masterpiece”, which was originally dedicated to her dog, shows “the amazing difference one person’s generosity can make”.

“I’m very grateful for this donation and for the work that went into making it possible,” he said.

“We are committed to ensuring art is for everyone, everywhere and the generosity of the Pérez family ensures that great art remains accessible to all, whilst also enriching our national collection.”

Argentine-American businessman Mr Pérez is best known as the chairman and CEO of The Related Group, a Miami-based real estate company.

He has given or pledged over $100m (£76m) to Miami’s public art museum, which was renamed the Pérez Art Museum Miami in his honour in 2013.

He also founded a not-for-profit contemporary art space in Miami called El Espacio 23.

Mr Pérez told BBC News: “We’ve been talking to the Tate for a long time, we’re great admirers of the Tate.

“Our hope is always that our art is seen by the highest number of people. The Tate has huge viewership, millions and millions of people coming in.”

He added the work suited being displayed next to other famous artists. “This painting, when you see it next to the Rothko’s, really resounds,” he said, “and it’ll be there forever.

“So when you talk about legacy, we like to think that our names will not be forgotten, and that they will live, not only with the British audience, but also with the international audience that comes to the Tate.

“We hope it fills a gap in the collection that is very important and maybe the most important art movement in America. It’s found its home, we’re very pleased with it here.”

Mrs Pérez noted female artists “play a significant role in shaping the cultural landscape” and that is was therefore “pivotal that we support and celebrate their contributions.”

“We’ve long admired Joan Mitchell’s work and are thrilled to share Iva with the world through Tate Modern.”

Their gift also includes a multimillion-dollar endowment to support Tate’s curatorial research.

Also, a range of works and photographs by artists from across Africa and the African diaspora – including by Yinka Shonibare, El Anatsui and Malick Sidibé – will make their way from the Pérezes to Tate’s collection over the coming years.

Huge meat-eating dinosaurs and their plant-eating prey shared the same watering holes on Skye 167 million years ago, say scientists.

University of Edinburgh researchers examined dozens of dinosaur footprints at Prince Charles’s Point on the island’s Trotternish Peninsula.

The dinosaurs included carnivorous megalosaurs – ancestors of Tyrannosaurus rex – and long necked herbivores that were up to three times bigger in size than an elephant.

The scientists analysed the footprints to understand how the animals had moved, and suggested the different dinosaurs had “milled around” shallow freshwater lagoons.

The researchers said the behaviour from the Middle Jurassic was similar to how animals congregated around watering holes today.

More than 130 footprints have been found so far at Prince Charles’s Point, on Skye’s north coast.

The area is named after Bonnie Prince Charlie who had sought shelter on the peninsula while fleeing British government troops after the Battle of Culloden in 1746.

The scientists said the footprints suggested meat-eating theropods and plant-eating sauropods habitually spent time in lagoons.

They said subsequent discoveries had made the area one of the most extensive dinosaur track sites in Scotland.

The Edinburgh research team’s Tone Blakesley said the footprints provided a “fascinating insight” into dinosaur behaviour.

Palaeontologist Steve Brusatte added: “Prince Charles’s Point is a place where Scottish history and prehistory blend together.

“It’s astounding to think that when Bonnie Prince Charlie was running for his life, he might have been sprinting in the footsteps of dinosaurs.”

The first three footprints at Prince Charles’s Point were discovered five years ago by a University of Edinburgh student and colleagues.

Important fossil discoveries have been made on Skye over the last 40 years.

They include a pony-sized dinosaur that lived 166 million years ago, and adult and juvenile mammals of the shrew-like Krusatodon.

The island also saw the discovery of the largest Jurassic pterosaur fossil, Dearc sgiathanach – a 170-million-year-old winged reptile.

A Libyan writer and politician who published documents linking his country’s intelligence service to the Lockerbie bombing has been arrested on national security charges.

Samir Shegwara was taken into custody two days after the BBC reported that the files could form evidence against a Libyan who has been accused of making the bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103.

The suspect, Abu Agila Masud Kheir Al-Marimi, is facing trial in Washington and has denied being involved in the attack that killed 270 people in December 1988.

The documents also implicate Libyan agents in the destruction of a French airliner that crashed in the Sahara desert in 1989, killing another 170 people.

Mr Shegwara said that they were retrieved from the archives of Libya’s former intelligence chief Abdullah Senussi after the collapse of Colonel Gaddafi’s regime in 2011.

Their contents were published in France in January this year, in the book The Murderer Who Must Be Saved, co-authored by Mr Shegwara and French investigative journalists Karl Laske and Vincent Nouzille.

The book’s publishers said Mr Shegwara is facing legal proceedings over the “alleged possession of classified security documents, without legal justification.”

The BBC reported on 18 March that Scottish detectives were examining copies of the files, which could represent the first proof from inside Libya’s intelligence agency that it was responsible for the Lockerbie bombing.

Mr Shegwara, who is also mayor of Hay al Andalous, a municipality in Tripoli, was arrested at his office by police on 20 March.

He has been writing publicly about the documents since 2018 and has made no secret of the fact that they were in his possession.

His arrest would appear to support his belief, shared by the French journalists, that the documents are genuine.

Robert Laffont Publishing says the authenticity of the documents cannot be questioned and they contain information of “major public and historical interest” to Libya, France, Scotland and the United States.

In a statement, the company said it “deplores the prosecution of Samir Shegware as well as the pressure that seems to be exerted on him to retract his denunciation of the crimes committed by the former regime of Muammar Gaddafi.

“As such, Robert Laffont Publishing joins with Karl Laske and Vincent Nouzille in calling on the Libyan authorities to drop the charges against him.”

The firm said Mr Shegwara was provisionally released on 1 April but remains under threat of reincarceration and a trial in the coming days.

A retired FBI special agent who led the agency’s original investigation into the Lockerbie disaster has described the dossier as potential “dynamite.”

One of the most significant documents appears to give an account of tests carried out on bombs hidden in suitcases, just weeks before the attack on Pan Am Flight 103.

The bomb which destroyed the plane was concealed inside a radio cassette player in a suitcase in the forward hold.

A copy of one of the Libyan files seen by the BBC records its subject matter as: “Experiments on the use of the suitcase and testing its effectiveness.”

The handwritten report is labelled “top secret” and dated 4 October 1988, with the sender given as the Information and Strategic Studies Centre in Tripoli, headed at the time by Abdelbasset Al-Megrahi, who was convicted over the Lockerbie bombing by a Scottish court in 2001.

The document says the tests were successful, with a “powerful and effective” explosion from a device which could not be detected by an X-ray scanner.

The report says an agent called Aboujila Kheir – assumed to be Abu Agila Masud Kheir Al-Marimi – was involved in the tests.

Another appears to detail the transfer of 10kg of explosives to an office in Malta, staffed by Al Amin Khalifah Fhimah, the Libyan who was cleared at the first Lockerbie trial.

Other documents are alleged to involve the “expenses” of agents who travelled to Malta shortly days before the attack on Pan Am 103.

The verdict from the Scottish court was that the bomb was smuggled onto a plane at Malta and then routed through the baggage system to Frankfurt and Heathrow, where it was loaded onto the American airliner.

The documents are also said to implicate Abdullah Senussi in the planning of the attacks on Pan Am 103 and the French plane, UTA Flight 772.

Colonel Gaddafi’s brother-in-law, Senussi was convicted of bombing UTA 772 after a trial held in his absence in 1999, although he was never served any of the life sentence imposed by the Paris court.

He was named as a suspect over Lockerbie by Scottish and American prosecutors in 2015.

Senussi is facing trial in Libya over his actions during the uprising against Gaddafi 14 years ago.

Police Scotland and Scotland’s prosecution service, the Crown Office, have declined to comment on Mr Shegwara’s arrest.

Former Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill, who freed Megrahi on compassionate grounds in 2009, believes Mr Shegwara’s arrest suggests the documents are authentic.

“I find it hard to imagine that they would have pressurised him otherwise,” he said.

“Hopefully that will change because I believe the man has done the world a service and done the pursuit of justice a service.”

Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died on the plane, said: “Anything that contributes to the knowledge of the truth about how this atrocity was carried out would be more than welcome.

“That would include these documents, if they can be proved to be genuine.”

Global stocks have sunk, a day after President Donald Trump announced sweeping new tariffs that are forecast to raise prices and weigh on growth in the US and abroad.

Stock markets in the Asia-Pacific region fell for a second day, hot on the heels of the US S&P 500, which had its worst day since Covid crashed the economy in 2020.

Nike, Apple and Target were among big consumer names worst hit, all of them sinking by more than 9%.

At the White House, Trump told reporters the US economy would “boom” thanks to the minimum 10% tariff he plans to slap on global imports in the hope of boosting federal revenues and bringing American manufacturing home.

The Republican president plans to hit products from dozens of other countries with far higher levies, including trade partners such as China and the European Union.

China, which is facing an aggregate 54% tariff, and the EU, which faces duties of 20%, both vowed retaliation on Thursday.

French President Emmanuel Macron called for European firms to suspend planned investment in the US.

Tariffs are taxes on goods imported from other countries, and Trump’s plan that he announced on Wednesday would hike such duties to some of the highest levels in more than 100 years.

The World Trade Organization said it was “deeply concerned”, estimating trade volumes could shrink as a result by 1% this year.

Traders expressed concern that the tariffs could stoke inflation and stall growth.

In early trading on Friday, Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index fell by 1.8%, the Kospi in South Korea was around 1% lower and Australia’s ASX 200 dipped by 1.4%.

On Thursday, the S&P 500 – which tracks 500 of the biggest American firms – plunged 4.8%, shedding roughly $2tn in value.

The Dow Jones closed about 4% lower, while the Nasdaq tumbled roughly 6%. The US shares sell-off has been going on since mid-February amid trade war fears.

Earlier, the UK’s FTSE 100 share index dropped 1.5% and other European markets also fell, echoing declines from Japan to Hong Kong.

On Thursday at the White House, Trump doubled down on a high-stakes gambit aimed at reversing decades of US-led liberalisation that shaped the global trade order.

“I think it’s going very well,” he said. “It was an operation like when a patient gets operated on, and it’s a big thing. I said this would exactly be the way it is.”

He added: “The markets are going to boom. The stock is going to boom. The country is going to boom.”

Contradicting White House aides who insisted the new tariffs were not a negotiating tactic, Trump signalled he might be open to a deal with trade partners “if somebody said we’re going to give you something that’s so phenomenal”.

On Thursday, Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney said that country would retaliate with a 25% levy on vehicles imported from the US.

Trump last month imposed tariffs of 25% on Canada and Mexico, though he did not announce any new duties on Wednesday against the North American trade partners.

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• Voter reaction: ‘So crazy’ or a ‘necessary evil’?
• Analysis: How will EU respond to Donald Trump’s tariffs?
• Your questions: What next for products like the iPhone?

Firms now face a choice of swallowing the tariff cost, working with partners to share that burden, or passing it on to consumers – and risking a drop in sales.

That could have a major impact as US consumer spending amounts to about 10% – 15% of the world economy, according to some estimates.

While stocks fell on Thursday, the price of gold, which is seen as a safer asset in times of turbulence, touched a record high of $3,167.57 an ounce at one point on Thursday, before falling back.

The dollar also weakened against many other currencies.

In Europe, the tariffs could drag down growth by nearly a percentage point, with a further hit if the bloc retaliates, according to analysts at Principal Asset Management.

In the US, a recession is likely to materialise without other changes, such as big tax cuts, which Trump has also promised, warned Seema Shah, chief global strategist at the firm.

She said Trump’s goals of boosting manufacturing would be a years-long process “if it happens at all”.

“In the meantime, the steep tariffs on imports are likely to be an immediate drag on the economy, with limited short-term benefit,” she said.

On Thursday, Stellantis, which makes Jeep, Fiat and other brands, said it was temporarily halting production at a factory in Toluca, Mexico and Windsor, Canada.

It said the move, a response to Trump’s 25% tax on car imports, would also lead to temporary layoffs of 900 people at five plants in the US that supply those factories.

On the stock market, Nike, which makes much of its sportswear in Asia, was among the hardest hit on the S&P, with shares down 14%.

Shares in Apple, which relies heavily on China and Taiwan, tumbled 9%.

Other retailers also fell, with Target down roughly 10%.

Motorbike maker Harley-Davidson – which was subject of retaliatory tariffs by the EU during Trump’s first term as president – fell 10%.

In Europe, shares in sportswear firm Adidas fell more than 10%, while stocks in rival Puma tumbled more than 9%.

Among luxury goods firms, jewellery maker Pandora fell more than 10%, and LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy) dropped more than 3% after tariffs were imposed on the European Union and Switzerland.

“You’re seeing retailers get destroyed right now because tariffs extended to countries we did not expect,” said Jay Woods, chief global strategy at Freedom Capital Markets, adding that he expected more turbulence ahead.

Social media influencers pose a “new and increasing threat” for uncontacted indigenous people, a charity has warned after the arrest of a US tourist who travelled to a restricted Indian Ocean island.

Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov, 24, allegedly landed on North Sentinel Island in an apparent attempt to make contact with the isolated Sentinelese tribe, filming his visit and leaving a can of coke and a coconut on the shore.

Survival International, a group that advocates for the rights of tribal people, said the alleged act endangered the man’s own life and the lives of the tribe, calling it “deeply disturbing”.

The US said it was aware and “monitoring the situation”.

Andaman and Nicobar Islands’ police chief HGS Dhaliwal told news agency AFP that “an American citizen” had been presented before the local court and was remanded for three days for “further interrogation”.

AFP, citing Mr Dhaliwal, said Mr Polyakov blew a whistle off the shore of the island in a bid to attract the attention of the tribe for about an hour.

He then landed for about five minutes, leaving his offerings, collecting samples and recording a video.

The police chief told AFP: “A review of his GoPro camera footage showed his entry and landing into the restricted North Sentinel Island.”

It is illegal for foreigners or Indians to travel within 5km (three miles) of the islands in order to protect the people living there.

According to police, Mr Polyakov has visited the region twice before – including using an inflatable kayak in October last year before he was stopped by hotel staff.

On his arrest earlier this week, the man told police he was a “thrill seeker”, Indian media reported.

Survival International said the Sentinelese have made their wish to avoid outsiders clear over many years and underlined that such visits pose a threat to a community which has no immunity to outside diseases.

Jonathan Mazower, spokesperson for Survival International, told the BBC they feared social media was adding to the list of threats for uncontacted tribal people. Several media reports have linked Mr Polyakov to a YouTube account, which features videos of a recent trip to Afghanistan.

“As well as all the somewhat more established threats to such peoples – from things like logging and mining in the Amazon where most uncontacted peoples live – there are now an increasing number of… influencers who are trying to do this kind of thing for followers,” Mr Mazower said.

“There’s a growing social media fascination with this whole idea.”

Survival International describes the Sentinelese as “the most isolated Indigenous people in the world” living on an island around the size of Manhattan.

Mr Mazower told the BBC an estimated 200 people belong to the tribe, before adding it was “impossible” to know its true number.

Few details are known about the group, other than they are a hunter-gatherer community who live in small settlements and are “extremely healthy”, he said.

He added that the incident highlighted why government protections for communities such as the Sentinelese are so important.

The UN’s Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention sets out obligations for governments to protect the rights. India’s government has an initiative focusing on tribal welfare, but the country has come under criticism in recent years for failing to protect against evictions.

It is not the first time an outsider has attempted to make contact with the Sentinelese.

In November 2018, John Allen Chau, also a US national, was killed by the tribe after visiting the same island.

Local officials said the 27-year-old was a Christian missionary.

Mr Chau was shot with bows and arrows upon landing. Reports at the time suggested he had bribed fisherman to take him to the island.

US President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs on Wednesday including a 10% tariff on most countries.

Some of America’s biggest trading partners will see even higher tariffs beginning 9 April.

The aggressive shift in trade policy makes clear where Trump stands on tariffs, but has left much of the world wondering what Americans – who are expected to see the side effects – think of the move.

We asked five people what they think.

I know we’re all going to get pinched in the pocket for a while. I think in the long run, it’s going to get us out of the massive deficit that we’re in.

I am concerned about the price of goods going up. I am going to end up being more particular about what I buy, basically I’ll tighten the belt for a while.

But then I think it’s going to go full circle and it’s going to be a good thing for the economy and for people in general.

We’ve been the world’s financial doormat for a while and we’ve gotta stop it.

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I’m very unhappy. I’m probably a couple of years away from retiring and I don’t know if I’m going to be able to retire.

My 401k’s not doing great, social security is on the line and I don’t think the tariffs are going to help America’s standing on the world platform.

Trump is not a king and I feel like our Congress and Senate is letting us down, both parties, by not pushing back [on tariffs].

They know better, and they’re not doing anything. Why?

I feel like the way to kick start investment back into US manufacturing is exactly this.

It’s a necessary evil.

Up until the 70’s, there were two steel mills [in my area] and then they closed. And up until the last ten years, the sites have been abandoned

We might not get back everything, but even if we recover 30-40% of it, it’s quite a bit of money and jobs.

I’m on a fixed income. I’m retired, so things are going to go up and I’m worried. It means less money that I’ll have coming in.

What I’m trying to do is stock up on food because I think things are going to get really, really bad as far as shipping. Food is the one thing that you can’t really cut from your budget.

If I can be honest, Trump’s got all the money. He doesn’t have to [worry about] food. Musk has all the things, so this isn’t going to affect them. So they don’t know about the pain.

They say ‘a little pain’ but how little is this pain?

I’m worried. I’m worried about my retirement funds. I’m worried that he’s going to make other countries hate us for what he’s doing. I just think he’s an idiot.

I have a son and he’s 30. He has his own family and he’s looking for work and he’s struggling. This isn’t going to help things. He has two children – 18 months and six.

I tend to be a glass half-full type of person, but the president and his ideas are just so crazy sometimes. My financial adviser, who I really trust, did say that some of Trump’s plans are good and good for the finance market.

It gives me a little bit of hope, I guess. But then when you see the stock market plunging, it was like “oh, maybe not.”

April Hubbard sits on the theatre stage where she plans to die later this year.

She is not terminally ill, but the 39-year-old performance and burlesque artist has been approved for assisted dying under Canada’s increasingly liberal laws.

She is speaking to BBC News from the Bus Stop Theatre, an intimate auditorium with a little under 100 seats, in the eastern city of Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Illuminated by a single spotlight on a stage she has performed on many times before, she tells me she plans to die here “within months” of her imminent 40th birthday. She’ll be joined by a small group of her family and friends.

April plans to be in a “big comfy bed” for what she calls a “celebratory” moment when a medical professional will inject a lethal dose into her bloodstream.

“I want to be surrounded by the people I love and just have everybody hold me in a giant cuddle puddle and get to take my last breath, surrounded by love and support,” she says.

April was born with spina bifida and was later diagnosed with tumours at the base of her spine which she says have left her in constant, debilitating pain.

She’s been taking strong opioid painkillers for more than 20 years and applied for Medical Assistance in Dying (Maid) in March 2023. While she could yet live for decades with her condition, she qualified to end her life early seven months after applying. For those who are terminally ill it is possible to get approval within 24 hours.

“My suffering and pain are increasing and I don’t have the quality of life anymore that makes me happy and fulfilled,” April says. Every time she moves or breathes, she says it feels like the tissues from the base of her spine “are being pulled like a rubber band that stretches too far”, and that her lower limbs leave her in agony.

We meet April as, almost 3,000 miles away, MPs are scrutinising proposals to legalise assisted dying in England and Wales. They voted in principle in support of those plans in November 2024, but months of detailed scrutiny have followed – and further votes in the Commons and Lords are required before the bill could possibly become law.

This week, the BBC witnessed a man’s death in California, where assisted dying laws are far more similar to those being considered in Westminster.

Critics say Canada is an example of the “slippery slope”, meaning that once you pass an assisted dying law it will inevitably widen its scope and have fewer safeguards.

Canada now has one of the most liberal systems of assisted dying in the world, similar to that operating in the Netherlands and Belgium. It introduced Maid in 2016, initially for terminally ill adults with a serious and incurable physical illness, which causes intolerable suffering. In 2021, the need to be terminally ill was removed, and in two years’ time, the Canadian government plans to open Maid to adults solely with a mental illness and no physical ailment.

Opponents of Maid tell us that death is coming to be seen as a standard treatment option for those with disabilities and complex medical problems.

“It is easier in Canada to get medical assistance in dying than it is to get government support to live,” says Andrew Gurza, a disability awareness consultant and friend of April’s.

Andrew, who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, says he respects April’s decision, but tells us: “If my disability declines and my care needs got higher, I’d still want to be here. To know there’s a law that’s saying you could easily end your life – it’s just really scary.”

Before she was approved for Maid, April was assessed by two independent physicians who were required to inform her of ways to alleviate her suffering and offer alternative treatments.

“The safeguards are there,” she says, when we press her about disabled people who feel threatened by assisted dying, or whether Maid is being used as a shortcut to better quality care. “If it’s not right for you and you’re not leading the charge and choosing Maid, you’re not going to be able to access it unless it’s for the right reasons,” she adds.

There were 15,343 Maid deaths in 2023, representing around one in 20 of all deaths in Canada – a proportion that has increased dramatically since 2016 and is one of the highest in the world. The average age of recipients was 77.

In all but a handful of cases, the lethal dose was delivered by a doctor or nurse, which is also known as voluntary euthanasia. One doctor we spoke to, Eric Thomas, said he had helped 577 patients to die.

Dr Konia Trouton, president of the Canadian Association of Maid Assessors and Providers, has also helped hundreds of patients to die since the law was introduced.

The procedure is the same each time – she arrives at the home of the person who has been given approval for Maid and asks if they wish to go ahead with it that day. She says the patients always direct the process and then give her the “heads up and ready to go”.

“That gives me an honour and a duty and a privilege to be able to help them in those last moments with their family around them, with those who love them around them and to know that they’ve made that decision thoughtfully, carefully and thoroughly,” she adds. If the answer is yes, she opens her medical bag.

Demonstrating to the BBC what happens next, Dr Trouton briefly puts a tourniquet on my arm. She shows me where the needle would be inserted into a vein in the back of my hand to allow an intravenous infusion of lethal drugs.

In her medical bag she also has a stethoscope. “Strangely, these days I use it more to determine if someone has no heartbeat rather than if they do,” she tells me.

Some 96% of Maid provisions are under “track one” where death is “reasonably foreseeable”. Dr Trouton says that means patients are on a “trajectory toward death”, which might range from someone who has rapidly spreading cancer and only weeks to live or another with Alzheimer’s “who might have five to seven years”.

The other 4% of Maid deaths come under “track two”. These are adults, like April, who are not dying but have suffering which is intolerable to them from a “grievous and irremediable medical condition”.

That is in stark contrast to Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s bill to legalise assisted dying in England and Wales, which says patients must be expected to die within six months. The Westminster bill would not allow doctors to give a lethal dose – rather patients would have to self-administer the drugs, usually by swallowing them.

Death via intravenous infusion normally takes just a few minutes, as the lethal drugs go straight into the bloodstream, whereas swallowing the drugs means patients usually take around an hour or two to die, but can take considerably longer, although they are usually unconscious after a few minutes.

Dr Trouton told me she regarded the Canadian system as quicker and more effective, as do other Maid providers. “I’m concerned that if some people can’t swallow because of their disease process, and if they’re not able to take the entire quantity of medication because of breathing difficulties or swallowing difficulties, what will happen?”

But opponents argue it’s being used as a cheaper alternative to providing adequate social or medical support.

One of them is Dr Ramona Coelho, a GP in London, Ontario, whose practice serves many marginalised groups and those struggling to get medical and social support. She’s part of a Maid Death Review Committee, alongside Dr Trouton, which examines cases in the province.

Dr Coelho told me that Maid was “out of control”. “I wouldn’t even call it a slippery slope,” she says “Canada has fallen off a cliff.”

“When people have suicidal ideations, we used to meet them with counselling and care, and for people with terminal illness and other diseases we could mitigate that suffering and help them have a better life,” she says. “Yet now we are seeing that as an appropriate request to die and ending their lives very quickly.”

While at Dr Coelho’s surgery I was introduced to Vicki Whelan, a retired nurse whose mum Sharon Scribner died in April 2023 of lung cancer, aged 81. Vicki told me that in her mum’s final days in hospital she was repeatedly offered the option of Maid by medical staff, describing it as like a “sales pitch”.

The family, who are Catholic, discharged their mother so she could die at home, where Vicki says her mum had a “beautiful, peaceful death”. “It makes us think that we can’t endure, and we can’t suffer a little bit, and that somehow now they’ve decided that dying needs to be assisted, where we’ve been dying for years.

“All of a sudden now we’re telling people that this is a better option. This is an easy way out and I think it’s just robbing people of hope.”

So is Canada an example of the so-called slippery slope? It’s certainly true that the eligibility criteria has broadened dramatically since the law was introduced nine years ago, so for critics the answer would be an emphatic yes and serve as a warning to Britain.

Canada’s assisted dying laws were driven by court rulings. Its Supreme Court instructed Parliament that a prohibition on assisted dying breached the country’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The extension of eligibility for those who were not terminally ill was in part a response to another court decision.

In Britain, judges in the most senior courts have repeatedly said any potential change to the law around assisted dying is a matter for Parliament, after the likes of Tony Nicklinson, Diane Pretty and Noel Conway brought cases arguing the blanket ban on assisted suicide breached their human rights.

April knows some people may look at her, a young woman, and wonder why she would die.

“We’re the masters of masking and not letting people see that we’re suffering,” she says. “But in reality, there’s days that I just can’t hide it, and there’s many days where I can’t lift my head off the pillow and I can’t eat anymore.

“It’s not a way I want to live for another 10 or 20 or 30 years.”

US President Donald Trump has said he will get rid of any staff deemed to be disloyal, as it emerged at least three officials at the White House National Security Council had been fired.

“We’re always going to let go of people – people we don’t like or people that take advantage of, or people that may have loyalties to someone else,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One, without confirming names.

It is not clear why the employees were removed, but the decision followed a meeting between Trump and far-right activist Laura Loomer on Wednesday.

Ms Loomer reportedly urged Trump to fire specific employees whom she suspected of lacking support for the president’s agenda. More firings are expected.

The White House told the BBC that the National Security Council “won’t comment on personnel” matters.

Those fired from the NSC on Thursday include Brian Walsh, a director for intelligence; Thomas Boodry, a senior director for legislative affairs; and David Feith, a senior director overseeing technology and national security, reports the BBC’s US partner CBS.

The firings follow a major controversy involving the National Security Council last month when senior officials inadvertently added a journalist to a Signal messaging thread about military strikes in Yemen.

The extent to which that controversy played a role in the firings is unclear.

Trump has so far stood by top officials involved in the incident, including National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, who took responsibility for the Atlantic magazine reporter being added to the Signal chat, and said it was an accident.

According to CBS, a source familiar with the situation said the Signal incident “opened the door” to looking into staff members believed not to be sufficiently aligned with Trump, while Ms Loomer’s visit sealed the fate for those who were terminated.

The administration has been looking at outside meetings held by national security staff, reprimanding some for meeting people not believed to be aligned with the president, according to the source.

Aboard Air Force One en route to Miami, Florida, on Thursday, Trump praised Ms Loomer and confirmed he had met with her, calling her a “great patriot” and a “very strong person”.

“She makes recommendations… sometimes I listen to those recommendations,” he said. “I listen to everybody and then I make a decision.”

In a phone call with the BBC, Ms Loomer said it would be “inappropriate” to divulge details of her meeting with Trump on Wednesday.

“It was a confidential meeting,” she said. “It’s a shame that there are still leakers at the White House who leaked this information.”

She texted a statement that said: “It was an honor to meet with President Trump and present him with my research findings.

“I will continue working hard to support his agenda, and I will continue reiterating the importance of STRONG VETTING, for the sake of protecting the President of the United States of America and our national security.”

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, who posted information in the chat, is now the subject of an internal review into his use of Signal and whether he complied with his department’s policies, the Pentagon’s office of the acting inspector general said on Thursday.

Inspector general offices routinely conduct independent investigations and audits of federal agencies, and look into possible security breaches.

Upon returning to the White House in January, Trump removed many of the government’s inspectors general and has installed acting heads of the watchdogs at the defence, commerce, labour and health departments.

The former president of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias, says his US visa has been revoked.

Arias, a Nobel laureate, said he was informed of the decision weeks after he had publicly criticised Donald Trump, comparing the behaviour of the US president to that of a Roman emperor.

The 84-year-old, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in brokering an end to conflicts in Central America, said US authorities had given no explanation.

Arias hinted, however, that it may be due to his rapprochement with China during the time he was president from 2006 to 2010.

Speaking at a news conference in the Costa Rican capital, San José, Arias said he had “no idea” what the reason for the cancellation was.

He said he had received a “terse” email “of a few lines” from the US government informing him of the decision.

He added that he thought that it was not President Trump but the US State Department which had taken the decision.

While he said it would be conjecture on his part to speculate about the reason behind the visa revocation, he did point out that “I established diplomatic relations with China.

“That, of course, is known throughout the world,” he told journalists of his 2007 decision to cut ties with Taiwan and establish them with China instead.

The Trump administration has sought to oppose China’s influence in the Western hemisphere and has accused a number of Central American governments of cosying up to the Chinese government and Chinese companies.

• Read: Rubio demands Panama ‘reduce China influence’ over canal

However, it has been supportive of the current Costa Rican President, Rodrigo Chaves, praising his decision to exclude Chinese firms from participating in the development of 5G in Costa Rica.

But this perceived closeness between President Chaves and the US was criticised by Arias, who wrote a post on social media in February saying that “it has never been easy for a small country to disagree with the US government, less so when its president behaves like a Roman emperor, telling the rest of the world what to do”.

He added that “during my governments, Costa Rica never received orders from Washington as if we were a banana republic”.

Arias is not the only Costa Rican to have had his US visa revoked. Three members of the country’s national assembly who opposed President Chaves’s decree to exclude Chinese companies from participating in the development of 5G have also had theirs cancelled.

Hungary is withdrawing from the International Criminal Court (ICC), its government has announced.

A senior official in Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government confirmed this hours after Israel’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who is sought under an ICC arrest warrant, arrived in Hungary for a state visit.

Orban had invited Netanyahu as soon as the warrant was issued last November, saying the ruling would have “no effect” in his country.

In November, ICC judges said there were “reasonable grounds” that Netanyahu bore “criminal responsibility” for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the war between Israel and Hamas. Netanyahu has condemned the ICC’s decision as “antisemitic”.

The ICC, a global court, has the authority to prosecute those accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Hungary is a founding member of the ICC, which counts 125 member states, and will be the first European Union nation to pull out of it. A withdrawal has no impact on ongoing proceedings.

During a joint press conference, Orban asserted that the ICC had become a “political court”. He added the court’s decision to issue a warrant against the Israeli leader “clearly showed” this.

Netanyahu meanwhile hailed Hungary’s “bold and principled” decision to withdraw from the court.

“It’s important for all democracies. It’s important to stand up to this corrupt organisation,” Netanyahu said.

A statement from the Israeli prime minister’s office on Thursday said Netanyahu and Orban had spoken with US President Donald Trump about the decision and the “next steps that can be taken on this issue”.

Earlier Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar thanked Orban on X for his “clear and strong moral stance alongside Israel”.

“The so-called International Criminal Court lost its moral authority after trampling the fundamental principles of international law in its zest for harming Israel’s right to self-defence,” Sa’ar added.

Hungary’s decision aligns with its broader foreign policy stance under Orban, who has cultivated close ties with Israel and adopted a critical view of international institutions perceived as infringing on national sovereignty.

While Hungary’s withdrawal may carry symbolic weight and political implications, it does not significantly alter the ICC’s operational capacity or legal framework.

The court has faced similar challenges in the past and continues to function with broad international support.

But Hungary’s criticism of the ICC as “politically biased” and its decision to withdraw as Netanyahu visits may set a precedent for other nations to question or abandon their commitments to international justice based on political alliances or disagreements with specific rulings.

The US, Russia, China and North Korea are among the nations that are not part of the ICC, and therefore do not recognise its jurisdiction.

Israel is also not part of the treaty, but the ICC ruled in 2021 that it did have jurisdiction over the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, because the UN’s Secretary General had accepted that Palestinians were a member.

Hungary now needs to send written notification to the UN Secretary General to leave the treaty, with the withdrawal taking effect one year later, according to article 127 of the Rome Statute, which established the ICC.

ICC spokesman Fadi El-Abdullah told the BBC: “On the visit of Mr Netanyahu, the court has followed its standard procedures, after the issuance of an arrest warrant. The court recalls that Hungary remains under a duty to cooperate with the ICC.”

Since the warrant was issued, Hungarian authorities should technically arrest Netanyahu and hand him over to the court in the Hague, although member states do not always choose to enforce ICC warrants.

In Europe, some ICC member states said they would arrest the Israeli leader if he set foot in their country, while others, including Germany, announced that Netanyahu would not be detained if he visited.

But Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Thursday Hungary’s announcement was “a bad day for international criminal law”.

“Europe has clear rules that apply to all EU member states, and that is the Rome Statute. I have made it clear time and again that no one in Europe is above the law and that applies to all areas of law,” she added.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the US has condemned the ICC’s decision to issue warrants for Netanyahu’s arrest and he has visited the country since it was issued in November. His visit to Hungary marks Netanyahu’s first trip to Europe since then.

Hungarian Defence Minister Kristof Szalay-Bobrovniczky, greeted Netanyahu on the tarmac of Budapest airport on Wednesday night, welcoming him to the country.

Israel is appealing against the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, and strongly rejects the accusations. It both denies the authority of the ICC and the legitimacy of the warrants.

Netanyahu said at the time that it was a “dark day in the history of humanity”, and that the ICC had become “the enemy of humanity”.

“It’s an antisemitic step that has one goal – to deter me, to deter us from having our natural right to defend ourselves against enemies who try to destroy us,” he said.

In the same ruling, ICC judges also issued a warrant against Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif, who Israel says is dead. Hamas also rejected the allegations.

The visit comes as Israel announced it was expanding its Gaza offensive and establishing a new military corridor to put pressure on Hamas, as deadly Israeli strikes continued across the Palestinian territory.

The war in Gaza was triggered by the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, which killed some 1,200 people and led to 251 hostages being taken to Gaza. Since then, Israeli military attacks have killed more than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed, health authorities in Hamas-run Gaza say.

Denmark will not give up Greenland to the US, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has said during an official visit to the Arctic Island.

Responding to repeated threats from Donald Trump, Frederiksen offered closer collaboration on security but told the US president: “You can’t annex other countries.”

Frederiksen stood alongside Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen and his predecessor Mute Egede in a show of support and unity in the face of US threats on Thursday.

Her three-day trip to the territory follows last week’s controversial visit by a US delegation headed up by Vice-President JD Vance, which was widely criticised in both Greenland and Denmark.

During his whirlwind trip, Vance reiterated Trump’s ambitions to bring Greenland under United States’ control for security reasons, criticised Denmark for not spending more on security in the region, and claimed it had “not done a good job” for Greenlanders.

On Thursday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen in Brussels, where he “reaffirmed the strong relationship” between the US and Denmark, the US State Department said in a statement.

Rasmussen said Rubio had acknowledged Greenland’s right to self-determination but added that Denmark would object to “any claims on Greenland”, Reuters news agency reported.

After arriving in Greenland on Wednesday, Frederiksen said: “It is clear that with the pressure put on Greenland by the Americans, in terms of sovereignty, borders and the future, we need to stay united.”

Frederiksen said on Thursday that Denmark was fortifying its military presence in the Arctic and offered closer collaboration with the United States in defending the region.

But she added: “When you demand to take over a part of… Denmark’s territory, when we are met by pressure and by threats from our closest ally, what are we to believe in, about the country that we have admired for so many years?”

Frederiksen rode around the capital Nuuk in a Danish navy patrol boat, alongside Egede and Nielsen.

According to Danish public broadcaster DR, many people cheered at seeing the Danish prime minister, with one resident shouting from a window: “Hey Mette! Thanks for being here.”

Egede, who served as prime minister for almost four years, said the island had cooperated with the US on security for almost 80 years – including the construction of the Pituffik Space Base following a 1951 agreement between Denmark and the United States.

The former leader insisted Greenland was not for sale, but added the island wanted trade with the US, Greenlandic national newspaper Sermitsiaq reported.

Trump first floated the idea of buying Greenland during his first term – and his desire to own the island has only grown with time.

Mikaela Engell, an expert on the Arctic territory who previously served as Denmark’s High Commissioner to Greenland, told AFP news agency “it’s very, very important and it’s very reassuring for Greenlanders to see a Danish head of government.”

Greenland – the world’s biggest island, between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans – has been controlled by Denmark, nearly 3,000km (1,860 miles) away, for about 300 years.

Greenland governs its own domestic affairs, but decisions on foreign and defence policy are made in Copenhagen.

Five of the six main parties favour independence from Copenhagen, but disagree over the pace with which to reach it.

A new Greenland coalition government was formed in March, led by the centre-right Democrats party which favours a gradual approach to independence.

Polls show that the vast majority of Greenlanders also want to become independent from Denmark, but do not wish to become part of the US.

Since 2009, Greenland has had the right to call an independence referendum, though in recent years some political parties have begun pushing more for one.

Donald Trump’s blanket tariffs have put the world on the brink of a possible global trade war. The European Union has vowed a united response, and China has threatened countermeasures.

Ratings agencies like Fitch have warned that the mass tariff hikes could result in lower growth, higher inflation and potentially a recession in some parts of the world.

How will India – Asia’s third largest economy – navigate these global tremors?

Trump has dealt the most brutal blow to Asian countries, slapping 34% tariffs on China in addition to the 20% previously levied. Vietnam and Cambodia will have to pay 46% and 49% respectively.

In relative terms, at 27% India has fared better.

But the rate is still steep and will severely affect major “labour intensive exports”, says Priyanka Kishore of the consultancy Asia Decoded. “That will likely have a knock-on impact on domestic demand and headline gross domestic product at a time when growth is already stuttering,” said Ms Kishore.

But the new trade realities also throw up opportunities for India.

Its new tariff differential with Asian peers may potentially lead to some export re-routing. “We can bring the footwear and garments business from Asian peers if we get our act together,” says Nilesh Shah, a veteran fund manager.

This will take time though.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government will thus have to be strategic in how it navigates the situation.

Foremost, the announcement should “give the government a greater sense of urgency in wrapping up a trade deal with the US”, says Rahul Ahluwalia, a public policy expert who previously worked for a government department. “The US is our largest export market, so this is serious stuff.”

India exports some $91bn (£69bn) in goods to the US, which account for 18% of its overall exports. Hectic trade negotiations have been under way with a fall deadline for conclusion. Ahluwalia says that deadline could now be compressed and brought forward.

While doing that, India must also expand export markets beyond the US and focus on regions where tariffs remain low, such as Europe, Southeast Asia, and Africa, recommends Indian trade research agency GTRI.

In the last couple of years, India has shown a renewed appetite for trade deals, launching free trade agreement (FTA) talks with a range of countries and blocs, including the European Union and the United Kingdom.

Last year, Delhi signed a $100bn free trade agreement with the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) – a group of four European countries that are not members of the European Union.

Experts say talks with other partners could now be expedited as cracks deepen between the US and many other global economies over Trump’s actions.

But even as trade negotiations carry on with global partners, the government will need a plan on how it deals with the domestic fallout of Trump’s decision.

Impact on sectors that employ millions of people – like gems and jewellery and textiles – is likely to be significant. The government will need to extend support through means like expanding production-linked subsidies to ensure that India’s domestic industry stays globally competitive and can leverage the new opportunities this has thrown up, according to the consultancy, Ernst & Young

The tariffs are “fundamentally reshaping the global trading system”, says Agneshwar Sen, a trade policy expert at Ernst & Young India. This will require a “fundamental revaluation of trading strategies” as new supply chains emerge, he adds.

India will also have to be mindful of other risk factors that emerge from this – such as “Chinese dumping”, says Mr Shah.

As it becomes more difficult for Chinese goods to enter the US, these will have to find other markets. And there are few others that are as large as India.

“The global South accounts for more than 20% of global consumption and is where the new middle class is being created. This is where China will attempt to sell,” according to Akash Prakash of Amansa Capital, an investment management company in Singapore.

For the moment there’s little clarity and no official word from the government on what its plans are.

India has already reduced tariffs on some goods including high-end motorbikes and bourbon whiskey. Unlike Canada, Mexico or the European Union, Modi’s government has adopted a conciliatory approach to Trump and these announcements are unlikely to trigger a retaliation, say experts.

Indian businesses will now most likely face a period of uncertainty which is unlikely to go away anytime soon.

“Clearly, the (Trump) administration wants even broader and deeper tariff cuts. The question is what, if anything, will satisfy the Trump administration?”, Milan Vaishnav, a senior fellow at Carnegie Endowment told the BBC.

It is a million dollar question, for which there are no immediate answers.

US President Donald Trump announced a sweeping new set of tariffs on Wednesday, arguing that they would allow the United States to economically flourish.

These new import taxes, which Trump imposed via executive order, are expected to send economic shockwaves around the world.

But the US president believes they are necessary to address trading imbalances and to protect American jobs and manufacturing.

Here are the basic elements of the plan.

• Live updates: Reaction to Trump’s tariffs announcement

In a background call before Trump’s speech, a senior White House official told reporters that the president would impose a “baseline” tariff on all imports to the US.

That rate is set at 10% and will go into effect on 5 April.

It is the companies that bring the foreign goods into the US that have to pay the tax to the government, although this could have knock-on effects to consumers.

Some countries will only face the base rate. These include:

• United Kingdom
• Singapore
• Brazil
• Australia
• New Zealand
• Turkey
• Colombia
• Argentina
• El Salvador
• United Arab Emirates
• Saudi Arabia

White House officials also said that they would impose what they describe as specific reciprocal tariffs on roughly 60 of the “worst offenders”.

These will go into effect on 9 April.

Trump’s officials say these countries charge higher tariffs on US goods, impose “non-tariff” barriers to US trade or have otherwise acted in ways they feel undermine American economic goals.

The key trading partners subject to these customised tariff rates include:

• European Union: 20%
• China: 54% (which includes earlier tariffs)
• Vietnam: 46%
• Thailand: 36%
• Japan: 24%
• Cambodia: 49%
• South Africa: 30%
• Taiwan: 32%

The 10% baseline rate does not apply to Canada and Mexico, since they have already been targeted during Trump’s presidency.

The White House said it would deal with both countries using a framework set out in Trump’s previous executive orders, which imposed tariffs on both countries as part of the administration’s efforts to address the entry of fentanyl to the US and border issues.

Trump previously set those tariffs at 25% on all goods entering from both countries, before announcing some exemptions and delays.

In addition, the president confirmed the beginning of a new American “25% tariff on all foreign made-automobiles”.

This tariff went into effect almost immediately, at midnight local time.

• Live updates: Reaction to Trump’s tariffs announcement
• At a glance: The countries hit hardest by these plans
• Watch: Three things to know about Trump’s plans
• BBC Verify: How were Donald Trump’s tariffs calculated?
• Global reaction: How five big economies see new Trump tariffs
• UK: What this means for you and your money
• Explainer: What are tariffs, and why is Trump using them?
• Analysis: Trump’s tariffs are his biggest gamble yet