The trade war between the world’s two biggest economies shows no signs of slowing down – Beijing has vowed to “fight to the end” hours after US President Donald Trump threatened to nearly double the tariffs on China.

That could leave most Chinese imports facing a staggering 104% tax – a sharp escalation between the two sides.

Smartphones, computers, lithium-ion batteries, toys and video game consoles make up the bulk of Chinese exports to the US. But there are so many other things, from screws to boilers.

With a deadline looming in Washington as Trump threatens to introduce the additional tariffs from Wednesday, who will blink first?

“It would be a mistake to think that China will back off and remove tariffs unilaterally,” says Alfredo Montufar-Helu, a senior advisor to the China Center at The Conference Board think tank.

“Not only would it make China look weak, but it would also give leverage to the US to ask for more. We’ve now reached an impasse that will likely lead to long-term economic pain.”

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Global markets have slumped since last week when Trump’s tariffs, which target almost every country, began coming into effect. Asian stocks, which saw their worst drop in decades on Monday after the Trump administration didn’t waver, recovered slightly on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, China has hit back with tit-for-tat levies – 34% – and Trump warned that he would retaliate with an additional 50% tariff if Beijing doesn’t back down.

Uncertainty is high, with more tariffs, some more than 40%, set to kick in on Wednesday. Many of these would hit Asian economies: tariffs on China would rise to 54%, and those on Vietnam and Cambodia, would soar to 46% and 49% respectively.

Experts are worried about the speed at which this is happening, leaving governments, businesses and investors little time to adjust or prepare for a remarkably different global economy.

China had responded to the first round of Trump tariffs with tit-for-tat levies on certain US imports, export controls on rare metals and an anti-monopoly investigation into US firms, including Google.

This time too it has announced retaliatory tariffs, but it also appears to be bracing for pain with stronger measures. It has allowed its currency, the yuan, to weaken, which makes Chinese exports more attractive. And state-linked enterprises have been buying up stocks in what appears to be a move to stabilise the market.

The prospect of negotiations between the US and Japan seemed to buoy investors who were fighting to claw back some of the losses of recent days.

But the face-off between China and the US – the world’s biggest exporter and its most important market – remains a major concern.

“What we are seeing is a game of who can bear more pain. We’ve stopped talking about any sense of gain,” Mary Lovely, a US-China trade expert at the Peterson Institute in Washington DC, told the BBC’s Newshour programme.

Despite its slowing economy, China may “very well be willing to endure the pain to avoid capitulating to what they believe is US aggression”, she added.

Shaken by a prolonged property market crisis and rising unemployment, Chinese people are just not spending enough. Indebted local governments have also been struggling to increase investments or expand the social safety net.

“The tariffs exacerbate this problem,” said Andrew Collier, Senior Fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School.

If China’s exports take a hit, that hurts a crucial revenue stream. Exports have long been a key factor in China’s explosive growth. And they remain a significant driver, although the country is trying to diversify its economy with high-end tech manufacturing and greater domestic consumption.

It’s hard to say exactly when the tariffs “will bite but likely soon,” Mr Collier says, adding that “[President Xi] faces an increasingly difficult choice due to a slowing economy and dwindling resources”.

But it’s not just China that will be feeling the impact.

According to the US Trade Representative office, the US imported $438bn (£342bn) worth of goods from China in 2024, with US exports to China valued at $143bn, leaving a trade deficit of $295bn.

And it’s not clear how the US is going to find alternative supply for Chinese goods on such short notice.

Taxes on physical goods aside, both countries are “economically intertwined in a lot of ways – there’s a massive amount of investment both ways, a lot of digital trade and data flows”, says Deborah Elms, Head of Trade Policy at the Hinrich Foundation in Singapore.

“You can only tariff so much for so long. But there are other ways both countries can hit each other. So you might say it can’t possibly get worse, but there are many ways in which it can.”

The rest of the world is watching too, to see where Chinese exports shut out of the US market will go.

They will end up in other markets such as those in South East Asia, Ms Elms adds, and “these places [are dealing] with their own tariffs and having to think about where else can we sell our products?”

“So we are in a very different universe, one that is really murky.”

Unlike the trade war with China during Trump’s first term, which was about negotiating with Beijing, “it’s unclear what is motivating these tariffs and it’s very hard to predict where things might go from here,” says Roland Rajah, lead economist at the Lowy Institute.

China has a “wide toolkit” for retaliation, he adds, such as depreciating their currency further or clamping down on US firms.

“I think the question is how restrained will they be? There’s retaliation to save face and there’s pulling out the whole arsenal. It’s not clear if China wants to go down that path. It just might.”

Some experts believe the US and China may engage in private talks. Trump is yet to speak to Xi since returning to the White House, although Beijing has repeatedly signalled its willingness to talk.

But others are less hopeful.

“I think the US is overplaying its hand,” Ms Elms says. She is sceptical of Trump’s belief that the US market is so lucrative that China, or any country, will eventually bend.

“How will this end? No-one knows,” she says. “I’m really concerned about the speed and escalation. The future is much more challenging and the risks are just so high.”

South Korea will hold a presidential election on 3 June, its acting leader has said, after the country’s constitutional court removed Yoon Suk Yeol from the presidency.

Yoon was impeached by parliament in December for his shock martial law declaration. The court upheld his impeachment on 4 April, paving the way for a snap election within 60 days.

Acting president Han Duck-soo announced the election date on Tuesday, saying the country needs to “quickly heal from the wounds” and go “upward and forward”.

Yoon’s martial law declaration plunged South Korea deep into political uncertainty and highlighted deep divisions in its society.

“I sincerely apologise for causing confusion and worries to the people over the past four months, and for having to face this regrettable situation of a presidential vacancy,” Han said.

Yoon cited threats from “anti-state forces” and North Korea when he declared martial law. However, it soon became clear that his move had been spurred not by external threats but by his own domestic political troubles.

He has been charged separately with insurrection before a criminal court.

Some politicians have signalled their intention to run for president, including labour minister Kim Moon-soo, who left his post on Tuesday to launch his campaign.

Ahn Cheol-soo, a lawmaker from the ruling People Power Party who contested in the last three presidential elections, has also thrown his hat into the ring.

But the current frontrunner is opposition leader Lee Jae-myung, who in 2022 lost to Yoon in the tightest race the country had seen. A Gallup poll held last week saw Lee with an approval rating of 34%.

Yoon is leaving behind a divided South Korea. While martial law has angered much of the country, with thousands taking to the streets calling for his removal, Yoon’s supporters have grown bolder and more extreme.

As South Korea emerges from its political crisis, it is also dealing with fresh economic challenges in the form of the sweeping tariffs announced by US President Donald Trump.

South Korea faces a 25% tariff on exports to the US, and authorities say they are seeking negotiations with the Trump administration.

Ukrainian forces have captured two Chinese nationals who were fighting for the Russian army in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, President Volodymyr Zelensky has said.

The Ukrainian president said intelligence suggested the number of Chinese soldiers in Russia’s army is “much higher than two”.

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said that Chinese troops fighting on Ukrainian territory “puts into question China’s declared stance for peace” and added that their envoy in Kyiv has been summoned for an explanation.

It marks the first official allegation that China is supplying Russia with manpower for its war in Ukraine. There has been no immediate response to the claims from Moscow or Beijing.

In a statement on social media platform X, Zelensky said the soldiers were captured in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region with identification documents, including bank cards which had “personal data” on them.

Ukraine’s forces fought six Chinese soldiers and took two of them prisoner, he said.

The post was accompanied by a video showing one of the alleged Chinese captives in handcuffs, speaking Mandarin Chinese and apparently describing a recent battle.

“We have information suggesting that there are many more Chinese citizens in the occupier’s units than just these two,” he said.

“Russia’s involvement of China, along with other countries, whether directly or indirectly, in this war in Europe is a clear signal that Putin intends to do anything but end the war,” Zelensky added.

The Ukrainian president called for a response “from the United States, Europe, and all those around the world who want peace”.

An investigation is under way and the captives are currently in the custody of Ukraine’s security service, he added.

On Tuesday, US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce called the reports “disturbing”.

She added that China is a “major enabler” of Russia’s war in Ukraine, citing its supply of dual-use goods such as navigation equipment, semiconductor chips and jet parts.

Ukraine’s foreign minister said that he had summoned China’s chargé d’affaires in Kyiv to “demand an explanation”.

Writing on X, Andrii Sybiha said: “We strongly condemn Russia’s involvement of Chinese citizens in its war of aggression against Ukraine, as well as their participation in combat against Ukrainian forces.”

He added that the move “puts into question China’s declared stance for peace” and undermines Beijing’s credibility as a member of the UN Security Council.

French newspaper Le Monde has previously reported that it identified around 40 accounts on TikTok’s sister app, Douyin – which is only available in China – belonging to Chinese individuals who claim to have signed up with the Russian army.

North Korea has sent thousands of troops to aid Russia’s war effort against Ukraine, according to Kyiv and Western officials.

• What we know about North Korean troops fighting Russia’s war
• About 1,000 North Koreans killed fighting Ukraine in Kursk, officials say

In a press conference on Tuesday, Zelensky said: “But there is a difference: North Koreans fought against us on the front in Kursk, the Chinese are fighting on the territory of Ukraine.”

In January Ukraine said it captured two injured North Korean soldiers in Russia’s Kursk Oblast.

While Beijing and Moscow are close political and economic allies, China has attempted to present itself as a neutral party in the conflict and has repeatedly denied supplying Russia with military equipment.

One of Russia’s chief advantages in the war is numbers. There have been reports of Moscow using “meat grinder” tactics to throw huge numbers of soldiers at the front lines and incrementally improve their position.

Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and Moscow currently controls about 20% of Ukraine’s territory, mostly in the east.

China has called US Vice-President JD Vance “ignorant and impolite” after he said America had been borrowing money from “Chinese peasants”.

Foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian told reporters on Tuesday that Vance’s comments – which had already caused a stir on Chinese social media – were “surprising and sad”.

Vance made the comments on Thursday, during an interview on Fox News where he defended US President Donald Trump’s tariffs – which are currently fuelling tensions between the world’s two largest economies.

“We borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture,” the vice-president said.

On Monday, Trump gave China – one of the world’s largest holders of US Treasury bonds – until Tuesday to scrap its 34% counter tariff or face an additional 50% tax on goods imported into the US.

If Trump acts on his threat, US companies could face a total rate of 104% on Chinese imports – as it comes on top of 20% tariffs already put in place in March and the 34% announced last week.

China has said it will “fight to the end” as it called Trump’s moves “bullying”.

“China’s position on China-US economic and trade relations has been made very clear,” Lin said on Tuesday.

Vance’s comments had already caused a stir among Chinese social media users, some of whom have called for him to be banned from entering China.

“As a key figure in the US government, it is really shameful for Vance to say such things,” one Weibo user wrote.

“Isn’t his memoir called ‘Hillbilly Elegy’?” wrote another user, a reference to Vance’s book which detailed his upbringing in rural America.

Trump and his allies have long argued that his tariff policy will boost the US economy and protect jobs.

But economists have warned that this would cause major disruptions to international supply chains, push up prices for consumers and bode disaster for all trade.

In the wake of the tariffs announcement, financial institutions have warned of heightened risks of a recession, both in the US and globally.

Elon Musk has called President Donald Trump’s trade adviser, Peter Navarro, a “moron” over comments he made about his electric vehicle firm, Tesla.

Musk – who is also a member of the Trump administration – also said Navarro was “dumber than a sack of bricks” in posts on his social media platform X.

It was in response to an interview Navarro gave in which he described Tesla as a “car assembler”, rather than a manufacturer, because of its use of foreign-made parts.

Navarro was being interviewed about Trump’s tariff policy and said he wanted to see such parts made in the US in the future instead.

Musk said the claims were “demonstrably false.”

The BBC has asked the White House for comment.

Trump has in part justified his global wave of tariffs by saying he wants to revive manufacturing in the US.

This is an argument Navarro was expanding on during an appearance on CNBC on Monday.

“If you look at our auto industry, right, we’re in assembly line for German engines and transmissions right now”, he said.

“We’re going to get to a place where America makes stuff again, real wages are going to be up, profits are going to be up”.

Responding to the comments on Tuesday, Musk posted a link to a 2023 article by car valuation firm Kelley Blue Book, which cited Car.com findings that Tesla vehicles had the most parts produced in the US.

“By any definition whatsoever, Tesla is the most vertically integrated auto manufacturer in America with the highest percentage of US content,” Musk wrote in a follow-up post.

Technology industry analyst Dan Ives said on Sunday that the company was less exposed to tariffs than other US car makers such as GM, Ford, and Stellantis.

But he too claimed the company sourced the majority of its parts from outside the US, highlighting China.

“The tariffs in their current form will disrupt Tesla, the overall supply chain, and its global footprint which has been a clear advantage over the years vs. rising competitors like BYD,” he said.

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Trump’s tariffs have caused stock market falls around the world, as investors calculate it will result in firms making smaller profits.

Musk – who is leading DOGE, which is tasked with cutting federal spending – warned in an X post on 27 March that even his company would not be immune from tariff disruption.

Another Trump backer, the billionaire fund manager Bill Ackman, has called for a pause on the tariffs to stave off what he called “major global economic disruption.”

In a post on X, he said the current plans would do “unnecessary harm.”

Navarro is considered an ultra-Trump loyalist after being jailed for ignoring a subpoena from a House committee investigating alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

He is also thought to be one of the main architects of Trump’s tariff policy.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has faced-off with his election rival Peter Dutton in their first debate before the 3 May federal election vote.

Cost of living issues dominated Tuesday night’s debate, organised by Sky News and The Daily Telegraph, and the two leaders were also asked about US President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

Opinion polls have predicted a slim margin between Albanese’s Labor Party and Dutton’s Liberal Party, and the possibility that either will need to form the next government with independent MPs or minor parties.

Albanese was declared the night’s winner by Sky News after a vote by 100 undecided voters, who also provided the night’s questions.

When the debate host asked the audience if they were having a tough time with the cost of living, most of the audience members raised their hands, according to ABC News.

Dutton described the show of hands as a “very confronting scene” while Albanese said he has brought inflation down, wages up and added that interest rates were starting to fall, according to ABC.

The two candidates were also asked about a possible cut in the fuel excise tax and the rising cost of seeing a general practitioner.

How to respond to Trump’s tariffs was the first question of the night. To which, Albanese replied that “no country is better prepared” than Australia because of his efforts.

“We’ll continue to negotiate, of course, with the United States looking for a better deal for Australia because reciprocal tariffs would, of course, be zero, because we don’t impose tariffs on US goods,” he said.

Dutton pointed to his experience negotiating with the first Trump government.

“The prime minister of the day should have the ability and the strength of character to be able to stand up against bullies, against those that would seek to do us harm, to keep our country safe,” he said.

Authorities in India’s Kuno National Park have started disciplinary action against a forest worker who is seen offering water to a cheetah and her cubs in a video that has gone viral online.

The man, a driver at the sanctuary, violated instructions which say only authorised personnel can go near the big cats, park officials told PTI news agency.

Cheetahs were declared extinct in India in 1952, the only large mammal to become extinct since the country’s independence.

They were reintroduced in Kuno in 2022 as part of an ambitious plan to repopulate the species.

The incident came to light on Sunday, when a video of the man feeding water to the big cats began circulating online.

The footage shows him pouring water into a metal pan after being urged to do so by some people who aren’t seen in the video.

Moments later, a cheetah named Jwala and her four cubs walk up to the pan and start drinking from it.

Officials say it’s not uncommon for certain staff members to offer water to big cats if they get close to the boundary of the national park to lure them back into the forest.

The mum and her cubs were in the fields close to the boundary, Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests Uttam Kumar Sharma told PTI.

“The monitoring team, in general, has been instructed to try to deviate or lure the cheetahs back inside whenever such a situation arises so as not to create human-cheetah conflict,” he said

However, only trained personnel are allowed to do so and the man’s actions went against established protocol, he added.

“There are clear instructions to move away from cheetahs. Only authorised persons can go in close proximity to them to perform a specific task,” Mr Sharma said.

Initial reports in the media called the video “heartwarming” but many on social media raised concerns about the safety of people and animals in such situations. Others suggested a better option would be for the authorities to create ponds and water bodies in the park to ensure the cats did not have to go far for water in the hot summer.

Villages on the park’s border have been tense as cheetahs wander into their fields and kill their livestock. Last month, some villagers pelted the cats with stones to stop such attacks, The New Indian Express newspaper reported. Officials say they have been trying to raise awareness in the villages so that people adapt to living near the animals.

Twenty cheetahs were relocated from South Africa and Namibia to the Kuno national park in the central state of Madhya Pradesh between 2022 and 2023 in what was the first such intercontinental translocation of the big cats.

Eight of them have since died due to various reasons, including kidney failure and mating injuries, sparking concerns about whether conditions at Kuno are suitable for them.

In 2023, South African and Namibian experts involved with the project wrote to India’s Supreme Court, saying they believed that some of these deaths could have been prevented by “better monitoring of animals and more appropriate and timely veterinary care”.

Experts from the Namibia-based Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF), which has been involved with the project since its inception, had also raised concerns about inadequate record-keeping at Kuno. They told the BBC that the park management had “little or no scientific training” and the vets were “too inexperienced to manage a project of this calibre”.

Park authorities have rejected the allegations and say there are now a total of 26 cheetahs, including 17 in the wild and nine others that are kept in enclosures at the moment.

This year, India is expected to receive 20 more cheetahs from South Africa. Officials say the big cats have already been identified by a task force in collaboration with South African authorities.

Police in India have arrested a man, who is accused of impersonating a British doctor, for performing surgeries that allegedly led to the death of seven patients.

Narendra Vikramaditya Yadav – also known as Dr N John Camm – worked as a cardiologist at a missionary hospital in Madhya Pradesh state.

Police accuse him of fraud, cheating and forgery and allege that the 53-year-old, who has worked as a doctor for almost two decades, faked his medical degrees.

They are also investigating allegations that he added the name of Prof John Camm, a leading cardiologist at UK’s St George Hospital, to his own to gain credibility. Mr Yadav has denied the allegations against him.

On Monday, just hours before he was arrested, he sent a legal notice of 50m rupees ($5,82,985; £4,54,969) to two dozen individuals and publishers for claiming he impersonated “some other cardiologist”.

The Mission Hospital in Damoh city, where Mr Yadav worked for a few weeks, has denied having any knowledge of his alleged fake credentials.

“Nobody suspected him of being a fake doctor. He was good at his job and acted like a big-time professor,” a hospital official told The Indian Express newspaper.

The case first came to light in February, when a child welfare committee in Damoh flagged the deaths to district officials.

“We got suspicious about his expertise and checked his credentials online and found that he had cases against him in at least three states,” claimed Deepak Tiwari, president of the district Child Welfare Committee.

An investigation found that Mr Yadav had quit his job at the hospital earlier that month and “gone missing” without explanation.

He was arrested in the city of Prayagraj in Uttar Pradesh state on Monday evening.

“The accused doctor had worked on a total of 64 cases, including 45 cases of angioplasty, which led to seven patient deaths,” the district’s police chief Shrut Kirti Somvanshi told BBC Hindi.

It’s not yet clear whether his degrees are genuine or fake, but police believe they were likely to be forged as the documents lack key details, such as a unique registration number given to each student.

This is not the first time that questions have been raised about Mr Yadav’s identity.

In a 2019 blog post, he claimed that he trained in the UK under Prof A John Camm and joined St George’s hospital in 2002 as an “Interventional Cardiologist”.

He claimed he first returned to India in 2003 to work at a leading heart hospital in Delhi and had worked in the US, Germany and Spain since then.

In one post shared in 2021, Mr Yadav wrote that he was developing a 5,000-bed John Camm Institute of Medical Sciences and Research in the western state of Rajasthan.

“The hospital is being developed under [the] leadership of Dr N John Camm, renowned Interventional Cardiologist from Germany, and will [be] spread over 100 acres of land and will have world class research and tissue labs,” he claimed.

But public records show that he registered four companies in the UK in 2018 under the name of Dr Narendra Vikramaditya Yadav, which he later got changed to Dr Narendra John Camm.

In 2023, a well-known fact-checker in India too had raised questions about his credentials after he allegedly created an X (formerly Twitter) account under the name of “Prof N John Camm”.

After some of his posts went viral, the real Prof Camm put out a statement clarifying that it was not his account and that he was being impersonated.

Police say Mr Yadav has also been at the centre of several other investigations.

In 2019, he was arrested for allegedly abducting a British doctor he had invited to work with him at a hospital in Hyderabad city.

And in 2014, India’s medical regulators had banned him for five years for “professional misconduct”, parliamentary records show.

Records show that he was also charged with fraud and cheating in 2013 in Uttar Pradesh. However, a court stayed the complaint against him.

The UN’s secretary-general says “aid has dried up [and] the floodgates of horror have re-opened” in the Gaza Strip, where Israel has blocked the entry of all goods and resumed the war against Hamas.

“Gaza is a killing field, and civilians are in an endless death loop,” António Guterres said on Tuesday.

His comments come after the heads of six UN agencies appealed to world leaders to act urgently to ensure food and supplies reached Palestinians there.

Israel has insisted there is enough food in Gaza “for a long period of time”, but UN agencies refute this.

Israel blockaded Gaza on 2 March, after the first stage of a ceasefire expired. Hamas refused to extend that part of the truce, accusing Israel of reneging on its commitments.

Israel then renewed its aerial bombardment and ground offensive on 18 March and these have since killed 1,449 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza. The Israeli military insists it does not target civilians.

In his address to journalists, Guterres said Israel, as the occupying power, had obligations under international law to ensure that food and medical supplies get to the population.

“The current path is a dead end – totally intolerable in the eyes of international law and history,” he said.

His comments follow a joint statement issued by six UN agencies on Monday that said world leaders must act urgently to make sure food and aid supplies get to Palestinians in the Strip.

Gazans were “trapped, bombed and starved again”, the statement said.

“The latest ceasefire allowed us to achieve in 60 days what bombs, obstruction and lootings prevented us from doing in 470 days of war: life-saving supplies reaching nearly every part of Gaza,” it said.

“While this offered a short respite, assertions that there is now enough food to feed all Palestinians in Gaza are far from the reality on the ground, and commodities are running extremely low.”

The statement was signed by the heads of:

• OCHA – UN’s Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs
• Unicef – UN’s children’s agency
• WFP – World Food Programme
• WHO – World Health Organization
• Unrwa – UN agency for Palestinian refugees
• UNOPS – UN Office for Project Services

Because of the blockade, all UN-supported bakeries have closed, markets are empty of most fresh vegetables and hospitals are rationing painkillers and antibiotics.

The statement says that Gaza’s “partially functional health system is overwhelmed [and]… essential medical and trauma supplies are rapidly running out.”

“With the tightened Israeli blockade on Gaza now in its second month, we appeal to world leaders to act – firmly, urgently and decisively – to ensure the basic principles of international humanitarian law are upheld.

“Protect civilians. Facilitate aid. Release hostages. Renew a ceasefire.”

The two-month pause in fighting saw a surge in humanitarian aid let into Gaza, as well as the release by Hamas of 33 hostages – eight of them dead – in exchange for about 1,900 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

On Tuesday, Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said at least 58 people had been killed in the territory over the previous 24 hours.

Israeli strikes overnight killed 19 people, including five children whose home in the central town of Deir al-Balah was hit, according to the Hamas-run Civil Defence agency.

Another 11 people were reportedly killed in two separate strikes in the northern town of Beit Lahia and an area north-west of Gaza City.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS) said a second Palestinian journalist had died of the wounds following an Israeli strike on Monday.

Ahmed Mansour suffered severe burns when a media tent in the southern city Khan Younis was hit, also killing his Palestine Today colleague Helmi al-Faqaawi.

The Israeli military said the strike targeted a third journalist, Hassan Eslaih, whom it accused of being a “Hamas terrorist”. The PJS said Eslaih was in a critical condition following the attack, along with several other journalists.

The war was triggered by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others taken back to Gaza as hostages.

More than 50,810 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive since then, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

At least 44 people have died after a roof collapsed at a nightclub in the Dominican Republic.

They included a provincial governor and former Major League Baseball pitcher Octavio Dotel, authorities said. Dotel, 51, died on the way to hospital after being pulled from the debris, the sports ministry said.

It is not yet clear what caused the incident, which happened in the early hours of Tuesday during a concert by the popular merengue singer Rubby Pérez, at the Jet Set discotheque in the capital, Santo Domingo.

More than 150 people were injured and efforts to free people from the rubble are continuing. Around 400 search and rescue workers have been deployed to the site.

The director of the Emergency Operations Centre (COE), Juan Manuel Méndez, said he was hopeful that many of those buried under the collapsed roof were still alive.

Jet Set is a popular nightclub in Santo Domingo which regularly hosts dance music concerts on Monday evenings. Politicians, athletes and other prominent figures were in attendance.

Also among the victims was Nelsy Cruz, governor of Monte Cristi province, President Luis Abinader said. She was the sister of former baseball player Nelson Cruz, a seven-time Major League Baseball All-Star.

Dotel meanwhile began playing for the New York Mets in 1999 and played for teams including the Houston Astros, Oakland A’s, New York Yankees, Chicago White Sox and Detroit Tigers until 2013.

Video footage apparently taken inside the club shows people sitting at tables in front of the stage and some dancing to the music in the back while Rubby Pérez sings.

In a separate mobile phone recording shared on social media, a man standing next to the stage can be heard saying “something fell from the ceiling”, while his finger can be seen pointing towards the roof.

In the footage, singer Rubby Pérez, also seems to be looking towards the area pointed out by the man.

Less than 30 seconds later, a noise can be heard and the recording goes black while a woman is heard shouting “Dad, what’s happened to you?”.

One of Rubby Pérez’s band members told local media that the club had been full when the collapse happened “at around 1am”.

“I thought it was an earthquake,” the musician said.

The daughter of Rubby Pérez said her father was among those trapped in the debris.

Speaking to the Diario Libre newspaper, Pérez’s manager Fernando Soto said the singer was found alive but he did not know whether he had been transferred to hospital.

The president of the Dominican Republic, Luis Abinader, has expressed his condolences to the families affected.

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Iran is ready to engage with the US at talks on Saturday over its nuclear programme “with a view to seal a deal”, its Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has said.

But US President Donald Trump must first agree there can be no “military option”, Araghchi said, and added that Iran would “never accept coercion”.

He also insisted the negotiations in Oman would be indirect, contradicting Trump’s surprise announcement on Monday that they would be “direct talks”.

Trump, who pulled the US out a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers during his first term, warned that Iran would be in “great danger” if talks were not successful.

The US and Iran have no diplomatic ties, so last month Trump sent a letter to Iran’s supreme leader via the United Arab Emirates. It said he wanted a deal to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and to avert possible military strikes by the US and Israel.

Trump disclosed the upcoming talks during a visit to the White House on Monday by the Israeli Prime Minister. Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that both leaders had agreed “Iran will not have nuclear weapons” and added “the military option” would happen if talks dragged on.

Iran insists its nuclear activities are entirely peaceful and it will never seek to develop or acquire nuclear weapons.

However, Iran has increasingly breached restrictions imposed by the existing nuclear deal, in retaliation for crippling US sanctions reinstated seven years ago, and has stockpiled enough highly-enriched uranium to make several bombs.

The US president told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday that this weekend’s meeting in Oman would be “very big”.

“I think everybody agrees that doing a deal would be preferable to doing the obvious,” Trump said.

But he also warned that it would “be a very bad day for Iran” if the talks were not successful.

In an opinion piece published by the Washington Post on Tuesday, Iran’s foreign minister declared that it was “ready to engage in earnest and with a view to seal a deal”.

“We will meet in Oman on Saturday for indirect negotiations. It is as much an opportunity as it is a test,” Araghchi said.

Iran harboured “serious doubts” about the sincerity of the US government’s intentions, he noted, citing the “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions that Trump restored soon after starting his second term.

“To move forward today, we first need to agree that there can be no ‘military option’, let alone a ‘military solution’,” he said.

“The proud Iranian nation, whose strength my government relies on for real deterrence, will never accept coercion and imposition.”

Araghchi insisted there was no evidence that Iran had violated its commitment not to seek nuclear weapons, but also acknowledged that “there may exist possible concerns about our nuclear programme”.

“We are willing to clarify our peaceful intent and take the necessary measures to allay any possible concern. For its part, the United States can show that it is serious about diplomacy by showing that it will stick to any deal it makes. If we are shown respect, we will reciprocate it.”

“The ball is now in America’s court,” he added.

Iran’s hard-line Tasnim news agency said Araghchi would head the country’s delegation at the Oman talks, underlining their importance.

The BBC’s US partner CBS News meanwhile confirmed that Trump’s Middle East special envoy Steve Witkoff would lead the US side, and said America is continuing to push for them to be direct talks.

During the first set of meetings, the US was expected to call on Iran to fully dismantle its nuclear programme and, depending on how negotiations went, technical experts were then expected to follow up in additional talks, it said.

US officials have so far revealed few details about Trump’s demands.

However, after Witkoff said in a recent interview that Trump was proposing a “verification programme” to show Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz clarified the goal was “full dismantlement”.

Israel’s prime minister echoed Waltz’s stance in a video on Tuesday, saying he wanted a “Libyan-style” agreement – a reference to the North African country’s decision to dismantle its nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programmes in 2003.

“They go in, blow up the installations, dismantle all of the equipment, under American supervision and carried out by America,” Netanyahu explained.

He then said: “The second possibility, that will not be, is that they drag out the talks and then there is the military option.”

Israel, which is assumed to have its own nuclear weapons but maintains an official policy of deliberate ambiguity, views a nuclear Iran as an existential threat.

Tel Aviv said last year it had hit an Iranian nuclear site in retaliation for an missile attack.

A senior official at Iran’s foreign ministry told the BBC that it would never agree to dismantle its nuclear programme, and added the “Libya model” would never be part of any negotiations.

The 2015 deal that Iran reached with then-US President Barack Obama’s administration, as well as the UK, France, China, Russia and Germany, saw it limit its nuclear activities and allow inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in return for sanctions relief.

However, in 2018, Trump unilaterally abandoned the agreement, which he said did too little to stop Iran’s potential pathway to a bomb.

Iran then increasingly breached the agreement’s restrictions. The IAEA warned in February that Iran had stockpiled almost 275kg (606lb) of uranium enriched to 60% purity, which is near weapons grade. That would theoretically be enough, if enriched to 90%, for six nuclear bombs.

A detailed analysis of a full-sized digital scan of the Titanic has revealed new insight into the doomed liner’s final hours.

The exact 3D replica shows the violence of how the ship ripped in two as it sank after hitting an iceberg in 1912 – 1,500 people lost their lives in the disaster.

The scan provides a new view of a boiler room, confirming eye-witness accounts that engineers worked right to the end to keep the ship’s lights on.

And a computer simulation also suggests that punctures in the hull the size of A4 pieces of paper led to the ship’s demise.

“Titanic is the last surviving eyewitness to the disaster, and she still has stories to tell,” said Parks Stephenson, a Titanic analyst.

The scan has been studied for a new documentary by National Geographic and Atlantic Productions called Titanic: The Digital Resurrection.

The wreck, which lies 3,800m down in the icy waters of the Atlantic, was mapped using underwater robots.

More than 700,000 images, taken from every angle, were used to create the “digital twin”, which was revealed exclusively to the world by BBC News in 2023.

Because the wreck is so large and lies in the gloom of the deep, exploring it with submersibles only shows tantalising snapshots. The scan, however, provides the first full view of the Titanic.

The immense bow lies upright on the seafloor, almost as if the ship were continuing its voyage.

But sitting 600m away, the stern is a heap of mangled metal. The damage was caused as it slammed into the sea floor after the ship broke in half.

The new mapping technology is providing a different way to study the ship.

“It’s like a crime scene: you need to see what the evidence is, in the context of where it is,” said Parks Stephenson.

“And having a comprehensive view of the entirety of the wreck site is key to understanding what happened here.”

The scan shows new close-up details, including a porthole that was most likely smashed by the iceberg. It tallies with the eye-witness reports of survivors that ice came into some people’s cabins during the collision.

Experts have been studying one of the Titanic’s huge boiler rooms – it’s easy to see on the scan because it sits at the rear of the bow section at the point where the ship broke in two.

Passengers said that the lights were still on as the ship plunged beneath the waves.

The digital replica shows that some of the boilers are concave, which suggests they were still operating as they were plunged into the water.

Lying on the deck of the stern, a valve has also been discovered in an open position, indicating that steam was still flowing into the electricity generating system.

This would have been thanks to a team of engineers led by Joseph Bell who stayed behind to shovel coal into the furnaces to keep the lights on.

All died in the disaster but their heroic actions saved many lives, said Parks Stephenson.

“They kept the lights and the power working to the end, to give the crew time to launch the lifeboats safely with some light instead of in absolute darkness,” he told the BBC.

“They held the chaos at bay as long as possible, and all of that was kind of symbolised by this open steam valve just sitting there on the stern.”

A new simulation has also provided further insights into the sinking.

It takes a detailed structural model of the ship, created from Titanic’s blueprints, and also information about its speed, direction and position, to predict the damage that was caused as it hit the iceberg.

“We used advanced numerical algorithms, computational modelling and supercomputing capabilities to reconstruct the Titanic sinking,” said Prof Jeom-Kee Paik, from University College London, who led the research.

The simulation shows that as the ship made only a glancing blow against the iceberg it was left with a series of punctures running in a line along a narrow section of the hull.

Titanic was supposed to be unsinkable, designed to stay afloat even if four of its watertight compartments flooded.

But the simulation calculates the iceberg’s damage was spread across six compartments.

“The difference between Titanic sinking and not sinking are down to the fine margins of holes about the size of a piece of paper,” said Simon Benson, an associate lecturer in naval architecture at the University of Newcastle.

“But the problem is that those small holes are across a long length of the ship, so the flood water comes in slowly but surely into all of those holes, and then eventually the compartments are flooded over the top and the Titanic sinks.”

Unfortunately the damage cannot be seen on the scan as the lower section of the bow is hidden beneath the sediment.

The human tragedy of the Titanic is still very much visible.

Personal possessions from the ship’s passengers are scattered across the sea floor.

The scan is providing new clues about that cold night in 1912, but it will take experts years to fully scrutinise every detail of the 3D replica.

“She’s only giving her stories to us a little bit at a time,” said Parks Stephenson.

“Every time, she leaves us wanting for more.”

A full-scale trade war with China and the US is in prospect after President Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs of more than 100% on Chinese goods imports from Wednesday 9 April.

China has said it will “fight to the end” rather than capitulate to what it sees as US coercion, and has already raised its own trade barriers against the US in response.

What does this escalating trade conflict mean for the world economy?

The trade in goods between the two economic powers added up to around $585bn (£429bn) last year.

Though the US imported far more from China ($440bn) than China imported from America ($145bn).

That left the US running a trade deficit with China – the difference between what it imports and exports – of $295bn in 2024. That’s a considerable trade deficit, equivalent to around 1% of the US economy.

But it’s less than the $1tn figure that Trump has repeatedly claimed this week.

Trump already imposed significant tariffs on China in his first term as president. Those tariffs were kept in place and added to by his successor Joe Biden.

Together those trade barriers helped to bring the goods the US imported from China down from a 21% share of America’s total imports in 2016 to 13% last year.

So the US reliance on China for trade has diminished over the past decade.

Yet analysts point out that some Chinese goods exports to the US have been re-routed through south-east Asian countries.

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For example, the Trump administration imposed 30% tariffs on Chinese imported solar panels in 2018.

But the US Commerce Department presented evidence in 2023 that Chinese solar panel manufacturers had shifted their assembly operations to states such as Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam and then sent the finished products to the US from those countries, effectively evading the tariffs.

The new “reciprocal” tariffs due to be imposed on those countries will therefore push up the US price of a wide range of goods ultimately originating in China.

In 2024 the biggest category of goods exports from the US to China were soybeans – primarily used to feed China’s estimated 440 million pigs.

The US also sent pharmaceuticals and petroleum to China.

Going the other way, from China to the US, were large volumes of electronics, computers and toys. A large amount of batteries, which are vital for electric vehicles, were also exported.

The biggest category of US imports from China is smartphones, accounting for 9% of the total. A large proportion of these smartphones are made in China for Apple, a US-based multinational.

The US tariffs on China have been one of the main contributors to the decline in the market value of Apple in recent weeks, with its share price falling by 20% over the past month.

All these imported items to the US from China were already set to become considerably more expensive for Americans due to the 20% tariff the Trump administration has already imposed on Beijing.

If the tariff rises to 100% – for all goods – then the impact could be five times greater.

And US imports into China will also go up in price due to China’s retaliatory tariffs, ultimately hurting Chinese consumers in a similar way.

But beyond tariffs, there are other ways for these two nations to attempt to damage each other through trade.

China has a central role in refining many vital metals for industry, from copper and lithium to rare earths.

Beijing could place obstacles in the way of these metals reaching the US.

This is something it has already done in the case of two materials called germanium and gallium, which are used by the military in thermal imaging and radar.

As for the US, it could attempt to tighten the technological blockade on China started by Joe Biden by making it harder for China to import the kind of advanced microchips – which are vital for applications like artificial intelligence – it still can’t yet produce itself.

Donald Trump’s trade advisor, Peter Navarro, has suggested this week that the US could apply pressure on other countries, including Cambodia, Mexico and Vietnam, not to trade with China if they want to continue to exporting to the US.

The US and China together account for such a large share of the global economy, around 43% this year according to the International Monetary Fund.

If they were to engage in an all-out trade war that slowed their growth down, or even pushed them into recession, that would likely harm other countries’ economies in the form of slower global growth.

Global investment would also likely suffer.

There are other potential consequences.

China is the world’s biggest manufacturing nation and is producing far more than its population consumes domestically.

It is already running an almost $1tn goods surplus – meaning it is exporting more goods to the rest of the world than it imports.

And it is often producing those goods at below the true cost of production due to domestic subsidies and state financial support, like cheap loans, for favoured firms.

Steel is an example of this.

There is a risk that if such products were unable to enter the US, Chinese firms could seek to “dump” them abroad.

While that could be beneficial for some consumers, it could also undercut producers in countries threatening jobs and wages.

The lobby group UK Steel has warned of the danger of excess steel potentially being redirected to the UK market.

The spillover impacts of an all-out China-US trade war would be felt globally, and most economists judge that the impact would be highly negative.

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The trade war between the world’s two biggest economies shows no signs of slowing down – Beijing has vowed to “fight to the end” hours after US President Donald Trump threatened to nearly double the tariffs on China.

That could leave most Chinese imports facing a staggering 104% tax – a sharp escalation between the two sides.

Smartphones, computers, lithium-ion batteries, toys and video game consoles make up the bulk of Chinese exports to the US. But there are so many other things, from screws to boilers.

With a deadline looming in Washington as Trump threatens to introduce the additional tariffs from Wednesday, who will blink first?

“It would be a mistake to think that China will back off and remove tariffs unilaterally,” says Alfredo Montufar-Helu, a senior advisor to the China Center at The Conference Board think tank.

“Not only would it make China look weak, but it would also give leverage to the US to ask for more. We’ve now reached an impasse that will likely lead to long-term economic pain.”

• Live updates on this story

Global markets have slumped since last week when Trump’s tariffs, which target almost every country, began coming into effect. Asian stocks, which saw their worst drop in decades on Monday after the Trump administration didn’t waver, recovered slightly on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, China has hit back with tit-for-tat levies – 34% – and Trump warned that he would retaliate with an additional 50% tariff if Beijing doesn’t back down.

Uncertainty is high, with more tariffs, some more than 40%, set to kick in on Wednesday. Many of these would hit Asian economies: tariffs on China would rise to 54%, and those on Vietnam and Cambodia, would soar to 46% and 49% respectively.

Experts are worried about the speed at which this is happening, leaving governments, businesses and investors little time to adjust or prepare for a remarkably different global economy.

China had responded to the first round of Trump tariffs with tit-for-tat levies on certain US imports, export controls on rare metals and an anti-monopoly investigation into US firms, including Google.

This time too it has announced retaliatory tariffs, but it also appears to be bracing for pain with stronger measures. It has allowed its currency, the yuan, to weaken, which makes Chinese exports more attractive. And state-linked enterprises have been buying up stocks in what appears to be a move to stabilise the market.

The prospect of negotiations between the US and Japan seemed to buoy investors who were fighting to claw back some of the losses of recent days.

But the face-off between China and the US – the world’s biggest exporter and its most important market – remains a major concern.

“What we are seeing is a game of who can bear more pain. We’ve stopped talking about any sense of gain,” Mary Lovely, a US-China trade expert at the Peterson Institute in Washington DC, told the BBC’s Newshour programme.

Despite its slowing economy, China may “very well be willing to endure the pain to avoid capitulating to what they believe is US aggression”, she added.

Shaken by a prolonged property market crisis and rising unemployment, Chinese people are just not spending enough. Indebted local governments have also been struggling to increase investments or expand the social safety net.

“The tariffs exacerbate this problem,” said Andrew Collier, Senior Fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School.

If China’s exports take a hit, that hurts a crucial revenue stream. Exports have long been a key factor in China’s explosive growth. And they remain a significant driver, although the country is trying to diversify its economy with high-end tech manufacturing and greater domestic consumption.

It’s hard to say exactly when the tariffs “will bite but likely soon,” Mr Collier says, adding that “[President Xi] faces an increasingly difficult choice due to a slowing economy and dwindling resources”.

But it’s not just China that will be feeling the impact.

According to the US Trade Representative office, the US imported $438bn (£342bn) worth of goods from China in 2024, with US exports to China valued at $143bn, leaving a trade deficit of $295bn.

And it’s not clear how the US is going to find alternative supply for Chinese goods on such short notice.

Taxes on physical goods aside, both countries are “economically intertwined in a lot of ways – there’s a massive amount of investment both ways, a lot of digital trade and data flows”, says Deborah Elms, Head of Trade Policy at the Hinrich Foundation in Singapore.

“You can only tariff so much for so long. But there are other ways both countries can hit each other. So you might say it can’t possibly get worse, but there are many ways in which it can.”

The rest of the world is watching too, to see where Chinese exports shut out of the US market will go.

They will end up in other markets such as those in South East Asia, Ms Elms adds, and “these places [are dealing] with their own tariffs and having to think about where else can we sell our products?”

“So we are in a very different universe, one that is really murky.”

Unlike the trade war with China during Trump’s first term, which was about negotiating with Beijing, “it’s unclear what is motivating these tariffs and it’s very hard to predict where things might go from here,” says Roland Rajah, lead economist at the Lowy Institute.

China has a “wide toolkit” for retaliation, he adds, such as depreciating their currency further or clamping down on US firms.

“I think the question is how restrained will they be? There’s retaliation to save face and there’s pulling out the whole arsenal. It’s not clear if China wants to go down that path. It just might.”

Some experts believe the US and China may engage in private talks. Trump is yet to speak to Xi since returning to the White House, although Beijing has repeatedly signalled its willingness to talk.

But others are less hopeful.

“I think the US is overplaying its hand,” Ms Elms says. She is sceptical of Trump’s belief that the US market is so lucrative that China, or any country, will eventually bend.

“How will this end? No-one knows,” she says. “I’m really concerned about the speed and escalation. The future is much more challenging and the risks are just so high.”

China has called US Vice-President JD Vance “ignorant and impolite” after he said America had been borrowing money from “Chinese peasants”.

Foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian told reporters on Tuesday that Vance’s comments – which had already caused a stir on Chinese social media – were “surprising and sad”.

Vance made the comments on Thursday, during an interview on Fox News where he defended US President Donald Trump’s tariffs – which are currently fuelling tensions between the world’s two largest economies.

“We borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture,” the vice-president said.

On Monday, Trump gave China – one of the world’s largest holders of US Treasury bonds – until Tuesday to scrap its 34% counter tariff or face an additional 50% tax on goods imported into the US.

If Trump acts on his threat, US companies could face a total rate of 104% on Chinese imports – as it comes on top of 20% tariffs already put in place in March and the 34% announced last week.

China has said it will “fight to the end” as it called Trump’s moves “bullying”.

“China’s position on China-US economic and trade relations has been made very clear,” Lin said on Tuesday.

Vance’s comments had already caused a stir among Chinese social media users, some of whom have called for him to be banned from entering China.

“As a key figure in the US government, it is really shameful for Vance to say such things,” one Weibo user wrote.

“Isn’t his memoir called ‘Hillbilly Elegy’?” wrote another user, a reference to Vance’s book which detailed his upbringing in rural America.

Trump and his allies have long argued that his tariff policy will boost the US economy and protect jobs.

But economists have warned that this would cause major disruptions to international supply chains, push up prices for consumers and bode disaster for all trade.

In the wake of the tariffs announcement, financial institutions have warned of heightened risks of a recession, both in the US and globally.

US President Donald Trump has urged Americans to trust in his sweeping tariffs, which have spooked markets and threaten to upend global trade, urging them: “Don’t be a PANICAN (A new party based on Weak and Stupid people!).”

He did not clarify who he meant by the term, which he coined in a post on his Truth Social platform on Monday.

The word “PANICAN” could be a portmanteau of “panic” and “Americans”, although an alternative theory suggests that it combines “panic” and “Republicans”.

A growing number of influential voices within Trump’s Republican Party have joined opposing Democrats and foreign leaders in attacking Trump’s trade policies, while his officials stand by them.

Trump himself has sought to justify his global programme of tariffs – import taxes – by claiming the US has long been the victim of unfair trading practices, and by vowing that his plan will bring jobs and manufacturing to American shores.

In Monday’s online post, he wrote: “The United States has a chance to do something that should have been done DECADES AGO. Don’t be Weak! Don’t be Stupid! Don’t be a PANICAN (A new party based on Weak and Stupid people!).”

He went on: “Be Strong, Courageous, and Patient, and GREATNESS will be the result!”

Although he was reposted by a vocal ally – Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene – Trump has also received some dissent from certain key supporters, including business figures and a top conservative commentator.

Ben Shapiro, the Daily Wire co-founder who has 7.2m YouTube subscribers for his podcast, The Ben Shapiro Show, used Monday’s episode to rail against the trade policy of his long-standing ally.

He said Trump’s new raft of tariffs that were due to begin on Wednesday could be economically catastrophic, and that the messaging behind them had been muddled.

“The biggest problem here is that the Trump administration has not made clear what they want to accomplish with these tariffs,” he said.

Shapiro said there were times when trade barriers could be justified, like to bolster the defence industry or apply pressure on other countries to reduce their tariffs on the US. But they had no merit in themselves, he argued.

“The idea that this is inherently good and makes the American economy strong is wrongheaded; it is untrue,” Shapiro said. “The idea that this will result in massive reshoring of manufacturing is also untrue.”

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Pete Sessions, a Republican congressman from Texas, said Trump’s tariffs had “ignited many capitalists” who were against them.

The agricultural sector in his state was fearful that tariffs would make the price of the food they want to sell uncompetitive, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“All Texans believe that a tariff is a tax and it’s not in America’s best interest, nor people in the free world, to pay that extra money.”

Other Republicans in Congress who have issued warnings include Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul.

They have been joined in recent days by big-name Wall Street figures. Billionaire hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman – who supported Trump in the 2024 presidential election – has warned of “a self-induced, economic nuclear winter”.

Even one of Trump’s top aides, billionaire businessman Elon Musk, is reportedly against the tariffs, and spent time over the weekend lobbying the president to reverse them, according to two anonymous sources cited by the Washington Post.

The tariffs have been designed to target almost all of the world’s countries.

Trump claims that a 10% tariff on all nations and much higher rates on individual countries will boost the US economy and protect jobs.

Companies that bring the foreign goods into the country have to pay the tax to the government.

Goods arriving from China, for example, could be taxed 104% if Trump follows through with an additional rate threatened against Beijing on Monday.

Global stock markets have endured days of turmoil after Trump made most of his announcements on 2 April.

The White House says he does not plan to back down, and have downplayed the risk of a recession that has been prophesied by some economists.

There is a magnificent, snow-white wolf on the cover of Time Magazine today – accompanied by a headline announcing the return of the dire wolf.

This now extinct species is possibly most famous for its fictional role in Game of Thrones, but it did exist – more than 10,000 years ago – when it roamed across the Americas.

The company Colossal Biosciences is behind today’s headlines. It announced that it used “deft genetic engineering and ancient DNA” to breed three dire wolf puppies and to “de-extinct” the species.

But while the young wolves – Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi – represent an impressive technological breakthrough, independent experts say they are not actually dire wolves.

Zoologist Philip Seddon from the University of Otago in New Zealand explained the animals are “genetically modified grey wolves”.

Colossal publicised its efforts to use similar cutting edge genetic techniques to bring back extinct animals including the woolly mammoth and the Tasmanian tiger.

Meanwhile experts have pointed to important biological differences between the wolf on the cover of Time and the dire wolf that roamed and hunted during the last ice age.

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Paleogeneticist Dr Nic Rawlence, also from Otago University, explained how ancient dire wolf DNA – extracted from fossilised remains – is too degraded and damaged to biologically copy or clone.

“Ancient DNA is like if you put fresh DNA in a 500 degree oven overnight,” Dr Rawlence told BBC News. “It comes out fragmented – like shards and dust.

“You can reconstruct [it], but it’s not good enough to do anything else with.”

Instead, he added, the de-extinction team used new synthetic biology technology – using the ancient DNA to identify key segments of code that they could edit into the biological blueprint of a living animal, in this case a grey wolf.

“So what Colossal has produced is a grey wolf, but it has some dire wolf-like characteristics, like a larger skull and white fur,” said Dr Rawlence. “It’s a hybrid.”

Dr Beth Shapiro, a biologist from Colossal Biosciences, said that this feat does represent de-extinction, which she described as recreating animals with the same characteristics.

“A grey wolf is the closest living relative of a dire wolf – they’re genetically really similar – so we targeted DNA sequences that lead to dire wolf traits and then edited grey wolf cells… then we cloned those cells and created our dire wolves.”

According to Dr Rawlence though, dire wolves diverged from grey wolves anywhere between 2.5 to six million years ago.

“It’s in a completely different genus to grey wolves,” he said. “Colossal compared the genomes of the dire wolf and the grey wolf, and from about 19,000 genes, they determined that 20 changes in 14 genes gave them a dire wolf.”

The edited embryos were implanted in surrogate domestic dog mothers. According to the article in Time, all three wolves were born by planned caesarean section to minimise the risk of complications.

Colossal, which was valued at $10bn (£7.8bn) in January, is keeping the wolves on a private 2,000-acre facility at an undisclosed location in the northern US.

The pups certainly look like many people’s vision of a dire wolf and the story has gathered global attention. So why is this scientific distinction important?

“Because extinction is still forever,” Dr Rawlence told BBC News. “If we don’t have extinction, how are we going to learn from our mistakes?

“Is the message now that we can go and destroy the environment and that animals can go extinct, but we can bring them back?”

It doesn’t take long to make David Hockney laugh.

At nearly 88 years old, he is frail but still very dapper in his beige, red and black houndstooth suit with a white silk handkerchief poking out of the pocket, and trademark round yellow glasses perched on his nose.

Britain’s most popular artist chuckles a lot, his throaty laugh betraying his many years of smoking.

But, he tells me, as a young student from Bradford at the Royal College of Art in London in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the other students laughed at him.

“People would mock my accent,” he says. But it didn’t faze him. Hockney knew his worth even then. “I’d look at their artworks and I’d think, well, if I drew like that, I’d keep my mouth shut.”

What would the young boy growing up in Bradford think about the life he’d go on to have and the work he’d create?

“He’d have thought it was pretty daft.”

For decades, Hockney has been among the world’s greatest living artists, and he is now opening his biggest ever show.

As we sit together in a vast gallery at the Louis Vuitton Foundation, a stunning museum designed in reflective glass on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, I ask him what he thinks of the exhibition.

He says it’s his best ever, and bursts into laughter again.

It’s an expression of pure delight at the 11 rooms filled across four floors with his art – and at being alive to see it. “I’m just laughing, I mean we made it!”

Two years ago, when they started planning the exhibition, “I just thought I probably wouldn’t be here”, he says. “I’m still a smoker, a happy smoker fed up of bossy people telling you what to do… but I didn’t know.”

Hockney is sporting a badge that says “End Bossiness Soon” in a gallery dedicated to his love of spring. During the pandemic in 2020, Hockney, who was living in Normandy, used his iPad to paint the trees and flowers blooming as spring arrived.

Those 220 iPad works adorn this gallery, floor to ceiling, the walls bursting with blossom and pure joy, made at a time when the world wasn’t feeling very hopeful.

Visitors to the show are greeted at the entrance by Hockney’s message from that time: “Do remember they can’t cancel the spring.”

Hockney has been in poor health. He now has two full-time carers, who have accompanied him to Paris from London, where he now lives. Portraits of both, sitting in their dark blue nurses’ uniforms, are the most recent works in the exhibition, made earlier this year.

A self-portrait of Hockney, painting and smoking a cigarette (his two great loves) is also very new.

He still paints for four to six hours every day, he tells me.

He believes you can’t judge a painter until their last work is done – but looking at his own work gathered together in Paris, “I can see what I was always trying to do, really”.

And he promises that “anybody who has just a little visual sensibility will really enjoy this show”.

His great-nephew Richard Hockney, who has regularly sat for him for 28 years, since he was four years old, including for this exhibition, tells me everyone was determined the artist would make it to Paris.

The night before, Hockney got into a car with his dachshund Tess to be driven across the Channel. And on the morning before they left, they were playing him variations of the jazz classic April in Paris.

Having arrived, “he is glowing”, Richard says. “I think this will keep him going for a long, long time, to be honest.”

And with spring unfolding in the French capital, it’s entirely appropriate that the artist known for chronicling spring would open his exhibition, David Hockney 25, now.

This is a man who would fly back from his home in Los Angeles when he heard the hawthorn had begun to blossom in his native Yorkshire, just so he could paint the dazzling spectacle.

Some of his earliest works, including probably his most famous, A Bigger Splash, are also on show in Paris.

That painting, capturing the moment of a swimmer diving into a Santa Monica pool, is on the wall next to Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), the south of France pool painting that broke records when it sold at auction in 2018 for £70m.

Next to those are Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy, another of Hockney’s most recognisable works, which depicts his good friend Celia Birtwell and her husband Ossie Clark, with their white cat on his knee. Seeing them brought together in one room is spectacular.

But the show’s main focus is the last 25 years because “it’s 2025”, he says. “People think it’s miserable, but in 1925 they’d had the First World War.”

It’s a visual feast, full of the bright colours and optimism for which Hockney has become known.

“I’ve always had it. I’ve always thought it was an absurd world.”

A world to laugh at, to look at closely, as Hockney does, and to paint vibrantly.

Some of the iPad paintings are huge. He’s “amazed they could be blown up so big” when they were created on something so small.

One room is almost pitch dark to show off paintings he did of the Moon, made possible by advances in iPad technology.

There’s also a floor devoted to his portraits (about 60), including a 2022 painting of singer Harry Styles in a striped cardigan with a set of pearls around his neck.

But the rest are the friends and family Hockney knows well – Birtwell, her children and grandchildren, the show’s curator Sir Norman Rosenthal wearing full regalia, Hockney’s partner JP, sometimes with Tess the dog – and two of Richard.

Even though they’re related, when he’s having a portrait done “it’s very surreal looking at him and then realising you’re being painted by David Hockney”, he tells me. “You know he’s always going to create a masterpiece.”

His great uncle chooses to paint people he loves because “he sees the truer representation of yourself than you do”. In one of the portraits, Richard is grinning, in a green and white striped T-shirt.

Because Hockney likes Richard’s cheeky grin, “he will sit there and grin at me because he knows it’s going to make me grin… after six hours, it aches a bit”.

King Charles went to visit Hockney at home in London before he travelled. “He’s a very nice man, thoughtful, I thought,” the artist says. “He does watercolours himself.”

But he doesn’t fancy painting the King. “The problem there is the majesty, isn’t it really? I would find that a bit difficult, I think.”

He does, though, have a work on the go, a new painting of his great-nephew.

Richard tells me Hockney “says he’s still got a lot of work to do, which is good”, adding: “As long as that’s in his head, then he’ll keep going.”

The artist says he’ll finish his painting of his great nephew and then “I will paint somebody else. And I just carry on.”

For the first time in decades, Lyle and Erik Menendez say they are beginning to feel hope they could get parole. It is a shift in mindset for the brothers, who have spent more than 30 years behind bars for the murders of their parents in their Beverly Hills home.

“My brother and I are cautiously hopeful,” Lyle Menendez, 57, said in a recent jailhouse interview with TMZ, which was aired on Fox.

“Hope for the future is really kind of a new thing for us. I think Erik would probably agree with that. It’s not something we’ve spent a lot of time on,” he added.

The Menendez brothers were convicted of first-degree murder in 1996 and sentenced to life without parole for the 1989 shotgun killings of their parents, Kitty and Jose Menendez.

The case shocked the nation – not only for the brutal nature of the crime, but also for the courtroom drama that followed.

Their first trial ended in a hung jury after both brothers detailed years of sexual abuse they claimed to have suffered at the hands of their father, a high-powered music industry executive.

But prosecutors in the second trial cast doubt on those claims, arguing the brothers had acted out of greed and wanted to inherit their parents’ wealth. The jury agreed, and the brothers were convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Over the decades, the brothers have kept up their appeals – and recently learned that they would get a parole hearing after all.

With that hearing scheduled for June, and a resentencing hearing in the middle of April, the brothers are reflecting on how they will lead their lives if freed.

• Who are the Menendez family, at centre of US murder case?
• Three possible paths to freedom for the Menendez brothers
• ‘Like a golden ticket’ – Menendez brothers case sparks frenzy in LA

“What it is that I want to do in terms of my day-to-day life is much of what I’m doing in here. I want to be an advocate for people that are suffering in silence,” 54-year-old Erik Menendez told TMZ.

“Lyle and I aren’t talking about leaving prison – should we be able to get out – and not looking back. Our lives will be spent working with the prison and doing the work that we’re doing in here, out there,” he added.

Part of the bid for parole hinges on a risk assessment that evaluates whether the brothers are still seen as threats to society.

The brothers say they have changed in prison.

“I’m striving to be a better person every day, and I want to be a person that my family can be proud of,” said Erik Menendez. “Who I’ve evolved into, who I’ve seen Lyle evolve into. I’m beginning to like myself, be proud of myself, and find it’s okay to like myself.”

During their time in prison, both Erik and Lyle have started rehabilitation programs for disabled and elderly inmates and taught classes on trauma healing and meditation.

“Our best moments are the ones that are not spoken about, and we just help somebody, or we help an animal, or we make somebody smile that’s feeling down that might have gone and harmed themselves if we weren’t there,” Erik said, speaking of their volunteer work in prison.

Despite the upcoming parole hearing, the brothers’ future – and the other possible paths to freedom – remain uncertain.

Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman recently withdrew a motion for resentencing that had been filed under his predecessor, George Gascón, signalling a harder stance on the case.

Hochman has publicly said he will not support the brothers’ release, though the final decision rests with a judge.

The move has stirred controversy with the DA’s office as two former prosecutors who worked under Gascón and advocated for the brothers’ resentencing, have filed a legal case against Hochman – accusing him of harassment, retaliation, and defamation.

The pair claim they were demoted because of their stance on the case – and have faced intense public scrutiny as a result. Mr Hochman’s office is yet to comment.

Some members of the Menendez family have also criticized Mr Hochman, suggesting he is letting personal bias influence his actions. Mr Hochman denies this.

“Hochman doesn’t seem to want to listen or engage with us,” the brothers’ cousin Tamara Goodell told US media. Ms Goodell accused the prosecutor of dismissing and ignoring the family, and “not acting like a neutral party”.

• Los Angeles DA Hochman opposes move to resentence Menendez brothers

But public opinion remains divided.

In the same TMZ special, Alan Abrahamson, a former Los Angeles Times reporter who covered the Menendez trials in the 1990s, said the brothers are “two of the most skilled and accomplished liars”.

“The Menendezes are very capable of shapeshifting, and being who people who want them to be,” Mr Abrahamson said. “And I think this is one of the grave dangers of this discussion that people don’t seem to pick up on.”

That is a thought shared by a former Beverly Hills detective who was assigned to investigate the murders at the time.

“This is the most heinous murder case I’ve had,” Tom Linehan told TMZ. He believes the Menendez brothers were money-motivated killers who grew up getting exactly they wanted.

“If somebody is challenging what they want to do, they’d take them out if they had to,” Linehan added.

As for the brothers, they have to hope the parole board sees things differently, so they will continue to fight their legal case.

“You never know how long you’ll be blessed to be on the Earth, so we don’t sit around waiting for something,” Lyle said.

Ruben Vardanyan is one of Armenia’s richest men, but his millions are of little use now that he is facing a possible life term in jail in neighbouring Azerbaijan.

The two neighbouring Caucasus countries have agreed the text of a historic peace deal to end decades long conflict over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, but Vardanyan and 15 other former ethnic Armenian leaders are not part of the agreement.

They are on trial in a military court in Baku, accused of war crimes dating back decades.

Vardanyan, a 56-year-old Russian-Armenian entrepreneur, is facing 42 charges including planning and waging war, mercenary activities and terrorism.

A picture of him in court appeared to show bruises on his forehead and there have been allegations of torture, denied by Azerbaijan which insists his rights have been respected in custody.

It marks a dramatic downfall for a man who made his fortune in Russia and once rubbed shoulders with celebrities such as George and Amal Clooney.

He set up Russia’s first investment bank back in the early 1990s, and as founder of the country’s prestigious business management school “Skolkovo” he enjoyed the reputation of a progressive visionary, a Western-friendly voice in Russia’s business community in the 2000’s.

But a 2019 investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project said that employees of his investment bank built a financial system laundering billions of dollars in the mid-2000s.

Vardanyan denied being aware of any criminal activities, and was never legally charged.

He spent hundreds of millions of dollars on philanthropic projects in Armenia, and transformed a quiet town in the snow-capped mountains in the north of the country, setting up a school with the aim of attracting students from all over the world.

“This school was imagined as an institution that would bring Armenia to the world and the world to Armenia,” says Adam Armanski, the principal of the United World Colleges (UWC) of Dilijan.

Everything changed for Ruben Vardanyan in September 2022 when he decided to move to Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous region that was historically populated by ethnic Armenians but part of Soviet Azerbaijan.

Armenia and Azerbaijan had already fought two full scale wars over the region, which was internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan.

The first Karabakh war in the 1990s resulted in the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Azeris.

Then, in 2020, Azerbaijan – backed by Turkey – regained control of big swathes of the lost territory, while the Karabakh enclave remained in the hands of ethnic Armenian separatists.

Within months of Vardanyan’s arrival Azerbaijani authorities blocked the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh with the Republic of Armenia, subjecting the region’s population to severe food shortages.

Vardanyan renounced his Russian citizenship and became the de facto prime-minister of Nagorno-Karabakh, which Armenians call Artsakh. He used his name, contacts and the ability to speak fluent English to raise the awareness of the plight of Karabakh Armenians.

“My father did more interviews with international media in three months than all the other Nagorno-Karabakh presidents in 30 years. The amount of attention this was receiving from the Western media clearly irritated Azerbaijan,” his son David Vardanyan told the BBC.

There had been speculation that Vardanyan had moved there to avoid international sanctions imposed on Russia’s billionaires with links to the Kremlin.

The government in Baku considered his decision to take up the position as illegal.

His son insists he was driven by the desire to help local Armenians.

“We had an argument on our last family holiday, I was completely against his decision, which was putting the entire family at risk. He said he would not be able to live with himself knowing he did nothing for the Armenians of Karabakh.”

His father’s long-term friend Arman Jilavian said even the remotest of chances of helping ethnic Armenians remain in their ancestral land was enough for him.

“Some would say this was irrational, some say this was super calculated political move. I think none is true,” he says.

In September 2023 Azerbaijan launched a military operation and took control of the entire territory in 24 hours.

Nagorno-Karabakh’s leaders capitulated and more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians were forced to leave their homes.

Vardanyan was arrested by Azerbaijani authorities as he joined a mass exodus to Armenia.

Much of his time since has been spent in solitary confinement, his family says.

He has already been on hunger strike twice, protesting at what he has called a lack of proper judicial process, amid allegations of torture.

Fifteen other former Karabakh leaders are also being tried in Baku’s military court for alleged war crimes committed since the late 1980s.

Vardanyan has been dealt with separately, but many in Armenia see all the cases as show trials.

Only the main Azerbaijani state TV channel has been allowed to film the trials.

Azerbaijan insists it is complying with international legal standards, and that it has a responsibility to hold to account those suspected of having committed war crimes.

But last month, the government in Baku ordered the closure of the local offices of the International Red Cross, the only international organisation with access to Armenian prisoners.

The European Parliament has adopted a resolution on the “unlawful detention and sham trials of Armenian hostages”, calling for their immediate release.

Vardanyan returns to court on Tuesday, but supporters fear his case will be overshadowed by a historic peace deal taking shape between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The details are yet to be made public but officials say the draft text does not include the issue of the prisoners on trial or the right of ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh to return to their homes.

The failure to mention the prisoners has prompted criticism of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s government at home and abroad.

But Arsen Torosyan, the MP from the Armenian governing party Civil Contract believes this issue needs to be solved separately.

“It is a peace treaty between the conflicting countries with a long history of hatred between each other. I personally think that only completing or signing of this peace treaty can make ground to solve the issue of political prisoners. I don’t see any other way to do it.”

Vardanyan has warned this is a mistake.

“This is not the trial of just me and 15 others – this is the trial of all Armenians,” he said in a voice message to supporters.

“If you don’t understand this – it is a big tragedy because this is not the end of the story, not the end of the conflict, it’s only the next stage of the conflict, for all sides.”

It’s likely that you have not heard of Taiwan’s Hong Fu Industrial Group, but look down on a busy street and you may well see its products.

Hong Fu is the world’s second-biggest maker of trainers (sneakers) supplying shoes to Nike, Converse, Adidas, Puma and many others. It makes around 200 million pairs of sports shoes a year.

So when it made a big investment in India’s market, the footwear industry took note.

Hong Fu is currently building a giant plant in Panapakkam, in the state of Tamil Nadu in south eastern India. When fully operation, sometime in the next three to five years, it will make 25 million pairs of shoes a year, employing as many as 25,000 workers.

The project has Indian partners, including Aqeel Panaruna, the chairman of Florence Shoe Company: “The international market is saturated and they [Hong Fu] were looking for a new market,” he explains.

“There is a drastic increase in non-leather footwear in India. It has huge potential,” Mr Panaruna added.

The Indian government is keen to attract such investment, hoping it will raise standards in the footwear industry and boost exports.

To spur the industry, last August the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) introduced new quality rules for all shoes sold in India.

Under those standards, for example, materials will have to pass tests of strength and flexibility.

“These BIS standards are really about cleaning up the market. We’ve had too many low-quality products flooding in, and consumers deserve better,” says Sandeep Sharma a journalist and footwear industry expert.

But many in India can’t afford shoes from well-known brands.

Serving them is a huge and intricate network of small shoe makers, known as the unorganised sector.

Their affordable products are estimated to account for two-thirds of the total footwear market.

Ashok (he withheld his full name) counts himself as part of that sector, with shoe making units all across the district of Agra in northern India. He estimates that 200,0000 pairs of shoes are made everyday by operations like his across Agra.

“Many consumers, especially in rural and lower-income urban areas, opt for cheaper local footwear instead of branded options,” he says.

“Many organised brands struggle to expand their retail footprint in semi-urban and rural areas because we cater to them.”

So how will the new government standards affect makers like Ashok?

“It’s complicated,” says Mr Sharma.

“I think the government is trying to walk a tightrope here. They can’t just shut down thousands of small businesses that employ millions of people – that would be economic suicide.

“What I’m seeing is more of a carrot-and-stick approach. They’re pushing for standards, but also rolling out programs to help small manufacturers upgrade their processes. It’s not about wiping out the unorganised sector but gradually bringing them into the fold.”

Making the situation more complicated is that the unorganised sector is well-known for making counterfeit shoes of big brands.

While popular among Indian shoppers looking for a stylish bargain, other countries have long-complained about the losses caused.

Meanwhile, a host of new Indian trainer-makers are springing up, to serve India’s growing middle class.

Sabhib Agrawal is trying to get those buyers interested in barefoot footwear – shoes which, their makers say, are healthy for the foot as they encourage natural, or barefoot, movement.

Mr Agrawal says his company, Zen Barefoot, is unusual as much of the Indian footwear industry is not very innovative.

“There are very few people who are ready to take time and invest in new technologies here. Indian manufacturing is a very profit- first market, ROI [return on investment] driven.

“And in a lot of cases, even the government is not ready to enable these industries through grants or tax relief, which makes it quite difficult.”

Comet is one Indian firm looking to innovate.

It claims to be the first homegrown trainer brand that owns the whole production process, from design to manufacturing.

“This level of control allows us to experiment with materials, introduce innovative silhouettes, and continuously refine comfort and fit based on real feedback,” says founder Utkarsh Gupta.

He says the Comet shoes are adapted to India’s climate and roads.

“Most homegrown brands rely on off-the-shelf soles from the market, but when we started Comet, we realized that these were lacking in quality, durability, and grip,” he says.

Change is coming to the footwear sector he says. “The shift to high value is now happening.”

“Many high value brands need to move their manufacturing to India. In 3-5 years, we should have a robust ecosystem to compete in the international sneaker market,” he adds.

Back in Agra, Ashok hopes that the unorganised sector is not neglected amid the growth of India’s footwear industry.

“The government should give us accreditation and certificates so our factories don’t close down. Once we too are included in the organised sector no one can beat India in the shoe manufacturing industry.”

But Mr Sharma says change is inevitable.

“The market is definitely going to shift. We’ll see the bigger players getting bigger – they have the money to adapt quickly.

“But I don’t think the small guys will disappear completely. The smart ones will find their niche.”

King Charles and Queen Camilla found an appropriately symbolic place in Rome to pose for photographs on the second day of their state visit to Italy.

They stood in the ancient Temple of Venus, honouring a goddess of love, during a four-day trip which coincides with their 20th wedding anniversary.

The royal visitors were earlier given a ceremonial red-carpet welcome by Italy’s President Sergio Mattarella and his daughter Laura at the Quirinale Palace.

At the Colosseum, shouts of “Carlo” could be heard from the crowds as the King and Queen met tourists visiting the historic monument.

The state visit is part of the UK’s efforts to reinforce its links with its European allies.

In a symbolic show of unity, the UK’s Red Arrow pilots flew alongside their Italian counterparts, the Frecce Tricolori, in a flypast that trailed the colours of both countries over the skies above Rome.

The UK’s ambassador to Italy, Lord Llewellyn, has said the alliance between Italy and the UK was “vital in a changing Europe, as both our countries stand steadfast in our support of Ukraine”.

The Colosseum provided a picture book setting for a photograph, with the royals standing on a balcony at the site of the Temple of Venus and Rome, built almost 2,000 years ago.

The King and Queen will celebrate their 20th anniversary on Wednesday by attending state banquet in the evening – a glitzy event which will have a guest list of politicians and celebrities.

A new set of photographs to mark their anniversary were taken on Monday evening, as the King and Queen visited the British ambassador at his residence.

State visits are a soft power mix of public engagements and diplomatic meetings. Such visits are carried out on behalf of the UK government – Foreign Secretary David Lammy has been accompanying the King on the trip.

King Charles will meet Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Wednesday. He will also make a speech to both houses of Italy’s Parliament – the first time a UK monarch will deliver such an address.

The state visit had originally been intended to include engagements at the Vatican, but that was postponed because of the ill-health of Pope Francis.

But with the Pope seeming to be getting better, there has been speculation about a possible private meeting when the King and Queen are in Rome.

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Police in India have arrested a man, who is accused of impersonating a British doctor, for performing surgeries that allegedly led to the death of seven patients.

Narendra Vikramaditya Yadav – also known as Dr N John Camm – worked as a cardiologist at a missionary hospital in Madhya Pradesh state.

Police accuse him of fraud, cheating and forgery and allege that the 53-year-old, who has worked as a doctor for almost two decades, faked his medical degrees.

They are also investigating allegations that he added the name of Prof John Camm, a leading cardiologist at UK’s St George Hospital, to his own to gain credibility. Mr Yadav has denied the allegations against him.

On Monday, just hours before he was arrested, he sent a legal notice of 50m rupees ($5,82,985; £4,54,969) to two dozen individuals and publishers for claiming he impersonated “some other cardiologist”.

The Mission Hospital in Damoh city, where Mr Yadav worked for a few weeks, has denied having any knowledge of his alleged fake credentials.

“Nobody suspected him of being a fake doctor. He was good at his job and acted like a big-time professor,” a hospital official told The Indian Express newspaper.

The case first came to light in February, when a child welfare committee in Damoh flagged the deaths to district officials.

“We got suspicious about his expertise and checked his credentials online and found that he had cases against him in at least three states,” claimed Deepak Tiwari, president of the district Child Welfare Committee.

An investigation found that Mr Yadav had quit his job at the hospital earlier that month and “gone missing” without explanation.

He was arrested in the city of Prayagraj in Uttar Pradesh state on Monday evening.

“The accused doctor had worked on a total of 64 cases, including 45 cases of angioplasty, which led to seven patient deaths,” the district’s police chief Shrut Kirti Somvanshi told BBC Hindi.

It’s not yet clear whether his degrees are genuine or fake, but police believe they were likely to be forged as the documents lack key details, such as a unique registration number given to each student.

This is not the first time that questions have been raised about Mr Yadav’s identity.

In a 2019 blog post, he claimed that he trained in the UK under Prof A John Camm and joined St George’s hospital in 2002 as an “Interventional Cardiologist”.

He claimed he first returned to India in 2003 to work at a leading heart hospital in Delhi and had worked in the US, Germany and Spain since then.

In one post shared in 2021, Mr Yadav wrote that he was developing a 5,000-bed John Camm Institute of Medical Sciences and Research in the western state of Rajasthan.

“The hospital is being developed under [the] leadership of Dr N John Camm, renowned Interventional Cardiologist from Germany, and will [be] spread over 100 acres of land and will have world class research and tissue labs,” he claimed.

But public records show that he registered four companies in the UK in 2018 under the name of Dr Narendra Vikramaditya Yadav, which he later got changed to Dr Narendra John Camm.

In 2023, a well-known fact-checker in India too had raised questions about his credentials after he allegedly created an X (formerly Twitter) account under the name of “Prof N John Camm”.

After some of his posts went viral, the real Prof Camm put out a statement clarifying that it was not his account and that he was being impersonated.

Police say Mr Yadav has also been at the centre of several other investigations.

In 2019, he was arrested for allegedly abducting a British doctor he had invited to work with him at a hospital in Hyderabad city.

And in 2014, India’s medical regulators had banned him for five years for “professional misconduct”, parliamentary records show.

Records show that he was also charged with fraud and cheating in 2013 in Uttar Pradesh. However, a court stayed the complaint against him.

More than 40 percent of the world’s electricity was generated without burning fossil fuels in 2024, according to a new report from think-tank Ember.

But carbon dioxide emissions, which warm the planet, have risen to an all time high, the report says, with hot weather pushing up the overall demand for power.

That meant an increase in the use of fossil fuel burning power stations.

Solar power continues to be the fastest-growing energy source, with the amount of electricity it generates doubling in the last three years.

“Solar power has become the engine of the global energy transition,” said Phil Macdonald, the managing director of Ember.

“Amid the noise, it’s essential to focus on the real signal. Hotter weather drove the fossil generation increase in 2024, but we’re very unlikely to see a similar jump in 2025.”

In a separate report, the European Copernicus climate service said March 2025 was the second hottest on record, extending a spell of record or near record breaking temperatures.

Ember is a global energy think tank which has been predicting for several years that emissions of the climate warming gas carbon dioxide were about to start falling.

But this hasn’t happened yet due to increasing global demand for electricity.

Cheap and relatively easy to install, for the twentieth year in a row solar is the fastest growing electricity source. According to Ember, the amount generated by solar panels has doubled every three years since 2012.

China continues to dominate the growth of solar with more than half of the increase taking place there. India’s solar capacity doubled between 2023 and 2024.

Though it is growing fast, solar remains a relatively small part of the global energy mix contributing just under 7% of global supply – that’s the same as powering the entire country of India.

Wind contributes just over 8%, with hydropower contributing 14% making it the largest source of clean energy. Both hydro-electric and nuclear power (9%) are growing much more slowly than wind and solar.

The report says that clean energy sources contributed more than 40% of global electricity generation for the first time since the 1940s. Back then demand was much lower, and hydroelectric power stations contributed a significant share.

The big picture is that the rise in the global demand for electricity continues to outpace the growth in renewable energy.

That means that though the percentage generated by clean power has risen to 40.9% the amount of greenhouse gases being emitted has yet to start falling.

According to the Ember report global demand for electricity rose by 4% in 2024.

This was partly due to an increased use of air conditioning in what was a particularly hot year. That meant that fossil fuel generation, mostly coal (34%) and gas (22%), increased by 1.4% and global emissions of the climate warming gas CO2 rose to an all time high of 14.6bn tonnes.

In the last five years, fast-growing Asian economies, in particular India and China, have continued expanding their use of fossil fuels to meet rapidly rising demand for electricity.

The US and Iran will hold “direct talks” over a possible new nuclear deal on Saturday, says President Donald Trump.

Hours after the surprise announcement, Iran’s foreign minister said the talks in Oman would be “indirect” but could be “as much an opportunity as… a test”.

Trump – who pulled the US out a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers during his first term – said discussions would be at “very high level” and that Iran would be in “great danger” if talks were not successful.

Last month, Iran said it was open to the possibility of indirect talks after Trump said he wanted a deal to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and avert possible US military action.

Trump disclosed the talks after a White House meeting with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has also threatened to strike Iranian nuclear sites.

Iran insists its nuclear activities are entirely peaceful, but it has increasingly breached the restrictions imposed by the existing deal in retaliation of the crippling US sanctions reinstated seven years ago. Iran has also stockpiled enough enriched uranium to make several bombs.

Speaking in the Oval Office on Monday, Trump said: “We’re having direct talks with Iran and they’ve started, it’ll go on Saturday. We have a very big meeting and we’ll see what can happen.”

“I think everybody agrees that doing a deal would be preferable to doing the obvious. And the obvious is not something that I want to be involved with, or frankly that Israel wants to be involved with, if they can avoid it.”

“But it’s getting to be very dangerous territory, and hopefully those talks will be successful.”

Trump later added: “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, and if the talks aren’t successful, I actually think it’ll be a very bad day for Iran.”

Hours later, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said “indirect high-level talks” would take place on Saturday in Oman.

“It is as much an opportunity as it is a test. The ball is in America’s court,” he wrote on X.

On Tuesday morning, Iran’s hard-line Tasnim news agency reported that Araghchi and Trump’s Middle East special envoy Steve Witkoff would “meet each other indirectly”.

Netanyahu said Israel and the US were “both united in the goal that Iran does not ever get nuclear weapons”.

“If it can be done diplomatically in a full way, the way it was done in Libya. I think that would be a good thing,” he added, referring to the North African country’s decision to dismantle its nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programmes in 2003.

The announcement of talks marks a significant step forward, but they are certain to be long and difficult.

The US and Iran have long been foes and they have not had diplomatic relations since the Islamic Revolution in 1979 and the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran.

In March, Trump sent a letter to Iran via an intermediary from the United Arab Emirates setting out his willingness to discuss a deal.

On the day that the letter was delivered, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dismissed it as a “deception of public opinion” and rejected the idea of negotiations.

But at the end of the month, Iran’s president said Khamenei had sent a reply to Trump’s letter via Oman that left open the possibility of indirect talks.

“We don’t avoid talks; it’s the breach of promises that has caused issues for us so far,” Massoud Pezeshkian told a cabinet meeting. “They must prove that they can build trust.”

The contents of the two letters have not been made public, and US officials have revealed few details about Trump’s demands.

After Witkoff said in an interview that Trump was proposing a “verification programme” to show Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz clarified that the goal was “full dismantlement”.

A senior official at Iran’s foreign ministry told BBC Persian on Tuesday that it would never agree to dismantle its nuclear programme, and that the “Libya model” would never be part of any future negotiations.

Curbing Iran’s ability to build nuclear weapons has been a key foreign policy goal for the US and its allies for decades.

Suspicions that Iran was using its nuclear programme as a cover to develop a bomb prompted the US, EU and UN to impose crippling sanctions in 2010.

The 2015 deal that Iran reached with then-US President Barack Obama’s administration, as well as the UK, France, China, Russia and Germany, saw it limit its nuclear activities and allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) into the country in return for sanctions relief.

However, in 2018, Trump unilaterally abandoned the deal, which he said did too little to stop Iran’s potential pathway to a bomb.

In response to the US sanctions reinstated to pressure it to renegotiate, Iran increasingly breached its restrictions, particularly those limiting the production of enriched uranium, which can be used to produce fuel for nuclear power plants but also to build nuclear weapons.

The IAEA warned in February that Iran had stockpiled almost 275kg (606lb) of uranium enriched to 60% purity, which is near weapons grade. That would theoretically be enough, if enriched to 90%, for six nuclear bombs.

Israel, which is assumed to have its own nuclear weapons but maintains an official policy of deliberate ambiguity, views a nuclear Iran as an existential threat.

Last year, Israel said it had hit an Iranian nuclear site in retaliation for an Iranian missile attack on Israel, as well as air defences systems and missile manufacturing facilities.

Iran can also no longer rely on the threat of deterrence from its regional allies Hamas and Hezbollah, which have been devastated by wars with Israel over the past 18 months.

The Duchess of Sussex has revealed she suffered a “rare and scary” medical condition after giving birth to one of her children.

In the first episode of her new podcast, Confessions of a Female Founder, Meghan said she was diagnosed with post-partum pre-eclampsia following childbirth.

She described it as a “huge medical scare”, and said she had to manage without the world knowing what she was going through.

Meghan, who shares two children with the Duke of Sussex, did not reveal whether she faced the medical complication after the birth of Archie, five, or Lilibet, three.

According to the NHS website, pre-eclampsia affects some women during pregnancy or soon after their baby is delivered, with early signs including having high blood pressure.

“It’s so rare. And it’s so scary,” Meghan said of the condition.

“You’re still trying to juggle all these things and the world doesn’t know what is happening, quietly, and in the quiet you are still trying to show up for people,” she added.

“In the quiet you’re still trying to show up mostly for your children. But those things are huge medical scares.”

The first guest on Meghan’s podcast was Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder of dating app Bumble, who also suffered from the condition.

Herd described it as “life or death, truly”, adding: “It’s really scary.”

She said she would “never forget” the image of Meghan, after giving birth to Archie, “and the whole world was waiting for his debut”.

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In the podcast, Meghan also talked about her experience of juggling work and childcare, and how Lilibet often joins her during online meetings when she’s working from home.

“I don’t leave the house to go to an office, my office is here,” she said. “Lili still naps, she gets picked up early and she naps. She only has a half day in preschool.

“If she wakes up and she wants to find me, she knows where to find me, even if my door is closed to the office.

“She’ll be sitting there on my lap during one of these meetings with a grid of all the executives.”

But Meghan insisted she “wouldn’t have it any other way”.

“I don’t want to miss those moments. I don’t want to miss pick-up if I don’t have to. I don’t want to miss drop-off.”

Meghan’s new podcast, with Lemonada Media, follows an earlier series called Archetypes on Spotify, which faced some tough criticism.

It’s the latest in a flurry of business ventures from the duchess, who has also recently starred in a new Netflix lifestyle series – titled With Love, Meghan – and launched a new brand, As Ever.

She has said the new series will feature “candid conversations with amazing women” and also include “girl talk”.

In the first episode, she added that having young children, while building a business, helped to bring “perspective”.

“Because you’re building something while your child’s going through potty training… and both are just as important,” she said.

“In your own world, that’s super high value. And in [Lili’s] world, that’s super high value.”

• Pre-eclampsia is a condition that affects some women, usually during the second half of pregnancy or soon after their baby is delivered
• Early signs include having high blood pressure and protein in urine
• In some cases, further symptoms can develop, including severe headaches, vision problems, and pain below the ribs
• Many cases are mild, but the condition can lead to serious complications for both mother and baby if it’s not monitored and treated

More information is available on the NHS.

Thousands of migrants who entered the US during the Biden administration and used a special app to arrange asylum appointments are being told to leave “immediately”.

The roughly 900,000 migrants who entered at the southern border using the app, CBP One, were generally allowed to remain in the US for two years and given “parole” from immigration laws to work in the country legally.

Now, many of them are being informed that their paroles are revoked and that they are subject to prosecution if they remain in the US.

President Donald Trump has long promised to increase deportations from the US. His administration recently renamed the app to CBP Home and is using it for “self-deportations”.

In an email seen by the BBC, a migrant was told “it is time for you to leave the United States”.

“If you do not depart the United States immediately you will be subject to potential law enforcement actions that result in your removal from the United States – unless you have otherwise obtained a lawful basis to remain here,” the email adds.

In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said that “the Biden Administration abused the parole authority to allow millions of illegal aliens into the US which further fuelled the worst border crisis in US history”.

“Cancelling these paroles is a promise kept to the American people to secure our borders and protect national security,” the statement added.

It is unclear how many people received the notices, although immigration officials have confirmed that they have been sent to “some” of those paroled into the US.

DHS said the cancellations and push to leave immediately do not apply to migrants in two parole programmes designated for some Ukrainians and Afghans.

Immigration advocates have said that Mexican, Honduran and Salvadoran migrants are among those who received the notices.

The notice also advises migrants that any benefits received as part of their parole into the US – including work authorisation – are cancelled.

“You will be subject to potential criminal prosecution, civil fines, and penalties, and any other lawful options available to the federal government,” it says.

Originally launched in 2020, CBP One was expanded during the Biden administration to allow prospective migrants to book appointments to appear at a port of entry.

At the time, officials credited the application with helping reduce detentions at the border and portrayed the technology as part of a larger effort to protect asylum seekers making an often-dangerous journey to the US.

In March, however, the app was rebranded as CBP Home.

It now allows undocumented migrants to identify themselves and declare their intention to leave the country.

The app also asks migrants whether they have “enough money to depart the United States” and whether they have a “valid, unexpired passport from your original country of citizenship”.

In late February, the administration said it would create a national registry for undocumented migrants and those failing to sign up could possibly face criminal prosecution.

The registration requires any undocumented migrants above the age of 14 to provide the US government with an address and their fingerprints.

Experts said that the registration system will face hurdles, as it is difficult to enforce and fraught with logistical challenges.

The number of state executions around the world has reached its highest level in ten years, a new report by Amnesty International has said.

More than 1,500 recorded executions took place in 2024 with Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia accounting for a combined 1,380 and the United States for 25, the charity found.

Despite this rise, the report also found that the total number of countries carrying out the death penalty stood at 15 – the lowest number on record for the second consecutive year.

Amnesty International’s Secretary General Agnes Callamard said the “tide is turning” on capital punishment, adding that “it is only a matter of time until the world is free from the shadow of the gallows”.

While these figures are the highest they have been since 2015 – when at least 1,634 people were subject to the death penalty – the true overall figure is likely to be higher.

Amnesty International says the figure does not include those killed in China, which it believes carries out thousands of executions each year. North Korea and Vietnam are also not included.

Data on the use of the death penalty is classified as a state secret both in China and Vietnam, meaning that the charity has been unable to access statistics.

Other obstacles, such as restrictive state practices or the ongoing crises in Gaza and Syria, meant that little or no information was available for those areas.

The report, entitled Death Sentences and Executions 2024, cited that Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia were responsible for the overall rise in known executions.

Iraq almost quadrupled its executions from at least 16 to at least 63, while Saudi Arabia doubled its yearly total from 172 to at least 345.

Executions in Iran rose from at least 853 in 2023 to at least 972 in 2024.

The report also said that the two main reasons for the spike in the use of capital punishment was down to “countries weaponising the death penalty against protesters” and for “drug-related crimes”.

The charity found that more than 40% of executions in 2024 were carried out for drug-related offences, which it said was unlawful under human rights law.

In 2024, Zimbabwe signed into law a bill that abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes and, since September 2024, the world has seen two cases where death row inmates in Japan and the US have been acquitted and granted clemency respectively.

The charity also said more than two thirds of all UN member states voted in favour of a moratorium on the use of the death penalty last year.

Elon Musk has called President Donald Trump’s trade adviser, Peter Navarro, a “moron” over comments he made about his electric vehicle firm, Tesla.

Musk – who is also a member of the Trump administration – also said Navarro was “dumber than a sack of bricks” in posts on his social media platform X.

It was in response to an interview Navarro gave in which he described Tesla as a “car assembler”, rather than a manufacturer, because of its use of foreign-made parts.

Navarro was being interviewed about Trump’s tariff policy and said he wanted to see such parts made in the US in the future instead.

Musk said the claims were “demonstrably false.”

The BBC has asked the White House for comment.

Trump has in part justified his global wave of tariffs by saying he wants to revive manufacturing in the US.

This is an argument Navarro was expanding on during an appearance on CNBC on Monday.

“If you look at our auto industry, right, we’re in assembly line for German engines and transmissions right now”, he said.

“We’re going to get to a place where America makes stuff again, real wages are going to be up, profits are going to be up”.

Responding to the comments on Tuesday, Musk posted a link to a 2023 article by car valuation firm Kelley Blue Book, which cited Car.com findings that Tesla vehicles had the most parts produced in the US.

“By any definition whatsoever, Tesla is the most vertically integrated auto manufacturer in America with the highest percentage of US content,” Musk wrote in a follow-up post.

Technology industry analyst Dan Ives said on Sunday that the company was less exposed to tariffs than other US car makers such as GM, Ford, and Stellantis.

But he too claimed the company sourced the majority of its parts from outside the US, highlighting China.

“The tariffs in their current form will disrupt Tesla, the overall supply chain, and its global footprint which has been a clear advantage over the years vs. rising competitors like BYD,” he said.

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Trump’s tariffs have caused stock market falls around the world, as investors calculate it will result in firms making smaller profits.

Musk – who is leading DOGE, which is tasked with cutting federal spending – warned in an X post on 27 March that even his company would not be immune from tariff disruption.

Another Trump backer, the billionaire fund manager Bill Ackman, has called for a pause on the tariffs to stave off what he called “major global economic disruption.”

In a post on X, he said the current plans would do “unnecessary harm.”

Navarro is considered an ultra-Trump loyalist after being jailed for ignoring a subpoena from a House committee investigating alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

He is also thought to be one of the main architects of Trump’s tariff policy.

A full-scale trade war with China and the US is in prospect after President Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs of more than 100% on Chinese goods imports from Wednesday 9 April.

China has said it will “fight to the end” rather than capitulate to what it sees as US coercion, and has already raised its own trade barriers against the US in response.

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The trade in goods between the two economic powers added up to around $585bn (£429bn) last year.

Though the US imported far more from China ($440bn) than China imported from America ($145bn).

That left the US running a trade deficit with China – the difference between what it imports and exports – of $295bn in 2024. That’s a considerable trade deficit, equivalent to around 1% of the US economy.

But it’s less than the $1tn figure that Trump has repeatedly claimed this week.

Trump already imposed significant tariffs on China in his first term as president. Those tariffs were kept in place and added to by his successor Joe Biden.

Together those trade barriers helped to bring the goods the US imported from China down from a 21% share of America’s total imports in 2016 to 13% last year.

So the US reliance on China for trade has diminished over the past decade.

Yet analysts point out that some Chinese goods exports to the US have been re-routed through south-east Asian countries.

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For example, the Trump administration imposed 30% tariffs on Chinese imported solar panels in 2018.

But the US Commerce Department presented evidence in 2023 that Chinese solar panel manufacturers had shifted their assembly operations to states such as Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam and then sent the finished products to the US from those countries, effectively evading the tariffs.

The new “reciprocal” tariffs due to be imposed on those countries will therefore push up the US price of a wide range of goods ultimately originating in China.

In 2024 the biggest category of goods exports from the US to China were soybeans – primarily used to feed China’s estimated 440 million pigs.

The US also sent pharmaceuticals and petroleum to China.

Going the other way, from China to the US, were large volumes of electronics, computers and toys. A large amount of batteries, which are vital for electric vehicles, were also exported.

The biggest category of US imports from China is smartphones, accounting for 9% of the total. A large proportion of these smartphones are made in China for Apple, a US-based multinational.

The US tariffs on China have been one of the main contributors to the decline in the market value of Apple in recent weeks, with its share price falling by 20% over the past month.

All these imported items to the US from China were already set to become considerably more expensive for Americans due to the 20% tariff the Trump administration has already imposed on Beijing.

If the tariff rises to 100% – for all goods – then the impact could be five times greater.

And US imports into China will also go up in price due to China’s retaliatory tariffs, ultimately hurting Chinese consumers in a similar way.

But beyond tariffs, there are other ways for these two nations to attempt to damage each other through trade.

China has a central role in refining many vital metals for industry, from copper and lithium to rare earths.

Beijing could place obstacles in the way of these metals reaching the US.

This is something it has already done in the case of two materials called germanium and gallium, which are used by the military in thermal imaging and radar.

As for the US, it could attempt to tighten the technological blockade on China started by Joe Biden by making it harder for China to import the kind of advanced microchips – which are vital for applications like artificial intelligence – it still can’t yet produce itself.

Donald Trump’s trade advisor, Peter Navarro, has suggested this week that the US could apply pressure on other countries, including Cambodia, Mexico and Vietnam, not to trade with China if they want to continue to exporting to the US.

The US and China together account for such a large share of the global economy, around 43% this year according to the International Monetary Fund.

If they were to engage in an all-out trade war that slowed their growth down, or even pushed them into recession, that would likely harm other countries’ economies in the form of slower global growth.

Global investment would also likely suffer.

There are other potential consequences.

China is the world’s biggest manufacturing nation and is producing far more than its population consumes domestically.

It is already running an almost $1tn goods surplus – meaning it is exporting more goods to the rest of the world than it imports.

And it is often producing those goods at below the true cost of production due to domestic subsidies and state financial support, like cheap loans, for favoured firms.

Steel is an example of this.

There is a risk that if such products were unable to enter the US, Chinese firms could seek to “dump” them abroad.

While that could be beneficial for some consumers, it could also undercut producers in countries threatening jobs and wages.

The lobby group UK Steel has warned of the danger of excess steel potentially being redirected to the UK market.

The spillover impacts of an all-out China-US trade war would be felt globally, and most economists judge that the impact would be highly negative.

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China has called US Vice-President JD Vance “ignorant and impolite” after he said America had been borrowing money from “Chinese peasants”.

Foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian told reporters on Tuesday that Vance’s comments – which had already caused a stir on Chinese social media – were “surprising and sad”.

Vance made the comments on Thursday, during an interview on Fox News where he defended US President Donald Trump’s tariffs – which are currently fuelling tensions between the world’s two largest economies.

“We borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture,” the vice-president said.

On Monday, Trump gave China – one of the world’s largest holders of US Treasury bonds – until Tuesday to scrap its 34% counter tariff or face an additional 50% tax on goods imported into the US.

If Trump acts on his threat, US companies could face a total rate of 104% on Chinese imports – as it comes on top of 20% tariffs already put in place in March and the 34% announced last week.

China has said it will “fight to the end” as it called Trump’s moves “bullying”.

“China’s position on China-US economic and trade relations has been made very clear,” Lin said on Tuesday.

Vance’s comments had already caused a stir among Chinese social media users, some of whom have called for him to be banned from entering China.

“As a key figure in the US government, it is really shameful for Vance to say such things,” one Weibo user wrote.

“Isn’t his memoir called ‘Hillbilly Elegy’?” wrote another user, a reference to Vance’s book which detailed his upbringing in rural America.

Trump and his allies have long argued that his tariff policy will boost the US economy and protect jobs.

But economists have warned that this would cause major disruptions to international supply chains, push up prices for consumers and bode disaster for all trade.

In the wake of the tariffs announcement, financial institutions have warned of heightened risks of a recession, both in the US and globally.

Ukrainian forces have captured two Chinese nationals who were fighting for the Russian army in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, President Volodymyr Zelensky has said.

The Ukrainian president said intelligence suggested the number of Chinese soldiers in Russia’s army is “much higher than two”.

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said that Chinese troops fighting on Ukrainian territory “puts into question China’s declared stance for peace” and added that their envoy in Kyiv has been summoned for an explanation.

It marks the first official allegation that China is supplying Russia with manpower for its war in Ukraine. There has been no immediate response to the claims from Moscow or Beijing.

In a statement on social media platform X, Zelensky said the soldiers were captured in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region with identification documents, including bank cards which had “personal data” on them.

Ukraine’s forces fought six Chinese soldiers and took two of them prisoner, he said.

The post was accompanied by a video showing one of the alleged Chinese captives in handcuffs, speaking Mandarin Chinese and apparently describing a recent battle.

“We have information suggesting that there are many more Chinese citizens in the occupier’s units than just these two,” he said.

“Russia’s involvement of China, along with other countries, whether directly or indirectly, in this war in Europe is a clear signal that Putin intends to do anything but end the war,” Zelensky added.

The Ukrainian president called for a response “from the United States, Europe, and all those around the world who want peace”.

An investigation is under way and the captives are currently in the custody of Ukraine’s security service, he added.

On Tuesday, US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce called the reports “disturbing”.

She added that China is a “major enabler” of Russia’s war in Ukraine, citing its supply of dual-use goods such as navigation equipment, semiconductor chips and jet parts.

Ukraine’s foreign minister said that he had summoned China’s chargé d’affaires in Kyiv to “demand an explanation”.

Writing on X, Andrii Sybiha said: “We strongly condemn Russia’s involvement of Chinese citizens in its war of aggression against Ukraine, as well as their participation in combat against Ukrainian forces.”

He added that the move “puts into question China’s declared stance for peace” and undermines Beijing’s credibility as a member of the UN Security Council.

French newspaper Le Monde has previously reported that it identified around 40 accounts on TikTok’s sister app, Douyin – which is only available in China – belonging to Chinese individuals who claim to have signed up with the Russian army.

North Korea has sent thousands of troops to aid Russia’s war effort against Ukraine, according to Kyiv and Western officials.

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In a press conference on Tuesday, Zelensky said: “But there is a difference: North Koreans fought against us on the front in Kursk, the Chinese are fighting on the territory of Ukraine.”

In January Ukraine said it captured two injured North Korean soldiers in Russia’s Kursk Oblast.

While Beijing and Moscow are close political and economic allies, China has attempted to present itself as a neutral party in the conflict and has repeatedly denied supplying Russia with military equipment.

One of Russia’s chief advantages in the war is numbers. There have been reports of Moscow using “meat grinder” tactics to throw huge numbers of soldiers at the front lines and incrementally improve their position.

Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and Moscow currently controls about 20% of Ukraine’s territory, mostly in the east.

A detailed analysis of a full-sized digital scan of the Titanic has revealed new insight into the doomed liner’s final hours.

The exact 3D replica shows the violence of how the ship ripped in two as it sank after hitting an iceberg in 1912 – 1,500 people lost their lives in the disaster.

The scan provides a new view of a boiler room, confirming eye-witness accounts that engineers worked right to the end to keep the ship’s lights on.

And a computer simulation also suggests that punctures in the hull the size of A4 pieces of paper led to the ship’s demise.

“Titanic is the last surviving eyewitness to the disaster, and she still has stories to tell,” said Parks Stephenson, a Titanic analyst.

The scan has been studied for a new documentary by National Geographic and Atlantic Productions called Titanic: The Digital Resurrection.

The wreck, which lies 3,800m down in the icy waters of the Atlantic, was mapped using underwater robots.

More than 700,000 images, taken from every angle, were used to create the “digital twin”, which was revealed exclusively to the world by BBC News in 2023.

Because the wreck is so large and lies in the gloom of the deep, exploring it with submersibles only shows tantalising snapshots. The scan, however, provides the first full view of the Titanic.

The immense bow lies upright on the seafloor, almost as if the ship were continuing its voyage.

But sitting 600m away, the stern is a heap of mangled metal. The damage was caused as it slammed into the sea floor after the ship broke in half.

The new mapping technology is providing a different way to study the ship.

“It’s like a crime scene: you need to see what the evidence is, in the context of where it is,” said Parks Stephenson.

“And having a comprehensive view of the entirety of the wreck site is key to understanding what happened here.”

The scan shows new close-up details, including a porthole that was most likely smashed by the iceberg. It tallies with the eye-witness reports of survivors that ice came into some people’s cabins during the collision.

Experts have been studying one of the Titanic’s huge boiler rooms – it’s easy to see on the scan because it sits at the rear of the bow section at the point where the ship broke in two.

Passengers said that the lights were still on as the ship plunged beneath the waves.

The digital replica shows that some of the boilers are concave, which suggests they were still operating as they were plunged into the water.

Lying on the deck of the stern, a valve has also been discovered in an open position, indicating that steam was still flowing into the electricity generating system.

This would have been thanks to a team of engineers led by Joseph Bell who stayed behind to shovel coal into the furnaces to keep the lights on.

All died in the disaster but their heroic actions saved many lives, said Parks Stephenson.

“They kept the lights and the power working to the end, to give the crew time to launch the lifeboats safely with some light instead of in absolute darkness,” he told the BBC.

“They held the chaos at bay as long as possible, and all of that was kind of symbolised by this open steam valve just sitting there on the stern.”

A new simulation has also provided further insights into the sinking.

It takes a detailed structural model of the ship, created from Titanic’s blueprints, and also information about its speed, direction and position, to predict the damage that was caused as it hit the iceberg.

“We used advanced numerical algorithms, computational modelling and supercomputing capabilities to reconstruct the Titanic sinking,” said Prof Jeom-Kee Paik, from University College London, who led the research.

The simulation shows that as the ship made only a glancing blow against the iceberg it was left with a series of punctures running in a line along a narrow section of the hull.

Titanic was supposed to be unsinkable, designed to stay afloat even if four of its watertight compartments flooded.

But the simulation calculates the iceberg’s damage was spread across six compartments.

“The difference between Titanic sinking and not sinking are down to the fine margins of holes about the size of a piece of paper,” said Simon Benson, an associate lecturer in naval architecture at the University of Newcastle.

“But the problem is that those small holes are across a long length of the ship, so the flood water comes in slowly but surely into all of those holes, and then eventually the compartments are flooded over the top and the Titanic sinks.”

Unfortunately the damage cannot be seen on the scan as the lower section of the bow is hidden beneath the sediment.

The human tragedy of the Titanic is still very much visible.

Personal possessions from the ship’s passengers are scattered across the sea floor.

The scan is providing new clues about that cold night in 1912, but it will take experts years to fully scrutinise every detail of the 3D replica.

“She’s only giving her stories to us a little bit at a time,” said Parks Stephenson.

“Every time, she leaves us wanting for more.”

The trade war between the world’s two biggest economies shows no signs of slowing down – Beijing has vowed to “fight to the end” hours after US President Donald Trump threatened to nearly double the tariffs on China.

That could leave most Chinese imports facing a staggering 104% tax – a sharp escalation between the two sides.

Smartphones, computers, lithium-ion batteries, toys and video game consoles make up the bulk of Chinese exports to the US. But there are so many other things, from screws to boilers.

With a deadline looming in Washington as Trump threatens to introduce the additional tariffs from Wednesday, who will blink first?

“It would be a mistake to think that China will back off and remove tariffs unilaterally,” says Alfredo Montufar-Helu, a senior advisor to the China Center at The Conference Board think tank.

“Not only would it make China look weak, but it would also give leverage to the US to ask for more. We’ve now reached an impasse that will likely lead to long-term economic pain.”

• Live updates on this story

Global markets have slumped since last week when Trump’s tariffs, which target almost every country, began coming into effect. Asian stocks, which saw their worst drop in decades on Monday after the Trump administration didn’t waver, recovered slightly on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, China has hit back with tit-for-tat levies – 34% – and Trump warned that he would retaliate with an additional 50% tariff if Beijing doesn’t back down.

Uncertainty is high, with more tariffs, some more than 40%, set to kick in on Wednesday. Many of these would hit Asian economies: tariffs on China would rise to 54%, and those on Vietnam and Cambodia, would soar to 46% and 49% respectively.

Experts are worried about the speed at which this is happening, leaving governments, businesses and investors little time to adjust or prepare for a remarkably different global economy.

China had responded to the first round of Trump tariffs with tit-for-tat levies on certain US imports, export controls on rare metals and an anti-monopoly investigation into US firms, including Google.

This time too it has announced retaliatory tariffs, but it also appears to be bracing for pain with stronger measures. It has allowed its currency, the yuan, to weaken, which makes Chinese exports more attractive. And state-linked enterprises have been buying up stocks in what appears to be a move to stabilise the market.

The prospect of negotiations between the US and Japan seemed to buoy investors who were fighting to claw back some of the losses of recent days.

But the face-off between China and the US – the world’s biggest exporter and its most important market – remains a major concern.

“What we are seeing is a game of who can bear more pain. We’ve stopped talking about any sense of gain,” Mary Lovely, a US-China trade expert at the Peterson Institute in Washington DC, told the BBC’s Newshour programme.

Despite its slowing economy, China may “very well be willing to endure the pain to avoid capitulating to what they believe is US aggression”, she added.

Shaken by a prolonged property market crisis and rising unemployment, Chinese people are just not spending enough. Indebted local governments have also been struggling to increase investments or expand the social safety net.

“The tariffs exacerbate this problem,” said Andrew Collier, Senior Fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School.

If China’s exports take a hit, that hurts a crucial revenue stream. Exports have long been a key factor in China’s explosive growth. And they remain a significant driver, although the country is trying to diversify its economy with high-end tech manufacturing and greater domestic consumption.

It’s hard to say exactly when the tariffs “will bite but likely soon,” Mr Collier says, adding that “[President Xi] faces an increasingly difficult choice due to a slowing economy and dwindling resources”.

But it’s not just China that will be feeling the impact.

According to the US Trade Representative office, the US imported $438bn (£342bn) worth of goods from China in 2024, with US exports to China valued at $143bn, leaving a trade deficit of $295bn.

And it’s not clear how the US is going to find alternative supply for Chinese goods on such short notice.

Taxes on physical goods aside, both countries are “economically intertwined in a lot of ways – there’s a massive amount of investment both ways, a lot of digital trade and data flows”, says Deborah Elms, Head of Trade Policy at the Hinrich Foundation in Singapore.

“You can only tariff so much for so long. But there are other ways both countries can hit each other. So you might say it can’t possibly get worse, but there are many ways in which it can.”

The rest of the world is watching too, to see where Chinese exports shut out of the US market will go.

They will end up in other markets such as those in South East Asia, Ms Elms adds, and “these places [are dealing] with their own tariffs and having to think about where else can we sell our products?”

“So we are in a very different universe, one that is really murky.”

Unlike the trade war with China during Trump’s first term, which was about negotiating with Beijing, “it’s unclear what is motivating these tariffs and it’s very hard to predict where things might go from here,” says Roland Rajah, lead economist at the Lowy Institute.

China has a “wide toolkit” for retaliation, he adds, such as depreciating their currency further or clamping down on US firms.

“I think the question is how restrained will they be? There’s retaliation to save face and there’s pulling out the whole arsenal. It’s not clear if China wants to go down that path. It just might.”

Some experts believe the US and China may engage in private talks. Trump is yet to speak to Xi since returning to the White House, although Beijing has repeatedly signalled its willingness to talk.

But others are less hopeful.

“I think the US is overplaying its hand,” Ms Elms says. She is sceptical of Trump’s belief that the US market is so lucrative that China, or any country, will eventually bend.

“How will this end? No-one knows,” she says. “I’m really concerned about the speed and escalation. The future is much more challenging and the risks are just so high.”

There is a magnificent, snow-white wolf on the cover of Time Magazine today – accompanied by a headline announcing the return of the dire wolf.

This now extinct species is possibly most famous for its fictional role in Game of Thrones, but it did exist – more than 10,000 years ago – when it roamed across the Americas.

The company Colossal Biosciences is behind today’s headlines. It announced that it used “deft genetic engineering and ancient DNA” to breed three dire wolf puppies and to “de-extinct” the species.

But while the young wolves – Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi – represent an impressive technological breakthrough, independent experts say they are not actually dire wolves.

Zoologist Philip Seddon from the University of Otago in New Zealand explained the animals are “genetically modified grey wolves”.

Colossal publicised its efforts to use similar cutting edge genetic techniques to bring back extinct animals including the woolly mammoth and the Tasmanian tiger.

Meanwhile experts have pointed to important biological differences between the wolf on the cover of Time and the dire wolf that roamed and hunted during the last ice age.

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Paleogeneticist Dr Nic Rawlence, also from Otago University, explained how ancient dire wolf DNA – extracted from fossilised remains – is too degraded and damaged to biologically copy or clone.

“Ancient DNA is like if you put fresh DNA in a 500 degree oven overnight,” Dr Rawlence told BBC News. “It comes out fragmented – like shards and dust.

“You can reconstruct [it], but it’s not good enough to do anything else with.”

Instead, he added, the de-extinction team used new synthetic biology technology – using the ancient DNA to identify key segments of code that they could edit into the biological blueprint of a living animal, in this case a grey wolf.

“So what Colossal has produced is a grey wolf, but it has some dire wolf-like characteristics, like a larger skull and white fur,” said Dr Rawlence. “It’s a hybrid.”

Dr Beth Shapiro, a biologist from Colossal Biosciences, said that this feat does represent de-extinction, which she described as recreating animals with the same characteristics.

“A grey wolf is the closest living relative of a dire wolf – they’re genetically really similar – so we targeted DNA sequences that lead to dire wolf traits and then edited grey wolf cells… then we cloned those cells and created our dire wolves.”

According to Dr Rawlence though, dire wolves diverged from grey wolves anywhere between 2.5 to six million years ago.

“It’s in a completely different genus to grey wolves,” he said. “Colossal compared the genomes of the dire wolf and the grey wolf, and from about 19,000 genes, they determined that 20 changes in 14 genes gave them a dire wolf.”

The edited embryos were implanted in surrogate domestic dog mothers. According to the article in Time, all three wolves were born by planned caesarean section to minimise the risk of complications.

Colossal, which was valued at $10bn (£7.8bn) in January, is keeping the wolves on a private 2,000-acre facility at an undisclosed location in the northern US.

The pups certainly look like many people’s vision of a dire wolf and the story has gathered global attention. So why is this scientific distinction important?

“Because extinction is still forever,” Dr Rawlence told BBC News. “If we don’t have extinction, how are we going to learn from our mistakes?

“Is the message now that we can go and destroy the environment and that animals can go extinct, but we can bring them back?”

Thousands of migrants who entered the US during the Biden administration and used a special app to arrange asylum appointments are being told to leave “immediately”.

The roughly 900,000 migrants who entered at the southern border using the app, CBP One, were generally allowed to remain in the US for two years and given “parole” from immigration laws to work in the country legally.

Now, many of them are being informed that their paroles are revoked and that they are subject to prosecution if they remain in the US.

President Donald Trump has long promised to increase deportations from the US. His administration recently renamed the app to CBP Home and is using it for “self-deportations”.

In an email seen by the BBC, a migrant was told “it is time for you to leave the United States”.

“If you do not depart the United States immediately you will be subject to potential law enforcement actions that result in your removal from the United States – unless you have otherwise obtained a lawful basis to remain here,” the email adds.

In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said that “the Biden Administration abused the parole authority to allow millions of illegal aliens into the US which further fuelled the worst border crisis in US history”.

“Cancelling these paroles is a promise kept to the American people to secure our borders and protect national security,” the statement added.

It is unclear how many people received the notices, although immigration officials have confirmed that they have been sent to “some” of those paroled into the US.

DHS said the cancellations and push to leave immediately do not apply to migrants in two parole programmes designated for some Ukrainians and Afghans.

Immigration advocates have said that Mexican, Honduran and Salvadoran migrants are among those who received the notices.

The notice also advises migrants that any benefits received as part of their parole into the US – including work authorisation – are cancelled.

“You will be subject to potential criminal prosecution, civil fines, and penalties, and any other lawful options available to the federal government,” it says.

Originally launched in 2020, CBP One was expanded during the Biden administration to allow prospective migrants to book appointments to appear at a port of entry.

At the time, officials credited the application with helping reduce detentions at the border and portrayed the technology as part of a larger effort to protect asylum seekers making an often-dangerous journey to the US.

In March, however, the app was rebranded as CBP Home.

It now allows undocumented migrants to identify themselves and declare their intention to leave the country.

The app also asks migrants whether they have “enough money to depart the United States” and whether they have a “valid, unexpired passport from your original country of citizenship”.

In late February, the administration said it would create a national registry for undocumented migrants and those failing to sign up could possibly face criminal prosecution.

The registration requires any undocumented migrants above the age of 14 to provide the US government with an address and their fingerprints.

Experts said that the registration system will face hurdles, as it is difficult to enforce and fraught with logistical challenges.

Authorities in India’s Kuno National Park have started disciplinary action against a forest worker who is seen offering water to a cheetah and her cubs in a video that has gone viral online.

The man, a driver at the sanctuary, violated instructions which say only authorised personnel can go near the big cats, park officials told PTI news agency.

Cheetahs were declared extinct in India in 1952, the only large mammal to become extinct since the country’s independence.

They were reintroduced in Kuno in 2022 as part of an ambitious plan to repopulate the species.

The incident came to light on Sunday, when a video of the man feeding water to the big cats began circulating online.

The footage shows him pouring water into a metal pan after being urged to do so by some people who aren’t seen in the video.

Moments later, a cheetah named Jwala and her four cubs walk up to the pan and start drinking from it.

Officials say it’s not uncommon for certain staff members to offer water to big cats if they get close to the boundary of the national park to lure them back into the forest.

The mum and her cubs were in the fields close to the boundary, Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests Uttam Kumar Sharma told PTI.

“The monitoring team, in general, has been instructed to try to deviate or lure the cheetahs back inside whenever such a situation arises so as not to create human-cheetah conflict,” he said

However, only trained personnel are allowed to do so and the man’s actions went against established protocol, he added.

“There are clear instructions to move away from cheetahs. Only authorised persons can go in close proximity to them to perform a specific task,” Mr Sharma said.

Initial reports in the media called the video “heartwarming” but many on social media raised concerns about the safety of people and animals in such situations. Others suggested a better option would be for the authorities to create ponds and water bodies in the park to ensure the cats did not have to go far for water in the hot summer.

Villages on the park’s border have been tense as cheetahs wander into their fields and kill their livestock. Last month, some villagers pelted the cats with stones to stop such attacks, The New Indian Express newspaper reported. Officials say they have been trying to raise awareness in the villages so that people adapt to living near the animals.

Twenty cheetahs were relocated from South Africa and Namibia to the Kuno national park in the central state of Madhya Pradesh between 2022 and 2023 in what was the first such intercontinental translocation of the big cats.

Eight of them have since died due to various reasons, including kidney failure and mating injuries, sparking concerns about whether conditions at Kuno are suitable for them.

In 2023, South African and Namibian experts involved with the project wrote to India’s Supreme Court, saying they believed that some of these deaths could have been prevented by “better monitoring of animals and more appropriate and timely veterinary care”.

Experts from the Namibia-based Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF), which has been involved with the project since its inception, had also raised concerns about inadequate record-keeping at Kuno. They told the BBC that the park management had “little or no scientific training” and the vets were “too inexperienced to manage a project of this calibre”.

Park authorities have rejected the allegations and say there are now a total of 26 cheetahs, including 17 in the wild and nine others that are kept in enclosures at the moment.

This year, India is expected to receive 20 more cheetahs from South Africa. Officials say the big cats have already been identified by a task force in collaboration with South African authorities.

In his first few weeks back in the Oval Office, US President Donald Trump made several extraordinary decisions on foreign policy.

He threatened to annex Greenland, announced plans to “take over” Gaza, and started to remove the US from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Paris climate agreement. He has also shuttered the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the government’s main overseas aid agency.

Many of these moves are not very popular with ordinary Americans, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Centre. It surveyed 3,605 US adults in late March – just before Trump imposed sweeping trade tariffs on countries around the world.

Here are four takeaways from the Pew research.

Trump has increased his rhetoric on “getting” Greenland, and Vice-President JD Vance recently took a controversial trip to the Arctic island.

But Pew found that most survey respondents (54%) did not think the US should take over the Danish territory. When asked if they think Trump would actually pursue the plan, 23% thought it was extremely likely, but a greater number (34%) said they believed he would not carry through with it.

• Denmark and Greenland show united front against US ‘annexation’ threats
• Andrew Harding: Vance makes ominous pitch to Greenland

Trump also proposed an American takeover of the Gaza Strip, resettling two million Palestinians in neighbouring countries with no right of return. This would violate international law and has been described as “tantamount to ethnic cleansing” by the UN.

Of those surveyed, 62% of Americans opposed such a move, compared to 15% who favoured it. Opinions were divided as to whether Trump was likely to actually pursue it. Again, the greater number (38%) thought it very or extremely unlikely.

• Trump says no right of return for Palestinians under Gaza plan

Trump signed executive orders to remove the US from the World Health Organization (WHO) and Paris Agreement on climate change, and said USAID largely would be shut down.

• More than 80% of USAID programmes ‘officially ending’

More Americans disapprove than approve of such moves, the survey suggests – although the results are not a landslide.

• 45% disapprove of ending USAID programmes (compared with 35% who approve)
• 46% do not agree with leaving the Paris agreement (32% approve)
• 52% disapprove of leaving the WHO (32% approve)

At the start of his second presidency, Trump said he would “work together, very closely” with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine – a very different approach to that of his predecessor, Joe Biden.

The Pew research found 43% of respondents thought Trump favoured Russia too much – a higher number than the 31% who said he was striking the right balance between both sides.

Since the survey was conducted, however, Trump’s mood appears to have changed. He has said he is “very angry” with Putin over Ukraine negotiations.

• Steve Rosenberg: Trump takes US-Russia relations on rollercoaster ride

Meanwhile, Trump’s relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has grown increasingly close this year.

Answering a question about whether Trump was favouring Israelis or Palestinians, 31% of those surveyed thought he favoured Israelis too much. Close behind at 29% were those who thought Trump was striking the right balance.

Larger than either of these, however, was the group of respondents who were not sure (37%). Just 3% felt he was favouring Palestinians too much.

While Pew Research Centre is non-partisan, those surveyed were not.

The results showed that most of the respondents (64%) who described themselves as Republican – or Republican-leaning – supported the move by the Republican president to end USAID, for example.

That compared to just 9% of opposing Democrats – or Democratic-leaning – respondents who felt the same way, indicating a high level of polarisation.

Generally, it is older adults who support Trump’s foreign policy actions, more than younger adults, the research suggested.

Pew also asked about tariffs on China, although this research was carried out before the situation escalated sharply into the trade war that is now under way.

Generally, more Americans said the tariffs would be bad for them personally, but those who were Republican, or leant more towards that party, believed the tariffs would benefit the US.

• China is not backing down from Trump’s tariff war. What next?