US President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs targeting most of the world are now in effect – and outside China, no other region has been hit as hard as South East Asia.

Near the top of the list are Vietnam and Cambodia which have been hit by some of the highest tariffs: 46% and 49%. Further down are Thailand (36%), Indonesia (32%) and Malaysia (24%). The Philippines gets a tariff of 17%, and Singapore of 10%.

This is a huge blow for a region highly dependent on exports. Its widely-admired economic development over the past three decades has largely been driven by its success in selling its products to the rest of the world, in particular to the US.

Exports to the US contribute 23% of Vietnam’s GDP, and 67% of Cambodia’s.

That growth story is now imperilled by the punitive measures being imposed in Washington.

The longer-term impact of these tariffs, assuming they stay in place, will vary, but will certainly pose big challenges to the governments of Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia in particular.

Vietnam’s “bamboo diplomacy”, where it attempts to be friends with everyone and balance ties with both China and the US, will now be tested.

Under the leadership of the new Communist Party Secretary-General To Lam, Vietnam has embarked on an ambitious plan to build an upper-income, knowledge-and-tech-based economy by the year 2045. It has been aiming for annual growth rates in excess of 8%.

Exporting more to the US, already its biggest market, was central to that plan.

It was also the main reason why Vietnam agreed to elevate their relationship to that of a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in 2023.

The Communist Party, which tolerates little dissent and has no formal political opposition, depends on its economic pledges for its legitimacy . Already viewed by many economists as too ambitious, these will now be even harder to meet.

Thailand depends on US exports less than Vietnam – under 10% of GDP – but the Thai economy is in much worse shape, having underperformed for the past decade. The Thai government is trying to find ways to lift economic growth, most recently attempting but failing to legalise gambling, and these tariffs are another economic blow it cannot afford.

For Cambodia, the tariffs pose perhaps the greatest political threat in the region.

The government of Hun Manet has proved just as authoritarian as that of his father Hun Sen, whom he succeeded two years ago, but it is vulnerable.

Keeping the Hun family’s hold on power has required offering rival clans in Cambodia economic privileges like monopolies or land concessions, but this has helped create a glut of property developments, which are no longer selling, and a mass of grievances over land expropriations.

The garment sector, which employs 750,000 people, has been a crucial social safety valve, giving steady incomes to Cambodia’s poorest. Thousands of those jobs are now likely to be lost as a result of President Trump’s tariffs.

Unlike China, which has hit back with its own levies, the official message from governments in South East Asia, is don’t panic, don’t retaliate, but negotiate.

Vietnam has dispatched deputy prime minister Ho Duc Pho to Washington to plead his country’s case, and has offered to eliminate all tariffs on US imports. Thailand plans to send its finance minister to make a similar appeal, and has offered to reduce its tariffs and buy more American products, like food and aircraft.

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim is also heading to Washington, though with exports to the US making up only 11% of Malaysia’s total, his country is less affected than some of its neighbours.

However, the Trump administration appears to be in no mood to compromise.

Peter Navarro, President Trump’s senior counsellor on trade and manufacturing and one of the main thinkers behind the new policy, said in interviews on Monday that Vietnam’s offer of zero tariffs was meaningless, because it would not address the deficit in trade where Vietnam sells $15 worth of goods to the US for every $1 it buys.

He accused Vietnam of keeping multiple non-tariff barriers to US imports, and said that one-third of all Vietnamese exports to the US were actually Chinese products, trans-shipped through Vietnam.

The proportion of Vietnamese exports which are being made or trans-shipped there to avoid US tariffs on China is difficult to assess, but detailed trade studies put it at between 7% and 16%, not one-third.

Like Vietnam, the government of Cambodia has appealed to the US to postpone the tariffs while it attempts to negotiate.

The local American Chamber of Commerce has called for the 49% tariffs to be dropped, making the point that the Cambodian garment industry, the country’s biggest employer, will be badly affected, but that no tariff level, however high, will see clothing and footwear manufacturing return to the US.

Perhaps the most perverse tariff rate is the 44% applied to Myanmar, a country mired in a civil war, which has no capacity to buy more US goods.

US exports make up only a small proportion of Myanmar’s GDP, less than 1%.

But as in Cambodia, that sector, mainly garments, is one of the few that provides a steady income to poor families in Myanmar’s cities.

In a supreme irony, Trump has until now been a popular figure in this region.

He has been widely admired in Vietnam for his tough, transactional approach to foreign policy, and Cambodia’s former strongman Hun Sen, still the main power behind the scenes, has long sought a close personal relationship with the US president, proudly posting selfies with him at their first meeting in 2017.

Only last month Cambodia was praising Trump for shutting down the US media networks Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, which often carried the views of Cambodian dissidents.

Now Cambodia, like so many of its neighbours, finds itself in a long line of supplicants pleading with him to ease their tariff burden.

A faulty radio antenna contributed to a deadly mid-air helicopter collision at an Australian theme park and resort, transport safety officials say.

Four people died – including two British tourists – and several more were seriously injured when the two aircraft hit each other in January 2023, near Sea World on the Gold Coast.

An investigation by Australia’s Transport and Safety Bureau (ATSB) found one of the pilots did not hear a vital radio call shortly before the accident, and that a series of changes by Sea World meant risk controls were over time eroded.

The accident rocked the Gold Coast, one of the nation’s biggest tourist hotspots.

The two helicopters collided around 20 seconds after one had taken off and as the other was landing.

Those who died were all travelling in the helicopter which was taking off. The other aircraft managed to make an emergency landing, with passengers suffering a range of injuries.

The ATSB report found that in the months leading up to the accident, Sea World had tried to improve its offering of leisure flights by adding a second helipad location and introducing larger Eurocopter EC140 B4 helicopters.

“Over time, these changes undermined risk controls used to manage traffic separation and created a conflict point between launching and departing helicopters,” it said.

The aircraft preparing to take off also had a faulty antenna.

In the run-up to the collision, a call from the arriving helicopter was either not received or not heard by the pilot on the ground, who was loading passengers at the time.

However, once the passengers were on board, a ground crew member advised the departing helicopter pilot that the airspace was clear. By the time the chopper took off, though, that information was no longer correct.

Meanwhile the pilot who was wanting to land after a five-minute scenic flight had seen the other helicopter on the ground but didn’t deem it a threat, the report said.

He would have expected to have been alerted by a “taxiing” radio call if that situation changed. However the faulty antenna likely prevented the broadcast of the taxiing call, the report said.

“Without the taxiing call being received, the pilot of the inbound helicopter, who was likely focusing on their landing site, had no trigger to reassess the status of the departing helicopter as a collision risk.”

Among those who died were Diane Hughes, 57, and her 65-year-old husband Ron who were from Neston, Cheshire. They had married in 2022 and were on holiday visiting relatives after being separated by COVID.

The “fun-loving” couple from Neston, Cheshire, had “a zest for life”, their family said in a statement at the time.

Also killed was Sydney resident Vanessa Tadros, 36, and 40-year-old Sea World Helicopters pilot Ashley Jenkinson, who was originally from Birmingham.

A further six people were seriously injured while three others sustained minor injuries in the crash.

Shortly after the accident, the passengers on the flight that was returning hailed the pilot as a “hero” for landing the helicopter safely.

In all, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau made 28 findings that underline “key lessons” for operators and pilots.

“The most fundamental lesson from this investigation is that making changes to aviation operations, even those that appear to increase safety, can have unintended consequences,” ATSB Chief Commissioner Angus Mitchell said.

“It is therefore critical that changes to aviation operations are managed through the implementation of a defined process to ensure overall safety is not adversely affected.”

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.

He said on Tuesday that intelligence suggested the number of Chinese soldiers in Russia’s army was “much higher than two”.

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

It is the first official allegation from Ukraine that China is supplying Russia with manpower. 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.

Russian drone attacks into Ukraine continued on Tuesday night with strikes injuring 14 people in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro, and another two in Kharkiv, in the north-east, local officials said. A number of fires were reported in the two cities.

US President Donald Trump is ripping up the rulebook on trade that has been in place for more than 50 years.

His latest round of sweeping tariffs, which came into force shortly after midnight on Wednesday, hits goods from some of America’s biggest trading partners including China and the European Union with dramatic hikes in import duties.

The president and his allies say the measures are necessary to restore America’s manufacturing base, which they view as essential to national security.

But it remains a potentially seismic action, affecting more than $2tn worth of imports, which will push the overall effective tariff rate in the US to the highest level in more than a century.

In the US, key consumer goods could see huge price rises, including an estimated 33% for clothing, and analysts are warning of near-certain global economic damage as sales in America drop, trade shrinks and production abroad falls.

With the stock market reeling and political pressure in the US starting to build, the White House has worked to soothe nerves by floating the possibility of trade talks, touting conversations that have already begun with Japan, Vietnam and South Korea.

But Trump has signalled resistance to the kinds of exemptions he granted during his first term, and even if these talks are ultimately productive, country-by-country deal-making will no doubt take time.

“The primary question… is whether or not there will be negotiations,” said Thierry Wizman, a global strategist at the investment bank Macquarie. “And no one has an answer to that because it’s going to depend on the approach and the disposition of the negotiating parties.”

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The US already appears set on a collision course with China, which was its third biggest supplier of imports last year.

The White House said on Tuesday that it was moving ahead with Trump’s social media threat to add a further 50% levy on imports from China, on top of the 54% duties that had already been announced, unless Beijing agreed to withdraw its retaliation.

Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, declined to say if the two sides had spoken directly since the threat.

But publicly, China has shown little willingness to back down, describing Trump’s moves as “bullying” and warning that “intimidation, threat and blackmail are not the right way to engage with China”.

“If the US decides not to care about the interests of the US itself, China and the rest of the world, and is determined to fight a tariff and trade war, China’s response will continue to the end,” he said in a statement.

The rapid change has shaken US businesses with decades of ties to China, which now find themselves paralysed and unsure how this escalating trade fight might end.

“You would laugh if you weren’t crying,” said US businessman Jay Foreman, whose toy company Basic Fun! is known for classics such as Tonka Trucks and Care Bears, the vast majority of which are made in China.

He put out notice to his suppliers to halt any shipments to the US earlier this week, as the US announced it would hit goods from China with duties starting at 104%.

“We just have to hold our shipments until this thing gets sorted out,” he said. “And if it doesn’t get sorted out, them I’m going to sell down the inventory that I have in my warehouse and pray.”

Speaking to Congress on Tuesday, Jamieson Greer, who leads the office of the US Trade Representative, declined to set a timeline for how quickly talks might progress.

“The president is fixed in his purpose. This trade deficit and offshoring and the loss of jobs has persisted for too long,” he said, while acknowledging the measures might lead to a “challenging” economic adjustment.

“It is a moment of drastic, overdue change, but I am confident the American people will rise to the occasion as they have done before,” he said.

Shares in the US resumed their downward slide on Tuesday, giving up early gains spurred by Trump comments about trade talks that the fight might see a quick resolution.

The S&P 500 is now trading at its lowest level in more than a year, after seeing roughly 12% of its value wiped out since the announcement last Wednesday.

Stock markets from Japan to Germany have also been shaken, as investors assess the wider repercussions of the actions. In the UK, the FTSE 100 has dropped about 10%.

“What I’m really seeing is trepidation, uncertainty, a lot of questions, a lot of people wanting us to predict what will happen next,” said Amy Magnus, director of compliance and customs affairs for Deringer, a Vermont-based firm that is one of America’s top five customs brokers. “But I have entered into a world that I cannot predict.”

Erin Williamson, vice-president of US customs brokerage at GEODIS, a global supply chain operator, said on Tuesday afternoon, said that the uncertainty had prompted some of her firm’s clients to simply put shipments on pause.

“One of the top ways that you can confirm that you’re not putting your business at risk is really holding off until maybe the dust settles,” she said.

The uncertainty is raising the risks to the economy, said Ernie Tedeschi, director of economics of the Budget Lab at Yale, which is not predicting a recession in the US, but still expects tariffs announced so far this year will cost the US 600,000 jobs and lead to a roughly $3,800 hit to purchasing power for the average household.

“A lot of the market turmoil we’ve seen is not about the substance of the economic damage of tariffs on their own. A lot of it is about the uncertainty,” he said.

“Businesses and consumers don’t know what the tariff rate is going to be an hour from now… How can you invest or make plans for the future in that environment?”

Mr Tedeschi said he saw no clear end to the trade war in sight.

“Even if the administration wanted to step back, how does it save face in a way that is mutually acceptable to all the relevant players?” he said. “That’s becoming harder by the day.”

At least 98 people have been killed and more than 150 injured after a roof collapsed at a nightclub in the Dominican Republic’s capital Santo Domingo, officials have said.

A provincial governor and former Major League Baseball pitcher Octavio Dotel were among the victims. Dotel, 51, died on the way to hospital after being pulled from the debris.

The incident happened in the early hours of Tuesday at a concert by popular merengue singer Rubby Pérez at the Jet Set nightclub. He was among those killed in the incident, his manager said.

Hundreds of people were inside the venue and some 400 rescuers are still searching for survivors. There are fears the death toll will rise further.

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.

President Abinader has expressed his condolences to the families affected.

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Donald Trump is a man in a hurry.

In the few short months he has been in office, the US president has sought and failed to bring peace to Gaza and Ukraine. He has bombed Yemen. He has launched a global trade war. Now he is turning his attention, such that it is, to Iran.

This has always been on the president’s jobs list. For Trump, Iran is unfinished business from his first term.

The issue remains the same as it was then: what can stop Iran seeking a nuclear weapon?

Iran denies it has any such ambition. But other countries believe the Islamic republic wants at the very least the capacity to build a nuclear warhead, a desire that some fear could spark an arms race or even all-out war in the Middle East.

In 2015, Iran agreed a deal with the US, UK, France, Germany, Russia and China. It was called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Under its provisions, Iran would limit its nuclear ambitions – and allow in international inspectors – in return for getting economic sanctions lifted.

But Trump pulled the US out of the deal in 2018, claiming it rewarded terrorism by funding Iran’s proxy militias such as Hamas and Hezbollah. The US reimposed sanctions.

Iran subsequently ignored some of the deal’s restrictions and enriched more and more uranium nuclear fuel.

Analysts fear Iran could soon have enough weapons’ grade uranium to make a nuclear warhead.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) watchdog estimates Iran’s stockpile of 60% enriched uranium could make about six bombs if it was enriched to the next and final level.

Within days of his inauguration, Trump restored his former policy of so-called “maximum pressure” on Iran.

On 4 February, with his trademark fat felt-tip pen, he signed a memorandum ordering the US Treasury to impose further sanctions on Iran and punish countries violating existing sanctions, especially those buying Iranian oil.

Now the White House is hoping to match that economic pressure with diplomacy.

Last month, Trump sent a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei.

The president offered to begin negotiations and sought a deal within a couple of months.

Now he has agreed to direct discussions between US and Iranian officials in Oman at the weekend.

The US threat to Iran is explicit: agree a deal or face military action.

“If the talks aren’t successful with Iran, I think Iran is going to be in great danger,” Trump said on Monday.

So how might Iran respond?

Some policymakers in Tehran appear keen to agree a deal that could get sanctions lifted.

Iran’s economy is in dire straits, with soaring inflation and a plunging currency.

But any such deal might involve compromises some hardliners could find hard to stomach.

Iran has suffered huge reverses in recent months, seeing its proxy militias severely weakened by war with Israel and its regional ally, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, ousted. Some in Tehran argue now may be exactly the time to build a nuclear deterrent.

Both the US and Iran seem far apart. Their negotiating positions are not explicit.

But the US has made clear it wants the full dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear programme, including a complete end to any further uranium enrichment, plus no further support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.

That might prove too much for Iran to accept.

A complete ban on any nuclear enrichment – even for civilian purposes – has long been seen as an absolute red line for Tehran.

There is also the problem of Iranian technological expertise: its scientists simply know more now about how to make a nuclear weapon than they did 10 years ago.

As for Israel, it has made clear it would accept only the complete end to any Iranian nuclear capability. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he would agree to “the way it was done in Libya”.

This is a reference to the decision by late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to dismantle his entire nuclear programme in 2003 in return for getting sanctions lifted.

But Iran is unlikely to follow this precedent.

What if talks fail?

Israel has long considered military options to try to destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities. But many are buried deep in underground bunkers.

Military analysts say Israel would need not just US help to bomb Iran, it might also need special forces on the ground to guarantee the destruction of its nuclear facilities.

This means military action would be risky and its success by no means guaranteed.

Trump also came to office promising not to start any more so-called “forever wars”, and an all-out regional conflict involving Iran could become one of those.

That has not stopped the US president from reportedly giving Israel more air defences and deploying more long-range B2 bombers to the region.

So, for now, Trump seems to be looking for a diplomatic solution – one Israel might have to accept as a fait accompli, regardless of its provisions.

But if there is no agreement, he is reserving the right to use force, the consequences of which could be devastating.

In the meantime, the president is allowing two months for both sides to agree a deal.

He may have forgotten it took negotiators two years to agree the JCPOA. Rushed diplomacy is not always successful diplomacy.

• Iran says it is ready for nuclear deal if US stops military threats
• High stakes as Iran nuclear issue reaches crunch moment

India’s Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal’s recent comments about the country’s start-up ecosystem have sparked a massive debate on social media and evoked strong reactions from some entrepreneurs.

At the second edition of Startup Mahakumbh, a government-led start-up conclave last week, Goyal seemed to take a hard look at India’s consumer start-ups as he urged entrepreneurs to explore more innovations in technology in order to help the country progress.

Poking fun at the rise of food delivery apps, artisanal brands and online betting apps in the country, he compared them with the innovations being made by the “other side”, which many took to mean China.

He said that while “they” were making leaps in machine learning, robotics and building “next-gen factories that can compete with the rest of the world”, India’s start-ups were still largely focussed on lifestyle products like gluten-free ice creams.

His comments sparked a flurry of reactions from India’s top innovators, with some arguing that he was only encouraging creators to be more ambitious and others calling it an unfair criticism of the start-up ecosystem, a major contributor to the country’s economy.

To be sure, Goyal also praised the pace at which new businesses were popping up in the country, hailing India as the third-largest start-up ecosystem in the world. He also urged Indian investors to do more to support Indian creators.

But he seemed to want to see more happen, and faster.

“We have to be willing to evolve and learn. [If] we want to be bigger and better, then we have to be bolder and we should not fight shy of the competition,” the minister said.

At one point, he asked the audience – brimming with entrepreneurs and investors – “Do we want to make ice creams or [semiconductor] chips?”

Aadit Palicha, co-founder of the quick-commerce app Zepto, was quick to call out the minister.

In a post on X, he argued that it was consumer internet companies like his that have led innovation in the technology space, in India and globally.

• Can tech stop India wasting so much of its harvest?
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He pointed out that Amazon – originally a consumer internet company – had scaled cloud computing while the big players in AI today, like Facebook and Google, were once consumer internet companies too.

He urged Indian investors to support consumer internet companies so that they can grow and use their profits for making more ambitious innovations.

Mohandas Pai, a prominent angel investor, told news channel Economic Times Now that there was a dearth of capital investment in deep-tech start-ups from the government and private players.

He explained that investors made a beeline for lifestyle-focused start-ups because they gave quick returns.

Deep-tech innovations take a long time to develop and require expensive infrastructure. “People are not willing to take long-term risks. We need long-term ‘patient’ money [for deep tech start-ups to thrive],” he said.

He also said that regulatory curbs on foreign investments in Indian start-ups were hurting innovation.

“Deep tech start-ups also struggle to find a market,” he added, citing the example of an Indian firm that recently pioneered a quick-charging battery for buses but found no takers for its product.

Many social media users also spoke about the challenges they faced when they tried to start their own tech businesses.

Some said they struggled to get loans, others highlighted high import taxes on certain foreign raw materials and equipment, while some others spoke about unnecessary red tape that made getting documents and approvals a nightmare.

But some entrepreneurs also defended the minister, saying that his comments were well-intentioned and a much-needed reality-check for the start-up ecosystem.

Vironika S, founder of edtech app Proxy Gyan, agreed that India’s future leadership of the global economy depended on breakthroughs in AI and semiconductors but added that there were realistic barriers to doing so and that the government could help by easing them.

Indian investor Kushal Bhagia said in a post on X that Goyal was right about ambition and a lack of deep tech start-ups in India. “We just don’t meet enough founders who are doing something truly deep tech or going after big ambitious problem statements,” he said.

He attributed this to India’s tech talent leaving the country to work in US firms and to a dearth of deep-tech founders for people to learn from and be inspired by.

The minister’s comments also got the media analysing different journeys of Indian and Chinese start-ups.

Journalist Abhijeet Kumar wrote in the Business Standard newspaper that in 2023, just 5% of Indian start-up funding went into deep-tech sectors, compared to 35% in China. He also pointed out how Beijing actively promoted high-tech innovation – in 2024, it had slashed $361bn in taxes and fees for high-tech firms, including $80.7bn in research and development deductions.

In an editorial published on Monday, the newspaper also noted that India’s start-ups are more consumption-driven, focused on using technology to solve local problems at scale rather than global ones by creating path-breaking foundational models.

It pointed out that India currently had 4,000 deep-tech start-ups and that this number was expected to jump to 10,000 by 2030 and quoted a Nasscom report which said that India’s deep tech-start-ups attracted $1.6bn in funding in 2024, marking a 78% year-on-year increase.

But there’s still a long way to go.

“As the deep-tech race intensifies globally, it is clear that India will have to do a lot to catch up with these countries,” the editorial said, adding that Goyal’s comments should “serve as a call to action” for start-ups and investors and also for the government.

“This can include setting up deep-tech innovation funds, building strong academia-start-up bridges and offering incentives for faster developments in hardware, AI, biotech and clean energy,” it said.

India’s central bank has cut interest rates by 0.25% amid a spate of downgrades to growth following Donald Trump’s tariff announcements.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) reduced repo rates from 6.25% to 6%, a second cut since February when rates were brought down after nearly five years.

The repo rate is the level at which the central bank lends to commercial banks, influencing borrowing costs.

The RBI also brought down its growth projections for this year from 6.7% to 6.5%. It said India’s gross domestic product (GDP) will grow at 6.5% next year as well.

Crucially, the RBI shifted its monetary policy stance to “accommodative” from “neutral”, which means that the central bank would be more open to cutting rates in the future to stimulate a slowing economy.

“Concerns on trade frictions are coming true” and unsettling the global community, RBI governor Sanjay Malhotra said in his speech, adding that headwinds from disruptions to trade would continue to pose challenges for the economy.

Most economists who had previously expected only one more rate cut this year are now predicting more softening as Trump’s tariff war puts growth in the world’s fastest growing major economy at risk.

“The magnitude of rate cuts in the cycle now could be as high as 100bps (1%),” ICICI Bank said in a note, a view echoed by many other analysts.

Moderating inflation will give the RBI further elbow room to slash borrowing costs, according to several brokerages, as growth momentum further loses steam due to Trump’s global trade war.

HSBC calculates GDP could take a direct hit of as much as half a percent this financial year due to slower export volumes around the world and weaker inflows of foreign funds.

The government’s capacity to stimulate the economy to counter the impact of Trump’s tariffs is also limited because “spending and tax revenues have lost steam in recent months”, according to HSBC.

Starting Wednesday, Indian goods being exported to the US will face additional tariffs of up to 27%.

Tariffs on India are lower than 104% on China and 46% and 49% respectively on Vietnam and Cambodia.

• How will India navigate a world on the brink of a trade war?

The final impact on India’s trade will depend on “how long the announced tariff structure lasts”, ratings agency Crisil said. “The outcome will also be influenced by how other countries retaliate or negotiate with the US on tariffs.”

China has already retaliated by imposing 34% reciprocal tariffs on US imports, while Europe is considering counter-measures.

India on the other hand has assumed a more restrained stance and is working towards concluding a trade deal with the US.

India has “agreed on the importance of the early conclusion of the Bilateral Trade Agreement”, Foreign Minister S Jaishankar said on X (formerly Twitter) this week after his meeting with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

But even with a trade deal in place, India’s economy is unlikely to be immune to a slowdown in other parts of the world with demand for its exports potentially reducing in the event of global growth falling off a cliff.

Wall Street bank JP Morgan has put the chance of a global recession at 60%, while ratings agency Moody’s said the odds had risen from 15% to 35% due to tariffs.

At 6.5%, India continues to remain the world’s fastest growing major economy, but its growth has sharply come off the 9.2% high recorded in financial year 2023-24.

On 12 March, Kilmar Abrego Garcia was driving home with his young son in Maryland when he was stopped by agents from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Agents took Mr Garcia into custody, then shuttled him to detention facilities in Louisiana and Texas.

According to a federal judge, after three days, “without any notice, legal process, or hearing”, Mr Garcia found himself back in his native El Salvador at an infamous prison known for housing gang members.

The government said he was deported due to an “administrative error”.

But despite that, Mr Garcia remains incarcerated in El Salvador as lawyers debate the unusual intricacies of the case.

A Maryland court ordered Mr Garcia be returned to the US, but Trump officials argued that they cannot compel El Salvador to return Mr Garcia. The administration also argued that the judge ordering his return lacked the authority to do so.

On Monday, the Supreme Court put a temporary hold on lower court orders while they consider the matter.

Immigration experts say that as US President Donald Trump takes a hardline approach on illegal immigration, this case has the potential to upend due process for immigrants.

“If the US Supreme Court were to accept [the Trump administration’s] position, it would completely eviscerate any rule of law in the immigration process,” Maureen Sweeney, director of the University of Maryland’s Chacón Center for Immigrant Justice, told the BBC.

“Because they could pick up anybody, at any time, and send them anywhere with no repercussions whatsoever.”

US District Judge Paula Xinis wrote in a filing Sunday that ICE officials did not follow procedures in the Immigration and Nationality Act when they deported Mr Garcia to El Salvador.

She ruled the US must bring him back before midnight on Monday. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, writing that the US “has no legal authority to snatch a person who is lawfully present in the United States off the street”.

Yet the Trump administration has argued that it cannot comply, saying Judge Xinis’ filing is outside her jurisdiction.

“Neither a federal district court nor the United States has authority to tell the Government of El Salvador what to do,” US Solicitor General D John Sauer wrote in an appeal to the Supreme Court.

Nicole Hallett, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School said that while it is true – US district judges cannot order El Salvador to take action – they can order the US government to have Mr Garcia returned.

She also said the US has previously facilitated the return of mistakenly deported individuals.

Prof Hallett also questioned the government’s claim that the US is powerless to compel El Salvador to release Mr Garcia, citing an agreement between the two countries.

The US, under the Trump administration, paid El Salvador’s government $6m to house prisoners it sends, according to CBS News, the BBC’s US partner. Top officials like Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump himself have publicly touted the arrangement.

“It’s almost as if the Salvadoran government is acting as an agent of the US government,” Ms Hallett said, arguing that this makes the release more plausible.

Mr Garcia’s lawyers argued that because El Salvador was detaining Mr Garcia “at the direct request and pursuant to financial compensation” from the US, the court could order the US government to request his return.

Mr Garcia is among 238 Venezuelans and 23 Salvadorans deported under the Trump administration to El Salvador’s notorious mega-prison. Officials allege they are gang members and therefore are subject to deportation.

Mr Garcia, who is married to a US citizen, does not have any gang ties and has never been charged with a crime, his lawyer says.

He was also protected by a “withholding of removal” order, which means the US government cannot send him back to El Salvador because he could face harm. The order dates back to 2019, when ICE first took Mr Garcia into custody and alleged he belonged to the MS-13 criminal organisation, an allegation he denied at the time.

Such orders are common, immigration lawyers told the BBC, and are an alternative to asylum protections.

“It was an unlawful act, for the US to return him to the country where he could not be returned,” said Amelia Wilson, director of the Immigration Justice Clinic at Pace University.

A judge ultimately granted Mr Garcia the 2019 order after he “testified about how he was a victim of gang violence in El Salvador when he was a teenager and he came to the US to escape all of that,” his wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, wrote in a March 2025 affidavit.

Department of Justice attorney Erez Reuveni acknowledged that at the time the “government did not appeal that decision, so it is final”.

The Trump administration now reiterates allegations that Mr Garcia belonged to MS-13, but Judge Xinis said the government made this claim “without any evidence” and had not produced a removal order or warrant.

The Trump administration continues to press its case to the nation’s highest court, setting up a potential showdown over the White House’s deportation strategy.

Chief Justice John Roberts issued an administrative stay on Monday night, pausing lower court rulings while the US Supreme Court considers the government’s appeal.

President Trump touted the stay as a victory, writing on Truth Social that the ruling allowed the president “to secure our Borders, and protect our families and our Country, itself.”

Immigration lawyers, meanwhile, are watching Mr Garcia’s case closely, considering it a test for how much power the administration can exert over US immigration.

“If the Trump administration is trying to remove these individuals by bypassing the immigration courts,” said Ms Wilson, “there’s a direct and obvious line between what they’re doing, and an effort by the administration to completely usurp judicial and due process.”

Tributes have been paid to a London-based scientist who formerly worked for the Royal Society of Biology (RSB) after he was found murdered in northern Colombia.

Alessandro Coatti’s remains were discovered on the outskirts of Santa Marta, a port city on the Caribbean coast, on Sunday, investigators say.

Santa Marta’s Mayor, Carlos Pinedo Cuello, said a reward of 50,000,000 Colombian pesos (£8,940) was being offered for information leading to the capture of those responsible for the death of the Italian citizen.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, the RSB said it was “devastated” by news of Mr Coatti’s killing.

“He was a passionate and dedicated scientist, leading RSB animal science work, writing numerous submissions, organising events and giving evidence in the House of Commons,” the RSB said.

“Ale was funny, warm, intelligent, loved by everyone he worked with and will be deeply missed by all who knew and worked with him.

“Our thoughts and best wishes go out to his friends and family at this truly awful time.”

Santa Marta is a gateway to some of Colombia’s most popular tourist destinations including Tayrona National Park, Minca and the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains.

Mr Coatti, who took a master’s course at University College London (UCL), worked for the RSB for eight years as science policy officer before being promoted to senior science policy officer.

He left the RSB at the end of 2024 to volunteer in Ecuador and travel in South America.

Parts of the scientist’s dismembered body were found in a suitcase dumped in a stream.

Posting on X, Mr Pinedo Cuello said: “This crime will not go unpunished. The criminals must know that crime has no place in Santa Marta. We will pursue them until they are brought to justice.”

A hotel worker who spoke to Colombian newspaper El Tiempo said Mr Coatti had inquired about visiting the village of Minca and was conducting research on local animal species.

The first Universal theme park in Europe will be built in the UK, the government has promised.

The attraction would be constructed on the site of the former Kempston Hardwick brickworks near Bedford and would create an estimated 28,000 jobs before opening in 2031.

Universal estimated the 476-acre complex could attract 8.5 million visitors in its first year.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the mutibillion-pound investment by the company would “see Bedford home to one of the biggest entertainment parks in Europe, firmly putting the county on the global stage”.

Universal Destinations and Experience said 80% of those employed in the new jobs would be from Bedfordshire and surrounding areas.

The production company, which has made films including Minions and Wicked, has theme parks in Orlando and Los Angeles in the US, as well as Osaka, Japan, Sentosa, Singapore, and Beijing, China.

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy hailed the “landmark investment” as “fantastic news” for the economy.

“This is not just about bringing great American creations to Britain, this is also about showcasing great British creations to the world,” she told the BBC.

“These are things like James Bond, Paddington Bear, these are things like Harry Potter. We’ve got so much to be proud of.”

A full planning proposal will be submitted to the UK government with construction expected to start in 2026.

Universal’s Orlando resort in Florida brought in 9.75 million visitors in 2023, while its Hollywood resort saw 9.66 million the same year – according to the Theme Index Report.

In 2016, NBCUniversal agreed to a seven-year deal with Warner Bros. That meant it had television rights to show the Harry Potter films and the Fantastic Beasts franchise.

The prime minister said the theme park would create jobs across construction, artificial intelligence and tourism.

“Together, we are building a brighter future for the UK, getting people into work and ensuring our economy remains strong and competitive,” he added.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves said: “At a time of global change, this investment is a vote of confidence in Britain as a place to do business.”

According to plans from Universal Destinations & Experiences, the UK site would include a theme park, a 500-room hotel and a retail complex.

Universal has already bought 476 acres for the project, but could buy more land to increase the plot to about 700 acres – which would improve transport links.

Residents living in surrounding villages have responded positively to the plans, though some are concerned infrastructure will not be enough to support the amount of expected visitors.

Universal said it surveyed more than 6,000 local people and organisations and 92% of those supported the project.

Universal said it would make upgrades to the Wixams railway station and build a new station on the East West Rail line near the resort.

It would also add dedicated slip roads to the A42, which flooded in October after heavy rainfall.

On Thursday, Secretary of State for Transport Heidi Alexander approved expansion plans at the nearby London Luton Airport.

Universal previously described the Bedford site as “an ideal location with convenient, fast rail links to London and London Luton Airport”.

Nandy also said the government’s commitment to improve local transport infrastructure had helped secure the deal with Universal.

Mike Cavanagh, the president of Comcast Corporation, which owns Universal, said he was excited to expand the parks brand into Europe.

The company said it would work with Bedford Borough Council on the project.

The local authority was one of six councils to support the plans last year, alongside Central Bedfordshire, Luton, Milton Keynes, north Northamptonshire and west Northamptonshire councils.

Bedford residents had mixed thoughts on the plans when asked on Wednesday.

Margaret Wilson, 85, from Elstoy, said she would not visit the theme park but believed her grandsons, aged 19 and 16, would enjoy it.

But she said: “It will be four years until anything is built. Who knows what will happen in four years?”

Maria Perez, a warehouse worker in the area, said the theme park would be “really great” for families and young people.

“It will be good for the economy, for the town and for the people. People will invest more.”

She did admit it would not be good for rent prices, but overall felt it would be positive for Bedford.

Jagdeep Singh is a 36-year-old business change analyst from Kempton.

While he believed the theme park would drive businesses and bring jobs, he feared the number of visitors could have a negative affect.

“I worried a bit about traffic on the bypass – what’s going to happen to our hospitals if there’s any accidents?” he added.

The proposals remain subject to a planning decision from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

For 20 years, Rj LaMendola found peace while paddling in the water on his surfboard.

But last month off the coast of Southern California, the ocean turned hostile after a sea lion lunged at him, bit him and dragged him off his board.

“It looked possessed,” Mr LaMendola wrote in a Facebook post, saying the animal involved in the encounter just north of Los Angeles was “feral, almost demonic”.

The surfer later learned the animal was suffering from domoic acid toxicosis- a neurological condition caused by a harmful algal bloom. It’s one of dozens of sickened animals that have been spotted across California beaches recently – many suffering from symptoms like seizures or intense lethargy. The toxin often leads to death.

This particular algae bloom has appeared four years in a row across California, raising concerns it might be turning into an annual event. The bloom of algae started earlier than normal this year and has spread roughly 370 miles of the iconic Southern California coastline.

When Mr LaMenolda made it to shore, his wetsuit ripped open, he was bleeding and went to the hospital. “It felt like I was being hunted,” he said.

South of where he was attacked, 15-year-old Phoebe Beltran was doing a swim test in Long Beach to become a lifeguard when a sea lion repeatedly bit her.

“I was just so scared, so shocked, but I still felt the immense pain on my arms, like, over and over again,” the teen told local US media.

The two back-to-back attacks have garnered global headlines and caused some anxiety among those who call California and its iconic beaches home. While attacks are rare, experts say the number of animals sickened by the toxic algae bloom appears to be increasing.

John Warner, CEO of the Marine Mammal Care Center in Los Angeles – which is treating sea life sickened by the bloom – told the BBC these animals aren’t “naturally aggressive or actually attack people” but the toxins impact their behaviour.

“These animals are reacting to the fact that they are sick,” he explained. “They’re disoriented, and most likely, most of them are having seizures, and so their senses are not all fully functional as they normally would and they’re acting out of fear.”

Domoic acid builds up in smaller fish like sardines and anchovies, which are eaten by marine predators such as dolphins, seals and sea lions in large quantities, causing them to get sick.

Exposure to the acid causes serious neurological issues in sea lions, including seizures, disorientation and a telltale head-tilting behaviour known as “stargazing.”

Some animals fall into a lethargic and comatose state, while others can turn aggressive.

“Their behaviour changes from what we’re used to, to something more unpredictable,” Mr Warner said. “But in this particular bloom, we’re seeing them really comatose and rather taken out by this toxin.”

The Marine Mammal Care Center is currently overwhelmed with the influx and severity of sick animals.

According to Mr Warner, the nonprofit has admitted at least 195 sea lions from Feb 20 to the end of March. During the same time frame last year, the centre saw only 50 of the animals.

If treated promptly, sea lions have a 50% to 65% chance of recovery, but Mr Warner says the centre is running out of space and money to treat the animals. Treatment includes anti-seizure medication and sedation, followed by twice-daily tube feeding and hydration.

On top of that, the recovery pace this year has been slower, he said.

While sick sea lions in 2023 typically began eating within a week, many this year are still lethargic five weeks into care.

Recovery comes in stages: from a comatose state to disorientation, then aggressive reawakening—when the animals are most dangerous due to lingering neurological effects.

Adult sea lions can weigh hundreds of pounds, and aggressive behaviors make housing them complicated. If their behaviour doesn’t normalize, it could signal permanent brain damage, and humane euthanasia becomes necessary.

“If they’re still aggressive or not foraging properly, it tells us their brains aren’t functioning the way they should,” Mr Warner said.

For now, beachgoers are urged to stay well away from stranded animals – at least 50 feet – and resist the temptation to intervene.

“These are still the same charismatic, really fun-to-watch expert cuddle puddlers that we see along the coast all the time,” Mr Warner said. “We need to remember they are wild animals. They can be unpredictable even in normal circumstances.”

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 shares, 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 shares 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.”

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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On 2 April US President Donald Trump announced a sweeping set of tariffs arguing that they would allow the United States to economically flourish.

These new import taxes, which Trump imposed via executive order, have sent shockwaves through global markets as they kicked in this week.

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

Here are the basic elements of the plan.

A baseline tariff of 10% on almost all foreign imports to the US kicked in on 5 April. Some countries and goods are exempt, which we’ll explain later.

The companies which bring the foreign goods into America will have to pay this tax to the US government, although this could have knock-on effects to consumers.

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

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

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

These have come into effect on 9 April.

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

Here is a list of key trading partners subject to these customised tariff rates (these figures include the baseline tariff):

• European Union: 20%
• Vietnam: 46%
• Thailand: 36%
• Japan: 24%
• Cambodia: 49%
• South Africa: 30%
• Taiwan: 32%

China once again faces large tariffs.

In addition to the 20% tariff levied in March, it now faces an extra 34%.

After Beijing responded by slapping its own 34% rate on American goods entering China, Trump imposed an additional 50% tariff.

This means that the total tariff on Chinese goods imported into the US is now 104%.

Separately, Trump has ordered that low-value goods entering the US from Hong Kong and mainland China will be subject to import duties from 1 May onwards.

The “de minimis” exemption has allowed foreign products costing $800 (£624) or less to enter the US duty-free – but that will no longer apply to Chinese imports.

Canada and Mexico, which were targeted in Trump’s previous round of tariffs, face no additional levies. The 10% baseline rate does not apply to them.

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

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

While the new round of tariffs applied globally covers most foreign goods entering the US, there are some exemptions.

According to the White House’s fact sheet, these include copper, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, lumber, bullion, energy and “other certain materials that are not available in the United States”.

Articles subject to a US Code clause, widely interpreted as “informational materials”, communications and donations, are also exempted.

The tariff rates also do not apply to steel, aluminium, vehicles and vehicle parts – but that’s because they are subject to separate 25% tariffs on specific sectors.

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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 – 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 criticised Musk. “[He’s] not a car manufacturer. He’s a car assembler, in many cases,” Navarro said.

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

Musk, who has hinted at his opposition to White House trade policy, said Navarro’s claims about Tesla were “demonstrably false”.

The spat was the most public sign of disagreement yet between Trump’s trade team and Musk, the world’s richest man who heads the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) which is tasked with slashing the size and spending of the federal government.

Later on Tuesday, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt was asked about the row between Musk and Navarro. “These are obviously two individuals who have very different views on trade and on tariffs,” she told reporters.

“Boys will be boys, and we will let their public sparring continue,” Leavitt said.

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 made during an appearance on CNBC on Monday.

“If you look at our auto industry, right, we’re an 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,” Navarro added.

Responding to the comments on Tuesday, Musk posted a link to a 2023 article by car valuation firm Kelley Blue Book, which cited Cars.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 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, particularly 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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• Explainer: What are tariffs and why is Trump using them?

Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a dean and professor at the Yale School of Management who hosted a gathering of business executives in Washington last month, said Musk was articulating what many American CEOs think but are reluctant to say publicly about Trump’s trade policies.

“Seventy-nine percent of them said they’re embarrassed in front of international partners, and 89 percent said this is needlessly taking us into a recession and a misguided economic policy,” Mr Sonnenfeld told the BBC, referring to a survey taken at the event he hosted.

Even before the row with Navarro, Musk had hinted at his dissatisfaction with the tariff policy.

On Monday, he posted a video of the economist Milton Friedman, a noted opponent of tariffs, in which he extolls the values of the free market.

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

Musk said 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 and was jailed for ignoring a subpoena from a House committee investigating alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

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

Todd Brayman is no longer buying his favourite red wine, which is from California.

A veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces, he is one of a growing number of people in Canada, Europe, and other parts of the world, who are avoiding buying US products due to President Trump’s tariffs and treatment of US allies.

“I have in my life served alongside American forces. It is just profoundly upsetting and disappointing to see where we are given the historical ties that our two countries have,” says Mr Brayman, who lives in Nova Scotia.

“But I think right now it’s time to stand up and be counted, and in my mind, that means buying local and supporting Canadian business.”

Together with his wife, Mr Brayman has replaced all the American products he used to buy, including his previous wine of choice, with Canadian alternatives.

“Luckett Phone Box Red wine, which is from right here in Nova Scotia, is great,” he says.

Determining which products are Canadian isn’t always easy however. “Sometimes labelling can be misleading,” adds Mr Brayman.

To help, he now uses an app on his phone that can scan a product’s barcode and identify where it’s from. If the product is identified as American, the app suggests Canadian alternatives.

The app, called Maple Scan, is one of numerous emerging in Canada to help people shop local. Others include Buy Canadian, Is This Canadian? and Shop Canadian.

Maple Scan’s founder, Sasha Ivanov, says his app has had 100,000 downloads since it launched last month. He believes the momentum around buying Canadian is here to stay.

“Lots of Canadians have told me, ‘I’m not going back’. It’s important that we support local regardless,” he says.

Canadians like Mr Brayman are boycotting American products in response to a raft of import tariffs introduced by Trump. These included tariffs of 25% on all foreign cars, steel and aluminium, and 25% tariffs on other Canadian and Mexican goods.

Meanwhile, other European Union exports will get tariffs of 20%, while the UK is facing 10%.

Trump says the tariffs will boost US manufacturing, raise tax revenue and reduce the US trade deficit. However, they have spooked global markets, which have fallen sharply over the past month.

Trump has even expressed a desire for Canada to join the US as its 51st state, something the Canadian government was quick to strongly reject.

Ottawa has also responded with C$60bn ($42bn; £32bn) in counter tariffs, as well as additional tariffs on the US auto sector.

And there has been a substantial drop in the number of Canadians travelling to the US.

Groups dedicated to boycotting US goods have also emerged in European countries. Momentum behind the boycott is particularly strong in Denmark, whose territory of Greenland Trump has said he wants to acquire.

Denmark’s largest grocery store operator, Salling Group, recently introduced a symbol, a black star, on pricing labels to denote European brands.

Bo Albertus, a school principal who lives in Skovlunde, a suburb of Copenhagen, says joining the boycott was his way of taking action. “Statements that Trump made about wanting to buy Greenland, that was just too much for me,” he says.

“I can’t do anything about the American political system, but I can vote with my credit card.”

One of Mr Albertus’s first moves was to cancel his subscriptions to US streaming services, including Netflix, Disney Plus and Apple TV. “My 11-year-old daughter is a bit annoyed about it, but that’s the way it is. She understands why I do it,” he says.

Mr Albertus is the administrator for a Danish Facebook group dedicated to helping people boycott US goods. In the group, which has 90,000 members, people share recommendations for local alternatives to US goods, from shoes to lawnmowers.

Mr Albertus says: “It’s a movement that is quite a lot bigger than just our little country, so it all that adds up.”

Mette Heerulff Christiansen, the owner of a grocery shop in Copenhagen called Broders has stopped stocking American products, such as Cheetos crisps and Hershey’s chocolate, in her store. She is substituting them with Danish or European products where possible.

Ms Christiansen is also swapping out products she uses at home. She’s finding some easier to replace than others. “Coca-Cola is easy to substitute with Jolly Cola, a Danish brand,” she says. “But technology, like Facebook, that’s totally difficult to avoid.”

She believes the boycott movement in Denmark is helping people to channel their anger at Trump’s policies and rhetoric. “I think it’s more for the Danish people to feel good that they are doing something,” she says.

Douglas Irwin, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College in the US, who specializes in the history of US trade policy, believes the economic impact of the boycott may be limited. “It is hard to judge how economically significant the consumer boycotts will be in terms of reducing trade with the United States,” he says.

“In the past, boycotts have not lasted long and have not achieved much. It starts as a hostile reaction to some US action but tends to fade with time,” he says.

For now though, the rising Buy Canadian sentiment in Canada is boosting sales for many local brands. The CEO of Canadian grocer Loblaw posted on LinkedIn that weekly sales of Canadian products were up by double digits.

Bianca Parsons, from Alberta in Canada, is behind an initiative to promote locally-made goods, called Made In Alberta, which she says has had a surge in interest since the tariffs were introduced. “We’re now getting over 20,000 hits [to the site] every two weeks.”

Ms Parsons, who is the executive director of the Alberta Food Processors Association, adds: “I’ve had producers reach out to us and say: ‘I’m selling out at stores that I would never sell out before, thank you so much’.”

Several Canadian provinces, including Ontario and Nova Scotia, have removed US-made alcoholic beverages from their liquor store shelves in response to tariffs, a move the boss of Jack Daniel’s maker Brown-Forman has said is “worse than tariffs”.

Among the American businesses feeling the impact is Caledonia Spirits, a distiller based in Vermont, near the Canadian border. Ryan Christiansen, Caledonia’s president and head distiller, says his business had an order on track for shipment to Quebec cancelled directly after tariffs were announced.

“My sense is that everyone’s just being a little too aggressive and, unfortunately, I think America started that,” says Mr Christiansen. “I do understand that the action America took needed a counter reaction.

“If it were up to me, I’d be at the table trying to resolve this in a friendly way, and I’m hopeful that the leaders in America take that approach.”

Ethan Frisch, the co-founder of Burlap & Barrel, an American spice company based in New York, which also exports to Canada, says he’s more concerned with the impact of the tariffs on his company’s imports and rising inflation in the US than the consumer boycott.

He says: “I think there’s this assumption that, if you boycott an American company, it’s going to have an impact on the economy and maybe change the situation. I think that assumption, unfortunately, is not accurate.

“The [US] economy is crashing all up by itself. Businesses like ours are struggling without boycotts.”

“The Albanian mafia would call me and say: ‘We want to send 500kg of drugs.’ If you don’t accept, they kill you.”

César (not his real name) is a member of the Latin Kings, a criminal drug gang in Ecuador. He was recruited by a corrupt counternarcotics police officer to work for the Albanian mafia, one of Europe’s most prolific cocaine trafficking networks.

The Albanian mafia has expanded its presence in Ecuador in recent years, drawn by key trafficking routes through the country, and it now controls much of the cocaine flow from South America to Europe.

Despite Ecuador not producing the drug, 70% of the world’s cocaine now flows through its ports, Ecuadorean President Daniel Noboa says.

It is smuggled into the country from neighbouring Colombia and Peru – the world’s two largest producers of cocaine.

Police say they seized a record amount of illicit drugs last year, the majority of it cocaine, and that this indicates total exports are on the rise.

The consequences are deadly: January 2025 saw 781 murders, making it the deadliest month in recent years. Many of them were related to the illegal drug trade.

We spoke to people in the supply chain to understand why this crisis is worsening – and how rising European cocaine consumption is fuelling it.

César, 36, first started working with cartels when he was 14 years old, citing poor job opportunities as one factor.

“The Albanians needed someone to solve problems,” he explains. “I knew the port guards, the transport drivers, the CCTV camera supervisors.”

He bribes them to help smuggle drugs into Ecuador’s ports or to turn a blind eye – and the occasional camera.

After cocaine arrives in Ecuador from Colombia or Peru it is stashed in warehouses until his Albanian employers become aware of a shipping container that will be leaving one of the ports for Europe.

Gangs use three main methods to smuggle cocaine into shipments: hiding drugs in cargo before it reaches the port, breaking into containers at the port, or attaching drugs to ships at sea.

Sometimes César has made up to $3,000 (£2,235) for one job, but the incentive is not just money: “If you don’t do a job the Albanians ask for, they’ll kill you.”

César says he feels some regret over his role in the drugs trade, particularly what he calls the “collateral victims”.

But he believes that the fault lies with the consumer countries. “If consumption keeps growing, so will trafficking. It will be unstoppable,” he says, adding: “If they fight it there, it will end here.”

Ordinary workers, not just gang members, get caught in this supply chain.

Juan, not his real name, is a truck driver. One day he picked up a tuna shipment to take to the port. He says that something seemed off.

“The first alarm bell was when we went to the warehouse and it only had the cargo, nothing else. It was a rented warehouse, no company name,” he recalls.

“Two months later, I saw on the news that the containers had been seized in Amsterdam, full of drugs. We never knew.”

Some drivers unknowingly transport drugs; others are coerced – if they refuse, they are killed.

European gangs are drawn to Ecuador for its location but also its legal exports, which provide a convenient way to hide illicit cargo.

“Banana exports make up 66% of containers that leave Ecuador, 29.81% go to the European Union, where drug consumption is growing,” explains banana industry representative José Antonio Hidalgo.

Some gangs have even set up fake fruit import or export companies in Europe and Ecuador as a front for illicit activities.

“These European traffickers pose as businessmen,” says “José” (not his real name), a prosecutor who targets organised crime groups and who spoke anonymously due to threats he has received.

One notorious example is Dritan Gjika, accused of being one of the most powerful Albanian mafia leaders in Ecuador.

Prosecutors say he had stakes in fruit export companies in Ecuador, and import companies in Europe, which he used to traffic cocaine. He remains on the run, but many of his accomplices faced convictions after a multinational police operation.

Lawyer Monica Luzárraga defended one of his associates and now speaks candidly about her knowledge of how these networks operate.

“In those years, banana exports to Albania boomed,” she says.

She appears frustrated that authorities did not put two and two together sooner that criminal groups were using this as a front: “The entire economy here is stagnant. Yet one item that has increased in exports is bananas. So, two plus two equals four.”

At Ecuador’s ports, the police and armed forces try to control the situation.

Boats patrol the waters, police scan banana boxes for bricks of cocaine – even police scuba divers search for drugs hidden beneath ships.

Everyone is heavily armed, even those simply guarding banana boxes before they are loaded into shipping containers. This is because if drugs are found during a search, a corrupt port worker would likely be involved, and it could trigger a violent incident.

Despite these efforts, police say the amount of cocaine being successfully smuggled out of Ecuador has reached a record high. Rising demand and economic factors are blamed.

Nearly 300 tonnes of drugs were seized last year – a new annual record, according to Ecuador’s interior ministry.

Major Christian Cozar Cueva of the National Police says that “there has been about a 30% increase in seizures headed for Europe in recent years”.

This increase in cocaine shipments has made it more dangerous for those caught up in the supply chain.

Truck driver “Juan” says the rise of “container contamination” makes him more vulnerable.

He says officials seized a container the day before with two tonnes of drugs: “It used to be kilos, now we talk about tonnes.”

“If you don’t contaminate the containers, you have two options: leave the job or end up dead.”

An economy battered by the Covid pandemic left more Ecuadoreans vulnerable to gang recruitment.

A state that was financially stretched post-pandemic, a security force which had less experience dealing with organised crime, and previously lax visa rules facilitated European gangs’ presence there post-2020.

Monica Luzárraga says 2021 was the year when the “Albanian mafia infiltration took off”.

She says this period coincided with an “influx” of Albanian citizens and a spike in banana exports, including to Albania.

“This is a lucrative business that harms Ecuador and benefits criminal organisations. How can we accept an economy built on suffering?”

This ire toward foreign cartels is unsurprising, given their contribution to rising violence.

But one thing some traffickers and those fighting them agree on: the trade is fuelled by consumers, particularly in Europe, the US and Australia.

UN data shows global cocaine consumption has hit record levels. Its surveys suggest the UK has the world’s second highest rate of cocaine use.

The UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) estimates the UK consumes about 117 tonnes of cocaine annually and has the biggest market in Europe.

Evidence suggests consumption in the UK is rising.

The UK Home Office’s analysis of wastewater suggests cocaine consumption increased by 7% from 2023 to 2024. NCA operations seized about 232 tonnes of cocaine in 2024, compared with 194 tonnes in 2023.

The NCA’s deputy director of threat leadership, Charles Yates, says this makes the UK the “country of choice” for organised crime groups who profit from the high demand.

He estimates the UK cocaine market is worth around £11bn ($14.2bn), and criminal gangs make about £4bn a year in the UK alone.

Those fighting these gangs in Ecuador, like prosecutor José, say it is down to “countries whose nationals are consumers to exercise greater control” on those financing the trade.

Its victims take many forms.

For Mr Hidalgo it is the banana exporters suffering reputational and economic damage. For Ms Luzárraga, it is “children, adolescents who are being co-opted by criminal gangs”.

“In Europe there are citizens willing to pay large amounts of money to have the drugs they consume. The drugs that are ultimately costing the lives of Ecuadorean citizens.”

The NCA stresses that as well as these “catastrophic” effects on communities along the supply chain, cocaine use is claiming additional casualties in users due to cardiovascular and psychological impacts. Cocaine-related deaths in the UK increased by 30% in 2023 compared to 2022, to 1,118.

The NCA also warns that the drug exacerbates domestic violence.

He is clear law enforcement’s efforts to tackle the supply aren’t enough: “Supply side action on its own is never going to be the answer. What’s really important is changing the demand.”

From drug gang members to the country’s president, this is Ecuador’s message to Europe, too.

President Daniel Noboa, who is standing for a second term in the presidential election run-off on 13 April, has made fighting criminal gangs one of his main priorities and deployed the military to tackle gang-related violence.

He told the BBC: “The chain that ends in ‘UK fun’ involves a lot of violence.”

“What’s fun for one person probably involves 20 homicides along the way.”

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.

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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?

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.

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“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.

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.”

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’s only been a couple of years since the last series of Charlie Brooker’s dystopian Netflix show Black Mirror landed. But we’re now living in an unpredictable world and a lot can happen in a short space of time.

Renowned for its often savvy and disturbing takes on humanity and our relationship with technology, Black Mirror is back for a seventh series at a time when the pace of change in both politics and tech has left many of us – including lawmakers – struggling to keep up.

In 2011, when the first episode aired, Siri was the new kid on the block and the iPhone 4S had just been launched. Now we have Meta AI embedded in WhatsApp and we’re on series 10 of the Apple watch.

Since then, Black Mirror has taken us from creepy memory devices, phone implants and robotic bees to actors-turned-werewolves. And everything in between.

Brooker is in buoyant mood as, he tells the BBC there appears to be little danger of him running out of ideas anytime soon, when asked if Black Mirror could go on forever.

“Hopefully [it will run and run]. Selfishly, it’s a fun job,” he says. “Technology is developing in the real world very quickly.

“That means there are more sources of inspiration, and… the viewer is experiencing more [technological] things in their everyday life.

“We can do stories that I wouldn’t have thought of 10 years ago, and also, you don’t need to explain some of the concepts to people because they’ve got it in their phone.”

The Crown and Deadpool & Wolverine actor Emma Corrin, who stars in one of this season’s episodes, adds: “It’s much closer to home. People have access to stuff like AI which is terrifying so then it’s more confronting and serves as a better warning.”

Brooker jokes: “So you’re saying it should go on forever?”

“Yes, it should go on forever,” Corrin concurs.

Brooker adds: “I’ll find out when it stops if I drop dead or people stop watching.”

Corrin appears in an episode titled Hotel Reverie, alongside Issa Rae. The pair both play A-listers appearing in a remake of a vintage Hollywood classic. With a twist, of course.

Corrin plays screen siren Dorothy Chambers, and reflects: “I really enjoyed playing in a 1940s movie star.

“I just like the voice and the mannerisms and the way they hold themselves, and the style of acting is so ridiculous, larger than life and tongue in cheek, and yet packed with emotion at the same time.”

Without giving too much away, AI – the subject of much debate in the creative industries – rears its head in the storyline.

Corrin says they don’t “feel great” about its potential impact on their profession.

“Obviously, I think it’s scary, but it’s also a massive conversation, right? There are aspects of it that are terrifying to me as an artist. I love the creative process. I love that this art is born out of being in a room with people and things coming from the depths of someone’s human experience or imagination. And I really don’t think we’ll lose that, or I hope not.

“And I think there are also aspects of AI I probably don’t understand, and that could be used as tools for good. It’s about everyone being able to understand them and to use them correctly, and them being in the right hands.”

Brooker agrees: “Quite rightly, when Andy Serkis played Gollum [in the Lord of the Rings trilogy], everyone’s amazed by that, but what you’re amazed by is the human, you’re seeing a human performance shining through.

“I can totally see the value of AI as a tool for creative people. The point at which it worries me is if you remove the people bit from that equation, or you’re just hoovering up their work and regurgitating it, and they’re not being paid.”

Brooker also returns to another favourite tech theme, which he’s used as a jumping off point for several Black Mirror episodes over the previous six series. The world of gaming.

Remember the interactive standalone Black Mirror film Bandersnatch, where Asim Chaudhry and Will Poulter played a games company boss and a genius developer? The pair are now reprising their roles from the 2018 movie in a new series seven episode called Plaything.

Scottish actor Lewis Gribben, who is soon to star in the highly anticipated TV series Blade Runner 2099, plays 1990s games journalist and loner Cameron, who becomes obsessed with one particular game featuring little pixel creatures. (Brooker himself was a games journalist back in the day).

Former Doctor Who Peter Capaldi also turns in a brilliantly disturbing performance as an older Cameron.

Although a big Black Mirror fan, Gribben hadn’t seen Bandersnatch but says that coming to Plaything fresh actually aided his performance.

“I think it made it easier for me… but I was just intimidated. I was like ‘Oh my god, it’s Will Poulter who I’ve watched since I was seven years old acting in Son of Rambow. And Asim Chowdhury from People Just Do Nothing!”

Gribben tells the BBC he’s a bit of a gamer himself but has more of a handle on it than his Black Mirror character.

“I’m playing the new Assassin’s Creed Shadows at the minute,” he says. “When you have a day off… I can spend a solid 10 hours [on it]. But I like to think most people game in moderation or just have bingeing game sessions. It’s more like a relaxation thing.”

Josh Finan, who has starred in Baby Reindeer, The Responder and recently played Gerry Adams in Say Nothing, plays an acquaintance of Cameron who becomes unwittingly embroiled in his companion’s distorted sense of reality.

The pair will both star in the highly anticipated Amazon mini-series, Blade Runner 2099. Expected to drop later this year, the action takes place 50 years after 2017’s Blade Runner 2049, a movie that also analyses the relationship between humans and AI.

Finan isn’t too worried about being replaced by robots though.

“I’m very optimistic. I don’t think actors are going anywhere. Maybe I’m being naive [but] I don’t think there’s any danger of being replaced. What we do is too special.”

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’s foreign ministry insisted there was enough food in Gaza and accused Guterres of “spreading slander against Israel”.

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.

Responding to the comments, Israel’s foreign ministry said there was no aid shortage in Gaza.

“As always, you don’t let the facts get in the way when spreading slander against Israel,” spokesman Oren Marmorstein said.

“There is no shortage of humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip – over 25,000 aid trucks have entered the Gaza Strip in the 42 days of the cease fire,” he added.

Guterres’s comments followed 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.

The UK government is investigating a fast-growing “green fuel” called HVO diesel amid claims of significant fraud, the BBC has learned.

HVO is increasingly popular as a transport fuel and for powering music festivals and its backers say it can curb carbon emissions by up to 90% as it can be made from waste materials like used cooking oil.

But industry whistleblowers told the BBC they believe large amounts of these materials are not waste but instead are virgin palm oil, which is being fraudulently relabelled.

And data analysed by the BBC and shared with the UK’s Department for Transport casts further doubt on one of the key ingredients in HVO, a material called palm sludge waste.

Europe used more of this waste in HVO and other biofuels in 2023 than it is thought possible for the world to produce.

In response to the BBC’s findings, the Department for Transport said they “take the concerns raised seriously and are working with stakeholders and international partners to gather further information”.

HVO, or hydrotreated vegetable oil, has been called something of a wonder-fuel in recent years as it can be used as 100% substitute for diesel reducing planet warming emissions.

UK consumption rocketed from 8 million litres in 2019 to about 699 million litres in 2024, according to provisional government figures.

Its green credentials rely heavily on the assumption that it is made from waste sources, particularly used cooking oil or the waste sludge from palm oil production.

But industry whistle-blowers have told the BBC that they believe virgin palm oil and other non-waste materials are often being used instead.

That would be bad news for the planet, as virgin palm oil is linked to increased tropical deforestation, which adds to climate change and threatening endangered species like orang-utans.

This palm oil “floods the market like cancer,” one large European biofuel manufacturer told the BBC.

They said that to stay in business they have to go along with the pretence that they are using waste materials.

Another whistle-blower, a former trader of these biofuels, also speaking anonymously, gave the BBC his account of one recent case dealing with supposedly waste products.

“I believe that what I bought was multiple cargos of virgin palm oil that has been wrongly classified as palm oil sludge,” they said.

“I called one of the board members and told them about the situation, and then I was told that they didn’t want to do anything about it, because the evidence would be burned.”

As well as this testimony, data compiled by campaign group Transport & Environment and analysed by the BBC suggests that more palm sludge waste is being used for transport biofuels than the world is probably able to produce.

The figures show that the UK and EU used about two million tonnes of palm sludge waste for HVO and other biofuels in 2023, based on Eurostat and UK Department for Transport figures.

EU imports of this sludge appear to have risen further in 2024, according to preliminary UN trade data, although the UK appears to have bucked this trend.

But the data analysed by the BBC, which is based on well-established UN and industry statistics, suggests the world can only produce just over one million tonnes of palm sludge waste a year.

This mismatch further suggests non-waste fuels such as virgin palm oil are being used to meet Europe’s rapid growth in biofuels, according to researchers and industry figures.

“It’s a very easy game,” said Dr Christian Bickert, a German farmer and editor with experience in biofuels, who believes that much of the HVO made with these waste products is “fake”.

“Chemically, the sludge and the pure palm oil are absolutely the same because they come from the same plant, and also from the same production facilities in Indonesia,” he told BBC News.

“There’s no paper which proves [the fraud], no paper at all, but the figures tell a clear story.”

Underpinning the sustainability claims of biofuels is an independent system of certification where producers have to show exactly where they get their raw materials from.

It is mainly administered by a company called ISCC, and in Europe it has a long-standing reputation for ensuring that waste materials turned into fuel really do come from waste, by working with national authorities.

But in Indonesia, Malaysia and China, three of the main sources of the raw ingredients claimed to be waste for HVO, supervision is much more difficult.

“ISCC is simply not allowed to send anybody to China,” said Dr Christian Bickert.

“They have to rely on certification companies in China to check that everything is OK, but China doesn’t allow any inspectors in from outside.”

This concern is echoed by several other groups contacted by the BBC.

Construction giant Balfour Beatty, for example, has a policy of not using the fuel, citing sustainability concerns.

“We just are not able to get any level of visibility over the supply chain of HVO that would give us that level of assurance that this is truly a sustainable product,” Balfour Beatty’s Jo Gilroy told BBC News.

The European Waste-based and Advanced Biofuels Association represents the major biofuel manufacturers in the EU and UK.

In a statement they said “there is a major certification verification issue that needs to be addressed as a matter of priority”, adding that the “ISCC should do much more to ensure that non-EU Biodiesel is really what it claims to be”.

In the light of growing fraud allegations, the Irish authorities have recently restricted incentives for fuels made from palm waste.

The BBC also understands that the EU is about to propose a ban on ISCC certification of waste biofuels for two-and-a-half years, although it is expected to say it is not aware of direct breaches of renewable goals.

It would then be up to individual member countries to decide whether to accept certifications.

In response, the ISCC said it was “more than surprised” by the EU’s move, adding that it had been “a frontrunner in implementing the most strict and effective measures to ensure integrity and fraud prevention in the market for years”.

“The measure would be a severe blow to the entire market for waste-based biofuels,” it said.

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German security officials say they are carefully examining possible indications of foreign finance or influence in a series of attacks in German cities in the past year.

However, they have reacted coolly to a German TV report suggesting suspicious internet searches were carried out in Russia before a deadly attack in Mannheim last year.

A 26-year-old Afghan man has admitted a knife attack that targeted anti-Islam activist Michael Stürzenberger and killed a police officer in May last year, days before European elections.

A ZDF TV report has now suggested that Russian Google searches days earlier had included “terror attack in Mannheim” and “Michael Stürzenberger stabbed”.

Digital intelligence analyst Steven Broschart told the public broadcaster ZDF’s Terra X History programme that the searches were highly unusual: “it’s pretty unlikely that we’re talking about a coincidence here”.

He spoke of Russian internet searches for webcams in Mannheim’s market square before the 31 May attack took place.

The broadcaster also highlighted fires inside parcels at a DHL cargo hub in Leipzig which Western security officials blamed on Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency.

That attack in August 2024 preceded regional elections in Saxony, and the head of domestic intelligence Stephan Joachim Kramer in neighbouring Thuringia told ZDF that “those who deal with this know we’ve actually been at war for a long time, even if it’s not been declared”.

• Police officer killed in Mannheim attack
• Russian ‘test runs’ targeted cargo flights to US

The trial of the man accused of carrying out the Mannheim attack, Sulaiman A, has heard how he became fascinated by jihadist group Islamic State and how he had ordered a knife online beforehand.

Other German cities have since been hit by attacks, including this year in Aschaffenburg and Munich, ahead of federal elections. The killings coincided with a spike in support for the far-right anti-immigration party, Alternative for Germany.

Interior ministry officials have not commented on ZDF’s report on Russian internet searches four days before the Mannheim attack, other than to say the issue of “possible indications of targeted influence from abroad” was being taken seriously.

There were “no clear indications” so far, the spokesman told AFP news agency.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for Germany’s BND intelligence service voiced scepticism over the analysis of internet searches before last year’s Mannheim attack.

“The results from Google Trends are unsuitable for presented analysis and evaluation methods and cannot be used with validity either,” the spokesman told Reuters.

The spokesman suggested that the the results were based on samples and searches that were too small, and that VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) that disguised the location of a search would not have been taken into account.

Despite the wariness of the intelligence response, former BND employee Gerhard Conrad warned that it would be “naive” not to pursue these leads.

Such violent crimes would certainly fit the “toolbox of what we now called hybrid measures, hybrid warfare”, he said.

The domestic intelligence service warned only last week that Russian spies were using “espionage, sabotage and exertion of influence, including disinformation” to target Germany and the rest of Europe.

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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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 of 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 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who 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 was continuing to push for the talks to be direct.

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.

Netanyahu said last year that Israel had hit an Iranian nuclear site in retaliation for a 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.

Delegates from the US and Russia will meet in Istanbul on Thursday as part of continued efforts to normalise embassy operations between the two countries, the US State Department has said.

The talks, which will take place at the Russian consulate in Turkey’s capital, will not include any discussion of political or security issues, the US said.

“Ukraine is not, absolutely not, on the agenda,” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said.

The Russian delegation will be led by the newly appointed ambassador to the US, Alexander Darchiev, and the US team by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Sonata Coulter, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

Speaking at a daily press briefing on Tuesday, Bruce said the negotiations would focus “solely” on the functioning of the respective embassies, “not on normalising a bilateral relationship overall”.

That “can only happen, as we’ve noted, once there is peace between Russia and Ukraine,” he said.

Earlier talks in February focused predominantly on conditions for each country’s diplomats.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova also said the second round of normalisation talks would take place “in the coming days”.

Over the past decade, Washington and Moscow have expelled numerous diplomats and restricted the appointment of new officials. Diplomatic ties were then all but severed after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

However there has been a thaw in relations under the Trump administration.

In February US and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia for their first face-to-face talks since the invasion to discuss how to end the war in Ukraine.

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 is ripping up the rulebook on trade that has been in place for more than 50 years.

His latest round of sweeping tariffs, which came into force shortly after midnight on Wednesday, hits goods from some of America’s biggest trading partners including China and the European Union with dramatic hikes in import duties.

The president and his allies say the measures are necessary to restore America’s manufacturing base, which they view as essential to national security.

But it remains a potentially seismic action, affecting more than $2tn worth of imports, which will push the overall effective tariff rate in the US to the highest level in more than a century.

In the US, key consumer goods could see huge price rises, including an estimated 33% for clothing, and analysts are warning of near-certain global economic damage as sales in America drop, trade shrinks and production abroad falls.

With the stock market reeling and political pressure in the US starting to build, the White House has worked to soothe nerves by floating the possibility of trade talks, touting conversations that have already begun with Japan, Vietnam and South Korea.

But Trump has signalled resistance to the kinds of exemptions he granted during his first term, and even if these talks are ultimately productive, country-by-country deal-making will no doubt take time.

“The primary question… is whether or not there will be negotiations,” said Thierry Wizman, a global strategist at the investment bank Macquarie. “And no one has an answer to that because it’s going to depend on the approach and the disposition of the negotiating parties.”

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The US already appears set on a collision course with China, which was its third biggest supplier of imports last year.

The White House said on Tuesday that it was moving ahead with Trump’s social media threat to add a further 50% levy on imports from China, on top of the 54% duties that had already been announced, unless Beijing agreed to withdraw its retaliation.

Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, declined to say if the two sides had spoken directly since the threat.

But publicly, China has shown little willingness to back down, describing Trump’s moves as “bullying” and warning that “intimidation, threat and blackmail are not the right way to engage with China”.

“If the US decides not to care about the interests of the US itself, China and the rest of the world, and is determined to fight a tariff and trade war, China’s response will continue to the end,” he said in a statement.

The rapid change has shaken US businesses with decades of ties to China, which now find themselves paralysed and unsure how this escalating trade fight might end.

“You would laugh if you weren’t crying,” said US businessman Jay Foreman, whose toy company Basic Fun! is known for classics such as Tonka Trucks and Care Bears, the vast majority of which are made in China.

He put out notice to his suppliers to halt any shipments to the US earlier this week, as the US announced it would hit goods from China with duties starting at 104%.

“We just have to hold our shipments until this thing gets sorted out,” he said. “And if it doesn’t get sorted out, them I’m going to sell down the inventory that I have in my warehouse and pray.”

Speaking to Congress on Tuesday, Jamieson Greer, who leads the office of the US Trade Representative, declined to set a timeline for how quickly talks might progress.

“The president is fixed in his purpose. This trade deficit and offshoring and the loss of jobs has persisted for too long,” he said, while acknowledging the measures might lead to a “challenging” economic adjustment.

“It is a moment of drastic, overdue change, but I am confident the American people will rise to the occasion as they have done before,” he said.

Shares in the US resumed their downward slide on Tuesday, giving up early gains spurred by Trump comments about trade talks that the fight might see a quick resolution.

The S&P 500 is now trading at its lowest level in more than a year, after seeing roughly 12% of its value wiped out since the announcement last Wednesday.

Stock markets from Japan to Germany have also been shaken, as investors assess the wider repercussions of the actions. In the UK, the FTSE 100 has dropped about 10%.

“What I’m really seeing is trepidation, uncertainty, a lot of questions, a lot of people wanting us to predict what will happen next,” said Amy Magnus, director of compliance and customs affairs for Deringer, a Vermont-based firm that is one of America’s top five customs brokers. “But I have entered into a world that I cannot predict.”

Erin Williamson, vice-president of US customs brokerage at GEODIS, a global supply chain operator, said on Tuesday afternoon, said that the uncertainty had prompted some of her firm’s clients to simply put shipments on pause.

“One of the top ways that you can confirm that you’re not putting your business at risk is really holding off until maybe the dust settles,” she said.

The uncertainty is raising the risks to the economy, said Ernie Tedeschi, director of economics of the Budget Lab at Yale, which is not predicting a recession in the US, but still expects tariffs announced so far this year will cost the US 600,000 jobs and lead to a roughly $3,800 hit to purchasing power for the average household.

“A lot of the market turmoil we’ve seen is not about the substance of the economic damage of tariffs on their own. A lot of it is about the uncertainty,” he said.

“Businesses and consumers don’t know what the tariff rate is going to be an hour from now… How can you invest or make plans for the future in that environment?”

Mr Tedeschi said he saw no clear end to the trade war in sight.

“Even if the administration wanted to step back, how does it save face in a way that is mutually acceptable to all the relevant players?” he said. “That’s becoming harder by the day.”

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.

• Live updates on this story
• China is not backing down from Trump’s tariff war. What next?
• Who are the tariff ‘PANICANS’ derided as ‘weak and stupid’ by Trump?

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.”

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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 shares, 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 shares 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.”

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.”

US President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs targeting most of the world are now in effect – and outside China, no other region has been hit as hard as South East Asia.

Near the top of the list are Vietnam and Cambodia which have been hit by some of the highest tariffs: 46% and 49%. Further down are Thailand (36%), Indonesia (32%) and Malaysia (24%). The Philippines gets a tariff of 17%, and Singapore of 10%.

This is a huge blow for a region highly dependent on exports. Its widely-admired economic development over the past three decades has largely been driven by its success in selling its products to the rest of the world, in particular to the US.

Exports to the US contribute 23% of Vietnam’s GDP, and 67% of Cambodia’s.

That growth story is now imperilled by the punitive measures being imposed in Washington.

The longer-term impact of these tariffs, assuming they stay in place, will vary, but will certainly pose big challenges to the governments of Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia in particular.

Vietnam’s “bamboo diplomacy”, where it attempts to be friends with everyone and balance ties with both China and the US, will now be tested.

Under the leadership of the new Communist Party Secretary-General To Lam, Vietnam has embarked on an ambitious plan to build an upper-income, knowledge-and-tech-based economy by the year 2045. It has been aiming for annual growth rates in excess of 8%.

Exporting more to the US, already its biggest market, was central to that plan.

It was also the main reason why Vietnam agreed to elevate their relationship to that of a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in 2023.

The Communist Party, which tolerates little dissent and has no formal political opposition, depends on its economic pledges for its legitimacy . Already viewed by many economists as too ambitious, these will now be even harder to meet.

Thailand depends on US exports less than Vietnam – under 10% of GDP – but the Thai economy is in much worse shape, having underperformed for the past decade. The Thai government is trying to find ways to lift economic growth, most recently attempting but failing to legalise gambling, and these tariffs are another economic blow it cannot afford.

For Cambodia, the tariffs pose perhaps the greatest political threat in the region.

The government of Hun Manet has proved just as authoritarian as that of his father Hun Sen, whom he succeeded two years ago, but it is vulnerable.

Keeping the Hun family’s hold on power has required offering rival clans in Cambodia economic privileges like monopolies or land concessions, but this has helped create a glut of property developments, which are no longer selling, and a mass of grievances over land expropriations.

The garment sector, which employs 750,000 people, has been a crucial social safety valve, giving steady incomes to Cambodia’s poorest. Thousands of those jobs are now likely to be lost as a result of President Trump’s tariffs.

Unlike China, which has hit back with its own levies, the official message from governments in South East Asia, is don’t panic, don’t retaliate, but negotiate.

Vietnam has dispatched deputy prime minister Ho Duc Pho to Washington to plead his country’s case, and has offered to eliminate all tariffs on US imports. Thailand plans to send its finance minister to make a similar appeal, and has offered to reduce its tariffs and buy more American products, like food and aircraft.

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim is also heading to Washington, though with exports to the US making up only 11% of Malaysia’s total, his country is less affected than some of its neighbours.

However, the Trump administration appears to be in no mood to compromise.

Peter Navarro, President Trump’s senior counsellor on trade and manufacturing and one of the main thinkers behind the new policy, said in interviews on Monday that Vietnam’s offer of zero tariffs was meaningless, because it would not address the deficit in trade where Vietnam sells $15 worth of goods to the US for every $1 it buys.

He accused Vietnam of keeping multiple non-tariff barriers to US imports, and said that one-third of all Vietnamese exports to the US were actually Chinese products, trans-shipped through Vietnam.

The proportion of Vietnamese exports which are being made or trans-shipped there to avoid US tariffs on China is difficult to assess, but detailed trade studies put it at between 7% and 16%, not one-third.

Like Vietnam, the government of Cambodia has appealed to the US to postpone the tariffs while it attempts to negotiate.

The local American Chamber of Commerce has called for the 49% tariffs to be dropped, making the point that the Cambodian garment industry, the country’s biggest employer, will be badly affected, but that no tariff level, however high, will see clothing and footwear manufacturing return to the US.

Perhaps the most perverse tariff rate is the 44% applied to Myanmar, a country mired in a civil war, which has no capacity to buy more US goods.

US exports make up only a small proportion of Myanmar’s GDP, less than 1%.

But as in Cambodia, that sector, mainly garments, is one of the few that provides a steady income to poor families in Myanmar’s cities.

In a supreme irony, Trump has until now been a popular figure in this region.

He has been widely admired in Vietnam for his tough, transactional approach to foreign policy, and Cambodia’s former strongman Hun Sen, still the main power behind the scenes, has long sought a close personal relationship with the US president, proudly posting selfies with him at their first meeting in 2017.

Only last month Cambodia was praising Trump for shutting down the US media networks Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, which often carried the views of Cambodian dissidents.

Now Cambodia, like so many of its neighbours, finds itself in a long line of supplicants pleading with him to ease their tariff burden.

At least 98 people have been killed and more than 150 injured after a roof collapsed at a nightclub in the Dominican Republic’s capital Santo Domingo, officials have said.

A provincial governor and former Major League Baseball pitcher Octavio Dotel were among the victims. Dotel, 51, died on the way to hospital after being pulled from the debris.

The incident happened in the early hours of Tuesday at a concert by popular merengue singer Rubby Pérez at the Jet Set nightclub. He was among those killed in the incident, his manager said.

Hundreds of people were inside the venue and some 400 rescuers are still searching for survivors. There are fears the death toll will rise further.

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.

President Abinader has expressed his condolences to the families affected.

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Todd Brayman is no longer buying his favourite red wine, which is from California.

A veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces, he is one of a growing number of people in Canada, Europe, and other parts of the world, who are avoiding buying US products due to President Trump’s tariffs and treatment of US allies.

“I have in my life served alongside American forces. It is just profoundly upsetting and disappointing to see where we are given the historical ties that our two countries have,” says Mr Brayman, who lives in Nova Scotia.

“But I think right now it’s time to stand up and be counted, and in my mind, that means buying local and supporting Canadian business.”

Together with his wife, Mr Brayman has replaced all the American products he used to buy, including his previous wine of choice, with Canadian alternatives.

“Luckett Phone Box Red wine, which is from right here in Nova Scotia, is great,” he says.

Determining which products are Canadian isn’t always easy however. “Sometimes labelling can be misleading,” adds Mr Brayman.

To help, he now uses an app on his phone that can scan a product’s barcode and identify where it’s from. If the product is identified as American, the app suggests Canadian alternatives.

The app, called Maple Scan, is one of numerous emerging in Canada to help people shop local. Others include Buy Canadian, Is This Canadian? and Shop Canadian.

Maple Scan’s founder, Sasha Ivanov, says his app has had 100,000 downloads since it launched last month. He believes the momentum around buying Canadian is here to stay.

“Lots of Canadians have told me, ‘I’m not going back’. It’s important that we support local regardless,” he says.

Canadians like Mr Brayman are boycotting American products in response to a raft of import tariffs introduced by Trump. These included tariffs of 25% on all foreign cars, steel and aluminium, and 25% tariffs on other Canadian and Mexican goods.

Meanwhile, other European Union exports will get tariffs of 20%, while the UK is facing 10%.

Trump says the tariffs will boost US manufacturing, raise tax revenue and reduce the US trade deficit. However, they have spooked global markets, which have fallen sharply over the past month.

Trump has even expressed a desire for Canada to join the US as its 51st state, something the Canadian government was quick to strongly reject.

Ottawa has also responded with C$60bn ($42bn; £32bn) in counter tariffs, as well as additional tariffs on the US auto sector.

And there has been a substantial drop in the number of Canadians travelling to the US.

Groups dedicated to boycotting US goods have also emerged in European countries. Momentum behind the boycott is particularly strong in Denmark, whose territory of Greenland Trump has said he wants to acquire.

Denmark’s largest grocery store operator, Salling Group, recently introduced a symbol, a black star, on pricing labels to denote European brands.

Bo Albertus, a school principal who lives in Skovlunde, a suburb of Copenhagen, says joining the boycott was his way of taking action. “Statements that Trump made about wanting to buy Greenland, that was just too much for me,” he says.

“I can’t do anything about the American political system, but I can vote with my credit card.”

One of Mr Albertus’s first moves was to cancel his subscriptions to US streaming services, including Netflix, Disney Plus and Apple TV. “My 11-year-old daughter is a bit annoyed about it, but that’s the way it is. She understands why I do it,” he says.

Mr Albertus is the administrator for a Danish Facebook group dedicated to helping people boycott US goods. In the group, which has 90,000 members, people share recommendations for local alternatives to US goods, from shoes to lawnmowers.

Mr Albertus says: “It’s a movement that is quite a lot bigger than just our little country, so it all that adds up.”

Mette Heerulff Christiansen, the owner of a grocery shop in Copenhagen called Broders has stopped stocking American products, such as Cheetos crisps and Hershey’s chocolate, in her store. She is substituting them with Danish or European products where possible.

Ms Christiansen is also swapping out products she uses at home. She’s finding some easier to replace than others. “Coca-Cola is easy to substitute with Jolly Cola, a Danish brand,” she says. “But technology, like Facebook, that’s totally difficult to avoid.”

She believes the boycott movement in Denmark is helping people to channel their anger at Trump’s policies and rhetoric. “I think it’s more for the Danish people to feel good that they are doing something,” she says.

Douglas Irwin, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College in the US, who specializes in the history of US trade policy, believes the economic impact of the boycott may be limited. “It is hard to judge how economically significant the consumer boycotts will be in terms of reducing trade with the United States,” he says.

“In the past, boycotts have not lasted long and have not achieved much. It starts as a hostile reaction to some US action but tends to fade with time,” he says.

For now though, the rising Buy Canadian sentiment in Canada is boosting sales for many local brands. The CEO of Canadian grocer Loblaw posted on LinkedIn that weekly sales of Canadian products were up by double digits.

Bianca Parsons, from Alberta in Canada, is behind an initiative to promote locally-made goods, called Made In Alberta, which she says has had a surge in interest since the tariffs were introduced. “We’re now getting over 20,000 hits [to the site] every two weeks.”

Ms Parsons, who is the executive director of the Alberta Food Processors Association, adds: “I’ve had producers reach out to us and say: ‘I’m selling out at stores that I would never sell out before, thank you so much’.”

Several Canadian provinces, including Ontario and Nova Scotia, have removed US-made alcoholic beverages from their liquor store shelves in response to tariffs, a move the boss of Jack Daniel’s maker Brown-Forman has said is “worse than tariffs”.

Among the American businesses feeling the impact is Caledonia Spirits, a distiller based in Vermont, near the Canadian border. Ryan Christiansen, Caledonia’s president and head distiller, says his business had an order on track for shipment to Quebec cancelled directly after tariffs were announced.

“My sense is that everyone’s just being a little too aggressive and, unfortunately, I think America started that,” says Mr Christiansen. “I do understand that the action America took needed a counter reaction.

“If it were up to me, I’d be at the table trying to resolve this in a friendly way, and I’m hopeful that the leaders in America take that approach.”

Ethan Frisch, the co-founder of Burlap & Barrel, an American spice company based in New York, which also exports to Canada, says he’s more concerned with the impact of the tariffs on his company’s imports and rising inflation in the US than the consumer boycott.

He says: “I think there’s this assumption that, if you boycott an American company, it’s going to have an impact on the economy and maybe change the situation. I think that assumption, unfortunately, is not accurate.

“The [US] economy is crashing all up by itself. Businesses like ours are struggling without boycotts.”

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.

He said on Tuesday that intelligence suggested the number of Chinese soldiers in Russia’s army was “much higher than two”.

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

It is the first official allegation from Ukraine that China is supplying Russia with manpower. 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.

Russian drone attacks into Ukraine continued on Tuesday night with strikes injuring 14 people in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro, and another two in Kharkiv, in the north-east, local officials said. A number of fires were reported in the two cities.

The first Universal theme park in Europe will be built in the UK, the government has promised.

The attraction would be constructed on the site of the former Kempston Hardwick brickworks near Bedford and would create an estimated 28,000 jobs before opening in 2031.

Universal estimated the 476-acre complex could attract 8.5 million visitors in its first year.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the multibillion-pound investment by the company would “see Bedford home to one of the biggest entertainment parks in Europe, firmly putting the county on the global stage”.

Universal Destinations and Experience said 80% of those employed in the new jobs would be from Bedfordshire and surrounding areas.

The production company, which has made films including Minions and Wicked, has theme parks in Orlando and Los Angeles in the US, as well as Osaka, Japan, Sentosa, Singapore, and Beijing, China.

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy hailed the “landmark investment” as “fantastic news” for the economy.

“This is not just about bringing great American creations to Britain, this is also about showcasing great British creations to the world,” she told the BBC.

“These are things like James Bond, Paddington Bear, these are things like Harry Potter. We’ve got so much to be proud of.”

A full planning proposal will be submitted to the UK government with construction expected to start in 2026.

Universal’s Orlando resort in Florida brought in 9.75 million visitors in 2023, while its Hollywood resort saw 9.66 million the same year – according to the Theme Index Report.

In 2016, NBCUniversal agreed to a seven-year deal with Warner Bros. That meant it had television rights to show the Harry Potter films and the Fantastic Beasts franchise.

The prime minister said the theme park would create jobs across construction, artificial intelligence and tourism.

“Together, we are building a brighter future for the UK, getting people into work and ensuring our economy remains strong and competitive,” he added.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves said: “At a time of global change, this investment is a vote of confidence in Britain as a place to do business.”

According to plans from Universal Destinations & Experiences, the UK site would include a theme park, a 500-room hotel and a retail complex.

Universal has already bought 476 acres for the project, but could buy more land to increase the plot to about 700 acres – which would improve transport links.

Residents living in surrounding villages have responded positively to the plans, though some are concerned infrastructure will not be enough to support the amount of expected visitors.

Universal said it surveyed more than 6,000 local people and organisations and 92% of those supported the project.

Universal said it would make upgrades to the Wixams railway station and build a new station on the East West Rail line near the resort.

It would also add dedicated slip roads to the A42, which flooded in October after heavy rainfall.

On Thursday, Secretary of State for Transport Heidi Alexander approved expansion plans at the nearby London Luton Airport.

Universal previously described the Bedford site as “an ideal location with convenient, fast rail links to London and London Luton Airport”.

Nandy also said the government’s commitment to improve local transport infrastructure had helped secure the deal with Universal.

Mike Cavanagh, the president of Comcast Corporation, which owns Universal, said he was excited to expand the parks brand into Europe.

The company said it would work with Bedford Borough Council on the project.

The local authority was one of six councils to support the plans last year, alongside Central Bedfordshire, Luton, Milton Keynes, north Northamptonshire and west Northamptonshire councils.

Bedford residents had mixed thoughts on the plans when asked on Wednesday.

Margaret Wilson, 85, from Elstoy, said she would not visit the theme park but believed her grandsons, aged 19 and 16, would enjoy it.

But she said: “It will be four years until anything is built. Who knows what will happen in four years?”

Maria Perez, a warehouse worker in the area, said the theme park would be “really great” for families and young people.

“It will be good for the economy, for the town and for the people. People will invest more.”

She did admit it would not be good for rent prices, but overall felt it would be positive for Bedford.

Jagdeep Singh is a 36-year-old business change analyst from Kempton.

While he believed the theme park would drive businesses and bring jobs, he feared the number of visitors could have a negative affect.

“I worried a bit about traffic on the bypass – what’s going to happen to our hospitals if there’s any accidents?” he added.

The proposals remain subject to a planning decision from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

India’s Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal’s recent comments about the country’s start-up ecosystem have sparked a massive debate on social media and evoked strong reactions from some entrepreneurs.

At the second edition of Startup Mahakumbh, a government-led start-up conclave last week, Goyal seemed to take a hard look at India’s consumer start-ups as he urged entrepreneurs to explore more innovations in technology in order to help the country progress.

Poking fun at the rise of food delivery apps, artisanal brands and online betting apps in the country, he compared them with the innovations being made by the “other side”, which many took to mean China.

He said that while “they” were making leaps in machine learning, robotics and building “next-gen factories that can compete with the rest of the world”, India’s start-ups were still largely focussed on lifestyle products like gluten-free ice creams.

His comments sparked a flurry of reactions from India’s top innovators, with some arguing that he was only encouraging creators to be more ambitious and others calling it an unfair criticism of the start-up ecosystem, a major contributor to the country’s economy.

To be sure, Goyal also praised the pace at which new businesses were popping up in the country, hailing India as the third-largest start-up ecosystem in the world. He also urged Indian investors to do more to support Indian creators.

But he seemed to want to see more happen, and faster.

“We have to be willing to evolve and learn. [If] we want to be bigger and better, then we have to be bolder and we should not fight shy of the competition,” the minister said.

At one point, he asked the audience – brimming with entrepreneurs and investors – “Do we want to make ice creams or [semiconductor] chips?”

Aadit Palicha, co-founder of the quick-commerce app Zepto, was quick to call out the minister.

In a post on X, he argued that it was consumer internet companies like his that have led innovation in the technology space, in India and globally.

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He pointed out that Amazon – originally a consumer internet company – had scaled cloud computing while the big players in AI today, like Facebook and Google, were once consumer internet companies too.

He urged Indian investors to support consumer internet companies so that they can grow and use their profits for making more ambitious innovations.

Mohandas Pai, a prominent angel investor, told news channel Economic Times Now that there was a dearth of capital investment in deep-tech start-ups from the government and private players.

He explained that investors made a beeline for lifestyle-focused start-ups because they gave quick returns.

Deep-tech innovations take a long time to develop and require expensive infrastructure. “People are not willing to take long-term risks. We need long-term ‘patient’ money [for deep tech start-ups to thrive],” he said.

He also said that regulatory curbs on foreign investments in Indian start-ups were hurting innovation.

“Deep tech start-ups also struggle to find a market,” he added, citing the example of an Indian firm that recently pioneered a quick-charging battery for buses but found no takers for its product.

Many social media users also spoke about the challenges they faced when they tried to start their own tech businesses.

Some said they struggled to get loans, others highlighted high import taxes on certain foreign raw materials and equipment, while some others spoke about unnecessary red tape that made getting documents and approvals a nightmare.

But some entrepreneurs also defended the minister, saying that his comments were well-intentioned and a much-needed reality-check for the start-up ecosystem.

Vironika S, founder of edtech app Proxy Gyan, agreed that India’s future leadership of the global economy depended on breakthroughs in AI and semiconductors but added that there were realistic barriers to doing so and that the government could help by easing them.

Indian investor Kushal Bhagia said in a post on X that Goyal was right about ambition and a lack of deep tech start-ups in India. “We just don’t meet enough founders who are doing something truly deep tech or going after big ambitious problem statements,” he said.

He attributed this to India’s tech talent leaving the country to work in US firms and to a dearth of deep-tech founders for people to learn from and be inspired by.

The minister’s comments also got the media analysing different journeys of Indian and Chinese start-ups.

Journalist Abhijeet Kumar wrote in the Business Standard newspaper that in 2023, just 5% of Indian start-up funding went into deep-tech sectors, compared to 35% in China. He also pointed out how Beijing actively promoted high-tech innovation – in 2024, it had slashed $361bn in taxes and fees for high-tech firms, including $80.7bn in research and development deductions.

In an editorial published on Monday, the newspaper also noted that India’s start-ups are more consumption-driven, focused on using technology to solve local problems at scale rather than global ones by creating path-breaking foundational models.

It pointed out that India currently had 4,000 deep-tech start-ups and that this number was expected to jump to 10,000 by 2030 and quoted a Nasscom report which said that India’s deep tech-start-ups attracted $1.6bn in funding in 2024, marking a 78% year-on-year increase.

But there’s still a long way to go.

“As the deep-tech race intensifies globally, it is clear that India will have to do a lot to catch up with these countries,” the editorial said, adding that Goyal’s comments should “serve as a call to action” for start-ups and investors and also for the government.

“This can include setting up deep-tech innovation funds, building strong academia-start-up bridges and offering incentives for faster developments in hardware, AI, biotech and clean energy,” it said.