Israeli troops fired more than 100 times during an attack in which they killed 15 emergency workers in Gaza, with some shots from as close as 12m (39ft) away, a forensic audio analysis of mobile phone footage commissioned by BBC Verify has found.

Two audio experts examined a 19-minute video authenticated by BBC Verify, showing the incident and the moments leading up to it near Rafah on 23 March.

The findings support a claim made by the Palestinian Red Crescent that the workers were “targeted from a very close range”. On 5 April an Israeli army official said aerial footage showed troops opening fire “from afar”.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) declined to comment on the analysis directly when approached by BBC Verify.

A spokesperson said it was investigating the attack and repeated claims that six of the people killed were linked to Hamas, without offering evidence. The Palestinian Red Crescent rejected the allegation, as did a ninth paramedic who survived and was detained by the IDF for 15 hours.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said the full video was recovered from the phone of a medic killed and buried in a shallow grave by the IDF.

Video filmed by medic Rifaat Radwan who was killed in the incident showed the convoy driving at night, using headlights and flashing emergency lights. At least one medic can be seen wearing a high-vis jacket.

Faced with this, the Israeli army changed its account, admitting that its initial statement that the convoy approached “suspiciously” with its lights off was inaccurate.

Experts told BBC Verify they used sound waveforms and spectrograms to measure the distance of the gunfire from the microphone of the mobile. Shortened time gaps indicate that the distance between the microphone and the gunfire decreased as the video progressed.

They concluded that the first shots were fired from around 40m to 43m away. But towards the end of the video, gunfire came from around 12m away.

At a briefing on 5 April, an IDF official told reporters that surveillance showed the troops were at some distance when they opened fire, adding: “It’s not from close. They opened fire from afar.”

One military expert told BBC Verify that any engagements under 50m to 100m would be considered as being within close range.

Robert Maher, an audio forensics expert at Montana State University, said towards the start of the footage one firearm is discharged about 43m away from the mobile phone.

Mr Maher and another expert, Steven Beck, independently corroborated one another’s view that in the final few moments of the audio, shots are fired as close at 12m away.

Mr Beck, a former FBI consultant who now runs Beck Audio Forensics, said: “The shooter(s) at these times is much closer, with distances of 12m to 18m. There is a strange pop sound that may be a tire hit by a bullet.”

He added: “The shockwaves indicate that the bullets are passing close to the recorder microphone – meaning they are being shot at.”

Chris Cobb-Smith, a former British Army officer with over 20 years experience in conducting investigations in conflicts zones, said that at 50m the Israeli troops would have “definitively been able to identify the convoy as humanitarian” and would have been able to “determine that the personnel were unarmed and not posing a threat”.

• Israel changes account of Gaza medic killings after video showed deadly attack
• Survivor challenges Israeli account of attack on Gaza paramedics

Voices can also be heard towards the end of the recording, shouting in Hebrew: “Get up,” and: “You (plural) go back”.

Over the period of more than five minutes, at times, multiple firearms were in use simultaneously, the audio experts determined.

Mr Maher said “the sounds are often overlapping in such a way that it is clear multiple firearms are in use at the same time”.

Because of the overlap of gunshots, Mr Maher said it’s difficult to identify individual shots. But both experts determined independently that there were more than 100 shots.

Our audio analysts could not comment on which weapons were being used but Mr Beck said there are “several bursts of fully automatic gunfire”.

A bullet travelling at supersonic speed first creates a sonic boom – often called a “crack”. The sound of the bullet being fired is what creates a second sound, often called a “pop”.

At close distances, the two sounds are almost indiscernible to the human ear.

But by looking closely at the waveform of the audio, the two sounds can be detected and the distance between them measured.

What Mr Maher describes as “crack-pop sequences” are visible in these waveforms.

Mr Maher said the further away the firearm is from the microphone, the longer the gap between the two sounds.

Mr Maher said: “The first few audible gunshots have a crack-pop timing of about 72ms. Assuming a bullet speed of 800 m/s and speed of sound 343 m/s, that time gap implies the firearm was about 43 meters away. If the bullet speed were actually faster, that would move the firearm estimate closer to the microphone.”

There are limitations to their estimates. For example, analysts told us they cannot be certain of the type of firearm used or of the miss distance, which is how far off the shot is from the intended target. They also must make an assumption about the average speed of the bullet.

BBC Verify will continue to investigate this incident.

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A controversial bill seeking to reinterpret New Zealand’s founding document, which established the rights of both Māori and non-Māori in the country, has been defeated at its second reading.

The Treaty Principles Bill was voted down 112 votes to 11, days after a government committee recommended that it should not proceed.

The proposed legislation sought to legally define the principles of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi – causing widespread outrage that saw more than 40,000 people taking part in a protest outside parliament last year.

The bill had already been widely expected to fail, with most major political parties committed to voting it down.

Members of the right-wing Act Party, which tabled it, were the only MPs to vote for it at the second reading on Thursday. Act’s leader David Seymour has promised to continue campaigning on the issue.

“I believe this Bill or something like it will pass one day because there are not good arguments against its contents,” he wrote on social media.

Tensions were high during a parliamentary debate on the bill in November. Labour MP Willie Jackson was told to leave after refusing to withdraw a comment he made calling Seymour a “liar”.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins said the proposed legislation would forever “be a stain on our country”, while Te Pāti Māori (The Māori Party) MP Hana Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke – who gained international attention for starting a haka in parliament at the bill’s first reading – said it had been “annihilated”.

“Instead of dividing and conquering, this bill has backfired and united communities across the motu [country] in solidarity for our founding agreement and what it represents,” Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson later said in a statement.

The second reading came after a select committee, which had been looking into the proposed legislation released its final report – revealing that more than 300,000 submissions had been made on it, the vast majority of which were opposed.

It is the largest response to proposed legislation that the New Zealand parliament has ever received.

While the principles of the Treaty have never been defined in law, its core values have, over time, been woven into different pieces of legislation in an effort to offer redress to Māori for the wrong done to them during colonisation.

Act’s proposed legislation had three main principles: that the New Zealand government has the power to govern, and parliament to make laws; that the Crown would respect the rights of Māori at the time the Treaty was signed; and that everyone is equal before the law and entitled to equal protection.

The party said the bill would not alter the Treaty itself but would “continue the process of defining the Treaty principles”. This, they believe, would help to create equality for all New Zealanders and improve social cohesion.

Among those backing it was Ruth Richardson, a former finance minister for the centre-right National Party, who told the select committee that the proposed legislation was “a bill of consequence whose time has come”.

She argued that while the Treaty itself could not be disputed, the idea of its principles was a “relatively modern matter”, and that these principles had so far been largely defined by the courts, rather than parliament.

“There is a new imperative in New Zealand on the cultural front, the necessity to address and correct Treaty overreach that has increasingly and evidently become wayward and wrong,” she said.

Opponents of the bill, meanwhile, believe it would be detrimental to Māori and create greater social divides.

Sharon Hawke, the daughter of the late Māori activist and MP Joe Hawke, spoke to the select committee on behalf of the Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei hapū [sub-tribe] – telling it that the legislation “strips the fabric of where we’ve been heading for in the last three decades at improving our people’s [Māori’s] ability to gain education, gain warm housing, gain good health”.

She added that the bill “polluted” the idea of all New Zealanders having a future together.

“We will continue to show our opposition to this,” she said.

Key issues identified by members of the public who made submissions to the select committee included that it was inconsistent with the values of the Treaty, and that it had promoted equality with equity – not taking into account social disparities, such as those created by the legacy of colonisation.

There were also concerns about the extent to which the bill complied with international law, and whether it would negatively impact New Zealand’s reputation internationally.

Submitters who supported the bill, meanwhile, referred to a current lack of clarity and certainty about the principles of the Treaty, and of the importance of equality for all.

They also said that it was important to hold a referendum to facilitate a national conversation around the Treaty – something David Seymour believes is still needed.

The Treaty Principles Bill passed its first reading in November, with support from National – the dominant party in New Zealand’s ruling coalition – who had promised to back it as part of a coalition agreement with Act, but not any further.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, who is also leader of the National Party, previously said there was nothing in the bill that he liked. He was not in parliament for its second reading, but remarked earlier in the day that it was time to move on from it.

There were some heroic efforts overnight from Donald Trump and those around him to suggest the past seven days were something other than absolute chaos.

By this reading, Trump’s 4D game of chess has left China in check. Certainly the Chinese economy faces a massive hit from punitive tariffs in its biggest market. But even accounting for the President’s roll back, the US has still erected a massive protectionist tariff wall, not seen since the 1930s.

The world is left with a universal 10% tariff, irrespective of whether that country (for example the UK or Australia) actually sells less to the US than the US sells to it. There is now no difference between the EU, which clearly does have a massive trade deficit in goods and was preparing to retaliate, and the UK.

There is also an anxious wait to find out what comes next. One of the questions is whether President Trump pushes ahead with tariffs on medicines, the UK’s second biggest goods export.

Plus there is potential logistical chaos on the cards from a little-noticed multi-million dollar port tax for every cargo vessel docking in the US that was “made in China”. That is more than half of the global merchant fleet – and it is due next Friday.

Even with Trump’s stated 90 day pause on implementing higher tariffs, there remains too much uncertainty for companies to go through the rigmarole of rerouting global trade.

The central issue today, however, is that the world’s two great economic superpowers are now facing off against each other like rutting stags.

Tariffs at these sky-high rates are massively hitting business between two nations which together account for around 3% of the entire world’s trade. The main motorway of the global economy is effectively shut.

The visible tangible consequences of all this will become very real very quickly: Chinese factories will close, workers will stroll from plant to plant looking for work.

Beijing will need to organise a stimulus package to account for the loss of whole percentage points of GDP, the kind of thing that happens when a natural disaster flattens a major city. Painful, but manageable at a cost, though not forever.

Meanwhile the US will see consumer prices surge. President Trump might try to order these US companies not to raise prices, but the effect will come through soon enough.

In theory this will be in sharp contrast to what is happening in other countries in the world. Across the border in Canada, or in Europe, not only will there not be such China-sourced price rises, there could be price cuts.

Trade wars on this scale do not stay confined to the flow of goods. They tend to become currency wars.

What we saw last night was the trade turmoil spread to credit markets, especially the US bond market, having already hit share prices.

Indeed there was an invaluable reveal for the game theory of this conflict. The Trump administration revealed a key pressure point with its concern about the “yippy” – as Trump called it – bond market.

As trading in US government debt continued overnight in Asia, the effective interest rate on these bonds rose to 5%.

This sort of borrowing should not move in such an erratic fashion.

The last time this happened was in the “Dash for Cash”, the key moment of financial fragility at the very beginning of the pandemic. The world was focussed on life or death in March 2020, but this potential further crisis was alleviated only by emergency action.

Effectively, the President’s row back was a form of emergency policy change.

Was the Chinese government behind this rash of US government bond sales in Asia? Probably not. However, what happened on Wednesday highlighted a vulnerability for Trump.

China is the second biggest holder of US government debt in the world and if it chose to, dumping all that debt would be catastrophic for America. But doing so would be a form of mutually assured economic destruction – the losses for China would be huge.

More importantly, what the bond markets were telling Trump is that they are deeply sceptical about his tariff policy.

The US does have the Federal Reserve, which does have some power to tranquillise bond markets. But right now it does not look like its chairman Jerome Powell will ride to the rescue.

The bond market scepticism echoes the sentiment of the ascendant Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. He is now pushing for Trump to reach trade deals with their allies because the US needs them to take on China.

Given the US was previously calling these same close allies cheaters, looters and pillagers, there is no way this was the strategy all along.

This does matter. The US needs the EU, UK, the rest of the G7 on side in terms of China. China probably needs those countries just to stay neutral, and carry on soaking up its exports.

The rest of the world has seen Trump’s team struggle to explain tariffing penguin islands or poor African economies and the President himself recirculating the suggestion he was crashing stock markets on purpose. And they’ve witnessed the fact that the tariff rates were changed after they came into effect and also the absurd nature of the equation used to calculate them.

It’s in this context that Trump’s handling of the situation has handed leverage back to the rest of the world, because neither friend nor foe will know quite what they are negotiating with this America.

There is a calm, welcomed by all, but it could be rather brief.

A Russian-American citizen has been released in a prisoner swap between Moscow and Washington.

Amateur ballerina Ksenia Karelina, a Los Angeles resident, had been in prison in Russia for over a year, after being arrested in early 2024 during a family visit in the city of Yekaterinburg.

She was accused by Russia’s FSB security service of raising money for a Ukrainian organisation providing arms to the Ukrainian military. She pleaded guilty last August and was sentenced to 12 years in jail.

Russian human rights activists said while living in the US she had made a single transfer of $51 (£39) on the first day of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 22 February 2022.

The charity in question denied raising money for weapons or ammunition, saying it was focused on humanitarian aid and disaster relief.

The FSB is thought to have discovered the transaction on her phone.

In exchange, the US freed Arthur Petrov, a dual German-Russian citizen arrested in Cyprus in 2023. He was accused of illegally exporting microelectronics to Russia for manufacturers working with the Russian military.

Russian TASS news agency said President Vladimir Putin had pardoned Ms Karelina.

The prisoner swap took place in Abu Dhabi in the early hours of Thursday.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed Ms Karelina was “on a plane back home to the United States”.

He added she had been “wrongfully detained by Russia for over a year”.

“President Trump secured her release. [The President] will continue to work for the release of ALL Americans.”

CIA director John Ratcliffe was present at the exchange, the Wall Street Journal said.

Ms Karelina’s parents thanked Trump and Putin.

“I guess that deal must have involved them both,” her father, Pavel, told the Wall Street Journal. “We are beside ourselves with happiness.

“The first seconds of our chat were all pure emotions, I can’t even remember what we were saying, it was like one explosion of happiness.”

It is the second prisoner swap between Russia and the US in less than two months.

In February, Russian national Alexander Vinnik – who was imprisoned in a US jail on money laundering charges – was freed in exchange for the release of American schoolteacher Marc Fogel.

The exchange comes as Moscow and Washington try to improve their relations.

US and Russian officials met in Istanbul on Thursday to hold another round of talks aimed at restoring some of the embassy operations that were scaled back following the Ukraine invasion.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says at least 155 Chinese citizens are fighting for Russia in the war.

His comments come after two Chinese fighters were captured earlier this week – marking Kyiv’s first official allegation that China was supplying Russia with manpower.

Speaking to journalists on Wednesday, Zelensky reiterated his claim that there are “many more” Chinese nationals engaged in the conflict, based on information gathered by his government.

Responding on Thursday, a Chinese government spokesman said they “advise relevant parties to correctly and soberly understand China’s role and not to make irresponsible remarks”.

“China is neither the creator nor a party to the Ukrainian crisis. We are a staunch supporter and active promoter of the peaceful resolution of the crisis,” said foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian.

He reiterated an earlier comment that appeared to suggest that Chinese soldiers fighting for Russia were doing so in their private capacity.

Mr Lin said China “has always required its citizens to stay away from armed conflict areas and avoid being involved in armed conflicts in any form, especially to avoid participating in military operations of any party”.

Beijing has previously denied many of its citizens are fighting for Russia, saying the claim has “no basis in facts”.

• Ukraine captures two Chinese nationals fighting for Russia
• War has changed Zelensky – but now is the time for him to transform again

Earlier this week, Zelensky said his forces had fought six Chinese soldiers in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region and took two prisoner. Russia declined to comment on this revelation.

On Wednesday Zelensky had told reporters that the “the Chinese issue is serious.”

“There are 155 people with surnames, with passport data – 155 Chinese citizens who are fighting against Ukrainians on the territory of Ukraine,” he said, according to remarks reported by Interfax.

He added that Russia was recruiting Chinese citizens on social media, and that “official Beijing knows about this”.

According to Zelensky, the alleged recruits receive training in Moscow before being sent out to the battlefield in Ukraine, as well as migration documents and payment.

He also released on X a video of what appeared to be an interrogation of the two captured Chinese soldiers.

Speaking in Mandarin Chinese, the soldiers described their background and how they were captured.

One of them said it was his “first time on duty and first time in combat. Before this I had never even fired a gun”. He added that he was captured with a Russian soldier.

The other mentions he was in a group that included two other Chinese soldiers before they were separated in the chaos. “Everyone dispersed, I don’t know if they’re dead or not,” he said.

He said he eventually surrendered along with Russian soldiers.

Zelensky said on X that: “Ukraine believes that such blatant involvement of Chinese citizens in hostilities on the territory of Ukraine during the war of aggression is a deliberate step towards the expansion of the war, and is yet another indication that Moscow simply needs to drag out the fighting.”

He has called on the US and the rest of the world for a response.

Washington has said the reports of Chinese fighting for Russia are “disturbing”.

Ukraine has in the past questioned China’s declared neutral stance. Zelensky previously alleged that Beijing supplies “elements that are part of Russia’s weaponry” and called for the country to maintain a “consistent” position.

China has been accused by the US of helping Russia make more munitions, armoured vehicles and missiles. It has also been scrutinised for allowing dual-use technology that can be used both commercially and militarily – such as computer chips and drones – to be exported to Russia.

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.

It defends its trade with Moscow by saying it is not selling lethal arms and “prudently handles the export of dual-use items in accordance with laws and regulations”.

The allegations about Chinese soldiers fighting for Russia follows Ukraine’s capture of two injured North Korean soldiers in Russia’s Kursk Oblast.

A Pakistan-born Chicago businessman wanted in India for his role in the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai city has been brought to the country after being extradited from the US.

Tahawwur Rana, a Canadian citizen, landed in Delhi on Thursday. India’s National Investigation Agency confirmed his extradition had been successful.

In 2011, a US court cleared him of a direct role in helping plot the attacks that killed 166 people, but convicted him for supporting a militant group blamed for the attacks.

Sentenced to 14 years in prison in 2013, the 64-year-old was released in 2020 on health grounds but was re-arrested later that year after India’s extradition request.

A US court approved Rana’s extradition in 2023 but he remained in custody pending a final approval by the country’s government.

In February, President Donald Trump approved the extradition after his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The US Supreme Court then rejected Rana’s appeals against the decision.

The extradition took place under the India-US Extradition Treaty signed by the two countries in 1997.

Rana grew up in Pakistan and studied medicine before joining the Pakistani army’s medical corps. He and his wife, also a doctor, became Canadian citizens in 2001.

They later moved to Chicago, where Rana ran several businesses, including an immigration and travel agency.

Indian authorities accused Rana of conspiring with his childhood friend David Coleman Headley to assist Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which was blamed for the Mumbai attacks.

A group of 10 militants stormed a train station, hotels, cafes and a Jewish centre in Mumbai, shooting and throwing bombs. Both India and the US designated LeT as a terrorist organisation.

US prosecutors in the case said that in 2006, Rana allowed Headley to open an office of his Chicago-based immigration services firm in Mumbai, which Headley then used as cover to scout sites for the 2008 attacks.

Rana was also accused of allowing Headley to pose as a representative of his firm in order to gain access to newspaper offices by feigning interest in purchasing advertising space.

Headley – who pleaded guilty to identifying locations for the Mumbai attacks – was a key prosecution witness. He said he had links to LeT and to the Pakistani intelligence service ISI. Pakistan has repeatedly denied any such links. Headley also testified against Rana.

Rana’s defence team at the time said he was manipulated and misled by Headley, an old friend from their days in a Pakistani military school.

In 2011, jurors at the federal court in Chicago convicted Rana for providing support to LeT and for his role in an aborted plot against a Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten. But he was cleared of the more serious charge of helping plot the Mumbai attacks and received a 14-year jail term.

Headley was given a 35-year sentence for his role in the attacks. He is lodged in a federal prison in Chicago.

In India, Rana and Headley were tried in absentia in a Mumbai court for their alleged involvement in the attacks. Headley later turned approver in the case.

The charges brought against Rana by India’s National Investigation Agency include criminal conspiracy, waging war against the Indian government and terrorism.

In his plea against being extradited to India in the lower court in the US, Rana had argued that India intended to prosecute him for the same offences for which he had been acquitted by the US court.

His plea was rejected, with the court saying the Indian charges were distinct from those he had been prosecuted for in the US.

In his appeal in the US Supreme Court to stay his extradition, Rana said it would violate US law and the United Nations Convention Against Torture “because there are substantial grounds for believing that, if extradited to India, petitioner will be in danger of being subjected to torture”.

“The likelihood of torture in this case is even higher though as petitioner faces acute risk as a Muslim of Pakistani origin charged in the Mumbai attacks,” the application said.

It also cited Rana’s underlying health conditions and concerns about the treatment he would receive in Indian prison. His plea was rejected.

Ujjwal Nikam, the former public prosecutor in the case in Mumbai, told ANI news agency that Rana’s extradition would help reveal more about “the involvement of Pakistan’s security apparatus” in the attacks.

A woman in Australia has unknowingly given birth to a stranger’s baby, after her fertility clinic accidentally implanted another woman’s embryos into her.

The mix-up at Monash IVF in Brisbane, Queensland has been blamed on human error, Australian media reports.

“On behalf of Monash IVF, I want to say how truly sorry I am for what has happened,” CEO Michael Knaap said, adding that everyone at the fertility clinic was “devastated” at the mistake.

Last year, the same clinic paid a A$56m (£26.8m) settlement to hundreds of patients whose embryos were destroyed despite them being viable.

According to a spokesperson for Monash IVF, staff became aware of the problem in February when the birth parents asked to transfer their remaining frozen embryos to another clinic.

“Instead of finding the expected number of embryos, an additional embryo remained in storage,” the spokesperson was quoted as saying by ABC.

Monash has confirmed that an embryo from another patient had been mistakenly thawed and transferred to the wrong person, resulting in the birth of a child.

The clinic has launched an investigation and the incident has been referred to regulatory bodies. Mr Knaap said the clinic was confident it was an isolated incident.

Last year, Monash IVF reached a A$56m (£26.8m) settlement in a landmark class action with 700 former patients for destroying embryos after inaccurate genetic testing.

The case found that about 35% of the embryos, which were actually normal and could have resulted in a viable pregnancy, were found to be abnormal by the faulty screening.

IVF – or in vitro fertilisation – involves the removal of eggs from a woman’s ovaries, which are then fertilised with sperm in a laboratory. When the fertilised eggs become embryos, they are inserted into the woman’s uterus.

It is an expensive process and not successful every time.

In 2021 there were 20,690 babies born as a result of IVF in Australia and New Zealand, according to a report by the University of New South Wales.

The Duke of Sussex met war victims in Ukraine on Thursday when he visited a clinic which rehabilitates wounded military personnel and civilians, a spokesperson has said.

Prince Harry visited the Superhumans Center, in the western city of Lviv, where he spoke to patients and staff.

He was accompanied by a group from the Invictus Games Foundation, including four veterans who had been through similar rehabilitation.

Lviv has frequently been targeted with Russian missiles and the visit was not announced until after the prince was out of the country.

Prince Harry, who served for 10 years in the British Army, founded the Invictus Games in 2014 for wounded veterans to compete in sports events.

The visit to Superhumans was to observe the support and rehabilitation services being provided in a country actively experiencing war, a spokesperson said.

Prince Harry was invited by Olga Rudneva, a chief executive of the centre, at the Invictus Games Vancouver Whistler 2025.

During the visit, the prince met patients and medical professionals, in addition to Ukraine’s Minister of Veterans Affairs, Natalia Kalmykova.

Th clinic administers psychological help, reconstructive surgery and prosthetics to victims for free.

Rob Owen, chief executive of the Invictus Games Foundation, said Ukraine had been “a vital part” of the foundation since participating in the Invictus Games Toronto 2017.

“This visit to the Superhumans charity in Ukraine underscores the Invictus Games Foundation’s broader commitment to supporting recovery and rehabilitation for wounded injured and sick service personnel and veterans, even in the most challenging environments,” he said.

Held in Vancouver, the last edition of the games involved more than 500 competitors from 23 nations, while Birmingham will host the next games in 2027.

Prince Harry was in London this week for a Court of Appeal hearing over his security arrangements in the UK.

He is the second royal to visit Ukraine since Russia’s full scale invasion, after the Duchess of Edinburgh visited Kyiv last year.

His father the King welcomed Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to his Sandringham estate in Norfolk in March, just days after Zelensky’s unprecedented exchange with US president Donald Trump and his vice president JD Vance in the White House’s Oval Office.

The Prince of Wales, Harry’s brother, met Ukrainian refugees during a two-day visit to Estonia last month.

Michelle Obama has spoken out against rumours that her marriage to Barack Obama might be in trouble.

The former first lady has not accompanied her husband to several high-profile events – including Donald Trump’s inauguration and the funeral of former President Jimmy Carter – fuelling speculation that they might be separating.

Without explicitly mentioning these occasions, Mrs Obama told the Work in Progress podcast hosted by actress Sophia Bush that she was now in a position to control her own calendar as a “grown woman”.

She said that people were not able to believe that she was “making a decision” for herself and instead “had to assume that my husband and I are divorcing”.

Mrs Obama shared that she felt some guilt for stepping back from certain duties.

“That’s the thing that we as women, I think we struggle with like disappointing people,” she said.

“I mean, so much so that this year people couldn’t even fathom that I was making a choice for myself that they had to assume that my husband and I are divorcing.

“This couldn’t be a grown woman just making a set of decisions for herself, right? But that’s what society does to us.”

Mrs Obama also said in the podcast: “I chose to do what was best for me. Not what I had to do. Not what I thought other people wanted me to do.”

Her absence from President Trump’s inauguration was seen as a break from tradition.

Despite carving out more time for herself, the former first lady said she still finds time to “give speeches, to be out there in the world, to work on projects. I still care about girls’ education”.

The Obamas celebrated their 32nd anniversary last year in October.

Mrs Obama has previously been open about the struggles she faced in her marriage due to Mr Obama’s political ambitions and time in the White House in her best-selling memoir, Becoming.

Andrew Tate pointed a gun in a woman’s face and said “you’re going to do as I say or there’ll be hell to pay”, according to one of four UK women suing the influencer and self-proclaimed misogynist.

The allegation is described in court documents, seen by the BBC, which also contain detailed accounts of rape, assault and coercive control.

One woman claims Tate threatened to kill her, another says he made clear he would kill anyone who spoke to her, and a third claims Tate convinced her he had killed other people.

Tate has denied the claims in a written defence submitted to the High Court, calling them a “pack of lies” and “gross fabrications”.

Separately, Tate continues to face serious legal challenges in three countries – a mixture of civil and criminal claims in the UK, US and Romania.

This civil case concerns incidents the four women allege took place in Luton and Hitchin between 2013 and 2015.

Two of the women worked for Tate’s webcam business in 2015, while the other two were in relationships with him in 2013 and 2014.

The BBC has previously spoken to two of the claimants about their alleged experiences with Tate as part of a Panorama documentary broadcast in September 2024.

However, this is the first time the full extent of the women’s allegations has been revealed.

Some of the allegations in the documents seen by the BBC include that Tate:

• Raped and strangled a woman who was working for his webcam business in 2015
• Assaulted another woman who was also working for his webcam business at the same time
• Strangled both of the above women so often that they developed red petechiae – spots from burst capillaries – in their eyes, a common side effect of asphyxia
• Told a third claimant “I’m just debating whether to rape you or not” before raping and strangling her
• Strangled a fourth claimant, whom we are calling Sienna, during sex until she lost consciousness, and then continued to have sex with her

Three of the women previously reported Tate to the police but in 2019, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decided not to bring criminal charges. They are now seeking damages “arising from the assaults, batteries, and infliction of intentional harm”, their civil claim states.

Tate denies all the allegations, and argues that the women cannot now take legal action against him because too much time has passed, and emails, texts, and other potential evidence would have been lost. A preliminary hearing for the case is due to take place on 15 April.

“Sienna”, the fourth woman involved in the civil case, was not part of the group that reported Tate to the police.

She told the BBC that when she slept with Tate, the sex was initially consensual.

“But then, during sex, he started to strangle me. I passed out, and he carried on having sex with me,” she said.

Tate denies strangling Sienna, and that she lost consciousness due to strangulation, adding that he “may have put a hand on her neck but there was no restriction of her breathing”.

In her claim submitted to the court, Sienna also describes an alleged incident at Tate’s flat in late 2014, where she saw a gun on his sofa. She says she “did not know if it was real or a replica”.

In his written defence, Tate says “there may have been a toy gun in the flat but the 4th Claimant [Sienna] never said anything about it”.

“I didn’t really mention it to him or anything,” Sienna told the BBC. “But I distinctly remember it being there and kind of being a bit freaked out by it, because it’s not really something you see in the UK.”

She added that she thought it would be “a bit strange for a fully grown man to have a toy gun”.

In the court documents another claimant, referred to as AA, alleges Tate threatened her with a gun in her face while swearing, calling himself “a boss” and a “G” and adding: “You’re going to do as I say or there’ll be hell to pay.” Tate denies this happened, writing in his defence that he only started calling himself “Top G” in recent years.

AA says Tate “threatened [her] daily” while she was working for him in 2015, and describes two alleged incidents in which he “grabbed her by her throat and pinned her up against the wall, so she was unable to move”.

Tate also denies AA’s claims that he threatened her and grabbed her by the neck.

Another claimant, BB, alleges Tate “made it very clear that she was ‘his’, and if anyone else spoke to her, he would kill them”.

BB’s written claim describes her being “forced to barricade herself inside the bathroom while the Defendant [Tate] threatened to ‘beat the shit out of’ her”.

Tate denies this allegation, and describes his relationship with BB as “loving and affectionate until shortly before she ceased to work for the business”.

In a statement, his solicitor Andrew Ford said the women’s allegations, including the claims of Tate having a gun, “are vehemently denied and will be fully contested in court”.

“No firearm was recovered during police searches,” Mr Ford said. “When the matter was referred to the Crown Prosecution Service, they concluded there was insufficient prospect of conviction and chose not to charge Mr Tate with any offence.”

All four women say they have developed long-term mental health problems as a result of their alleged experiences with Tate.

Lawyer Matt Jury of McCue Jury & Partners, who is representing the women, told the BBC his clients had “been denied justice by the police and CPS, while watching Andrew Tate’s influence grow”.

“They have been left with no other choice but to bring their case in the High Court to finally bring Tate to account,” he said.

The women’s claim against Tate is one of several serious legal challenges around the world that he is fighting, including some where he is co-accused with his brother Tristan Tate. They are currently facing a mix of criminal and civil legal action in three countries – the UK, the US and Romania.

In Romania, they are facing allegations including human trafficking, trafficking of minors and money laundering. Andrew Tate also faces allegations of rape.

They are also under criminal investigation in the US state of Florida. Andrew Tate has said that US authorities are “trying to find crimes on an innocent man”.

Andrew Tate’s ex-girlfriend Brianna Stern also filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles last month, accusing him of sexual assault, battery and gender violence.

Last year, the brothers were detained in Bucharest after Bedfordshire Police in the UK said it had obtained an arrest warrant in relation to allegations of rape and trafficking dating back to between 2012 and 2015.

The pair deny all accusations against them.

A travel ban imposed on the brothers in Romania was recently lifted, and they have since travelled to the US and Dubai – something Sienna said was “horrible to see”.

“Maybe men will look at him and think, ‘oh well if he can get away with that, then so can I’ – and it kind of makes it normalised,” she told the BBC.

Sienna added that she thought the UK should be “pushing a lot harder” for the extradition of the Tate brothers.

Neither of the brothers have been convicted of any crimes.

An “unsecured” penguin in a cardboard box was the cause of a helicopter crash in South Africa, a report into the incident has found.

The penguin, which had been placed in the box and on the lap of a passenger, slid off and knocked the pilot’s controls just after take-off from Bird Island off the Eastern Cape on 19 January.

The South African Civil Aviation Authority said the impact sent the helicopter crashing to the ground. No-one on board, including the penguin, was hurt.

The authority said that “the lack of secure containment for the penguin” was responsible for creating the “dangerous situation”.

According to the report, released this week, the flight had been conducting an aerial survey of the island in Gqeberha, Eastern Cape province.

After completing the survey, the helicopter landed, where a specialist then requested the transport of one penguin back to Port Elizabeth.

The report did not say why they had picked up the penguin.

The aviation authority said the pilot conducted a “risk assessment” but omitted to include the transport of the penguin on board which “was not in accordance with the Civil Aviation Regulations (CAR) 2011”.

When the helicopter was about 15m (50 feet) above ground, the cardboard box slid off the lap of the specialist to the right and caused the cyclic pitch control lever to move to the far-right position causing the aircraft roll, the report determined.

Unable to recover, the main rotor blades then struck the ground and the helicopter ultimately crashed on its starboard side approximately 20m from the point of lift-off.

While the helicopter sustained substantial damage, both the pilot and passengers were uninjured and the penguin was unharmed.

The report said all situations should be subject to “established safety protocols” and compliance with aviation safety procedures.

It also said that a proper evaluation of the situation and potential hazards (such as cargo shifting) should have been conducted.

“The absence of a proper, secured crate meant that the penguin’s containment was not suitable for the flight conditions,” it said.

As a former champion runner, Richard McDonald can move quickly.

But the speed of the market falls, triggered by the sweeping global tariffs Donald Trump announced last week, still kept him on his toes.

Previously a trader for Credit Suisse, he now buys and sells stocks privately. At his laptop in London last week, he watched as the president unveiled a poster board outlining tariff rates, some as high as 50%, for imports from countries around the world.

He raced to understand which companies might be worst hit. Then he sold.

“There are billions being wiped off share prices every second, so it’s really ‘fastest finger first’,” he said. “My mind was sprinting.”

In 25 years of trading, he said he had rarely experienced anything like it.

Trillions were wiped off the value of financial markets around the world in the aftermath of Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement.

Leading share indexes in the US and UK saw some of the steepest declines since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, dropping more than 10% over three days.

Oil prices sank and so did the dollar.

By Wednesday, the worries had spread to the bond market, as investors started dumping US government debt, usually a safe haven for investors in times of uncertainty.

When Trump announced he was putting some of the most eye-watering tariffs on pause, shares stopped sliding and rallied.

But the market turmoil was far from over.

Trump left in place a tariff of 10% on imports from most countries and a tariff of 145% on goods from China, America’s third largest source of imports after the European Union and Mexico.

A day after the announcement, the S&P 500 dropped another 3.5%, the Dow slid 2.5% and the Nasdaq fell 4.3%.

At St Louis-based Argent Capital Management, the mood, said portfolio manager Jed Ellerbroek, was “still miserable”.

Some of his firm’s holdings, like health insurance giant United Healthcare, have done well over the last week, as investors look for companies likely to be able to weather the tariff storm.

But his third largest investment is Apple, which makes the majority of its iPhones and other products in China.

“Trump has induced a gigantic amount of uncertainty into the global economy and consumers and investors and business managers are reeling and unable to make long-term decisions,” Mr Ellerboek said.

“We are really on hold, because we only trade when we have high conviction levels,” he said.

“What do we do with Apple? I don’t know. I’m not going to change when I have no clue what the tariff rate is going to be next week,” he said.

Faced with so many uncertainties, some investors are simply quitting the market, said John Canavan, lead analyst at Oxford Economics.

“What you’re looking at, broadly speaking, is a market that is frustrated, uncertain and confused about where we’re going to be one day to the next,” he said. “In that environment you have a tendency to see some investors choosing the safety of cash.”

While Trump’s tariff rollback was a “relief”, he said it did not change the bigger picture: firms in the US that are bringing in parts or products are facing significantly higher import taxes than they were at the start of the year.

“The tariffs that remain are still high enough that they are likely to push up inflation and weigh significantly on the economy as we go forward,” he said.

“We’re just trading back again on the broader long-term outlook of the tariff implications, which is still negative.”

The world’s most popular gadgets – phones, laptops, tablets, smartwatches – could be about to get a lot more expensive in the US.

Many of them are made in China, which now faces a 145% tariff on its goods imported to the US, under President Donald Trump’s controversial trade policy.

The effect this may have on the iPhone and its maker Apple is under the spotlight – with some analysts saying if costs are passed onto consumers, iPhone prices in the US could rise by hundreds of dollars.

And if the tariffs impact the value of the dollar, it could become more expensive to import iPhones and other devices around the world – potentially leading to higher prices in UK shops.

Ben Wood of CCS Insight told the BBC that if tariffs remain in place, Apple may raise iPhone prices globally when the next iteration is launched.

“It is unlikely the company would want to have differentiated pricing globally,” he said – as the tech giant would want to avoid people buying the the device cheaply in the UK and selling it on for profit in the US.

Though others say they believe it could result in cheaper prices if firms which normally send their goods to the US instead send them to countries which don’t have such steep tariffs, like the UK.

And there may be a significant change if the cost of tariffs is passed onto consumers globally – longer contracts to spread out the cost of the device.

While a phone contract may typically last two years, Mr Wood said some firms already offer four year deals, and he believed “we might see five-year contracts” in 2025.

“One could argue it is almost like having a mortgage for your smartphone,” he said.

The US is a major market for iPhones and Apple accounted for more than half of its smartphones sales last year, according to Counterpoint Research.

It says as much as 80% of Apple’s iPhones intended for US sale are made in China, with the remaining 20% made in India.

Along with fellow smartphone giants such as Samsung, Apple has been trying to diversify its supply chains to avoid over-reliance on China in recent years.

India and Vietnam emerged as frontrunners for additional manufacturing hubs.

As tariffs took effect, Apple reportedly looked to speed up and increase its production of India-produced devices in recent days.

Reuters reported on Thursday that Apple chartered cargo flights to ship more than 600 tons of iPhones from India to the US.

Amid Trump’s 90-day pause on tariffs, including those levied on India, the country may be set to benefit from an iPhone manufacturing boost.

The BBC has approached Apple for comment on the impact of tariffs on their operations and prices, but has not had any response yet.

Trump and his advisors have said the aim of its tariffs are to encourage more US manufacturing.

However, the tech industry relies on a global network of suppliers for product components and assembly.

This, and finding skilled workers to match the fast pace and low cost of production in Asia, means relocating supply chains is no simple feat.

Apple committed a $500bn (£385bn) investment in the US in February – which the Trump administration believes will result in more homegrown manufacturing.

But Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said shifting parts of its supply chain from cheaper manufacturing hubs in Asia to the US will take a lot of time, and money.

“The reality is it would take 3 years and $30 billion dollars in our estimation to move even 10% of its supply chain from Asia to the US with major disruption in the process,” he wrote on X on 3 April.

Apple have not revealed yet whether they plan to pass on the costs of the tariffs onto consumers in the US and increase prices.

Some analysts believe Apple is in a more fortunate position than others, having reaped more money from its products than it has spent on making them.

“As a company with lucrative margins on its devices, Apple can absorb some of the tariff-induced cost increases without significant financial impact, at least in the short term,” says Forrester principal analyst Dipanjan Chatterjee.

But he notes the company’s strong branding and popularity may allow it to pass some costs to consumers without too much backlash.

“The brand commands better loyalty than its competitors, and it is unlikely that a manageable price increase will send these customers fleeing into the arms of Android-based competitors.”

Some estimates suggest iPhone prices in the US could as much as triple if costs were passed to consumers.

Following Trump’s tariff increase on China to 125%, the cost for a China-made iPhone 16 Pro Max with 256GB storage would have surged from $1,199 to $1,999, according to estimates by investment banking firm UBS.

They estimate a less significant increase on the iPhone 16 Pro 128GB storage – which is made in India – by five percent from $999 to $1046.

While some analysts such as Dan Ives have suggested that the cost of a “Made in USA” iPhone could soar to as much as $3500.

There’s still plenty of uncertainty about what happens next, and how companies like Apple will respond to tariffs remains to be seen.

This hasn’t stopped some US customers reportedly rushing to Apple stores to buy its smartphones.

The BBC spoke to shoppers outside an Apple Store in New York who had bought products in fear of a potential price hike.

Anthony Cacioppo, a 53-year-old DJ and security technician, purchased the new iPhone.

“I really didn’t need a phone… but I’m not ready to pay double the price,” he said.

Bruce Conroy, a hair stylist, told the BBC that even if prices had risen considerably he “would have stuck with Apple products” – though potentially delayed his purchase of a new iPad.

“I bought it because the tariffs are coming, I want to buy before the prices go up and I expect they will,” said Julia Baumann, a personal finance editor, of her new MacBook.

We will likely have to wait until the autumn to see how much the next iPhone will cost.

But if it looks like costs incurred by tariffs will result in higher price tags, some may look to rival handsets or second-hand devices.

CCS Insight estimates that 5.5m second-hand smartphones will be sold in the UK in 2025, representing 29.7% of the total market.

The iPhone remains one of the most expensive smartphones on the market – and brands such as Google and Samsung offer phones with similar features at a lower cost.

The other option, and perhaps the most cost-effective, could be for people to skip upgrades to newer iPhone models and look to slightly older, cheaper versions.

“The path of least resistance would be to keep the smartphone they already have for longer,” said Mr Wood.

Suddenly, Donald Trump’s trade war is in much sharper focus.

Rather than a fight on all fronts against the world, this now looks far more like a fight on familiar Trumpian territory: America v China.

The 90-day pause on the higher “retaliatory” tariffs levied on dozens of countries still leaves a universal across-the-board tariff of 10% in place.

But China – which ships everything from iPhones to children’s toys and accounts for around 14% of all US imports – has been singled out for much harsher treatment with an eye-watering rate of 125%.

Trump said the increase was due to Beijing’s readiness to retaliate with its own 84% levy on US goods, a move the president described as showing a “lack of respect”.

But for a politician who first fought his way to the White House on the back of an anti-China message, there is much more to this than simple retaliation.

For Trump, this is about the unfinished business of that first term in office.

“We didn’t have the time to do the right thing, which we’re doing now,” he told reporters.

The aim is nothing less than the upending of an established system of global trade centred on China as the factory of the world, as well as the once widely held view that underpinned it – the idea that more of this trade was, in and of itself, a good thing.

To understand just how central this is to the US president’s thinking, you need to go back to the time before anyone ever thought of him as a possible candidate for office, let alone a likely winner.

In 2012, when I first reported from Shanghai – China’s business capital – increased trade with the country was seen by almost everyone – global business leaders, Chinese officials, visiting foreign governments and trade delegations, foreign correspondents and learned economists – as a no brainer.

It was boosting global growth, providing an endless supply of cheap goods, enriching China’s army of new factory workers increasingly embedded in global supply chains, and providing lucrative opportunities to multinational corporations selling their wares to its newly minted middle classes.

Within a few of years of my arrival, China had surpassed the US to become the world’s biggest market for Rolls Royce, General Motors and Volkswagen.

• What are tariffs and why is Trump using them?
• US pauses higher tariffs for most countries but hits China harder
• Trump steps back from cliff edge of all-out global trade war

There was a deeper justification, too.

As China got richer, so the theory went, Chinese people would begin to demand political reform.

Their spending habits would also help China transition to a consumer society.

But the first of those aspirations never happened, with China’s ruling Communist Party only tightening its grip on power.

And the second one didn’t happen fast enough, with China not only still dependent on exports, but openly planning to become ever more dominant.

Its infamous policy blueprint – published in 2015 and entitled Made in China 2025 – set out a huge state-backed vision of becoming a global leader in a number of key manufacturing sectors, from aerospace to ship building to electric vehicles.

And so it was that same year, a political outsider launched his run for US president, making the case repeatedly on the campaign trail that China’s rise had hollowed out the American economy, driven Rust Belt decline and cost blue-collar workers their livelihoods and dignity.

Trump’s first-term trade war broke the mould and shattered the consensus. His successor, President Joe Biden, kept much of his tariffs on China in place.

And yet, even though they have undoubtedly caused China some pain, they have not done much to change the economic model.

China now produces 60% of the world’s electric cars – a large proportion of them made by its own homegrown brands – and 80% of the batteries that power them.

So, now Trump is back, with this tit-for-tat escalation on levies.

It would, arguably, be the biggest shock ever delivered to the established global trading system, were it not for all the other on-again off-again tariff measures the US president has rolled out in recent days.

What happens next depends on two key questions.

Firstly, whether China takes up that offer to negotiate.

And secondly, assuming it eventually does, whether China is willing to make the kind of major concessions that America is looking for, including a complete overhaul of its export driven economic model.

In answering them, the first thing to say is that we are in completely uncharted territory, so we should be wary of anyone who says they know how Beijing is likely to react.

But there are certainly reasons to be cautious.

China’s vision of its economic strength – one based on strong exports and a tightly protected domestic market – is now closely bound up with its idea of national rejuvenation and the supremacy of its one-party system.

Its tight control over the information sphere means it will be unlikely to drop its barriers to American technology companies, for example.

But there is a third question, and it is one for America to answer.

Does the US still believe in free trade? Donald Trump often suggests that tariffs are a good thing, not merely as a means to an end, but as an end in themselves.

He talks about the benefit of a protectionist barrier for America, in order to stimulate domestic investment, encourage American companies to bring those foreign supply chains back home, and raise tax revenues.

And if Beijing believes that is indeed the primary purpose of the tariffs, it may decide there is nothing to negotiate anyway.

Rather than championing the idea of economic co-operation, the world’s two biggest superpowers may find themselves locked in a fight for winner-takes-all economic supremacy.

If so, that really would mark a shattering of the old consensus, and a very different, possibly very dangerous, future.

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Live updates on this story

Global markets have slumped since last week when Trump’s tariffs, which target almost every country, began coming into effect. Asian 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.”

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 around 30% of Vietnam’s GDP, and 25% 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 Phoc 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.

Máximo Peña had been coming to the Jet Set nightclub every single Monday for the past 30 years.

This week, excited to see a concert by the popular Dominican singer Rubby Pérez, he took his wife and his sister. Now all three are buried beneath the rubble of the collapsed discotheque, after the roof caved in part way through the performance, leaving at least 218 dead.

“I haven’t heard any news about any of them,” said Shailyn Peña, Máximo’s 17-year-old daughter as she sat on a wall outside the devastated venue.

“It was just another Monday night for them. In fact, my dad invited my mum to come too but at the last minute she decided not to go. It was a blessing in disguise.”

Behind her as she spoke to me on Wednesday afternoon, a team of rescue workers was meticulously going through the rubble inside the building, listening for the slightest sound of a survivor beneath them.

They had been joined by Israeli and Mexican search teams and were using sophisticated heat-seeking equipment to try to locate anyone still alive.

Shailyn told me her cousin was one of the rescue workers, sifting through the debris for her own uncle, which she said brought her peace of mind that a relative was inside doing everything in her power to try to track Máximo down.

But the uncertainty and the endless wait for information were becoming unbearable, Shailyn said.

“I feel the urge to just go in there and push aside all the rocks and pull him out. But as much as I want to, I really can’t. I just have to sit here and wait it out.”

Hours later, the government released a statement saying that “all reasonable chances of finding more survivors have been exhausted” and so the search and rescue mission would give way to the recovery of bodies.

The authorities have been doing what they can to keep the public informed, delivering grim updates on the number of dead, which has risen steadily with every passing hour.

At regular intervals, teams have been emerging from the site carrying bodies covered by blankets on stretchers.

Earlier on, some people were brought out alive, bolstering the hopes of the relatives.

The head of the Emergency Operations Center (COE) said that since the roof collapse, 189 people had been “rescued alive”.

But by Wednesday evening, officials said that given the conditions at the site observed by the more than 300 rescue workers, they would conclude the rescue phase of their operations “within hours”.

The president of the Dominican Republic, Luis Abinader, has declared three days of national mourning, a reflection of the scale of the tragedy unfolding at the site.

Among those confirmed to have lost their lives in the accident were some well-known national figures including Pérez himself, two much-loved former baseball players, Octavio Dotel and Tony Blanco, and a regional governor. And alongside them, scores of merengue music-lovers and Pérez fans also died in the collapse.

For now, the authorities’ focus remains on the recovery operation. However, eventually the questions will turn to the cause of the collapse and government investigators will have to provide meaningful answers to the families in due course.

One theory is already circulating outside the venue. Many are pointing the finger of blame at a fire at the nightclub around two years ago. Some fear the blaze structurally weakened the site or that any repairs carried out were insufficient or not up to code.

The owner of the Jet Set nightclub, Antonio Espaillat, delivered a video message via social media expressing his condolences and those of “all the Jet Set family”, to the victims’ relatives.

He also insisted that he and his team were co-operating “totally and transparently with the authorities” over the disaster.

Shailyn Peña has heard about the fire at the nightclub and is among those who thinks it played a part. However, for now she has bigger worries. Despite the family’s efforts to protect them, her younger stepsisters found out that their father and mother were trapped under the rubble from other children at school.

They are “terrified”, she added.

It is Shailyn’s birthday on Thursday, a day she would normally celebrate alongside her father, stepmother and aunt.

Instead, she must endure it in the worst possible circumstances, caught inside the worst such tragedy in her country’s modern history.

The corner shop Ramji Dharod has manned for over six decades is now on the brink of closure.

The store sits in a bylane in the central Indian city of Mumbai’s busy shopping precinct, and has served the community for 75 years.

Dharod began coming to the shop with his father when he was just 10. These days, he mostly sits idle, waiting for an occasional customer to walk in.

Behind him, cardboard boxes of unsold biscuit packets and snacks show a “stock clearance sale” sign posted on them.

“I wouldn’t get a minute to breathe a few years ago, but now I rarely get anyone coming,” says the septuagenarian wryly. “They are all shopping online. I’ve decided to retire and down the shutters.”

As 10-minute online deliveries by “quick commerce” apps like Zomato, BlinkIt and Zepto pervade urban India, hundreds of thousands of neighbourhood stores across cities have closed down.

A lobby group of consumer product distributors estimated that number to be 200,000 last October, while the municipal body of the southern city of Chennai estimated 20% of small grocers and 30% of larger departmental stores had shut down in the city in the past 5 years.

Sunil Kenia who runs a provision store right beside Dharod’s shop says he’s still in business only because his family owns the shop. Those on rent are no longer able to stay afloat, he says.

“It started going downhill after the Covid lockdowns. Business is at 50% of what we did before the pandemic,” Kenia told the BBC.

Most of his revenue now comes from wholesale customers – hawkers or those selling street-side snacks. The retail customer has all but “vanished”, he says, because of the convenience of mobile deliveries.

Mumbai-based graphic designer Monisha Sathe is among the millions of urban Indians who’ve stopped their weekly run to the market because of the ease of quick commerce.

“Lugging groceries back home was a big pain,” says Sathe. And occasionally, when she took out her car, navigating narrow market lanes and finding a parking slot would be a challenge.

Sathe says she misses the human interaction she had with the grocers and vegetable vendors and even the variety of fresh produce on sale – but for her, the balance still tilts in favour of online deliveries because of how much easier it has made her life.

A recent survey by consultancy PwC shows some 42% of urban consumers in India’s big cities think like Sathe, especially preferring quick delivery for their urgent needs. And these shifts in buying behaviour have led to three out of 10 retailers reporting a negative impact on their business, with a 52% drop in essential goods sales.

But to what extent is quick commerce really hollowing out the Indian high street?

There’s no doubt general trade – which includes grocery stores, corner shops and even big retail outlets – has come under threat, says Ankur Bisen, a partner at Technopak retail advisory. But at least for now “quick commerce is still a three-four city story”, he says. Nearly all of their sales come from these cities.

Lightning fast deliveries bucked the global trend and became successful in India largely due to a large concentration of people staying in urban clusters.

They are serviced through low-rent “dark stores” – or small shops dedicated to delivery and not open to the public – in densely populated areas, enabling economies of scale.

But the precarious nature of demand and fragmented demographics of smaller towns could make it expensive for quick commerce players to expand and make money beyond the metros, says Mr Bisen.

There’s little doubt though that these online deliveries will disrupt trade in the longer run.

Bain and Company expects quick commerce to grow at over 40% annually through to 2030, driven by expansion across “geographies”.

And this has made traditional retail nervous.

Trade organisations – like the Confederation of All India Traders, or the All India Consumer Products Distributors Federation which calls itself the voice of India’s 13m retailers – have made urgent and repeated pleas to the government against this breakneck expansion.

They allege that these companies are using billions of dollars in venture capital funds to engage in anti-competitive practices like “predatory pricing” or “deep discounting” which has further distorted the playing field for mom-and-pop shops.

The BBC spoke to several small retailers who shared these concerns. Mr Bisen too agreed there’s evidence of such practices in the clusters that quick commerce companies operate.

Swiggy, Zepto and Blinkit, who primarily control this market, did not agree to comment on the BBC’s queries on these allegations.

But a source within one of the quick commerce companies told the BBC the discounting was done by traders on the platform and not by them.

The source also said that contrary to the binary narrative of the “big guy versus small guy”, online deliveries were solving real-world challenges for people for whom going to the market was a “traumatic” experience.

“Think of women or senior citizens – they don’t want to be harassed or navigate potholes and traffic,” the source said. “Also consider the small brands that sell on our platform – they never get shelf space in physical shops where only the big names are displayed. We’ve democratised the market.”

Analysts say, the sheer diversity of India in terms of its stages of development, levels of income and infrastructure will mean that in the end all retail models – small corner shops, organised big retailers and quick commerce platforms – will cohabit in the country.

This is not a “winner takes all market”, says Mr Bisen, giving the example of e-commerce which came into India in 2010 and was meant to sound the death knell of local retailers.

Even after all these years, only 4% of all shopping is done online in India.

But the ripples caused by quick commerce should be a warning for physical retailers, say analysts, to improve their marketing and integrate technology to use both online and offline channels to give their consumers a better shopping experience.

Competing with click-of-a-button delivery means it can no longer be business as usual for the millions of corner shops who’ve existed for decades, with little or no innovation.

The ex-partner of a millionaire horse racing tipster who “tortured” women and filmed the abuse has warned someone could die if he is not stopped.

Kevin Booth was given a worldwide travel ban after a Scottish civil court heard that he attacked his victims in an underground chamber at his remote Highland home and in foreign hotel rooms.

Tammy Conner – who said she was beaten by Booth for four years from the age of 16 – has now decided to speak out in the hope that other women will come forward.

Another woman who worked for Booth at Lochdhu Lodge in Caithness told BBC Scotland News she had to sign a contract allowing him to “punish” her.

Tammy, who is now 44, said: “One of these days he is really going to hurt someone and they are going to end up dead or they are going to kill themselves.

“He shouldn’t be getting away with it any more.”

Booth, 65, described Tammy’s allegations as “laughable” and said he had never been arrested, charged or convicted of domestic violence or abuse.

However, the sheriff who heard the travel ban case described the footage Booth had filmed as “utterly harrowing” and said his conduct amounted to “trafficking and exploitation”.

Tammy was 16 when she spotted an advert in her local paper in 1997: “Models required for race meetings.”

Booth, who founded horse racing tips service Isiris, gave the teenager a job at his office in Keighley, West Yorkshire. She said he told her during the interview that she had “nice eyes”.

The work was a combination of office duties and attending race meetings at courses across England and as far north as Perth.

Booth, whose business was built on premium rate phone lines, had made a name for himself as a top tipster.

In 1997 he told the Sunday Times: “I was making more money betting than through my salary so I decided it was best to pack in teaching and bet.”

But his career change was also prompted by his 1994 conviction for caning children at the private school he ran with his then wife in Newbiggin-by-the-Sea in Northumberland.

His three-month jail term was suspended for two years but by this time he had become so successful that some course bookies refused to take his bets.

Tammy said she was one of a number of girls who were driven to the racing in a limo and plied with alcohol throughout the day.

“Then he’d suddenly try and kiss you or something. If you said no he’d say you had a punishment,” she said.

“With me he gave me three envelopes and told me to pick one.

“So I picked one and my punishment for not kissing him or something was 20 lashes with a cane.”

Tammy recalled being led to a sofa bed in Booth’s office. She noticed a video camera on his desk, which recorded the beating.

“Every time he hit me I had to say ‘please sir’ or ‘Thank you, sir’.

“And if I didn’t say ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ he would start again.”

Tammy said she was once beaten for kissing Booth’s friend at the racing.

She said: “It just went on like that. But I didn’t realise at the time he was doing it to the other girls as well.

“I thought it was just me.

“We were 16. We were kids. He effectively groomed us all.”

Tammy added: “Some of the times he hit me I was so sore. I was black and blue. I could hardly walk or sit down. It was awful.”

She said he would pay her extra for beatings and have her sign contracts saying she consented.

He also urged Tammy to sleep with him, and a year after she took the job she discovered she was pregnant.

Tammy said Booth was “happy” at the news and told her she no longer had to work in the office.

But another incident after the birth of their second child in 2000, which involved a riding crop, left her with marks on her back, bottom and legs.

She said: “After he had done that I said: ‘You are not doing that again. I’ve got kids now’.”

The beatings stopped – but Booth had other targets.

His world eventually imploded on Grand National day in April 2000 when West Yorkshire Police raided the family home.

Tammy was later told that a Brazilian au pair alleged Booth showed her a home video of him whipping a woman’s buttocks and warned she would be “severely punished” if she failed to obey him.

The following day the 27-year-old said she was indecently assaulted in his office.

The entrepreneur claimed the encounter was consensual but a jury at Bradford Crown Court took just 80 minutes to convict him. He was jailed for two years.

Tammy said that after his release they moved to Vermont in the US, before returning to live in Booth’s property in the Scottish Highlands.

Their new home was Lochdhu Lodge in Altnabreac, a small community in Caithness. It was built in 1895 as a hunting lodge in one of the most remote inhabited parts of Britain.

Accessible only by a private dirt track, the house has no neighbouring properties and offers complete privacy.

In 2010, Booth secured permission from Highland Council to build an underground chamber at the lodge.

The civil judgement said entry was via a trapdoor and a 60m-long curved concrete tunnel. It contains an empty coffin, life-sized Egyptian figures and a metal bench.

Tammy said that some years later she confronted Booth after finding a suitcase which contained sex toys and women’s underwear.

She said: “He told me that because I didn’t like doing that with him he would find other women that would, and he would pay them.”

Tammy and Booth split in 2016 but they maintained contact.

She said she was aware women were being beaten at the lodge and that she had encouraged them go to the police.

Tammy never reported Booth but in 2016 she was convicted of a breach of the peace against him. The court admonished her and released her without further punishment.

In early 2018 a European woman was taken on as a maid by Booth.

The woman, who we are calling Marta, told BBC Scotland News that she was summoned to Booth’s office within weeks of starting her job.

She said he then asked her to massage his “private parts”.

Marta refused but said she was then told: “If you are not willing to do this you will not get more pay. If you do this you will get more pay.”

She agreed to the request because she needed the money.

Marta says she was later presented with a new contract.

It stated that she could be “punished” if she did something wrong.

Marta’s first offence, in Booth’s eyes, was a chicken dinner that he didn’t like.

She said he smacked her “really hard” on the bottom and then used a brush to strike her.

“I could not sit for a couple of days,” Marta added.

She reported Booth to police in 2019 but the Crown Office dropped the case against him in 2021.

But following the recent civil action, Marta said she hoped that sharing her story would inspire others to come forward.

“I am speaking because I want to save other girls from that horrible man.”

The civil court case in February brought Booth’s behaviour into the full glare of publicity.

Police Scotland successfully raised the civil action under human trafficking and exploitation laws to ban him from travelling outside the UK.

The judgement said Booth communicated with economically vulnerable women on Skype and arranged to meet them in locations such as South Africa, Dubai, Sri Lanka and the Philippines.

He paid for them to travel to the UK, where they were subjected to violent “punishments”.

It added: “Some of these messages explicitly mentioned payment for submitting to beatings.”

The judgement also said Booth applied “financial pressure” on a woman to withdraw a rape allegation in Ireland.

Detectives recovered 341 home videos featuring women being beaten.

One 18-minute attack on a woman who was apparently unable to escape was described as appearing to be “nothing other than torture”.

The judgement also referred back to his time working as a teacher in Botswana in the 1980s, when he “caned many students, and enjoyed doing so”.

Booth is due to return to court next week for a sexual communication case.

He has denied the charges against him.

Tammy said she would be willing to speak to detectives about her experiences.

She said: “He just seems to get away with things because he is rich. He’s never going to stop it.”

Tammy urged women who have been beaten by Booth, many of whom may now be living overseas, to contact police.

She added: “He should be in prison.”

The Crown Office concluded in 2021 that there should be no further criminal proceedings in relation to Marta’s complaint but a spokesperson said it reserved the right to prosecute in the future.

They added: “We are working closely with Police Scotland on further investigations.”

Det Supt Steven Bertram said the trafficking and exploitation risk order was sought in a bid to prevent “any further offending”.

He added: “Trafficking and exploitation is a blight on our communities and has no place in society and we will use all resources open to us to tackle it.

“Time is no barrier to justice and we would always urge anyone with concerns or information to please come forward and speak to us.”

In response, Kevin Booth said Tammy’s accusations about his behaviour were “somewhat laughable”.

He said he had been the victim of domestic abuse at her hands and that she had “exercised coercive and controlling behaviour by restricting my activities”.

Booth said there had been no complaints, arrests, charges or convictions against him for domestic violence or abuse.

He said Marta’s allegations were “not correct” and that he had “evidence to that effect”.

Booth added: “When the actual evidence was put before the Crown Office they said that they were not going to prosecute.”

He also said that the civil court judgement was still subject to an appeal and, as a result, he could not comment on it at this stage.

Two couples who got married together in 1955 have put the foundation of their 70 years of marriage down to spending plenty of time apart.

Tommy Budge and Thelma Bruce had a joint ceremony with Tommy’s older sister Violet Budge and Leslie Flett in Kirkwall, Orkney.

The four have now marked the rare double platinum anniversary together, this time with their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren for company.

They described their earlier times together as days of leaving post-it notes for each other rather than phone calls or modern-day text messages, and joked that time spent apart had helped them stay together.

Thelma is now 87, Tommy is 89, Violet is 91, with Leslie now aged 94. Between them, they have seven children, eight grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.

The joint wedding on 9 April 1955 came about due to Tommy being called away for national service with the army.

Violet and Leslie already had a date set for their ceremony.

With Tommy’s time at home limited, they all decided they would combine their big day.

The ceremony was conducted by a family friend, who was the registrar at that time, in the local Balfour Hospital, where the registry office was situated.

Thelma describes it as having been a flying visit for Tommy.

“He came home on the Friday, we got married on the Saturday, and he went away again on the Monday,” she recalled.

Violet remembers their double wedding as a relatively simple process.

“Two of us stood up and got married and then we changed places, and the next two got married,” she said. “I think me and Les, went first.”

After the ceremony and photographs being taken, they all headed to the home of Leslie’s parents.

This was the moment Violet tried Champagne.

“I said it was the first time I had ever tasted Champagne and the last time,” she recalled.

“Oh I did not like it – it wasn’t my cup of tea at all,” she laughed.

It was then on to Violet and Tommy’s parents for a meal of chicken and potatoes for about 30 guests.

Both couples had to spend long periods apart at times because of work commitments.

This is something they joke was perhaps part of the reason for their long marriages.

Tommy travelled, as a lighthouse keeper, while for much of her working life Violet was on the night shift in local hospitals.

Violet said: “My secret was I worked at nights, I was home during the day, and I was out every night.

“And my man worked during the day, and he was home every night, that was the secret – to avoid each other.”

She added: “I used to write messages on post-it notes and stuck it on the mirror. He he would see it and he could read it and he could answer it and did the same thing for me. That was how we got on.”

Thelma said it had been similar for her and Tommy, who was in the army for three years before starting work as a lighthouse keeper.

“Seventy married, maybe 35 years together,” she said with a smile.

She continued: “Firstly he had around 18 months of training where I never saw him. Then he was two months away, two weeks home.

“It was only latterly that the unions got it month-on month-off.”

The quartet live in Orkney, just a few miles apart. They were delighted to receive a card from King Charles and Queen Camilla, having been sent similar god wishes by Queen Elizabeth to mark their 60th and 65th anniversaries.

Violet said: “The first card that we got, we thought, oh my God, a card from the Queen – unbelievable.

“Then the next one came around, another one from the Queen, and we thought, wonder if we will be here for (King) Charles when he gets to the throne.

“Postman came the other day and it arrived and I thought ‘oh lovely’.”

Coincidentally they share an anniversary with the King and Queen, who were married 20 years ago on 9 April.

Violet said: “It’s a day I thought we would never, ever reach.

“It is just beyond anybody’s expectations I think, especially to have all four of us here and able to take part. It’s just unbelievable.”

And what is Violet’s advice to other married couples?

“Take each day as it comes,” she said.

It sounds like something from a science fiction movie, but Stephen Eisele is confident that one day his company will open a data centre on the Moon.

“The way we see it is that by putting the data centre in space, you’re really offering unparalleled security,” says the president of Lonestar Data Holdings.

Last month, the Florida-based firm claimed to have successfully tested a tiny data centre the size of a hardback book that hitched a ride to the Moon on the Athena Lunar Lander from US space exploration firm Intuitive Machines. This, in turn, had been launched by a rocket from Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Data centres are the vast warehouses that house stacks of computers that store and process data used by websites, companies and governments.

Lonestar says that putting them on the Moon will offer customers secure, reliable data processing, while taking advantage of unlimited solar energy to power them.

And while space-based data centres may sound far-fetched, it’s an idea that’s really starting to take off.

Part of the reason is rocketing demand and the difficulty of finding suitable sites on Earth.

The ever-expanding use of artificial intelligence (AI) computing has seen a massive increase in the amount of data that needs to be stored and processed around the world.

As a result, the need for data centres has shot up too, with annual demand set to rise between 19% and 22% by 2030, according to global management consultants McKinsey.

New facilities are springing up all the time – but it’s getting hard to find places to put them. Data centres are large and sprawling, and use enormous amounts of power and water for cooling.

And increasingly local people don’t want them built nearby.

Putting data centres in space – either in orbit around Earth, or on the Moon – the theory goes, means they can’t do quite so much harm. There’s more-or-less unlimited energy available from the sun, for example, and no neighbours to complain about the environmental impacts.

Not only that, space-based data centres could specialise in services for spacecraft and other space facilities, with space-to-space data transfers quicker than from the ground.

Last summer, a European Commission-funded feasibility study into orbiting data centres published its results.

The Ascend report by carried out by Thales Alenia Space – a joint venture between French and Italian aerospace groups Thales and Leonardo – published its results.

It determined that deploying data centres in space “could transform the European digital landscape”, and be “more eco-friendly”.

Thales Alenia Space envisages building a constellation of 13 satellites measuring a combined 200m-by-80m, and with a total data processing power of around 10 megawatts (MW). That’s equivalent to a current medium-sized, ground-based data centre, with some 5,000 servers.

Based on technologies that already exist or are under development, the satellites would be assembled in orbit.

Damien Dumestier, Ascend project architect at Thales Alenia Space, says that for space-based data centres to be more environmentally friendly than existing ground-based ones it will be necessary to make the rocket launchers 10 times less emissive over their lifecycles. He says this looks possible.

“But in order to cover the new technology’s developments and the production capacity ramp-up to benefit from scale, we have to consider larger system capacity, around 200MW, meaning 200 of our envisaged large space infrastructures and 200 launches,” he says.

“The main question is when an adapted launcher will be ready. Depending on the investment and decisions to be taken, this could be done for 2030 or 2035, meaning commercial viability before 2037.”

However, despite this optimism from firms aiming to develop the technology, Dr Domenico Vicinanza, associate professor of intelligent systems and data science at Anglia Ruskin University in the UK, says there are numerous big hurdles before space-based data centres can be a viable proposition.

“Even with the contribution and advancements of companies like SpaceX, launching hardware into orbit remains extremely expensive,” he says. “Each kilogram sent into space costs thousands of dollars.

“Space-based data centres would require not only the data equipment but also the infrastructure to protect, power, and cool them. All of which add up in weight and complexity.”

Cooling the equipment will be a particular problem, because even though space is cold, conventional cooling systems don’t work well without gravity.

Meanwhile, space weather can damage electronics, while the ever-increasing quantity of space debris puts the physical hardware at risk.

Dr Vicinanza adds: “And fixing problems in orbit is far from straightforward. Even with robotics and automation, there are limits to what can be repaired remotely.

“A big hardware failure might necessitate a costly human mission, potentially making downtime stretch for weeks or months.”

Yet firms like Lonestar are supremely confident, and say that they are responding to demand. “We wouldn’t be doing this if the customers weren’t asking us to,” says Mr Scott.

Its next target is to put a small data centre in orbit around the moon in 2027. Meanwhile, other companies are hoping to get there a bit faster, such as Washington state-based Starcloud, which is due to launch a satellite-based data centre next month, and start commercial operations in mid-2026.

Lonestar’s Mr Eidele says that space-based facilities offer more security for governments and businesses because their data does not need to be routed through terrestrial networks. Instead the information can be beamed directly from space to a dedicated ground station.

“It’s like having the vaults at the back of the bank,” he says. “You don’t have to open it every day, but it’s there to provide an extra measure of security, and the distance from the Earth to the moon offers that – it’s that much harder to hack, that much harder to access.”

The distance to the Moon means that data takes about a second and a half to reach the ground – this doesn’t matter for some applications, like longer-term data storage and backups.

And meanwhile, says Lonestar founder and chief executive Chris Stott, space-based data centres can help organisations meet regulations about data sovereignty – the need to hold peoples’ data in the country of origin.

“Under space law, that box of electronics is literally under the law of the licensing or launching state – it is an actual embassy in space,” he says.

Lonestar already has customers lined up, including the state of Florida and the Isle of Man government.

The US and Iran are due to hold the first talks in years on Saturday to try to reach a new deal over Iran’s controversial nuclear programme.

Donald Trump pulled the US out of a previous nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers in 2018, and reinstated economic sanctions, angering Iran.

Trump has warned of military action if the talks do not succeed.

Iran says its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes only.

It insists it is not trying to develop nuclear weapons, but many countries – as well as the global nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – are not convinced.

Suspicions about Iran’s intentions arose when the country was found to have secret nuclear facilities in 2002.

This broke an agreement called the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which Iran and almost all other countries have signed.

The NPT lets countries use non-military nuclear technology – such as for medicine, agriculture and energy – but does not permit the development of nuclear weapons.

• US to hold direct nuclear talks with Iran, Trump says
• Iran says it is ready for nuclear deal if US stops military threats
• Analysis: Can Trump convince Iran to ditch its nuclear programme?

Since the US pulled out of the existing nuclear deal – known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA – in 2018, Iran has breached key commitments, in retaliation for the decision to reinstate sanctions.

It has installed thousands of advanced centrifuges (purification machines) to enrich uranium, something which was banned by the JCPOA.

Nuclear weapons require uranium which has been enriched to 90% purity. Under the JCPOA, Iran was only allowed to possess up to 300kg (600lb) of uranium enriched to 3.67% – sufficient for civilian nuclear power and research purposes but not nuclear bombs.

But by March 2025, the IAEA said Iran had about 275kg of uranium which it had enriched to 60% purity. That is enough to theoretically make about half a dozen weapons, should Iran further enrich the uranium.

US officials have said they believe Iran could turn that uranium into enough weapons-grade material for one bomb in as little as a week. However, they have also said it would take Iran between a year to 18 months to build a nuclear weapon. Some experts say a “crude” device could be built in six months or less.

The UN, US and EU imposed extensive economic sanctions on Iran from 2010, over suspicions that its nuclear programme was being used to develop a bomb.

The sanctions stopped Iran from selling oil on international markets and froze $100bn (£77bn) of the country’s foreign assets. Its economy plunged into recession and the value of its currency fell to record lows, which in turn caused inflation to soar.

In 2015, Iran and six world powers – the US, China, France, Russia, Germany and the UK – agreed to the JCPOA after years of negotiations.

As well as limiting what Iran was permitted to do with its nuclear programme, it allowed the IAEA to access all of Iran’s nuclear facilities and to carry out inspections of suspect sites.

In return, the powers agreed to lift the sanctions.

The JCPOA was set to last up to 15 years, after which the restrictions would expire.

When Donald Trump took office in 2018, he removed the US – which had been a key pillar of the agreement.

He said it was a “bad deal” because it was not permanent and did not address Iran’s ballistic missile programme, amongst other things. Trump re-imposed US sanctions as part of a “maximum pressure” campaign to compel Iran to negotiate a new and expanded agreement.

Trump’s decision was influenced by America’s regional allies who were opposed to the deal, chiefly Israel.

Israel claimed that Iran was still pursuing a covert nuclear programme, and warned that Iran would use billions of dollars in sanctions relief to strengthen its military activities.

• Iran’s uranium enrichment ‘worrisome’ – nuclear watchdog
• High stakes as Iran nuclear issue reaches crunch moment
• Iran rejects nuclear talks as UAE delivers Trump’s letter

Trump’s announcement about talks with Iran appeared to take Israel by surprise. He had long said he would make a “better” deal than the JCPOA, though up till now Iran has rejected renegotiating the agreement.

Trump has previously warned that If Iran did not make a new deal “there will be bombing”.

His national security adviser Mike Waltz has said that Trump wants the “full dismantlement” of Iran’s nuclear programme, adding: “That’s enrichment, that is weaponisation, and that is its strategic missile programme.”

Although Trump said there would be “direct talks”, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the negotiations, in Oman, would be indirect. He said Iran is ready to engage with the US, but Trump must first agree there can be no “military option”.

After Trump’s announcement Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the only acceptable deal would involve Iran agreeing to eliminate its nuclear programme. He said that meant: “We go in, blow up the facilities, and dismantle all the equipment, under American supervision and execution.”

Israel’s biggest fear will be that Trump might accept a compromise short of Iran’s complete capitulation which he could present as a diplomatic win.

Israel, which has not signed the NPT, is assumed to have nuclear weapons, something it neither confirms nor denies. It believes a nuclear-armed Iran, which does not accept Israel’s right to exist, would pose a substantial threat.

Both the US and Israel have the military capabilities to bomb Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, but such an operation would be complex and risky, with an uncertain outcome.

Key nuclear sites are buried deep underground, meaning only the most powerful bunker-busting bombs could possibly reach them. While the US possesses these bombs, Israel is not known to.

Iran would almost certainly defend itself, which could include attacking US assets in the region, and firing missiles at Israel.

For an operation of this kind, the US would likely need to use its bases in the Gulf, as well as aircraft carriers.

But countries like Qatar, which hosts the biggest US airbase, might not agree to help it attack Iran, fearing retaliation.

Listen to James read this article

“The best salesman in history.” This was what Donald Trump once called Volodymyr Zelensky because of the amount of aid the US has given Ukraine.

Whether or not a fair comparison, Zelensky’s role in keeping his country in the spotlight and convincing allies to invest has certainly been crucial for Ukraine’s fight.

His transformation from prime-time comedian to wartime president has long been cast – it dates back to 2022 when he decided to remain in Kyiv as Russian troops closed in. That decision meant Ukraine would go on to defend itself to this day.

In the years since, I’ve stood across from him in person dozens of times, and Zelensky now casts a more authoritative, perhaps battle-hardened figure, moulded partly by his increased isolation on the international stage.

But with the unpredictability of Trump’s second term – not least following the pair’s Oval Office bust-up in February – Zelensky may now have to transform again.

Politically it is no longer a story of oppressor versus oppressed. Rather, it is muddied by the dual challenge of voicing an appetite for peace whilst protecting his country’s interests.

But is a man used to having so much authority at home and being so influential abroad really going to stage a second big transformation, shifting his focus to Trump-era diplomacy? Or will he decide the best way of standing up for Ukraine is to yield little?

Later today the “coalition of the willing”, a group of nations who have pledged to stand with Ukraine, will meet at Nato headquarters – notably without America.

Before Trump’s chapter two began, Ukraine’s leader had effectively lobbied for western support. He appealed for air defences, tanks, rockets and fighter jets, with nations such as Germany hesitating over fears of the war escalating, before yielding to his requests.

His message was rigid and he was successful in procuring support.

“Zelensky was very clever and calculated in the early days of the war,” says Ed Arnold from defence and security think tank, Royal United Services Institute (Rusi).

His decision go to the Munich security conference two weeks before the invasion, despite being advised that this would be a security risk, was pivotal, argues Mr Arnold.

“It personalised support to Ukraine within the minds of people who personally attended.”

Serhiy Leshchenko, an advisor to Zelensky’s office, explains: “We have to be visible to the world. If public opinion is on Ukraine’s side, there is a better chance to get help from the international community.”

Leshchenko points to Zelensky’s daily video addresses, which he has created since start of the invasion. “It’s unusual to be so open.”

Ukraine’s victory in the battle of Kyiv cemented Zelensky as a symbol of the country’s survival, and boosted his case for continued military aid from western allies.

Later in 2022, Zelensky was able to demonstrate the difference their supplies were making when swathes of Ukrainian territory, including the city of Kherson, were liberated. He had initial success with European allies.

“They are invested in Zelensky personally and Ukraine,” says Mr Arnold. “He’s gone through four UK prime ministers since the start of the war … and they’ve all signed new declarations with Ukraine, again through Zelensky.

“He’s been able to weather the changes in national politics within Europe throughout his tenure.”

But when further successes failed to materialise, Zelensky’s message did not change – and as time went on, this would be to his detriment.

After Ukraine’s failed counter-offensive in the summer of 2023, for example, the merits of supporting Kyiv were increasingly questioned by an influential minority of US Republicans and pleas were starting to be passed over in some quarters.

Maria Zolkina, head of regional security and conflict studies at the Democratic Initiatives Foundation, a Kyiv-based think tank, believes Zelensky is partly responsible.

“He and his close circle relied on the logic that they must always be demanding when speaking with their partners – pushing the argument that Ukraine simply needs something. That worked really well during 2022, but with the US and others this kind of messaging stopped working in 2023,” she argues.

“But his diplomacy really didn’t adjust quickly enough.”

On 27 September 2024, in a lobby in New York, things truly changed for Ukraine. Only the driving force was not approaching Russian armour but the political reincarnation of Ukraine’s biggest ally: the US.

On that day, just over a month before the US Presidential election, Zelensky had a last minute meeting with Trump in Trump Tower.

Tensions between the pair had heightened before this meeting: Zelensky had claimed a few days earlier that Trump didn’t “really know how to end the war”, after he asserted he could do it in “one day”.

After the Trump Tower meeting, the two men emerged looking awkward.

Despite announcing a “common view” of wanting to end the war, their body language suggested a lack of chemistry.

The pair would not meet again until five months later in the Oval Office, where their now famous encounter would be a diplomatic disaster for Kyiv.

“Trump should have liked him,” says Vadym Prystaiko, who was present when the pair first met after Zelensky’s election win in 2019. “Zelensky saw Trump as more or less as himself, as a media guy who moved into politics, who was anti-establishment,” he says.

Mr Prystaiko was Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, before he was sacked in 2023. Kyiv gave no official reason for the dismissal, but it came after Mr Prystaiko criticised Zelensky’s response to a row over gratitude for British military aid. He said there had been a “little bit of sarcasm” in his president’s response, which he believed was “unhealthy”.

“Zelensky has never been a diplomat,” Mr Prystaiko adds. “He has never been a usual political leader who kisses babies and shakes hands.”

“The relationship with Trump is like a rollercoaster,” says Volodymyr Fesenko, director at the Penta Center for Political Studies. “Sometimes there is constructive cooperation, and then, all of a sudden, some kind of crisis appears.”

Then there is their war of words. Trump has blamed Zelensky for starting the war, calling him a “dictator”, while Ukraine’s leader accused his US counterpart of “living in a Russian disinformation space”.

While Mr Fesenko believes Zelensky is continually changing tactics to find a working relationship with Washington, Ms Zolkina believes the issues go deeper.

“There is a triangle between the US administration, the Kremlin and Kyiv,” she claims. “Ukraine is considered to be a weaker part of this triangle. For Trump, Zelensky is not in the same league, and that’s the problem.”

When it came to the now infamous Oval Office meeting with Trump and his Vice President JD Vance, this was the first time I’d seen Zelensky seemingly run out of political rope as he was accused of “not showing enough gratitude” and “playing with World War Three”.

His defensive body language, the folding of his arms for example, also seemed new.

Zelensky has always appeared comfortable hosting or visiting other leaders. He is at ease on a stage and often injects timely humour — but this was different.

A mineral agreement, in which Zelensky had originally suggested trading a portion of Ukraine’s mineral resource wealth for continued military aid, was never signed, and has since evolved into a less favourable proposal for Kyiv.

The US would also briefly pause its military aid and intelligence sharing to ensure Ukraine danced to its tune.

But the official view from some is that the Oval Office meeting was not a calamity.

“Nobody took it as the end of something,” claims Ihor Brusylo, the deputy head of the Presidential Office, who travelled to the White House with Zelensky. “We discussed how to move forward. It was not a disaster.”

When the US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz told them the meeting was over, “we just shrugged our shoulders and decided to go back to the hotel,” he recalls.

“My presumption is that on a personal level, they [Trump and Zelensky] get on well,” he adds. “They understand each other better, and are frank and honest.”

Whatever the truth about their relationship behind closed doors, there have been signs of a willingness to bend from Zelensky since that meeting – European allies are said to have convinced him to subsequently take a more compliant tone, because of the inescapable truth that they, and Ukraine, still need the US to combat an aggressive Russia.

Yet others argue more bend still is needed.

“The war changes everyone, it has changed us all in some sense. But I don’t think fundamentally Zelensky has changed – for good or bad in some instances,” says Olga Onuch, professor of Comparative and Ukrainian Politics at the University of Manchester.

“It is very clear that certain actors have decided it’s difficult to negotiate with Zelensky. Why? Because he has red lines that he is sticking to.”

Mr Brusylo agrees. “It is very difficult to bend Zelensky,” he says. “It’s like watching a spring, the more you press, the bigger the pushback.”

And yet whenever Ukraine is attacked, politically or diplomatically, increased political unity follows. The Oval Office clash was no exception, as Zelensky’s popularity rating soared to around 70%.

“Zelensky is very powerful, and his authority is made up of himself and a certain circle of people,” argues Ms Zolkina.

Orysia Lutsevych, head of the Ukraine Forum at Chatham House says it’s interesting how Ukrainians rallied around Zelensky after the Oval Office, almost like they took it as a personal insult of Ukrainian statehood.

“People rally around him, what he represents and how he behaves”.

Mr Prystaiko argues if the Americans wanted him to be replaced “they’ve shot themselves in the foot as he might easily be re-elected”.

Some political experts, like Ms Zolkina, do not think this is a certainty. “I don’t think he understands that this boost is a direct reaction to what Trump is doing, not his personal position,” she says.

“He has pretty strong political ambitions for a second term, and is pretty politically egocentric, as all leaders are at his level.”

Prof Onuch does not think that pursuit of political power alone motivates Zelensky. “[He is] much more of a careful and considered and tactical political operator than people give him credit for”.

Still, imagining a Zelensky second term can be difficult, simply because of the sheer demands of the job. Even post-war challenges would be considerable.

For now, Mr Arnold suspects that an exhausted Zelensky would not want to stand again and suggests that he may want a way out from at least the frontline politics.

As for the near-term, Zelensky cannot afford another Oval Office. So, given that Trump is a keen player, will Ukraine’s leader ever join him for a round of golf?

“He is a quick learner,” says his Mr Brusylo. “When there is a need to play golf, I’m sure he will tackle this task.”

Evangelical Christian and former talk show host Mike Huckabee has been confirmed as the new US ambassador to Israel.

The former Arkansas governor has long been a fervent supporter of Israel. He strongly backs Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories, which are considered illegal under international law – though Israel rejects this.

“This is a great day for the Israeli-American alliance,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, joining other members of his government in celebrating the outcome of Wednesday’s vote.

The Senate backed Huckabee by 53 to 46, largely along party lines, with only one Democrat, John Fetterman, supporting him.

Many Democrats have, however, been critical of his previous statements about the ongoing war in Gaza.

Democratic Senator Jerry Nadler last month said Huckabee was “woefully unfit” for the role.

Nadler also accused him of engaging in “brazen denial of the existence of the Palestinian people”, referencing a 2017 news conference where Huckabee said there was “no such thing as a Palestinian”.

Huckabee takes up his post at a time when there is little sign of any agreement on a fresh ceasefire in Gaza and the return of the remaining hostages.

He has also frequently expressed his support for annexing the occupied West Bank, with far-right politicians in Israel calling this year for Israeli sovereignty to be extended there.

But during his questioning by a Senate committee, he sought to play down some of his past statements, saying he would “carry out the president’s priorities”, not his, and denied backing the expulsion of Palestinians.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said Huckabee’s appointment would “strengthen the unbreakable bond between our nations”, following a phone call between the two.

Israel’s prime minister also shared his congratulations, describing Huckabee as a “dear friend” in a post on X.

Netanyahu has just returned from Washington where he stood next to US President Donald Trump as he told the world he was conducting direct talks with Iran – Israel’s principal regional adversary – and praised Turkey’s President Erdogan – whom Israel regards as a potential threat in the remaking of Syria.

Speaking on Wednesday, the Trump said Huckabee would “be fantastic” in his new role.

“He’s going to bring home the bacon,” he said from the Oval Office, “even though bacon isn’t too big in Israel. I had to clear that up.”

Oscar-winning actress and Avengers star Scarlett Johansson is featuring twice at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, both in front of and behind the camera.

She will appear in Wes Anderson’s new project, The Phoenician Scheme, alongside Benicio Del Toro and Tom Hanks and off-screen in her first directorial project.

Her new film, Eleanor the Great, has also been revealed as part of the line-up and follows an elderly woman as she copes with the death of her best friend.

Johansson’s starring role comes as organisers of the film festival have said that they are committed to showcasing more work from female filmmakers.

Speaking at a press conference, Cannes president Iris Knobloch said she was “honoured to amplify” the voices of women.

Johansson, 40, who is best known for starring as Black Widow in the Avengers films, has entered her film into the second prize category.

Competing for the main Palme d’Or prize this year are 20 films, of which six come from female directors.

This includes Kelly Reichardt, whose drama The Mastermind, starring Josh O’Connor and John Magaro, will be showing at the festival.

Those looking to replace Oscar-winning Sean Baker, who won the top prize at Cannes for Anora last year, also include Iranian director Jafar Panahi and his film A Simple Accident, plus horror newcomer Ari Aster with Eddington, which stars Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone.

Robert De Niro will also make an appearance at the festival to receive an honorary Palme d’Or, while Tom Cruise’s final instalment of Mission: Impossible will also be shown.

It’s also been a busy few weeks for Harris Dickinson, who was recently announced as one of the new stars of Sir Sam Mendes’ Beatles quadrilogy.

Dickinson, who will play John Lennon in the films, will also be making a directing debut at Cannes.

The 28-year-old will show his film Urchin, about a homeless man in London, at the French festival.

Donald Trump is going to “make America’s showers great again” by easing rules restricting water flow, the White House says.

The US president is ordering the energy secretary to rescind a change introduced by Barack Obama that restricted multi-nozzle showers from discharging over 2.5 gallons of water per minute overall.

This served “a radical green agenda that made life worse for Americans”, the White House said, as Trump criticised the “ridiculous” amount of time he says it takes to wet his hair in the shower.

Consumer and conservation groups have previously argued that changing the rules is wasteful and unnecessary.

According to the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, which shared a factsheet in 2024, efficiency standards in the US set more than three decades ago “reduce water waste… save consumers money on their water and energy bills and help protect the environment”.

Under a 1992 energy law, showerheads in the US are not allowed to produce more than 2.5 gallons (9.5l) of water per minute.

Obama introduced a redefinition, as part of an Energy Conservation Program, that meant for showers with multiple nozzles, the restriction applied overall rather than to each nozzle.

At the end of Trump’s first term, in 2020, he moved to allow each nozzle to produce up to 2.5 gallons a minute.

But when Joe Biden succeeded him as president, he stopped that.

The current administration has dubbed their efforts a “war on water pressure”, saying Americans “pay for their own water and should be free to choose their showerheads without federal meddling”.

Trump now wants to return to the “straightforward meaning” of ‘showerhead’ from the 1992 law.

According to the White House fact sheet: “The Order frees Americans from excessive regulations that turned a basic household item into a bureaucratic nightmare.

“No longer will showerheads be weak and worthless.”

The order says the change will come into effect 30 days after the energy secretary publishes a notice rescinding the definition.

While signing the order in the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump said it was “ridiculous” he has to stand under the water for 15 minutes for his “beautiful” hair to get wet – echoing remarks he made during 2020.

At that time, he also complained about water not coming out of shower heads, saying his hair “has to be perfect”.

Kenya’s national high-school drama competition has been overshadowed by drama of its own after police fired tear gas to disperse a crowd that had gathered to watch a controversial play.

Echoes of War is set in a fictional kingdom where the youth have lost faith in their leaders.

It features battles with the police and has drawn parallels with last year’s protests by young people against tax rises.

It was initially disqualified from the drama festival under unclear circumstances, but a High Court ruling overturned the decision and ordered it to be included.

Tensions flared in the western town of Nakuru on Thursday morning when the student performers stormed out of the venue, demanding the release of the play’s author, Cleophas Malala, who had been detained by police.

The scriptwriter and former senator who had penned the production for students from Butere Girls High School, was blocked by police from meeting the young performers for final rehearsals on Wednesday evening.

Malala was later released without charge and praised the students for boycotting the play.

“The young girls of Butere Girls’ have exercised an act of heroic restoration. I’m determined to ensure that Echoes of War is displayed before a Kenyan audience,” Malala said immediately after his release.

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The students briefly sang the national anthem before dramatically leaving the hall, which was sealed off by anti-riot police, armed with batons and tear gas canisters.

“There’s no audience. Who are we performing for?” one of the girls told journalists.

They also complained about police harassment.

Following news of Malala’s arrest, large crowds had gathered outside the venue curious to watch the play.

But anti-riot police had been deployed overnight in case of trouble and they fired tear gas to disperse the would-be audience.

Education Minister Julius Ogamba questioned the involvement of Malala in the competition, saying the politician was neither a teacher nor a play director.

“I wonder why a politician should be a script writer for a student performance. Even the competition loses value if we do not allow the teachers to be scriptwriters,” Interior Minister Kipchumba Murkomen said, warning politicians against using innocent students to settle their political scores.

“Let us have a thick line between politics and education,” he added.

The row has sparked public uproar, with rights group Amnesty International saying it was “pointing to a worrying pattern of state-sponsored repression of free expression, press freedom, and the right to associate”.

Chief Justice Martha Koome said that Malala’s detention contravened the court order that the play, and its author, be allowed to take part in the competition.

“Defiance of court orders not only undermines the authority of the courts but also poses a serious threat to the rule of law, which is the bedrock of our society,” she added.

Prominent opposition figure Kalonzo Musyoka condemned the police for firing tear gas near students, praising the “brave” girls for declining to perform.

In a statement, the opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) demanded that the students be allowed to stage their play like all the other competitors.

The fictitious kingdom in Echoes of War play is ruled by a tyrannical sultan who is irked by the activism of the youth, portraying similarities to what is currently happening in Kenya, where young people have been demanding better governance.

It is not clear whether the play will now be disqualified and so not get through to the finals, which are held at State House with the president in attendance.

The annual high school drama competitions are hugely popular in Kenya, with students often using theatre as a tool to challenge those in power.

This is not the first time one of the plays has angered the authorities.

In 2013, Malala made headlines with his controversial play Shackles of Doom, which thrust him into the national limelight – and eventually into politics.

The play, also performed by Butere Girls’ High School, was banned by the government before the High Court ruled against the ban and allowed the play to be staged.

At the time, Malala said Shackles of Doom depicted Kenya’s highly ethnised politics which he said contributed to the unequal distribution of resources in the country.

The senator, who has written dozens of other plays, was last August kicked out of the ruling United Democratic Alliance (UDA) following internal party wrangles.

He has since fallen out with President William Ruto, whom he campaigned for during the 2022 general elections.

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Prada has agreed to buy its smaller rival Versace in a billion dollar deal to unite two of the biggest designer fashion labels.

The deal to unite the two Italian brands has an estimated value of $1.36bn (£1.06bn), the Prada Group said on Thursday.

“We aim to continue Versace’s legacy celebrating and re-interpreting its bold and timeless aesthetic,” said Prada chairman Patrizio Bertelli.

The Prada Group already owns several other designer labels including Miu Miu and luxury footwear brand Church’s.

Its acquisition of Versace will create a multi-billion dollar luxury fashion group, putting the brands in a position to compete with the likes of French luxury fashion conglomerates LVMH and Kering.

Negotiations to buy Versace between Prada and Capri began in February.

The price Prada agreed to pay for Versace is significantly lower than the $2.15bn that Capri Holdings spent when it bought Versace in 2018.

The deal, which includes the brand’s debt pile, comes as Versace has been operating at a loss amid a slowdown in demand for luxury fashion worldwide.

Capri also owns other fashions brands including Jimmy Choo and Michael Kors.

Mr Bertelli said that the Prada Group would provide Versace with “a strong platform”.

“Versace has huge potential. The journey will be long and will require disciplined execution and patience,” added Andrea Guerra, the chief executive of Prada.

In March, Donatella Versace stepped down from her creative director role at the luxury brand after nearly 30 years.

She had held the position since 1997 and took over after the murder of her brother Gianni.

The 69-year-old has a new role as the chief brand ambassador for Versace, while Dario Vitale, who is a former design and image director of Miu Miu, took over as chief creative officer.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected criticism of the Gaza war by some air force reservists, calling it “unforgivable”.

The Israeli military said it would dismiss serving reservists who had signed a letter calling for the return of Israeli hostages to be prioritised over fighting Hamas.

The letter also says the current fighting is politically motivated and will lead to the deaths of the hostages, Israeli soldiers and innocent civilians.

The military said it could not allow serving reservists to engage in political protests.

Israel resumed its air and ground campaign in Gaza last month, saying that military pressure would force Hamas to release the hostages it is still holding.

Israel’s military air power, which has been used extensively in Gaza over the past 18 months, relies heavily on reservist pilots.

Most of the 970 signatories of the letter published in Israeli newspapers on Thursday morning are retired. But it is reported that dozens are still active personnel.

The letter does not call for refusal to serve, but it demands “the return of all hostages even at the price of a cessation of hostilities”.

“Currently, the war serves mainly political and personal interests, not security interests,” it says.

“The continuation of the war does not contribute to any of its declared goals and will lead to the deaths of the hostages, Israeli soldiers and innocent civilians, and to the attrition of the IDF reserve forces.”

It adds: “As has been proven in the past, only a deal can bring back the hostages safely.”

An IDF spokesperson was quoted by Israeli media as saying that it was unacceptable to “use the Israeli Air Force brand” for a political protest.

“It is inconceivable for someone to do a shift at [the IAF] command centre and head out afterward and express mistrust in the task,” they added.

Netanyahu said the letter came from a “radical, marginal group”, accusing it of trying to fracture Israeli society from within.

“Refusal to serve is refusal to serve – even if it implied and in polite language,” he said.

“Expressions that weaken the IDF and strengthen our enemies in wartime are unforgivable.”

He also claimed that the signatories represent “neither the fighters nor the public”.

Defence Minister Israel Katz said the letter was an attempt “to undermine the legitimacy” of what he called “the just war”.

The latest opinion polls indicate widespread support among the Israeli public for a new ceasefire and hostage release deal.

When the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) recently asked Israelis which of the state’s declared war goals – toppling Hamas or bringing home all the hostages – was more important, 68% said it was the latter.

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

More than 50,880 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s health ministry.

A ceasefire deal that began in January and lasted two months saw Hamas release 33 Israeli hostages – eight of them dead – and five Thai hostages in exchange for about 1,900 Palestinian prisoners and a surge in humanitarian aid entering Gaza.

Israel resumed its offensive on 18 March, blaming Hamas’s refusal to accept a proposal for an extension of the agreement’s first phase and the release of more of the 59 hostages it is still holding, up to 24 of whom are believed to be alive.

Hamas accused Israel of violating the original deal, according to which there would be a second phase where all the remaining living hostages would be handed over and the war brought to a permanent end.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is hearing a case brought by Sudan accusing the United Arab Emirates (UAE) of being “complicit in the genocide” during the current civil war.

The two-year conflict, which has pitted Sudan’s army against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has led to tens of thousands of deaths and forced more than 12 million from their homes.

Sudan alleges that the UAE has been arming the RSF with the aim of wiping out the non-Arab Massalit population of West Darfur. The UAE has said the case is a cynical publicity stunt and is seeking an immediate dismissal.

Since the war began, both the RSF and the Sudanese army have been accused of committing atrocities.

According to Sudan’s case, the RSF has carried out systematic attacks on non-Arab groups, especially the Massalit community, with the intent to destroy them as a distinct ethnic group.

Among other things, it also alleges that the RSF has used rape as a weapon against civilians.

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At the beginning of this year the US also accused the RSF of committing genocide and imposed sanctions on its leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti.

Gen Hemedti has previously denied its fighters have deliberately targeted civilians.

As the ICJ deals with disputes between states, Sudan’s military government cannot take the RSF to the court.

Instead it has brought the case against one of its alleged sponsors.

Sudan argues that these atrocities were enabled by extensive financial, military and political support from the UAE, including arms shipments, drone training and the recruitment of mercenaries.

It says this means the UAE is complicit in genocide.

Sudan is seeking reparations and urgent measures to prevent further genocidal acts.

In court on Thursday, Sudan’s legal team argued that there was a risk of plausible harm to the Masalit people and there was an urgent need for the ICJ to intervene to ensure no further genocidal acts are committed.

Sudan has requested the judges to rule that the UAE should be blocked from supplying the RSF. And the UAE should report back to the court on how these measures are being implemented.

In her response in court, the UAE’s ambassador to the Netherlands Ameirah Alhefeiti began by describing the violence in Sudan as “heart-breaking”.

But she added that Sudan had not brought the case to The Hague to ease the suffering but rather to deflect from its own actions and was using the court as a stage to attack the UAE.

An earlier statement from the government said the ICJ was “not a stage for political theatrics, and it must not be weaponised for disinformation”.

The ambassador said that her country had not provided arms to either of the warring parties, and rather that the UAE had worked tirelessly to alleviate suffering by, for example, setting up field hospitals.

The UAE’s lawyers have argued that the case should be thrown out.

Most legal experts appear to agree the case has little chance of going beyond this point.

The UAE has a reservation – or opt out – to the Genocide Convention which has meant in previous cases, the ICJ does not have jurisdiction over these types of claims.

However, in bringing its grievances to the UN’s top court, Sudan has drawn attention to what it alleges is the UAE’s role in the conflict.

In terms of what happens next, it should be known within a matter of weeks if the judges decide they have the power to act on Sudan’s request for them to issue what essentially amounts to an injunction – provisional measures for the UAE to fulfil its commitments to prevent acts of genocide.

ICJ rulings are legally binding, but the court itself has no direct powers to enforce its decisions.

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Michelle Obama has spoken out against rumours that her marriage to Barack Obama might be in trouble.

The former first lady has not accompanied her husband to several high-profile events – including Donald Trump’s inauguration and the funeral of former President Jimmy Carter – fuelling speculation that they might be separating.

Without explicitly mentioning these occasions, Mrs Obama told the Work in Progress podcast hosted by actress Sophia Bush that she was now in a position to control her own calendar as a “grown woman”.

She said that people were not able to believe that she was “making a decision” for herself and instead “had to assume that my husband and I are divorcing”.

Mrs Obama shared that she felt some guilt for stepping back from certain duties.

“That’s the thing that we as women, I think we struggle with like disappointing people,” she said.

“I mean, so much so that this year people couldn’t even fathom that I was making a choice for myself that they had to assume that my husband and I are divorcing.

“This couldn’t be a grown woman just making a set of decisions for herself, right? But that’s what society does to us.”

Mrs Obama also said in the podcast: “I chose to do what was best for me. Not what I had to do. Not what I thought other people wanted me to do.”

Her absence from President Trump’s inauguration was seen as a break from tradition.

Despite carving out more time for herself, the former first lady said she still finds time to “give speeches, to be out there in the world, to work on projects. I still care about girls’ education”.

The Obamas celebrated their 32nd anniversary last year in October.

Mrs Obama has previously been open about the struggles she faced in her marriage due to Mr Obama’s political ambitions and time in the White House in her best-selling memoir, Becoming.

Donald Trump is going to “make America’s showers great again” by easing rules restricting water flow, the White House says.

The US president is ordering the energy secretary to rescind a change introduced by Barack Obama that restricted multi-nozzle showers from discharging over 2.5 gallons of water per minute overall.

This served “a radical green agenda that made life worse for Americans”, the White House said, as Trump criticised the “ridiculous” amount of time he says it takes to wet his hair in the shower.

Consumer and conservation groups have previously argued that changing the rules is wasteful and unnecessary.

According to the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, which shared a factsheet in 2024, efficiency standards in the US set more than three decades ago “reduce water waste… save consumers money on their water and energy bills and help protect the environment”.

Under a 1992 energy law, showerheads in the US are not allowed to produce more than 2.5 gallons (9.5l) of water per minute.

Obama introduced a redefinition, as part of an Energy Conservation Program, that meant for showers with multiple nozzles, the restriction applied overall rather than to each nozzle.

At the end of Trump’s first term, in 2020, he moved to allow each nozzle to produce up to 2.5 gallons a minute.

But when Joe Biden succeeded him as president, he stopped that.

The current administration has dubbed their efforts a “war on water pressure”, saying Americans “pay for their own water and should be free to choose their showerheads without federal meddling”.

Trump now wants to return to the “straightforward meaning” of ‘showerhead’ from the 1992 law.

According to the White House fact sheet: “The Order frees Americans from excessive regulations that turned a basic household item into a bureaucratic nightmare.

“No longer will showerheads be weak and worthless.”

The order says the change will come into effect 30 days after the energy secretary publishes a notice rescinding the definition.

While signing the order in the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump said it was “ridiculous” he has to stand under the water for 15 minutes for his “beautiful” hair to get wet – echoing remarks he made during 2020.

At that time, he also complained about water not coming out of shower heads, saying his hair “has to be perfect”.

There were some heroic efforts overnight from Donald Trump and those around him to suggest the past seven days were something other than absolute chaos.

By this reading, Trump’s 4D game of chess has left China in check. Certainly the Chinese economy faces a massive hit from punitive tariffs in its biggest market. But even accounting for the President’s roll back, the US has still erected a massive protectionist tariff wall, not seen since the 1930s.

The world is left with a universal 10% tariff, irrespective of whether that country (for example the UK or Australia) actually sells less to the US than the US sells to it. There is now no difference between the EU, which clearly does have a massive trade deficit in goods and was preparing to retaliate, and the UK.

There is also an anxious wait to find out what comes next. One of the questions is whether President Trump pushes ahead with tariffs on medicines, the UK’s second biggest goods export.

Plus there is potential logistical chaos on the cards from a little-noticed multi-million dollar port tax for every cargo vessel docking in the US that was “made in China”. That is more than half of the global merchant fleet – and it is due next Friday.

Even with Trump’s stated 90 day pause on implementing higher tariffs, there remains too much uncertainty for companies to go through the rigmarole of rerouting global trade.

The central issue today, however, is that the world’s two great economic superpowers are now facing off against each other like rutting stags.

Tariffs at these sky-high rates are massively hitting business between two nations which together account for around 3% of the entire world’s trade. The main motorway of the global economy is effectively shut.

The visible tangible consequences of all this will become very real very quickly: Chinese factories will close, workers will stroll from plant to plant looking for work.

Beijing will need to organise a stimulus package to account for the loss of whole percentage points of GDP, the kind of thing that happens when a natural disaster flattens a major city. Painful, but manageable at a cost, though not forever.

Meanwhile the US will see consumer prices surge. President Trump might try to order these US companies not to raise prices, but the effect will come through soon enough.

In theory this will be in sharp contrast to what is happening in other countries in the world. Across the border in Canada, or in Europe, not only will there not be such China-sourced price rises, there could be price cuts.

Trade wars on this scale do not stay confined to the flow of goods. They tend to become currency wars.

What we saw last night was the trade turmoil spread to credit markets, especially the US bond market, having already hit share prices.

Indeed there was an invaluable reveal for the game theory of this conflict. The Trump administration revealed a key pressure point with its concern about the “yippy” – as Trump called it – bond market.

As trading in US government debt continued overnight in Asia, the effective interest rate on these bonds rose to 5%.

This sort of borrowing should not move in such an erratic fashion.

The last time this happened was in the “Dash for Cash”, the key moment of financial fragility at the very beginning of the pandemic. The world was focussed on life or death in March 2020, but this potential further crisis was alleviated only by emergency action.

Effectively, the President’s row back was a form of emergency policy change.

Was the Chinese government behind this rash of US government bond sales in Asia? Probably not. However, what happened on Wednesday highlighted a vulnerability for Trump.

China is the second biggest holder of US government debt in the world and if it chose to, dumping all that debt would be catastrophic for America. But doing so would be a form of mutually assured economic destruction – the losses for China would be huge.

More importantly, what the bond markets were telling Trump is that they are deeply sceptical about his tariff policy.

The US does have the Federal Reserve, which does have some power to tranquillise bond markets. But right now it does not look like its chairman Jerome Powell will ride to the rescue.

The bond market scepticism echoes the sentiment of the ascendant Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. He is now pushing for Trump to reach trade deals with their allies because the US needs them to take on China.

Given the US was previously calling these same close allies cheaters, looters and pillagers, there is no way this was the strategy all along.

This does matter. The US needs the EU, UK, the rest of the G7 on side in terms of China. China probably needs those countries just to stay neutral, and carry on soaking up its exports.

The rest of the world has seen Trump’s team struggle to explain tariffing penguin islands or poor African economies and the President himself recirculating the suggestion he was crashing stock markets on purpose. And they’ve witnessed the fact that the tariff rates were changed after they came into effect and also the absurd nature of the equation used to calculate them.

It’s in this context that Trump’s handling of the situation has handed leverage back to the rest of the world, because neither friend nor foe will know quite what they are negotiating with this America.

There is a calm, welcomed by all, but it could be rather brief.

Australia has swiftly turned down China’s offer to “join hands” against Donald Trump’s tariffs, as Washington escalates its trade war with Beijing.

The White House recently imposed an import tax of 10% on Australian goods, but for China – Australia’s biggest trading partner – raised tariffs to 125%.

China’s ambassador to Australia Xiao Qian argued joint resistance is “the only way” to stop the “hegemonic and bullying behaviour of the US”, appealing for Canberra’s cooperation in an opinion piece on Thursday.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, however, said Australians would “speak for ourselves”, while the country’s defence minister said the nation would not be “holding China’s hand”.

“It’s about pursuing Australia’s national interests, not about making common calls with China,” Richard Marles told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Hours earlier, Trump had dramatically changed course on his sweeping tariffs scheme, announcing a 90-day pause for countries hit with high US tariffs. In the meantime, a tariff of 10% would apply.

China was the exception though. Instead, the US imposed an extra bump on import fees, after Beijing announced it would impose 84% counter-tariffs on the US.

Canberra has expressed anger over the tariffs but has said it will not retaliate, instead seeking further negotiations with the White House.

In his opinion piece for Nine Newspapers, Mr Xiao said the US had “weaponised” trade issues and expressed concern that a “weak compromise” would enable Trump to “sabotage the international order” and drag the world economy into a “quagmire” and an “abyss”.

Australia and China have a “mutually beneficial and long-standing co-operation” and need to work together to “safeguard a fair and free trading environment”, he added.

“The international community… should firmly say no to unilateralism and protectionism.”

Albanese told reporters on Thursday that Australia’s trade relationship with China was an important one, but said Australia was focussed on looking for other export opportunities outside of the US.

“Eighty percent of trade does not involve the United States. There are opportunities for Australia and we intend to seize them,” he said.

Marles said Australia is also looking to lessen its reliance on China, to bolster “economic resilience”, adding that the country’s focus would be on diversifying trade, in particular with Indonesia, India, the UK and the UAE.

Australian Trade Minister Don Farrell has held meetings with Japan, Singapore, South Korea and India in recent days.

A woman in Australia has unknowingly given birth to a stranger’s baby, after her fertility clinic accidentally implanted another woman’s embryos into her.

The mix-up at Monash IVF in Brisbane, Queensland has been blamed on human error, Australian media reports.

“On behalf of Monash IVF, I want to say how truly sorry I am for what has happened,” CEO Michael Knaap said, adding that everyone at the fertility clinic was “devastated” at the mistake.

Last year, the same clinic paid a A$56m (£26.8m) settlement to hundreds of patients whose embryos were destroyed despite them being viable.

According to a spokesperson for Monash IVF, staff became aware of the problem in February when the birth parents asked to transfer their remaining frozen embryos to another clinic.

“Instead of finding the expected number of embryos, an additional embryo remained in storage,” the spokesperson was quoted as saying by ABC.

Monash has confirmed that an embryo from another patient had been mistakenly thawed and transferred to the wrong person, resulting in the birth of a child.

The clinic has launched an investigation and the incident has been referred to regulatory bodies. Mr Knaap said the clinic was confident it was an isolated incident.

Last year, Monash IVF reached a A$56m (£26.8m) settlement in a landmark class action with 700 former patients for destroying embryos after inaccurate genetic testing.

The case found that about 35% of the embryos, which were actually normal and could have resulted in a viable pregnancy, were found to be abnormal by the faulty screening.

IVF – or in vitro fertilisation – involves the removal of eggs from a woman’s ovaries, which are then fertilised with sperm in a laboratory. When the fertilised eggs become embryos, they are inserted into the woman’s uterus.

It is an expensive process and not successful every time.

In 2021 there were 20,690 babies born as a result of IVF in Australia and New Zealand, according to a report by the University of New South Wales.

A Russian-American citizen has been released in a prisoner swap between Moscow and Washington.

Amateur ballerina Ksenia Karelina, a Los Angeles resident, had been in prison in Russia for over a year, after being arrested in early 2024 during a family visit in the city of Yekaterinburg.

She was accused by Russia’s FSB security service of raising money for a Ukrainian organisation providing arms to the Ukrainian military. She pleaded guilty last August and was sentenced to 12 years in jail.

Russian human rights activists said while living in the US she had made a single transfer of $51 (£39) on the first day of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 22 February 2022.

The charity in question denied raising money for weapons or ammunition, saying it was focused on humanitarian aid and disaster relief.

The FSB is thought to have discovered the transaction on her phone.

In exchange, the US freed Arthur Petrov, a dual German-Russian citizen arrested in Cyprus in 2023. He was accused of illegally exporting microelectronics to Russia for manufacturers working with the Russian military.

Russian TASS news agency said President Vladimir Putin had pardoned Ms Karelina.

The prisoner swap took place in Abu Dhabi in the early hours of Thursday.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed Ms Karelina was “on a plane back home to the United States”.

He added she had been “wrongfully detained by Russia for over a year”.

“President Trump secured her release. [The President] will continue to work for the release of ALL Americans.”

CIA director John Ratcliffe was present at the exchange, the Wall Street Journal said.

Ms Karelina’s parents thanked Trump and Putin.

“I guess that deal must have involved them both,” her father, Pavel, told the Wall Street Journal. “We are beside ourselves with happiness.

“The first seconds of our chat were all pure emotions, I can’t even remember what we were saying, it was like one explosion of happiness.”

It is the second prisoner swap between Russia and the US in less than two months.

In February, Russian national Alexander Vinnik – who was imprisoned in a US jail on money laundering charges – was freed in exchange for the release of American schoolteacher Marc Fogel.

The exchange comes as Moscow and Washington try to improve their relations.

US and Russian officials met in Istanbul on Thursday to hold another round of talks aimed at restoring some of the embassy operations that were scaled back following the Ukraine invasion.

The Duke of Sussex met war victims in Ukraine on Thursday when he visited a clinic which rehabilitates wounded military personnel and civilians, a spokesperson has said.

Prince Harry visited the Superhumans Center, in the western city of Lviv, where he spoke to patients and staff.

He was accompanied by a group from the Invictus Games Foundation, including four veterans who had been through similar rehabilitation.

Lviv has frequently been targeted with Russian missiles and the visit was not announced until after the prince was out of the country.

Prince Harry, who served for 10 years in the British Army, founded the Invictus Games in 2014 for wounded veterans to compete in sports events.

The visit to Superhumans was to observe the support and rehabilitation services being provided in a country actively experiencing war, a spokesperson said.

Prince Harry was invited by Olga Rudneva, a chief executive of the centre, at the Invictus Games Vancouver Whistler 2025.

During the visit, the prince met patients and medical professionals, in addition to Ukraine’s Minister of Veterans Affairs, Natalia Kalmykova.

Th clinic administers psychological help, reconstructive surgery and prosthetics to victims for free.

Rob Owen, chief executive of the Invictus Games Foundation, said Ukraine had been “a vital part” of the foundation since participating in the Invictus Games Toronto 2017.

“This visit to the Superhumans charity in Ukraine underscores the Invictus Games Foundation’s broader commitment to supporting recovery and rehabilitation for wounded injured and sick service personnel and veterans, even in the most challenging environments,” he said.

Held in Vancouver, the last edition of the games involved more than 500 competitors from 23 nations, while Birmingham will host the next games in 2027.

Prince Harry was in London this week for a Court of Appeal hearing over his security arrangements in the UK.

He is the second royal to visit Ukraine since Russia’s full scale invasion, after the Duchess of Edinburgh visited Kyiv last year.

His father the King welcomed Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to his Sandringham estate in Norfolk in March, just days after Zelensky’s unprecedented exchange with US president Donald Trump and his vice president JD Vance in the White House’s Oval Office.

The Prince of Wales, Harry’s brother, met Ukrainian refugees during a two-day visit to Estonia last month.

A controversial bill seeking to reinterpret New Zealand’s founding document, which established the rights of both Māori and non-Māori in the country, has been defeated at its second reading.

The Treaty Principles Bill was voted down 112 votes to 11, days after a government committee recommended that it should not proceed.

The proposed legislation sought to legally define the principles of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi – causing widespread outrage that saw more than 40,000 people taking part in a protest outside parliament last year.

The bill had already been widely expected to fail, with most major political parties committed to voting it down.

Members of the right-wing Act Party, which tabled it, were the only MPs to vote for it at the second reading on Thursday. Act’s leader David Seymour has promised to continue campaigning on the issue.

“I believe this Bill or something like it will pass one day because there are not good arguments against its contents,” he wrote on social media.

Tensions were high during a parliamentary debate on the bill in November. Labour MP Willie Jackson was told to leave after refusing to withdraw a comment he made calling Seymour a “liar”.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins said the proposed legislation would forever “be a stain on our country”, while Te Pāti Māori (The Māori Party) MP Hana Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke – who gained international attention for starting a haka in parliament at the bill’s first reading – said it had been “annihilated”.

“Instead of dividing and conquering, this bill has backfired and united communities across the motu [country] in solidarity for our founding agreement and what it represents,” Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson later said in a statement.

The second reading came after a select committee, which had been looking into the proposed legislation released its final report – revealing that more than 300,000 submissions had been made on it, the vast majority of which were opposed.

It is the largest response to proposed legislation that the New Zealand parliament has ever received.

While the principles of the Treaty have never been defined in law, its core values have, over time, been woven into different pieces of legislation in an effort to offer redress to Māori for the wrong done to them during colonisation.

Act’s proposed legislation had three main principles: that the New Zealand government has the power to govern, and parliament to make laws; that the Crown would respect the rights of Māori at the time the Treaty was signed; and that everyone is equal before the law and entitled to equal protection.

The party said the bill would not alter the Treaty itself but would “continue the process of defining the Treaty principles”. This, they believe, would help to create equality for all New Zealanders and improve social cohesion.

Among those backing it was Ruth Richardson, a former finance minister for the centre-right National Party, who told the select committee that the proposed legislation was “a bill of consequence whose time has come”.

She argued that while the Treaty itself could not be disputed, the idea of its principles was a “relatively modern matter”, and that these principles had so far been largely defined by the courts, rather than parliament.

“There is a new imperative in New Zealand on the cultural front, the necessity to address and correct Treaty overreach that has increasingly and evidently become wayward and wrong,” she said.

Opponents of the bill, meanwhile, believe it would be detrimental to Māori and create greater social divides.

Sharon Hawke, the daughter of the late Māori activist and MP Joe Hawke, spoke to the select committee on behalf of the Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei hapū [sub-tribe] – telling it that the legislation “strips the fabric of where we’ve been heading for in the last three decades at improving our people’s [Māori’s] ability to gain education, gain warm housing, gain good health”.

She added that the bill “polluted” the idea of all New Zealanders having a future together.

“We will continue to show our opposition to this,” she said.

Key issues identified by members of the public who made submissions to the select committee included that it was inconsistent with the values of the Treaty, and that it had promoted equality with equity – not taking into account social disparities, such as those created by the legacy of colonisation.

There were also concerns about the extent to which the bill complied with international law, and whether it would negatively impact New Zealand’s reputation internationally.

Submitters who supported the bill, meanwhile, referred to a current lack of clarity and certainty about the principles of the Treaty, and of the importance of equality for all.

They also said that it was important to hold a referendum to facilitate a national conversation around the Treaty – something David Seymour believes is still needed.

The Treaty Principles Bill passed its first reading in November, with support from National – the dominant party in New Zealand’s ruling coalition – who had promised to back it as part of a coalition agreement with Act, but not any further.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, who is also leader of the National Party, previously said there was nothing in the bill that he liked. He was not in parliament for its second reading, but remarked earlier in the day that it was time to move on from it.

Two American Airlines jet have had a minor collision on the ground at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport – just three months after a deadly crash near there.

The Federal Aviation Administration said the wingtip of one aircraft struck another on the taxiway on Thursday afternoon. Six members of Congress were aboard one of the jets.

Nick LaLota, a New York Republican, said no-one was hurt when the wing of their stationary plane was “bumped” by another jet.

Sixty-seven people died on 29 January when an Army helicopter collided in midair with a jetliner as it landed at the same airport.

LaLota posted on X: “Serving in Congress has come with some once in a lifetime experiences… like just now while stationary on the runway at DCA, another plane just bumped into our wing.”

“Heading back to the gate, but thankfully everyone is ok,” LaLota added.

He said his colleague, Grace Meng, a New York Democrat, was handing out grapes to passengers on the plane.

She posted on X: “I’m grateful no one was hurt today.”

In addition to Meng and LaLota, congressman Gregory Meeks, a New York Democrat and congressman Josh Gottheimer, a New Jersey Democrat, confirmed they were on board the flight, too.

Two of those lawmakers said that New York congressmen Adriano Espaillat and Ritchie Torres, both Democrats, were also aboard that craft.

The Federal Aviation Administration said: “The wingtip of American Airlines Flight 5490 struck American Airlines Flight 4522 on a taxiway at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport around 12:45pm local time on Thursday, April 10.

“Flight 5490, a Bombardier CRJ 900, was headed to Charleston International Airport in South Carolina. Flight 4522, an Embraer E175, was headed to JFK International Airport in New York. The FAA will investigate.”

Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport said in a statement that there was no impact on flight operations, and both aircraft returned to gates with no injuries reported.

American Airlines said 76 customers were aboard Flight 5490 and 67 customers were on the other plane, and no injuries were reported.

“Safety is our top priority,” the airline said in an emailed statement, “and we apologize to our customers for their experience.”

“Both aircraft taxied to the terminal and have been taken out of service to be inspected by our maintenance teams,” the statement continued. “The damage was limited to a winglet on each aircraft.”

An investigation is still ongoing into January’s deadly crash involving an American Airlines flight from Wichita, Kansas, that was landing at Reagan National Airport when it collided with a Sikorsky H-60 Black Hawk helicopter.

The cause of that disaster remains unknown, but a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) recommended that some helicopter operations near the airport be banned.

An “unsecured” penguin in a cardboard box was the cause of a helicopter crash in South Africa, a report into the incident has found.

The penguin, which had been placed in the box and on the lap of a passenger, slid off and knocked the pilot’s controls just after take-off from Bird Island off the Eastern Cape on 19 January.

The South African Civil Aviation Authority said the impact sent the helicopter crashing to the ground. No-one on board, including the penguin, was hurt.

The authority said that “the lack of secure containment for the penguin” was responsible for creating the “dangerous situation”.

According to the report, released this week, the flight had been conducting an aerial survey of the island in Gqeberha, Eastern Cape province.

After completing the survey, the helicopter landed, where a specialist then requested the transport of one penguin back to Port Elizabeth.

The report did not say why they had picked up the penguin.

The aviation authority said the pilot conducted a “risk assessment” but omitted to include the transport of the penguin on board which “was not in accordance with the Civil Aviation Regulations (CAR) 2011”.

When the helicopter was about 15m (50 feet) above ground, the cardboard box slid off the lap of the specialist to the right and caused the cyclic pitch control lever to move to the far-right position causing the aircraft roll, the report determined.

Unable to recover, the main rotor blades then struck the ground and the helicopter ultimately crashed on its starboard side approximately 20m from the point of lift-off.

While the helicopter sustained substantial damage, both the pilot and passengers were uninjured and the penguin was unharmed.

The report said all situations should be subject to “established safety protocols” and compliance with aviation safety procedures.

It also said that a proper evaluation of the situation and potential hazards (such as cargo shifting) should have been conducted.

“The absence of a proper, secured crate meant that the penguin’s containment was not suitable for the flight conditions,” it said.