China has raised its tariffs on US products to 125% in the latest salvo of the trade dispute with Washington, just hours after Xi Jinping said there were “no winners in a tariff war”.

Xi made the comments during a meeting with the Spanish prime minister in which he invited the EU to work with China to resist “bullying”, part of an apparent campaign to shore up other trading partners.

The Chinese commerce ministry announced on Friday it was raising the 84% tariffs on all US imports to 125%, again saying that China was ready to “fight to the end”. The statement also suggested it may be Beijing’s last move in the tit-for-tat tariff rises as “at the current tariff level, there is no market acceptance for US goods exported to China”.

“If the US continues to impose tariffs on Chinese goods exported to the US, China will ignore it,” it said, flagging that there were other countermeasures to come.

Some markets continued to tumble on Friday, as the French president, Emmanuel Macron, described the US president’s 90-day tariff pause – which sets most tariffs at 10% until July – as “fragile”.

Asian indices followed Wall Street lower on Friday, with Japan’s Nikkei down nearly 5% and Hong Kong stocks heading towards the biggest weekly decline since 2008. Oil prices were also expected to drop for a second consecutive week.

Chinese officials have been canvassing other trading partners about how to deal with the US tariffs, after the country was excluded from Trump’s 90-day pause of the steepest global tariffs. Instead the US president made consecutive increases to duties on Chinese imports, which are now 145%.

On Friday, Xi welcomed Spain’s Pedro Sánchez, after also talking to counterparts in Saudi Arabia and South Africa. According to the official Chinese summary of the talks, Xi said “there will be no winners in a tariff war, and going against the world will isolate oneself”, in an apparent reference to the US.

“China and the EU should fulfil their international responsibilities, jointly maintain the trend of economic globalisation and the international trade environment, and jointly resist unilateral bullying, not only to safeguard their own legitimate rights and interests, but also to safeguard international fairness and justice, and to safeguard international rules and order,” the summary said the Chinese president told Sánchez.

Spain said Sánchez told Xi his country favoured a more balanced relationship between the EU and China based on negotiations to resolve differences and cooperation in areas of common interest.

Xi plans to travel to south-east Asia, including Vietnam and Cambodia, next week.

Macron wrote on X early on Friday that Trump’s partial tariff suspension, pausing new rates on various countries that would have risen as high as 50%, “sends out a signal and leaves the door open for talks. But this pause is a fragile one.”

He added: “This 90-day pause means 90 days of uncertainty for all our businesses, on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond.”

Battered financial markets were given a brief reprieve on Wednesday when Trump decided to pause duties on dozens of countries. However, his escalating trade dispute with China, the world’s second-largest economy, has continued to fuel fears of recession and further retaliation.

The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, tried to assuage the fears of sceptics by telling a cabinet meeting on Thursday that more than 75 countries wanted to start trade negotiations, and Trump had expressed hope of a deal with China.

But the uncertainty in the meantime extended some of the most volatile trading since the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The US’s S&P 500 index ended 3.5% lower on Thursday and was now down about 15% from its all-time peak in February. Some analysts believe stocks have further to fall owing to the uncertainty surrounding the US tariff policy.

Bessent shrugged off the renewed market sell-off on Thursday and predicted that striking deals with other countries would bring more certainty.

The US and Vietnam agreed to begin formal trade talks after Bessent spoke to the Vietnamese deputy prime minister, Ho Duc Phoc, the White House said.

The south-east Asian manufacturing hub is prepared to crack down on Chinese goods being shipped to the US via its territory in the hope of avoiding tariffs, Reuters reported on Friday.

Taiwan’s president said his government would also be among the first batch of trading partners to enter negotiations. Taiwan, listed for a 32% tariff, has offered zero tariffs as a basis for talks.

Japan’s prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, has set up a taskforce led by a close aide that hopes to visit Washington next week, according to local media.

While Trump suddenly paused his “reciprocal” tariffs on other countries hours after they came into effect this week, he did not include China, instead increasing duties on Chinese imports as punishment for Beijing’s initial move to retaliate.

Trump had imposed tariffs on Chinese goods of 145% since taking office, a White House official said.

Meanwhile, Trump told reporters at the White House he thought the US could make a deal with China, but reiterated his argument that Beijing had “really taken advantage” of the US for a long time.

“I’m sure that we’ll be able to get along very well,” the US president said, referring to Xi. “In a true sense, he’s been a friend of mine for a long period of time, and I think that we’ll end up working out something that’s very good for both countries.”

Xi and Trump are not known to have spoken since before Trump’s inauguration. Beijing has said it has no intention of backing down to what it terms as Trump’s “bullying” with tariffs.

“We will never sit idly by and watch while the legitimate rights and interests of the Chinese people are infringed, nor will we sit idly by as international economic and trade rules and the multilateral trading system are undermined,” the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Lin Jian, said on Thursday.

As well as retaliatory tariffs, Beijing has restricted imports of Hollywood films, and put 18 US companies on trade restriction lists.

The commerce ministry said China’s door was open to dialogue but this must be based on mutual respect.

The US tariff pause does not apply to duties paid by Canada and Mexico, whose goods are still subject to 25% fentanyl-related tariffs unless they comply with the US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement’s rules of origin.

With trade hostilities persisting among the top three US trade partners, Goldman Sachs estimates the probability of a recession at 45%.

Even with the rollback, the overall average import duty rate imposed by the US is the highest in more than a century, according to Yale University researchers.

It also did little to soothe business leaders’ worries about the fallout from Trump’s trade dispute and its chaotic implementation: soaring costs, falling orders and snarled supply chains.

One reprieve came, however, when the EU said it would pause its first counter-tariffs.

The EU will not rip up its tech rules in an attempt to reach a trade deal with Donald Trump, the bloc’s most senior official on digital policy has said.

Henna Virkkunen, the European Commission vice-president responsible for tech sovereignty, indicated the EU was not going to compromise on its digital rulebook to reach an agreement on trade with the US – a key demand of Trump administration officials.

“We are very committed to our rules when it comes to the digital world,” Virkkunen said in an interview with European newspapers, including the Guardian. “We want to make sure that our digital environment in the European Union … that it is fair and it’s safe and it’s also democratic.”

She gently pushed back at suggestions that EU digital regulations could be considered trade barriers, saying the same rules applied to all companies, whether European, American or Chinese. “We are not specially targeting certain companies, but we have this risk-based approach in all our rules.”

In recent days, Trump’s senior trade adviser, Peter Navarro, has claimed the EU was using “lawfare” against the US’s largest tech firms, in an FT article featuring a litany of complaints against supposed “non-tariff weapons”. The Meta chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has accused the EU of “institutionalising censorship”, while Trump has attacked European decisions to impose fines and pursue anti-trust investigations into the likes of Apple and Facebook.

Referring to the EU’s digital rules, Virkkunen said US tech firms often had greater obligations, because they were among the biggest companies on the market: “When you are a bigger player, then there are more obligations, because you are posing a bigger risk.”

She was speaking the morning after Trump announced a whiplash-inducing 90-day pause on many tariffs, but before the commission announced a matching freeze in its retaliation. The EU still faces 10% tariffs, as well as 25% duties on cars and metals entering the US.

Welcoming the US decision on “reciprocal” tariffs, she said: “We want to have a good trade agreement with the USA and we don’t want to have a trade war.”

While the commission has said that all retaliatory options remain on the table if trade talks fail, Virkkunen declined to “speculate” about possible EU actions against US tech companies. France has led calls to consider measures against US tech firms in response to tariffs on European goods. Virkkunen said “different options” for retaliation had been prepared in consultation with member states.

Virkkunen, a former Finnish government minister and MEP, took up her post at the commission last December, having been given a sprawling brief covering “tech sovereignty” as well as overseeing security and border control policies, and protecting European democracy from disinformation.

One of the most highly charged issues on her plate is overseeing investigations into big tech firms under the EU’s new digital rules. The commission is investigating firms including Alphabet, Apple and Meta under the Digital Markets Act, which is intended to ensure big tech does not crowd out smaller rivals in the marketplace. Separately, via the Digital Services Act, which is designed to counter online harms, it is running investigations into firms including X and Meta.

Risking a further falling-out with the US, in March the commission pushed ahead with enforcement action against Apple and Alphabet, the owner of Google, accusing them of breaking the DMA with anti-competitive behaviour.

Asked about reports that the commission could fine X more than $1bn (£770m), she said: “Our goal in these investigations and proceedings is not to impose big fines. Our goal is to make sure that all the companies are complying with our rules.”

Virkkunen, a member of the transnational European People’s party, stressed her wish to ensure Europe’s digital rules were not too cumbersome for small businesses, amid rising concern about Europe’s anaemic economic growth in comparison with the US and China, which are also far more advanced in artificial intelligence technologies. “We are lagging very much behind because 80% of our technology is coming outside of the European Union, so there’s a lot of work ahead of us,” she said.

This week, she outlined a strategy to create up to five AI gigafactories, sites equipped with vast supercomputers to test and develop AI models in the EU. But her openness to consider revising the EU’s landmark AI legislation has also rung alarm bells among consumer groups. She said: “We want to implement the AI Act in a very innovation-friendly manner, and we really want to support our SMEs and our AI developers to comply with the rules.”

The EU’s AI Act has sparked deep concerns from writers, musicians and other creatives, who say they have no protection for their copyright from big tech’s generative AI systems, which draw on droves of books, newspapers, songs and images to feed their databases. In a tacit acknowledgment that there could be a gap, Virkkunen said: “It looks that now further steps have to be taken here.”

She added: “I think it’s important that we find a good solution … [to] support our copyright holders and all the right-holders and the creative industry to give their content for AI training and for AI purposes. At the same time, they also have to get fair compensation for that. But I see that it’s also problematic if European content is not used for training AI.”

The commission, she said, was examining “how we could support different licensing models … to make sure that we have good balance here”.

Stock markets slid further on Friday amid growing fears of an escalating trade war between the world’s two biggest economies, as China announced it would increase its retaliatory tariffs on US goods to 125%.

The increase from 84% ups the ante to the same level as the US 125% “reciprocal” tariff on Beijing’s imports that came into force on Thursday, although the White House clarified later that day that its total levies on Chinese goods were now at least 145%, when a separate 20% fentanyl-related border tax was included.

Indexes reversed the relief rallies that had followed Trump’s announcement on Wednesday of a 90-day pause on “reciprocal” tariffs on most other countries, reverting to a baseline of 10%.

European markets had been gaining on Friday before Beijing’s latest tariff news but afterwards slid into the red. London’s FTSE 100 index slipped 0.4% on Friday morning, while in Paris the Cac 40 dropped by 1.3%. The German Dax slipped 1.1%, while the pan-European Stoxx Europe 600 index fell by 0.9%.

In Asia, stocks had already been falling before the announcement. Japan’s Nikkei 225 index ended the session down 3%, reversing the previous day’s 9% gain. Meanwhile, the South Korean Kospi index dropped 0.5%. However, Chinese share indices were resilient in the face of higher tariffs, with the Hang Seng rising by 1.1% and the Shanghai composite ticking up 0.5%.

Announcing its latest retaliation, Beijing’s finance ministry said that if Washington insisted on continuing to infringe upon China’s interests in a substantive way, the country would resolutely take countermeasures and fight to the end.

Xi Jinping has urged the EU to work with China to resist tariff “bullying”. The Chinese president told a meeting with the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, on Friday there were “no winners in a tariff war”.

US stocks closed down on Thursday after another day of losses, which accelerated after it became clear the total China tariff was larger than widely believed. The S&P 500 blue chip index dropped 3.5% and the technology-focused Nasdaq composite fell 4.3%.

Despite the market turmoil, the Trump administration has held firm. One of the president’s top trade advisers, Peter Navarro, dismissed Thursday’s sell-off, telling CNBC: “It’s just normal retracement after a big day. It’s no big deal.”

American government bonds have also been selling off heavily as investor confidence in the Trump administration wanes. The yield on the 30-year Treasury is now on track for its largest weekly rise since the 1980s, according to Deutsche Bank, currently at 4.84%. Meanwhile, the US dollar has also been weakening, falling 1% on Friday against a basket of currencies.

The former US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen has said the tariff policies could cost the average American household $4,000 a year. She told CNN: “This is the worst self-inflicted wound that I have ever seen an administration impose on a well-functioning economy.” Yellen added that Chinese tariffs could be especially damaging, and “no one knows where these policies are headed”.

However, Trump has told US reporters that he thought trade deals with some countries were “very close” and expressed optimism that China would eventually be open to negotiation.

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has offered his condolences to friends and relatives of a Spanish family who died in New York on Thursday after their sightseeing helicopter crashed in the Hudson River, killing all onboard including the pilot.

It emerged on Friday that the victims were Agustín Escobar, his wife, Mercè Camprubí, and their three children, who were 11, five and four. The identity of the pilot has not yet been made public.

The sightseeing helicopter broke apart in midair and crashed upside down into the Hudson between Manhattan and the New Jersey waterfront shortly after 3pm local time (2000 BST), leading to a huge response from emergency crews.

Videos posted on social media showed the aircraft mostly submerged, upside down in the water, and rescue vehicles crowding on to the streets on shore as emergency workers raced to save those onboard.

“We have had devastating news about the helicopter accident in the River Hudson,” Sánchez posted in a message on X on Friday. “Five Spaniards from the same family, three of them children, lost their lives along with the pilot. It’s an unimaginable tragedy. I share the pain of the victims’ loved ones in this heartbreaking moment.”

Spain’s transport minister, Óscar Puente, also paid tribute, saying: “Reading with horror that the victims of the awful helicopter accident in the US were Agustín Escobar and his family. I met him over the past year in his capacity at Siemens Spain. He was a charming, hard-working and talented person.”

The German industrial conglomerate Siemens later confirmed that Escobar worked for the company as head of rail infrastructure at its mobility division.

“We are deeply saddened by the tragic helicopter crash in which Agustín Escobar and his family lost their lives,” Siemens said in a statement.

A person briefed on the investigation, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Associated Press (AP) that Camprubí was a global manager at an energy technology company.

The New York mayor, Eric Adams, confirmed six people had been pronounced dead, including three children and three adults.

Speaking at a news conference on Thursday evening, Adams said his thoughts were with the crash victims and their families. An investigation into the cause of the accident was continuing, he said.

Jessica Tisch, the New York City police commissioner, said most of the passengers were already dead when they were removed from the water, but two passengers were taken to a nearby hospital, where they died soon after.

Tisch said the Bell 206 helicopter, operated by New York Helicopter Tours, took off from a downtown helicopter pad at about 3pm and flew north over the Hudson. It turned south when it reached the George Washington Bridge and crashed minutes later, hitting the water upside down and sinking near Lower Manhattan about 3.15pm, just off Hoboken, New Jersey.

Witness Bruce Wall told the AP he saw the helicopter “falling apart” in midair, with the tail and propeller coming off. The propeller was still spinning without the aircraft as it fell, he said.

Lesly Camacho, a hostess at a restaurant along the river in Hoboken, said she had seen the helicopter spinning uncontrollably before it slammed into the water.

A helicopter crashed into the Hudson River in New York on Thursday, killing all six people onboard, including the pilot and a family of Spanish tourists with three children.

The sightseeing helicopter broke apart in midair and crashed upside down into the Hudson River between Manhattan and the New Jersey waterfront shortly after 3pm ET, leading to a huge response from emergency crews.

Videos posted on social media showed the aircraft mostly submerged, upside down in the water, and rescue vehicles crowding on to the streets on shore as emergency workers raced to save those onboard.

At the scene of the crash, the emergency response boats could be seen circling in the water. A crane could also be seen on a floating platform in the river, presumably trying to raise the sunken helicopter. Meanwhile on shore, fire and police personnel stopped the public and press from reaching the end of a long concrete pier on the river from downtown Manhattan, as scuba teams emerged from the water.

The New York mayor, Eric Adams, confirmed six people had been pronounced dead, including three children and three adults.

Speaking at a news conference on Thursday evening, Adams said his thoughts were with the crash victims and their families. An investigation into the cause of the accident was ongoing, he said.

Three adults and three children were on board the Bell 206 helicopter that had left from downtown Skyport, Adams said. The victims were a pilot and a family believed to be visiting from Spain, he said.

Jessica Tisch, the NYPD commissioner, said most of the passengers were already dead when they were removed from the water, but two passengers were taken to a nearby hospital, where they died soon after.

The flight lasted less than 18 minutes. Radar data showed it flew north along the Manhattan skyline and then back south toward the Statue of Liberty.

Witness Bruce Wall told the Associated Press he saw the helicopter “falling apart” in midair, with the tail and propeller coming off. The propeller was still spinning without the aircraft as it fell, he said.

Lesly Camacho, a hostess at a restaurant along the river in Hoboken, New Jersey, told the AP she saw the helicopter spinning uncontrollably before it slammed into the water.

The rescue operations took place near a site close to the Manhattan waterfront, near the end of a long maintenance pier for one of the ventilation towers for the Holland tunnel, a busy under-river road tunnel connecting the city with New Jersey.

Over the years, there have been multiple crashes in the skies over Manhattan, which are routinely filled with both planes and helicopters, including private recreational aircraft and commercial and tourist flights.

Prior incidents include a collision in 2009 when a tour helicopter and a small private airplane collided over the Hudson River, killing nine people. In 2018, a sightseeing helicopter offering “open door” flights went down into the East River, killing five people. New York City banned open-door helicopter flights following the crash.

The spot where the helicopter crashed is less than three miles (4.8km) south of where US Airways Capt Chesley Sullenberger expertly landed the passenger plane he was piloting, on the water, with no lives lost, after the engines were put out in a bird strike after takeoff from LaGuardia airport. The rare successful emergency landing on water became known as the “miracle on the Hudson”.

The crash site is close to the southern end of the island of Manhattan, within sight of the Statue of Liberty and the One World Trade skyscraper at the site of the September 11 terrorist attack.

New Yorkers were jogging and walking along the sidewalk near the Hudson as normal on Thursday evening, overlooking the scene of the crash with emergency boats still visible across the water on the New Jersey side, blue lights flashing.

Software engineers and friends Mike Jones, 37, and Omar Mohamed, 21, said they were out for a walk during a break and they had heard the news of the crash.

“It seems that helicopters crash a lot. And I’m afraid of heights anyway so helicopters are a no-go for me,” Jones said.

Mohamed said: “There was just another helicopter crash, right?” recalling the helicopter crash in Washington DC at the end of January, when a military flight collided midair with a passenger plane coming in to land. All people aboard both flights were killed.

The head of the US military base in Greenland, a Danish territory coveted by Donald Trump, has been fired for criticising Washington’s agenda for the island.

Col Susannah Meyers, who had served as commander of the Pituffik space base since July, was removed amid reports she had distanced herself and the base from JD Vance’s criticism of Denmark and its oversight of the territory during the US vice-president’s visit to the base two weeks ago.

The US Space Force said in a statement on Thursday night: “Commanders are expected to adhere to the highest standards of conduct, especially as it relates to remaining nonpartisan in the performance of their duties.”

The statement did not expand further, but the US website military.com said Meyers sent an email to all personnel at Pituffik on 31 March “seemingly aimed at generating unity among the airmen and guardians, as well as the Canadians, Danes and Greenlanders who work there, following Vance’s appearance”.

During his 28 March visit to the base, Vance told a press conference: “Our message to Denmark is very simple: you have not done a good job by the people of Greenland. You have under-invested in the people of Greenland and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this incredible, beautiful land mass.”

In her email, relayed to military.com, Meyers wrote: “I do not presume to understand current politics, but what I do know is the concerns of the US administration discussed by Vice-president Vance on Friday are not reflective of Pituffik space base.”

The Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said on X: “Actions to undermine the chain of command or to subvert President Trump’s agenda will not be tolerated at the Department of Defense.”

Trump has insisted the US needs control of Greenland for national and international security and has refused to rule out the use of force to secure it.

The US Space Force said Meyers had been replaced with Col Shawn Lee.

An Iranian court has handed two Iranian film directors suspended jail terms over a film that angered authorities in its home country but was acclaimed in Europe and the US, rights groups said on Thursday.

Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha were convicted earlier this week by a revolutionary court for their film My Favourite Cake, the Human Rights Activist News Agency (HRANA) and Dadban legal monitor said in separate statements. The film, which competed at the 2024 Berlin film festival and won prizes in Europe and the US, shows the romantic awakening of a woman in Tehran who notably appears without the headscarf that is obligatory for women in Iran.

The pair were sentenced to 14 months in prison, suspended for five years, and a fine on charges of “spreading lies with the intention of disturbing public opinion”, Dadban said. In addition, they were sentenced to one year in prison, also suspended for five years, and all equipment ordered confiscated for the charge of “participating in the production of vulgar content”. Another fine was ordered on the charge of “showing a film without a screening licence”, it added.

The New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran commented on the verdict, saying: “Artists in Iran endure significant hardships, including increasing censorship, arbitrary detentions and the constant threat of legal repercussions for expressing dissent through their work.”

Even before their conviction, Moghaddam and Sanaeeha were banned from leaving Iran to attend the Berlin film festival and then promote the film when it was released in Europe. “We wanted to tell the story of the reality of our lives, which is about those forbidden things like singing, dancing, not wearing hijab at home, which no one does at home,” Moghaddam said earlier this year.

News of the verdict came as the Cannes film festival announced that the new movie by another leading director banned from leaving Iran, Jafar Panahi, would be screened at its 2025 edition. Another recent Iranian film, Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig, which explicitly deals with the 2022-23 protest movement, resulted in the director and several of its actors fleeing the country, and those who remained unable to leave and subject to prosecution.

Israel’s military is organising hiking tours for civilians in newly occupied Syrian territory during the Passover holiday, local media has reported.

The twice-daily tours in the contested Golan Heights will run for a week beginning this Sunday. Tickets sold out almost immediately.

Under a military escort in bulletproof buses, small groups will travel up to 2.5km into Syrian territory that was off limits until the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) seized the Golan buffer zone after the fall of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in December. Israel has occupied the Golan Heights since 1967 and now controls hundreds more square kilometres of Syrian land.

The itinerary includes the Syrian side of Mount Hermon, which overlooks Damascus, and Lebanon’s Shebaa Farms at the foot of the mountain. The Israeli-occupied strip of Lebanese land, reputedly the site of God’s covenant with Abraham, has been a flashpoint for violence between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah for decades.

Visitors will also be able to hike and swim in the Ruqqad river valley which flows into the Yarmouk on the border with Jordan, and see parts of the abandoned Ottoman Hejaz railway, which used to connect the empire’s capital in Istanbul to Haifa, Nablus and holy sites in present day Saudi Arabia.

The trips have been organised by the IDF’s 210th Division, the Golan regional council, the Keshet Yehonatan religious education centre, the environmentalist Golan Field School and the Israel nature and parks authority, the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported.

The tours are part of a wider initiative, “Returning to a Safer North”, after the end of last year’s Israel-Hezbollah war, which was part of the regional fallout ignited by Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel and the ensuing war in the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military said: “It’s important for us to restore heritage and tourism to the region and to tell the story of the battles fought during the war.”

Tourists sign up at their own risk and the trips may be cancelled at short notice if there are security issues. In response to questions from Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the IDF said that the tour was “inside Israel”, rather than Syria, although the visits take place in the Golan Heights demilitarised buffer zone, internationally recognised as Syrian territory.

The IDF began a heavy bombing campaign across Syria targeting the regime’s weapons stockpiles shortly after Assad fled the country, while ground troops advanced in violation of a 1974 agreement.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has demanded that forces belonging to Syria’s new Islamist-led transitional government stay away from the border area and that the IDF remain until an alternative arrangement can be found.

Given demand, organisers have said that they hope the security situation will permit additional tours to Syria after Passover.

Israel’s military is organising hiking tours for civilians in newly occupied Syrian territory during the Passover holiday, local media has reported.

The twice-daily tours in the contested Golan Heights will run for a week beginning this Sunday. Tickets sold out almost immediately.

Under a military escort in bulletproof buses, small groups will travel up to 2.5km into Syrian territory that was off limits until the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) seized the Golan buffer zone after the fall of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in December. Israel has occupied the Golan Heights since 1967 and now controls hundreds more square kilometres of Syrian land.

The itinerary includes the Syrian side of Mount Hermon, which overlooks Damascus, and Lebanon’s Shebaa Farms at the foot of the mountain. The Israeli-occupied strip of Lebanese land, reputedly the site of God’s covenant with Abraham, has been a flashpoint for violence between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah for decades.

Visitors will also be able to hike and swim in the Ruqqad river valley which flows into the Yarmouk on the border with Jordan, and see parts of the abandoned Ottoman Hejaz railway, which used to connect the empire’s capital in Istanbul to Haifa, Nablus and holy sites in present day Saudi Arabia.

The trips have been organised by the IDF’s 210th Division, the Golan regional council, the Keshet Yehonatan religious education centre, the environmentalist Golan Field School and the Israel nature and parks authority, the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported.

The tours are part of a wider initiative, “Returning to a Safer North”, after the end of last year’s Israel-Hezbollah war, which was part of the regional fallout ignited by Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel and the ensuing war in the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military said: “It’s important for us to restore heritage and tourism to the region and to tell the story of the battles fought during the war.”

Tourists sign up at their own risk and the trips may be cancelled at short notice if there are security issues. In response to questions from Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the IDF said that the tour was “inside Israel”, rather than Syria, although the visits take place in the Golan Heights demilitarised buffer zone, internationally recognised as Syrian territory.

The IDF began a heavy bombing campaign across Syria targeting the regime’s weapons stockpiles shortly after Assad fled the country, while ground troops advanced in violation of a 1974 agreement.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has demanded that forces belonging to Syria’s new Islamist-led transitional government stay away from the border area and that the IDF remain until an alternative arrangement can be found.

Given demand, organisers have said that they hope the security situation will permit additional tours to Syria after Passover.

Zimbabwe has started to make compensation payments to white former farm owners, 25 years after Robert Mugabe’s government began confiscating land.

The government paid $3.1m (£2.3m) to a “first batch” of 378 farms, the ministry of finance said in a statement on Wednesday, the first payout under a 2020 agreement to pay $3.5bn in compensation.

The remainder of the $311m due to this group of farmers will be paid in US dollar-denominated treasury bonds with two- to 10-year maturities and interest of 2%. That is much lower than the current yield on a two-year US treasury bond of about 3.8%.

Zimbabwe’s finance minister, Mthuli Ncube, said: “The payments will continue. We are very serious about this.”

Mugabe’s government seized more than 4,000 mostly white-owned farms, often violently, from about the year 2000 to redistribute to black people in what it claimed was restitution for the dispossession of British colonial rule.

However, Mugabe and his cronies took nearly 40% of the 14m hectares (about 35m acres) confiscated for themselves, according to a 2010 investigation by a local news outlet, ZimOnline. Agricultural production, which had accounted for 40% of exports, plunged and the economy collapsed, with hyperinflation reaching a staggering 500bn% in 2008.

Zimbabwe cannot borrow from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund as it has been in arrears since 2000 and 2001, respectively. Government debt was $21bn late last year, about half of which was arrears and penalties.

The compensation payments to the displaced farmers are one of the requirements of international lenders to start a debt restructuring process with Zimbabwe, including a new IMF programme.

Andrew Pascoe, who signed the 2020 compensation deal while head of the Commercial Farmers’ Union, confirmed the first payments had been received on 24 March and thanked Zimbabwe’s government, in comments included in the ministry of finance statement. He said: “We are extremely grateful.”

However, Tony Hawkins, a retired University of Zimbabwe economics professor, called the payments a “publicity stunt”, noting that the US could block an IMF programme. A US law “restricts US support for multilateral financing to Zimbabwe until Zimbabwe makes concrete governance and economic reforms”, according to the US state department.

Of using government bonds to pay farmers, Hawkins said: “We continue to accumulate arrears because we are unable to service our foreign debt, so we can’t really afford to take on new debt commitments … It’s derisory, the more you look at it.”

About 1,000 former farmers had signed up for compensation, said Harry Orphanides, one of Pascoe’s co-negotiators. He said: “Look, it’s not a perfect deal. But there was no other alternative.”

Prosecutors in Taiwan charged, for the first time, a Chinese ship captain with intentionally damaging undersea cables off the island in February, after a rise in sea cable malfunctions alarmed Taiwan officials amid tensions with China.

Prosecutors say the man was captain of the Chinese-crewed Hong Tai 58, registered in Togo, which Taiwanese authorities detained after suspecting the ship had dropped anchor near an undersea cable off southwestern Taiwan, allegedly damaging it.

The prosecutors’ office in the southern Taiwanese city of Tainan said they had charged the ship’s Chinese captain, whom they identified only by his family name, Wang, with being responsible for the alleged damage to the cable.

Wang has said he is innocent, but refused to provide details of the ship’s owner and “had a bad attitude”, the prosecutors alleged in a statement.

Seven other Chinese nationals detained at the same time will not be charged and will be transported to China, prosecutors said, adding that the case was the island’s first prosecution relating to damage to sea cables.

Reuters was not able to determine the ship’s ownership or immediately locate a lawyer representing the captain.

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. China has previously accused Taiwan of “manipulating” possible Chinese involvement in the case, saying it was casting aspersions before the facts were clear.

Taiwan has reported five cases of sea cable malfunctions this year, compared with three each in 2024 and 2023, according to its digital ministry.

Taiwan’s coastguard has in recent months stepped up efforts to protect its sea cables, including monitoring a “blacklist” of close to 100 China-linked ships registered to a country other than that of its owner near Taiwan, officials familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Taiwan said in January it suspected a China-linked ship of damaging an undersea cable off its northern coast. The shipowner denied the accusations.

Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory, has repeatedly complained about “grey zone” Chinese activities around the island, designed to pressure it without direct confrontation, such as balloon overflights and sand dredging.

Taipei was alarmed after another Chinese-linked ship was suspected of damaging a different cable this year, prompting the navy and other agencies to step up efforts to protect the undersea communication links, which are vital to the island’s connections to the rest of the world.

Taiwan, whose government rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims, has pointed to similarities between what it has experienced and damage to undersea cables in the Baltic Sea following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The ChatGPT developer OpenAI has countersued Elon Musk, accusing the billionaire of harassment and asking a US federal judge to stop him from “any further unlawful and unfair action” against the company.

OpenAI was co-founded by Musk and its chief executive, Sam Altman, in 2015. However, the two men have been at loggerheads for years over its direction as it transitions from a complex non-profit structure into a more traditional for-profit business.

Musk sued OpenAI over its restructuring plans about a year ago, accusing it of betraying its foundational mission by putting the pursuit of profit ahead of the benefit of humanity. He dropped the suit in June, but then filed a fresh one in August.

In February this year he led a consortium of investors in a surprise $97.4bn bid for the company. Altman quickly rejected the bid, writing on X: “no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.” Musk bought Twitter, since rebranded as X, in 2022 for $44bn.

In documents filed at a district court in California this week, OpenAI said: “Through press attacks, malicious campaigns broadcast to Musk’s more than 200 million followers on the social media platform he controls, a pretextual demand for corporate records, harassing legal claims, and a sham bid for OpenAI’s assets, Musk has tried every tool available to harm OpenAI.”

The company asked the judge to stop Musk from any further attacks, as well as “be held responsible for the damage he has already caused”. A jury trial is expected to begin in spring 2026.

Musk left OpenAI in 2018 and the world’s richest man started his own company called xAI. The bid for OpenAI this year was backed by xAI and several investment firms, including one run by Joe Lonsdale, who co-founded the spy technology company Palantir.

The Tesla boss has openly accused OpenAI of abandoning its original charitable mission by establishing a for-profit subsidiary to raise money from investors, such as Microsoft. OpenAI, which was founded as a non-profit with the aim of safely building futuristic AI that helped humanity, has argued the new model is necessary to develop the best AI models.

Last month OpenAI raised $40bn in a funding round from SoftBank and other investors that valued the company at $300bn. The company has said it plans to use the money to “push the frontiers of AI research even further” and develop its computer infrastructure to deliver more powerful tools for the estimated 500 million people who use ChatGPT every week.

OpenAI has had several corporate dramas since ChatGPT went viral in 2022. In 2023 the board sacked Altman over an alleged failure to be “candid in his communications”. He was reinstated less than a week later after many at the company threatened to resign unless he returned to his role.