“Watch the courts” was the whispered message a well-connected diplomat told me in Washington DC last month, amid the previous episode of US tariff chaos.

Most eyes were on the high-profile case in California from the Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom – that President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs were illegal.

In the event, it was a separate case at the International Trade Court filed by a dozen other states and some small businesses that have pulled the rug from underneath Trump’s signature policy.

It raises the real question about whether the wider so-called reciprocal tariffs due in July will ever come in to effect, whether the 10% universal tariff can stick, whether nations will bother to negotiate, whether Congress will come to the president’s rescue, and of course, the eventual reaction of the Supreme Court.

Much of this can be traced back to the highly unusual dynamic underpinning the Trump’s tariff actions.

The very sight of the president proclaiming sweeping tariff rates on a variety of countries, culminating in his now infamous Rose Garden moment with the blue board, is the foundational legal problem here.

Typically, indeed constitutionally, trade policy is the domain of the US Congress. The chairs of the Trade committees of the House and Senate (branches of the Ways and Means Committee) are typically very powerful positions.

President Trump bypassed all of that by proclaiming a variety of national emergencies. While he has some scope to act in actual emergencies, these cases contend that the sweeping use of these powers to announce permanent tariff changes was illegal and unconstitutional.

There is a fascinating assessment of the separation of powers in the US which includes reference to both former President Richard Nixon’s limited use of the same powers and the Federalist Papers of Hamilton and Madison.

In essence, the powers he has asserted to “regulate importation” are narrow in scope and do not stretch to unlimited imposition of tariffs, in particular, to remedy trade deficits.

Of course, the Trump administration rather undermined their own logic by also levying “reciprocal” tariffs on countries with which it ran a trade surplus, such as the UK.

Separately the court also found that the president’s basis for the fentanyl tariffs against Mexico, Canada, and China did not “deal with” their stated objective.

Trump’s claim that they “create leverage” to do deals is not a permissible rationale for use of the powers. This dismantles the entire notion of the “art of the deal” 4D chess manoeuvres designed to extract trade advantages.

This will now be dealt with by the Supreme Court. The case appears rather robust, and also emboldens California’s similar case.

It also totally undermines any attempt by the US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to negotiate deals with other countries.

The likes of Japan and the European Union were already holding back, after seeing the White House retreat in the face of tariff-related turbulence in US government borrowing rates.

US retailers were warning not just of tariff-related inflation, but of potential empty shelves. The row back on the China tariffs, purportedly fentanyl-trafficking enemy, means that actual G7 allies expect better treatment from the US.

And now its own courts deem the actions illegal. The White House is currently hemmed in by its own bond markets, retailers, big business, many individual states and now its courts on this policy.

While it hit back with an immediate appeal, some in the wider administration might well be privately toasting the judges.

Could the White House get Congress onside to pass these tariffs? There has to be a very big doubt about this. In any event, other countries can now return to traditional trade tactics designed to pressurise the self interest of key senators and congressmen and women, with impacts on their local industries, whether that is motorcycles, jeans, or bourbon.

Another option might be to switch to another legal basis, such as the section 232 powers underpinning the steel and automotive tariffs. This approach would alter the dynamics of the trade war away from sweeping country-specific ones, towards industry-specific tariffs instead.

In any event, the court has surfaced rather unarguable evidence of the economic harm caused to the US by its own tariffs.

For example Virginia-based educational manufacturer MicroKits says it will “be unable to pay its employees, will lose money and as a result may go out of business”. New York-based wine company VOS says it is paying the tariffs “upon arrival at the Port of NY” putting immediate strain on its cash flow. Terry Cycling has already paid $25,000 and projects a total of $250,000 this year.

The court concluded: “The government does not meaningfully contest the ‘economic logic’ tracing the retaliatory tariffs to the plaintiffs showing of downstream harm.”

Does the White House want a messy Congressional fight to pass these tariffs, with numerous examples of their real life impact?

For now, expect other negotiators around the world to put their feet up and wait, while the White House tries to disprove the illegality of the very basis of its global trade conflict.

The Iranian Embassy in India has said it is investigating the case of three Indian nationals who went missing in Tehran earlier this month.

The men, all of whom are from the northern state of Punjab, had a stopover in Iran on 1 May, and were on their way to Australia, where they were promised lucrative jobs by a local travel agent.

Their families allege that they were kidnapped upon their arrival by unknown men, who are now demanding a ransom of 5m rupees ($63,000; £47,000).

On Thursday, the Iranian Embassy said on X that it was keeping Indian authorities informed of all developments “within the judicial system” and warned about the dangers of taking illegal immigration routes.

“Given the nature of this incident, Indian citizens are strongly advised not to be deceived by the promises of unauthorised individuals or illegal Indian agencies offering travel to other countries,” it said.

The statement came a day after the Indian embassy in Iran said that it had “strongly taken up this matter with Iranian authorities” and requested that the missing Indians be “urgently traced and their safety ensured”.

Many Indians, particularly from Punjab, travel to developed countries in search of job opportunities and a better life.

Some fall victim to scams run by travel agents, who charge exorbitant fees and send them through illegal or unsafe routes, often without proper documentation.

Gurdeep Kaur recounted the events that led to her 23-year-old son Amritpal Singh going missing to BBC Punjabi.

The family had hired a travel agent in Hoshiarpur – where they live – to secure an Australian work permit for her son.

“Last month, the agent informed us that my son’s visa had been approved and asked for 1.8m rupees as payment,” she said.

“They told us they had booked a flight from Delhi to Australia on 26 April. But when my son went there, they told him that his documents were still not ready.”

The agent then told Amritpal that they had rebooked him on a flight for 29 April, but later claimed that even that ticket got cancelled.

On 1 May, the agent put Amritpal, along with the two other men, on a flight to Iran, describing it as a stopover en route to Australia, Ms Kaur said.

After landing, Amritpal called his mum to say that he had arrived safely and that a cab was on its way to take them to a hotel, before their next flight.

But an hour later, Ms Kaur said her son called again, this time to say that he had been kidnapped.

Before she could get any details, the call got cut abruptly and her son became unreachable.

Ms Kaur said that the family tried to contact the three agents in Punjab – they first gave them “vague responses” and then went missing. The next day, the family found that their homes and offices were locked.

Ms Kaur said they began receiving video calls from unknown men around the same time.

On the call, Ms Kaur alleged the kidnappers would show Amritpal and the two other men held hostage inside a room. They had injuries all over their body from being beaten up, she alleged.

At first, they demanded 20mn rupees but eventually reduced the amount, settling at 5.4m rupees, Ms Kaur said.

“But it has been more than 10 days days since we last heard from them,” said Gurdev Singh, Amritpal’s uncle. The family has not paid any ransom till now.

A police complaint has since been filed against the travel agents and an investigation is under way.

“The search for the three men is on. They are on the run, but we are conducting searches,” Gursahib Singh, an officer with Hoshiarpur police, told BBC Punjabi.

Meanwhile, around 150km (93 miles) away, in Dhuri village, the house of Husanpreet Singh, one of the other missing men, remains locked.

He lived there with his maternal grandmother, who is now busy going door-to-door to her relatives, asking them for help.

The Indian embassy in Tehran has said it was keeping the families informed of all developments.

India has recently intensified its crackdown on travel agents involved in illegal immigration, particularly after hundreds of undocumented Indians were deported from the US after President Donald Trump took office for a second term.

Images of these migrants in chains, disembarking from an American aircraft, had made headlines for weeks.

Airline passengers to Turkey will be fined if they stand up before the seatbelt sign turns off after landing, regulators have said.

The Turkish civil aviation authority said it imposed the order after receiving complaints from passengers. The rules came into effect earlier this month.

Turkish media reports say fines will be about about US$70 (£50), although no amount is mentioned in the authority’s guidance.

The authority warned that there was a “serious increase” in such incidents, with many complaints about passengers grabbing overhead baggage before the plane has been parked.

Turkey is a destination for tens of millions of tourists every year.

The aviation authority said commercial airlines must now issue an in-flight announcement and report those who do not follow orders.

Passengers must be told to keep their seatbelts locked, and refrain from standing and opening overhead lockers until the seatbelt sign is off.

Those who do not follow these rules must be reported to the authority, it says.

Turkish Airlines, the national carrier, has updated its landing announcement, according to Euronews.

“Passengers who do not comply with the rules will be reported to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation through a Disruptive Passenger Report, and an administrative fine will be imposed in accordance with the applicable legal regulations,” the airline says upon landing, according to the TV network.

The BBC has contacted the airline for comment.

Israeli ministers say 22 new Jewish settlements have been approved in the occupied West Bank – the biggest expansion in decades.

Several already exist as outposts, built without government authorisation, but will now be made legal under Israeli law. Others are completely new, according to Defence Minister Israel Katz and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

Settlements – which are widely seen as illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this – are one of the most contentious issues between Israel and the Palestinians.

Katz said the move “prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel”, while the Palestinian presidency called it a “dangerous escalation”.

The Israeli anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now called it “the most extensive move of its kind” in more than 30 years and warned that it would “dramatically reshape the West Bank and entrench the occupation even further”.

Israel has built about 160 settlements housing some 700,000 Jews since it occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem – land Palestinians want, along with Gaza, for their hoped-for future state – in the 1967 Middle East war. An estimated 3.3 million Palestinians live alongside them.

Successive Israeli governments have allowed settlements to grow. However, expansion has risen sharply since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power in late 2022 at the head of a right-wing, pro-settler coalition, as well as the start of the Gaza war, triggered by Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel.

On Thursday, Israel Katz and Bezalel Smotrich – an ultranationalist leader and settler who has control over planning in the West Bank – officially confirmed a decision that is believed to have been taken by the government two weeks ago.

A statement said they had approved 22 new settlements, the “renewal of settlement in northern Samaria [northern West Bank], and reinforcement of the eastern axis of the State of Israel”.

It did not include information about the exact location of the new settlements, but maps being circulated suggest they will be across the length and width of the West Bank.

Katz and Smotrich did highlight what they described as the “historic return” to Homesh and Sa-Nur, two settlements deep in the northern West Bank which were evacuated at the same time as Israel withdrew its troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005.

Two years ago, a group of settlers established a Jewish religious school and an unauthorised outpost at Homesh, which Peace Now said would be among 12 made legal under Israeli law.

Nine of the settlements would be completely new, according to the watchdog. They include Mount Ebal, just to the south of Homesh and near the city of Nablus, and Beit Horon North, west of Ramallah, where it said construction had already begun in recent days.

The last of the settlements, Nofei Prat, was currently officially considered a “neighbourhood” of another settlement near East Jerusalem, Kfar Adumim, and would now be recognised as independent, Peace Now added.

Katz said the decision was a “strategic move that prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel, and serves as a buffer against our enemies.”

“This is a Zionist, security, and national response – and a clear decision on the future of the country,” he added.

Smotrich called it a “once-in-a-generation decision” and declared: “Next step sovereignty!”

But a spokesperson for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas – who governs parts of the West Bank not under full Israeli control – called it a “dangerous escalation” and accused Israel of continuing to drag the region into a “cycle of violence and instability”.

“This extremist Israeli government is trying by all means to prevent the establishment of an independent Palestinian state,” Nabil Abu Rudeineh told Reuters news agency.

Lior Amihai, director of Peace Now, said: “The Israeli government no longer pretends otherwise: the annexation of the occupied territories and expansion of settlements is its central goal.”

Elisha Ben Kimon, an Israeli journalist with the popular Ynet news site who covers the West Bank and settlements, told the BBC’s Newshour programme that 70% to 80% of ministers wanted to declare the formal annexation of the West Bank.

“I think that Israel is a few steps from declaring this area as Israeli territory. They believe that this period will never be coming back, this is one opportunity that they don’t want to slip from their hands – that’s why they’re doing this now,” Mr Ben Kimon told the BBC’s Newshour programme.

Israel effectively annexed East Jerusalem in 1980, in a move not recognised by the vast majority of the international community.

This latest step is a blow to renewed efforts to revive momentum on a two-state solution to the decades-old Israel-Palestinian conflict – the internationally approved formula for peace that would see the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel – with a French-Saudi summit planned at the UN’s headquarters in New York next month.

Jordan’s foreign ministry condemned what it called a “flagrant violation of international law” that “undermines prospects for peace by entrenching the occupation”.

UK Foreign Office Minister Hamish Falconer said the move was “a deliberate obstacle to Palestinian statehood”.

Since taking office, the current Israeli government has decided to establish a total of 49 new settlements and begun the legalisation process for seven unauthorised outposts which will be recognised as “neighbourhoods” of existing settlements, according to Peace Now.

Last year, the UN’s top court issued an advisory opinion that said “Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful”. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) also said Israeli settlements “have been established and are being maintained in violation of international law”, and that Israel should “evacuate all settlers”.

Netanyahu said at the time that the court had made a “decision of lies” and insisted that “the Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land”.

A Chinese paraglider has survived being accidentally propelled 8,500m (27,800ft) into the sky above north-west China, state media report.

Peng Yujiang, 55, was testing new equipment at 3,000m above sea level, over the Qilian mountains, when a rare updraft or air current known as a “cloud suck” pulled him about 5,000m higher into a cloud formation.

Saturday’s events were filmed on a camera that was mounted on Mr Peng’s glider and the footage has gone viral after being posted on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok.

It showed Mr Peng holding on to the glider’s controls, with his face and much of his body covered in ice crystals.

“It was terrifying… Everything was white. I couldn’t see any direction. Without the compass, I wouldn’t have known which way I was going. I thought I was flying straight, but in reality, I was spinning,” he told China Media Group.

Mr Peng narrowly survived death as oxygen is thin at that altitude – slightly lower than the 8,849m peak of Mount Everest. Temperatures can also fall to -40C.

“I wanted to come down quickly, but I just couldn’t. I was lifted higher and higher until I was inside the cloud,” he said.

Mr Peng, who has been paragliding for four and a half years, said he might have lost consciousness during his descent.

He added that the most frightening part of his ordeal was trying to regain control of the glider as it spiralled in the air.

Chinese authorities are investigating the incident and Mr Peng has been suspended for six months because the flight was unauthorised, state-run Global Times reported.

Mr Peng had no intention to fly that day and was only testing the fit and comfort of his parachute on the ground, Global Times said.

However, strong winds lifted him off the ground and grew even stronger, until he encountered the updraft that shot him up into the clouds.

A South African woman convicted of kidnapping and trafficking her six-year-old daughter has been sentenced to life in prison, along with her two accomplices.

The jail terms for Racquel “Kelly” Smith, her boyfriend Jacquen Appollis and their friend Steveno van Rhyn come more than a year after Joshlin Smith mysteriously disappeared outside her home in Saldanha Bay, near Cape Town.

Despite a highly publicised search for the girl, who vanished in February 2024, she is yet to be found.

South African prosecutors say she was sold into slavery however this was not definitively proven during the trial.

It is believed that Smith, who was addicted to drugs, needed the money.

The sentencing follows an eight-week trial that captivated South Africa, with witnesses and prosecutors making a number of shocking allegations.

Judge Nathan Erasmus said he “drew no distinction” between the trio in handing down the sentences.

“On the human trafficking charge, you are sentenced to life imprisonment. On the kidnapping charge, you are sentenced to 10 years imprisonment,” he said to loud applause in the courtroom.

Judge Erasmus took over an hour to deliver the sentence and was measured as he gave a brief summary of the case and highlighted points that stood out during the trial.

He rebuked the trio, especially Van Rhyn and Smith, saying they showed no remorse for their actions.

“There is nothing that I can find that is redeeming or deserving of a lesser sentence,” he said.

He also spoke of the impact their conduct had on the community of Middelpos, where the girl lived, saying it had left residents “fractured”.

Smith, 35, and her accomplices showed no emotion as their sentences were read out in the community centre in Saldanha where the trial was held to allow residents to attend proceedings.

• Tears and heartbreak over tragic story of Joshlin Smith
• South Africa police target gang kidnapping women in shopping centres

Police said the search for the little girl would continue, even beyond South Africa’s borders.

“We will not rest until we find [out] what happened to Joshlin. We are continuing day and night looking for her,” Western Cape police commissioner Thembisile Patekile told local media.

The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) welcomed the sentence and lauded the work of its team in proving that Joshlin was “sold [and] delivered to the intended buyer” for the purpose of “exploitation, namely slavery or practices similar to slavery”.

During the trial, the identity of the “intended buyer” was never revealed.

The BBC asked the NPA for further details, however a spokesperson was unable to provide any.

Emotions were high ahead of the sentencing, with angry community members saying the trio should get a “harsh sentence because they deserve it”.

Ahead of sentencing, Joshlin’s grandmother, Amanda Smith-Daniels, once again pleaded with her daughter to “bring my [grand]child back or tell me where she is”.

“I don’t feel that any sentence they get will bring my grandchild back,” she told local broadcaster Newzroom Afrika.

Ms Smith-Daniels said that Joshlin’s disappearance had left her family “broken”.

She urged her daughter to stop blaming others for her misfortune as she “was the person that did the deed”.

During the trial, the court heard testimonies from more than 30 witnesses, who painted a picture of the young girl’s troubled life and subsequent disappearance.

Kelly Smith and her accomplices refused to testify or call any witnesses for their defence.

The most explosive came from Lourentia Lombaard, a friend and neighbour of Smith who turned state witness.

Ms Lombaard alleged that Smith told her she had done “something silly” and sold Joshlin to a traditional healer, known in South Africa as a “sangoma”.

The “person who [allegedly took] Joshlin wanted her for her eyes and skin”, Ms Lombaard told the court.

A local pastor testified that in 2023, he had heard Smith – a mother of three – talk of selling her children for 20,000 rand ($1,100; £850) each, though she had said she was willing to accept a lower figure of $275.

Joshlin’s teacher then alleged in court that Smith had told her during the search that her daughter was already “on a ship, inside a container, and they were on the way to West Africa”.

It was the testimonies of Ms Lombard and the clergyman that were key to securing a conviction.

During sentencing hearings, Smith was described as manipulative and someone who told “bald-faced lies”. A social worker appointed to compile a report on Smith and her accomplices, went so far as to say it would not be a “stretch to conclude that [Kelly] Smith is the mastermind behind the trafficking of her own daughter”.

The court also heard powerful statements from those who knew Joshlin about the devastating effect of her disappearance on the community.

• Joshlin Smith’s disappearance spreads fear in South Africa’s Saldhana Bay
• ‘The selfie that revealed I was a stolen baby’

A Russian book distributor has ordered bookshops to “return or destroy” works by the Pulitzer Prize-winner Jeffery Eugenides and the British bestseller Bridget Collins, among others, in the latest case of censorship targeting the country’s literary scene.

Trading House BMM sent a letter to shops this week, seen by the BBC, with a list of 37 titles that should immediately be removed from sale.

The list also included texts by Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, Japanese novelist Ryu Murakami, and a number of Russian writers.

The order comes amid growing Kremlin censorship since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which has targeted books featuring anti-war sentiment, LGBTQ themes, and criticism of Russia’s leadership.

The letter warned of “adverse consequences” if books such as Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides and Murakami’s Ecstasy were not pulled from shelves as there were suspicions they “do not comply with Russian laws,” without providing further details.

Booksellers should “immediately cease sales and return [the titles] or destroy the remaining copies, providing writing confirmation of destruction”, the message said.

The targeted books are an eclectic mix.

Bridget Collins’ book The Binding, about an apprentice bookbinder, features, as does An Oral History of Reggae by David Katz, along with Lisi Harrison’s romance The Dirty Book Club.

The letter was signed by BMM’s chief executive Anastasia Nikitanova, who hung up when the BBC approached her for comment and did not respond to further messages.

“We checked the list and we don’t have these books in stock now,” an employee of one of the shops that had received the letter told the BBC on condition of anonymity.

They continued: “If we did, we could have tried to understand what’s wrong with them. I have no idea why the publisher chose these books… it’s a sign of the moral panic that has overtaken the market.”

The newly banned books were released in Russia by the publishing houses Ripol Classic and Dom Istorii, which are affiliated with BMM.

Sergei Makarenkov, the head of Ripol Classic, said: “I think [the list] is most likely connected to the anti-LGBT law. This needs to be clarified with BMM… I can’t clearly explain to you what has happened here.”

“Such lists appear everywhere now, it’s become completely routine,” he added. Makarenkov said he would get back to the BBC when further details were available but at the time of publication had not responded to follow-up calls.

Russia banned the promotion of “non-traditional sexual orientations” to minors in 2013 but since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine has expanded the law to forbid “LGBT propaganda” being disseminated among people of any ages.

Moscow has also labelled what it calls the “international LGBT movement” an “extremist organisation,” despite no such official movement existing.

The BMM letter follows a high-profile case against the publishers behind the teen romance novel A Summer in the Red Scarf and other titles with LGBT themes.

A Summer in the Red Scarf tells the story of two teenage boys who fall for each other at a Soviet pioneer camp.

The backlash against the book prompted its two authors to leave Russia. And earlier this month, a Moscow court placed under house arrest managers from Popcorn Books and Individuum – which are part of Russia’s largest publishing group, Eksmo.

The victims of prolific French paedophile Joel Le Scouarnec have expressed their dismay that the former surgeon’s 20-year prison sentence does not include preventive detention – meaning he could be released from jail in the early 2030s.

The 74-year-old was found guilty on Tuesday of sexually abusing hundreds of people, most of them underage patients of his, over decades.

Over the course of the trial he had confessed to committing 111 rapes and 188 sexual assaults, and was sentenced to the maximum of 20 years in jail.

Prosecutors – who dubbed Le Scouarnec “a devil in a white coat” – had asked the court to take the extremely rare provision to hold him in a centre for treatment and supervision even after release, called preventive detention.

The judge rejected this demand, arguing Le Scouarnec’s age and his “desire to make amends” had been taken into account.

Le Scouarnec will have to serve two-thirds of his sentence before being eligible for parole.

But because he has already served seven years due to a previous conviction for the rape and sexual assault of four children, he may be eligible for parole by 2032.

His lawyer, Maxime Tessier, pointed out that saying Le Scouarnec could be released then was “inaccurate”, as parole is not tantamout a release.

Now, his victims – many of whom assiduously attended the three-month-long trial in Vannes, northern France – are lamenting the sentence.

“For a robbery you risk 30 years. But the punishment for hundreds of child rapes is lighter?” one victim told Le Monde.

The president of a child advocacy group, Solène Podevin Favre, said that she might have expected the verdict “to be less lenient” and to include a post-sentence preventive detention.

“It’s the maximum sentence, certainly,” she said. “But it’s the least we could have hoped for. Yet in six years, he could potentially be released. It’s staggering.”

Marie Grimaud, one of the lawyers representing the victims, told reporters that while she “intellectually” understood the verdict, “symbolically” she could not.

Another lawyer, Francesca Satta, said that she felt 20 years was too short a time given the number of victims in the case.

“It is time for the law to change so we can have more appropriate sentences,” she argued.

But in her judgement read out to the court, Judge Aude Burési said that, while the court had “heard perfectly the demands from the plaintiffs that Le Scouarnec should never be released from jail, it would be demagogic and fanciful to let them believe that would be possible”.

“In fact,” she added, “the rule of law does not allow for that to happen.”

One of Le Scouarnec’s victims, Amélie Lévêque, said the verdict had “shocked” her and that she would have liked preventive detention to be imposed. “How many victims would it take? A thousand?”

She argued that French law needed to change and allow for harsher sentences to take into account the serial nature of crimes.

Similar complaints were raised in the aftermath of the Pelicot trial last December, in which Dominique Pelicot was found guilty of drugging and raping his wife, Gisèle, and recruited dozens of men to abuse her over almost a decade.

Pelicot, too, was sentenced to 20 years – the maximum sentence for rape in French law – with the obligation to serve a minimum of two-thirds in jail.

His case, however, will have to be re-examined at the end of the prison sentence before the question of preventive detention can be explored.

In France, sentences are not served consecutively. Public prosecutor Stéphane Kellenberger noted last week that had Le Scouarnec been on trial in the US – where people serve one prison sentence after another – he may have faced a sentence of over 4,000 years.

But Cécile de Oliveira, one of the victims’ lawyers, praised the sentence, which she said had been “finely tailored” to Le Scouarnec’s “psychiatric condition”.

She agreed with the court’s decision not to impose preventive detention on the former surgeon, adding: “It needs to remain an entirely exceptional punishment.”

After the verdict was read out, victims, journalists and lawyers mingled outside the courthouse in Vannes. Many of the civil parties and their relatives, angered by the verdict, brought their frustration to the media.

“All that I ask for is that this man cannot offend again,” the mother of a victim told French outlets.

“If this kind of behaviour needs to entail a life sentence, so be it.”

The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) says that “hordes of hungry people” have broken into a food supply warehouse in central Gaza.

Two people are reported to have died and several others injured in the incident, the programme said, adding that it was still confirming details.

Footage showed thousands of people breaking into the Al-Ghafari warehouse in Deir Al-Balah and taking bags of flour and cartons of food as gunshots rang out. It was not immediately clear where the gunshots came from or who fired them.

In a statement, the WFP said humanitarian needs in Gaza had “spiralled out of control” after an almost three-month Israeli blockade that was eased last week.

The WFP said that food supplies had been pre-positioned at the warehouse for distribution.

The programme added: “Gaza needs an immediate scale-up of food assistance. This is the only way to reassure people that they will not starve.”

The WFP said it had “consistently warned of alarming and deteriorating conditions on the ground, and the risks imposed by limiting humanitarian aid to hungry people in desperate need of assistance”.

Israeli authorities said on Wednesday that 121 trucks belonging to the UN and the international community carrying humanitarian aid including flour and food were transferred into Gaza.

Israel began to allow a limited amount of aid into Gaza last week. However, UN Middle East envoy Sigrid Kaag told the UN Security Council this was “comparable to a lifeboat after the ship has sunk” when everyone in Gaza was facing the risk of famine.

A controversial US and Israeli-backed group – the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) – was also established as a private aid distribution system. It uses US security contractors and bypasses the UN, which said it was unworkable and unethical.

The US and Israeli governments say the GHF, which has set up four distribution centres in southern and central Gaza, is preventing aid from being stolen by Hamas, which the armed group denies doing.

Large numbers of hungry people living in tents along the coast of Gaza have been going to the GHF distribution centres for food.

The UN Humans Right Office said 47 people were injured on Tuesday after people overran one of the GHF distribution sites in the southern city of Rafah, a day after it began working there.

Another senior UN official told journalists on Wednesday that desperate crowds were looting cargo off of UN aid trucks.

Jonathan Whittall, the head of the UN’s humanitarian office for the occupied Palestinian territories, also said there was no evidence that Hamas was diverting aid coordinated through credible humanitarian channels.

He said the real theft of relief goods since the beginning of the war had been carried out by criminal gangs which the Israeli army “allowed to operate in proximity to the Kerem Shalom crossing point in Gaza”.

The UN has argued that a surge of aid like the one during the recent ceasefire between Israeli and Hamas would reduce the threat of looting by hungry people and allow it to make full use of its well-established network of distribution across the Gaza Strip.

Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, said the UN was behaving in a “mafia-like” way and accused it of threatening aid agencies working with the GHF.

The UN has said Israeli’s new aid distribution system in Gaza is “essentially engineered scarcity”, adding that it operates only in the south of the territory when most of the population is in the north.

Students around the world are anxious and in limbo, they say, as the Trump administration makes plans to temporarily halt US student visa appointments.

An official memo seen by BBC’s US partner CBS ordered a temporary pause in appointments as the state department prepares to increase social media vetting of applicants for student and foreign exchange visas.

It is part of a wide-ranging crackdown by US President Donald Trump on some of America’s most elite universities, which he sees as overly liberal.

For students, the changes have brought widespread uncertainty, with visa appointments at US embassies now unavailable and delays that could leave scholarships up in the air.

Some students told the BBC that the confusion has even left them wishing they had applied to schools outside the US.

“I already regret it,” said a 22-year-old master’s student from Shanghai, who did not wish to be named for fear of jeopardising their visa to study at the University of Pennsylvania.

The student said they feel lucky their application was approved, but that has not eased their uncertainty.

“Even if I study in the US, I may be chased back to China without getting my degree,” they said. “That’s so scary.”

Asked about the decision to pause all student visa appointments, state department spokesperson Tammy Bruce told reporters on Tuesday: “We take very seriously the process of vetting who it is that comes into the country, and we’re going to continue to do that.”

As part of his wider crackdown on higher education, Trump has moved to ban Harvard from enrolling international students, accusing the school of not doing enough to combat antisemitism on campus.

Harvard filed a lawsuit in response, and a judge has halted Trump’s ban for now, with a hearing on the matter scheduled for 29 May.

A student from Guangzhou City, who runs a consultancy group for Chinese students wishing to study in the US, said they are not sure how to advise applicants because the rules keep changing.

The student, who also wished not to be named, added that they think there will be fewer students who see the US as a viable education option.

More than 1.1 million international students from over 210 countries were enrolled in US colleges in the 2023-24 school year, according to Open Doors, an organisation that collects data on foreign students.

Universities often charge these international students higher tuition fees – a crucial part of their operating budgets.

For Ainul Hussein, 24, from India, the visa implications are both financial and personal.

Mr Hussein said he was excited to begin the next chapter of his life in New Jersey, enrolled in a master’s of science programme in management.

He received a I-20 document from the university – a crucial piece of paper that allows him to apply for a US student visa.

But recent processing delays left him “deeply worried”, he said, with appointments at consulates now either postponed or unavailable.

Foreign students who want to study in the US usually must schedule interviews at a US embassy in their home country before approval.

He said he may be forced to book flights to the US, still unsure of the situation. He also risks losing his scholarship if he has to defer his studies.

Students in the UK are being affected, too.

Oliver Cropley, a 27-year-old from Norwich, said he was due to study abroad for a year in Kansas, but that plan is now in jeopardy.

“Currently I’ve no student visa, despite forking out £300 on the application process,” Mr Cropley said.

News of the US pausing visa applications is “a huge disappointment”.

He, too, risks losing a scholarship if he is unable to complete his study abroad in the US, and may have to find last-minute accommodation and liaise with the university to make sure it does not delay him academically.

Alfred Williamson, from Wales, told Reuters he was excited to travel after his first year at Harvard, but couldn’t wait to get back. But now, he hasn’t heard about his visa.

It’s “dehumanising”, he told Reuters.

“We’re being used like pawns in the game that we have no control of, and we’re being caught in this crossfire between the White House and Harvard,” Mr Williamson told the news agency.

In the latest escalation of its feud with Harvard University, the Trump administration has targeted the school’s permission to enrol foreign students on visas.

The government’s initially revoked Harvard’s certification “effective immediately,” prompting a swift lawsuit from Harvard and a temporary restraining order from a federal court in Boston.

On Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security appeared to walk back its initial revocation, now telling Harvard it had “30 calendar days” to show it was complying with the agency’s visa programme requirements.

At a hearing that same morning, US District Court Judge Allison Burroughs indicated she would soon issue a broader injunction against the Trump administration while the case played out.

The legal battle, closely watched by other US universities and the thousands of foreigners who study there. Harvard University is the most prominent academic institution to face the Trump administration’s ire – and the most prominent so far to push back.

There are two main questions at play, lawyers say.

Do the government’s reasons for targeting Harvard’s participation in the student visa programme hold up under the law?

And, are those reasons legitimate, or just a pretext for punishing Harvard for constitutionally protected speech the administration dislikes?

While legal experts agree the Trump administration could lose if courts find it targeted Harvard for ideological reasons, the government has taken steps that could help it prevail – with broader, thorny implications.

Looming over the showdown is a bigger question: Can the US government dictate what universities can teach, who they can hire, and who can enrol?

“This could be the type of case that could, on a fast track-basis, flow from the district court to the First Circuit to the US Supreme Court,” said Aram Gavoor, an associate dean at George Washington University Law School and a former Department of Justice attorney.

America’s academic visas on which international students, researchers and faculty rely to study in the US is overseen by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, a subsidiary of the Department of Homeland Security.

To participate, universities must receive certification from DHS through the Student and Exchange Visitor Programme (SEVP). The government last week revoked Harvard’s SEVP certification, gutting its ability to host international students and researchers.

“In terms of the general authority of DHS, it’s quite strong. It’s a certifying agency for this programme and there’s a variety of bases on which decertification can take place,” Mr Gavoor said. Courts tend to be deferential to the agency, as well.

“There are certain limits to it, though,” he said.

The US Constitution’s First Amendment, which guarantees free speech for individuals as well as corporations and entities like Harvard, is a powerful protection – and one that Harvard invoked again and again in its lawsuit.

If judges determine DHS’ basis for withdrawing Harvard’s certification stems from ideological differences and violates the university’s free speech rights, the court could rule against the government.

“A lot will turn on whether the courts conclude whether the First Amendment is implicated here,” Mr Gavoor said.

References to Harvard’s alleged ideological leanings appear throughout the Trump administration’s letters and statements – possibly problematic for the White House in court, legal experts say.

An 11 April letter ordered the university to make significant changes to its operations, including bringing in a third party “to audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for viewpoint diversity.”

President Trump attacked Harvard on Truth Social for “hiring almost all woke, Radical Left, idiots and ‘birdbrains'”. A separate post called for the university to lose its tax-exempt status “if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness'”.

In her 22 May letter to Harvard announcement about student visa eligibility, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Harvard was “hostile to Jewish students, promotes pro-Hamas sympathies, and employs racist ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ policies.”

Harvard argues that the Trump administration’s actions are not about combatting antisemitism or keeping Americans safe.

Revoking visa certification is “the latest act by the government in clear retaliation for Harvard exercising its First Amendment rights to reject the government’s demands to control Harvard’s governance, curriculum, and the ‘ideology’ of its faculty and students,” the school says in its lawsuit. It also alleges the government violated Harvard’s right to due process and ignored proper procedures for taking action against it.

“The administration is making clear that they are going after Harvard on account of viewpoints it’s ascribing to Harvard students and faculty and the institution itself,” said Will Creeley, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression legal director.

“The smoking gun is very smoky indeed, it’s right out there,” he said.

Harvard must comply with federal non-discrimination laws that bar prejudice based on race, gender, national origin, or other protected classes, but “that doesn’t mean that the federal government can dictate acceptable pedagogy in Harvard’s classrooms,” he said.

Decades of legal precedent and a critical 1957 US Supreme Court decision underpin this concept, said Mr Creeley.

Despite Harvard’s argument, nuances could complicate its case.

The US historically screens prospective international students for viewpoints it deems unsafe, which could include allegedly supporting terror or totalitarian regimes. In the past, communist leanings were used to bar foreign academics from the US. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination against Jewish students.

Secretary Noem’s letter to Harvard in on 22 May invokes these concepts to justify pulling certification, meaning it could “read in a way where all that conduct is potentially unlawful” on the university’s part, Mr Gavoor said.

“The government could win here,” he said.

Even if a judge bans the visa policy, Trump may already have won by chilling international enrollment, said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, an immigration attorney representing Kilmar Abrego Garcia in a high-profile deportation case.

“It’s similar to self-deportation. They want people to self-unenrol,” he said.

At the White House on Wednesday, President Trump floated the idea of capping international students at 15% of Harvard’s student body.

“We have people [who] want to go to Harvard and other schools,” he said. “They can’t get in because we have foreign students there.”

A video clip of a laughing Joshlin Smith, who was six years old when she went missing more than a year ago in South Africa, left most people in the courtroom sobbing.

It was shown during a hearing in Saldanha Bay, near Cape Town, ahead of the life sentence given to Joshlin’s mother – a drug addict who is believed to have sold her for money.

Racquel Smith, also known as Kelly Smith, was convicted of kidnapping and trafficking her daughter earlier this month. The 35-year-old mother of three was convicted and sentenced along with her boyfriend Jacquen Appollis and their friend Steveno van Rhyn.

Even the court interpreter could not hold back her tears as she translated the victim impact statements into English.

A court official read out those statements first in Afrikaans, the language spoken by those in the impoverished Middelpos informal settlement of Saldanha Bay, where Joshlin had lived.

In their own words, Joshlin’s grandmother, the family friend who had wanted to adopt Joshlin and her teacher spoke of their pain and bewilderment about how she could have been sold by her mother.

One witness during the trial had alleged this was to a traditional healer, known in South Africa as a “sangoma”, who wanted Joshlin for “her eyes and skin”.

A local pastor also testified that he had once heard Smith talk of selling her children for 20,000 rand ($1,100; £850) each, but would have been willing to accept a lower figure of $275.

“How do you sleep [and] live with yourself?” a devastated Amanda Smith-Daniels, asked her daughter in her victim statement on Wednesday. She now looks after Smith’s oldest child and the youngest stays with her father.

Smith and her co-accused refused to take the stand during the eight-week trial that began in March and was held at a community centre in Saldanha to allow the wider community to attend proceedings.

But as Joshlin’s mother heard the statements on Wednesday and saw the video clip, she sobbed uncontrollably.

Joshlin’s teacher, Edna Maart, described the little girl as a quiet pupil who was “very tidy”.

She said she struggled with daily questions from Joshlin’s schoolmates about her whereabouts.

Determined not to forget her, she said the class listened to her favourite gospel song God Will Work It Out at the start of every school day. It was also played to a teary courtroom on Wednesday.

To this day no-one knows what has happened to Joshlin.

Her disappearance on 19 February 2024 caused shockwaves across the country. Bianca van Aswegen, a criminologist and national co-ordinator at Missing Children South Africa, likened it to the case of Madeleine McCann, a British girl who went missing in Portugal in 2007.

Madeleine was aged three when she vanished from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in the Algarve – and hers is one of the most high-profile, unsolved missing person cases in the world.

Ms Van Aswegen told the BBC that while the trio’s conviction in Joshlin’s case had given people a sense of relief, “the matter of fact is that nobody knows where Joshlin is and I think that’s the big question that South Africa is still asking”.

A picture of Joshlin’s troubled life emerged during the trial – and a better sense of her personality during this week’s hearings ahead of sentencing.

She was born in October 2017, to Smith and her former partner Jose Emke, who broke down on Wednesday and had to be carried out of the courtroom.

Their second child – she and her older brother, now 11, had both suffered from neglect, according to a social worker who testified during the trial.

Growing up, Kelly Smith had lived with her maternal grandmother and had struggled with substance abuse since she was 15 – often becoming abusive towards her and her children when she was high, social workers said.

A report prepared by a social worker for the sentencing hearing paints a stark picture of Smith’s drug addiction at the time of Joshlin’s birth.

Her grandmother had kicked Smith out of the family home because of her drug use and she had threatened to stab her own son at that time.

The judge noted that it took Smith five months to register Joshlin’s birth – by law this must be done within 30 days – and had lived intermittently at a shelter for abused women.

When she went into rehab later on, family friend Natasha Andrews stepped in to care for Joshlin – and she and her husband had wanted to adopt her.

“We could have provided for her better than her mother,” Ms Andrews said during the trial, but the plans fell apart in 2018 as the parents “wouldn’t agree” to it.

Despite this, Joshlin often visited the Andrews family for weekends and school holidays and would go on trips with them.

The clip shown in court on Wednesday of Joshlin laughing was from one of those holidays and formed part of Ms Andrews’ victim statement.

She shared this and other photos of Joshlin playing with her own daughter because “so many people… don’t know what Joshlin sounds like”, she said.

It was this and her description of her family’s pain that sparked the greatest outpouring of emotion in the courtroom.

Joshlin grew up in a corrugated iron structure located in Middelpos informal settlement with her mother, her mother’s partner, her brother and younger half-sister.

The social workers’ report described the shack as offering “little in the way of privacy due to its highly restrictive living space”.

Smith did odd jobs to support her family, including part-time domestic work for Kelly Zeegers, who lived with her family in a nearby neighbourhood and paid her with groceries instead of cash.

“This is to make sure that she and the children have a plate of food,” Ms Zeegers said during her testimony.

Some witnesses did describe Smith as a good mother; her sister told the court Joshlin was the spitting image of her mum when she was young.

The little that is known of what happened to Joshlin on the day she disappeared is thanks to Laurentia Lombaard, who turned state witness. She had been at the shack smoking drugs with Appollis and Van Rhyn at the time.

She explained that Joshlin, who had started school a few weeks before her disappearance, and her brother had stayed at home that day because they did not have clean uniforms.

The children had been mainly left in the care of Appollis as Smith was in and out during course of the day, occasionally returning to smoke.

It is not clear exactly how or when Joshlin went missing but the trial established it was some time during the afternoon – but the preoccupation of most of the adults meant the disappearance was only reported to the police at 21:00.

The social worker appointed to compile the report on the trio ahead of their sentencing described Smith as “manipulative” and someone who told “bald-faced lies”.

“It is therefore not a stretch to conclude that Smith is the mastermind behind the trafficking of her own daughter,” he said.

Ms Van Aswegen said Joshlin’s disappearance reflected a growing crisis in child trafficking.

“It is much more of a crisis than police stats actually show us due to the fact of many cases going unreported,” she told the BBC.

She said what was unusual in Joshlin’s case was that it had captured the whole nation.

“I have never really seen a case blow up like this in South Africa before [and] neither have we seen such a big search for a missing child. I think social media played a big role [and] we had political parties get involved in the case.”

According to South African news site IOL, 632 children were reported missing last year and 8,743 over the past 10 years.

Earlier this month, police spokesperson Athlenda Mathe said many children were eventually reunited with their families.

Ms Van Aswegen said this showed that one could never give up hope and the search for Joshlin would continue.

This hope was reflected most by the Andrews family during the sentencing hearing.

A poem written by Ms Andrews’ 14-year-old daughter Tayla was also read out in court. It described her pain of not knowing what had happened to Joshlin and her hope that she was safe.

“We just want to hug you again,” Ms Andrews’ said in her statement. “You are our flower, our baby and our green-eyed child.”

• Joshlin Smith: A six-year-old’s disappearance spreads fear in South Africa’s Saldhana Bay
• ‘The selfie that revealed I was a stolen baby’

Before the events of 3 December 2024, Lee Jae–myung’s path to South Korea’s presidency was littered with obstacles.

Ongoing legal cases, investigations for corruption and allegations of abusing power all looked set to derail the former opposition leader’s second presidential bid.

Then a constitutional crisis changed everything.

On that night, former president Yoon Suk Yeol’s abortive attempt to invoke martial law set in motion a series of events that appears to have cleared the path for Lee.

Now, as the Democratic Party candidate, he is the frontrunner to win South Korea’s election on 3 June.

It’s a dramatic reversal of fortunes for the 61-year-old, who at the time of Yoon’s martial law declaration stood convicted of making false statements during his last presidential campaign in 2022.

Those charges still cast a long shadow over Lee, and could yet threaten his years-long pursuit of the top job. But they are also just the latest in a string of controversies that have dogged him throughout his political career.

A rags-to-riches origin story combined with a bullish political style has made Lee into a divisive figure in South Korea.

“Lee Jae-myung’s life has been full of ups and downs, and he often takes actions that stir controversy,” Dr Lee Jun-han, professor of political science and international studies at Incheon National University, tells the BBC.

These actions typically include attempts at progressive reform – such as a pledge, made during his 2022 presidential campaign, to implement universal basic income scheme – which challenge the existing power structure and status quo in South Korea.

“Because of this, some people strongly support him, while others distrust or dislike him,” Dr Lee says. “He is a highly controversial and unconventional figure – very much an outsider who has made a name for himself in a way that doesn’t fit traditional Democratic Party norms.”

In a recent memoir, Lee described his childhood as “miserable”. Born in 1963 in a mountain village in Andong, Gyeongbuk Province, he was the fifth of five sons and two daughters, and – due to his family’s difficult circumstances – skipped middle school to illegally enter the workforce.

As a young factory worker, Lee suffered an industrial accident where his fingers got caught in a factory power belt, and at the age of 13 suffered a permanent injury to his arm after his wrist was crushed by a press machine.

Lee later applied for and was allowed to sit entrance exams for high school and university, passing in 1978 and 1980 respectively. He went on to study law with a full scholarship, and passed the Bar Examination in 1986.

In 1992, he married his wife Kim Hye-kyung, with whom he has two children.

He worked as a human rights lawyer for almost two decades before entering politics in 2005, joining the social-liberal Uri Party, a predecessor of the Democratic Party of Korea and the ruling party at the time.

While his poor upbringing has drawn scorn from members of South Korea’s upper class, Lee’s success in building his political career from the ground up has earned him support from working-class voters and those who feel disenfranchised by the political elite.

He was elected mayor of Seongnam in 2010, rolling out a series of free welfare policies during his tenure, and in 2018 became governor of the broader Gyeonggi Province.

Lee would go on to receive acclaim for his response to the Covid-19 pandemic, during which he clashed with the central government due to his insistence on providing universal relief grants for all residents of the province.

It was also during this time that Lee became the Democratic Party’s final presidential candidate for the first time in October 2021 – losing by 0.76 percentage points. Less than a year later, in August 2022, he was elected as the party’s leader.

From that point on, Dr Lee says, Lee dialled back on the controversial, fire-and-brimstone approach for which he had become notorious – opting instead to play it safe and keep a low profile.

“After [Lee’s] term as a governor, his reformist image faded somewhat as he focused more on his presidential ambitions,” he says. “Still, on certain issues – like addressing past wrongs [during the Japanese colonial era], welfare and corruption – he has built a loyal and passionate support base by taking a firm and uncompromising stance.”

This uncompromising attitude has its detractors, with many members and supporters of the ruling People Power Party (PPP) viewing Lee as aggressive and abrasive in his approach.

Lee’s political career has also been marred by a series of scandals – including a drink driving incident in 2004, disputes with relatives in the late 2010s and allegations of an extramarital affair that emerged in 2018.

While in other parts of the world voters have shown forgiveness and even support for controversial politicians, in South Korea – a country that is still relatively conservative in what it expects of public figures – such scandals have not typically played well.

In recent years, Lee’s political ambitions have been saddled with even more pressing controversies – including the ongoing legal cases that continue to hang over him, threatening to hamstring if not scuttle his chances at election.

One of these concerns a string of high-profile charges, including corruption, bribery and breach of trust, associated with a land development project in 2023.

Another, perhaps more critical legal battle concerns allegations that Lee made a knowingly false statement during a debate in the last presidential campaign.

During the debate, which aired on South Korean television in December 2021, Lee had denied personally knowing Kim Moon-ki, a key figure in a corruption-ridden land development scandal who had taken his own life just days earlier.

Prosecutors allege that claim was false, thus violating the Public Official Election Act, and in November 2024 Lee was convicted of the false statements charge and given a one-year suspended prison sentence.

Then, in March, an appeals court cleared him of the charges – only for that ruling to be overturned by South Korea’s Supreme Court. At the time of writing, the case is still awaiting a verdict.

Other threats against Lee’s future political ambitions posed a more fatal danger.

In January 2024, while answering questions from reporters outside the construction site of a planned airport in Busan, Lee was stabbed in the neck by a man who had approached him asking for an autograph.

The injury to Lee’s jugular vein, though requiring extensive surgery, was not critical – but he now campaigns behind bulletproof glass, wearing a bulletproof vest, surrounded by agents carrying ballistic briefcases.

The assailant, who had written an eight-page manifesto and wanted to ensure that Lee never became president, was later sentenced to 15 years in prison.

The attack raised concerns about deepening political polarisation in South Korea – embodied perhaps most publicly in the bitter rivalry between Lee and Yoon, and more privately in the country’s increasingly extreme online discourse.

In December 2023, just weeks before Lee was attacked, a survey sponsored by the newspaper Hankyoreh found that more than 50% of respondents said they felt South Korea’s political divide worsening.

Some claim that, as Democratic Party leader, Lee played a major role in fuelling the problem, frequently blocking motions by Yoon’s government and effectively rendering him a lame duck president.

Such constant stonewalling by the Democratic Party only exacerbated Yoon’s leadership struggles – which also included repeated impeachment attempts against administration officials and constant opposition to his budget.

Finally, as the pressure against him mounted, the former president took the drastic step of declaring martial law.

Yoon’s declaration of martial law on 3 December – made in a self-proclaimed bid to eliminate “anti-state forces” and North Korea sympathisers – served as the catalyst for Lee to emerge as a leading presidential candidate.

Within hours of the declaration, Lee appealed to the public via a livestream broadcast and urged them to assemble in protest outside the National Assembly building in central Seoul.

Thousands responded, clashing with police and blocking military units as opposition lawmakers rushed into the assembly building, clambering over fences and walls in a desperate attempt to block Yoon’s order.

Lee was among them, climbing over the fence to enter the National Assembly and helping to pass the resolution to lift martial law.

The Democratic Party later decided to impeach President Yoon – a decision that was unanimously upheld by South Korea’s Constitutional Court on 4 April, 2025.

It was then that Lee began the path to a full-fledged election bid, announcing his resignation as leader of the Democratic Party on 9 April ahead of his presidential run. In the Democratic Party presidential primary held on April 27, he was selected as the general candidate with overwhelming support.

The result of Yoon’s abortive martial law attempt was a political maelstrom from which South Korea is still reeling: a constitutional crisis that ended the former president’s career and left his PPP in tatters.

But of the small few who have managed to leverage that chaos to their advantage, none have benefitted more than Lee.

Now the controversial presidential candidate awaits the verdict on his political future – not only from the South Korean people, but also the courts.

If his guilty ruling is ultimately confirmed, Lee will likely lose his seat in the National Assembly. As a candidate, that would prevent him from running for president for a period of five years.

But with the courts having now approved Lee’s request to postpone his legal hearings until after the election, another possibility has emerged: that Lee, who remains the electoral favourite, could be convicted after winning the presidency.

And that could mean that South Korea, having just endured a months-long period of political turmoil, may not be done with its leadership dramas just yet.

Could India’s decades-long jungle insurgency finally be approaching its end?

Last week, the country’s most-wanted Maoist, Nambala Keshava Rao – popularly known as Basavaraju – was killed along with 26 others in a major security operation in the central state of Chhattisgarh. Home Minister Amit Shah called it “the most decisive strike” against the insurgency in three decades. One police officer also died in the encounter.

Basavaraju’s death marks more than a tactical victory – it signals a breach in the Maoists’ last line of defence in Bastar, the forested heartland where the group carved out its fiercest stronghold since the 1980s.

Maoists, also known as “Naxalites” after the 1967 uprising in Naxalbari village in West Bengal, have regrouped over the decades to carve out a “red corridor” across central and eastern India – stretching from Jharkhand in the east to Maharashtra in the west and spanning more than a third of the country’s districts. Former prime minister Manmohan Singh had described the insurgency as India’s “greatest internal security threat”.

The armed struggle for Communist rule has claimed nearly 12,000 lives since 2000, according to the South Asian Terrorism Portal. The rebels say they fight for the rights of indigenous tribes and the rural poor, citing decades of state neglect and land dispossession.

The Maoist movement – officially known as Left-Wing Extremism (LWE) – took formal shape in 2004 with the merger of key Marxist-Leninist groups into the CPI (Maoist). This party traces its ideological roots to a 1946 peasant uprising in the southern state of Telangana.

Now, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government pledging to end Maoism by March 2026, the battle-hardened rebellion stands at a crossroads: could this truly be the end – or just another pause in its long, bloody arc?

“There will be a lull. But Marxist-Leninist movements have transcended such challenges when the top leadership of the Naxalites were killed in the 70s and yet we are talking about Naxalism,” said N Venugopal, a journalist, social scientist and long-time observer of the movement, who is both a critic and sympathiser of the Maoists.

One of the senior-most officials in India’s home ministry who oversaw anti-Maoist operations, MA Ganapathy, holds a different view.

“At its core, the Maoist movement was an ideological struggle – but that ideology has lost traction, especially among the younger generation. Educated youth aren’t interested anymore,” says Mr Ganapathy.

“With Basavaraju neutralised, morale is low. They’re on their last leg.”

The federal home ministry’s latest report notes a 48% drop in violent incidents in Maoist-related violence – from 1,136 in 2013 to 594 in 2023 – and a 65% decline in related deaths, from 397 to 138.

However, it acknowledges a slight rise in security force casualties in 2023 compared to 2022, attributed to intensified operations in core Maoist areas.

The report says Chhattisgarh remained the worst-affected state in 2023, accounting for 63% of all Left-Wing Extremism (LWE) incidents and 66% of the related deaths.

Jharkhand followed, with 27% of the violence and 23% of the deaths. The remaining incidents were reported from Maharashtra, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar.

The collapse of Maoism in Chhattisgarh, a stronghold of the insurgency, offers key clues to the movement’s broader decline.

A decade ago, the state’s police were seen as weak, according to Mr Ganapathy.

“Today, precise state-led strikes, backed by central paramilitary forces, have changed the game. While paramilitary held the ground, state forces gathered intelligence and launched targeted operations. It was clear role delineation and coordination,” he said.

Mr Ganapathy adds that access to mobile phones, social media, roads and connectivity have made people more aware and less inclined to support an armed underground movement.

“People have become aspirational, mobile phones and social media have become widespread and people are exposed to the outside world. Maoists also cannot operate in hiding in remote jungles while being out of sync with new social realities.

“Without mass support, no insurgency can survive,” he says.

A former Maoist sympathiser, who did not want to be named, pointed to a deeper flaw behind the movement’s collapse: a political disconnect.

“They delivered real change – social justice in Telangana, uniting tribespeople in Chhattisgarh – but failed to forge it into a cohesive political force,” he said.

At the heart of the failure, he argued, was a dated revolutionary vision: building isolated “liberated zones” beyond the state’s reach and “a theory to strike the state through a protracted people’s war”.

“These pockets work only until the state pushes back. Then the zones collapse, and thousands die. It’s time to ask – can a revolution really be led from cut-off forestlands in today’s India?”

The CPI (Maoist)’s 2007 political document clings to a Mao-era strategy: of creating a “liberated zone” and “encircling the cities from the countryside.” But the sympathiser was blunt: “That doesn’t work anymore.”

The party still retains some popular support in a few isolated pockets, primarily in the tribal regions of eastern Maharashtra, southern Chhattisgarh and parts of Odisha and Jharkhand – but without a strong military base.

Ongoing operations by state forces have significantly weakened the Maoist military infrastructure in their strongholds in southern Chhattisgarh. Cadres and leaders are now being killed regularly, reflecting the rebels’ growing inability to defend themselves.

Mr Venugopal believes the strategy needs rethinking – not abandonment.

The underground struggle has its place, he said, but “the real challenge is blending it with electoral politics”.

In contrast, Mr Ganapathy sees little hope for the Maoists to mount a meaningful fightback in the near future and argues that the time has come for a different approach – dialogue.

“It would be wise for them to go for talks now and perhaps unconditionally or even lay down the conditions and let the government consider them. This is the time to approach the government instead of unnecessarily sacrificing their own cadres, without a purpose,” he said.

Maoists enjoy support in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana from mainstream political parties. In Telangana, both the ruling Congress and the main opposition Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) have backed calls for a ceasefire, along with 10 smaller Left parties – an effort widely seen as aimed at protecting the group’s remaining leaders and cadres.

The Maoist movement, rooted in past struggles against caste oppression, still carries social legitimacy in parts of these states. Civil society activists have also joined the push for a truce.

“We, along with other civil rights groups, demanded a two-step process – an immediate ceasefire followed by peace talks,” said Ranjit Sur, general secretary of the Kolkata-based group Association for Protection of Democratic Rights.

Maoist-affected states remain resilient strongholds in part because they are rich in minerals – making them sites of intense resource battles. Mr Venugopal believes this is key to the CPI (Maoist’s) enduring presence.

Chhattisgarh, for instance, is India’s sole producer of tin concentrates and moulding sand, and a leading source of coal, dolomite, bauxite and high-grade iron ore, according to the ministry of mines.

It accounts for 36% of the country’s tin, 20% iron ore, 18% coal, 11% dolomite and 4% of diamond and marble reserves. Yet, despite strong interest, mining companies – both global and national – have long struggled to access these resources.

“Multinational companies couldn’t enter because the Maoist movement, built on the slogan ‘Jal, Jangal, Jameen (Water, Forest, Land),’ asserted that forests belong to tribespeople – not corporations,” Mr Venugopal said.

But with the Maoists now weakened, at least four Chhattisgarh mines are set to go to “preferred bidders” after successful auctions in May, according to an official notification.

Mr Venugopal believes that the resistance won’t die with the death of Maoist leaders.

“Leaders may fall, but the anger remains. Wherever injustice exists, there will be movements. We may not call them Maoism anymore – but they’ll be there.”

France’s National Assembly has voted to abolish low-emission zones, a key measure introduced during President Emmanuel Macron’s first term to reduce city pollution.

So-called ZFEs () have been criticised for hitting those who cannot afford less-polluting vehicles the hardest.

A handful of MPs from Macron’s party joined opposition parties from the right and far right in voting 98-51 to scrap the zones, which have gradually been extended across French cities since 2019.

The motion was put forward by Pierre Meurin of the far-right National Rally, and backed by some motoring organisations.

But it was a personal victory for writer Alexandre Jardin who set up a movement called (Beggars)arguing that “ecology has turned into a sport for the rich”.

“Everyone played their part in the vote. The MPs voted either for the end of this nightmare, or they abstained,” he told Le Figaro newspaper.

“They were afraid of going back to their constituencies if they had voted against the abolition of the ZFEs.”

The low-emission zones began with 15 of France’s most polluted cities in 2019 and by the start of this year had been extended to every urban area with a population of more than 150,000, with a ban on cars registered before 1997.

Those produced after 1997 need a round “Crit’Air” sticker to drive in low-emission zones, and there are six categories that correspond to various types of vehicle.

The biggest restrictions have been applied in the most polluted cities, Paris and Lyon, as well as Montpellier and Grenoble.

They have turned into something of a lightning rod for Macron’s opponents.

Marine Le Pen condemned the ZFEs as “no-rights zones” during her presidential campaign for National Rally in 2022, and her Communist counterpart warned of a “social bomb”.

The head of the right-wing Republicans in the Assembly, Laurent Wauquiez, talked of “freeing the French from stifling, punitive ecology”, and on the far left, Clémence Guetté said green policies should not be imposed “on the backs of the working classes”.

The government tried to head off Wednesday night’s revolt by watering down the restrictions, but also preserving the zones in Paris and Lyon. This amendment was defeated by a large margin.

Agnès Pannier-Runacher, the minister for green transition, told MPs that “air pollution is behind almost 40,000 premature deaths a year… and the low-emission zones have helped bring down [that number]”.

The Greens and Socialists also voted to maintain the zones.

Green Senator Anne Souyris told BFMTV that “killing [the ZFEs] also means killing hundreds of thousands of people” and Socialist MP Gérard Leseul said the vote sent a negative signal as it did not address the reduction that had to be made to levels of air pollution.

The abolition is expected to go through the upper house, France’s Senate, but it still needs to be approved in a broader bill in the lower house in June and will have to be approved by France’s Constitutional Council, which is not guaranteed.

Australian actress and comedian Magda Szubanski has been diagnosed with a rare and aggressive cancer.

Szubanski is best known for her iconic role as Sharon Strzelecki in the Australian sitcom Kath & Kim, and for her film roles in Babe and Happy Feet.

In a video posted to social media, the 64-year-old said she had begun treatment to fight stage four Mantle Cell Lymphoma, a “fast-moving” form of blood cancer.

Calling the news “confronting”, Szubanski said she was receiving “world-class care” in Melbourne.

“I won’t sugar-coat it: it’s rough. But I’m hopeful,” she said.

“I’m being lovingly cared for by friends and family, my medical team is brilliant, and I’ve never felt more held by the people around me.”

Kylie Minogue was among the stars offering their support on social media.

“Sending all love,” the Australian singer replied on Instagram, along with heart emojis.

Actor Richard E Grant also sent a string of hearts and wrote: “WE ALL LOVE YOU SOOOOOO MUCH Mags.”

Jurassic Park star Sam Neill, who was diagnosed with a rare type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2022, wrote to his Ride Like A Girl co-star: “Right there with you darling xx.”

Australian actress Toni Collette added: “Sending huge, healing love and hugs to you, dear Magda. You are supported and held in all our hearts.”

Szubanski said she was undergoing Nordic protocol treatment, a regimen which combines chemotherapy and immunotherapy to treat Mantle Cell Lymphoma.

The cancer was only discovered incidentally after she requested blood tests after feeling unwell for “ages”.

“So the take away is – get tested and listen to your body!” she said.

Szubanksi rose to fame playing the netball-loving Strzelecki in the early 2000s, and has been a stalwart of the comedy scene in Australia since.

She was also a prominent advocate for the legalisation of same-sex marriage in Australia.

Motown legend Smokey Robinson has filed a $500m (£370m) defamation lawsuit against four former housekeepers who have accused the singer of sexual assault.

The legal case filed by the star and his wife Frances on Wednesday in California accused the women of fabricating the sexual assault allegations as part of an “extortionate” lawsuit.

The Robinsons say the alleged victims, who filed their case anonomously, went on family holidays with the couple and celebrated holidays together.

The singer, who is now also under criminal investigation in Los Angeles over accusations of sexual assault, has denied all the allegations, and his lawyer said those behind the accusations were after his money.

Mr Robinson’s lawyers also filed a motion to dismiss the women’s lawsuit, arguing they should not have been granted anonymity.

“The Robinsons did not abuse, harm, or take advantage of plaintiffs; they treated plaintiffs with the utmost kindness and generosity,” the lawsuit states.

The women filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court on 6 May under the pseudonyms Jane Doe 1, 2, 3 and 4.

In the 27-page legal action, they alleged several incidents that they said dated back to 2006, and accused Mr Robinson of pressuring them into sex.

All four women, who are of Hispanic descent, said they had not come forward until now because they feared losing their livelihoods, familial reprisal or embarrassment. Some were concerned the allegations could affect their immigration status.

They are seeking at least $50m (£38m) in damages and a jury trial.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department then opened its investigation, which the 85-year-old singer said at the time he welcomed “because exposure to the truth is a powerful thing”.

Mr Robinson was Motown’s first hitmaker, writing number one records like Mary Wells’ My Guy and The Temptations’ My Girl.

He was both a talent scout for the record label and one of its most prominent recording artists in his own right, known for songs like Tracks of My Tears, Shop Around and Tears of a Clown.

He has spots in both the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and claims to have credits on more than 4,000 songs.

US President Donald Trump has appeared to set a two-week deadline for Vladimir Putin, threatening a different response if the Russian counterpart was still stringing him along.

As the Kremlin escalated its attacks on Ukraine, Trump was asked in the Oval Office on Wednesday if he thought Putin wanted to end the war.

“I can’t tell you that, but I’ll let you know in about two weeks,” Trump told reporters, the latest amid a string of critical public remarks made by Trump about Putin.

Since Sunday, Trump has written multiple posts on social media saying that Putin has gone “absolutely crazy” and is “playing with fire” after Russia intensified its attacks on Ukraine.

The bombardments by Russia are said to have been some of the largest and deadliest attacks since the start of the war, now in its fourth year.

Russian strikes in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, killed at least 13 people and injured dozens more, including children, over the weekend.

And by Wednesday, the attacks had shown no signs of slowing down.

In Trump’s remarks about the escalation of violence and whether he thinks Putin is serious about ending the war, Trump said: “I’ll let you know in about two weeks.

“Within two weeks. We’re gonna find out whether or not (Putin is) tapping us along or not.

“And if he is, we’ll respond a little bit differently.”

The comments are a sign of Trump’s growing frustration, as the White House’s repeated efforts to negotiate a deal between Russia and Ukraine appear ever more futile.

This includes a recent two-hour phone call between Trump and Putin, after which the US president said the discussions went “very well”.

Putin walked away from the call saying he was ready to work with Ukraine on a “memorandum on a possible future peace agreement”.

That call was one week before Russia launched hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles towards Ukraine’s capital, according to Ukraine’s air force.

And a memorandum has yet to be produced by Russia.

So far, Trump’s threats have not appeared to concern Moscow sufficiently for it to accede to his demands. Trump has not delivered on previous such threats.

Since taking office, Trump has only taken action against Ukraine, as Washington sought to steer the countries to Trump’s demand for a truce.

This included an eight-day suspension of US military assistance and intelligence sharing with Kyiv in March.

Meanwhile the US administration has not publicly demanded any significant concessions from Russia.

The White House rejects accusations of appeasing Moscow or failing to enforce its will, pointing out that all the Biden-era sanctions remain in force against Russia.

But so far its mediation approach appears to have made the Kremlin more, not less, empowered.

After the latest attacks, Trump wrote on Truth Social that “something has happened” to Putin, which the Kremlin said were comments made “connected to an emotional overload”.

Russia’s attacks on Ukraine continued in the days afterwards. Trump then escalated his criticism. On Tuesday, he said Putin was “playing with fire” and that “lots of bad things” would have happened to Russia if it were not for Trump’s involvement.

A Kremlin aid responded to the latest Trump Truth Social post by saying: “We have come to the conclusion that Trump is not sufficiently informed about what is really happening.”

Putin aide Yury Ushakov told Russian state TV channel Russia-1 that Trump must be unaware of “the increasingly frequent massive terrorist attacks Ukraine is carrying out against peaceful Russian cities.”

On Wednesday, Germany’s new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, told Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky that Berlin will help Kyiv produce long-range missiles to defend itself from Russian attack.

The Kremlin has warned that any decision to end range restrictions on the missiles that Ukraine can use would be a dangerous change in policy that would harm efforts to reach a political deal.

In the face of Russia’s recalcitrance, Trump has frequently softened his demands, shifting the emphasis from his original call for an immediate 30-day ceasefire, to which only Ukraine agreed, to more recently demanding a summit with Putin to get what he says would be a breakthrough.

Putin and his foreign minister Sergei Lavrov have upped their demands from earlier positions since the US restored contacts with the Russians in February.

These have included a demand that Ukraine cede parts of its own country not even occupied by Russia and that the US recognises Crimea as a formal part of Russia.

Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Moscow, calls this a “poison pill” introduced by Russia: Creating conditions Kyiv could never agree to in order to shift blame onto Ukraine in Trump’s eyes.

The war has claimed tens of thousands of lives and left much of Ukraine’s east and south in ruins. Moscow controls roughly one-fifth of the country’s territory, including Crimea, which it annexed in 2014.

Zelensky has accused Moscow of delaying the peace process and said they were yet to deliver a promised memorandum of peace terms following talks in Istanbul. Peskov insisted the document was in its “final stages.”

A nine-year-old was the youngest victim injured when a car was driven into crowds at Liverpool’s victory parade, police said, as they continue to question a suspect.

Merseyside Police confirmed the age of the victims hurt in the incident on Water Street on Monday ranged from nine to 78.

The force has until Thursday evening to question a 53-year-old man, from West Derby, Liverpool, who is in custody after he was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder, dangerous driving and drug driving.

On Wednesday, police said seven people remained in hospital in a stable condition, while 79 people in total had been injured when the car crashed into Liverpool fans.

The car had also struck the pram of a baby boy who was being pushed by his parents, but the child was not hurt, despite the pram spinning metres down the street after it was hit.

The drug the 53-year-old was suspected of taking has not been revealed by police.

A force spokesman said: “We wouldn’t go into this detail at this stage of the investigation.”

Police believe the car, which struck pedestrians, followed an ambulance attending to someone suffering a heart attack after a road block was temporarily lifted.

A force spokesman said there was a partial closure in place on Dale Street – which leads into Water Street – between North John Street and Exchange Street.

In the aftermath of the incident, people from across the city came together to offer support to those stranded in the aftermath.

• What we know about the Liverpool FC parade incident
• ‘Driver looked emotional and agitated’ – Liverpool witnesses share stories
• How Liverpool united after car ploughed into crowd

John and Kerri Davies, owners of J&K Travel, immediately headed to the scene with minibuses to offer transport, while Liverpool university student Oli Fountain offered his own flat as a place for those “stuck in town to crash on”.

An appeal for funds to help those affected has raised more than £30,000, including £10,000 from ex-Liverpool centreback Jamie Carragher.

Rae Brooke, from the Community Foundation for Merseyside, a partnership with local authority and voluntary services which set up the fund, said people wanted to do something to help.

She said “We know just how generous people are in the Liverpool area”.

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An animal sanctuary has announced one of its rare snow leopards has given birth to a cub after months of dedicated work.

The cub, nicknamed Little Lady, was born at The Big Cat Sanctuary in Smarden, Kent, on 10 May.

Her successful birth follows months of work by primary trainer Simon Jackaman, who built the trust necessary for mother Laila to voluntarily participate in ground-breaking ultrasound sessions.

Celebrity chef and charity ambassador Paul Hollywood said: “Laila has had a special place in my heart for many years and to see her become a mum for the fourth time is truly heartwarming.”

Little Lady weighed 630g (1.4lb) at her first health check when she was five days old.

She is the second female snow leopard to be born at the centre, after her sister Zaya in 2023.

Mother Laila has had three previous litters with breeding partner Yarko as part of the sanctuary’s breeding programme.

Snow leopards are listed as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature red list, with an estimated 2,700 to 3,300 mature adults remaining in the wild.

They are predicted to lose 30% of their habitat because of climate change in the next 50 to 100 years and they also face threats from poaching and the illegal wildlife trade.

“This birth is a testament to our commitment to the participation in the endangered species breeding programme and the conservation of this vulnerable species,” said Cam Whitnall, managing director of The Big Cat Sanctuary.

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The number of vehicles manufactured in the UK fell sharply last month, as US tariffs and the timing of Easter hit production.

The 59,203 vehicles made was the lowest April output for more than 70 years, with the exception of 2020, when production effectively stopped during the Covid lockdown.

The Society for Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said a wider change in the industry as it shifts from petrol cars to electric vehicles (EVs) had also temporarily reduced output.

However, new trade deals with the US, EU and India may help boost upcoming production, the industry group said.

The April figure was 16% lower than the same month last year, and a quarter lower than March, when numbers were likely to have been boosted by manufacturers shipping more cars to the US before President Trump’s 25% tariff on steel, aluminium, and cars kicked in.

On Wednesday, a US court blocked many of Trump’s tariffs, but the ruling does not apply to the tariff on steel, aluminium, and cars.

British car maker Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is paying 27.5% tariffs on everything it ships to the US, which it said is costing it “a huge amount of money”.

The firm sends cars from its UK business to its US business – meaning it pays both export and import taxes on any cars it sends across the Atlantic.

The company also said it is frustrated that the new deal agreed in early May between the UK and US to reduce tariffs on cars to 10% up to a quota of 100,000 vehicles is taking so long to come into effect.

The fact that Easter fell in April this year, which meant there were fewer working days, was another reason car making fell, the SMMT said.

The lowest April output before that – outside the pandemic – was back in 1952, when 53,517 vehicles were produced.

Car production for exports fells by 10.1%, said the SMMT, driven by falls in demand from the UK’s biggest export markets the US and EU.

The group said the total number of vehicles manufactured in the UK for the first four months of the year was the lowest since 2009.

Nathan Coe, chief executive of online car seller Autotrader, said those exporting to the US have taken a bigger hit than the UK’s domestic market, which he says remains buoyant.

“If you look at the UK market itself, actually, there’s been more new cars sold, more used cars sold. But if you look at manufacturing itself, because of those export impacts, those numbers are down,” he said.

He added the UK could be seen as an attractive market for foreign automakers, as it has now become expensive to sell cars in the US.

The SMMT’s figures show car production for the UK market was down by 3.3% in April compared to a year ago.

Autotrader’s share price sank 12% early on Thursday as it reported a 5% bump in sales but warned of economics “uncertainties”.

The downward trend in production is similar in other countries, said Prof Peter Wells, director of the Centre for Automotive Industry Research at Cardiff University.

“There are concerns in Germany, Italy, France and Japan,” he told the BBC.

“So I would emphasise that there is this bigger picture going on, and it’s not purely a UK phenomenon.”

However, some of the global pressures may be stronger in the UK, Prof Wells said, such as fewer trade barriers against Chinese imports compared to the EU and US.

The UK government’s change in policy over encouraging more manufacturing of EVs had also made planning more difficult for carmakers, he added.

In April, the UK announced plans to relax sales targets for EVs and reduce fines for cars that do not meet certain emissions standards.

In recent years, the UK has seen producers such as Honda and Ford shut down plants.

Last year, Stellantis – which makes Vauxhall, Citroen and Peugeot cars – warned it may have to halt UK production due to uncertainty over the government’s approach to EVs.

“What industry always wants is stability and clarity in policy, whether it’s tariffs or electrification or any other issue,” said Prof Wells.

“For me at least, it remains a volatile environment in that sense.”

“Watch the courts” was the whispered message a well-connected diplomat told me in Washington DC last month, amid the previous episode of US tariff chaos.

Most eyes were on the high-profile case in California from the Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom – that President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs were illegal.

In the event, it was a separate case at the International Trade Court filed by a dozen other states and some small businesses that have pulled the rug from underneath Trump’s signature policy.

It raises the real question about whether the wider so-called reciprocal tariffs due in July will ever come in to effect, whether the 10% universal tariff can stick, whether nations will bother to negotiate, whether Congress will come to the president’s rescue, and of course, the eventual reaction of the Supreme Court.

Much of this can be traced back to the highly unusual dynamic underpinning the Trump’s tariff actions.

The very sight of the president proclaiming sweeping tariff rates on a variety of countries, culminating in his now infamous Rose Garden moment with the blue board, is the foundational legal problem here.

Typically, indeed constitutionally, trade policy is the domain of the US Congress. The chairs of the Trade committees of the House and Senate (branches of the Ways and Means Committee) are typically very powerful positions.

President Trump bypassed all of that by proclaiming a variety of national emergencies. While he has some scope to act in actual emergencies, these cases contend that the sweeping use of these powers to announce permanent tariff changes was illegal and unconstitutional.

There is a fascinating assessment of the separation of powers in the US which includes reference to both former President Richard Nixon’s limited use of the same powers and the Federalist Papers of Hamilton and Madison.

In essence, the powers he has asserted to “regulate importation” are narrow in scope and do not stretch to unlimited imposition of tariffs, in particular, to remedy trade deficits.

Of course, the Trump administration rather undermined their own logic by also levying “reciprocal” tariffs on countries with which it ran a trade surplus, such as the UK.

Separately the court also found that the president’s basis for the fentanyl tariffs against Mexico, Canada, and China did not “deal with” their stated objective.

Trump’s claim that they “create leverage” to do deals is not a permissible rationale for use of the powers. This dismantles the entire notion of the “art of the deal” 4D chess manoeuvres designed to extract trade advantages.

This will now be dealt with by the Supreme Court. The case appears rather robust, and also emboldens California’s similar case.

It also totally undermines any attempt by the US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to negotiate deals with other countries.

The likes of Japan and the European Union were already holding back, after seeing the White House retreat in the face of tariff-related turbulence in US government borrowing rates.

US retailers were warning not just of tariff-related inflation, but of potential empty shelves. The row back on the China tariffs, purportedly fentanyl-trafficking enemy, means that actual G7 allies expect better treatment from the US.

And now its own courts deem the actions illegal. The White House is currently hemmed in by its own bond markets, retailers, big business, many individual states and now its courts on this policy.

While it hit back with an immediate appeal, some in the wider administration might well be privately toasting the judges.

Could the White House get Congress onside to pass these tariffs? There has to be a very big doubt about this. In any event, other countries can now return to traditional trade tactics designed to pressurise the self interest of key senators and congressmen and women, with impacts on their local industries, whether that is motorcycles, jeans, or bourbon.

Another option might be to switch to another legal basis, such as the section 232 powers underpinning the steel and automotive tariffs. This approach would alter the dynamics of the trade war away from sweeping country-specific ones, towards industry-specific tariffs instead.

In any event, the court has surfaced rather unarguable evidence of the economic harm caused to the US by its own tariffs.

For example Virginia-based educational manufacturer MicroKits says it will “be unable to pay its employees, will lose money and as a result may go out of business”. New York-based wine company VOS says it is paying the tariffs “upon arrival at the Port of NY” putting immediate strain on its cash flow. Terry Cycling has already paid $25,000 and projects a total of $250,000 this year.

The court concluded: “The government does not meaningfully contest the ‘economic logic’ tracing the retaliatory tariffs to the plaintiffs showing of downstream harm.”

Does the White House want a messy Congressional fight to pass these tariffs, with numerous examples of their real life impact?

For now, expect other negotiators around the world to put their feet up and wait, while the White House tries to disprove the illegality of the very basis of its global trade conflict.

A Chinese paraglider has survived being accidentally propelled 8,500m (27,800ft) into the sky above north-west China, state media report.

Peng Yujiang, 55, was testing new equipment at 3,000m above sea level, over the Qilian mountains, when a rare updraft or air current known as a “cloud suck” pulled him about 5,000m higher into a cloud formation.

Saturday’s events were filmed on a camera that was mounted on Mr Peng’s glider and the footage has gone viral after being posted on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok.

It showed Mr Peng holding on to the glider’s controls, with his face and much of his body covered in ice crystals.

“It was terrifying… Everything was white. I couldn’t see any direction. Without the compass, I wouldn’t have known which way I was going. I thought I was flying straight, but in reality, I was spinning,” he told China Media Group.

Mr Peng narrowly survived death as oxygen is thin at that altitude – slightly lower than the 8,849m peak of Mount Everest. Temperatures can also fall to -40C.

“I wanted to come down quickly, but I just couldn’t. I was lifted higher and higher until I was inside the cloud,” he said.

Mr Peng, who has been paragliding for four and a half years, said he might have lost consciousness during his descent.

He added that the most frightening part of his ordeal was trying to regain control of the glider as it spiralled in the air.

Chinese authorities are investigating the incident and Mr Peng has been suspended for six months because the flight was unauthorised, state-run Global Times reported.

Mr Peng had no intention to fly that day and was only testing the fit and comfort of his parachute on the ground, Global Times said.

However, strong winds lifted him off the ground and grew even stronger, until he encountered the updraft that shot him up into the clouds.

Israeli ministers say 22 new Jewish settlements have been approved in the occupied West Bank – the biggest expansion in decades.

Several already exist as outposts, built without government authorisation, but will now be made legal under Israeli law. Others are completely new, according to Defence Minister Israel Katz and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

Settlements – which are widely seen as illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this – are one of the most contentious issues between Israel and the Palestinians.

Katz said the move “prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel”, while the Palestinian presidency called it a “dangerous escalation”.

The Israeli anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now called it “the most extensive move of its kind” in more than 30 years and warned that it would “dramatically reshape the West Bank and entrench the occupation even further”.

Israel has built about 160 settlements housing some 700,000 Jews since it occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem – land Palestinians want, along with Gaza, for their hoped-for future state – in the 1967 Middle East war. An estimated 3.3 million Palestinians live alongside them.

Successive Israeli governments have allowed settlements to grow. However, expansion has risen sharply since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power in late 2022 at the head of a right-wing, pro-settler coalition, as well as the start of the Gaza war, triggered by Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel.

On Thursday, Israel Katz and Bezalel Smotrich – an ultranationalist leader and settler who has control over planning in the West Bank – officially confirmed a decision that is believed to have been taken by the government two weeks ago.

A statement said they had approved 22 new settlements, the “renewal of settlement in northern Samaria [northern West Bank], and reinforcement of the eastern axis of the State of Israel”.

It did not include information about the exact location of the new settlements, but maps being circulated suggest they will be across the length and width of the West Bank.

Katz and Smotrich did highlight what they described as the “historic return” to Homesh and Sa-Nur, two settlements deep in the northern West Bank which were evacuated at the same time as Israel withdrew its troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005.

Two years ago, a group of settlers established a Jewish religious school and an unauthorised outpost at Homesh, which Peace Now said would be among 12 made legal under Israeli law.

Nine of the settlements would be completely new, according to the watchdog. They include Mount Ebal, just to the south of Homesh and near the city of Nablus, and Beit Horon North, west of Ramallah, where it said construction had already begun in recent days.

The last of the settlements, Nofei Prat, was currently officially considered a “neighbourhood” of another settlement near East Jerusalem, Kfar Adumim, and would now be recognised as independent, Peace Now added.

Katz said the decision was a “strategic move that prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel, and serves as a buffer against our enemies.”

“This is a Zionist, security, and national response – and a clear decision on the future of the country,” he added.

Smotrich called it a “once-in-a-generation decision” and declared: “Next step sovereignty!”

But a spokesperson for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas – who governs parts of the West Bank not under full Israeli control – called it a “dangerous escalation” and accused Israel of continuing to drag the region into a “cycle of violence and instability”.

“This extremist Israeli government is trying by all means to prevent the establishment of an independent Palestinian state,” Nabil Abu Rudeineh told Reuters news agency.

Lior Amihai, director of Peace Now, said: “The Israeli government no longer pretends otherwise: the annexation of the occupied territories and expansion of settlements is its central goal.”

Elisha Ben Kimon, an Israeli journalist with the popular Ynet news site who covers the West Bank and settlements, told the BBC’s Newshour programme that 70% to 80% of ministers wanted to declare the formal annexation of the West Bank.

“I think that Israel is a few steps from declaring this area as Israeli territory. They believe that this period will never be coming back, this is one opportunity that they don’t want to slip from their hands – that’s why they’re doing this now,” Mr Ben Kimon told the BBC’s Newshour programme.

Israel effectively annexed East Jerusalem in 1980, in a move not recognised by the vast majority of the international community.

This latest step is a blow to renewed efforts to revive momentum on a two-state solution to the decades-old Israel-Palestinian conflict – the internationally approved formula for peace that would see the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel – with a French-Saudi summit planned at the UN’s headquarters in New York next month.

Jordan’s foreign ministry condemned what it called a “flagrant violation of international law” that “undermines prospects for peace by entrenching the occupation”.

UK Foreign Office Minister Hamish Falconer said the move was “a deliberate obstacle to Palestinian statehood”.

Since taking office, the current Israeli government has decided to establish a total of 49 new settlements and begun the legalisation process for seven unauthorised outposts which will be recognised as “neighbourhoods” of existing settlements, according to Peace Now.

Last year, the UN’s top court issued an advisory opinion that said “Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful”. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) also said Israeli settlements “have been established and are being maintained in violation of international law”, and that Israel should “evacuate all settlers”.

Netanyahu said at the time that the court had made a “decision of lies” and insisted that “the Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land”.

Airline passengers to Turkey will be fined if they stand up before the seatbelt sign turns off after landing, regulators have said.

The Turkish civil aviation authority said it imposed the order after receiving complaints from passengers. The rules came into effect earlier this month.

Turkish media reports say fines will be about about US$70 (£50), although no amount is mentioned in the authority’s guidance.

The authority warned that there was a “serious increase” in such incidents, with many complaints about passengers grabbing overhead baggage before the plane has been parked.

Turkey is a destination for tens of millions of tourists every year.

The aviation authority said commercial airlines must now issue an in-flight announcement and report those who do not follow orders.

Passengers must be told to keep their seatbelts locked, and refrain from standing and opening overhead lockers until the seatbelt sign is off.

Those who do not follow these rules must be reported to the authority, it says.

Turkish Airlines, the national carrier, has updated its landing announcement, according to Euronews.

“Passengers who do not comply with the rules will be reported to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation through a Disruptive Passenger Report, and an administrative fine will be imposed in accordance with the applicable legal regulations,” the airline says upon landing, according to the TV network.

The BBC has contacted the airline for comment.

A South African woman convicted of kidnapping and trafficking her six-year-old daughter has been sentenced to life in prison, along with her two accomplices.

The jail terms for Racquel “Kelly” Smith, her boyfriend Jacquen Appollis and their friend Steveno van Rhyn come more than a year after Joshlin Smith mysteriously disappeared outside her home in Saldanha Bay, near Cape Town.

Despite a highly publicised search for the girl, who vanished in February 2024, she is yet to be found.

South African prosecutors say she was sold into slavery however this was not definitively proven during the trial.

It is believed that Smith, who was addicted to drugs, needed the money.

The sentencing follows an eight-week trial that captivated South Africa, with witnesses and prosecutors making a number of shocking allegations.

Judge Nathan Erasmus said he “drew no distinction” between the trio in handing down the sentences.

“On the human trafficking charge, you are sentenced to life imprisonment. On the kidnapping charge, you are sentenced to 10 years imprisonment,” he said to loud applause in the courtroom.

Judge Erasmus took over an hour to deliver the sentence and was measured as he gave a brief summary of the case and highlighted points that stood out during the trial.

He rebuked the trio, especially Van Rhyn and Smith, saying they showed no remorse for their actions.

“There is nothing that I can find that is redeeming or deserving of a lesser sentence,” he said.

He also spoke of the impact their conduct had on the community of Middelpos, where the girl lived, saying it had left residents “fractured”.

Smith, 35, and her accomplices showed no emotion as their sentences were read out in the community centre in Saldanha where the trial was held to allow residents to attend proceedings.

• Tears and heartbreak over tragic story of Joshlin Smith
• South Africa police target gang kidnapping women in shopping centres

Police said the search for the little girl would continue, even beyond South Africa’s borders.

“We will not rest until we find [out] what happened to Joshlin. We are continuing day and night looking for her,” Western Cape police commissioner Thembisile Patekile told local media.

The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) welcomed the sentence and lauded the work of its team in proving that Joshlin was “sold [and] delivered to the intended buyer” for the purpose of “exploitation, namely slavery or practices similar to slavery”.

During the trial, the identity of the “intended buyer” was never revealed.

The BBC asked the NPA for further details, however a spokesperson was unable to provide any.

Emotions were high ahead of the sentencing, with angry community members saying the trio should get a “harsh sentence because they deserve it”.

Ahead of sentencing, Joshlin’s grandmother, Amanda Smith-Daniels, once again pleaded with her daughter to “bring my [grand]child back or tell me where she is”.

“I don’t feel that any sentence they get will bring my grandchild back,” she told local broadcaster Newzroom Afrika.

Ms Smith-Daniels said that Joshlin’s disappearance had left her family “broken”.

She urged her daughter to stop blaming others for her misfortune as she “was the person that did the deed”.

During the trial, the court heard testimonies from more than 30 witnesses, who painted a picture of the young girl’s troubled life and subsequent disappearance.

Kelly Smith and her accomplices refused to testify or call any witnesses for their defence.

The most explosive came from Lourentia Lombaard, a friend and neighbour of Smith who turned state witness.

Ms Lombaard alleged that Smith told her she had done “something silly” and sold Joshlin to a traditional healer, known in South Africa as a “sangoma”.

The “person who [allegedly took] Joshlin wanted her for her eyes and skin”, Ms Lombaard told the court.

A local pastor testified that in 2023, he had heard Smith – a mother of three – talk of selling her children for 20,000 rand ($1,100; £850) each, though she had said she was willing to accept a lower figure of $275.

Joshlin’s teacher then alleged in court that Smith had told her during the search that her daughter was already “on a ship, inside a container, and they were on the way to West Africa”.

It was the testimonies of Ms Lombard and the clergyman that were key to securing a conviction.

During sentencing hearings, Smith was described as manipulative and someone who told “bald-faced lies”. A social worker appointed to compile a report on Smith and her accomplices, went so far as to say it would not be a “stretch to conclude that [Kelly] Smith is the mastermind behind the trafficking of her own daughter”.

The court also heard powerful statements from those who knew Joshlin about the devastating effect of her disappearance on the community.

• Joshlin Smith’s disappearance spreads fear in South Africa’s Saldhana Bay
• ‘The selfie that revealed I was a stolen baby’

Elon Musk has said he is leaving the Trump administration after helping lead a tumultuous drive to shrink the size of US government that saw thousands of federal jobs axed.

In a post on his social media platform X, the world’s richest man thanked Trump for the opportunity to help run the Department of Government Efficiency, known as Doge.

The White House began “offboarding” Musk as a special government employee on Wednesday night, the BBC understands.

His role was temporary and his exit is not unexpected, but it comes a day after Musk criticised the legislative centrepiece of Trump’s agenda.

“As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President @realDonaldTrump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending,” Musk wrote on X.

“The @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government.”

The South African-born tech tycoon had been designated as a “special government employee” – allowing him to work a federal job for 130 days each year.

• What is Doge and why is Musk leaving?
• How much has Elon Musk’s Doge cut?
• Who is Musk and what is his net worth?

Measured from Trump’s inauguration on 20 January, he would hit that limit towards the end of May.

But his departure comes a day after he said he was “disappointed” with Trump’s budget bill, which proposes multi-trillion dollar tax breaks and a boost to defence spending.

The SpaceX and Tesla boss said in an interview with BBC’s US partner CBS that the “big, beautiful bill”, as Trump calls it, would increase the federal deficit.

Musk also said he thought it “undermines the work” of Doge.

“I think a bill can be big or it could be beautiful,” Musk said. “But I don’t know if it could be both.”

Musk, who had clashed in private with some Trump cabinet-level officials, initially pledged to cut “at least $2 trillion” from the federal government budget, before halving this target, then reducing it to $150bn.

An estimated 260,000 out of the 2.3 million-strong federal civilian workforce have had their jobs cut or accepted redundancy deals as a result of Doge.

In some cases, federal judges blocked the mass firings and ordered terminated employees to be reinstated.

The rapid-fire approach to cutting the federal workforce occasionally led to some workers mistakenly being let go, including staff at the US nuclear programme.

Musk announced in late April that he would step back to run his companies again after becoming a lightning rod for criticism of Trump’s efforts to shake up Washington.

“Doge is just becoming the whipping boy for everything,” Musk told the Washington Post in Texas on Tuesday ahead of a Space X launch.

“Something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it.”

Musk’s time in government overlapped with a significant decline in sales at his electric car company.

Tesla sales dropped by 13% in the first three months of this year, the largest drop in deliveries in its history.

The company’s stock price also tumbled by as much as 45%, but has mostly rebounded and is only down 10%.

Tesla recently warned investors that the financial pain could continue, declining to offer a growth forecast while saying “changing political sentiment” could meaningfully hurt demand for the vehicles.

Musk told investors on an earnings call last month that the time he allocates to Doge “will drop significantly” and that he would be “allocating far more of my time to Tesla”.

Activists have called for Tesla boycotts, staging protests outside Tesla dealerships, and vandalising the vehicles and charging stations.

The Tesla blowback became so violent and widespread that US Attorney General Pam Bondi warned her office would treat acts of vandalism as “domestic terrorism”.

Speaking at an economic forum in Doha, Qatar, on Tuesday, Musk said he was committed to being the leader of Tesla for the next five years.

He said earlier this month he would cut back his political donations after spending nearly $300m to back Trump’s presidential campaign and other Republicans last year.

Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

The Iranian Embassy in India has said it is investigating the case of three Indian nationals who went missing in Tehran earlier this month.

The men, all of whom are from the northern state of Punjab, had a stopover in Iran on 1 May, and were on their way to Australia, where they were promised lucrative jobs by a local travel agent.

Their families allege that they were kidnapped upon their arrival by unknown men, who are now demanding a ransom of 5m rupees ($63,000; £47,000).

On Thursday, the Iranian Embassy said on X that it was keeping Indian authorities informed of all developments “within the judicial system” and warned about the dangers of taking illegal immigration routes.

“Given the nature of this incident, Indian citizens are strongly advised not to be deceived by the promises of unauthorised individuals or illegal Indian agencies offering travel to other countries,” it said.

The statement came a day after the Indian embassy in Iran said that it had “strongly taken up this matter with Iranian authorities” and requested that the missing Indians be “urgently traced and their safety ensured”.

Many Indians, particularly from Punjab, travel to developed countries in search of job opportunities and a better life.

Some fall victim to scams run by travel agents, who charge exorbitant fees and send them through illegal or unsafe routes, often without proper documentation.

Gurdeep Kaur recounted the events that led to her 23-year-old son Amritpal Singh going missing to BBC Punjabi.

The family had hired a travel agent in Hoshiarpur – where they live – to secure an Australian work permit for her son.

“Last month, the agent informed us that my son’s visa had been approved and asked for 1.8m rupees as payment,” she said.

“They told us they had booked a flight from Delhi to Australia on 26 April. But when my son went there, they told him that his documents were still not ready.”

The agent then told Amritpal that they had rebooked him on a flight for 29 April, but later claimed that even that ticket got cancelled.

On 1 May, the agent put Amritpal, along with the two other men, on a flight to Iran, describing it as a stopover en route to Australia, Ms Kaur said.

After landing, Amritpal called his mum to say that he had arrived safely and that a cab was on its way to take them to a hotel, before their next flight.

But an hour later, Ms Kaur said her son called again, this time to say that he had been kidnapped.

Before she could get any details, the call got cut abruptly and her son became unreachable.

Ms Kaur said that the family tried to contact the three agents in Punjab – they first gave them “vague responses” and then went missing. The next day, the family found that their homes and offices were locked.

Ms Kaur said they began receiving video calls from unknown men around the same time.

On the call, Ms Kaur alleged the kidnappers would show Amritpal and the two other men held hostage inside a room. They had injuries all over their body from being beaten up, she alleged.

At first, they demanded 20mn rupees but eventually reduced the amount, settling at 5.4m rupees, Ms Kaur said.

“But it has been more than 10 days days since we last heard from them,” said Gurdev Singh, Amritpal’s uncle. The family has not paid any ransom till now.

A police complaint has since been filed against the travel agents and an investigation is under way.

“The search for the three men is on. They are on the run, but we are conducting searches,” Gursahib Singh, an officer with Hoshiarpur police, told BBC Punjabi.

Meanwhile, around 150km (93 miles) away, in Dhuri village, the house of Husanpreet Singh, one of the other missing men, remains locked.

He lived there with his maternal grandmother, who is now busy going door-to-door to her relatives, asking them for help.

The Indian embassy in Tehran has said it was keeping the families informed of all developments.

India has recently intensified its crackdown on travel agents involved in illegal immigration, particularly after hundreds of undocumented Indians were deported from the US after President Donald Trump took office for a second term.

Images of these migrants in chains, disembarking from an American aircraft, had made headlines for weeks.

The Swiss village of Blatten has been partially destroyed after a huge chunk of glacier crashed down into the valley.

Although the village had been evacuated some days ago because of fears the Birch glacier was disintegrating, one person has been reported missing, and many homes have been completely flattened.

Blatten’s mayor, Matthias Bellwald, said “the unimaginable has happened” but promised the village still had a future.

Local authorities have requested support from the Swiss army’s disaster relief unit and members of the Swiss government are on their way to the scene.

The disaster that has befallen Blatten is the worst nightmare for communities across the Alps.

The village’s 300 inhabitants had to leave their homes on 19 May after geologists monitoring the area warned that the glacier appeared unstable. Now many of them may never be able to return.

Appearing to fight back tears, Bellwald said: “We have lost our village, but not our heart. We will support each other and console each other. After a long night, it will be morning again.”

The Swiss government has already promised funding to make sure residents can stay, if not in the village itself, at least in the locality.

However, Raphaël Mayoraz, head of the regional office for Natural Hazards, warned that further evacuations in the areas close to Blatten might be necessary.

Climate change is causing the glaciers – frozen rivers of ice – to melt faster and faster, and the permafrost, often described as the glue that holds the high mountains together, is also thawing.

Drone footage showed a large section of the Birch glacier collapsing at about 15:30 (14:30 BST) on Wednesday. The avalanche of mud that swept over Blatten sounded like a deafening roar, as it swept down into the valley leaving an enormous cloud of dust.

Glaciologists monitoring the thaw have warned for years that some alpine towns and villages could be at risk, and Blatten is not even the first to be evacuated.

In eastern Switzerland, residents of the village of Brienz were evacuated two years ago because the mountainside above them was crumbling.

Since then, they have only been permitted to return for short periods.

In 2017, eight hikers were killed, and many homes destroyed, when the biggest landslide in over a century came down close to the village of Bondo.

The most recent report into the condition of Switzerland’s glaciers suggested they could all be gone within a century, if global temperatures could not be kept within a rise of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, agreed ten years ago by almost 200 countries under the Paris climate accord.

Many climate scientists suggest that target has already been missed, meaning the glacier thaw will continue to accelerate, increasing the risk of flooding and landslides, and threatening more communities like Blatten.

A nine-year-old was the youngest victim injured when a car was driven into crowds at Liverpool’s victory parade, police said, as they continue to question a suspect.

Merseyside Police confirmed the age of the victims hurt in the incident on Water Street on Monday ranged from nine to 78.

The force has until Thursday evening to question a 53-year-old man, from West Derby, Liverpool, who is in custody after he was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder, dangerous driving and drug driving.

On Wednesday, police said seven people remained in hospital in a stable condition, while 79 people in total had been injured when the car crashed into Liverpool fans.

The car had also struck the pram of a baby boy who was being pushed by his parents, but the child was not hurt, despite the pram spinning metres down the street after it was hit.

The drug the 53-year-old was suspected of taking has not been revealed by police.

A force spokesman said: “We wouldn’t go into this detail at this stage of the investigation.”

Police believe the car, which struck pedestrians, followed an ambulance attending to someone suffering a heart attack after a road block was temporarily lifted.

A force spokesman said there was a partial closure in place on Dale Street – which leads into Water Street – between North John Street and Exchange Street.

In the aftermath of the incident, people from across the city came together to offer support to those stranded in the aftermath.

• What we know about the Liverpool FC parade incident
• ‘Driver looked emotional and agitated’ – Liverpool witnesses share stories
• How Liverpool united after car ploughed into crowd

John and Kerri Davies, owners of J&K Travel, immediately headed to the scene with minibuses to offer transport, while Liverpool university student Oli Fountain offered his own flat as a place for those “stuck in town to crash on”.

An appeal for funds to help those affected has raised more than £30,000, including £10,000 from ex-Liverpool centreback Jamie Carragher.

Rae Brooke, from the Community Foundation for Merseyside, a partnership with local authority and voluntary services which set up the fund, said people wanted to do something to help.

She said “We know just how generous people are in the Liverpool area”.

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A US federal court has blocked President Donald Trump’s sweeping global trade tariffs, in a major blow to a key component of his economic policies.

The Court of International Trade ruled that an emergency law invoked by the White House did not give the president unilateral authority to impose tariffs on nearly every one of the world’s countries.

The New York-based court said the US Constitution gave Congress exclusive powers to regulate commerce with other nations, and that this was not superseded by the president’s remit to safeguard the economy.

The White House has asked the court to block the order suspending tariffs while it appeals the case.

• Follow live updates after the court ruling

The ruling was based on two separate cases. The nonpartisan Liberty Justice Center brought one case on behalf of several small businesses that import goods from countries that were targeted by the duties, while a coalition of US state governments also challenged the import taxes.

The two cases marked the first major legal challenges to Trump’s so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs and went to the Court of International Trade, a part of the federal court system with specific authority over trade.

A three-judge panel ruled that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a 1977 law that Trump cited to justify the tariffs, did not give him the power to impose the sweeping import taxes.

The court also blocked a separate set of levies the Trump administration imposed on China, Mexico and Canada, in response to what the administration said was the unacceptable flow of drugs and illegal immigrants into the US.

However, the court was not asked to address tariffs imposed on some specific goods like cars, steel and aluminium, which fall under a different law.

The White House has criticised the ruling, though Trump has not yet commented directly.

“It is not for unelected judges to decide how to properly address a national emergency,” White House deputy press secretary Kush Desai said in a statement.

But Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, one of 12 states involved in the lawsuit, welcomed the decision.

“The law is clear: no president has the power to single-handedly raise taxes whenever they like,” she said.

Stock markets in Asia and US rose in early trading on Thursday following the ruling while European markets opened flat.

• What tariffs has Trump announced, and why?
• Trump agrees to extend EU trade talks after 50% tariff threat

For now, the court has given the White House has 10 days to complete the bureaucratic process of halting the tariffs, although some are currently suspended anyway.

Meanwhile, the White House has asked the court to block the order while it appeals it.

The case could eventually go to the Supreme Court – the highest court in the US – but even if Trump lost there it would not necessarily spell the end of his tariff plans.

For one thing, the ruling noted that the president does have the power to impose tariffs of up to 15% for 150 days to address concerns about the balance of trade, which the White House had argued were an emergency.

If the administration chose to go that route, those new tariffs could go into effect within days, according to analysts at Goldman Sachs.

Trump could also turn to the other, more established laws that he used in his first term to justify tariffs, which focus on issues such as national security and unfair trade policies. Those require investigations and periods of public comment before tariffs go into effect.

Goldman Sachs said Trump might also turn to an untested part of a 1930 trade law that allows the President to impose tariffs of up to 50% on imports from countries that “discriminate” against the US.

On 2 April, Trump unveiled an unprecedented global tariff regime by imposing import taxes on most of the US’s trading partners.

A 10% baseline tariff was placed on most countries, along with steeper reciprocal tariffs handed down to dozens of nations and blocs, including allies such as the EU, UK, Canada, Mexico and China.

Trump argued that the sweeping economic policy would boost American manufacturing and protect jobs, while kick-starting negotiations over trade policies it views as unfair.

Global markets have been thrown into disarray since the announcement, but Trump has since backed down on some tariffs and reduced or delayed others.

For now, John Leonard, a former top official at the CBP, told the BBC that there would not be any changes at the border and that tariffs would still have to be paid.

If the White House is unsuccessful in its appeal, the US Customs and Border Protection Agency (CBP) would then issue directions to its officers to refund the payments, he said.

The ruling also raises questions about ongoing trade talks between the US and other countries. The White House had argued in court hearings that its negotiating position would be weakened if the court struck down the tariffs.

Paul Ashworth, from Capital Economics, said the ruling “will obviously throw into disarray the Trump administration’s push to quickly seal trade ‘deals’ during the 90-day pause from tariffs“.

He predicted other countries “will wait and see” what happens next.

The UK and US governments agreed a deal to reduce tariffs on some goods traded between the countries earlier this month.

It included the lowering and removal of import taxes on some of the UK’s main exports to America, such as cars, steel and aluminium.

That aspect of the deal is not impacted by the court ruling, but the blanket 10% tariff on most other UK goods entering the US has now been called into question.

How that part of the deal could change remains uncertain following the ruling, with the agreement between both governments yet to be implemented.

The UK government has not commented on the court ruling but said it was working to ensure British businesses can benefit from the deal “as quickly as possible”.

Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.