Xiao Chen turned up at the US Consulate in Shanghai on Thursday morning, hours after Washington announced that it would “aggressively” revoke the visas of Chinese students.

The 22-year-old had a visa appointment: she was headed to Michigan in the autumn to study communications.

After a “pleasant” conversation, she was told her application had been rejected. She was not given a reason.

“I feel like a drifting duckweed tossed in wind and storm,” she said, using a common Chinese expression to describe feeling both uncertain and helpless.

She had been hopeful because she already had the acceptance letter. And she thought she had narrowly escaped the bombshells in recent days.

First, Donald Trump’s administration moved to end Harvard University’s ability to enrol international students, a move that has since been blocked in court. And then it said it had stopped visa appointments for all foreign students.

But now, Chen is ready for plan B. “If I can’t get the visa eventually, I’ll probably take a gap year. Then I’ll wait to see if things will get better next year.”

A valid visa may still not be enough, she adds, because students with visas could be “stopped at the airport and deported”.

“It’s bad for every Chinese student. The only difference is how bad.”

It has been a bleak week for international students in the US – and perhaps even harder for the 280,000 or so Chinese students who would have noticed that their country has been singled out.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused Harvard of “co-ordinating with the Chinese Communist Party”.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the move against Chinese students in the US would include “those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields”.

That could hit a wide swathe of them given membership of the Communist Party is common among officials, entrepreneurs, business people and even artists and celebrities in China.

Beijing has called it a “politically motivated and discriminatory action”, and its foreign ministry has lodged a formal protest.

There was a time when China sent the highest number of foreign students to American campuses. But those numbers slipped as the relationship between the two countries soured.

A more powerful and increasingly assertive Beijing is now clashing with Washington for supremacy in just about everything, from trade to tech.

Trump’s first term had already spelled trouble for Chinese students. He signed an order in 2020 barring Chinese students and researchers with ties to Beijing’s military from obtaining US visas.

That order remained in place during President Joe Biden’s term. Washington never clarified what constitutes “ties” to the military, so many students had their visas revoked or were turned away at US borders, sometimes without a proper explanation.

One of them, who did not wish to be named, said his visa was cancelled by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) when he landed in Boston in August 2023.

He had been accepted into a post-doctoral program at Harvard University. He was going to study regenerative medicine with a focus on breast cancer, and had done his master’s degree from a military-affiliated research institution in China.

He said he was not a member of the Communist Party and his research had nothing to do with the military.

“They asked me what the relationship was between my research and China’s defence affairs,” he told the BBC then. “I said, how could breast cancer have anything to do with national defence? If you know, please tell me.”

He believes he never stood a chance because the officials had already made up their minds. He recalled one of them asking: “Did Xi Jinping buy your suitcase for you?”

What was surprising, or even shocking then, slowly turned normal as more and more Chinese students struggled to secure visas or admissions to study science and technology in US universities.

Mr Cao, a psychology major whose research involves neuroscience, has spent the past school year applying for PhD programs in the US.

He had graduated from top-tier universities – credentials that could send him to an Ivy League school. But of the more than 10 universities he applied to, only one extended an offer.

Trump’s cuts to biomedical research didn’t help, but the mistrust surrounding Chinese researchers was also a factor. Allegations and rumours of espionage, especially in sensitive subjects, have loomed over Chinese nationals at US universities in recent years, even derailing some careers.

“One of the professors even told me, ‘We rarely give offers to Chinese students these days, so I cannot give you an interview,” Mr Cao told the BBC in February.

“I feel like I am just a grain of sand under the wheel of time. There is nothing I can do.”

For those who did graduate from US colleges, returning home to China has not been easy either.

They used to be lauded as a bridge to the rest of the world. Now, they find that their once-coveted degrees don’t draw the same reaction.

Chen Jian, who did not want to use his real name, said he quickly realised that his undergraduate degree from a US college had become an obstacle.

When he first came back in 2020, he interned at a state-owned bank and asked a supervisor if there was a chance to stay on.

The supervisor didn’t say it outright, but Chen got the message: “Employees should have local degrees. People like me (with overseas degrees) won’t even get a response.”

He later realised that “there really weren’t any colleagues with overseas undergraduate background in the department”.

He went back to the US and did his master’s at Johns Hopkins University, and now works at Chinese tech giant Baidu.

But despite the degree from a prestigious American university, Mr Chen does not feel he has an edge because of the stiff competition from graduates in China.

What also has not helped is the suspicion around foreign graduates. Beijing has ramped up warnings of foreign spies, telling civilians to be on the lookout for suspicious figures.

In April, prominent Chinese businesswoman Dong Mingzhu told shareholders in a closed-door meeting that her company, home appliance maker Gree Electric, will “never” recruit Chinese people educated overseas “because among them are spies”.

“I don’t know who is and who isn’t,” Ms Dong said, in comments that were leaked and went viral online.

Days later, the CIA released promotional videos encouraging Chinese officials dissatisfied with the government to become spies and provide classified information. “Your destiny is in your own hands,” the video said.

The suspicion of foreigners as the US and China pull further away from each other is a surprising turn for many Chinese people who remember growing up in a very different country.

Zhang Ni, who also did not want to use her real name, says she was “very shocked” by Ms Dong’s remarks.

The 24-year-old is a recent journalism graduate from Columbia University in New York. She says she “doesn’t care about working at Gree”, but what surprised her was the shift in attitudes.

That so many Chinese companies “don’t like anything that might be associated with the international” is a huge contrast from what Ms Zhang grew up with – a childhood “filled with [conversations centred on] the Olympics and World Expo”.

“Whenever we saw foreigners, my mom would push me to go talk to them to practice my English,” she says.

That willingness to exchange ideas and learn from the outside world appears to be waning in China, according to many.

And America, once a place that drew so many young Chinese people, is no longer that welcoming.

Looking back, Ms Zhang can’t help but recall a joke her friend made at a farewell dinner before she left for the US.

Then a flippant comment, it now sums up the fear in both Washington and Beijing: “Don’t become a spy.”

Russia has continued to make billions from fossil fuel exports to the West, data shows, helping to finance its full-scale invasion of Ukraine – now in its fourth year.

Since the start of that invasion in February 2022, Russia has made more than three times as much money by exporting hydrocarbons than Ukraine has received in aid allocated by its allies.

Data analysed by the BBC show that Ukraine’s Western allies have paid Russia more for its hydrocarbons than they have given Ukraine in aid.

Campaigners say governments in Europe and North America need to do more to stop Russian oil and gas from fuelling the war with Ukraine.

Proceeds made from selling oil and gas are key to keeping Russia’s war machine going.

Oil and gas account for almost a third of Russia’s state revenue and more than 60% of its exports.

In the wake of the February 2022 invasion, Ukraine’s allies imposed sanctions on Russian hydrocarbons. The US and UK banned Russian oil and gas, while the EU banned Russian seaborne crude imports, but not gas.

Despite this, by 29 May, Russia had made more than €883bn ($973bn; £740bn) in revenue from fossil fuel exports since the start of the full-scale invasion, including €228bn from the sanctioning countries, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).

The lion’s share of that amount, €209bn, came from EU member states.

EU states continued importing pipeline gas directly from Russia until Ukraine cut the transit in January 2025, and Russian crude oil is still piped to Hungary and Slovakia.

Russian gas is still piped to Europe in increasing quantities via Turkey: CREA’s data shows that its volume rose by 26.77% in January and February 2025 over the same period in 2024.

Hungary and Slovakia are also still receiving Russian pipeline gas via Turkey.

Despite the West’s efforts, in 2024 Russian revenues from fossil fuels fell by a mere 5% compared with 2023, along with a similar 6% drop in the volumes of exports, according to CREA. Last year also saw a 6% increase in Russian revenues from crude oil exports, and a 9% year-on-year increase in revenues from pipeline gas.

Russian estimates say gas exports to Europe rose by up to 20% in 2024, with liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports reaching record levels. Currently, half of Russia’s LNG exports go the EU, CREA says.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, says the alliance has not imposed “the strongest sanctions” on Russian oil and gas because some member states fear an escalation in the conflict and because buying them is “cheaper in the short term”.

LNG imports have not been included in the latest, 17th package of sanctions on Russia approved by the EU, but it has adopted a road map towards ending all Russian gas imports by the end of 2027.

Data shows that money made by Russia from selling fossil fuels has consistently surpassed the amount of aid Ukraine receives from its allies.

The thirst for fuel can get in the way of the West’s efforts to limit Russia’s ability to fund its war.

Mai Rosner, a senior campaigner from the pressure group Global Witness, says many Western policymakers fear that cutting imports of Russian fuels will lead to higher energy prices.

“There’s no real desire in many governments to actually limit Russia’s ability to produce and sell oil. There is way too much fear about what that would mean for global energy markets. There’s a line drawn under where energy markets would be too undermined or too thrown off kilter,” she told the BBC.

In addition to direct sales, some of the oil exported by Russia ends up in the West after being processed into fuel products in third countries via what is known as “the refining loophole”. Sometimes it gets diluted with crude from other countries, too.

CREA says it has identified three “laundromat refineries” in Turkey and three in India processing Russian crude and selling the resulting fuel on to sanctioning countries. It says they have used €6.1bn worth of Russian crude to make products for sanctioning countries.

India’s petroleum ministry criticised CREA’s report as “a deceptive effort to tarnish India’s image”.

“[These countries] know that sanctioning countries are willing to accept this. This is a loophole. It’s entirely legal. Everyone’s aware of it, but nobody is doing much to actually tackle it in a big way,” says Vaibhav Raghunandan, an analyst at CREA.

Campaigners and experts argue that Western governments have the tools and means available to stem the flow of oil and gas revenue into the Kremlin’s coffers.

According to former Russian deputy energy minister Vladimir Milov, who is now a diehard opponent of Vladimir Putin, sanctions imposed on trade in Russian hydrocarbons should be better enforced – particularly the oil price cap adopted by the G7 group of nations, which Mr Milov says “is not working“.

He is fearful, though, that the US government shake-up launched by President Donald Trump will hamper agencies such as the US Treasury or the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which are key for sanctions enforcement.

Another avenue is continued pressure on Russia’s “shadow fleet” of tankers involved in dodging the sanctions.

“That is a complex surgery operation. You need to periodically release batches of new sanctioned vessels, shell companies, traders, insurers etc. every several weeks,” Mr Milov says. According to him, this is an area where Western governments have been much more effective, particularly with the introduction of new sanctions by Joe Biden’s outgoing administration in January 2025.

Mai says that banning Russian LNG exports to Europe and closing the refining loophole in Western jurisdictions would be “important steps in finishing the decoupling of the West from Russian hydrocarbons”.

According to Mr Raghunandan from CREA, it would be relatively easy for the EU to give up Russian LNG imports.

“Fifty percent of their LNG exports are directed towards the European Union, and only 5% of the EU’s total [LNG] gas consumption in 2024 was from Russia. So if the EU decides to completely cut off Russian gas, it’s going to hurt Russia way more then it’s going to hurt consumers in the European Union,” he told the BBC.

Experts interviewed by the BBC have dismissed Donald Trump’s idea that the war with Ukraine will end if Opec brings oil prices down.

“People in Moscow are laughing at this idea, because the party which will suffer the most… is the American shale oil industry, the least cost-competitive oil industry in the world,” Mr Milov told the BBC.

Mr Raghunandan says that Russia’s cost of producing crude is also lower than in Opec countries like Saudi Arabia, so they would be hurt by lower oil prices before Russia.

“There is no way that Saudi Arabia is going to agree to that. This has been tried before. This has led to conflict between Saudi Arabia and the US,” he says.

Ms Rosner says there are both moral and practical issues with the West buying Russian hydrocarbons while supporting Ukraine.

“We now have a situation in which we are funding the aggressor in a war that we’re condemning and also funding the resistance to the war,” she says. “This dependence on fossil fuels means that we are really at the whims of energy markets, global energy producers and hostile dictators.”

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More than a thousand Indians have “come back or [been] deported” from the United States since January, India’s foreign ministry has said.

Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said that around 62% of them came on commercial flights, without providing more details.

This comes in the wake of President Donald Trump’s campaign against undocumented migrants to the US. Trump had earlier said that India “will do what’s right” on the deportation of illegal migrants.

In February, the US had deported more than hundred Indians on a US military flight, with reports saying some of them were brought back shackled.

“We have close cooperation between India and the United States on migration issues,” Mr Jaiswal said during the ministry’s weekly briefing, adding that India verifies nationalities before “we take them back”.

In total, the US is said to have identified about 18,000 Indian nationals it believes entered the country illegally.

Earlier this month, the US Embassy in India issued a warning that overstaying in the US could lead to deportation or a permanent ban on entry in the country, even for those who entered legally.

Mr Jaiswal also spoke about the Trump administration’s updated policy on student visas which is likely to impact Indian students planning to enrol in US universities.

The US had announced on Thursday that it had halted the scheduling of new visa interviews for foreign students as it considered expanding the screening of their social media activities.

“While we note that issuance of a visa is a sovereign function, we hope that the application of Indian students will be considered on merit, and they will be able to join their academic programs on time,” Mr Jaiswal said.

Mr Jaiswal also said that 330,000 Indians students had gone to the US for studies in 2023-24 – which makes India the largest source of international students in the country.

On Thursday, expanding its new visa policy, the US further announced that it was working to “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields”.

Trade talks between the US and China are “a bit stalled”, the US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said.

His comment comes less than three weeks after a temporary trade truce was agreed between the world’s two largest economies, with both agreeing to reduce tit-for-tat tariffs.

Bessent told Fox News on Thursday: “I think that given the magnitude of the talks, given the complexity, that this is going to require [leaders of both the countries] to weigh in with each other”.

Donald Trump’s global tariff regime was dealt a blow on Wednesday following a ruling that he had exceeded his authority. His plans have been temporarily reinstated after the White House appealed the decision.

Both the US and China confirmed they would reduce tariffs imposed on each other’s imports earlier this month, following talks in Switzerland.

The deal involved both nations cancelling some tariffs altogether and suspending others for 90 days by 14 May.

Bessent said talks on a further deal had lost momentum, but stressed that they were continuing.

“I believe that we will be having more talks with [China] in the next few weeks and I believe we may at some point have a call between the president and [Chinese President Xi Jinping],” Bessent said on Thursday.

He added that the pair had “a very good relationship” and he was “confident that the Chinese will come to the table when President Trump makes his preferences known”.

Under the deal struck earlier this month, the US lowered tariffs imposed on goods from China from 145% to 30%.

China’s retaliatory tariffs on US goods dropped from 125% to 10%.

The US President has argued imposing tariffs on foreign goods would encourage US consumers to buy more American-made goods, bringing back manufacturing jobs while increase the amount of tax revenue raised.

They have been used by the Trump administration as leverage in negotiations as it seeks to reduce trade deficits with other nations.

A delegation from Japan are continuing trade talks with their US counterparts in Washington on Friday.

Bessent said “a couple” of US trade deals were “very close”, but “a couple of them are more complicated”.

Trump’s tariff regime remains in the balance following the decision by the US Court of International Trade, which ruled that Trump had overstepped his power by imposing the duties.

Some analysts believe it will mean countries will be less likely to rush to secure trade deals with the US.

A federal appeals court has granted a bid from the White House to temporarily suspend the lower court’s order, which Trump described as “horrific”.

“Hopefully, the Supreme Court will reverse this horrible, Country [sic] threatening decision, QUICKLY and DECISIVELY,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.

Banksy’s latest piece of graffiti art, revealed to the world on Thursday, has now been traced to a street in Marseille.

Images posted on the elusive artist‘s Instagram depict a lighthouse stencilled on a drab, beige wall, along with the words: “I want to be what you saw in me.”

A false shadow appears to have been drawn on the pavement from a nearby bollard, giving the illusion that the lighthouse is itself a silhouette of the mundane street furniture.

Its location was initially a mystery, but BBC Verify has confirmed it as Rue Félix Fregier in the southern French city.

An image of the art circulating online shows a blurred person riding a scooter in front of the piece, with a graffiti tag seemingly reading “Yaze” further along the wall.

The tag matches that used by a Canadian graffiti artist Marco The Polo, whose Instagram account features photos of his own work but who has called Banksy an inspiration.

Banksy has kept his true identity a secret throughout his career, and it is only through the Instagram account that works are identified as genuine.

Often imbuing his works with a political message, his previous pieces have alluded to immigration, the war in Ukraine and homelessness, among other things.

The meaning of some of his works, though, is less clear – such as his motivation behind the series of animals painted in various locations across London last summer.

Prior to the lighthouse, in December, Banksy posted a piece depicting a Madonna and child, with a fixture in the wall appearing like a bullet wound in her chest.

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Paul Doyle has appeared in court accused of driving his car into a crowd of people after Liverpool FC’s trophy parade.

The former Royal Marine, 53, faces seven charges including wounding with intent, causing grievous bodily harm (GBH) with intent, attempting to cause GBH with intent and dangerous driving.

A total of 79 people were injured on Water Street in the city centre just before 18:00 BST on Monday.

The father-of-three of Burghill Road in West Derby, Liverpool, was escorted into the dock at Liverpool Magistrates’ Court wearing a black suit, grey tie and white shirt.

Mr Doyle appeared emotional as he spoke quietly only to confirm his date of birth and age.

For much of the hearing, he sat in the dock with his head down, listening to proceedings.

None of his family or friends chose to attend court today. The defendant stood with his head down as the charges we read to him.

Mr Doyle was not asked to enter a plea. District Judge Paul Healey confirmed he has imposed a number of reporting restrictions.

Richard Derby, defending, confirmed there will be no application for bail today.

Hundreds of thousands of jubilant Liverpool fans packed the city centre on Bank Holiday Monday and lined the 10-mile (16km) parade route as Liverpool FC celebrated winning their second Premier League crown and 20th top-flight league title.

A pram carrying a baby boy was hit by a car and spun metres down the street after it was hit, but the child was not hurt.

A fundraising campaign set up for those affected by the incident has raised more than £30,000, including a £10,000 donation from ex-player Jamie Carragher’s charity foundation.

Mr Doyle will next appear at Liverpool Crown Court this afternoon for a hearing before the Recorder of Liverpool, Judge Andrew Menary KC.

China does not want to go to war with anyone, especially the US.

But Beijing does have aspirations to be the number one economic power in the world.

And that means flexing its muscles to rid the seas around East and South East Asia of their US military presence, so it can dominate the shipping lanes so vital for global trade.

By building up its nuclear and conventional arsenals, China aims to show the US that times have changed and that it’s too dangerous a power to challenge.

The US has long had the upper hand in the Asia-Pacific – with tens of thousands of troops based in Japan and South Korea, alongside several military bases.

Trump’s administration has clearly focused its energy on countering China – by initiating a trade war and seeking to strengthen alliances with Asian nations.

The Shangri-La Dialogue has historically been the setting for top-level encounters between the US and China – an arena for the superpowers to set out their vision for security in the region.

And it’s opening again in Singapore on Friday. Here’s what we can expect from the three-day event:

The growing struggle for dominance between the US and China is undoubtedly the biggest issue in Asia-Pacific security.

Gone are the days when China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was characterised by outdated weaponry and rigid Maoist doctrine. Today it is a formidable force deploying state-of-the-art hypersonic missiles and fifth-generation warplanes like the J20.

Its navy has the largest number of warships in the world, outstripping the United States.

While China lags far behind the US and Russia in its number of nuclear warheads, it is rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal, with missiles that can travel up to 15,000km, putting the continental US easily within range.

The US Navy’s formidable 7th Fleet, based in Yokosuka, just south of Tokyo, can no longer claim to have guaranteed naval supremacy in the region.

China’s array of Dong Feng missiles and swarms of explosive drones would make any approach to its shores extremely hazardous for US warships.

Ultimately, Beijing is believed to be working to “push” the US military out of the western Pacific.

Taiwan is a liberal, self-governing, pro-Western island democracy that China’s President Xi Jinping has vowed to “take back” by force if necessary.

It has an economic importance well beyond its geographic small size. It manufactures more than 90% of the world’s high-end microchips, the all-important semi-conductors that power so much of our tech.

Recent opinion polls have made clear that a majority of Taiwanese people do not want to be ruled by Beijing, but Xi has made this a key policy aim.

The US has done much to help Taiwan bolster its defences but the key question of whether Washington would go to war with China over Taiwan has always been shrouded in something called “strategic ambiguity”, i.e. keeping Beijing guessing.

On more than one occasion President Biden indicated the US would respond militarily in the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan. But the return of Donald Trump to the Oval Office has brought back a degree of uncertainty.

There are also major concerns in the region over China’s attempts to turn the entire South China Sea into what some have called a “Chinese lake”.

The PLA Navy has established military bases on reefs, many artificially dredged, across the strategically important South China Sea, an area through which an estimated $3 trillion’s worth of maritime trade passes annually.

Today China deploys a vast, industrial fishing fleet across the South China Sea, backed by its fleet of coastguard ships and warships. These vessels clash frequently with Filipino fishermen, fishing close to their own country’s shores.

China frequently challenges planes and ships transiting the South China Sea, warning them they are entering Chinese territory without permission, when the rest of the world considers this to be international waters.

Donald Trump, when asked during his first presidency if North Korea could ever develop nuclear missiles that could reach the continental United States, vowed “it’s never going to happen”. But it has.

In what amounts to a serious CIA intelligence failure, Pyongyang has demonstrated that it now possesses both the nuclear know-how and the means to deliver those warheads across the Pacific Ocean.

Successive US presidencies have failed to curb North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and this isolated, economically backward yet militarily powerful nation is thought to have at least 20 nuclear warheads.

It also has an enormous, well-armed army, some of which its autocratic leader Kim Jong Un has sent to help Russia fight Ukraine.

Defence analysts are still dissecting the recent, brief but alarming conflict between these two nuclear-armed neighbours. India’s military far outnumbers Pakistan’s and yet the latter was allegedly able to land an embarrassing blow against India’s air force, when Pakistan’s Chinese-made J10-C jets went up against India’s advanced, French-made Rafales.

Pakistan reportedly shot down at least one of the Indian warplanes, using Chinese-made PL-15 air-to-air missiles. The reports were denied in India’s media.

China’s assistance to Pakistan in the conflict has reportedly been critical to Islamabad, including repositioning its satellites to provide it with real-time intelligence.

Both India and Pakistan are expected to make high-level addresses at the Shangri-La Dialogue this weekend while the US and others will be looking for ways to prevent a repeat of their clash over Kashmir.

All of this is happening in a dramatically changed US context.

Donald Trump’s sudden imposition of trade tariffs, while eventually modified, has caused many in the region to rethink their reliance on Washington. Would an ally that is prepared to inflict so much economic pain on its friends really come to their aid if they were attacked?

China has been quick to capitalise on the confusion. It reached out to neighbours such as Vietnam – a country it went to war with in 1979 – to point out the People’s Republic represented stability and continuity in an unstable world.

Under the previous US administration, Washington signed up to a multi-billion dollar trilateral partnership between the US, UK and Australia under the acronym of Aukus.

It aims to not only build Canberra’s next generation of submarines but to guarantee freedom of navigation across the South China Sea using intelligence and naval force deployed by the three nations.

President Trump, when asked in February about his commitment to the Aukus pact, appeared not to recognise the term, asking in reply: “What does that mean?”

But early this Saturday morning the US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth will be addressing the Shangri-La Dialogue, potentially offering some clarity on Aukus as well as how the US plans to work with, and quite possibly against, China’s interests across the Asia-Pacific region.

Jesse Armstrong, one of the UK’s most successful screenwriters, is not one to rest on his laurels.

Hot off the back of his hit show Succession, which followed the twists and turns in the lives of media mogul Logan Roy, played by Brian Cox, and his four children, Armstrong is back with his first feature-length film, Mountainhead.

It’s a satire film about a group of four tech billionaire friends who go away to a mountain resort for the weekend but find themselves and their social media companies under scrutiny as social unrest spreads across the globe.

Speaking at the Hay Festival, Armstrong says: “People start by saying, ‘Why are you doing these rich people again? And it’s a fair question. They’re tech billionaires. Succession was about a big media family. And I think it’s because I’m interested in power, I don’t think it’s about just wealth.

“Succession was very clearly about why is the world like it is, who has power?”

HBO’s Mountainhead, starring Steve Carrell and Ramy Youssef, was made very quickly.

“We did it at great speed. I pitched it in December and wrote it in January… carried on re-writing it through pre-production and then shot it in 22 days, then edited it.

“We only finished (editing) about a week ago and it’s on TV this weekend!”

Armstrong, 54, wanted to do a quick turnaround on the film to try to capture the feeling and pace of technological developments and society’s fear about keeping up.

“The anxieties that we have about technology, especially AI, feel very present and move quite fast. And I wanted to try and write it in the same mood as you might be when you’re watching it, so I was keen to do it quickly,” he says.

“Another attraction for me was that I’ve never directed anything before and it made me feel less anxious to run at it and do it really, really quickly.”

Armstrong, who cut his teeth in children’s TV before writing for shows such as The Thick of It and going on to co-create series like Peep Show and Fresh Meat, said the inspiration for Mountainhead came from listening to podcasts.

“I wrote a book review about Sam-Bankman-Fried, the crypto fraudster, and then I read more and more about tech, and I started listening to podcasts of senior tech figures, from Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman, but also the mid-level people and even lower level – it’s an ecosphere.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about the voice of these people. I do love getting the vocabulary right. For me, that opens the door, once I can hear them talking. And since it seems like the AI companies are scraping so much of our hard work to train their models, I thought I would scrape them back [using their podcasts]!”

Armstrong told the Hay audience that while he knew his job was to engage viewers, writing the film “was a way of expressing a load of feelings about that world and about those men – they’re almost all men in that world – and it’s cathartic”.

His shows are known for their dark humour and Armstrong says if he had to write his job description in his passport application, he would put down “comedy writer”, adding that he doesn’t think of himself as a storyteller.

“I’m trying to make a story engaging that will probably involve people laughing. And the bit that I find most challenging is finding a story because people remember jokes, but you just won’t make it through that half hour or hour unless that story is is compelling enough to make an audience follow along.”

Many writers and showrunners end up directing episodes of the series that they have created but Armstrong says he couldn’t do that on Succession, which won multiple awards including 14 primetime Emmys.

“I always felt like the people who did it were so good at it that it was rather rude of me to suggest I could just come in and do it just as well.”

Armstrong doesn’t appear to be your stereotypical confident showrunner, coming across as quite shy and humble, despite his success.

“Sometimes very creative people have a real ‘screw you’ attitude to authority, and I don’t have that. Maybe I’m a bit more fearful, a bit more amenable. I like everyone to be happy. I want to to give people what they want in quite a decent and humane way.

“I don’t have a confrontational attitude to people I work with, unless someone’s a jerk – I hope I can stand up for myself and the work.”

This week saw Elon Musk part ways with the White House, Gary Lineker present his final Match of the Day, and the world of television pay tribute to former BBC presenter and executive Alan Yentob.

But how much attention did you pay to what else happened in the world?

Quiz collated by Ben Fell.

Fancy testing your memory? Try last week’s quiz, or have a go at something from the archives.

A suspect wanted for the murder of a South African university student has been killed in a shootout with police.

The man had been linked to the death of Olorato Mongale, whose body was found in Johannesburg on Sunday, about two hours after she was reported missing having gone on a date.

In the early hours of Friday morning, police officers found the main suspect hiding at a residential complex in the coastal town of Amanzimtoti, police spokesperson Athlenda Mathe said.

The suspect, who has not been named by the police, shot at the officers, who returned fire and killed him, Brigadier Mathe added.

Regional police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi said that at the time of the suspect’s death, he had 28 ID cards and a dozen mobile phones in his possession.

Ms Mongale’s death has sparked a fierce debate about the levels of violence faced by women in South Africa.

The country has one of the highest rates of femicide and gender-based violence in the world.

In an impassioned statement, Police Minister Senzo Mchunu called Ms Mongale’s killing “inhumane” and “gruesome”, adding: “To all men, this is a plea – simple, urgent, and human: Please, stop killing women.”

While continuing the search for two other men allegedly linked to the murder, the police took the parents of the deceased suspect into custody.

The suspect’s mother is accused of enabling him to “evade arrest” by tipping him off about the police’s presence at her house.

The police also said the suspect’s father is the owner of a VW Polo allegedly used in Ms Mongale’s murder.

The vehicle, which has been seized by the police, had traces of blood inside it, Brig Mathe said.

The suspect’s parents were questioned in custody but have now been released, said commissioner Mkhwanazi.

Earlier this week, the police named the three suspects linked to the killing as Fezile Ngubane, Philangenkosi Sibongokuhle Makhanya and Bongani Mthimkhulu.

Two of them – Mr Makhanya and Mr Mthimkhulu – were last month arrested for kidnapping and robbing a woman in KwaZulu-Natal, using the same VW Polo involved in Ms Mongale’s murder, police said. Both men had been freed on bail.

As part of their investigation into the killing, the police have identified a criminal gang or “syndicate” who have been targeting women in malls “for kidnapping and robbery”, said police spokesperson Mathe.

“They propose them, request to take them out on a date. When they agree, that is when they plan to rob them,” she added.

When Ms Mongale was last seen on Sunday, she was on a date with a man she had met a few days earlier at a shopping centre.

CCTV footage showed her leaving a location in Kew, Johannesburg, and walking towards a white VW Polo with fake licence plates.

The 30-year-old’s friends said she was invited for a date by a man only identified as John, who she had met in Johannesburg, where she was studying for a postgraduate degree at Witwatersrand University.

She texted one of her friends shortly before leaving home, saying that she was excited and getting ready for her date.

But police later found her body in an open field, sparking public outrage and calls for justice.

Family spokesperson Criselda Kananda said Ms Mongale’s body was “brutally violated”.

A candlelight vigil was held on Wednesday evening in Lombardy West, at the site where her body was found.

Family and friends have described her as an outspoken, bubbly woman who “lived with purpose and love”, local media reported.

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More than a thousand Indians have “come back or [been] deported” from the United States since January, India’s foreign ministry has said.

Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said that around 62% of them came on commercial flights, without providing more details.

This comes in the wake of President Donald Trump’s campaign against undocumented migrants to the US. Trump had earlier said that India “will do what’s right” on the deportation of illegal migrants.

In February, the US had deported more than hundred Indians on a US military flight, with reports saying some of them were brought back shackled.

“We have close cooperation between India and the United States on migration issues,” Mr Jaiswal said during the ministry’s weekly briefing, adding that India verifies nationalities before “we take them back”.

In total, the US is said to have identified about 18,000 Indian nationals it believes entered the country illegally.

Earlier this month, the US Embassy in India issued a warning that overstaying in the US could lead to deportation or a permanent ban on entry in the country, even for those who entered legally.

Mr Jaiswal also spoke about the Trump administration’s updated policy on student visas which is likely to impact Indian students planning to enrol in US universities.

The US had announced on Thursday that it had halted the scheduling of new visa interviews for foreign students as it considered expanding the screening of their social media activities.

“While we note that issuance of a visa is a sovereign function, we hope that the application of Indian students will be considered on merit, and they will be able to join their academic programs on time,” Mr Jaiswal said.

Mr Jaiswal also said that 330,000 Indians students had gone to the US for studies in 2023-24 – which makes India the largest source of international students in the country.

On Thursday, expanding its new visa policy, the US further announced that it was working to “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields”.

India’s economy grew by 7.4% in the period between January and March – up from 6.2% the previous quarter and significantly beating analyst expectations.

However, growth for full 2024-25 year, which runs between April and March, is pegged at 6.5% – the slowest in four years.

The country’s central bank – the Reserve Bank of India – meets later in June and is expected to cut rates for the third time in a row to boost growth.

India remains the world’s fastest growing major economy, although growth has sharply dropped from the 9.2% high recorded in financial year 2023-24.

Asia’s third-largest economy benefitted from strong growth in farm activity, steady public spending and improved rural demand in the last financial year, even as manufacturing and new investments by private companies remained weak.

While rural growth has improved on account of a strong winter harvest it is not nearly enough to offset continuing weakness in urban consumption, which has flagged due to high unemployment and lower wages.

India’s growth engine remains heavily dependent on the government’s infrastructure spending on roads, ports and highways, in the absence of significant improvement in private investment.

Going forward, domestic growth should benefit from government’s income tax cuts announced in the federal budget, as well as “monetary easing, expectations of an above normal monsoon and lower food inflation”, Aditi Nayar, an economist with the ratings agency Icra, said.

But ongoing global uncertainties, including US President Donald Trump’s trade war, are expected to weigh on export demand.

India is currently negotiating a trade-agreement with the United States which is officially expected to conclude by fall. Trump slapped tariffs of up to 27% on Indian goods in April – and a 90-day pause on these ends on 9 July.

Economists expect GDP growth in the ongoing financial year 2025-26 to further slow to 6% on the back of these global slowdown worries which could delay new private capital spending on projects.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects global growth to drop to 2.8% in 2025 and 3% in 2026.

Data from Icra earlier showed private sector expenditure, as part of overall investments in India’s economy, fell to a 10-year low of 33% in the last financial year.

Net foreign direct investment (FDI) into India – at $0.35bn in 2024-25 – also fell to the lowest level in two decades, as rising outward foreign investment and repatriations by Indian companies, neutralised inward investment.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has been attempting to position India as a manufacturing hub for global companies.

While companies like Apple indicated recently that it was shifting most of its production of iPhones headed to the US from China to India, trade analysts have cautioned that such manufacturing investment could yet stall, with the US and China agreeing to roll-back tariffs earlier this month.

The FBI is investigating an effort by one or more unknown people to access the personal phone of Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, sources told the BBC’s US news partner CBS.

The key Trump ally told people that her phone had been hacked after an impersonator – or impersonators – used her contacts file to message other top US officials, sources told CBS.

Some recipients of the messages raised suspicions after they were asked if they could continue a conversation in another platform, such as Telegram.

“The White House takes the cybersecurity of all staff very seriously, and this matter continues to be investigated,” a White House spokesperson said.

The period of time over which the messages were received is unknown.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the incident and the FBI probe launched in response.

The impersonation was targeted at her personal phone, not government phone, the Wall Street Journal reported. It also reported that the recipients included US senators, governors and top business executives.

Wiles is the first female White House chief of staff and was seen as a key architect of US President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign.

It is not the first time she has been at the centre of concerns around cybersecurity.

Last year, three members of a cyber espionage unit associated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards – a powerful branch of Iran’s armed forces – were indicted for launching cyber attacks on the Trump campaign team, which Susie Wiles led.

Responding to the latest incident, FBI director Kash Patel said in a statement to CBS News: “The FBI takes all threats against the President, his staff, and our cybersecurity with the utmost seriousness; safeguarding our administration officials’ ability to securely communicate to accomplish the President’s mission is a top priority.”

Flights were temporarily disrupted at Liberia main airport on Thursday night after a private jet carrying President Joseph Boakai almost crashed while landing.

Part of the presidential jet’s landing gear malfunctioned while approaching the runway, causing a rough landing, airport authorities said.

The incident, which sparked panic at the airport, forced the cancellation of all scheduled flights for the night, local media reported.

President Boakai, who was returning from a trip in Nigeria with his entourage, was safely evacuated unharmed, as authorities announced an investigation.

Photos of the stalled jet at the Roberts International Airport (RIA) circulated on social media, triggering concerns about the president’s safety.

Local media, citing airport authorities, said one of the plane’s tyres had burst upon landing leaving it stranded on the runway.

In a statement, the Liberia Airport Authority (LAA) confirmed the “unfortunate near-accident situation” involving the presidential jet.

The authority dismissed reports suggesting that the incident was caused by poor runway conditions.

“The runway infrastructure remains fully compliant with international aviation safety standards,” the LAA said.

The aircraft has since been removed from the runway and normal operations have resumed at the airport, the authorities said.

“At this stage, investigation to establish the actual cause of the incident is ongoing, and the airport authority will keep the public informed,” the LAA said.

The Liberian presidency is yet to comment on the incident but it shared photos of Boakai arriving at the airport, where he briefly spoke to journalists without mentioning the plane scare.

He had gone to Nigeria to attend the 50th anniversary of the regional Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas).

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Russia has continued to make billions from fossil fuel exports to the West, data shows, helping to finance its full-scale invasion of Ukraine – now in its fourth year.

Since the start of that invasion in February 2022, Russia has made more than three times as much money by exporting hydrocarbons than Ukraine has received in aid allocated by its allies.

Data analysed by the BBC show that Ukraine’s Western allies have paid Russia more for its hydrocarbons than they have given Ukraine in aid.

Campaigners say governments in Europe and North America need to do more to stop Russian oil and gas from fuelling the war with Ukraine.

Proceeds made from selling oil and gas are key to keeping Russia’s war machine going.

Oil and gas account for almost a third of Russia’s state revenue and more than 60% of its exports.

In the wake of the February 2022 invasion, Ukraine’s allies imposed sanctions on Russian hydrocarbons. The US and UK banned Russian oil and gas, while the EU banned Russian seaborne crude imports, but not gas.

Despite this, by 29 May, Russia had made more than €883bn ($973bn; £740bn) in revenue from fossil fuel exports since the start of the full-scale invasion, including €228bn from the sanctioning countries, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).

The lion’s share of that amount, €209bn, came from EU member states.

EU states continued importing pipeline gas directly from Russia until Ukraine cut the transit in January 2025, and Russian crude oil is still piped to Hungary and Slovakia.

Russian gas is still piped to Europe in increasing quantities via Turkey: CREA’s data shows that its volume rose by 26.77% in January and February 2025 over the same period in 2024.

Hungary and Slovakia are also still receiving Russian pipeline gas via Turkey.

Despite the West’s efforts, in 2024 Russian revenues from fossil fuels fell by a mere 5% compared with 2023, along with a similar 6% drop in the volumes of exports, according to CREA. Last year also saw a 6% increase in Russian revenues from crude oil exports, and a 9% year-on-year increase in revenues from pipeline gas.

Russian estimates say gas exports to Europe rose by up to 20% in 2024, with liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports reaching record levels. Currently, half of Russia’s LNG exports go the EU, CREA says.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, says the alliance has not imposed “the strongest sanctions” on Russian oil and gas because some member states fear an escalation in the conflict and because buying them is “cheaper in the short term”.

LNG imports have not been included in the latest, 17th package of sanctions on Russia approved by the EU, but it has adopted a road map towards ending all Russian gas imports by the end of 2027.

Data shows that money made by Russia from selling fossil fuels has consistently surpassed the amount of aid Ukraine receives from its allies.

The thirst for fuel can get in the way of the West’s efforts to limit Russia’s ability to fund its war.

Mai Rosner, a senior campaigner from the pressure group Global Witness, says many Western policymakers fear that cutting imports of Russian fuels will lead to higher energy prices.

“There’s no real desire in many governments to actually limit Russia’s ability to produce and sell oil. There is way too much fear about what that would mean for global energy markets. There’s a line drawn under where energy markets would be too undermined or too thrown off kilter,” she told the BBC.

In addition to direct sales, some of the oil exported by Russia ends up in the West after being processed into fuel products in third countries via what is known as “the refining loophole”. Sometimes it gets diluted with crude from other countries, too.

CREA says it has identified three “laundromat refineries” in Turkey and three in India processing Russian crude and selling the resulting fuel on to sanctioning countries. It says they have used €6.1bn worth of Russian crude to make products for sanctioning countries.

India’s petroleum ministry criticised CREA’s report as “a deceptive effort to tarnish India’s image”.

“[These countries] know that sanctioning countries are willing to accept this. This is a loophole. It’s entirely legal. Everyone’s aware of it, but nobody is doing much to actually tackle it in a big way,” says Vaibhav Raghunandan, an analyst at CREA.

Campaigners and experts argue that Western governments have the tools and means available to stem the flow of oil and gas revenue into the Kremlin’s coffers.

According to former Russian deputy energy minister Vladimir Milov, who is now a diehard opponent of Vladimir Putin, sanctions imposed on trade in Russian hydrocarbons should be better enforced – particularly the oil price cap adopted by the G7 group of nations, which Mr Milov says “is not working“.

He is fearful, though, that the US government shake-up launched by President Donald Trump will hamper agencies such as the US Treasury or the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which are key for sanctions enforcement.

Another avenue is continued pressure on Russia’s “shadow fleet” of tankers involved in dodging the sanctions.

“That is a complex surgery operation. You need to periodically release batches of new sanctioned vessels, shell companies, traders, insurers etc. every several weeks,” Mr Milov says. According to him, this is an area where Western governments have been much more effective, particularly with the introduction of new sanctions by Joe Biden’s outgoing administration in January 2025.

Mai says that banning Russian LNG exports to Europe and closing the refining loophole in Western jurisdictions would be “important steps in finishing the decoupling of the West from Russian hydrocarbons”.

According to Mr Raghunandan from CREA, it would be relatively easy for the EU to give up Russian LNG imports.

“Fifty percent of their LNG exports are directed towards the European Union, and only 5% of the EU’s total [LNG] gas consumption in 2024 was from Russia. So if the EU decides to completely cut off Russian gas, it’s going to hurt Russia way more then it’s going to hurt consumers in the European Union,” he told the BBC.

Experts interviewed by the BBC have dismissed Donald Trump’s idea that the war with Ukraine will end if Opec brings oil prices down.

“People in Moscow are laughing at this idea, because the party which will suffer the most… is the American shale oil industry, the least cost-competitive oil industry in the world,” Mr Milov told the BBC.

Mr Raghunandan says that Russia’s cost of producing crude is also lower than in Opec countries like Saudi Arabia, so they would be hurt by lower oil prices before Russia.

“There is no way that Saudi Arabia is going to agree to that. This has been tried before. This has led to conflict between Saudi Arabia and the US,” he says.

Ms Rosner says there are both moral and practical issues with the West buying Russian hydrocarbons while supporting Ukraine.

“We now have a situation in which we are funding the aggressor in a war that we’re condemning and also funding the resistance to the war,” she says. “This dependence on fossil fuels means that we are really at the whims of energy markets, global energy producers and hostile dictators.”

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Paul Doyle has appeared in court accused of driving his car into a crowd of people after Liverpool FC’s trophy parade.

The former Royal Marine, 53, faces seven charges including wounding with intent, causing grievous bodily harm (GBH) with intent, attempting to cause GBH with intent and dangerous driving.

The charges relate to six victims, including two children, after a total of 79 people were injured in the city centre on Monday evening.

The father-of-three of Burghill Road in West Derby, Liverpool, was escorted into the dock at Liverpool Crown Court wearing a black suit, grey tie and white shirt.

Recorder of Liverpool Judge Andrew Menary KC said he would fix a provisional trial date of 24 November, with the case expected to last three to four weeks.

Philip Astbury, prosecuting, told Judge Menary the charges “as they stand may change”.

“This is an ongoing investigation and there are a great deal of witnesses to be interviewed and footage to be reviewed,” he said.

Damian Nolan, defending, said there would be no application for bail at the hearing.

Mr Doyle first appeared at a separate hearing in Liverpool Magistrates’ Court earlier, and appeared emotional as he spoke quietly only to confirm his date of birth and age.

For much of that hearing he sat in the dock listening to proceedings.

Mr Doyle was not asked to enter a plea before magistrates and at that hearing District Judge Paul Healey confirmed he had imposed a number of reporting restrictions.

Hundreds of thousands of jubilant Liverpool fans packed the city centre on Bank Holiday Monday and lined the 10-mile (16km) parade route as Liverpool FC celebrated winning their second Premier League crown and 20th top-flight league title.

A pram carrying a baby boy was hit by a car and spun metres down the street after it was hit, but the child was not hurt.

A fundraising campaign set up for those affected by the incident has raised more than £30,000, including a £10,000 donation from ex-player Jamie Carragher’s charity foundation.

Banksy’s latest piece of graffiti art, revealed to the world on Thursday, has now been traced to a street in Marseille.

Images posted on the elusive artist‘s Instagram depict a lighthouse stencilled on a drab, beige wall, along with the words: “I want to be what you saw in me.”

A false shadow appears to have been drawn on the pavement from a nearby bollard, giving the illusion that the lighthouse is itself a silhouette of the mundane street furniture.

Its location was initially a mystery, but BBC Verify has confirmed it as Rue Félix Fregier in the southern French city.

An image of the art circulating online shows a blurred person riding a scooter in front of the piece, with a graffiti tag seemingly reading “Yaze” further along the wall.

The tag matches that used by a Canadian graffiti artist Marco The Polo, whose Instagram account features photos of his own work but who has called Banksy an inspiration.

Banksy has kept his true identity a secret throughout his career, and it is only through the Instagram account that works are identified as genuine.

Often imbuing his works with a political message, his previous pieces have alluded to immigration, the war in Ukraine and homelessness, among other things.

The meaning of some of his works, though, is less clear – such as his motivation behind the series of animals painted in various locations across London last summer.

Prior to the lighthouse, in December, Banksy posted a piece depicting a Madonna and child, with a fixture in the wall appearing like a bullet wound in her chest.

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Elon Musk’s time in the Trump administration is coming to an end after a tempestuous 129 days in which the world’s richest man took an axe to government spending – stirring ample controversy along the way.

Earlier this week, the South African-born billionaire, on his social media platform, X, thanked President Trump for his time at the Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge.

Trump announced he will host a news conference in the Oval Office on Friday with Musk, writing: “This will be his last day, but not really, because he will, always, be with us, helping all the way.”

While Musk’s time in government lasted little more than four months, his work with Doge upended the federal government and had an impact not just in the halls of power in Washington – but around the world.

Let’s take a look at some of the ways Musk has left a mark.

Musk took a job with the Trump White House with one mission: to cut spending from the government as much as possible.

He began with an initial target of “at least $2 trillion”, which then shifted to $1tn and ultimately $150bn.

To date, Doge claims to have saved $175bn through a combination of asset sales, lease and grant cancellations, “fraud and improper payment deletion”, regulatory savings and a 260,000-person reduction from the 2.3 million-strong federal workforce.

A BBC analysis of those figures, however, found that evidence is sometimes lacking.

This mission has at times caused both chaos and controversy, including some instances in which federal judges halted mass firings and ordered employees reinstated.

In other instances, the administration has been forced to backtrack on firings.

In one notable instance in February, the administration stopped the firing of hundreds of federal employees working at the National Nuclear Security Administration, including some with sensitive jobs related to the US nuclear arsenal.

Musk himself repeatedly acknowledged that mass firings would inevitably include mistakes.

“We will make mistakes,” he said in February, after his department mistook a region of Mozambique for Hamas-controlled Gaza while cutting an aid programme. “But we’ll act quickly to correct any mistakes.”

Doge’s efforts to access data also garnered controversy, particularly the department’s push for access to sensitive treasury department systems that control the private information of millions of Americans.

Polls show that cuts to government spending remain popular with many Americans – even if Musk’s personal popularity has waned.

The presence of Musk – an unelected “special government employee” with companies that count the US government as customers – in Trump’s White House has also raised eyebrows, prompting questions about potential conflicts of interest.

His corporate empire includes large companies that do business with US and foreign governments. SpaceX has $22 billion in US government contracts, according to the company’s chief executive.

Some Democrats also accused Musk of taking advantage of his position to drum up business abroad for his satellite internet services firm, Starlink.

The White House was accused of helping Musk’s businesses by showcasing vehicles made by Tesla – his embattled car company – on the White House lawn in March.

Musk and Trump have both shrugged off any suggestion that his work with the government is conflicted or ethically problematic.

Around the world, Musk’s work with Doge was most felt after the vast majority – over 80% – of the US Agency for International Development’s (USAID’s) programmes were eliminated following a six-week review by Doge. The rest were absorbed by the State Department.

The Musk and Doge-led cuts formed part of a wider effort by the Trump administration to bring overseas spending closer in line with its “America First” approach.

The cuts to the agency – tasked with work such as famine detection, vaccinations and food aid in conflict areas – quickly had an impact on projects including communal kitchens in war-torn Sudan, scholarships for young Afghan women who fled the Taliban and clinics for transgender people in India.

USAID also was a crucial instrument of US “soft power” around the world, leading some detractors pointing to its elimination as a sign of waning American influence on the global stage.

While Musk – and Trump – have for years been accused by detractors of spreading baseless conspiracy theories, Musk’s presence in the White House starkly highlighted how misinformation has crept into discourse at the highest levels of the US government.

For example, Musk spread an unfounded internet theory that US gold reserves had quietly been stolen from Fort Knox in Kentucky. At one point, he floated the idea of livestreaming a visit there to ensure the gold was secured.

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More recently, Musk spread widely discredited rumours that the white Afrikaner population of South Africa is facing “genocide” in their home country.

Those rumours found their way into the Oval Office earlier in May, when a meeting aimed at soothing tensions between the US and South Africa took a drastic twist after Trump presented South African President Cyril Ramaphosa with videos and articles he said were evidence of crimes against Afrikaners.

Musk’s work in government also showed that, despite public pledges of unity, there are tensions within the “Trump 2.0” administration.

While Trump publicly – and repeatedly – backed the work of Musk and Doge, Musk’s tenure was marked by reports of tension between him and members of the cabinet who felt Doge cuts were impacting their agencies.

“They have a lot of respect for Elon and that he’s doing this, and some disagree a little bit,” Trump acknowledged in a February cabinet meeting. “If they aren’t, I want them to speak up.”

At one point, he was asked whether any cabinet members had expressed dissatisfaction with Musk and turned to the room to ask them. No one spoke.

The announcement of Musk’s departure also came the same day CBS – BBC’s US partner – publicised part of an interview during which Musk said he was “disappointed” by Trump’s “big, beautiful” budget bill. The bill includes multi-trillion dollar tax breaks and a pledge to increase defence spending.

Musk said the bill “undermines” the work of Doge to cut spending – reflecting larger tensions within the Republican Party over the path forward.

More than a thousand Indians have “come back or [been] deported” from the United States since January, India’s foreign ministry has said.

Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said that around 62% of them came on commercial flights, without providing more details.

This comes in the wake of President Donald Trump’s campaign against undocumented migrants to the US. Trump had earlier said that India “will do what’s right” on the deportation of illegal migrants.

In February, the US had deported more than hundred Indians on a US military flight, with reports saying some of them were brought back shackled.

“We have close cooperation between India and the United States on migration issues,” Mr Jaiswal said during the ministry’s weekly briefing, adding that India verifies nationalities before “we take them back”.

In total, the US is said to have identified about 18,000 Indian nationals it believes entered the country illegally.

Earlier this month, the US Embassy in India issued a warning that overstaying in the US could lead to deportation or a permanent ban on entry in the country, even for those who entered legally.

Mr Jaiswal also spoke about the Trump administration’s updated policy on student visas which is likely to impact Indian students planning to enrol in US universities.

The US had announced on Thursday that it had halted the scheduling of new visa interviews for foreign students as it considered expanding the screening of their social media activities.

“While we note that issuance of a visa is a sovereign function, we hope that the application of Indian students will be considered on merit, and they will be able to join their academic programs on time,” Mr Jaiswal said.

Mr Jaiswal also said that 330,000 Indians students had gone to the US for studies in 2023-24 – which makes India the largest source of international students in the country.

On Thursday, expanding its new visa policy, the US further announced that it was working to “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields”.

The US Court of International Trade on Wednesday struck down President Donald Trump’s tariffs imposed under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).

The court ruled IEEPA did not give the president the authority to impose certain tariffs.

This affects the “fentanyl” tariffs imposed by the White House on Canada, Mexico, China since Trump returned to the White House. These tariffs were brought in to curb smuggling of the narcotic into the US.

It also affects the so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs announced on 2 April, including the universal 10% baseline tariff on all imports to the US.

However, the ruling does not affect the Trump administration’s 25% “sectoral” tariffs on steel and aluminium imports and also his 25% additional tariffs on cars and car part imports, as these were implemented under a different legal justification.

A US federal appeals court decided on Thursday night that Trump’s global tariffs can temporarily stay in place while it considers the White House’s appeal against the trade court’s judgement – but the future of the President’s tariff agenda remains in the balance.

Data from US Customs shows the amount of revenue collected in the 2025 financial year to date (ie between 1 October 2024 and 30 April) under various tariffs.

The data gives an approximate sense of the proportion of tariffs struck down and unaffected by the trade court’s ruling.

It shows the tariffs imposed under IEEPA on China, Mexico and Canada in relation to the fentanyl smuggling had brought in $11.8bn (£8.7bn) since February 2025.

The 10% reciprocal tariffs – also justified under IEEPA – implemented in April had brought in $1.2bn (£890m).

On the other side of the ledger, the tariffs on metals and car parts – which are unaffected by this ruling – brought in around $3.3bn (£2.4bn), based on rounded figures.

And the biggest source of tariff revenue for the US in the period was from tariffs imposed on China dating back to Trump’s first term in office, which raised $23.4bn (£17.3bn). These are also not affected by the court ruling, as they were not justified by IEEPA.

However, this is a backward looking picture – and the new tariffs were expected to raise considerably more revenue over a full financial year.

Analysts at the investment bank Goldman Sachs have estimated that the tariffs the trade court has struck down were likely to have raised almost $200bn (£148bn) on an annual basis.

In terms of the overall impact on Donald Trump’s tariff agenda, the consultancy Capital Economics estimates the court ruling would reduce the US’s average external tariff this year from 15% to 6.5%.

This would still be a considerable increase on the 2.5% level of 2024 and would be the highest since 1970.

Yet 15% would have been the highest since the late 1930s.

Trump had been using his tariffs as negotiating leverage in talks with countries hit by his 2 April tariffs.

Some analysts believe this trade court ruling will mean countries will now be less likely to rush to secure deals with the US.

The European Union (EU) intensified negotiations with the White House last weekend after Trump threatened to increase the tariff on the bloc to 50% under IEEPA.

The EU – and others, such as Japan and Australia – might now judge it would be more prudent to wait to see what happens to the White House’s appeal against the trade court ruling before making any trade concessions to the US to secure a deal.

The response of stock markets around the world to the trade court ruling on Wednesday suggested it would be positive.

But it also means greater uncertainty.

Some analysts say Trump could attempt to reimpose the tariffs under different legal justifications.

For instance, Trump could attempt to re-implement the tariffs under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which empowers the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) to address foreign practices that violate trade agreements or are deemed “discriminatory”.

And Trump has also threatened other sectoral tariffs, including on pharmaceuticals and semiconductors. Those could still go into effect if they are not justified by IEEPA.

Last month the World Trade Organization (WTO) said that the outlook for global trade had “deteriorated sharply” due to Trump’s tariffs.

The WTO said it expected global merchandise trade to decline by 0.2% in 2025 as a result, having previously projected it would grow by 2.7 per cent this year.

The trade court ruling – if it holds – might help global trade perform somewhat better than this.

But the dampening impact of uncertainty regarding whether US tariffs will materialise or not remains.

The bottom line is that many economists think trade will still be very badly affected this year.

“Trump’s trade war is not over – not by a long shot,” is the verdict of Grace Fan of the consultancy TS Lombard.

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Russell Brand has pleaded not guilty to charges of rape, sexual assault and indecent assault at a court hearing in London.

The broadcaster, comedian and actor appeared at Southwark Crown Court, where he formally denied the five charges for the first time.

He faces one allegation of rape, one of indecent assault, one of oral rape and two further counts of sexual assault. The offences are alleged to have taken place in central London and Bournemouth between 1999 and 2005, and relate to four women.

The 49-year-old will now face a trial, which is scheduled to begin on 3 June 2026.

Brand is accused of oral rape and sexual assault against one of the women in July 2004, and is accused of raping another woman in 1999.

He is also charged with indecently assaulting a woman by grabbing her arm and dragging her towards a male toilet in 2001, and with sexually assaulting a different woman by kissing and groping her in 2004 or 2005.

Mr Brand did not speak to reporters and looked straight ahead as he entered the court building wearing a dark suit and unbuttoned shirt.

He stood in the glass dock as he spoke to confirm his name, and replied “not guilty” after each of the counts were put to him.

He then put his sunglasses back on as he walked out of the dock, thanking the usher as he left.

Leaving the building shortly afterwards, he was flanked by security guards as he walked past photographers and camera crews to a waiting car.

The media personality and influencer, of Hambleden, Buckinghamshire, will remain on conditional bail until the trial.

A pre-trial review has been scheduled for 20 May 2026.

After being charged in April, he released a video saying he was not a rapist and had never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity.

“I’m now going to have the opportunity to defend these charges in court and I’m incredibly grateful for that,” he told followers at the time.

Mr Brand, who was born in Essex, rose to fame as a stand-up comedian and became a household name as host of TV shows like Big Brother’s Big Mouth, and with his own radio programmes on stations including BBC Radio 2 and 6 Music.

He went on to establish a Hollywood career, starring in films like Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him To The Greek.

Trade talks between the US and China are “a bit stalled”, the US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said.

His comment comes less than three weeks after a temporary trade truce was agreed between the world’s two largest economies, with both agreeing to reduce tit-for-tat tariffs.

Bessent told Fox News on Thursday: “I think that given the magnitude of the talks, given the complexity, that this is going to require [leaders of both the countries] to weigh in with each other”.

Donald Trump’s global tariff regime was dealt a blow on Wednesday following a ruling that he had exceeded his authority. His plans have been temporarily reinstated after the White House appealed the decision.

Both the US and China confirmed they would reduce tariffs imposed on each other’s imports earlier this month, following talks in Switzerland.

The deal involved both nations cancelling some tariffs altogether and suspending others for 90 days by 14 May.

Bessent said talks on a further deal had lost momentum, but stressed that they were continuing.

“I believe that we will be having more talks with [China] in the next few weeks and I believe we may at some point have a call between the president and [Chinese President Xi Jinping],” Bessent said on Thursday.

He added that the pair had “a very good relationship” and he was “confident that the Chinese will come to the table when President Trump makes his preferences known”.

Under the deal struck earlier this month, the US lowered tariffs imposed on goods from China from 145% to 30%.

China’s retaliatory tariffs on US goods dropped from 125% to 10%.

The US President has argued imposing tariffs on foreign goods would encourage US consumers to buy more American-made goods, bringing back manufacturing jobs while increase the amount of tax revenue raised.

They have been used by the Trump administration as leverage in negotiations as it seeks to reduce trade deficits with other nations.

A delegation from Japan are continuing trade talks with their US counterparts in Washington on Friday.

Bessent said “a couple” of US trade deals were “very close”, but “a couple of them are more complicated”.

Trump’s tariff regime remains in the balance following the decision by the US Court of International Trade, which ruled that Trump had overstepped his power by imposing the duties.

Some analysts believe it will mean countries will be less likely to rush to secure trade deals with the US.

A federal appeals court has granted a bid from the White House to temporarily suspend the lower court’s order, which Trump described as “horrific”.

“Hopefully, the Supreme Court will reverse this horrible, Country [sic] threatening decision, QUICKLY and DECISIVELY,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.

A US government report on children’s health cited “totally fabricated” studies to back up its findings, academics wrongly listed as the authors of those studies have said.

First released on 22 May, the report detailed causes of a “chronic disease crisis” among children in the US. An amended version was issued on 29 May after digital outlet NOTUS found it had used seven non-existent sources.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said there were “formatting issues” and the report would be updated, but it did “not negate the substance of the report”.

US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, who has promoted debunked claims that vaccines cause autism, leads the department behind the report.

It comes on the back of one of US President Donald Trump’s sweeping executive orders earlier this year, specifically to “study the scope of the childhood chronic disease crisis and any potential contributing causes”.

Issued by the Make America Healthy Again Commission, the report concluded that poor diet, environmental toxins, stress, insufficient physical activity and “overmedicalisation” may contribute to chronic illness among American children.

But the authors of several studies cited in the report told news outlets they did not write them, and that the studies never existed.

Guohua Li, a Columbia University professor who was named as an author of a report on the mental health of children in the pandemic, told Agence France-Presse that the reference was “totally fabricated” and that he does not even know the listed co-author.

He was listed as an author alongside Noah Kreski, a researcher at Columbia University, who also denied writing it, telling AFP it “doesn’t appear to be a study that exists at all.”

Katherine Keyes, an epidemiology professor who told news agency Reuters she was also wrongly named as an author, said: “It does make me concerned given that citation practices are an important part of conducting and reporting rigorous science.”

Another study cited about the advertising of psychotropic medications for youth was not written by the listed author, the university that employs him told AFP and Reuters.

The Democratic National Committee accused RFK Jr.’s Department of Health and Human Services of “justifying its policy priorities with sources that do not exist” and using citations that “are rife with errors, from broken links to misstated conclusions”.

RFK Jr was sworn in as US Health Secretary in February. Since taking office he has cut thousands of jobs in the health department and made plans to introduce placebo trials for all new vaccines.

Xiao Chen turned up at the US Consulate in Shanghai on Thursday morning, hours after Washington announced that it would “aggressively” revoke the visas of Chinese students.

The 22-year-old had a visa appointment: she was headed to Michigan in the autumn to study communications.

After a “pleasant” conversation, she was told her application had been rejected. She was not given a reason.

“I feel like a drifting duckweed tossed in wind and storm,” she said, using a common Chinese expression to describe feeling both uncertain and helpless.

She had been hopeful because she already had the acceptance letter. And she thought she had narrowly escaped the bombshells in recent days.

First, Donald Trump’s administration moved to end Harvard University’s ability to enrol international students, a move that has since been blocked in court. And then it said it had stopped visa appointments for all foreign students.

But now, Chen is ready for plan B. “If I can’t get the visa eventually, I’ll probably take a gap year. Then I’ll wait to see if things will get better next year.”

A valid visa may still not be enough, she adds, because students with visas could be “stopped at the airport and deported”.

“It’s bad for every Chinese student. The only difference is how bad.”

It has been a bleak week for international students in the US – and perhaps even harder for the 280,000 or so Chinese students who would have noticed that their country has been singled out.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused Harvard of “co-ordinating with the Chinese Communist Party”.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the move against Chinese students in the US would include “those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields”.

That could hit a wide swathe of them given membership of the Communist Party is common among officials, entrepreneurs, business people and even artists and celebrities in China.

Beijing has called it a “politically motivated and discriminatory action”, and its foreign ministry has lodged a formal protest.

There was a time when China sent the highest number of foreign students to American campuses. But those numbers slipped as the relationship between the two countries soured.

A more powerful and increasingly assertive Beijing is now clashing with Washington for supremacy in just about everything, from trade to tech.

Trump’s first term had already spelled trouble for Chinese students. He signed an order in 2020 barring Chinese students and researchers with ties to Beijing’s military from obtaining US visas.

That order remained in place during President Joe Biden’s term. Washington never clarified what constitutes “ties” to the military, so many students had their visas revoked or were turned away at US borders, sometimes without a proper explanation.

One of them, who did not wish to be named, said his visa was cancelled by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) when he landed in Boston in August 2023.

He had been accepted into a post-doctoral program at Harvard University. He was going to study regenerative medicine with a focus on breast cancer, and had done his master’s degree from a military-affiliated research institution in China.

He said he was not a member of the Communist Party and his research had nothing to do with the military.

“They asked me what the relationship was between my research and China’s defence affairs,” he told the BBC then. “I said, how could breast cancer have anything to do with national defence? If you know, please tell me.”

He believes he never stood a chance because the officials had already made up their minds. He recalled one of them asking: “Did Xi Jinping buy your suitcase for you?”

What was surprising, or even shocking then, slowly turned normal as more and more Chinese students struggled to secure visas or admissions to study science and technology in US universities.

Mr Cao, a psychology major whose research involves neuroscience, has spent the past school year applying for PhD programs in the US.

He had graduated from top-tier universities – credentials that could send him to an Ivy League school. But of the more than 10 universities he applied to, only one extended an offer.

Trump’s cuts to biomedical research didn’t help, but the mistrust surrounding Chinese researchers was also a factor. Allegations and rumours of espionage, especially in sensitive subjects, have loomed over Chinese nationals at US universities in recent years, even derailing some careers.

“One of the professors even told me, ‘We rarely give offers to Chinese students these days, so I cannot give you an interview,” Mr Cao told the BBC in February.

“I feel like I am just a grain of sand under the wheel of time. There is nothing I can do.”

For those who did graduate from US colleges, returning home to China has not been easy either.

They used to be lauded as a bridge to the rest of the world. Now, they find that their once-coveted degrees don’t draw the same reaction.

Chen Jian, who did not want to use his real name, said he quickly realised that his undergraduate degree from a US college had become an obstacle.

When he first came back in 2020, he interned at a state-owned bank and asked a supervisor if there was a chance to stay on.

The supervisor didn’t say it outright, but Chen got the message: “Employees should have local degrees. People like me (with overseas degrees) won’t even get a response.”

He later realised that “there really weren’t any colleagues with overseas undergraduate background in the department”.

He went back to the US and did his master’s at Johns Hopkins University, and now works at Chinese tech giant Baidu.

But despite the degree from a prestigious American university, Mr Chen does not feel he has an edge because of the stiff competition from graduates in China.

What also has not helped is the suspicion around foreign graduates. Beijing has ramped up warnings of foreign spies, telling civilians to be on the lookout for suspicious figures.

In April, prominent Chinese businesswoman Dong Mingzhu told shareholders in a closed-door meeting that her company, home appliance maker Gree Electric, will “never” recruit Chinese people educated overseas “because among them are spies”.

“I don’t know who is and who isn’t,” Ms Dong said, in comments that were leaked and went viral online.

Days later, the CIA released promotional videos encouraging Chinese officials dissatisfied with the government to become spies and provide classified information. “Your destiny is in your own hands,” the video said.

The suspicion of foreigners as the US and China pull further away from each other is a surprising turn for many Chinese people who remember growing up in a very different country.

Zhang Ni, who also did not want to use her real name, says she was “very shocked” by Ms Dong’s remarks.

The 24-year-old is a recent journalism graduate from Columbia University in New York. She says she “doesn’t care about working at Gree”, but what surprised her was the shift in attitudes.

That so many Chinese companies “don’t like anything that might be associated with the international” is a huge contrast from what Ms Zhang grew up with – a childhood “filled with [conversations centred on] the Olympics and World Expo”.

“Whenever we saw foreigners, my mom would push me to go talk to them to practice my English,” she says.

That willingness to exchange ideas and learn from the outside world appears to be waning in China, according to many.

And America, once a place that drew so many young Chinese people, is no longer that welcoming.

Looking back, Ms Zhang can’t help but recall a joke her friend made at a farewell dinner before she left for the US.

Then a flippant comment, it now sums up the fear in both Washington and Beijing: “Don’t become a spy.”