Donald Trump has said he will visit China after speaking to its leader Xi Jinping over the phone.

The US president said he had reciprocated with an invite to the White House during the “very good talk” – though such a trip has not been confirmed by either side.

Thursday’s call is the first time the two leaders have spoken since Trump launched a trade war with Beijing in February. Chinese state media reported that the call happened at the White House’s request.

Trump wrote on social media that the hour-and-a-half conversation was primarily focused on trade and had “resulted in a very positive conclusion for both countries”.

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“He invited me to China and I invited him here,” Trump said of the call with Xi while meeting German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in the Oval Office.

“We both accepted, so I will be going there with the first lady at a certain point and he will be coming here hopefully with the first lady of China.”

The Chinese readout of the conversation mentioned the its invitation but not the reciprocal one to the White House.

According to Chinese state news agency Xinhua, Xi reportedly told Trump that the US should “withdraw the negative measures it has taken against China”.

The Chinese leader was also said to have told Trump that China always kept its promises and since a consensus had been reached, both sides should abide by it – a reference to a recent deal between the two nations struck in Geneva.

Both sides have accused the other of breaching the deal aimed at dramatically reducing trade tariffs – a deal Trump touted as a “total reset”.

It came after Trump raised tariffs on imports from a number of countries, but reserved the highest rates for China. Beijing responded with its own higher rates on US imports, sparking tit-for-tat increases that peaked at 145%.

The tentative truce struck in May brought that US tariff on Chinese products down to 30%, while Beijing slashed levies on US imports to 10% and promised to lift barriers on critical mineral exports.

The agreement gave both sides a 90-day deadline to try to reach a trade deal.

But since then, talks have seemed to grind to a halt amid claims on both sides that the deal had been breached.

The US has accused China of failing to restart shipments of critical minerals and rare earth magnets vital to car and computer industries.

The Chinese Ministry of Commerce has denied the claims and accused the US of undermining the deal by introducing new restrictions on computer chips.

Trump introduced new export restrictions on semiconductor design software and announced it would revoke the visas of Chinese students.

The US president said following the call that “there should no longer be any questions respecting the complexity of Rare Earth products”.

He told reporters in the White House: “Chinese students can come, no problem, no problem – its an honour to have them frankly. But we want to check them.”

Chinese state media reported that Xi warned Washington that it should handle Taiwan “with caution” to avoid conflict, just days after US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said China posed an “imminent” threat to the self-governed island.

Hegseth told the Shangri-la Dialogue in Singaport that Beijing was “credibly preparing to potentially use military force to alter the balance of power”.

China sees Taiwan as a breakaway province that will eventually be reunified, and has not ruled out the use of force to achieve this. The US supports Taiwan militarily but does not officially recognise it due to the “One China” policy.

According to the readout of Thursday’s call given to Chinese media, Xi stressed that the US should handle the “Taiwan issue prudently to prevent a small number of Taiwan Independence separatists from dragging China and the US into a dangerous situation of conflict and confrontation”.

The call between Trump and Xi is long awaited and comes after months of silence between the two leaders.

The White House has touted the possibility they might talk from week one of Trump’s presidency – and earlier this week he finally vented his frustration on social media.

Trump wrote: “I like President Xi of China, always have, and always will, but he is VERY TOUGH, AND EXTREMELY HARD TO MAKE A DEAL WITH!”

Trump has made it clear that he likes to be involved in negotiations. But this is not the way China does business.

Beijing prefers to appoint a negotiating team led by a trusted official. Any calls or meeting between heads of state are usually thoroughly planned and highly choreographed.

The Chinese will also not want to be seen to bend to Washington’s demands.

An Australian man has been conditionally released from prison in Iraq, after four years of what the UN has called arbitrary detention.

Robert Pether, a mechanical engineer, was jailed in 2021 on fraud charges amid a contract dispute between the consulting firm he worked for and the Central Bank of Iraq.

The UN has said the 50-year-old’s detention and treatment was illegal, and an international court has ruled his employer is not responsible for the business disagreement.

Iraqi officials are yet to provide an explanation for the decision, Mr Pether’s wife Desree told the BBC – noting her “extremely sick” husband is still banned from leaving the country despite needing urgent medical care.

The family feels numb with shock, said Mrs Pether, who has been tirelessly lobbying for this moment.

“It’s the first time in over four years that we’ve taken one step in the right direction.”

“There’s a tiny glimmer of hope, but there’s another mountain still to go over.”

“He really needs to be home and in hospital.”

Simon Harris, the tánaiste (deputy prime minister) of Ireland – where the Pether family lives – said in a statement to media that Iraq’s Foreign Minister had called him to confirm the “welcome news”.

“[This] has been a long and distressing saga for Robert’s wife, three children and his wider family and friends,” Harris said.

“I welcomed this as a first step to his being allowed to return to his family in Roscommon.”

He added that he remained concerned about Mr Pether’s health and any outstanding charges against him – which are unclear.

The BBC has contacted the Australian government for comment.

Mr Pether worked in the Middle East for almost a decade before taking on a huge rebuild of the Central Bank of Iraq’s Baghdad headquarters in 2015.

He was arrested alongside his CME Consulting colleague, Egyptian Khalid Radwan, after the bank accused the men of stealing money from the project.

After being held without charge for almost six months, and then subjected to a speedy trial, the two were each given a five-year jail sentence and a joint fine of $12m (A$18.4m, £8.8m).

However, a 2022 report from the UN determined that the case contravened international law, and that Mr Pether and Mr Khalid had been subjected to “abusive and coercive” interrogations.

Iraq’s government has previously denied allegations of ill treatment.

In 2023, the International Chamber of Commerce’s (ICC) Court of Arbitration ruled that Iraq’s central bank was at fault in the dispute with CME, and ordered it to pay $13m to the company.

Mrs Pether said she spoke to her husband after his release on Thursday night.

“He’s on a bit of a high tonight, but I think he’ll probably come crashing down tomorrow.”

He looked sick and weak, she said, noting that he can’t keep food down and hasn’t eaten properly in months. There are also worries he has a potential skin cancer relapse, she added.

“He’s unrecognisable. If he got on a plane now and they were checking his passport, they would not know it was the same person.”

She said efforts are now turning to have Mr Pether’s travel ban lifted, but in the meantime the family has turned to crowdfunding to try to get him private hospital care in Baghdad.

“Enough is enough,” Mrs Pether said. “He needs to come home.”

When Shamili left her home in India’s Bengaluru city on Wednesday, it wasn’t to see her favourite cricket team – she isn’t even a fan of the game.

But the buzz around the Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s (RCB’s) Indian Premier League victory parade – the home team won the tournament for the first time – had swept through the city like wildfire.

Wearing an RCB jersey with “18 Virat” on the back – a nod to Virat Kohli, the city’s favourite cricket icon – Shamili joined her sister and friends near the Chinnaswamy Stadium, looking forward to celebrations.

What she didn’t expect was to get caught in a terrifying crush.

The victory parade turned deadly when surging crowds – far beyond what authorities expected – led to a horrific crush that killed 11 people and injured dozens more.

Survivors like Shamili are now grappling with trauma, pain and a sense of disbelief after the celebration spiralled into catastrophe.

“I kept saying, ‘let’s go, let’s go’ – the crowd was getting out of control,” Shamili recalled, sitting on a bed at the government-run Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital. “The next thing I knew, I was on the ground. People were walking over me. I thought I was going to die.”

She is not alone. Many who had come just to soak in the atmosphere – fans, families, curious onlookers – found themselves caught in a tide of bodies as crowds swelled beyond control.

Police had expected no more than 100,000 people. In reality, Karnataka’s chief minister Siddaramaiah said, the crowd surged to 200,000-300,000. The stadium, with a capacity of 32,000, was overwhelmed long before the team arrived.

Videos from before the crush showed people climbing trees and trying to scale the stadium walls.

Haneef Mohammed, an engineering student, told BBC Hindi that he had no intention of going inside because he didn’t have a pass or ticket.

“I was just standing and watching the crowds near the main gate. Suddenly, people started running all around and the police started hitting people with their lathis,” he said.

Police in India often wield lathis – long bamboo sticks – to try and control crowds.

Mr Mohammed got hit on the head with a lathi and started bleeding. He says the police immediately arranged for a vehicle to take him to the hospital.

The ages of the 11 victims range from 13 to 43 years.

The youngest, Divyanshi, was a Class 9 student who had come to the stadium with her mother and other family members. Other victims include college students and a young tech worker who had come to the stadium with her colleagues.

A doctor who spoke on condition of anonymity said that most of them were “brought dead to hospital” due to suffocation or broken ribs. The massive crowds had delayed ambulances getting to the site of the crush.

Even as chaos and panic ensued on the roads around the Chinnaswamy stadium, the RCB team went inside the stadium after being felicitated on the footsteps of the Vidhana Soudha – the seat of power in Karnataka – by the governor, chief minister and other ministers.

“They went on a victory lap around the stadium. Inside the stadium, there was no sign that anything had happened outside,” said a young man who spoke on condition of anonymity.

IPL chairman Arun Dhumal said he did not know who had planned the event in Bengaluru and that RCB officials inside the stadium were not aware of the crush until they got phone calls.

In a statement on X, RCB said it was “deeply anguished by the unfortunate incidents”.

“Immediately upon being made aware of the situation, we promptly amended our programme and followed the guidance and advice of the local administration,” it said.

“At a loss for words. Absolutely gutted,” star player Kohli wrote on Instagram.

But questions still remain over how and why the event was organised.

“Normally, the felicitation of a team should be done in a controlled environment. But here, there appeared to be no preparation,” a relative of an injured person at the Bowring Hospital said.

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has announced a magisterial enquiry into the incident.

“A moment of joy has turned into sorrow,” he said on Wednesday.

What happens when the richest person and the most powerful politician have a knock-down, drag-out fight?

The world is finding out – and it’s not a pretty picture. Donald Trump and Elon Musk have two of the biggest megaphones, and they have now turned them on each other, as a disagreement has ballooned into a war of words.

Trump has threatened Musk’s voluminous business dealings with the federal government, which form the lifeblood of his SpaceX programme.

“The easiest way to save money in our budget, billions and billions of dollars, is to terminate Elon’s governmental subsidies and contracts,” Trump posted menacingly on his own social media website.

If Trump turns the machinery of government against Musk, the tech billionaire will feel pain. Tesla’s stock price plunged by 14% on Thursday.

It’s not a one-way street, however. After that volley, Musk called for Trump’s impeachment, dared him to cut funding for his companies and countered that he was accelerating the decommissioning of his Dragon spacecraft, which the US relies on to carry American astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station.

Musk has near limitless resources to respond, including by funding insurgent challengers to Republicans in next year’s elections and primaries. And late on Thursday afternoon, he said he was dropping the “really big bomb” – suggesting without evidence that Trump appears in unreleased files related to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, offered only a tepid pushback to Musk’s allegations and accusations.

“This is an unfortunate episode from Elon, who is unhappy with the One Big Beautiful Bill because it does not include the policies he wanted,” she said.

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Musk may not win a fight against the whole of Trump’s government, but he could exact a high political – and personal – price for Trump and the Republicans.

Trump, perhaps aware of this, appeared to tamp down the heat a bit by the end of the day, avoiding comment on Musk during a public appearance at a White House police appreciation event and posting a message on Truth Social that said he didn’t mind “turning against him” but wishes he had quit government service months ago. He then pivoted to boosting of his “big, beautiful” tax and spending legislation.

It’s difficult to envision an easy walk-down after Thursday’s heat, however.

The feud started at a simmer last week, began bubbling on Wednesday and became a full-on boil on Thursday afternoon in the Oval Office. As new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz – the day’s visitor – sat in awkward silence, the president sounded a bit like a spurned lover.

He expressed surprise at Musk’s criticism of his legislation. He pushed back against the notion that he would have lost last year’s presidential election without Musk’s hundreds of millions of dollars in support. And he said Musk was only changing his tune now because his car company, Tesla, will be hurt by the Republican push to end electric vehicle tax credits.

Musk quickly took to his social media site, X, with a very Generation X response for his 220 million followers: “Whatever”. He said he didn’t care about the car subsidies, he wanted to shrink the national debt, which he says is an existential threat to the nation. He insisted that Democrats would have prevailed in last year’s election without his help. “Such ingratitude,” he told Trump.

The billionaire then launched a series of extraordinary attacks throughout the afternoon, and the feud was on in earnest.

Musk and Trump had formed a powerful but unlikely alliance, culminating in the tech billionaire having a key position of budget-slashing authority in the Trump administration. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge, became one of the biggest stories of Trump’s first 100 days, as it shuttered entire agencies and dismissed thousands of government workers.

It wasn’t long, however, before speculation began over when – and how – the two outsized personalities would ultimately fall out.

For a while, it seemed like those predictions were off the mark. Trump stood by Musk even as the latter’s popularity dropped, as he feuded with administration officials and as he became a liability in several key elections earlier this year.

Every time it appeared there would be a break, Musk would pop up in the Oval Office, or the Cabinet room or on the president’s Air Force One flight to Mar-a-Lago.

When Musk’s 130 days as a “special government employee” ended last week, the two had a chummy Oval Office send-off, with a golden key to the White House and hints that Musk might someday return.

It’s safe to say that any invitation has been rescinded and the locks have been changed.

“Elon and I had a great relationship,” Trump said on Thursday – a comment notable for its use of the past tense.

There had been some thought that Trump’s surprise announcement on Wednesday night of a new travel ban, additional sanctions on Harvard and a conspiracy-laced administration investigation of former President Joe Biden were all efforts to change the subject from Musk’s criticism. The White House and its allies in Congress seemed careful not to further antagonise him after his earlier comments.

Then Trump spoke out and… so much for that.

Now the question is where the dispute goes next. Congressional Republicans could find it harder to keep their members behind Trump’s bill with Musk providing rhetorical and, perhaps financial, air cover for those who break ranks.

Trump has already threatened Musk’s government contracts, but he could also take aim at Musk’s remaining Doge allies in the administration or reopen Biden-era investigations into Musk’s business dealings.

Everything at this point is on the table.

Meanwhile, Democrats are on the sidelines, wondering how to respond. Few seem willing to welcome Musk, a former donor to their party, back into the fold. But there’s also the old adage that the enemy of an enemy is a friend.

“It’s a zero-sum game,” Liam Kerr, a Democratic strategist, told Politico. “Anything that he does that moves more toward Democrats hurts Republicans.”

At the very least, Democrats seem happy to stand back and let the two men exchange blows. And until they abandon this fight, the din is likely to drown out everything else in American politics.

But don’t expect this spat to end anytime soon.

“Trump has 3.5 years left as president,” Musk wrote on X, “but I will be around for 40-plus years.”

US President Donald Trump has issued a sweeping new travel ban for people from 12 countries, revisiting a hallmark policy of his first term in office.

There are some key differences, however.

The original travel ban suffered a series of legal defeats. This time, the policy appears to have been designed to avoid the same pitfalls.

Its predecessor, which targeted seven predominantly Muslim countries and was dubbed the “Muslim ban” by critics, was ordered just a week after Trump took office in 2017, during his first term in the White House.

The ban was amended twice to overcome court challenges, after opponents argued it was unconstitutional and illegal because it discriminated against travellers based on their religion.

A scaled-back version was eventually upheld by the US Supreme Court in 2018, which this new ban closely resembles.

Legal experts told the BBC that it appeared Trump had learned lessons from his first attempt.

Christi Jackson, an expert in US immigration law at the London firm Laura Devine Immigration, said the new ban was more legally robust as a result.

While the first lacked “clarity”, the new restrictions were “wider in scope” and had “clearly defined” exemptions, she said.

While there are some similarities in the nations chosen by the 2017 ban and the 2025 ban, Muslim-majority states are not the express target of the latest order.

Barbara McQuade, professor of law at the University of Michigan and former US attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, told the BBC World Service’s Newshour programme that, on this basis, it seemed likely to win the approval of the Supreme Court if it was ever referred up to that level.

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The 12 countries subject to the harshest restrictions from 9 June are mainly in the Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean, including Afghanistan, Iran and Somalia.

There will be partial restrictions on travellers from another seven countries, including Cuban and Venezuelan nationals.

Trump said the strength of the restrictions would be graded against the severity of the perceived threat, including from terrorism.

But besides Iran, none of the 12 countries hit by the outright ban are named on the US government’s state sponsors of terrorism list.

Trump cited Sunday’s incident in Boulder, Colorado, in which a man was accused of throwing Molotov cocktails at demonstrators attending a march for Israeli hostages, in a video announcing the ban on X.

The alleged attacker was an Egyptian national. However, Egypt does not appear on either list.

Trump also specified high rates of people overstaying their visas as a reason for listing certain countries.

However, Steven D Heller, an immigration lawyer based in the US, said there was a “lack of clarity” over what threshold had to be met by a country’s overstaying rate in order for that country to be placed on Trump’s ban list. That could be the basis for a successful legal challenge, he suggested.

“If they’re relying on this notion of excessive overstay rates… they have to define what that actually means,” he told the BBC.

But he noted that existing US law gave the president broad powers over immigration policy.

Unlike the first ban, which was to last for only 90 to 120 days, today’s order has no end date.

It has been met with dismay in the targeted countries.

Venezuela has described the Trump administration as “supremacists who think they own the world”, though Somalia has pledged to “engage in dialogue to address the concerns raised”.

The original ban spurred mass protests and sowed chaos at US airports.

It was repealed in 2021 by Trump’s successor, President Joe Biden, who called the policy “a stain on our national conscience”.

Immigration lawyer Shabnam Lotfi, who challenged the previous travel ban, said it would be an “uphill battle” to overturn the new one.

“The president does have the authority to determine who is admissible to the US,” she said, adding that because of the way the ban had been written, it was “harder to find a huge group of people that could file a class-action lawsuit”.

“They’ve put more thought into it.”

Ms Lotfi noted that the new restrictions could have consequences for students and other visa applicants abroad.

“Students who are stuck in administrative processing are impacted. So are winners of the diversity visa lottery who paid fees and went to interviews – they’re unlikely to get visas now,” she said.

“Even EB-5 investors – people who’ve put over $1 million into the US economy – are affected. And H-1B visa holders stuck abroad, waiting to return to their US employers, could also be blocked.”

Israel has carried out several air strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs, saying it was targeting Hezbollah’s drone production.

The attack on Thursday night, the eve of Eid Al Adha, one of the most important celebrations in Islam, followed evacuation warnings for several buildings in the area, where Hezbollah is based in the capital.

The Israeli Defence Forces said it had identified a Hezbollah unit producing “thousands” of drones underground, funded by “Iranian terrorists”.

The attack occurred despite a ceasefire being in effect between Israel and the armed group for the past six months.

Lebanon’s prime minister said he “strongly condemns” the strikes.

“I consider them to constitute a systematic and deliberate attack on our homeland, its security, stability, and economy, especially on the eve of the holidays and the tourist season,” Nawaf Salam said in a post on X.

Thousands fled packed streets in the densely populated area following the evacuation warning, causing a traffic gridlock. Plumes of smoke then appeared in the sky.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun described the strikes as a “flagrant violation of an international accord” while noting it had occurred “on the eve of a sacred religious festival”.

Israel’s military said Hezbollah’s “extensive use” of drones was central to its attacks on Israel, calling the activities “a blatant violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon”.

There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah.

An hour before the air strikes occurred, the Israeli military’s Arabic spokesman, Avichay Adraee, ordered residents living in the neighbourhoods of Hadath, Haret Hreik and Borj el-Barajneh in the Dahieh area to evacuate.

“You are next to infrastructure belonging to Hezbollah,” he said in a social media post that included a map identifying specific buildings.

Prior to the Israel-Gaza war, Israel and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group had engaged in more than a year of cross-border hostilities that culminated in an intense Israeli bombing campaign and ground incursion into southern Lebanon.

The offensive killed about 4,000 people in Lebanon – including many civilians – and led to the displacement of more than 1.2 million residents.

Israel said the military intervention was necessary to dismantle Hezbollah installations near the border that it argued a UN peacekeeping mission had failed to stop.

Its stated goal was to allow the return of about 60,000 residents who had been displaced from communities in the country’s north because of the group’s attacks.

A ceasefire struck in late November between Israel and Lebanon – but not Hezbollah – saw Israel withdraw while the Lebanese army took over policing southern Lebanon.

The agreement also stated that its commitments “do not preclude either Israel or Lebanon from exercising their inherent right of self-defence, consistent with international law”.

Israel has carried out air strikes in Lebanon on targets it says are linked to Hezbollah in the months since.

In April, Israel attacked what it described as a Hezbollah store of “precision-guided missiles” in the same Dahieh region.

Earlier the same month, it launched a similar strike, killing a Hezbollah official and three other people, Lebanon’s health ministry said at the time.

Lebanon’s government said those attacks, as well as the continued stationing of Israeli soldiers in five locations in southern Lebanon, constitute violations of the truce.

Hezbollah launched its campaign the day after Hamas launched its 7 October 2023 attack into Israel, saying it was acting in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

Zambia’s former President Edgar Lungu has died at the age of 68, his party has said in a statement.

He had “been receiving specialized treatment in South Africa” for an undisclosed illness, the Patriotic Front (PF) added.

Lungu led Zambia for six years from 2015, losing the 2021 election to the current President Hakainde Hichilema by a large margin.

After that defeat he stepped back from politics but later returned to the fray. He had ambitions to vie for the presidency again but at the end of last year the Constitutional Court barred him from running, ruling that he had already served the maximum two terms allowed by law.

Even after being disqualified from running for the presidency again, he remained hugely influential in Zambian politics and did not hold back in his criticism of his successor.

In a short video, Lungu’s daughter Tasila said that the former head of state, who had been “under medical supervision in recent weeks”, died at a clinic in South Africa’s capital, Pretoria, at 06:00 (04:00 GMT) on Thursday.

“In this moment of grief, we invoke the spirit of ‘One Zambia, One Nation’ – the timeless creed that guided President Lungu’s service to our country,” she added in an emotional statement.

There was no mention of what his condition was, but a decade ago he underwent throat surgery abroad. At the time his office said he was suffering from a narrowing of the oesophagus.

In his condolence message, President Hichilema called for “solemnity, unity and an outpouring of love and compassion.

“Let us come together as one people, above political affiliation or personal conviction, to honour the life of a man who once held the highest office in our land.”

Lungu first became president in January 2015 after winning a special presidential election triggered by the death in office of Michael Sata.

After completing Sata’s term, he won a further five years in power in 2016 taking just over 50% of the vote.

But after six years at the helm, Lungu, who encouraged Chinese investment and enlisted the country’s help in infrastructure development, was blamed for a struggling economy, high unemployment and rising debt levels.

His time in office was also marred by corruption scandals involving his allies and relatives. Lungu always denied wrongdoing.

His party’s youth wing was accused of harassing opposition supporters, and the population at large.

Lungu lost in 2021 by close to a million votes with Hichilema, seen as more pro-Western, tapping into widespread dissatisfaction among the electorate.

He said he was retiring in the aftermath of the vote, but returned to frontline politics in 2023 as his successor’s popularity waned.

“I am ready to fight from the front, not from the rear, in defence of democracy. Those who are ready for this fight, please come along with me, I am ready for anything,” Mr Lungu told supporters at the time.

After returning to politics, the former president complained of police harassment. At one point last year he said he was “virtually under house arrest”.

“I cannot move out of my house without being accosted and challenged by the police and driving me back home”, Lungu told the BBC’s Newsday programme.

In the interview in May 2024, he alleged that he had been barred from attending a conference abroad and from travelling for medical treatment.

In 2023, the police warned him against jogging in public, describing his weekly workouts as “political activism”.

The government said that Lungu had “never been placed under house arrest” and that he was free to exercise his rights.

Lungu was a lawyer by training but enjoyed a meteoric rise in politics after winning a seat in parliament as a PF MP in 2011.

He entered government as deputy minister in the vice-president’s office in that year and rose to become minister of home affairs in just over 12 months.

He later became minister of defence and then justice. A close friend described Lungu as a “good foot-soldier, lawyer and politician, father, husband and grandparent”.

Born on 11 November 1956, Lungu graduated with a law degree from the University of Zambia in 1981. He also underwent military training at the then Miltez army college in Kabwe.

He later worked at Andre Masiye and Company Advocates, Barclays Bank and Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines.

New Zealand’s parliament has voted to suspend three Māori MPs for their protest haka during a sitting last year.

Opposition MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, who started the traditional dance, was suspended for seven days, while her party’s co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer were banned for 21 days.

The MPs did the haka when asked if their Te Pāti Māori or Māori Party, supported a bill that sought to redefine the country’s founding treaty with Māori people.

The Treaty Principles Bill has since been voted down but it drew nationwide outrage – and more than 40,000 people protested outside parliament during the bill’s first reading in November last year.

We have been “punished for being Māori”, Ngarewa-Packer told the BBC. “We take on the stance of being unapologetically Māori and prioritising what our people need or expect from us.”

There were tense exchanges on Thursday as the house debated penalties, with Foreign Minister Winston Peters being asked to apologise for calling Te Pāti Māori a “bunch of extremists” and saying the country “has had enough of them”.

“We will never be silenced, and we will never be lost,” Maipi-Clarke, who at 22 is the youngest MP, said at one point, holding back tears.

“Are our voices too loud for this house – is that why we are being punished?”

Last month, a parliamentary committee proposed suspending the MPs, It ruled that the haka, which brought parliament to a temporary halt, could have “intimidated” other lawmakers.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon had rejected accusations then that the committee’s ruling was “racist”, adding that the issue was “not about haka”, but about “parties not following the rules of parliament”.

Following a heated debate, the suspensions handed out on Thursday are the longest any New Zealand lawmaker has faced. The previous record was three days.

New Zealand has long been lauded for upholding indigenous rights, but relations with the Māori community have been strained recently under the current conservative government Luxon-led government.

His administration has been criticised for cutting funding to programmes benefiting Māori, including plans to disband an organisation that aims to improve health services for the community.

Luxon though has defended his government’s record on Māori issues, citing plans to improve literacy in the community and move children out of emergency housing.

The Treaty Principles Bill that has been at the heart of this tension. It sought to legally define the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, the pact the British Crown and Māori leaders signed in 1840 during New Zealand’s colonisation.

The bill’s defenders, such as Act, the right-wing party that tabled it, argue the 1840 treaty needs to be reinterpreted because it had divided the country by race, and does not represent today’s multicultural society.

Critics, however, say it is the proposed bill that would be divisive and lead to the unravelling of much-needed protections for many Māori.

The bill sparked a hīkoi, or peaceful protest march, that lasted nine days, beginning in the far north and culminating in the capital Wellington. It grew to more than 40,000 by the end, becoming one of the country’s biggest marches ever.

The Treaty Principles Bill was eventually voted down by 112 votes to 11 in April, days after a government committee recommended that it should not proceed. The party holds six seats in the 123-member parliament.

Beyoncé signed off the first night of her London residency by telling fans she was “blessed” to get to do what she loves by performing on stage.

She stormed through a seven-act set at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, treating the audience to a spectacle that lasted just shy of three hours.

But despite this being the first opportunity for fans to enjoy the singer’s country era in person, slow ticket sales and high prices have been the hot topic around the tour.

Promoters slashed some ticket prices in the run-up to shows in a bid to fill the stadium, prompting some of those who bought seats in advance to feel short-changed.

Beyoncé’s rodeo rumbled into London, bringing with it every country cliché you could think of – cowboy hats, horseshoes, tassels and even a gold mechanical bull.

The 40-song setlist relied heavily on tracks from 2024’s Cowboy Carter, which was met with critical acclaim, including taking the top album prize at this year’s Grammy Awards.

Every element of the performance was flawless, from the 43-year-old superstar’s stunning array of costume changes (each one featuring more rhinestones than the last) to the seamless transitions between songs and musical themes.

Much of the talk around the US leg of this tour, which took place in April and May, was the inclusion of Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s 13-year-old daughter Blue Ivy, who reportedly begged her parents to dance on the Renaissance tour in 2023, but was denied the opportunity.

She made several appearances throughout the show, earning thunderous applause whilst dancing to an instrumental performance of her mum’s 2006 hit Deja Vu.

The teenager certainly seemed to enjoy her moment in the spotlight, unlike her younger sister, Rumi, who came on stage during Protector, shyly mouthing the words whilst being held by Beyoncé.

The show, which is called The Cowboy Carter and the Rodeo Chitlin’ Circuit Tour as a way of referencing black performers that were segregated from the country scene, often paid homage in its interludes to these artists.

Beyoncé herself previously hinted about being rejected from the country music world in the past and throughout the performance it felt like she was wrestling with this idea.

She blended some of her biggest hits into Cowboy Carter tracks, such as Freedom and Diva, almost to prove that she belonged in this space.

Thursday night’s performance certainly showed she is more than qualified to be a country singer, but perhaps that a 60,000 seater stadium is not the best arena for it.

As the night drew darker, Beyoncé delivered an act comprised of tracks from her house-inspired album Renaissance, which immediately lifted the crowd into a party mood.

LED wristbands lit up in array of colours as she belted out Alien Superstar and I’m That Girl – which certainly got the best reaction from fans of the night.

Similarly a section of old classics such as Crazy In Love and Irreplaceable had the crowd singing every word, proving perhaps that a few more classics wouldn’t have gone amiss.

With crowds on their feet, it was difficult to see how sold out the stadium actually was, but with just hours to go until the show there were still thousands of tickets available for sale online.

Despite the tour only stopping in two European cities – London and Paris – the remaining eight dates are not sold out.

Beyoncé’s tour has the highest top-priced ticket of any artist visiting the UK in 2025 at £950, with the cheapest costing £71.

Some seats that were sold in the Beyhive fan presale for £620 excluding fees are next to seats that were available this week for £141.60 without fees.

Zulkarnain Sadali flew from Singapore to London to watch Beyoncé perform live and bought a ticket in the pre-sale, which he said cost him “more than £700”.

“A couple of weeks ago I checked my ticket and then curiosity got the best of me and I checked the same ticket, or same category, and the price was around £300,” he told the BBC.

“I’m really excited for [the show] but I will say the dynamic pricing really left a sour taste in my mouth.”

Another fan, Holly Whiteman, said she “panic bought” Beyoncé tickets in a fan pre-sale on Ticketmaster, which were “way up in the nosebleeds” and cost £170 each, when she had initially set a budget of £100.

“Fast forward a few days later, the tickets went on general sale through Tottenham Hotspur and I found tickets for the same show in both the same row and the same section for a much cheaper price,” she told the BBC.

“I believe they were at least £50-£70 cheaper per ticket.”

Sadali said that despite feeling short-changed, it had not dented his excitement for the tour.

“It’s really about the Beyoncé experience, you’re not gonna get it anywhere else and I know this sounds like a contradiction, it’s worth every cent,” he said.

Whiteman said the process had left her a bit “disappointed”, but she was still looking forward to the tour.

A Ticketmaster spokesperson told the BBC they do “not use surge pricing or dynamic algorithms to adjust ticket prices”, adding that event organisers are responsible for the pricing structures.

“Since tickets typically go on sale at least 3-6 months before the event, organisers may review prices at key points leading up to the show, but they make any adjustments, not an algorithm,” they also added.

The BBC also contacted tour promoter Live Nation for comment.

Ticketing expert Reg Walker put the lack of sold-out shows down to several factors, including “overexposure” after her last UK stadium tour, which played five nights at the same venue in 2023.

And the ticket prices are “eye-watering”, he told the BBC.

“You might be able to afford to go to one of her concerts where you’re effectively paying, in some categories, the same amount of money as a small holiday, but you can’t do that on consecutive years.

“The pricing strategy on tickets was clearly far too high,” he added.

Walker said there were a lot of “affordably priced” tours coming up – but with so many artists visiting the UK this summer, fans may be picking and choosing who they pay to go and see.

Billie Eilish, Lana Del Rey, Dua Lipa, Kendrick Lamar and SZA are all embarking on stadium tours over the coming months, with Olivia Rodrigo, Sabrina Carpenter, Chapell Roan and Drake headlining festivals.

Winston Churchill’s push to obtain penicillin in time to treat casualties expected from D-Day has come to light in documents seen by BBC News.

Official papers unearthed by the National Archives reveal the prime minister’s frustration and concern over slow progress securing supplies of what was then seen to be a brand new “wonder drug”.

The BBC was shown the papers ahead of the anniversary of the Normandy landings on 6 June 1944.

Even months after D-Day, the wartime prime minister called efforts “very disappointing” and bemoaned the fact the US was “so far ahead” despite the drug being a “British discovery”.

Penicillin was discovered in London by Professor Alexander Fleming in 1928. Despite attempts to produce a usable medicine from the bacteria-killing mould, this had not been achieved by the start of World War Two.

But an Oxford team of scientists, led by Howard Florey, carried out the first successful trials. With large-scale production difficult in the UK, they took their research to the United States, where drug companies expanded output.

Before the development of penicillin, blood poisoning could follow even minor wounds with no cure available. So with the anticipation of the huge military effort ahead, supplies of the drug were seen as essential.

Early in 1944, the prime minister was complaining to his ministers about Britain’s inability to produce it at scale. He scrawled in red ink on a Ministry of Supply report that said the Americans were producing greater quantities: “I am sorry we can’t produce more”.

Later in the year, in response to explanations from officials, he said: “Your report on penicillin showing that we are only to get about one-tenth of the expected output this year, is very disappointing.”

On another report, he instructs: “Let me have proposals for a more abundant supply from Great Britain”.

Less than a fortnight before D-Day, health officials could report that sufficient supplies had been obtained, most from the US, but only for battle casualties.

Dr Jessamy Carlson, modern records specialist at The National Archives, said: “The files give a glimpse into the extraordinary levels of preparation undertaken in advance of the D-Day landings.

“Only six weeks before, penicillin is just reaching our shores in quantities which will allow it to play a major role in improving the outcomes for service personnel wounded in action.”

But what’s now seen as the first true antibiotic would not be fully available to the general public till 1946.

A telegram in the same files shows a doctor from Cornwall, who was treating a 10-year-old child in 1944, pleading with the authorities for the medicine: “No hope without penicillin”.

The plea was rejected, with supplies said to be only available for military use.

With antibiotics now part of everyday life (and arguably too widely used), the documents seen by the BBC shed new light on the urgent efforts by Churchill and others to secure enough of one such drug for the first time to save lives during the struggle to liberate northern Europe.

Goods brought into the US plunged by 20% in April, recording their largest ever monthly drop in the face of a wave of tariffs unleashed by US President Donald Trump.

The retreat reflects the abrupt hit to trade, after firms had rushed products into the country earlier this year to try to get ahead of new taxes on imports Trump had promised.

US purchases from major trade partners such as Canada and China fell to their lowest levels since 2021 and 2020 respectively, the Commerce Department said.

The collapse helped to cut the US trade deficit – the gap between exports and imports – in goods by almost half, a record decline, according to the report.

“The April trade report indicates the impact from tariffs has well and truly arrived,” said Oxford Economics, while noting that the latest figures should be interpreted with caution, given the surge in activity earlier this year.

Since re-entering office in January, Trump has raised import taxes on specific items such as foreign steel, aluminium and cars and imposed a blanket 10% levy on most goods from trading partners around the world.

He had briefly targeted some countries’ exports with even higher duties, only to suspend those measures for 90 days to allow for talks.

Trump has said the moves are intended to rebuild manufacturing at home and strengthen its hand in trade negotiations.

White House officials are now engaged in intense talks aimed at striking deals before that 90-day deadline expires next month.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Trump spoke by phone on Thursday to try to reach a breakthrough in those negotiations, as the fragile truce between the two sides showed signs of deteriorating.

In a social media post, Trump said it had been a “very good phone call” focused on trade and that teams from the two sides would be meeting again shortly.

State media in China reported that they had agreed to further talks and extended an invitation of a visit to Trump.

Trump’s barrage of tariffs have brought the average effective tariff rate in the US to the highest level since the 1930s, according to analysts.

After a surge in activity earlier this year, the abrupt changes have led to a sharp slowdown in trade as firms weigh how to respond.

In Mexico, the steel industry said its exports to the US had been cut in half last month.

In Canada, the trade deficit hit an all-time high last month, widening to C$7.1bn, as exports to the US shrank for a third month in a row.

Thursday’s report from the US Commerce Department showed few categories of products were unaffected by the changes.

Imports of passenger cars dropped by a third from March to April. Pharmaceutical products were hit and imports of most consumer goods also fell, including cell phones, artwork, furniture, toys and apparel.

But imports surged from Vietnam and Taiwan, which saw their exports briefly targeted with higher rates before Trump suspended those levies, according to the report.

Despite the big monthly decline, overall US goods imports in the first four months of the year are up about 20% compared with the same period in 2024.

Exports so far this year are up about 5% compared with 2024.

The overall goods and services deficit in April was $61.6bn, down from $138.3bn in March.

Shona Banu still shudders when she thinks of the past few days.

The 58-year-old, a resident of Barpeta district in India’s north-eastern state of Assam, says that she was called to the local police station on 25 May and later taken to a point at the border with neighbouring Bangladesh. From there, she says, she and around 13 other people were forced to cross over to Bangladesh.

She says she was not told why. But it was a scenario she had been dreading – Ms Banu says she has lived in Assam all her life but for the past few years, she has been desperately trying to prove that she is an Indian citizen and not an “illegal immigrant” from Bangladesh.

“They pushed me over at gunpoint. I spent two days without food or water in the middle of a field in knee-deep water teeming with mosquitoes and leeches,” Ms Banu said, wiping away tears. After those two days in no man’s land – between India and Bangladesh – she says she was taken to what appeared to be an old prison on the Bangladeshi side.

After two days there, she and a few others – she is not sure if all of them were from the same group sent with her – were escorted by Bangladeshi officials across the border, where Indian officials allegedly met them and sent them home.

It’s not clear why Ms Banu was abruptly sent to Bangladesh and then brought back. But her case is among a spate of recent instances where officials in Assam have rounded up people declared foreigners by tribunals in the past – on suspicion of being “illegal Bangladeshis” – and sent them across the border. The BBC found at least six cases where people said their family members had been picked up, taken to border towns and just “pushed across”.

Officials from India’s Border Security Force, the Assam police and the state government did not respond to questions from the BBC.

Crackdowns on alleged illegal immigrants from Bangladesh are not new in India – the countries are divided by a 4,096km (2,545 miles) long porous border which can make it relatively easy to cross over, even though many of the sensitive areas are heavily guarded.

But it’s still rare, lawyers working on these cases say, for people to be picked up from their homes abruptly and forced into another country without due process. These efforts seem to have intensified over the past few weeks.

The Indian government has not officially said how many people were sent across in the latest exercise. But top sources in the Bangladesh administration claim that India “illegally pushed in” more than 1,200 people into the country in May alone, not just from Assam but also other states. Out of this, they said on condition of anonymity, Bangladesh identified 100 people as Indian citizens and sent them back.

In a statement, the Border Guard Bangladesh said it had increased patrolling along the border to curb these attempts.

India has not commented on these allegations.

While media reports indicate that the recent crackdown includes Rohingya Muslims living in other states too, the situation is particularly tense and complex in Assam, where issues of citizenship and ethnic identity have long dominated politics.

The state, which shares a nearly 300km-long border with Muslim-majority Bangladesh, has seen waves of migration from the neighbouring country as people moved in search of opportunities or fled religious persecution.

This has sparked the anxieties of Assamese people, many of whom fear this is bringing in demographic change and taking away resources from locals.

The Bharatiya Janata Party – in power in Assam and nationally – has repeatedly promised to end the problem of illegal immigration, making the state’s National Register of Citizens (NRC) a priority in recent years.

The register is a list of people who can prove they came to Assam by 24 March 1971, the day before neighbouring Bangladesh declared independence from Pakistan. The list went through several iterations, with people whose names were missing given chances to prove their Indian citizenship by showing official documents to quasi-judicial forums called Foreigners Tribunals.

After a chaotic process, the final draft published in 2019 excluded nearly two million residents of Assam – many of them were put in detention camps while others have appealed in higher courts against their exclusion.

Ms Banu said her case is pending in the Supreme Court but that authorities still forced her to leave.

The BBC heard similar stories from at least six others in Assam – all Muslims – who say their family members were sent to Bangladesh around the same time as Ms Banu, despite having necessary documents and living in India for generations. At least four of them have now come back home, with no answers still about why they were picked up.

A third of Assam’s 32 million residents are Muslims and many of them are descendants of immigrants who settled there during British rule.

Maleka Khatun, a 67-year-old from Assam’s Barpeta who is still in Bangladesh, says she has temporarily been given shelter by a local family.

“I have no-one here,” she laments. Her family has managed to speak to her but don’t know if and when she can return. She lost her case in the foreigners’ tribunal and in the state’s high court and hadn’t appealed in the Supreme Court.

Days after the recent round of action began, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma cited a February Supreme Court direction which ordered the government to start deportation proceedings for people who had been “declared foreigners” but were still held in detention centres.

“The people who are declared foreigners but haven’t even appealed in court, we are pushing them back,” Sarma said. He also claimed that people with pending court appeals were not being “troubled”.

But Abdur Razzaque Bhuyan, a lawyer working on many citizenship cases in Assam, alleged that in many of the recent instances, due process – which would, among other things, require India and Bangladesh to cooperate on the action – was not followed.

“What is happening is a wilful and deliberate misinterpretation of the court order,” he said.

Mr Bhuyan recently filed a petition on behalf of a student organisation seeking the Supreme Court’s intervention in stopping what they said was a “forceful and illegal pushback policy” but was asked to first approach the Assam high court.

In Morigaon, around 167km from Barpeta, Reeta Khanum sat near a table which had a pile of papers on it.

Her husband Khairul Islam, a 51-year-old school teacher, was in the same group as Ms Banu that was allegedly picked up by authorities.

A tribunal had declared him a foreigner in 2016, after which he spent two years in a detention centre before being released. Like Ms Banu, his case is also being heard in the Supreme Court.

“Every document is proof that my husband is Indian,” Ms Khanum said, leafing through what she said was Mr Islam’s high school graduation certificate and some land records. “But that wasn’t enough to prove his nationality to authorities.”

She says her husband, his father and grandfather were all born in India.

But on 23 May, she says that policemen arrived at their home and took Mr Islam away without any explanation.

It was only a few days later – when a viral video surfaced of a Bangladeshi journalist interviewing Mr Islam in no man’s land – that the family learnt where he was.

Like Ms Banu, Mr Islam has now been sent back to India.

While his family confirmed his return, the police told the BBC they had “no information” about his arrival.

Sanjima Begum says she is sure her father was declared a foreigner due to a case of mistaken identity – he was also taken on the same night as Mr Islam.

“My father’s name is Abdul Latif, my grandfather was Abdul Subhan. The notice that came [years ago, from the foreigners’ tribunal] said Abdul Latif, son of Shukur Ali. That’s not my grandfather, I don’t even know him,” Ms Begum said, adding that she had all the necessary documents to prove her father’s citizenship.

The family has now heard that Mr Latif is back in Assam, but he hasn’t reached home yet.

While some of these people are back home now, they fear they might be picked up again abruptly.

“We are not playthings,” Ms Begum said.

“These are human beings, you can’t toss them around as per your whims.”

Tucked deep in Donald Trump’s sprawling “One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act” is a clause that could quietly take billions from money sent abroad.

It proposes a 3.5% tax on remittances sent abroad by foreign workers, including green card holders and temporary visa workers such as those on H-1B visas. For India – the world’s top remittance recipient – the implications are serious, say experts. Other major recipients include Mexico, China, the Philippines, France, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

In 2023, Indians abroad sent home $119bn (£88bn) – enough to finance half of India’s goods trade deficit and outpace foreign direct investment, according to a paper by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) economists. Of this, the largest share came from the US. For millions of migrants, that includes the money wired to cover a parent’s medicine, a nephew’s tuition or a mortgage back home.

A blunt levy on remittances could skim billions from migrant workers, many of whom already pay taxes in America. The likely result? A rise in informal, untraceable cash transfers and a dent in India’s most stable source of external financing.

India has remained the top recipient of remittances since 2008, with its share rising from 11% in 2001 to 14% in 2024, according to World Bank. India’s central bank says that remittances are expected to stay strong, reaching an estimated $160bn by 2029. The country’s remittances have consistently hovered around 3% of GDP since 2000.

India’s international migrant population grew from 6.6 million in 1990 to 18.5 million in 2024, with its global share rising from 4.3% to over 6%. While the Gulf still hosts nearly half of all Indian migrants, skilled migration to advanced economies – especially the US – has increased significantly, driven by India’s global IT footprint.

The US remains the top source of remittances worldwide, with its share rising from 23.4% in 2020–21 to nearly 28% in 2023–24, driven by a strong post-pandemic job recovery and a 6.3% rise in foreign-born workers in 2022. Notably, 78% of Indian migrants in the US work in high-earning sectors such as management, business, science, and the arts.

Remittance costs – driven by fees and currency conversion – have long been a global policy concern due to their impact on families. While global averages of the costs remain above targets, India stands out as one of the most affordable destinations, reflecting the rise of digital channels and heightened market competition.

A 10-15% drop in remittances could cost India $12-18bn a year, tightening dollar supply and putting pressure on the rupee, according to Ajay Srivastava of Delhi-based think tank Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI). He reckons the central bank may have to step in more often to stabilise the currency.

The bigger blow would land on households in states such as Kerala, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, where remittances fund essentials like education, healthcare and housing. The tax could “hit household consumption hard” even as the Indian economy grapples with global uncertainty and inflation, Mr Srivastava says in a note.

The remittance tax could squeeze Indian household budgets, dampen consumption and investment, and undermine one of India’s steadiest sources of foreign exchange, warns a brief by the Delhi-based Centre for WTO Studies. Maharashtra, followed by Kerala and Tamil Nadu, continues to be among the dominant recipient states.

Remittances in India are largely used for household consumption, savings and investment in assets like housing, gold and small businesses. according to a policy brief by the think tank’s Pritam Banerjee, Saptarshee Mandal and Divyansh Dua.

A drop in inflows could shrink domestic savings and reduce investment in both financial and physical assets. When remittance inflows decline, households are likely to “prioritise consumption needs (e.g. food, healthcare, and education) over savings and investment”, the brief says.

A study by Center for Global Development, a Washington-based think tank, suggests the proposed tax could sharply cut formal transfers, with Mexico facing the biggest hit – over $2.6bn annually. Other major losers include India, China, Vietnam and several Latin American nations like Guatemala, the Dominican Republic and El Salvador.

To be sure, there’s still some confusion surrounding the tax, and final approval is pending Senate action and the President’s signature.

“The tax applies to all non-citizens and even embassy and UN/World Bank staff. But those who pay taxes can claim a tax credit. Thus, the remittance tax would apply only to those migrants who do not pay taxes. That would mostly include unauthorised migrants (and diplomats),” Dilip Ratha, the World Bank lead economist for migration and remittances, told the BBC.

Dr Ratha wrote in a note on LinkedIn that migrants would try to cut remittance costs by turning to informal methods – hand-carrying cash, sending money through friends, couriers, bus drivers or airline staff, arranging local currency payouts via friends in the US, or using hawala, hundi and cryptocurrencies.

“Will the proposed tax deter unauthorised immigration to the US? Will it encourage unauthorised migrants to return home?” wonders Dr Ratha.

Not quite, he says. A minimum wage job in the US earns over $24,000 a year – roughly four to 30 times more than in many developing countries. Migrants typically send home between $1,800 and $48,000 annually, estimates Dr Ratha.

“A 3.5% tax is unlikely to deter these remittances. After all the main motivation for migration – migrants trying to cross oceans and rivers and mountains – is to send money home to help helpless family members.”

This week saw Ukraine mount an audacious drone attack on Russian airfields, Donald Trump ban people in 12 countries from travelling to the US, while Billie Piper returned to Doctor Who.

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.

With Air Canada and Southwest the latest airlines to charge passengers for check-in luggage, the ballooning cost of such ancillary or “junk fees” is provoking anger among politicians and consumer groups. At the same time, sales of suitcases small enough for passengers to take on the plane as hand luggage are booming.

Standing outside Toronto’s downtown airport, Lauren Alexander has flown over from Boston for the weekend. She describes such additional charges as “ridiculous”.

“It feels like a trick,” says the 24-year-old. “You buy the ticket, you think it’s going to be less expensive, then you have to pay $200 (£148) extra [to bring a suitcase].”

To avoid the fee, Ms Alexander instead travelled with a small backpack as hand luggage.

Sage Riley, who is 27, agrees, telling the BBC, “It can be pricey.”

There was a time when checked bags, seat selection and your meals all came as standard on commercial flights. But that all changed with the rise of the budget airlines, says Jay Sorensen of US aviation consultancy IdeaWorks.

It was in 2006 when UK low-cost carrier FlyBe became what is believed to be the world’s first airline to start charging passengers to check in bags. It charged £2 for a pre-booked item of luggage, and £4 if the customer hadn’t paid in advance.

Other budget carriers then quickly followed suit, with the so-called flag carriers or established airlines then also doing so, at least on shorter flights.

In 2008 American Airlines became the first US airline to charge a fee, $15, for the first checked bag on its domestic routes.

Mr Sorenson says such traditional airlines felt they had no choice when they “began to realise that the low-cost carriers were providing very significant competition”. He adds: “They felt they had to do something to meet that.”

Fast forward to today, and US airlines alone made $7.27bn from check-in baggage fees last year, according to federal figures. That is up from $7bn in 2023, and $5.76bn in 2019.

Little wonder then that more of us are trying to just take carry-on. Kirsty Glenn, managing director of UK luggage firm Antler, confirms that there is an ongoing surge in demand for small suitcases that meet airline dimension limits for carry-on luggage.

“We have seen huge spikes in searches online and on our website,” she says. Describing a new small-dimension case her company launched in April, Ms Glenn adds: “Testament to the trend of only travelling with hand luggage, it’s sold like crazy.”

At the same time, social media content about travel packing “hacks” and luggage that meets airlines’ carry-on size measurements, have soared according to travel journalist Chelsea Dickenson. She makes this content for TikTok.

“Social media has really propelled this idea of needing a bag that fits the baggage allowance requirements, says Ms Dickenson. “It’s become a core part of the content that I create and post on social media.”

Ms Dickenson, whose social media following has ballooned to close to a million followers, adds that her luggage videos have become a “core part of the content” she creates.

“It blows my mind,” she says. “I could spend weeks and weeks researching a big trip, and the resulting videos will not come close to doing as well as me going and buying a cheap suitcase, taking it to the airport, testing it in one of those baggage sizes and reporting back.”

The overall global cost of all airline extra fees, from luggage to seat selection, buying wifi access, lounge access, upgrades, and food and drink, is expected to reach $145bn this year, 14% of the sector’s total revenues. That’s according to the International Air Transport Association, which represents the industry. This compares with $137bn last year.

These numbers have caught the attention of some politicians in Washington, and last December airline bosses were grilled before a senate committee. It was a Democrat senator who used the term “junk fees”.

He wants the federal government to review such costs and potentially fine airlines. We asked the US Department of Transportation for a comment, but did not get a response.

But if having to pay for check-in wasn’t enough, a growing number of airlines are now charging for hand luggage. For example, Irish budget airline Ryanair will only allow you to carry a small bag that fits under the seat in front of you for free. If you want to take a bigger bag or suitcase to go in the overhead locker that will cost you from £6.

Other European airlines that now have similar charges for hand luggage are Easyjet, Norwegian Airlines, Transavia, Volotea, Vueling, and Wizzair.

This has annoyed pan-European consumer group Becu (The European Consumer Organisation), which last month filed a complaint with the European Commission.

Becu cites a 2014 EU Court of Justice ruling, which said “carriage of hand baggage cannot be made subject to a price supplement, provided that it meets reasonable requirements in terms of its weight and dimensions, and complies with applicable security requirements”.

However, what determines “reasonable requirements” continues to be a grey area in need of an official ruling.

There can, however, be a different way of doing things, as shown by Indian airline IndiGo. Its boss Pieter Eibers says that it does not charge for check-in luggage.

“The entire philosophy here is different,” he says. “We don’t want long lines, and endless debates at gates about the weight of luggage. We don’t have any of that. We turn our planes around in 35 minutes.”

Singer and actor Olly Alexander has said he has “come into a different space in my life”, as he announced a new West End stage role after recently parting ways with his record label.

The star will appear in the National Theatre’s production of The Importance of Being Earnest when it transfers to the West End in September.

It will be his first acting role since It’s A Sin, Channel 4’s acclaimed 2021 drama about the Aids crisis, for which he was nominated for a Bafta Award.

“I’d recently been thinking that I’d love to act again,” he told BBC News. “I’d come to the end of my record contract, and I have a bit more breathing space to try a few different things and not feel, oh, well I have to deliver an album to my record label.”

Alexander will take over from Doctor Who star Ncuti Gatwa, who starred in The Importance of Being Earnest when it opened at the National Theatre in 2024.

He will play Algernon when the production transfers to the Noel Coward Theatre in London.

“What’s not to love?” Alexander asked. “It’s such a brilliant play, Oscar Wilde’s most celebrated comedy. I saw the National production and thought it was fantastic, and this opportunity came along and I jumped at the chance.”

Alexander shot to fame when his band Years & Years won the BBC Sound of 2015 poll and went on to have hits such as King and Shine, and score a number one album.

He later went solo, although continued to perform as Years & Years, and scored another top-charting album in 2021. He has performed with Sir Elton John and Kylie Minogue, and was the UK’s Eurovision entrant last year.

However, after his most recent album Polari, released in February, reached number 17, Alexander announced his departure from his record label.

“They aren’t dropping me, they just aren’t renewing my contract,” he explained at the time. “It’s OK and honestly for the best. I’ve been on a pretty terrible deal for 10 years. It’s time I do something new. But I’ll still make music in the future.”

Reflecting on his first decade as a pop star, Alexander told the BBC: “With music, there’s an intensity to the way I’ve been working and putting albums out, promoting and touring. I definitely want to take the foot off the gas in terms of that intensity.”

He still occasionally works on music, but has “not been putting pressure on myself… I just do what feels good and feel very lucky that I have this other strand of acting that I’m able to explore”.

Alexander said he felt he had “learned so much” over the last decade about the way he likes to work.

“But for me,” he continued, “a lot of the reason I think the [music] industry has changed so much is that it’s set on this model which is very antiquated now, and it’s not kept pace with the times.

“Lots of artists have this direct link with their audience via social media. They want their music out quickly. The whole model of promoting it – three singles into an album, then you tour the album, then move onto the next one – it’s not really working like it did.”

He noted that record labels could historically make an album a success because they were “able to pour a lot of money into something”.

“They just can’t do that now. Everything has changed. But I think that is exciting for lots of reasons, and it is an exciting place for artists, even though it’s harder to break through.”

He concluded: “If I go back into it, it’ll be because I think it’s fun and something I want to do, and not think too much about how it’s going to perform.

“That’s pretty much how I try to always feel, but you’re in an environment where you have a lot of other stakeholders, and people telling you it needs to be this or that, and there’s always that tension.”

For now, he is focusing on acting.

First performed in 1895, The Importance of being Earnest follows two male friends who adopt fictional personas. The farcical comedy unfolds with mistaken identities and makes generous use of clever wordplay.

“In a nutshell, it’s a comedy about two quite ridiculous young men and the double lives they lead,” Alexander explained. “They do that to avoid their social obligations, and they both invent these aliases called Ernest, while they try and woo and marry these two young women.

“But really, it’s a comedy that skewers society’s expectations, makes fun of class and what society expects of us, and what roles we’re expected to perform.”

The previous production of the show, starring Gatwa, received a positive reception from critics.

“There is an elegance to the nudge-wink references and it is a production with just the right amount of delightful mischief,” wrote the Guardian’s Arifa Akbar in a four-star review.

The Daily Mail’s Patrick Marmion awarded five stars, describing the “sparkling new production” as a “witty reboot”.

“Yes, liberties are taken,” he said. “But that is surely the best way of blowing the dust off this national treasure.”

In a three-star review, the Telegraph’s Dominic Cavendish described the show as “defiantly bold, but more playful than antagonistic”, although he added he wasn’t sure the new iteration “adds much” to the original.

In the play, nobody except Jack and Algernon know about their alter-egos – something which would be much more difficult to pull off now in an age of smartphones.

“It’d be impossible!” Alexander laughed. “Our every movement is captured, so there’s less room to invent aliases and lead double lives, which in some circumstances is probably for the best.

“What’s brilliant about the play is it’s set 100 years ago, at a time that feels so different to where we are now, but the themes are so timeless.”

Alexander last appeared in the West End in 2013, before becoming famous as a pop star, with a relatively small role in Peter & Alice alongside Dame Judi Dench.

In 2024, Alexander finished in 18th place at Eurovision with his track Dizzy, in a tricky year for the contest which was partly overshadowed by controversy surrounding Israel’s participation.

This year’s entrants, girl group Remember Monday, ended in a similar position, finishing 19th. Alexander praised their performance, adding that he “hopes to meet up with them soon and we can exchange stories”.

“But,” he added, “I think I’ll still be processing and reflecting [on Eurovision] for a long time.”

The singer is excited to be returning to the West End, not least because it will mean performing continuously in one venue.

“I spent a lot of my previous years moving around, touring, which is so fun and amazing,” he reflects. “But I also very much appreciate staying in one place now.

“Having a home in London with my partner, my cats, just trotting off to the theatre every night – that just sounds like the most wonderful existence.”

After a six-year delay, India is finally set to count its population in a two-phase census that will conclude in 2027, the government has announced.

India’s decennial census is one of the world’s largest administrative exercises and provides critical data for planning welfare schemes, allocating federal funds, drawing electoral boundaries and making key policy decisions.

It was originally due in 2021, but has been delayed several times since. The last census was conducted in 2011.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government had initially cited the Covid-19 pandemic as the main reason but critics have questioned what has taken so long to resume the exercise.

On Wednesday, India’s home ministry said in a statement that the much-awaited census will be conducted in two phases, with 1 March 2027 as the reference date.

For the snow-bound Himalayan regions, which includes the states of Uttarakhand, and Himachal Pradesh, and the region of Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir, the reference date will be 1 October 2026.

It did not, however, specify when the survey would actually begin.

For the first time, the government will also collect the caste details – a politically and socially sensitive issue in India – of all its citizens, the statement added.

The last time caste was officially counted as part of a national census was in 1931, during British colonial rule.

India’s census is conducted under the Census Act, 1948, which provides a legal framework for conducting the exercise, but does not specify a fixed schedule for when the census must be conducted or when its results must be published.

In 2020, India was set to begin the first phase of the census – in which housing data is collected – when the pandemic hit, following which the government postponed the exercise.

In the years since, the government further delayed the exercise several times without any explanation, even as life returned to normal.

Experts have spoken of the consequences this could have on the world’s most populous country – such as people being excluded from welfare schemes, and the incorrect allocation of resources.

“The census is not simply a count of the number of people in a country. It provides invaluable data needed to make decisions at a micro level,” Professor KP Kannan, a development economist, had told the BBC in 2023.

The US Supreme Court has blocked a lawsuit brought by Mexico that sought to hold American gunmakers accountable for playing a role in country’s struggle with drug cartels.

The court voted 9-0 to reject the suit, in the process upholding a 2005 law that shields gun manufacturers from liability if weapons they produce are misused.

Mexico’s government had argued that the “flood” of illegal guns across the border is a result of “deliberate” practices by US firms that they say appealed to cartel members with their products.

The decision overturns a lower court’s ruling that allowed the suit, brought against manufacturer Smith & Wesson and wholesaler Interstate Arms, to proceed.

Mexico’s original lawsuit was filed in 2021 against eight gun manufacturers, but the cases against six of them were dismissed by a district court.

The Supreme Court has now rejected the suit in its entirety, agreeing the case satisfied an exception to the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), which limits the liability of gun manufactures.

In its complaint, the Mexican government argued that the gun manufacturers “supply firearms to retail dealers whom they know illegally sell to Mexican gun traffickers”.

It also claimed that the manufacturers did not impose any controls on their distribution networks to prevent the sale of these weapons to traffickers in Mexico.

The Supreme Court said Mexico’s complaint “does not plausibly allege that the defendant manufacturers aided and abetted gun dealers’ unlawful sales of firearms to Mexican traffickers”.

The court said it has “little doubt” some guns are sold to Mexican firearm traffickers. However, it added that the government had been unable to prove that the manufacturers “participate in” those sales, as its complaint did not identify any specific criminal transactions.

Mexico’s accusation was more general, the court said – that the manufacturers help a number of unidentified “rogue gun dealers” sell firearms illegally.

This case is the first time the court has taken up the PLCAA shield law, which limits the ability of victims of gun violence to sue firearms manufacturers and dealers for the misuse of their products.

At a hearing in March, the court appeared sceptical of Mexico’s challenge, with justices on both sides of the ideological spectrum questioning the validity of the suit.

An investigation by the BBC’s US partner CBS News revealed that between 200,000 and 500,000 US-made firearms are trafficked to Mexico each year.

Almost half the guns recovered at crime scenes in Mexico are manufactured in the US, CBS reported citing data from the US’ Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Israeli forces have recovered the bodies of two Israeli-Americans taken back to Gaza as hostages during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, the Israeli military says.

Judi Weinstein Haggai, 70, who was also a Canadian citizen, and her husband Gadi Haggai, 72, were murdered by gunmen from the Mujahideen Brigades group when they attacked Kibbutz Nir Oz, a statement said.

Their bodies were found in the southern Khan Younis area of Gaza overnight and brought back to Israel for forensic identification.

There are now 56 hostages still being held by Hamas in Gaza, at least 20 of whom are believed to be alive.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he and his wife sent their condolences to the families of Judi and Gadi Haggai.

“Our hearts grieve over this terrible loss. May their memories be blessed,” he added.

“I would like to thank, and express appreciation to, the fighters and commanders for this determined and successful operation. We will not rest, nor will we be silent, until we return home all of our hostages – the living and the deceased.”

The couple’s families recalled how they “went out for a walk on the morning of that cursed Saturday and never returned”.

“We welcome the closure and their return to a proper burial at home, in Israel,” they said.

Judi, an English teacher, and Gadi Haggai, who used to work in Kibbutz Nir Oz’s kitchen, were last seen alive in a video they shared with a group chat at the start of the 7 October attack. They were seen taking cover in a field as incoming rockets fired from Gaza streaked overhead and the sound of gunfire was heard.

Judi later told friends and relatives they had been wounded, before ceasing contact.

The couple’s daughter Iris Weinstein Haggai said after the attack her mother had told her they had been “shot by terrorists on a motorcycle and that my dad was wounded really bad”. She added: “Paramedics tried to send her an ambulance. The ambulance got hit by a rocket.”

In December 2023, the kibbutz announced that both Judi and Gadi were killed that day and their bodies were being held hostage in Gaza.

On Wednesday, an Israeli military official said the couple’s bodies were recovered from the Khan Younis area following an operation based on “precise intelligence” from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Shin Bet security service.

They said they could not disclose further details due to the sensitivity of the operation. However, Israeli Army Radio reported the intelligence was obtained through the Shin Bet’s interrogation of a Palestinian fighter captured by Israeli troops in Gaza.

“We will keep doing the utmost for the mission of bringing our hostages back – the living, to reunite with their families, and the deceased to dignified burial. We will deploy all the methods and tools in our disposal for this goal,” the military official said.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum urged decision-makers to do everything they could to agree a new ceasefire deal with Hamas to secure the return of all the remaining hostages.

“There is no need to wait another 608 agonising days for this,” it said. “The mission can be completed as early as tomorrow morning. This is what the majority of the Israeli people want.”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he was “united in prayer” for the Haggai family.

“Hamas must release all remaining hostages, including Omer Neutra and Itay Chen,” he added, referring to two other Israeli-Americans who the Israeli military says were killed on 7 October while serving as soldiers and whose bodies were taken back to Gaza.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said: “The return of their remains is a time to begin to heal and to rest. We mourn with [Judi Haggai’s] family. May her memory be a blessing.”

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to the unprecedented cross-border attack almost 20 months ago, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

Another four people, two of them dead, were already being held captive in Gaza before the conflict.

So far, 199 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive, mostly through two temporary ceasefire deals with Hamas.

At least 54,677 people have been killed in Gaza during the war, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza on 2 March and resumed its military offensive against Hamas two weeks later, collapsing a two-month truce during which 33 Israeli hostages and five Thai hostages were freed. Israel said it wanted to put pressure on Hamas to release the remaining hostages.

On 19 May, the Israeli military launched an expanded offensive that Netanyahu said would see troops “take control of all areas” of Gaza. Israel also partially eased its blockade, allowing some food into the territory amid warnings from experts of a looming famine.

More than 4,400 people have reportedly been killed in Gaza over the past three months, while 640,000 others have been displaced again by Israeli ground operations and evacuation orders.

Hopes of a new ceasefire deal faded last week, with Hamas and Israel remaining at odds over the conditions of the latest US proposal.

Hamas said it was prepared to release 10 living hostages and the bodies of 18 dead ones, which was the number specified in US envoy Steve Witkoff’s proposal, in exchange for a 60-day truce and the release of Palestinian prisoners.

But the group also repeated its demands for guarantees that the truce would lead to a permanent ceasefire, as well as a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and the resumption of unrestricted aid deliveries.

Israel called Hamas’s statement a refusal of the proposal, and Witkoff said it was totally unacceptable. But a Hamas official insisted it had acted positively and responsibly.

A Cartier turquoise and diamond tiara owned by the first woman to take a seat in the House of Commons has been sold for £889,400.

American-born Nancy Astor was elected in 1919 to represent Plymouth Sutton in Parliament and held the seat until she stood down in 1945.

London Auctioneers Bonhams said it was the first time the tiara had been on the market since it was bought by her husband Lord Waldorf Astor in 1930.

The auction house said it was worn by Lady Astor to the film premiere of City Lights at the Dominion Theatre in London in 1931.

Jean Ghika, Global head of jewellery at Bonhams, said the “exceptionally rare” tiara with “impeccable provenance” dates from when Cartier London was at the “height of its creative prowess”.

The tiara has single, rose-cut and brilliant-cut diamonds and three fluted turquoise plumes set with diamond stems.

The auction house had estimated a sale price of between £250,000 and £350,000.

During her time in government Astor successfully campaigned for the drinking age to rise from 14 to 18 in 1923 and advocated for the rights of women including the lowering of the voting age for women from 30 to 21 in 1928.

While she was the first woman to take up a seat in the House of Commons another woman was elected to the Commons a year before.

Constance Markievicz was successful in the 1918 general election, but as a member of Sinn Féin she did not take her seat, according to the House of Commons Information Office.

X

Five people have been killed in an Israeli strike on al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City, according to the Anglican Church, which operates it.

The Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem said three journalists, a father escorting his son to surgery, and another person died on Thursday morning when the hospital’s compound was hit.

It condemned “in the strongest possible terms” the attack, which also injured 30 bystanders, including four hospital staff. The Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate accused Israel of a “full-fledged war crime”.

The Israeli military said it “precisely struck” a Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) fighter operating from a command centre inside the hospital’s yard.

It came the same day as more than 130 global news and press freedom organisations – including the BBC – called for international media to be given immediate access to Gaza and for Palestinian journalists to be given full protection.

“For 20 months, the Israeli authorities have refused to grant journalists outside of Gaza independent access to the Palestinian territory – a situation that is without precedent in modern warfare,” they wrote in a letter co-ordinated by the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders.

“Local journalists, those best positioned to tell the truth, face displacement and starvation. To date, nearly 200 journalists have been killed by the Israeli military.

“Many more have been injured and face constant threats to their lives for doing their jobs: bearing witness. This is a direct attack on press freedom and the right to information.”

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military or government. They have previously denied that Israeli forces have targeted journalists.

The Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate said the Israeli strike on al-Ahli hospital’s compound directly targeted a media tent.

Video footage showed medics and other people rushing to help casualties lying on the ground underneath a tree in a yard and carrying at least four of them into a medical tent.

“The Israeli drone suddenly attacked these colleagues,” Palestinian journalist Mohammed Ahmed told the news agency Reuters at the scene. “Three of them [were] martyred, in addition to a number of martyrs among passersby.”

“The Israeli occupation forces are increasing their attacks on us as journalists, trying to prevent us from doing our work,” he alleged.

The journalists’ syndicate identified the three dead journalists as Ismail Badah, a cameraman for the PIJ-affiliated Palestine Today TV channel, Soliman Hajaj, a Palestine Today editor, and Samir al-Refai of the Shams News network.

Another four journalists were injured, two of whom – Palestine Today correspondent Imad Daloul and Ahmed Qalja, a cameraman for Qatar-based Al-Araby TV – were in a critical condition, it said.

The Israeli military said in a statement that it “precisely struck an Islamic Jihad terrorist who was operating in a command-and-control centre” in the yard of the hospital. It did not name the target or provide any evidence.

The military also accused armed groups of using al-Ahli for “terrorist activity” and “cynically and brutally using the civilian population” inside – an allegation it has denied.

In April, staff at al-Ahli hospital said an Israeli strike destroyed its laboratory and damaged its emergency room. They did not report any direct casualties, but said a child died due to disruption of care. The Israeli military said it hit a Hamas “command-and-control centre”.

Hospitals are specially protected under international humanitarian law. They only lose that protection in certain circumstances, including being used as a base from which to launch an attack, as a weapons depot, or to hide healthy fighters.

The Hamas-run Civil Defence agency said Israeli strikes killed at least 37 people across Gaza on Thursday. As well as Gaza City, local media reported deaths in Jabalia and Beit Lahia in the north, and in Khan Younis in the south.

Also on Thursday, a controversial US and Israeli-backed aid group working in Gaza said it had reopened two of its distribution centres, a day after closing them for “renovation”.

“Over the past 24 hours, we have been fully focused on strengthening our distribution sites to ensure safe and more efficient delivery of life-saving aid to the people of Gaza,” the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s (GHF) interim executive director John Acree said in a statement.

On Wednesday, the GHF announced that it was shutting all of its sites – three out of four of which had been operational – to make them “as safe as possible” following a string of deadly incidents nearby.

Dozens of Palestinians have been killed in recent days while approaching one of the centres in Rafah on a route that runs through an Israeli military zone.

Witnesses have said Israeli forces opened fire at crowds seeking aid.

The Israeli military has denied that it fired at civilians within the centre, but it has said that troops fired at “suspects” who ignored warning shots and approached them.

The GHF has denied that anyone was killed or injured at its centres.

The group, which uses US private security contractors, aims to bypass the UN as the main supplier of aid to Palestinians.

The UN and other aid groups refuse to co-operate with the new system, saying it contravenes the humanitarian principles of neutrality, impartiality, and independence.

They also warn that Gaza’s 2.1 million population faces catastrophic levels of hunger after an almost three-month total Israeli blockade that was partially eased two weeks ago.

The US and Israel say the GHF’s system will prevent aid being stolen by Hamas, which the group denies doing.

Separately, the Israeli military said it recovered the bodies of two Israeli-Americans taken back to Gaza as hostages during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023.

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to the attack, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

At least 54,677 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

What happens when the richest person and the most powerful politician have a knock-down, drag-out fight?

The world is finding out – and it’s not a pretty picture. Donald Trump and Elon Musk have two of the biggest megaphones, and they have now turned them on each other, as a disagreement has ballooned into a war of words.

Trump has threatened Musk’s voluminous business dealings with the federal government, which form the lifeblood of his SpaceX programme.

“The easiest way to save money in our budget, billions and billions of dollars, is to terminate Elon’s governmental subsidies and contracts,” Trump posted menacingly on his own social media website.

If Trump turns the machinery of government against Musk, the tech billionaire will feel pain. Tesla’s stock price plunged by 14% on Thursday.

It’s not a one-way street, however. After that volley, Musk called for Trump’s impeachment, dared him to cut funding for his companies and countered that he was accelerating the decommissioning of his Dragon spacecraft, which the US relies on to carry American astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station.

Musk has near limitless resources to respond, including by funding insurgent challengers to Republicans in next year’s elections and primaries. And late on Thursday afternoon, he said he was dropping the “really big bomb” – suggesting without evidence that Trump appears in unreleased files related to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, offered only a tepid pushback to Musk’s allegations and accusations.

“This is an unfortunate episode from Elon, who is unhappy with the One Big Beautiful Bill because it does not include the policies he wanted,” she said.

• Live updates – follow the latest in the Trump and Musk fight
• Trump ‘very disappointed’ by Musk as row explodes into public
• Tesla shares tumble as Trump-Musk feud erupts

Musk may not win a fight against the whole of Trump’s government, but he could exact a high political – and personal – price for Trump and the Republicans.

Trump, perhaps aware of this, appeared to tamp down the heat a bit by the end of the day, avoiding comment on Musk during a public appearance at a White House police appreciation event and posting a message on Truth Social that said he didn’t mind “turning against him” but wishes he had quit government service months ago. He then pivoted to boosting of his “big, beautiful” tax and spending legislation.

It’s difficult to envision an easy walk-down after Thursday’s heat, however.

The feud started at a simmer last week, began bubbling on Wednesday and became a full-on boil on Thursday afternoon in the Oval Office. As new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz – the day’s visitor – sat in awkward silence, the president sounded a bit like a spurned lover.

He expressed surprise at Musk’s criticism of his legislation. He pushed back against the notion that he would have lost last year’s presidential election without Musk’s hundreds of millions of dollars in support. And he said Musk was only changing his tune now because his car company, Tesla, will be hurt by the Republican push to end electric vehicle tax credits.

Musk quickly took to his social media site, X, with a very Generation X response for his 220 million followers: “Whatever”. He said he didn’t care about the car subsidies, he wanted to shrink the national debt, which he says is an existential threat to the nation. He insisted that Democrats would have prevailed in last year’s election without his help. “Such ingratitude,” he told Trump.

The billionaire then launched a series of extraordinary attacks throughout the afternoon, and the feud was on in earnest.

Musk and Trump had formed a powerful but unlikely alliance, culminating in the tech billionaire having a key position of budget-slashing authority in the Trump administration. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge, became one of the biggest stories of Trump’s first 100 days, as it shuttered entire agencies and dismissed thousands of government workers.

It wasn’t long, however, before speculation began over when – and how – the two outsized personalities would ultimately fall out.

For a while, it seemed like those predictions were off the mark. Trump stood by Musk even as the latter’s popularity dropped, as he feuded with administration officials and as he became a liability in several key elections earlier this year.

Every time it appeared there would be a break, Musk would pop up in the Oval Office, or the Cabinet room or on the president’s Air Force One flight to Mar-a-Lago.

When Musk’s 130 days as a “special government employee” ended last week, the two had a chummy Oval Office send-off, with a golden key to the White House and hints that Musk might someday return.

It’s safe to say that any invitation has been rescinded and the locks have been changed.

“Elon and I had a great relationship,” Trump said on Thursday – a comment notable for its use of the past tense.

There had been some thought that Trump’s surprise announcement on Wednesday night of a new travel ban, additional sanctions on Harvard and a conspiracy-laced administration investigation of former President Joe Biden were all efforts to change the subject from Musk’s criticism. The White House and its allies in Congress seemed careful not to further antagonise him after his earlier comments.

Then Trump spoke out and… so much for that.

Now the question is where the dispute goes next. Congressional Republicans could find it harder to keep their members behind Trump’s bill with Musk providing rhetorical and, perhaps financial, air cover for those who break ranks.

Trump has already threatened Musk’s government contracts, but he could also take aim at Musk’s remaining Doge allies in the administration or reopen Biden-era investigations into Musk’s business dealings.

Everything at this point is on the table.

Meanwhile, Democrats are on the sidelines, wondering how to respond. Few seem willing to welcome Musk, a former donor to their party, back into the fold. But there’s also the old adage that the enemy of an enemy is a friend.

“It’s a zero-sum game,” Liam Kerr, a Democratic strategist, told Politico. “Anything that he does that moves more toward Democrats hurts Republicans.”

At the very least, Democrats seem happy to stand back and let the two men exchange blows. And until they abandon this fight, the din is likely to drown out everything else in American politics.

But don’t expect this spat to end anytime soon.

“Trump has 3.5 years left as president,” Musk wrote on X, “but I will be around for 40-plus years.”

Donald Trump has said he will visit China after speaking to its leader Xi Jinping over the phone.

The US president said he had reciprocated with an invite to the White House during the “very good talk” – though such a trip has not been confirmed by either side.

Thursday’s call is the first time the two leaders have spoken since Trump launched a trade war with Beijing in February. Chinese state media reported that the call happened at the White House’s request.

Trump wrote on social media that the hour-and-a-half conversation was primarily focused on trade and had “resulted in a very positive conclusion for both countries”.

• China says US has ‘severely violated’ tariffs truce
• China hits back after Trump claims it is ‘violating’ tariff truce

“He invited me to China and I invited him here,” Trump said of the call with Xi while meeting German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in the Oval Office.

“We both accepted, so I will be going there with the first lady at a certain point and he will be coming here hopefully with the first lady of China.”

The Chinese readout of the conversation mentioned the its invitation but not the reciprocal one to the White House.

According to Chinese state news agency Xinhua, Xi reportedly told Trump that the US should “withdraw the negative measures it has taken against China”.

The Chinese leader was also said to have told Trump that China always kept its promises and since a consensus had been reached, both sides should abide by it – a reference to a recent deal between the two nations struck in Geneva.

Both sides have accused the other of breaching the deal aimed at dramatically reducing trade tariffs – a deal Trump touted as a “total reset”.

It came after Trump raised tariffs on imports from a number of countries, but reserved the highest rates for China. Beijing responded with its own higher rates on US imports, sparking tit-for-tat increases that peaked at 145%.

The tentative truce struck in May brought that US tariff on Chinese products down to 30%, while Beijing slashed levies on US imports to 10% and promised to lift barriers on critical mineral exports.

The agreement gave both sides a 90-day deadline to try to reach a trade deal.

But since then, talks have seemed to grind to a halt amid claims on both sides that the deal had been breached.

The US has accused China of failing to restart shipments of critical minerals and rare earth magnets vital to car and computer industries.

The Chinese Ministry of Commerce has denied the claims and accused the US of undermining the deal by introducing new restrictions on computer chips.

Trump introduced new export restrictions on semiconductor design software and announced it would revoke the visas of Chinese students.

The US president said following the call that “there should no longer be any questions respecting the complexity of Rare Earth products”.

He told reporters in the White House: “Chinese students can come, no problem, no problem – its an honour to have them frankly. But we want to check them.”

Chinese state media reported that Xi warned Washington that it should handle Taiwan “with caution” to avoid conflict, just days after US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said China posed an “imminent” threat to the self-governed island.

Hegseth told the Shangri-la Dialogue in Singaport that Beijing was “credibly preparing to potentially use military force to alter the balance of power”.

China sees Taiwan as a breakaway province that will eventually be reunified, and has not ruled out the use of force to achieve this. The US supports Taiwan militarily but does not officially recognise it due to the “One China” policy.

According to the readout of Thursday’s call given to Chinese media, Xi stressed that the US should handle the “Taiwan issue prudently to prevent a small number of Taiwan Independence separatists from dragging China and the US into a dangerous situation of conflict and confrontation”.

The call between Trump and Xi is long awaited and comes after months of silence between the two leaders.

The White House has touted the possibility they might talk from week one of Trump’s presidency – and earlier this week he finally vented his frustration on social media.

Trump wrote: “I like President Xi of China, always have, and always will, but he is VERY TOUGH, AND EXTREMELY HARD TO MAKE A DEAL WITH!”

Trump has made it clear that he likes to be involved in negotiations. But this is not the way China does business.

Beijing prefers to appoint a negotiating team led by a trusted official. Any calls or meeting between heads of state are usually thoroughly planned and highly choreographed.

The Chinese will also not want to be seen to bend to Washington’s demands.

Goods brought into the US plunged by 20% in April, recording their largest ever monthly drop in the face of a wave of tariffs unleashed by US President Donald Trump.

The retreat reflects the abrupt hit to trade, after firms had rushed products into the country earlier this year to try to get ahead of new taxes on imports Trump had promised.

US purchases from major trade partners such as Canada and China fell to their lowest levels since 2021 and 2020 respectively, the Commerce Department said.

The collapse helped to cut the US trade deficit – the gap between exports and imports – in goods by almost half, a record decline, according to the report.

“The April trade report indicates the impact from tariffs has well and truly arrived,” said Oxford Economics, while noting that the latest figures should be interpreted with caution, given the surge in activity earlier this year.

Since re-entering office in January, Trump has raised import taxes on specific items such as foreign steel, aluminium and cars and imposed a blanket 10% levy on most goods from trading partners around the world.

He had briefly targeted some countries’ exports with even higher duties, only to suspend those measures for 90 days to allow for talks.

Trump has said the moves are intended to rebuild manufacturing at home and strengthen its hand in trade negotiations.

White House officials are now engaged in intense talks aimed at striking deals before that 90-day deadline expires next month.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Trump spoke by phone on Thursday to try to reach a breakthrough in those negotiations, as the fragile truce between the two sides showed signs of deteriorating.

In a social media post, Trump said it had been a “very good phone call” focused on trade and that teams from the two sides would be meeting again shortly.

State media in China reported that they had agreed to further talks and extended an invitation of a visit to Trump.

Trump’s barrage of tariffs have brought the average effective tariff rate in the US to the highest level since the 1930s, according to analysts.

After a surge in activity earlier this year, the abrupt changes have led to a sharp slowdown in trade as firms weigh how to respond.

In Mexico, the steel industry said its exports to the US had been cut in half last month.

In Canada, the trade deficit hit an all-time high last month, widening to C$7.1bn, as exports to the US shrank for a third month in a row.

Thursday’s report from the US Commerce Department showed few categories of products were unaffected by the changes.

Imports of passenger cars dropped by a third from March to April. Pharmaceutical products were hit and imports of most consumer goods also fell, including cell phones, artwork, furniture, toys and apparel.

But imports surged from Vietnam and Taiwan, which saw their exports briefly targeted with higher rates before Trump suspended those levies, according to the report.

Despite the big monthly decline, overall US goods imports in the first four months of the year are up about 20% compared with the same period in 2024.

Exports so far this year are up about 5% compared with 2024.

The overall goods and services deficit in April was $61.6bn, down from $138.3bn in March.

The rift between US President Donald Trump and his former adviser Elon Musk has erupted into the open, with each trading insults after the tech billionaire criticised one of Trump’s key domestic policies.

The two billionaires escalated the feud throughout the day, lobbing barbs at each other on the social media sites they each own, suggesting a bitter conclusion to their unlikely alliance.

Thursday began with Trump saying he was “disappointed” with Musk’s criticisms of his administration’s centrepiece tax and spending bill, musing that it may be the end of their “great relationship”.

Musk then accused Trump of “ingratitude”, adding: “Without me, Trump would have lost the election”.

The breaking point in the relationship between the president and his one-time ally came after weeks of Musk lobbying against the “big, beautiful” spending bill, which was passed by the US House last month and is awaiting a vote in the Senate.

Shortly after leaving the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) after 129 days on the job, Musk took to his site X to call the bill a “disgusting abomination” and posting: “Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong.”

He argued that the bill will irresponsibly add to the US national debt, and encouraged his followers to phone their representatives to express opposition to the spending plan.

• Follow live updates here
• Trump and Musk enter bitter feud – and Washington buckles up
• Tesla shares tumble as Trump-Musk feud erupts

Speaking to reporters during a news conference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Thursday, Trump defending the bill and said: “I’m very disappointed because Elon knew the inner workings of this bill better than almost anybody sitting here. All of a sudden he had a problem.”

He went on to suggest that Musk was upset about the removal of subsidies and mandates for electric vehicles, which could affect his Tesla business.

Musk denied this was the case and wrote: “Keep the EV/solar incentive cuts in the bill, even though no oil & gas subsidies are touched (very unfair!!), but ditch the MOUNTAIN of DISGUSTING PORK in the bill.”

“Pork” is a term used in US politics to describe wasteful government spending, particularly on things meant to curry favour with particular groups or local areas.

The partnership between the two men began when Musk endorsed Trump last July after an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania. The Tesla boss reportedly funnelled $290m (£213m) into getting him back into the White House.

Amid a flurry of posts on X after Thursday’s news conference, Musk took credit for the sweeping Republican victory in last November’s election, writing: “Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate.”

“Such ingratitude,” he added.

Musk went on to post a poll asking his followers “Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?”

Over the course of the day, Musk went on to repost a tweet calling for Trump to resign, argue that his global tariff plan will trigger a US recession, and to suggest without evidence that Trump appears in unreleased files related to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Epstein was arrested in July 2019 on charges of sex trafficking and died by suicide while awaiting trial. Trump was president at the time. He said he knew Epstein “like everybody in Palm Beach knew him” but had a “falling out with him a long time ago”.

The White House condemned Musk’s allegation, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt saying in a statement: “This is an unfortunate episode from Elon, who is unhappy with the One Big Beautiful Bill because it does not include the policies he wanted.”

On his Truth Social network, Trump claimed that Musk “just went CRAZY” and went on to post: “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”

Musk’s companies, including Tesla, SpaceX and Starlink have direct contacts with the US government and, like many other businesses, also benefit from subsidies and tax breaks.

In response, Musk said SpaceX “will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately”. The craft is used to shuttle people and supplies to the International Space Station.

Telsa stock dropped by 14% within hours of the row bursting out into public.

According to the most recent analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the spending bill working its way through Congress will increase the US national debt by $2.4tn over 10 years and leave nearly 11 million people without government-backed health insurance.

The White House disputes those figures, saying they don’t account for revenues brought in by increased tariffs.

Put in charge of radically slashing government spending at Doge, Musk initiated mass sackings and wholesale elimination of departments such as the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

Doge claims to have saved $180bn, although that number has been disputed, and is well short of Musk’s initial aim to cut spending by up to $2tn.

Beyoncé signed off the first night of her London residency by telling fans she was “blessed” to get to do what she loves by performing on stage.

She stormed through a seven-act set at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, treating the audience to a spectacle that lasted just shy of three hours.

But despite this being the first opportunity for fans to enjoy the singer’s country era in person, slow ticket sales and high prices have been the hot topic around the tour.

Promoters slashed some ticket prices in the run-up to shows in a bid to fill the stadium, prompting some of those who bought seats in advance to feel short-changed.

Beyoncé’s rodeo rumbled into London, bringing with it every country cliché you could think of – cowboy hats, horseshoes, tassels and even a gold mechanical bull.

The 40-song setlist relied heavily on tracks from 2024’s Cowboy Carter, which was met with critical acclaim, including taking the top album prize at this year’s Grammy Awards.

Every element of the performance was flawless, from the 43-year-old superstar’s stunning array of costume changes (each one featuring more rhinestones than the last) to the seamless transitions between songs and musical themes.

Much of the talk around the US leg of this tour, which took place in April and May, was the inclusion of Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s 13-year-old daughter Blue Ivy, who reportedly begged her parents to dance on the Renaissance tour in 2023, but was denied the opportunity.

She made several appearances throughout the show, earning thunderous applause whilst dancing to an instrumental performance of her mum’s 2006 hit Deja Vu.

The teenager certainly seemed to enjoy her moment in the spotlight, unlike her younger sister, Rumi, who came on stage during Protector, shyly mouthing the words whilst being held by Beyoncé.

The show, which is called The Cowboy Carter and the Rodeo Chitlin’ Circuit Tour as a way of referencing black performers that were segregated from the country scene, often paid homage in its interludes to these artists.

Beyoncé herself previously hinted about being rejected from the country music world in the past and throughout the performance it felt like she was wrestling with this idea.

She blended some of her biggest hits into Cowboy Carter tracks, such as Freedom and Diva, almost to prove that she belonged in this space.

Thursday night’s performance certainly showed she is more than qualified to be a country singer, but perhaps that a 60,000 seater stadium is not the best arena for it.

As the night drew darker, Beyoncé delivered an act comprised of tracks from her house-inspired album Renaissance, which immediately lifted the crowd into a party mood.

LED wristbands lit up in array of colours as she belted out Alien Superstar and I’m That Girl – which certainly got the best reaction from fans of the night.

Similarly a section of old classics such as Crazy In Love and Irreplaceable had the crowd singing every word, proving perhaps that a few more classics wouldn’t have gone amiss.

With crowds on their feet, it was difficult to see how sold out the stadium actually was, but with just hours to go until the show there were still thousands of tickets available for sale online.

Despite the tour only stopping in two European cities – London and Paris – the remaining eight dates are not sold out.

Beyoncé’s tour has the highest top-priced ticket of any artist visiting the UK in 2025 at £950, with the cheapest costing £71.

Some seats that were sold in the Beyhive fan presale for £620 excluding fees are next to seats that were available this week for £141.60 without fees.

Zulkarnain Sadali flew from Singapore to London to watch Beyoncé perform live and bought a ticket in the pre-sale, which he said cost him “more than £700”.

“A couple of weeks ago I checked my ticket and then curiosity got the best of me and I checked the same ticket, or same category, and the price was around £300,” he told the BBC.

“I’m really excited for [the show] but I will say the dynamic pricing really left a sour taste in my mouth.”

Another fan, Holly Whiteman, said she “panic bought” Beyoncé tickets in a fan pre-sale on Ticketmaster, which were “way up in the nosebleeds” and cost £170 each, when she had initially set a budget of £100.

“Fast forward a few days later, the tickets went on general sale through Tottenham Hotspur and I found tickets for the same show in both the same row and the same section for a much cheaper price,” she told the BBC.

“I believe they were at least £50-£70 cheaper per ticket.”

Sadali said that despite feeling short-changed, it had not dented his excitement for the tour.

“It’s really about the Beyoncé experience, you’re not gonna get it anywhere else and I know this sounds like a contradiction, it’s worth every cent,” he said.

Whiteman said the process had left her a bit “disappointed”, but she was still looking forward to the tour.

A Ticketmaster spokesperson told the BBC they do “not use surge pricing or dynamic algorithms to adjust ticket prices”, adding that event organisers are responsible for the pricing structures.

“Since tickets typically go on sale at least 3-6 months before the event, organisers may review prices at key points leading up to the show, but they make any adjustments, not an algorithm,” they also added.

The BBC also contacted tour promoter Live Nation for comment.

Ticketing expert Reg Walker put the lack of sold-out shows down to several factors, including “overexposure” after her last UK stadium tour, which played five nights at the same venue in 2023.

And the ticket prices are “eye-watering”, he told the BBC.

“You might be able to afford to go to one of her concerts where you’re effectively paying, in some categories, the same amount of money as a small holiday, but you can’t do that on consecutive years.

“The pricing strategy on tickets was clearly far too high,” he added.

Walker said there were a lot of “affordably priced” tours coming up – but with so many artists visiting the UK this summer, fans may be picking and choosing who they pay to go and see.

Billie Eilish, Lana Del Rey, Dua Lipa, Kendrick Lamar and SZA are all embarking on stadium tours over the coming months, with Olivia Rodrigo, Sabrina Carpenter, Chapell Roan and Drake headlining festivals.

Israel has carried out several air strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs, saying it was targeting Hezbollah’s drone production.

The attack on Thursday night, the eve of Eid Al Adha, one of the most important celebrations in Islam, followed evacuation warnings for several buildings in the area, where Hezbollah is based in the capital.

The Israeli Defence Forces said it had identified a Hezbollah unit producing “thousands” of drones underground, funded by “Iranian terrorists”.

The attack occurred despite a ceasefire being in effect between Israel and the armed group for the past six months.

Lebanon’s prime minister said he “strongly condemns” the strikes.

“I consider them to constitute a systematic and deliberate attack on our homeland, its security, stability, and economy, especially on the eve of the holidays and the tourist season,” Nawaf Salam said in a post on X.

Thousands fled packed streets in the densely populated area following the evacuation warning, causing a traffic gridlock. Plumes of smoke then appeared in the sky.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun described the strikes as a “flagrant violation of an international accord” while noting it had occurred “on the eve of a sacred religious festival”.

Israel’s military said Hezbollah’s “extensive use” of drones was central to its attacks on Israel, calling the activities “a blatant violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon”.

There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah.

An hour before the air strikes occurred, the Israeli military’s Arabic spokesman, Avichay Adraee, ordered residents living in the neighbourhoods of Hadath, Haret Hreik and Borj el-Barajneh in the Dahieh area to evacuate.

“You are next to infrastructure belonging to Hezbollah,” he said in a social media post that included a map identifying specific buildings.

Prior to the Israel-Gaza war, Israel and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group had engaged in more than a year of cross-border hostilities that culminated in an intense Israeli bombing campaign and ground incursion into southern Lebanon.

The offensive killed about 4,000 people in Lebanon – including many civilians – and led to the displacement of more than 1.2 million residents.

Israel said the military intervention was necessary to dismantle Hezbollah installations near the border that it argued a UN peacekeeping mission had failed to stop.

Its stated goal was to allow the return of about 60,000 residents who had been displaced from communities in the country’s north because of the group’s attacks.

A ceasefire struck in late November between Israel and Lebanon – but not Hezbollah – saw Israel withdraw while the Lebanese army took over policing southern Lebanon.

The agreement also stated that its commitments “do not preclude either Israel or Lebanon from exercising their inherent right of self-defence, consistent with international law”.

Israel has carried out air strikes in Lebanon on targets it says are linked to Hezbollah in the months since.

In April, Israel attacked what it described as a Hezbollah store of “precision-guided missiles” in the same Dahieh region.

Earlier the same month, it launched a similar strike, killing a Hezbollah official and three other people, Lebanon’s health ministry said at the time.

Lebanon’s government said those attacks, as well as the continued stationing of Israeli soldiers in five locations in southern Lebanon, constitute violations of the truce.

Hezbollah launched its campaign the day after Hamas launched its 7 October 2023 attack into Israel, saying it was acting in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

US President Donald Trump has issued a sweeping new travel ban for people from 12 countries, revisiting a hallmark policy of his first term in office.

There are some key differences, however.

The original travel ban suffered a series of legal defeats. This time, the policy appears to have been designed to avoid the same pitfalls.

Its predecessor, which targeted seven predominantly Muslim countries and was dubbed the “Muslim ban” by critics, was ordered just a week after Trump took office in 2017, during his first term in the White House.

The ban was amended twice to overcome court challenges, after opponents argued it was unconstitutional and illegal because it discriminated against travellers based on their religion.

A scaled-back version was eventually upheld by the US Supreme Court in 2018, which this new ban closely resembles.

Legal experts told the BBC that it appeared Trump had learned lessons from his first attempt.

Christi Jackson, an expert in US immigration law at the London firm Laura Devine Immigration, said the new ban was more legally robust as a result.

While the first lacked “clarity”, the new restrictions were “wider in scope” and had “clearly defined” exemptions, she said.

While there are some similarities in the nations chosen by the 2017 ban and the 2025 ban, Muslim-majority states are not the express target of the latest order.

Barbara McQuade, professor of law at the University of Michigan and former US attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, told the BBC World Service’s Newshour programme that, on this basis, it seemed likely to win the approval of the Supreme Court if it was ever referred up to that level.

• Trump’s travel ban: Follow live updates
• Everything we know about the ban so far
• Why are these 12 countries on the list?
• Trump suspends foreign student visas at Harvard

The 12 countries subject to the harshest restrictions from 9 June are mainly in the Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean, including Afghanistan, Iran and Somalia.

There will be partial restrictions on travellers from another seven countries, including Cuban and Venezuelan nationals.

Trump said the strength of the restrictions would be graded against the severity of the perceived threat, including from terrorism.

But besides Iran, none of the 12 countries hit by the outright ban are named on the US government’s state sponsors of terrorism list.

Trump cited Sunday’s incident in Boulder, Colorado, in which a man was accused of throwing Molotov cocktails at demonstrators attending a march for Israeli hostages, in a video announcing the ban on X.

The alleged attacker was an Egyptian national. However, Egypt does not appear on either list.

Trump also specified high rates of people overstaying their visas as a reason for listing certain countries.

However, Steven D Heller, an immigration lawyer based in the US, said there was a “lack of clarity” over what threshold had to be met by a country’s overstaying rate in order for that country to be placed on Trump’s ban list. That could be the basis for a successful legal challenge, he suggested.

“If they’re relying on this notion of excessive overstay rates… they have to define what that actually means,” he told the BBC.

But he noted that existing US law gave the president broad powers over immigration policy.

Unlike the first ban, which was to last for only 90 to 120 days, today’s order has no end date.

It has been met with dismay in the targeted countries.

Venezuela has described the Trump administration as “supremacists who think they own the world”, though Somalia has pledged to “engage in dialogue to address the concerns raised”.

The original ban spurred mass protests and sowed chaos at US airports.

It was repealed in 2021 by Trump’s successor, President Joe Biden, who called the policy “a stain on our national conscience”.

Immigration lawyer Shabnam Lotfi, who challenged the previous travel ban, said it would be an “uphill battle” to overturn the new one.

“The president does have the authority to determine who is admissible to the US,” she said, adding that because of the way the ban had been written, it was “harder to find a huge group of people that could file a class-action lawsuit”.

“They’ve put more thought into it.”

Ms Lotfi noted that the new restrictions could have consequences for students and other visa applicants abroad.

“Students who are stuck in administrative processing are impacted. So are winners of the diversity visa lottery who paid fees and went to interviews – they’re unlikely to get visas now,” she said.

“Even EB-5 investors – people who’ve put over $1 million into the US economy – are affected. And H-1B visa holders stuck abroad, waiting to return to their US employers, could also be blocked.”

Investors sold off shares in Tesla on Thursday, as tensions erupted between boss Elon Musk and US President Donald Trump.

Shares in the electric car company dropped 14%, wiping out roughly $150bn in market value in one of the worst days in months.

The losses were an indication of what might be at stake for Musk, as he breaks with a White House known for wielding the power of government against what it sees as enemies.

As the dispute devolved, Trump threatened to cut off government contracts to Musk’s companies, including rocket firm SpaceX, which has contracts worth tens of billions of dollars with the government.

“Go ahead, make my day,” Musk fired back in response to the threat.

The stark turn in the relationship between the two men played out live on social media, quickly spiralling from policy disagreements into personal insults.

• Trump and Musk enter bitter feud – and Washington buckles up
• Trump ‘very disappointed’ by Musk as row explodes into public

Analyst Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities, a longtime Tesla cheerleader, called it “jaw dropping and a shock to the market”,

He said the clash had sparked fear among investors about what it might mean for regulation of the company, which is seeking to expand self-driving and robotics and had hoped for a more relaxed regulatory approach under the Trump administration.

“This must start to be calmed down,” Mr Ives wrote in a note, adding that it “put a fly in the ointment of the Trump regulatory framework going forward”.

Musk’s foray into government has already proven a wild ride for Tesla investors.

Shares had surged last year, on hopes his alliance with Trump would benefit the company.

But investor sentiment soured this year, as Musk’s alliance with Trump and his role leading controversial cuts to government spending proved a lightning rod, sparking backlash and hurting sales, especially in Europe.

Investors were also concerned that Musk – who had been fighting for a record-breaking pay package – was not focused on the company.

Last month, the head of Tesla’s board was forced to publicly deny a report that the company had started to look for someone else to lead the firm.

Musk’s pledge on an investor call that he would be stepping back from his role leading Doge had prompted an upswing in the stock. He formally left the government at the end of last month.

But Tesla now finds itself back in the political crossfire.

The breach with Trump was sparked by Musk’s criticism of a Trump-backed spending bill.

Musk has sought to rally opposition, arguing that it will add too much the government’s debt load. He has also been critical of Trump’s tariffs, which he said on Thursday would cause an economic recession in the second half of the year.

Trump said Musk’s welcome at the White House was wearing thin and accused him of being unhappy about the elimination of a tax credit for electric vehicles, which has been key to Tesla’s sales in the US.

The two men have also clashed over Trump’s decision to withdraw his nomination of Jared Isaacman, a Musk ally, to lead Nasa.

Thursday’s fall put the company’s share price at its lowest level since May, erasing gains that had been made on hopes that Musk would refocus attention on the company.

As the two men went at it, investors watched in disbelief.

“Can someone please take the phone away from him,” wrote investor Ross Gerber, who has been vocal about his concerns about the impact of Musk’s politics on Tesla and cut back his holdings. “Tesla is getting destroyed.”

A British backpacker has been found dead in Malaysia, the Foreign Office has confirmed.

Jordan Johnson-Doyle, 25, from Southport, was last seen in Kuala Lumpur on the evening of 27 May, his mother Leanne Burnett said.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said it was assisting the family of a British man who died in Malaysia and was in contact with local authorities.

In a social media appeal for assistance in the search for her son, Ms Burnett said Mr Johnson-Doyle’s family had been working with Malaysian police to try and find him.

Police in Kuala Lumpur reportedly found a body at a construction site in Bangsar on Wednesday, according to Malaysian media.

Ms Burnett previously told the BBC she had flown out to Malaysia earlier this week to try and help in the search.

Merseyside Police said it was aware that a body had now been found after it received a report on 30 May that Mr Johnson-Doyle had gone missing in Malaysia.

A spokesperson said: “We are in contact with the family of Jordan Johnson-Doyle and supporting them whilst enquiries continue.

“On behalf of the family we would ask their privacy is respected at this time.”

New Zealand’s parliament has voted to suspend three Māori MPs for their protest haka during a sitting last year.

Opposition MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, who started the traditional dance, was suspended for seven days, while her party’s co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer were banned for 21 days.

The MPs did the haka when asked if their Te Pāti Māori or Māori Party, supported a bill that sought to redefine the country’s founding treaty with Māori people.

The Treaty Principles Bill has since been voted down but it drew nationwide outrage – and more than 40,000 people protested outside parliament during the bill’s first reading in November last year.

We have been “punished for being Māori”, Ngarewa-Packer told the BBC. “We take on the stance of being unapologetically Māori and prioritising what our people need or expect from us.”

There were tense exchanges on Thursday as the house debated penalties, with Foreign Minister Winston Peters being asked to apologise for calling Te Pāti Māori a “bunch of extremists” and saying the country “has had enough of them”.

“We will never be silenced, and we will never be lost,” Maipi-Clarke, who at 22 is the youngest MP, said at one point, holding back tears.

“Are our voices too loud for this house – is that why we are being punished?”

Last month, a parliamentary committee proposed suspending the MPs, It ruled that the haka, which brought parliament to a temporary halt, could have “intimidated” other lawmakers.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon had rejected accusations then that the committee’s ruling was “racist”, adding that the issue was “not about haka”, but about “parties not following the rules of parliament”.

Following a heated debate, the suspensions handed out on Thursday are the longest any New Zealand lawmaker has faced. The previous record was three days.

New Zealand has long been lauded for upholding indigenous rights, but relations with the Māori community have been strained recently under the current conservative government Luxon-led government.

His administration has been criticised for cutting funding to programmes benefiting Māori, including plans to disband an organisation that aims to improve health services for the community.

Luxon though has defended his government’s record on Māori issues, citing plans to improve literacy in the community and move children out of emergency housing.

The Treaty Principles Bill that has been at the heart of this tension. It sought to legally define the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, the pact the British Crown and Māori leaders signed in 1840 during New Zealand’s colonisation.

The bill’s defenders, such as Act, the right-wing party that tabled it, argue the 1840 treaty needs to be reinterpreted because it had divided the country by race, and does not represent today’s multicultural society.

Critics, however, say it is the proposed bill that would be divisive and lead to the unravelling of much-needed protections for many Māori.

The bill sparked a hīkoi, or peaceful protest march, that lasted nine days, beginning in the far north and culminating in the capital Wellington. It grew to more than 40,000 by the end, becoming one of the country’s biggest marches ever.

The Treaty Principles Bill was eventually voted down by 112 votes to 11 in April, days after a government committee recommended that it should not proceed. The party holds six seats in the 123-member parliament.