A hiss and puff of compressed air shapes the smooth leather, bringing to life an all-American cowboy boot in a factory on China’s eastern coast.

Then comes another one as the assembly line continues, the sounds of sewing, stitching, cutting and soldering echoing off the high ceilings.

“We used to sell around a million pairs of boots a year,” says the 45-year-old sales manager, Mr Peng, who did not wish to reveal his first name.

That is, until Donald Trump came along.

A slew of tariffs in his first presidential term triggered a trade war between the world’s two largest economies. Six years on, Chinese businesses are bracing themselves for a sequel now that he is back in the White House.

“What direction should we take in the future?” Mr Peng asks, uncertain of what Trump 2.0 means for him, his colleagues – and China.

For Western markets that are increasingly wary of Beijing’s ambitions, trade has become a powerful bargaining chip – especially as a sluggish Chinese economy relies ever more on exports. Trump returned on a campaign promise that included crushing tariffs against Chinese-made goods, and has since threatened a 10% levy that is expected to take effect on 1 February.

He has also ordered a review of US-China trade – which buys Beijing time and Washington, negotiating room. And for now, harsher rhetoric (and higher tariffs) seem to be directed against US allies such as Canada and Mexico.

Trump may have pressed pause on the looming battle with Beijing. But many believe it’s still coming. It’s hard to find an exact figure on how many businesses are fleeing China, but major firms such as Nike, Adidas and Puma have already relocated to Vietnam. Chinese businesses too have been moving, reshaping supply chains, although Beijing remains a key player.

Mr Peng says his boss, who owns the factory, has considered moving production to South East Asia, along with many of their competitors.

It would save the firm, but they would lose their workforce. Most of the staff are from the nearby city of Nantong and have worked here for more than 20 years.

Mr Peng, whose wife died when their son was young, says the factory has been his family: “Our boss is determined not to abandon these employees.”

He is aware of the geopolitics at play, but he says he and his workers are just trying to make a living. They are still reeling from the impact of 2019, when a fourth round of Trump tariffs – 15% – hit Chinese-made consumer goods, such as clothes and shoes.

Orders have since dwindled and staff numbers, once more than 500, have dropped to just over 200. The evidence is in the empty work stations, as Mr Peng shows us around.

All around him, workers are cutting the leather into the right shape to hand it to the machinist. They have to be precise because mistakes will ruin the expensive leather, most of which has been imported from the US.

The factory is trying to keep costs low as some of their American buyers are already considering moving business away from China and the threat of tariffs.

But that would mean losing skilled workers: it can take up to a week to make one pair of boots, from flattening the leather to giving the finished boots a final polish and packing them for export.

This is what turned China into the world’s top manufacturer – labour-intensive production which is also cheap when it’s scaled up and supported by an unrivalled supply chain. And this has been years in the making.

“It was once a constant cycle of inspecting goods and shipping them out – I felt fulfilled,” says Mr Peng, who has worked here since 2015. “But orders have decreased, which makes me feel quite lost and anxious.”

Once crafted to conquer the Wild West, these cowboy boots have been made here for more than a decade. And this is a familiar story in the south of Jiangsu province, a manfucaturing hub along the Yangtze River that produces just about everything, from textiles to electric vehicles.

These are among the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods that China ships to the United States every year – a number that steadily ballooned as Washington became its biggest trading partner.

That status slipped under Trump. But it was not restored under his successor Joe Biden, who kept most Trump-era tariffs in place, as ties with Beijing frayed.

In fact, the European Union too has imposed tariffs on electric vehicle imports, accusing China of making too much, often with the support of state subsidies. Trump has echoed this – that China’s “unfair” trade practices disadvantage foreign comeptitors.

Beijing sees such rhetoric as Western attempts to stifle its growth, and it has repeatedly warned Washington that there will be no winners in a trade war. But it has also said it’s ready to talk and “properly handle differences”.

And President Trump, who has described tariffs as his “one big power” over China, certainly wants to talk.

It’s unclear as yet what he might want in return. During Trump’s honeymoon period with China in his first term he came to Beijing to ask for Xi’s help in meeting North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un. This time it is believed he might need Xi’s support to make a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine. He recently said that China had “a great deal of power over that situation”.

The threat of a 10% tariff is driven by the belief that China is “sending fentanyl to Mexico and Canada”. So he could demand that it do more to end that flow.

Or, given he welcomed a bidding war over TikTok, he may want to negotiate its ownership – or the prized technology that powers the app – because Beijing would need to agree to any such sale.

Whatever the deal may be, it could help reset US-China ties. However, the absence of one could abruptly end the chance of a second honeymoon, setting up Trump and Xi for a far more confrontational relationship.

Already business sentiment is nervous: an annual survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in China showed just over half of them were concerned about the US-China relationship deteriorating further.

Trump’s seemingly softer stance on China offers offers some relief. But his hope is still that the threat of tariffs will help drive buyers away from China and move manufacturing back to the US.

Some Chinese businesses are indeed on the move – but not to America.

An hour outside Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh, businessman Huang Zhaodong has built a new factory to cater to a flood of orders from US giants Walmart and Costco.

This is his second factory in Cambodia, and together they produce half a million garments a month, from shirts to underwear. Hangers carrying cotton trousers roll past us on an automated line, moving from one station to the next as the elastic waist is inserted and hemlines are finished.

Now, when prospective US customers lob the first question, which he has come to expect – where is he based – Mr Huang has the right answer. Not in China.

“In the case of some Chinese firms, their customers have told them: ‘If you don’t move production overseas, I’ll cancel your orders’.”

The tariffs raise tough choices for suppliers and retailers, but it’s not always clear who will bear the brunt of the cost. Sometimes it will be the customer, Mr Huang says.

“Take Walmart as an example. I sell them clothes at $5, but they usually mark it up 3.5 times. If the cost increases due to higher tariffs, the price I sell to them might rise to $6. If they mark it up by 3.5 times, the retail price would increase.”

But usually, he says, it is the supplier. If his production line was in China, he estimates an extra 10% tariff could take an extra $800,000 (£644,000) from his earnings.

“That’s more than what I make as profit. It’s huge and we can’t afford it. If you’re making clothes in China under such tariff conditions, it’s unsustainable,” he says.

Current US tariffs on Chinese goods vary from 100% on electric vehicles to 25% on steel and aluminium. Until now, several top-selling items have been exempt, including electronics, such as TVs and iPhones.

But the 10% blanket tariff Trump is proposing could affect the price of everything that is made in China and exported to the US. That applies to a lot of things – from toys and tea cups to laptops.

Mr Huang says this would encourage more factories to move elsewhere. Several new workshops have sprung up around him and Chinese companies from textile production heartlands such as Shandong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Guangdong are moving in to make winter jackets and woollen clothing.

Around 90% of clothing factories in Cambodia are now Chinese-run or Chinese-owned, according to a report by insight and analysis group Research and Markets.

Half of the country’s foreign investment flows from China. Seventy percent of roads and bridges were built using loans Beijing dispensed, according to Chinese state media.

Many of the signs on restaurants and shops are in Chinese as well as Khmer, the local language. There’s even a ring road named Xi Jinping Boulevard in honour of the Chinese president.

Cambodia is not a lone recipient. China has invested heavily in different parts of the world under President Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative – a trade and infrastructure project that also increases Beijing’s influence.

That means China has choices.

Chinese state media claims that more than half of China’s imports and exports now come from Belt and Road countries, most of them in South East Asia.

This has not happened overnight, says Kenny Yao from AlixPartners, who advises Chinese firms on how to deal with tariffs.

During Trump’s first term, many Chinese firms doubted his tariff threat, he told the BBC. Now they ask if he will follow the supply chain and slap tariffs on other countries.

Just in case he does, Mr Yao says, it would be wise for Chinese businesses to look further afield: “For example, Africa or Latin America. This is more difficult, but it is good to look at areas you have not explored before.”

As America pledges to look after itself first, Beijing is doing its best to appear a stable business partner, and there is some evidence it is working.

China has edged past the US to become the prevailing choice for countries in South East Asia, according to a survey by the Iseas Yusof-Ishak think tank in Singapore.

Even though production has moved abroad, money still flows to China – 60% of the materials being made into clothes at Mr Huang’s factories in Phnom Penh come from China.

And exports are thriving, with Beijing investing more heavily in high-end manufacturing, from solar panels to artificial intelligence. Last year’s trade surplus with the world – on the back of a nearly 6% year-on-year jump in exports – was a record $992bn.

Still, Chinese businesses – in Jiangsu and Phnom Penh – are preparing themselves for an uncertain spell, if not a turbulent one.

Mr Peng hopes the US and China can have an “amicable and calm” discussion to keep the tariffs “within a reasonable range” and avoid a trade war.

“Americans still need to purchase these products,” he said, before driving off to meet new customers.

US President Donald Trump will impose tariffs on Saturday of 25% on Mexico, 25% on Canada and 10% on China, says the White House.

But Trump said on Friday that Canadian oil would be hit with lower tariffs of 10%, which could take effect later, on 18 February.

The president also said he planned to impose tariffs on the European Union in the future, saying the bloc had not treated the US well.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the Canada and Mexico duties were in response to “the illegal fentanyl that they have sourced and allowed to distribute into our country, which has killed 10s of millions of Americans”.

Trump has also repeatedly said the move was to address the large amounts of undocumented migrants that have come across US borders as well as trade deficits with its neighbours.

Ms Leavitt told a news briefing at the White House on Friday: “These are promises made and promises kept by the President.”

During the election campaign, Trump threatened to hit Chinese-made products with tariffs of up to 60%, but held off on any immediate action on his first day back in the White House, instead ordering his administration to study the issue.

US goods imports from China have flattened since 2018, a statistic that economists have attributed in part to a series of escalating tariffs that Trump imposed during his first term.

• Booze, oil and orange juice: How Canada could retaliate
• China calls for ‘win-win’ solution to trade tensions

Earlier this month, a top Chinese official warned against protectionism as Trump’s return to the presidency renews the threat of a trade war between the world’s two biggest economies – but did not mention the US by name.

Addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Ding Xuexiang, Vice Premier of China, said his country was looking for a “win-win” solution to trade tensions and wanted to expand its imports.

China, Canada and Mexico are the top US trading partners, accounting for 40% of the goods imported into the US last year, and fears are rising that the new steep levies could kick off a major trade war as well as push up prices in the US.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Friday: “It’s not what we want, but if he moves forward, we will also act.”

Canada and Mexico have already said that they would respond to US tariffs with measures of their own, while also seeking to assure Washington that they were taking action to address concerns about their US borders.

The BBC has reached out to the Chinese embassy in the US for comment.

If US imports of oil from Canada and Mexico are hit with levies it risks undermining Trump’s promise to bring down the cost of living.

Tariffs are an import tax on goods that are produced abroad.

In theory, taxing items coming into a country means people are less likely to buy them as they become more expensive.

The intention is that they buy cheaper local products instead – boosting a country’s economy.

But the cost of tariffs on imported energy could be passed on to businesses and consumers, which may increase the prices of everything from petrol to groceries.

Around 40% of the crude that runs through US oil refineries is imported, and the vast majority of it comes from Canada.

On Friday, Trump agreed tariff costs are sometimes passed along to consumers and that his plans may cause disruption in the short-term.

Mark Carney, the former head of Canada’s and England’s central banks, told BBC Newsnight on Friday that the tariffs will hit economic growth and drive up inflation.

“They’re going to damage the US’s reputation around the world,” said Carney, who is also in the running to replace Prime Minister Trudeau as leader of Canada’s Liberal Party.

A small plane with six aboard has crashed into several buildings in north-east Philadelphia, setting homes and vehicles ablaze, and injuring people on the ground.

The jet was on a medical transport mission on Friday evening and was carrying four crew members, a child patient and the patient’s escort, Jet Rescue Air Ambulance, the medical aircraft company, told Reuters and other US media.

“We know that there will be loss,” Pennsylvania Gov Josh Shapiro said during a news conference at the scene of the crash, calling it an “awful aviation disaster”.

Emergency crews rushed to the scene during evening rush hour, as residents crowded streets that were littered with fiery debris and pieces of the aircraft. Many described a chaotic scene with injured people running and a neighbourhood block on fire.

Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker said city officials do not know the number of fatalities, but the city is “asking for prayers for anyone and everyone that may have been affected”.

“If you see debris, call 911, don’t touch anything,” she told city residents.

The crash happened just blocks from the Roosevelt Mall, a three-story shopping centre in a densely populated part of the Pennsylvania city.

The area where the crash occurred is filled with terraced housing and shops.

Disturbing videos of the incident online show the plane coming down quickly and sparking a huge fireball that rocketed into the sky.

Witnesses describes shrapnel from the crash damaging cars, and strewing burning debris into the streets. Photos of the aftermath of the incident show cars burned and mangled in the streets as more fires are ablaze on the sidewalk.

The plane, a Learjet 55, took off from the Northeast Philadelphia Airport about 18:30 local time and crashed less than four miles (6.4km) away, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The FAA said in a statement that the flight was en-route to Springfield-Branson National Airport in Missouri. At first, the agency said two people were on the plane but later revised that to six.

According to data on FlightAware, a flight tracking website, the plane was operated by a company called Med Jets, and had arrived in Philadelphia from Florida less than four hours earlier.

The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are investigating.

In a statement, President Donald Trump said his administration was “totally engaged”.

“So sad to see the plane go down in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. More innocent souls lost,” he said.

Weather forecasts in the area show it’s been a cloudy and rainy evening with winds measured around 10 to 20 mph.

One witness told local media that the explosion “lit up the whole sky”.

“I just saw a plane basically hit the building and it exploded. The sky lit up and I pulled over and basically, it was just real bad around here,” the witness told WPVI-TV, describing the crash as feeling like an earthquake.

Ryan Tian, 23, told The Philadelphia Inquirer said he was getting dinner when he saw a “massive fireball” that turned the sky orange.

“I thought we were getting attacked by something,” he said. As he saw people start to flee, he decided to get “outta there”.

The plane crash comes just two days after a much larger collision happened between a commercial jet and a military helicopter in Washington DC, where officials suspect all 67 people aboard both aircraft were killed.

It was the deadliest plane crash in the US in over 20 years.

Venezuela has freed six US detainees after talks in Caracas between President Nicolás Maduro and a senior Trump administration official.

The release of the men was announced on social media by Donald Trump and his special envoy, Richard Grenell.

Grenell – who published online a photo of the six on board his plane – said they had spoken by phone to President Trump to thank him.

Earlier, the White House had called on Venezuela to release “US hostages” – as well as agreeing to receive Venezuelan criminals deported by the US – or face consequences.

• Venezuela’s Maduro sworn in for third term after contested elections
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• ‘I thought I was going to die’: Jailed Venezuelan activist

Grenell did not name the six men, who were seen dressed in light blue outfits used by the Venezuelan prison system.

“We are wheels up and headed home with these 6 American citizens,” Grenell posted on X. “They just spoke to @realDonaldTrump and they couldn’t stop thanking him.”

Trump hailed the move in a separate post, saying Grenell was bringing “six hostages home from Venezuela”.

Venezuelan state media said the discussions with President Trump’s envoy had been respectful.

In January, Caracas announced the capture of a group of “mercenaries” who included US citizens.

Maduro was sworn in last month for a third term as Venezuelan president, six months after disputed elections which the opposition and international community say he lost.

The official results of the July 2024 election have been widely rejected by the international community, including the US.

Grenell’s visit did not mean US recognition of Maduro as Venezuela’s legitimate leader, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said earlier on Friday.

Mark Carney, the frontrunner to be the next Canadian prime minister, has said his country is “going to stand up to a bully” after US President Donald Trump announced tariffs of 25% on Canada.

Speaking exclusively to BBC Newsnight, 59-year-old Carney said Canada will “match dollar for dollar the US tariffs”.

As well as levying a 25% tariff on Canadian imports on Saturday, the White House has announced tariffs of 25% on Mexico and 10% on China.

Carney, who announced his run for leader of Canada’s governing Liberal Party in January, is the former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England.

He is currently one of five candidates in the running to succeed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – and has so far secured the largest support base among Liberal MPs.

The leadership race will conclude on 9 March.

The winner will replace Trudeau – who announced his intention to resign in January after nine years in office – both as prime minister and party leader.

Canada is then required to hold a federal election to elect a new government on or before 20 October, with the Liberal party currently trailing their Conservative rivals in the polls.

In response to the tariff announcement, Carney told Newsnight that “President Trump probably thinks Canada will cave in”.

“But we are going to stand up to a bully, we’re not going to back down,” he said.

“We’re united and we will retaliate.”

The former Bank of England governor said the tariffs are “going to damage the US’s reputation around the world”.

“They’re going to hit growth. They’re going to move up inflation. They’re going to raise interest rates,” he said.

He added that it’s the “second time” in less than a decade that the US has “in effect, ripped up a trade agreement with its closest trading partner”.

In 2020, towards the end of Donald Trump’s first term, the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (UCMCA) came into effect – effectively an update to Nafta, the agreement between the three countries which had been in place since the 1990s.

Economists have suggested the newly imposed tariffs could have a devastating immediate impact on Canada’s economy – while also leading to higher prices for Americans.

Tariffs are a central part of Trump’s economic vision. He sees them as a way of growing the US economy, protecting jobs and raising tax revenue.

Outgoing Prime Minister Trudeau has said Canada’s response will be “forceful” and “immediate” to the new tariffs.

Trump said on Friday that Canadian oil would be hit with lower tariffs of 10%, which would take effect later, on 18 February.

The president also said he planned to impose tariffs on the European Union in the future, saying the bloc had not treated the US well.

Officials have recovered the cockpit voice recorder – also known as the black box – from the helicopter involved in the plane crash that killed 67 people at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Wednesday.

Emergency responders are planning to ramp up operations over the weekend to recover the debris from the site.

There were 64 passengers aboard an American Airlines flight when it collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter carrying three soldiers.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has since restricted helicopter traffic around the airport after concerns from officials about overcrowding in the airspace overhead.

As of Friday, 28 people from the crash had been identified and 41 bodies had been recovered from the water.

The rest of the bodies will not be found until officials are able to hoist the plane off the riverbed, officials have said.

Investigators recovered the black boxes from the wreckage of the passenger plane the day after the collision.

After soaking those black boxes and extracting the moisture from them, they will be able to get data from the recorders “very soon”, National Transportation Safety Board member Todd Inman told reporters on Friday evening.

“We just have to work through a number of steps,” Mr Inman said.

NTSB members said they still do not know the cause of the collision.

Mr Inman said the “main lifting” of the salvage operations, which will be carried out by the US Navy, will begin on Saturday.

Parts of the aircraft need to be removed from the water before divers can go back in.

Authorities plan on mapping the debris in the river so they can better understand how the aircraft responded to the collision.

Work to remove large segments of the aircraft from the water by crane starts on Sunday and will continue throughout the week, said Mr Inman.

Over 500 people have been working around the clock at the site of the crash in the Potomac River, Washington DC fire chief John Donnelly said.

Mr Inman was asked about reports that one air traffic controller was managing both control for helicopters and airplanes flying in the area

He did not comment on specifics, but said officials plan to examine the controller’s behaviour over the past several weeks and in particular, the 72 hours before the crash.

“Obviously we’ll be looking at not only staffing that day…[but also] how many people, what job functions they’ve done, are they being combined.”

The Air Traffic Control group is still conducting interviews.

Mr Inman was also asked whether his team is in contact with the White House.

President Donald Trump has suggested without evidence that the helicopter involved in the crash “was flying too high”.

Recordings of air traffic control conversations published online suggested that a controller tried to warn the helicopter about the American Airlines plane in the seconds before the collision.

The helicopter pilot appeared to respond to confirm they were aware of the plane, but moments later the two aircraft collided.

Trump has also said suggested that diversity hiring at the FAA may have led to safety issues.

“Our job is to find the facts,” Mr Inman said. “More importantly, our job is to make sure this tragedy doesn’t happen again – regardless of what anyone may be saying.”

No one at the Skating Club of Boston had any doubt that 13-year-old Jinna Han and 16-year-old Spencer Lane would go far in a sport they had fallen in love with.

Even at a club that has produced countless elite-level skaters – where the competition is as tough as it gets – the two stood out.

“They had been sought out and identified as the future of the sport,” the club’s CEO Doug Zeghibe told me while standing alongside the rink where the two athletes trained day in and day out.

“So, to see such promising talents snuffed out, it’s hard. They really, truly were on the cusp of greatness and really, finally hitting their goals of representing not just the Skating Club of Boston but representing their country.”

That talent, on full display in videos that show them both performing with a strength and maturity beyond their ages, was why they were invited to the High Performance Camp that followed the US National Figure Skating Championships in Wichita, Kansas, this week.

After the camp, they boarded an American Airlines regional jet on Wednesday evening, planning to fly home to Massachusetts via Washington DC. They were among the 60 passengers killed when the jet had a mid-air collision with a helicopter and fell into the Potomac River.

Their mothers, Christine Lane and Jin Han, and the club’s star coaches Vadim Naumov and Evgenia Shishkova, were also on board, meaning that six of the crash victims were all connected to the world-renowned skating club.

Skating at such a high level demands a huge commitment, with schoolwork being carried out online after hours on the ice each day.

Inevitably, close relationships develop among coaches and club members alike and, in the face of such a disaster, the clubhouse is a natural place to gather.

Just a few days ago, club members Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov won the US pairs title in Wichita before taking an earlier flight home.

“They were just two sunshines that you get the energy from as soon as you see them,” Efimova told me.

“Every time I would walk into this ice rink, I would see them in the morning tying their skates, saying, just saying ‘hello,’ seeing their faces lit up.”

“Spencer was a firecracker, that’s the best way to put it,” Mitrofanov added.

“He started skating fairly later than other skaters, but because of his amazing talent, he progressed so quickly.”

At the end of a hard day’s training, they told me, the two would take their skates off and head upstairs to begin catching up on academic work.

Now, in the club’s entrance, photographs capturing them in motion on the ice are surrounded by tributes and flowers. Jinna has her arms outstretched. Spencer maintains a look of deep focus on his face.

“You don’t expect it,” Mitrofanov said. “And when it happens, it breaks you.”

Coaches Naumov and Shishkova, originally from Russia, were the 1994 world pairs skating champions. They leave a 23-year-old son, Maxim, another promising talent from Boston who finished fourth in the men’s competition in Wichita.

In its more than 100 years of history, the club has seen before how success can be quickly overshadowed by tragedy.

It was home to 10 of the 18 members of the US figure skating team killed in a plane crash on the way to the 1961 world championships in Prague.

CEO Zeghibe immediately thought of that crash as he watched the unfolding news on Wednesday night.

“My first thought was this can’t be happening again,” he told me. “And I was just like, how can lightning strike twice?”

One of the club’s many well-known alumnus, Nancy Kerrigan has also been at the club to show her solidarity and mourn the loss of the six lives.

Before her 1994 Winter Olympics silver medal, an assailant struck her knee with a baton after a practice session. It was later revealed the attacker was hired by the husband of Kerrigan’s rival, Tonya Harding.

“The community stood behind me and I was grateful for that,” she said.

“And so, it’s my turn now to hopefully be here. I’m not sure what it is to do. Maybe get a cup of coffee or hug. I’m here for hugs. I don’t know, it’s just I want to be able to give back what I feel like I got.”

In just a few weeks, the club is organising the World Figure Skating Championships taking place in the city in March.

It’s a huge responsibility to bear.

“It all requires a lot from us, not just in running this club, not just in running the World Championships, but now also in managing grief,” Zeghibe said when I asked him how they would cope.

The event will be a chance to honour the lives lost, not only from this club. A total of 14 members of the figure skating community were killed in the crash.

“I think looking to the future is part of the emotional healing process,” he said, “and it’s good to have things to focus on that are positive for the sport.”

“We’re going to take it day by day, be there for our members as much as possible, and then figure out: How do we move forward?”

Families of people who were killed in a crush at a major religious festival in northern India this week are grieving their loss and waiting to take bodies of their relatives back home.

At least 30 people died in the crush at the Kumbh Mela on Wednesday, which was one of the holiest days of the six-week long Hindu festival.

The incident took place in Prayagraj city near the Sangam, an auspicious meeting point of the sacred Ganges, Yamuna and mythical Saraswati rivers where devotees take a dip.

The festival, billed as the largest gathering of humanity, attracts tens of millions of pilgrims from around the world.

The crush reportedly took place after a surge of pilgrims making their way to the Sangam trampled over devotees sleeping near the riverbank.

Eyewitnesses have blamed the police and festival authorities for poor crowd-control measures and not making adequate space for pilgrims to move to their destinations.

The government in Uttar Pradesh state has launched a judicial investigation into the incident.

• BBC reports from scene of India’s Kumbh Mela crush

Meanwhile, the families of the victims are mourning the loss of their loved ones and some say that many of their questions remain unanswered. Others are still waiting for news of their relatives.

Kaikeyi Devi, who travelled from Bihar state with her husband to attend the Kumbh Mela, says she can’t shake the image of him getting trampled in front of her eyes.

“He was dragged in the chaos and we started crying… ‘Let him free! Let him be! We are here!’…but he never came [back],” Ms Devi told Reuters news agency as she waited outside a mortuary in Prayagraj city to collect her husband’s body.

Taposh Roy, a resident of Assam state who lost his brother in the crush, recounts the delay in getting help from authorities.

“He was just lying there for a long time because there was no ambulance to take him to the hospital. We pleaded with the police saying that we would carry him ourselves but they told us to wait. When he was taken by police, we couldn’t go with him,” Mr Roy told the Indian Express newspaper.

This was also the experience of Tarun Bose from West Bengal state who lost a female relative in the crush.

“The authorities failed to rescue her and the police only managed to retrieve her body after an hour and a half. There were no police officers around during the accident,” he told AFP news agency.

Deepak Hattarwat from Karnataka state is mourning the loss of his wife and daughter. He didn’t travel to the festival and says that he found out about their deaths only a day later and that too from a fellow traveller in their group.

“We were planning her [the daughter’s] wedding. What should I do and for whom should I live now?” Mr Hattarwat told the Indian Express newspaper.

Meanwhile, some people say that they are still searching for their loved ones, more than 48 hours after the incident took place.

Manoj Kumar Sahni from Bihar state told Reuters news agency that he has been desperately searching for his father who is missing.

“I have been searching for him since the last three days. I went to the hospital as well but didn’t find him. We also searched at the railway station and the bus stand but did not find him,” he said.

Since the incident, authorities have stepped up security measures in the festival and have also banned vehicles from entering the mela grounds until 4 February. The next auspicious bathing day is on Monday, when the festival is expected to witness massive crowds.

Women who were once members of a secretive Christian sect in the United States have told the BBC they were coerced by the church into giving up their children for adoption.

Hundreds of adoptions could have taken place between the 1950s and 1990s, say former members.

Some of the children who were adopted within the church have told us they were then subjected to abuse and neglect in their adoptive families.

The claims follow a BBC investigation last year into allegations of child sexual abuse spanning decades within the church, which is believed to have up to 100,000 members worldwide and is often referred to as The Truth or the Two by Twos. The FBI has since launched an investigation.

Four women – who were all unmarried at the time – have told us they were given no option but to give up their babies. Three of them feared being cast out of the church and sent to hell if they refused.

One says she was pressured into giving her baby to a married couple in the church after she was raped in 1988, age 17.

“My fear of going to hell was so great that it forced me to make up my mind to give up the baby to this couple in the church,” she told the BBC.

Another says she wasn’t allowed to see her baby daughter before the child was taken away forever.

The BBC has also spoken to six people given up for adoption as babies between the 1960s and 1980s. One woman says she was physically and emotionally abused in her first adoptive family in the church, and sexually abused in the second.

The adopted children – born all over the US – are referred to within the church as “Baldwin Babies” because the adoptions were overseen by Wally Baldwin, a doctor from the sect who died in 2004.

Some of the women would stay at his home in Oregon during pregnancy, according to a minister who used to work with Dr Baldwin.

The exact number of Baldwin Babies is unclear. The BBC has spoken to the late doctor’s adopted son, Gary Baldwin, who said the original records were no longer available but he believed the number to be “less than 200”.

He said that “inevitably” mistakes were made by his father’s vetting system but that his intentions were good. Others we spoke to also said they remembered Dr Baldwin fondly.

Because The Truth has no official leader, the BBC instead contacted six of its most senior current officials – known as “overseers” – for comment. We received one response. The overseer told us any adoptions he was aware of had been done “through legal channels” and he had “heard some beautiful stories”.

One woman who was adopted recalled seeing hundreds of photos in an album Dr Baldwin would keep of the children whose adoptions he had organised in The Truth.

Another man who was adopted told us he had personally connected with more than 100 Baldwin babies and mothers.

• BBC confronts man who abused boy in secretive Christian church
• FBI launches probe into church investigated by BBC

The church, founded in Ireland by a Scottish evangelist in 1897, is built around ministers – known as workers – spreading New Testament teachings through word-of-mouth.

Most of the mothers the BBC spoke to believe the workers – and The Truth as an institution – should shoulder most of the responsibility for the trauma caused by the adoptions.

“Somewhere the church got off track and it became a fear-based cult and I was forced to make a choice,” says Melanie Williams, 62, who gave up her baby for adoption in January 1981.

At 18, Melanie became pregnant after falling “madly in love” with a boy from her school.

Not only were the pair unmarried, but the father was not a member of The Truth and refused to become one. This meant Melanie had committed a “terrible sin” in the eyes of local workers.

The workers and her family decided that she could only continue to attend church meetings if she gave her baby to another family in the sect.

“If I keep this baby, I’m going to go to hell. If I keep the baby, I can’t go home,” Melanie recalls thinking.

She gave birth in a Catholic hospital in Oklahoma, where she was discreetly put in a room on her own.

She remembers being shouted at by a doctor when she began to cry during labour.

Melanie’s baby was whisked away before it made a sound and she says she didn’t know whether she’d had a girl or a boy.

The new mother was left wondering if her child might be dead.

When she eventually found out the baby was alive, she told a nurse she was wavering on whether to go through with the adoption and wanted to hold her baby.

“You can’t ever hold your baby,” came the reply.

Years later, Melanie managed to track her daughter down – but she didn’t want to meet.

Deb Adadjo, 54, was also unsure about giving up her baby, but felt too much pressure at the time to refuse the workers, who threatened to ban her from church meetings – which in The Truth meant you not only got thrown out of the church, but also ended up in hell.

She became pregnant after being raped in 1988.

Recalling holding her newborn, she says – “I can still feel her against my chest right now.”

“In our last moments together, I remember just cuddling with her and telling her that I loved her and that I was sorry, over and over again,” she adds.

“I had to let her go, I had no options.”

Deb later met her daughter, but they are no longer in regular contact.

Sherlene Eicher, 63, from Iowa, says she never stopped thinking about the daughter she felt her parents pressured her to give up in 1982.

She briefly got to hold and feed her newborn before they were separated.

Sherlene would hold a private birthday celebration for her daughter every year.

“When her birthday would come around I would get her a birthday card and a couple times I made a cake,” she says.

“I would journal a lot too – wondering where she was, what she was like, what she might be going through at the age she was.”

Then in 2004, Sherlene’s daughter got in touch by email and they met. They are close to this day.

“When we finally met, we just hugged and hugged and hugged,” says Sherlene.

“We talk for like two or three hours on the phone – she’s a pretty incredible woman.”

Those interviewed said the adoption system involved very little vetting and this set-up the potential for abusive situations. They said when a baby was on the way, Dr Baldwin would contact workers for referrals, and they would recommend a family in the sect to place the child with.

Of the six Baldwin Babies who spoke to the BBC, two faced sexual, physical and emotional abuse in their adoptive families, while one said she had been subjected to emotional abuse by her adoptive father.

One woman said she was removed from her first adoptive home by social services because of extreme physical abuse and was placed in the home of a church “elder” – a person of seniority who holds meetings in their own home – and his wife. She said the couple started sexually abusing her within weeks, when she was 15.

• If you are affected by any of the issues in this story, visit the BBC Action Line

Another woman said she was beaten by her adoptive parents on a daily basis and sexually abused by an uncle in her adoptive family when she was five.

Since reports of widespread child sexual abuse started spreading within the church two years ago, former and current members have started connecting in Facebook groups, including Baldwin mothers and babies.

“The moms – I know how they feel and I have so much empathy for them. I cry for their stories when they write them. But for myself I have cried all the tears I can cry,” says Deb.

“It has been like finding my tribe,” says Melanie. “I’m not alone any more.”

“Our moms were afraid to hug us, our dads were ashamed of us, and the church would only accept us if we made the ultimate sacrifice.”

“And all these years later, we are all going to be OK.”

A British-Israeli woman who was held hostage by Hamas in Gaza for 15 months says she was detained for some time at United Nations facilities.

During a phone call with UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, Emily Damari – who was released earlier this month – said she was held at sites belonging to the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa).

She also said she was denied medical treatment during her captivity, despite being shot in the hand and leg.

In a statement, Unrwa said claims that hostages had been held on UN premises were “very serious” and that it had repeatedly called for independent investigations into claims Palestinian armed groups, including Hamas, were misusing the facilities.

Israel has repeatedly accused personnel from Unrwa of being involved in the 7 October attacks and said that its buildings in Gaza were used by Hamas. The Israeli government plans to ban the organisation from operating.

During the call with Downing Street, Ms Damari said that while being held at an Unrwa facility, her captors only provided her with an out-of-date bottle of iodine to treat gunshot wounds in her leg and her left hand, on which she lost two fingers.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s PM programme, Unrwa’s director of communications Juliette Touma was asked about Ms Damari’s claims. She said: “For many, many months we did not have access to several of our facilities.

“So the vast majority of our buildings were turned into shelters when the war started.

“At some point we had a million people in those shelters.”

A Downing Street spokesperson said they “welcome the fact that Unrwa have said there should be an investigation into the use of their facilities”.

Ms Damari, now 28, also used the call with Sir Keir to thank people in the UK who campaigned for her release.

A ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas will see the gradual release of hostages being held in Gaza, in exchange for Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons.

Three more hostages are set to be released on Saturday, while 183 Palestinian prisoners are expected to be freed.

Some 251 hostages were taken by Hamas when it attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, killing about 1,200 people.

The attack triggered a war which has devastated Gaza. Israel’s 15-month military offensive killed 47,460 Palestinians in the territory, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

The UN says at least 700 people have been killed in intense fighting in Goma, the largest city in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, since Sunday.

UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said 2,800 people have been injured, as M23 rebels – backed by Rwanda – captured the capital of North Kivu province.

The rebels are now reported to be moving south towards Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu.

The conflict in eastern DR Congo dates back to the 1990s but has rapidly escalated in recent weeks.

M23, which is made up of ethnic Tutsis, say they are fighting for minority rights, while DR Congo’s government says the Rwanda-backed rebels are seeking control of the eastern region’s vast mineral wealth.

On Friday, Dujarric said the casualty figures came from an assessment made by the World Health Organization and its partners, alongside the DR Congo’s government, between Sunday and Thursday.

The UN spokesman also warned the death toll would rise further.

In an attempt to halt M23’s progress, the DR Congo military has set up a defensive line on the road between Goma and Bukavu, according to the AFP news agency.

Hundreds of civilian volunteers have been enlisted to defend Bukavu.

One young man told the AFP: “I am ready to die for my country.”

Jean-Jacques Purusi Sadiki, the governor of South Kivu – the province M23 are marching on – told Reuters news agency the government army and its allies were holding back the rebels, though that claim has not been independently verified.

Earlier this week, M23 vowed to continue its offensive until it reached the capital Kinshasa, about 2,600km (1,600 miles) to the west.

Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner, the country’s foreign minister, told the BBC that Rwanda was illegally occupying her country and attempting to orchestrate regime change.

Wagner said the international community had allowed Rwandan President Paul Kagame decades of impunity and failed to hold him accountable for violating international law.

Rwanda’s government spokeswoman Yolande Makolo denied the accusation, saying the country’s troops were only deployed to prevent the conflict spilling over to its territory.

“We’re not interested in war, we’re not interested in annexation, we’re not interested in regime change,” Makolo told the BBC’s Newsday programme.

UN experts estimated last year that Rwanda had between 3,000 and 4,000 troops operating alongside the M23 in eastern DR Congo.

On Friday, the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) regional bloc declared its support for DR Congo at a crisis summit in Zimbabwe.

In a statement, the 16-member group “reaffirmed its solidarity and unwavering commitment to continue supporting the DRC in its pursuit of safeguarding its independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

Sadc has sent peacekeeping troops, primarily from South Africa, to DR Congo to combat armed groups like the M23 and restore peace in the mineral-rich region after decades of unrest.

Sixteen soldiers from southern African countries have been killed in clashes with the M23 around Goma in the past week.

The fighting has also worsened the humanitarian crisis in eastern DR Congo.

Shelley Thakral, from the UN’s World Food Programme, said the city’s residents were running out of food, clean water and medical supplies.

“The supply chain has really been strangled at the moment if you think about land access, air access, when everything is closed down,” she told AFP.

Since the start of 2025, more than 400,000 people have been forced from their homes, according to the UN’s refugee agency.

DR Congo is Africa’s second-largest country – about two-thirds the size of Western Europe – and borders nine different countries.

Previous conflicts in the country during the 1990s drew in several neighbours and were dubbed Africa’s World Wars.

The United States’ system for monitoring famine globally has been taken offline amid President Donald Trump’s order for a 90-day freeze on nearly all US foreign assistance.

The Famine Early Warning System Network (Fewsnet) was established after the 1984 famine in Ethiopia, as part of a worldwide effort to prevent a repeat of its devastating impact.

It was designed by US government agencies, including its international development body USAID and the space agency Nasa.

It is regarded as a gold standard in combining weather data and political analysis to predict drought and food insecurity globally.

Alongside a model run by the UN, the system allows aid officials to target emergency food supply ahead of time, and is credited with mitigating the effects of a devastating drought in the Horn of Africa in 2016.

It has been used to try to target aid during the current famine in Sudan as the war continues there.

A briefing service provided by the network was stopped as part of Trump’s suspension of nearly all foreign assistance, according to a source familiar with Fewsnet’s operations.

Asked about the shutdown, USAID said it was “expeditiously processing exception requests” but could not “address every individual exception-related question”. It was not clear whether an exception request for Fewsnet was pending.

The network is “insanely important”, according to Dave Harden, who oversaw its operation at USAID during the 2016 food security emergency in East Africa.

“Because we had Fewsnet, and we had guard teams, we were able to pre-position food and supplies [in Ethiopia] and plant it in a way that was remarkably different than what happened in 1984,” he told the BBC.

Last Friday, the State Department issued a “stop-work” order on all US foreign assistance, worth nearly $70bn a year, with the exception of emergency food aid and military aid to Israel and Egypt, pending a 90-day review to ensure programmes’ alignment with Trump’s “America First” foreign policy.

Since then, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has expanded the scope of projects eligible for waivers to the order, including for life-saving medicine and shelter, but there remains widespread confusion in the global aid sector, significant parts of which have been upended by the freeze.

Fewsnet is operated by a USAID contractor, which declined to comment, while its website is run by another provider which did not respond to requests for comment.

Explaining the thinking behind the breadth of stop-work orders, Mr Rubio said on Thursday that “things that save lives” were being exempted, adding that others could apply for waivers to ensure their projects were not an inefficient use of US taxpayer money and were aligned with Trump’s priorities.

Proponents of the foreign aid freeze see US donations as bloated and carrying too much of the burden compared with other wealthy Western countries.

The Trump administration has also vowed to end foreign aid funding for diversity and inclusion programmes, transgender rights, family planning, abortions and other issues long targeted by many Republicans.

The exemption for emergency food aid does not appear so far to have included the famine-tracking operation.

Jeremy Konyndyk, a former senior official at USAID, described the system as “the single best resource” in the world for food insecurity prediction, adding that in 2011 it saw the famine coming in Somalia months ahead of time.

“The client was the US government… but everything was put online. And that was really important – it became a global public good, [because] any donor in the world can use that, any government in the world can use that,” he said.

“It’s a really critical resource… sounding the alarm when there is a major food crisis emerging.”

A USAID spokesperson said: “We are expeditiously processing exception requests. Several urgent requests have been approved within hours. We cannot address every individual exception-related question but commit to transparency consistent with the President’s Executive Order.

“The Secretary of State has approved core life-saving humanitarian assistance and issued waivers for specific purposes. Implementers of existing life-saving humanitarian assistance programs should continue or resume work.”

Ukrainian special forces fighting in Russia’s western Kursk region have told the BBC they have not seen any North Korean troops there for the past three weeks.

A spokesman said it was likely they had pulled out after suffering heavy losses.

Last week, Western officials told the BBC that, out of some 11,000 troops sent from North Korea to fight for Russia, 1,000 had been killed in just three months.

North Korea and Russia have not commented.

On Friday, the Ukrainian special forces spokesman told the BBC he was only referring to areas in the Kursk region where his forces were fighting.

The spokesman did not say how long that front line was.

And while this is not the full picture, it does suggest significant North Korean casualties.

Separately, the New York Times also reported that the North Koreans had been pulled off the front lines.

The newspaper quoted US officials as saying the withdrawal may not be a permanent one, and the soldiers could return after receiving additional training or after the Russians come up with new ways of deploying them to avoid such heavy casualties.

Reports attributed to South Korean intelligence say the North Koreans are unprepared for the realities of modern warfare, and are especially vulnerable to being targeted by Ukrainian drones.

• North Koreans suffer 1,000 losses
• What are North Korean troops doing in Ukraine?

Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un have in recent months deepened bilateral ties, signing a security and defence treaty.

Pyongyang’s assistance to Moscow now also extends to large amounts of ammunition and weapons.

Last August, elite Ukrainian troops launched a lightning offensive in Kursk, seizing more than 1,000 sq km (386 sq miles) of Russian territory.

Since then, Russian forces have managed to retake a sizeable chunk of that region.

Kyiv’s surprise incursion was aimed at changing the dynamics of the war.

It was initially hoped the operation would relieve pressure on other parts of the more than 1,000km-long (620 miles) frontline, particularly in eastern Ukraine.

Moscow is continuing its relentless – albeit slow – advance in the east, seizing a number of settlements in the Donetsk region in recent weeks.

Now Kyiv is looking to hold on to the land it occupies in Kursk as leverage for any possible ceasefire or peace negotiations with Moscow.

Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Recovery operations are still under way in Washington DC, after an American Airlines plane from Kansas carrying 64 people onboard collided with a military helicopter, manned by three personnel, on Wednesday night.

The victims include top figure skaters from the US and Russia, a young pilot, flight attendants, and a lawyer travelling home on her birthday.

Here are some of the people believed to have been on board the helicopter and the plane.

Asra Hussain Raza

Indiana woman Asra Hussain Raza, 26, had moved to the Washington DC area after receiving a master’s degree in hospital management.

“She was returning from a work trip where she was helping to improve a hospital that really needed help,” said her husband Hamaad Raza, who showed the last text message from his wife to news crews outside the airport.

“And, you know, she was doing what she loved. She was even working on the flight.”

He added: “She gave a lot, but she had so much more to give. But if there was ever someone who took advantage of their 26 years of life, it was her.”

Professor Kiah Duggins

The president of Howard University confirmed Professor Kiah Duggins had died in the collision.

The civil rights lawyer was set to begin teaching at the university’s School of Law in the autumn.

“She dedicated her career to fighting against unconstitutional policing and unjust money bail practices in Tennessee, Texas and Washington DC,” the university said in a statement reported by US media.

Sarah Lee Best

Two DC lawyers were also on board the flight, their loved ones confirmed.

Sarah Lee Best, 33, was kind and hard working, her husband Daniel Solomon told the Washington Post.

Mrs Best and Mr Solomon had planned to travel to Hawaii, where she was born, for their 10th wedding anniversary in May.

Elizabeth Keys

Lawyer Elizabeth Keys, 33, “always, always managed to have fun… no matter what she was doing,” her partner David Seidman told the Washington Post.

She died on her birthday, Mr Seidman said.

The firm where both worked, Wilkinson Stekloff, paid tribute to the “cherished members” of its team.

They were “wonderful attorneys, colleagues, and friends,” firm founder Beth Wilkinson said in a statement.

Casey Crafton

Tributes were made to “dedicated father” Casey Crafton of Salem, Connecticut.

“Salem has lost a dedicated father, husband, and community member,” Governor Ned Lamont wrote on social media.

Salem Little League, where Mr Crafton was a coach, said the town was “heartbroken” by the loss of the “beloved” club member.

“The Crafton family, deeply involved in all things Salem, has suffered an unimaginable loss,” the statement read.

Michael Stovall

Michael Stovall’s mother said her son was “the happiest person”, who saw the good in everybody.

Mr Stovall, known as Mikey, was travelling home from an annual hunting trip with friends, Christina Stovall told Wink News.

“Mikey did not have one enemy. If you see pictures of him… he was the life of the party. He loved everybody.”

Mr Stovall’s cousin told the New York Times that he had been flying with at least six of his friends from the trip, some of whom had known each other since childhood.

Jesse Pitcher

Travelling with Mr Stovall was Jesse Pitcher, his father confirmed.

The 30-year-old from Maryland had got married last year and recently started his own business, Jameson Pitcher told the New York Times.

“He was just getting started with life,” he said.

“He said he’d see me when he got back.”

Pergentino N. Malabed

The Philippine National Police confirmed that the director of its Supply Management Division, Colonel Pergentino N. Malabed, had been on board the flight.

A body carrying Col Malabed’s passport was recovered from the Potomac, a police spokesman said.

He had travelled to the US with two other officers to test personnel vests the police planned to buy, and was on his way to the Philippine embassy in Washington.

Vikesh Patel

Vikesh Patel was confirmed as one of the victims of the plane crash by his employer GE Aerospace.

Larry Culp, chairman and CEO of the company, said in a statement on X that Patel, “a cherished colleague”, was aboard the American Airlines flight.

According to his Linkedin, Patel worked at GE Aerospace for more than a decade in several roles including Engine Assembly Engineer, Production Planner and Senior Operations Manager.

Wendy Shaffer

A friend of Wendy Shaffer, Bill Melugin, confirmed that she was among the passengers who were killed aboard the American Airlines flight.

Melugin wrote on X that Shaffer “was an incredibe wife” to his friend Nate, “and an amazing mom of two children, ages 3 and 1”.

“Always smiling, such a sweetheart,” Melugin said. “Heartbroken for Nate. We go from joking in our fantasy football group chat to this horrible news.”

Melugin shared a statement from Shaffer’s husband, who wrote: “Wendy was not just beautiful on the outside, but was a truly amazing woman through and through. She was the best wife, mother, and friend that anyone could ever hope for.”

Grace Maxwell

Cedarville University in southwest Ohio said in a statement that Grace Maxwell, a junior mechanical engineering student, was among those who died in the plane crash.

“This is heartbreaking news for her family and for our campus community,” the university said.

They added that Maxwell was returning to campus from her home in Wichita, where she was attending her grandfather’s funeral.

Friends of Maxwell told the Dayton Daily News that she was “a bright light” and had “big ideas” to develop prosthetics as part of her studies.

Lori and Bob Schrock

Ellie Schrock, the daughter of Lori and Bob Schrock, told the Washington Post that her parents were among the victims.

She said they were heading from from Wichita to Washington DC on their way to Philadelphia, where Ellie is a junior at Villanova University.

The couple lived in Kiowa, Kansas, where Bob was a farmer.

Ellie said her mother, Lori, was 56, and her father Bob was 58. “But he would want me to say he was younger,” she said.

Melissa Nicandri

Melissa Nicandri’s father, Peter Nicandri, said his daughter was on her way back from a business trip to Kansas when she died aboard the American Airlines flight.

He told a local Jacksonville, Florida, news outlet that he learned of her death when he received a phone call from her boyfriend notifying him that she was on the flight.

“She’s just anything that anyone would want in a daughter,” Peter told News4JAX.

“She was beautiful. Smart. Kind. Generous. Funny. She was a great sister. She was a great friend. She worked hard and had so much ahead of her.”

• Live: Follow the latest updates
• What we know so far about the plane crash
• BBC Verify analyses moments before collision
• Watch: The scene in DC after moment of impact

Spencer Lane and Christine Lane

Ice skater Spencer Lane, 16, died alongside his mother Christine Lane, 49, and were among at least 14 athletes and coaches who died while returning from a skate camp in Wichita.

His father told local media his son was “a force of nature” who showed “drive and tenacity” to the sport.

“He trained at the Skating Club of Boston five days a week and attended high school online and just committed himself to it,” Douglas Lane said.

He added that his wife was “a creative powerhouse” who would do anything for her children.

Jinna Han and Jin Han

Jinna Han, 13, had also travelled to the skate camp with her mother, Jin.

In a 2022 interview, Jinna told a news network in her Massachusetts hometown that she was excited to watch the Olympics.

“It’s just so exciting,” Jinna Han said. “It’s like, who’s going to win, what’s going to happen, because anything can happen at the Olympics.”

Doug Zeghibe of the Skating Club of Boston called Jin “wonderful, pleasant, polite” person.

“Never a discouraging word,” he said. “Always appreciative, always supportive of not just Jinna, her daughter, but every athlete. Just role model parents in your sport, and you don’t always get that.”

Olivia Ter

Twelve-year-old Olivia Ter from Maryland was among the US figure skaters aboard the flight, local officials confirmed.

“Olivia not only excelled in figure skating programs but inspired others through her talent, determination and sportsmanship,” Prince George’s County Parks and Recreation said in a statement reported by CBS News.

“The impact of Olivia’s life will continue to resonate in our youth sports community, and she will be sorely missed,” said Bill Tyler, the director of the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission.

Brielle and Justyna Magdalena Beyer

Andy Beyer told ABC News that his daughter Brielle, 12, and wife Justyna, 42, had been flying home from the skating camp.

Brielle was “a fighter in everything she did” who “lit up the house” with her excitement and wonderful singing voice, he said.

Beyer had been on his way to collect the pair from the airport: “When it was time for the plane to land, they hadn’t landed.”

“We couldn’t get text messages through. I saw fire trucks and everything go by, and I knew.”

Cory Haynos, Roger Haynos and Stephanie Branton Haynos

Cory Haynos was travelling home from Kansas with his parents, Roger Haynos and Stephanie Branton Haynos, a family member wrote on social media.

“Roger has always inspired me by his absolute love for his family and dedication to providing only the best for his wife and kids,” Matthew Alan LaRavier, Roger’s cousin, wrote.

“Cory was an amazing skater with a very bright future,” he said.

“We all were expecting Cory to represent our country in the US Olympics in the future.”

Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov

The deaths of beloved ice skating coaches Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, who are Russian, were confirmed by the Kremlin.

Renowned skating coach and friend Rafael Arutyunyan told CNN that he had made his athletes train in silence after the crash as a mark of a respect.

“I know all these coaches,” he said. “All of our community was respectful to them and liked them, so I feel it’s they’ll stay with us forever.”

Inna Volyanskaya

Ice skating coach Inna Volyanskaya, a Russian national who competed for the pre-1991 Soviet Union, was also reported to be aboard the plane, according to Russia’s TASS news agency.

Her death was confirmed by House representative Suhas Subramanyam of Virginia. Subramanyam said in a post on X that Volyanskaya worked as a skating coach in Ashburn.

Alexandr Sasha Kirsanov

Former coach Sasha Kirsanov was on board the plane, the University of Delaware said.

His wife told ABC News she had “lost everything” in the crash.

Angela Yang and Sean Kay

Both Angela Yang and Sean Kay were 11 years old. The young figure skating pair were coached by Kirsanov, his wife Natalya Gudin told local news outlet Delaware Online.

All three were aboard the American Airlines plane, Ms Gudin said.

“This young team – Sean Kay and Angela Yang – they were so amazing,” Gudin said.

“All the judges were so proud and they had such a big future. And what, all on the same plane? … For me, it’s a triple [loss].”

Sean and Yang were members of the University of Delaware Figure Skating Club. In a post that featured Yang on the club’s Facebook page, she said that she started on the ice as a hockey player, but later discovered her passion for ice dance.

“I realized that my skill for ice dancing would far surpass my hockey ability, so I’ve committed to ice dance since then,” the young skater said.

Jonathan J. Campos

The plane’s captain Jonathan J. Campos had dreamed of being a pilot since he was three, his aunt told the New York Times.

“I think he wanted to be free, and be able to fly and soar like a bird,” said Beverly Lane.

Mr Campos, 34, was raised in Brooklyn, New York, and had worked for PSA Airlines (part of the American Airlines group) for eight years, she added.

Sam Lilley

The father of 28-year-old pilot Sam Lilley said that he was engaged to be married and “was just at the prime of his life”.

Tim Lilley told NewsNation that his son got his piloting licence in only a few years because he “pursued it with a vigour”.

“Sam’s right with Jesus, and I know where he’s going,” he said.

His sister Tiffany Gibson called him “an amazing person”.

“He loved people. He loved adventure. He loved travelling,” she told ABC News.

“He was so young, and he was excited about life and his future and getting a dog and a house and kids. And it’s just, this is just tragic.”

Ian Epstein

Virginia resident Ian Epstein was a flight attendant on the plane, his family said. He was known for his ability to make people smile and was “full of life”.

“He loved being a flight attendant because he truly enjoyed traveling and meeting new people. But his true love was his family,” the statement continued.

Epstein, 53, was a father, stepfather, husband, and brother, the family said, adding that he will be “truly missed”.

Danasia Elder

Danasia Elder was also working as a flight attendant, her family told US media in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Her brother-in-law Brandon Payne paid tribute to her, calling her “full of life”.

“She was a great wife, a great parent, a great friend,” Payne said. “She was very bright, very smart… This flight attendant thing was kind of like one of her dreams she wanted to do.”

He said that he was proud of his sister-in-law for pursuing her dreams, and that she “would want y’all do the same thing she did”.

“Chase your dreams, no matter what. Don’t let nothing scare you, push you away. Just believe in yourself, believe in God, and follow the path.”

Ryan O’Hara

Ryan O’Hara, 28, was the crew chief of the Black Hawk helicopter that collided with the passenger plane, according to CBS News.

He leaves behind a wife and one-year-old son, his local Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) program said in a social media post confirming his death.

O’Hara is “fondly remembered as a guy who would fix things around the ROTC gym as well as a vital member of the rifle team,” the post said.

Andrew Eaves

Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves confirmed that Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Eaves was killed in the collision.

Paying tribute to her husband, Carrie Eaves confirmed he was one of the pilots of the Blackhawk helicopter.

“We ask that you pray for our family and friends and for all the other families that are suffering today. We ask for peace while we grieve,” she wrote on social media.

Sixty-seven people are believed to have died after a passenger plane hit a military helicopter in mid-air near Washington DC’s Ronald Reagan airport on Wednesday evening.

It is not clear what caused the crash. Flight-tracking data appears to suggest the helicopter was flying above the permitted altitude minutes before the collision. But an investigation is continuing to determine what went wrong.

Authorities have recovered the flight data recorders from the American Airlines jet, and continue to find bodies in the icy Potomac River where the plane fell.

• Live: Follow the latest updates
• What we know so far about the plane crash
• Who are the victims?
• BBC Verify analyses moments before collision
• Watch: The scene in DC after moment of impact

The plane, a Bombardier CRJ700, had travelled from Wichita, Kansas. It was operating as American Airlines flight 5342.

The US Army helicopter was a Sikorsky H-60 Black Hawk that took off from Fort Belvoir in Virginia, and belonged to B Company, 12th Aviation Battalion.

The helicopter appears to have been flying above the permitted altitude, according to analysis by the BBC’s US partner, CBS News.

Recordings of air traffic control conversations published online suggested that a controller tried to warn the helicopter about the American Airlines plane in the seconds before the collision.

The helicopter pilot appeared to respond to confirm they were aware of the plane, but moments later the two aircraft hit each other. Transport Secretary Sean Duffy also said he thought the helicopter was aware of the plane nearby.

Joining Duffy at a briefing on Thursday, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth added that the helicopter was on an annual proficiency flight, performing a night evaluation – and the crew had night-vision goggles.

The collision happened at about 21:00 local time (02:00 GMT), as the plane approached Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

One eyewitness, Ari Schulman, told NBC Washington that the plane’s approach looked normal, until he saw it bank hard to the right, with “streams of sparks” running underneath the craft, illuminating its belly, which he believed to look “very, very wrong”.

Another eyewitness, Jimmy Mazeo, recalled seeing what looked like a “white flare” in the sky. He remarked that planes approaching the airport appeared to have been flying in “irregular patterns”.

After the impact, the passenger plane broke into multiple pieces and sank several feet into the river, while the helicopter ended up upside down on the water.

Hundreds of first responders on rubber boats were deployed to search for survivors. Officials highlighted the challenging conditions in which they were working due to ice floating on the freezing-cold river, and contending with the plane wreckage.

They later said they did not expect to find any survivors and had changed the focus of their mission to focus on recovering bodies.

Details are emerging about the 64 people who were on board the plane, who included top figure skaters, as well as four crew members. Meanwhile, the helicopter was carrying three soldiers.

Forty-one bodies have now been recovered, including the three people who were flying on the US military helicopter, emergency officials told the BBC.

The people known to have been on the flight include the skaters, a young pilot, flight attendants, and a lawyer travelling home on her birthday.

They comprise a range of nationalities – and several of them have been identified by family members and organisations.

Among the skaters were six people linked to a club in Boston. They were two teenagers, their mothers, and two Russian coaches, Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, who were former world champions in their sport, the club said.

The plane’s captain Jonathan Campos was named by his aunt, who told the New York Times that flying planes had been her nephew’s lifelong dream.

Ryan O’Hara was the crew chief of the helicopter, according to CBS.

• Who are the victims?
• US and Russian figure skaters were on board crashed plane

It remains unclear what caused the crash. Officials have retrieved from the jet the data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder – known as the black boxes – and will look into possible contributing factors, including human error.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) began its first full day of investigation on Thursday and intends to release a preliminary report in 30 days.

Hegseth has said he expected the investigation to establish whether the helicopter was flying in the right corridor and altitude.

NTSB officials said on Thursday that the helicopter appeared to move from one corridor into another in a standard manoeuvre.

As the official probe continues, the New York Times has reported that the air traffic control staffing was “not normal” at the time – citing a preliminary Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) report.

Normally two people manage helicopters and airplanes flying in the area, but only one person was reportedly doing so at the time of the crash, the NYT and CBS reported.

It has also been reported by the Washington Post and CNN that just 24 hours before the deadly crash, another jet had to abort its landing at the airport after a helicopter came close to its flight path.

President Trump said on Friday that the Black Hawk helicopter was flying too high “by a lot”.

“It was far above the 200ft limit. That’s not really too complicated to understand, is it???” he said.

The helicopter does appear to have been flying above the limit, according to publicly available flight data analysed by CBS News.

Data from FlightRadar24 showed the helicopter’s last estimated altitude was about 400ft.

“Why is it on this day, on that flight, they were [as much as] 150 to 200ft higher than they knew they should be?” Greg Feith, a former senior air safety investigator told CBS.

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told Fox News’ morning show on Friday: “Someone was at the wrong altitude.

“The investigation will help us understand that. Was the Black Hawk too high? Was it on course? Right now, we don’t quite know.”

Trump said earlier the country was in mourning, before going on to take a swipe at his political foes.

He speculated that standards had been lowered for hiring air traffic controllers in the FAA during the Joe Biden and Barack Obama presidencies, claiming this could have been a factor in the disaster.

Trump said he and his team had “strong opinions and ideas” about what had happened, but acknowledged the investigation was at an early stage.

He also announced he was appointing Chris Rocheleau as the temporary head of the FAA. The top job there, as well as the positions of administrator and deputy administrator, have been vacant since Trump took office.

• Combative Trump blames diversity policies after tragedy

Major incidents of this kind are relatively rare in the US. The most recent comparable crash was in 2009, according to a list compiled by Reuters.

That year, an aircraft crashed on approach to landing in Buffalo, New York, killing all 49 people on board and one person on the ground.

The airspace above Washington DC is both busy and highly controlled. It is used by domestic and international traffic using two airports, and there are extra factors of presidential flights, heavy military traffic and flights around the Pentagon.

Passenger airliners must follow fixed flight plans, said the BBC’s transport correspondent Sean Dilley. Unlike in uncontrolled airspace, military pilots operate under strict instruction of air traffic controllers. But unlike their civilian counterparts, they have freedom to deviate and a duty to “see and avoid” other aircraft.

The aviation world is struggling to understand how a deadly mid-air collision between a passenger plane and military helicopter was able to happen in what one expert described as “the most controlled bit of airspace in the world”.

A US Army Black Hawk helicopter with a crew of three collided with an American Airlines jet carrying 64 people seconds before the passenger aircraft was due to land at Washington National airport.

Both aircraft were sent careering into the icy Potomac River on Wednesday night.

The exact cause of the crash remains unknown.

Officials will release a preliminary report within 30 days, according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) – which is leading the investigation.

Crews were able to recover flight data recorders – known as the black boxes – from the wreckage on Thursday, according to the BBC’s US news partner CBS. The devices can help investigators pinpoint what led up to a crash.

Airspace over the District of Columbia is heavily restricted to protect both national security and the buildings that house core aspects of US government.

Commercial planes are prevented from flying over the Pentagon, the White House and other historic landmarks.

Yet the area sees a lot of air traffic, Aviation attorney Jim Brachle, who has handled numerous litigation matters related to jets and Reagan airport, told the BBC.

There is commercial traffic but also private aviation and helicopters that fly around the city, often carrying high-ranking officials and politicians between sensitive locations.

“You got these really narrow pathways in and out and you’ve got a lot of congestion and extra airplanes, so you’re putting a lot of aircraft in a really confined space,” he said.

Jeff Guzzetti, a former aircraft accident investigator for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the NTSB, told BBC Newshour that it seems the helicopter was in communication with the control tower before the accident. The air traffic controller pointed out the American Airlines flight to the helicopter, he said.

“The helicopter pilot indicated he had the airplane in sight and was going to visually separate from it – and then the accident happened shortly thereafter – so there’s going to be a lot of questions about exactly what did the helicopter pilot see?” Mr Guzzetti said.

Todd Inman, part of the five-member NTSB board, said that DC is also a “unique environment” because of helicopters and specific zones they’re allowed to fly.

“If you look at DC, you see a lot of helicopters going down into this area so there’s a very well-defined system in that regard,” he said.

Mr Inman could not provide any specifics on altitude of the helicopter before it collided with the American Airlines flight.

Mr Brachle, who has handled numerous litigation matters related to jets and Reagan airport, told the BBC the question that remains is how two aircraft ended up in the same airspace.

“What’s really unique about Reagan is right there on the river. There’s also a helicopter route that crosses right through that final approach and that’s at or below 200 feet,” he said.

Brachle said the routes for both helicopters and the approach for aircraft intersect.

“You’re putting potentially two different aircraft in a really small space with hardly any separation,” he said. “If you get one that’s maybe a little too low, one that’s a little too high, you end up being in the same spot.”

Aviation consultant Philip Butterworth-Hayes said the incident occurred at the “nexus of different aviation systems”, including civilian and military systems, as well as procedures specific to the airport.

“You are at the border of three or four aviation systems here – and it’s at those borders where most accidents tend to happen,” he added.

But UK-based aviation expert John Strickland said the amount of commercial air traffic in the area cannot fully explain why the deadly collision was able to happen.

As well as Washington National close to the city centre, he notes, there is the international gateway, Washington Dulles, and also Baltimore Airport a little further away.

• Live: Follow the latest updates
• What we know so far about the plane crash
• Who are the victims?
• BBC Verify analyses moments before collision
• Watch: The scene in DC after moment of impact

“There has to be management of traffic flows to keep separation. It’s much like we have in London where you have to manage traffic flows between Heathrow, Stansted, Gatwick and London City.

“So DC is not different in that sense to London or New York… it’s not totally unusual.”

Mr Butterworth-Hayes continued: “This is the most controlled bit of airspace in the world. You have both US government and civilian systems – Ronald Reagan airport is even owned by the government, it’s one of the very, very few like that.

“This really is the most secure – and should be the safest – airspace in the world, given the number of security and civilian safety organisations working in that area.”

The last fatal crash on a comparable scale involving a commercial plane in the US was in February 2009. Officials and experts alike have stressed that this type of incident is incredibly rare due to tight safety restrictions on all types of flights.

Footage obtained from an air traffic control source by CBS News, the BBC’s US news partner, showed the two aircraft which appear to have been involved in the crash clearly visible on radar systems accessible to controllers.

Audio sourced by BBC News appears to confirm the helicopter was in contact with air traffic control on the ground at the airport.

The helicopter was asked if it had the passenger plane “in sight” and to “pass behind” it. In the audio that follows, controllers appear to realise there has been a collision and can be heard directing other planes in the air to neighbouring airports.

Mr Butterworth-Hayes said an in-air collision like this requires a number of things going wrong.

He said that in order to fly in civilian airspace, the military helicopter would have needed to be fitted with a transponder alerting surrounding aircraft to its position.

That means both aircraft should have been able to see each other, he says, plus there would have been instructions from air traffic control and an aircraft protection safety device that operate separately from each other.

“On this occasion, you have these two different systems and both should have been able to keep these aircraft separate.”

The Black Hawk helicopter was part of B Company, 12th Aviation Battalion. It left Fort Belvoir, a military base in Virginia, and was taking part in a training exercise.

US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth has said the helicopter’s crew were “fairly experienced” and taking part in an annual night flight training session.

Speaking to CNN, Cedric Leighton – a retired US Air Force colonel – said it was normal for that type of military aircraft to be training at night in the area, particularly to make sure pilots are proficient with using instruments needed to fly in the dark.

He said one of the unit’s duties is to transport high-ranking personnel around the capital – though none were on board at the time of the crash as it was a training flight.

The unit’s pilots are expected to be proficient at flying in DC’s busy airspace and “train in order to avoid incidents like this”, he added.

Mr Butterworth-Hayes said only experienced pilots would be able to train in such a busy section of airspace.

“Whether it’s training for new systems or equipment, we need to know what systems the pilot had turned on in the helicopter and whether they had all the safety systems on board, or whether they were trying a new procedure or new route.”

The Grammys are music’s biggest night, both literally and figuratively.

The ceremony, which takes place in LA on Sunday night, runs for a staggering eight hours, attracting the biggest stars in pop, rock, country and hip-hop.

Organisers will hand out 94 awards, recognising everything from best pop album to best choral performance.

Beyoncé and Taylor Swift have both confirmed their attendance, as they square off in the album of the year category for the first time since 2010 (Swift won on that occasion, fact fans).

There’ll also be performances from Charli XCX, Sabrina Carpenter, Benson Boone, Shakira, Stevie Wonder, Teddy Swims and Raye – and an tribute to Thriller producer Quincy Jones.

Here’s everything you need to know about the ceremony.

The big question of the night is whether Beyoncé will finally win album of the year, after four previous losses in the category?

During last year’s ceremony, her husband Jay-Z addressed the oversight, telling the audience: “I don’t want to embarrass this young lady, but she has more Grammys than everyone and never won album of the year. So even by your own metrics, that doesn’t work.”

Beyoncé’s latest record, Cowboy Carter, is a wildly ambitious attempt to contextualise and commemorate the black roots of country music. It’s the sort of thing that delights Grammy voters, who traditionally prefer albums that elevate America’s musical history over contemporary, cutting-edge productions.

But the album’s excessive length – including a few weaker tracks in its latter half – could count against it.

Billie Eilish is currently the bookmakers’ favourite with her third album Hit Me Hard and Soft. Mixing passionate power ballads with violent electronic shifts and hip-hop swagger, it marks a new evolution in the star’s songwriting partnership with her brother, Finneas.

Charli XCX’s Brat is a career-defining pop record that became a cultural phenomenon. The best-reviewed album of 2024, it’s probably too abrasive for the Grammys’ more conservative voters, but that’s their loss.

And you’d have to be crazy to ignore Taylor Swift. Her 11th album, The Tortured Poets Department, was the biggest-seller of last year; a fact that will undoubtedly be taken into account, even if the record is one of her weaker efforts.

If she wins, Swift will collect her fifth album of the year trophy – more than any other artist in Grammy history.

One of the year’s most stacked categories is record of the year – better understood as “best single”.

Aside from a rogue nomination for The Beatles (see below), the shortlist reflects a stellar year for pop music, with Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso and Charli XCX’s 360 up against Beyoncé’s Texas Hold ‘Em and Billie Eilish’s Birds Of A Feather.

But the front-runner is Kendrick Lamar’s Not Like Us. A furious take-down of his rap nemesis, Drake, it’s as catchy as it is legally contentious. If it wins, it would be only the second hip-hop single to win the category, following Childish Gambino’s This Is America in 2019.

In the parallel song of the year prize – which recognises achievement in songwriting – the smart money is on Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga’s Die With A Smile.

Both artists are perennial Grammy favourites, and their virtuoso ballad will be catnip to voters.

Their competition includes Shaboozey’s A Bar Song (Tipsy), which was America’s longest-running number one single of 2024. However, the fact that it’s based on a previous hit (J-Kwon’s Tipsy) is likely to count against it.

Chappell Roan’s breakout single Good Luck Babe is another strong contender, notable for its soaring high notes and a piercing lyric that skewers internalised homophobia. Billie Eilish’s gossamer ballad Birds of a Feather is a similar masterclass in songcraft – making this category one of the hardest to predict.

By contrast, the coveted best new artist prize is pretty much a two-way split between Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter, both of whom established a dominant chart presence in 2024 after years on the pop sidelines.

That’s bad news for the sole British nominee, six-time Brit Award winner Raye. But at least she’s in good company, alongside breakout rap star Doechii and big-hearted pop singer Teddy Swims.

• Grammy Awards 2025: List of nominees
• Beyoncé surpasses Jay-Z in all-time Grammy nominations
• How rave culture inspired Charli XCX’s Brat
• Critics praise Billie Eilish’s “bold and brave” new album
• Chappell Roan interview: ‘I’d be more successful if I wore a muzzle’
• Grammys 2024: Celine Dion makes a surprise appearance
• Grammys 2024: The highs, the lows, and why Taylor Swift won

Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter has 11 nominations, potentially making it the most-rewarded album in Grammy history.

The record is currently held by Santana, who got nine trophies for his album Supernatural in 2000 (coincidentally, the same year that Beyoncé received her first Grammy nomination, as part of Destiny’s Child).

And if Cowboy Carter doesn’t take home best album, Beyoncé still breaks a record, for the most nominations in that category without a win.

Billie Eilish could become the first female artist to win Record of the Year three times with Birds of a Feather. Paul Simon and Bruno Mars are the only other artist with three wins in the category.

Rapper turned flautist André 3000 is also poised to make history. If he wins best instrumental composition, he does so with the longest song title in Grammy history: I Swear, I Really Wanted To Make A ‘Rap’ Album But This Is Literally The Way The Wind Blew Me This Time.

The current record holders, in case you were wondering, are Oklahoma band The Flaming Lips. In 2007, they won best rock instrumental performance for the magnificently-titled The Wizard Turns on the Giant Silver Flashlight and Puts On His Werewolf Moccasins.

More than 13,000 members of the Recording Academy vote for the Grammys every year – including musicians, producers, lyricists, and even the people who write CD liner notes.

To qualify, they must be currently working in the music industry, and pay an annual subscription of $150 (£120). All former winners are also eligible to vote.

Every member is allowed to vote in up to 10 categories across three fields, such as rock, classical and R&B. They are encouraged only to vote in genres where their expertise lies.

Additionally, every member, regardless of their background, gets to vote for the six biggest awards of the night. Those are: album of the year, record of the year, song of the year, best new artist, songwriter of the year and producer of the year.

The 2025 awards recognise music released between 16 September 2023 and 30 August, 2024. The winners are not revealed until the ceremony.

The Beatles might have broken up 55 years ago, but they’re up for two prizes on Sunday: record of the year and best rock performance.

Both nominations recognise Now and Then, a song that John Lennon demoed in the 1970s, and which was finally completed by his surviving bandmates Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr last year.

Grammy voters, with their eyes firmly trained on the past, rarely miss an opportunity to reward the Beatles. Eight years ago, for example, the band’s documentary Eight Days a Week: The Touring Years beat Beyoncé’s groundbreaking Lemonade for best music film.

In some ways, that’s correcting an historic wrong. In their prime, the Beatles were nominated for record of the year four times – for I Want to Hold Your Hand, Yesterday, Hey Jude and Let It Be – but lost every time.

A win in 2025 would prove that Beatlemania never fades – but voters may be put off by The Beatles’ use of machine learning (a form of artificial intelligence), which was used to clean up Lennon’s scratchy old cassette recordings.

The Recording Academy’s rules on AI say that “only human creators” can win Grammys, and that “the human authorship component of the work submitted must be meaningful”.

That’s true in the case of Now And Then, but many creators remain sceptical of the technology.

Quite a lot.

All the hoopla surrounding the Grammys has gone. No pre-parties, no after-parties. Everything except the ceremony itself has been cancelled. All the money that would have been spent on champagne and vol au vents is being funnelled into relief efforts.

The Recording Academy and its affiliated MusiCares charity have also set up a Fire Relief fund, which has so far pledged more than $3.2 million (£2.6 million) in emergency aid to assist music professionals affected by the fires.

And the telecast itself will reflect the devastation, with segments honouring the first responders who risked their lives to tackle the inferno and protect the vulnerable.

“We’ll still have performances, we’ll still have awards and honour music,” Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason, Jr told Variety magazine.

“But you’ll know that something’s happened, and you’ll know that we’re using music to do good.”

You betcha. So far, the list includes:

• Benson Boone
• Sabrina Carpenter
• Jacob Collier
• Sheryl Crow
• Billie Eilish
• Cynthia Erivo
• Chappell Roan
• Charli XCX
• Doechii
• Herbie Hancock
• Brittany Howard
• John Legend
• Chris Martin
• Janelle Monáe
• Brad Paisley
• Raye
• Shakira (
• Teddy Swims
• Lainey Wilson
• Stevie Wonder
• St. Vincent

The ceremony is split into two parts, with the first 80 awards distributed during what’s called the “premiere ceremony” at 12:30 in Los Angeles / 20:30 in London on Sunday.

It’s often worth tuning in. The winners in the more obscure categories are less polished and more excited about winning, and the performances are looser and, dare I say it, more musical than the grandiose set pieces you’ll see later.

You can watch the whole thing on the Recording Academy’s YouTube channel, and on live.grammy.com.

That’s also where you want to go to watch red carpet coverage, which kicks off at 15:00 in Los Angeles / 23:00 in the UK.

Finally, the main show kicks off at 17:00 Los Angeles / 01:00 Monday in the UK. It’s broadcast live in the US on CBS and streamed internationally on Paramount Plus. Speeches and select performances are usually uploaded to YouTube the following day.

Of course not! But have you seen what’s going on everywhere else in the world?

Musicians, however take the Grammys . A big win can boost album sales and bump you up festival bills.

That said, the awards themselves are notoriously ridiculous. According to legend, they were created in 1959 as a panicked reaction to the popularity of rock ‘n’ roll. Record companies hoped that by highlighting “good” music, they’d steer the public away from Elvis’s swivelling hips.

As if to illustrate that point, they didn’t hand Mr Presley a trophy until 1968, and even that was for “best sacred performance”, recognising his first gospel album, How Great Thou Art.

Since then, the awards have remained wilfully arbitrary, woefully out of touch, or a combination of the two.

Famously, The Beatles won more awards after they split up than they did together; and there were no rap categories until 1989.

And if anyone still thinks that Herbie Hancock’s jazz tribute to Joni Mitchell was the best album of 2008 – the year of Amy Winehouse’s Back To Black and Kanye West’s Graduation – I’d be interested to hear your arguments.

So if Beyoncé doesn’t win on Sunday (or even if she does) don’t let it affect your enjoyment of her music.

Canada will react forcefully and immediately if Donald Trump imposes tariffs, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Friday.

The US president has said he could levy a 25% tariff on Canadian imports as soon as Saturday.

“It’s not what we want, but if he moves forward, we will also act,” Trudeau said.

Tariffs are a central part of Trump’s economic vision. He sees them as a way of growing the US economy, protecting jobs and raising tax revenue.

Economists suggest that such a move could have devastating immediate impacts on Canada’s economy – while also leading to higher prices for Americans.

“I won’t sugarcoat it – our nation could be facing difficult times in the coming days and weeks,” Trudeau said in his televised address to Canadians.

Canada is trying to avoid a trade war altogether. It has pledged more than C$1bn ($690m; £560m) to boost security at its shared border with the US – a key point of contention for Trump, who appears to be using tariffs as a negotiating tactic.

Trudeau said all options were still on the table – here are four of them, and their possible impacts.

Canada has already fought one tariff “war” with Trump.

During his first term, the US president slapped 10% tariffs on Canadian aluminium products and 25% tariffs on Canadian steel, citing national security concerns.

Ottawa retaliated by imposing tariffs on select goods, which were chosen to send a political message to Trump and his allies.

It put levies on Florida orange juice, and whiskey and bourbon from Tennessee and Kentucky – the latter being the home of then-Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell.

Both countries ended up agreeing to lift the tariffs a year later.

Senior Canadian officials recently told local media that if Trump imposed tariffs again, the immediate response would likely be targeted.

According to US government data, 17% of US exports go to Canada. More than 75% of Canada’s exports go to the US.

Canada stands to suffer a larger economic blow in any trade war with the US and this stark imbalance is why targeted tariffs are often the first and safest approach, said Peter Clark, a lawyer who previously worked on trade policy issues in Canada’s federal finance department.

By targeting select goods, Canada can hit the US without widely punishing its own citizens, as tariffs can immediately raise prices for consumers at home.

This approach is also why officials are pushing a “Buy Canadian” campaign as a way to lessen the impact of a potential retaliation.

But pundits argue that Trump is less politically vulnerable this time, given that he cannot run for a third term in the White House.

“You won’t have the same impact as last time,” said Julian Karaguesian, an economics lecturer at McGill University in Montreal and a former finance counsellor at the Canadian embassy in Washington DC.

Another move Canada made in its first tariff war with its neighbour was to apply dollar-for-dollar tariffs.

It slapped identical tariffs on US aluminium and steel, and ensured the total dollar value of the American goods it taxed equalled the US tariffs on Canadian exports. That came up to around C$16.6bn at the time.

This time, the possible use of dollar-for-dollar tariffs could be much larger, with Canada reportedly preparing a first round on about $37bn of goods, according to official sources quoted in Canadian media.

That could be expanded to another C$110bn worth of goods.

The challenge is that Canada still does not know just how sweeping Trump’s tariffs would be. The more sweeping they are, the more goods Canada would have to tax in response.

• Canada and Mexico face 25% tariffs on Saturday, Trump says

Not all of Canada is on board with dollar-for-dollar tariffs. Scott Moe, leader of the mineral-rich province of Saskatchewan, has said that broad levies on US goods would “rip this country apart”.

Mr Karaguesian said the promised US tariffs on Canadian goods could plunge the country into a recession. If Canada responded with dollar-for-dollar tariffs, it could lead to inflation.

This would result in “stagflation,” he said, referring to a combination of high unemployment and rising prices.

Mr Clark said that whatever decision Canada took, politics would likely be top of mind. Polls suggest a majority of Canadians support retaliation, and that many Canadian business leaders want targeted, dollar-for-dollar tariffs.

Canadian politicians might be pushed to respond more forcefully if it means a boost in approval, Mr Clark said. “We’re talking about political decisions, which are not always rational.”

One of the most valuable assets in Canada’s arsenal is energy.

North-eastern US states like Vermont, New York and Maine significantly rely on electricity sold to them by neighbouring Canadian provinces. British Columbia and Manitoba also supply energy to western and Midwestern regions of the US.

About 30 states receive some of their electricity from Canada, according to Canadian government data.

Canada is also the top supplier of crude oil to the US, making up 60% of total oil imports, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

Doug Ford, Ontario’s premier, has suggested that Canada cut off Americans’ supply to pinch Americans at the petrol pump.

Trump suggested on Thursday that oil and gas could be exempt from US tariffs but Canada still has the option of energy restrictions or taxes to inflict pain.

“The only thing that would really sting in the immediate to short-term is if energy prices went up, because Trump himself campaigned on bringing energy prices down very quickly,” said Mr Karaguesian.

But the move would be contentious, especially with the oil-rich province of Alberta – which has refused to sign off on taxing its oil and gas exports, arguing that doing so would disproportionately hurt its economy.

Other ideas have been floated.

Ford said that Ontario could pull American-made alcohol off shop shelves in the province, signalling a different approach in which different provincial premiers could define their own responses.

Another option is not retaliating – at least for now. For weeks, Canadian officials have been meeting their American counterparts in Washington DC in a bid to stave off any American tariffs in the first place.

On Wednesday, foreign minister Melanie Joly met Secretary of State Marco Rubio to deliver a message that tariffs would be bad for both countries, and that Ottawa was addressing US concerns about border security and fentanyl trafficking.

“We need to continue to engage,” she told reporters.

Canada has also signalled that it could bring in a relief programme for businesses harmed by the possible tariffs, similar to those introduced during the Covid pandemic.

Some argue, given the economic costs of retaliation, that Canada should instead focus on diversifying its trade relationships and increasing domestic production.

“We’re a natural resource superpower,” Mr Karaguesia said, adding that the country could use the tariffs as a push to harness that potential and sell its products elsewhere.

Modern video games look and sound more realistic than they ever have.

But there’s one sense developers have yet to exploit – smell.

Imagine playing as Mario, pirouetting through the Mushroom Kingdom as a waft of a Fire Flower power-up hits you.

Or dropping into a hallway in the Last of Us crawling with Clickers – the deadly, stalking enemies mutated by an extinction-level fungal pandemic.

James, a member of the Nuneaton Nitros esports team, says he’s curious about some of those weird aromas.

“I could definitely say I’ve wanted to smell things in Call of Duty”, says James, who also wonders about the whiff of aliens in Warhammer: Space Marine 2.

But he does admit they’re likely to be “pretty grim”.

Gamers like him are currently being used to answer a question – can smelling a game make it more immersive, and make you better at playing it?

That’s what researchers demoing experimental tech at Warwick University’s Festival of Innovation are hoping to find out.

They’ve developed a custom-made headset that delivers tiny doses of smell pumped through a tube and dispersed via a fan in front of the player.

Developed in conjunction with Hollywood Gaming, it uses bottles of essential oils to replicate a range of different aromas.

BBC Newsbeat played arcade classic Daytona Racing on the demo rig.

When we tried it out the the sickly smell of petrol wafted in front of our noses while racing around the track.

Hit the brakes, and you’re suddenly getting a blast of plasticky rubber. You also get the faint scent of “new car smell” while you’re playing.

As anyone who’s ever had a wet dog in their house will know, it’s not easy to get rid of a smell once it’s there.

According to the researchers behind the project, the real challenge is quickly switching between scents as a game progresses.

That can be especially tricky if you’re facing a sudden transition between two contrasting scenes such as a flashback from a post-apocalyptic scene to a pre-doomsday memory.

Previous technologies, like the infamous smell-o-vision, have struggled with this issue but the researchers believe their “micro-dosing” method will overcome it.

But is there a point to all of this?

Prof Alan Chalmers, of Warwick University, tells Newsbeat the tech could be especially useful for simulations, allowing trainee pilots to use all of their senses.

“We’re trying to create environments that are as close to reality as we can,” he says.

“Smell is a key part of it,” he says.

He says using gamers to test this out works well because “there’s no shortage of volunteers who want to do it”.

But he also says he can see potential used in consumer games, too, especially with the use of artificial smells to represent fantasy worlds.

“People want more immersive experiences.”

Big gaming companies are already sniffing out new ways to make games more immersive.

At this year’s CES tech showcase in Las Vegas, Sony showed off its Future Immersive Entertainment Concept – a room with screens on every surface creating a 360-degree view.

The PlayStation maker said the experience included smells being pumped in to match the game being played.

Last year also saw the launch of the GameScent, a box designed to sit next to gaming PCs or consoles and release bursts of smell.

Its makers claim it uses AI to work out what smells to release and when to unleash them – including a metallic gunfire aroma, or flowers in a forest.

It’s been marketed as a consumer product, but is still pretty niche tech.

And more broadly there are questions over how much gamers care about making worlds more realistic and immersive.

While more Virtual Reality games and headsets are being developed, they’re still far from the main way people play games, and Sony has been criticised for neglecting software support for its own VR2 headset.

The popularity of lower-spec machines like Nintendo’s Switch also show it’s not always the most realistic graphics that sell games.

But what’s the verdict from gamers?

When Newsbeat speaks to some of the volunteers from the esports course at North Warwickshire and South Leicestershire College, the reaction is generally positive.

Esports lecturer Shoubna Naika-Taylor says it does make games seem more realistic.

“I think it’s interesting and really immersive, and would work with a lot of games,” she says.

“It’s a really cool piece of technology.”

Student Juris Kozirev says he couldn’t always work out what the smells were supposed to be. The motor oil smell could have been the smell of flowers, he says.

And instead of feeling like he was in a high-adrenaline race, he also says the smells actually make him feel more relaxed.

“You don’t feel like being competitive, you just feel calm.

“It’s there, you’re not too bothered, but you can definitely smell it.”

Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays – or listen back here.

A terminally ill man says he has changed his mind on assisted dying since his diagnosis and would now pay for euthanasia.

He is one of many patients and palliative care leaders who have been discussing what legalising assisted dying in England and Wales could mean for them.

It comes after MPs voted in support of the proposed Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill in November – the bill’s final reading is set for April.

Radio 5 Live’s Clare McDonnell visited Swindon’s Prospect Hospice, Wiltshire, to find out what effect the bill could have on palliative care homes.

Under the plans, only those who are expected to die within six months could apply for assisted dying. And a High Court judge would have to rule each time a person makes a request to end their life.

Melvin Camden is terminally ill with lung cancer and is undergoing chemotherapy to extend his life.

He is being cared for at the Swindon hospice, which last month Queen Camilla visited to celebrate the charity’s 45th anniversary.

Since receiving his diagnosis, Mr Camden said he is now supportive of assisted dying.

“I have changed my opinion, yes,” he said, “I would even go to Switzerland and pay for euthanasia.”

However he worries about the impact that might have on anybody who helps him travel.

Under the law in England and Wales, anyone assisting someone to die or accompanying them abroad to do so can be sentenced to up to 14 years in prison and an automatic forfeiture of the deceased person’s estate is enforced.

Specialist trusts and estates litigator, Alexa Payat, has successfully fought for families of British people who have gone to places like Dignitas in Switzerland.

She believes the assisted dying bill is “incredibly narrow” and requires “more scrutiny” around the capacity of the Family Division of the High Court to oversee applications.

Former hospice medical director and palliative care consultant Dr Richard Scheffer said his views on assisted dying changed throughout his 30-year career.

He is calling for improvements to both palliative care treatment and assisted dying options.

Palliative care services in the UK are “the best in the world”, he said, but services “can still improve more”.

“We’re not talking about either palliative care or assisted dying, we need both,” he said.

“So those who are adequately cared for by palliative care are cared for and die naturally, but that small percentage of patients who find their suffering isn’t dealt with by palliative care, have a way out.”

Natasha Wiggins from the Association of Palliative Medicine of GB and Ireland feels the bill could see some patients choosing to end their lives prematurely.

She said patients often tell her “the idea of the loss of dignity” is not acceptable to them and would like her to help them end their lives.

“When we ask them what it is that makes you think life isn’t worth living right now, there’s nearly always something we can do about it,” she said.

She raised concerns that legalising assisted dying could see a “whole swathe of people” ending their lives when they “actually could have had three more Christmasses or seen their daughter get married”.

“As it stands, I cannot see a way this bill would protect the most vulnerable in society,” she concluded.

Sri Lanka is set to relax a ban on some vehicle imports in a sign the country is returning to normal after a severe economic crisis that toppled a president.

From 1 February, imports of buses, trucks and utility vehicles will be allowed to resume, while restrictions on other vehicles are expected to be gradually lifted.

Many Sri Lankans are waiting for authorities to also drop an import ban on private cars, sport utility vehicles and three-wheeled trishaws – which are commonly used as taxis.

But with prices of vehicles forced up by a scarcity of new ones to buy, a weak currency and high taxes, some are asking who will be able to afford a new car.

In 2022, Sri Lanka faced a severe foreign currency shortage, which meant it was unable to meet its obligations to creditors for the first time in its history.

The island nation of 22 million people was thrown into turmoil as it faced crippling shortages of fuel, food and medicines.

Massive anti-government protests toppled then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa just months later.

Colombo negotiated a $2.9bn (£2.3bn) bailout from the International Monetary Fund, while Rajapaksa’s successor introduced austerity measures including hiking taxes and ending energy subsidies.

The country’s finances have since improved and the economy is gradually returning from the brink.

The announcement to lift the import ban on vehicles has triggered a buzz among Sri Lankans who have been waiting for years to buy a new car or a van.

Murtaza Jafeerjee, chair of Advocata, an economic think tank based in Colombo, told the BBC he thought the move was long overdue.

“The vehicle imports will not only increase the government’s revenue but will also trigger other economic activities like car financing, dealer revenue, car servicing and other related activities, creating jobs,” he said.

But Nalinda Jayatissa, the country’s information minister told a media briefing on Tuesday that the country was “moving very cautiously because we don’t want a surge of imports that will deplete our foreign reserves”.

The country, which doesn’t have any major factories producing cars and trucks, imports almost all its vehicles, many of them from countries like Japan and India. Now there’s a also lot of interest in Chinese cars, particularly electric vehicles.

Prices of used cars in Sri Lanka have soared, with some models now costing two or three times as much as they did before the ban.

The restrictions have been particularly difficult for people like Gayan Indika, who provides vehicles for weddings and is a part-time cab driver.

“I want to buy a new car so that I can do my work and resume my private cab rental. Without a car, without mobility, I am losing a lot of my revenue,” he said.

In a country with poor public transport, a car can be vital, Sasikumar, a software professional from the central city of Kandy explained.

“As we don’t have a good public transport system, a car is essential to travel to other parts of the country. Either the government should lift the ban on cars or improve the public transport.”

Sri Lanka imported about $1.4bn worth of vehicles in the year before the ban was imposed. This year the central bank says it’s planning to allocate up to a billion dollars for vehicle imports, but said the money will be released gradually.

Arosha Rodrigo, from the Vehicle Importers Association of Sri Lanka, and his family have been running a car dealership for more than four decades.

The firm was importing about 100 vehicles a month before the ban. Since the restrictions came into force they have not been unable to import a single vehicle.

He points out that even if the ban is relaxed further, to allow passenger cars and other vehicles to be imported, many people won’t be able to afford them because of increased taxes and Sri Lanka’s weak currency.

The government has sharply raised excise duties on imported vehicles, both new and second hand, to 200% and 300% depending on engine size.

On top of excise duty, there is also 18% Value Added Tax (VAT) for any vehicle brought from abroad.

The price of imported vehicles will also be impacted by the weakness of the Sri Lankan rupee against major world currencies like the US dollar.

Those soaring costs are putting off people like school teacher R Yasodha.

“We have been waiting to purchase a vehicle for a long time. But if we calculate the tax and the price, the cost of an average sized car has doubled from 2.5 million rupees ($8,450; £6,800) to five million rupees,” she told the BBC.

“It would cost a fortune for us.”

There is a good chance that inside your mobile phone is a miniscule amount of a metal that started its journey buried in the earth of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where a war is currently raging.

It may even be directly connected to the M23 rebel group that made global headlines this week.

The tantalum within your device weighs less than half of the average garden pea but is essential for the efficient functioning of a smartphone, and almost all other sophisticated electronic devices.

The unique properties of this rare, blue-grey, lustrous metal – including being able to hold a high charge compared to its size, while operating in a range of temperatures – make it an ideal material for tiny capacitors, which temporarily store energy.

It is also mined in Rwanda, Brazil and Nigeria but at least 40% – and maybe more – of the element’s global supply comes from DR Congo and some of the key mining areas are now under the control of the M23.

The current wave of fighting has been going on for months, but the rebels grabbed attention with Sunday’s assault on the vital trading and transport hub of Goma. The city, bordering Rwanda, is a regional centre for the mining business

• What’s the fighting in DR Congo all about?

Over the past year, the M23 has made rapid advances across the mineral-rich east of DR Congo, taking areas where coltan – the ore from which tantalum is extracted – is mined.

Like scores of other armed groups operating in the area, the M23 began as an outfit defending the rights of an ethnic group perceived to be under threat. But as its territory has expanded, mining has become a crucial source of income, paying for fighters and weapons.

Last April, it seized Rubaya, the town at the heart of the country’s coltan industry.

Mineral extraction in this region is not in the hands of multinational conglomerates – instead thousands of individuals toil in open pits that honeycomb the landscape, or underground, in extremely unsafe and unhealthy conditions.

They are part of a complex, and yet informal, network that sees the rocks removed from the ground using shovels, brought to the surface, crushed, washed, taxed, sold and then exported to be further purified and eventually smelted.

Once the M23 moved into Rubaya, the rebels established what a UN group of experts described as a “state-like administration”, issuing permits to the diggers and traders and demanding an annual fee of $25 (£20) and $250 respectively. The M23 doubled the diggers’ wages to ensure they would carry on working.

It runs the area as a monopoly making sure – through the threat of arrest and detention – that only its authorised traders are able to do business.

The M23 also charges a levy of $7 on each kilogramme of coltan. The UN group of experts estimated that as a result the M23 earns about $800,000 a month from coltan taxation in Rubaya. That money is almost certainly then used to fund the rebellion.

There is a question mark hanging over how the ore extracted from M23-controlled areas gets into the global supply chain.

Neighbouring Rwanda, which is seen as backing the M23, is at the centre of the answer, the UN experts say.

Theoretically, a certification scheme – known as the Innovative Tin Supply Chain Initiative (Itsci) – should mean that what goes into a phone handset and other electronics does not come from areas of conflict where it could be used to fund armed groups responsible for carrying out atrocities.

The US’ Dodd-Frank Act passed in 2010, and a similar piece of EU legislation, is aimed at ensuring that companies purchasing tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold – so-called “conflict minerals” – are not inadvertently funding violence.

But Itsci has come under some criticism.

Ken Matthysen, a security and resource management expert with independent research group Ipis, highlights that the dispersed nature of a lot of small-scale mines make it difficult for the local authorities to monitor exactly what is going on everywhere.

Itsci tags should be put on bags at the mine itself, to prove the origin of the minerals inside, but often they get transported to a collection point where it becomes harder to trace where the ore actually came from, Mr Matthysen said.

He added that there is also a possible issue with corruption.

“There is even an accusation of the state agents selling tags to traders, because they don’t make a good living. So the traders then go around eastern DR Congo and they tag the bags themselves.”

Itsci did not respond to a BBC request for comment, but has in the past defended its record saying that the scheme has been subjected to a rigorous independent audit. It has also been praised for bringing “prosperity for hundreds of thousands of small-scale miners”.

• The evidence that shows Rwanda is backing rebels in DR Congo

In the case of Rubaya, Itsci suspended its operations there soon after the M23 entered the town.

Nevertheless, the group has managed to continue exporting coltan.

The UN experts map a circuitous route showing how it is transported to close to the Rwandan border. It is then transferred to “heavy-duty trucks” that needed the road to be widened in order to accommodate them.

Rwanda has its own coltan mines but the experts say that the uncertified coltan is mixed with Rwandan production leading to a “significant contamination of supply chains”.

The M23 was already involved in the coltan business before the capture of Rubaya – setting up roadblocks and charging fees to cross them, according to Mr Matthysen.

“A lot of the trade of these minerals went through M23-controlled area towards Rwanda. So even then, Rwanda was profiting from the instability in eastern DR Congo and we saw the export volumes to Rwanda were already increasing,” he told the BBC.

Figures from the US Geological Survey show that Rwanda’s coltan exports rose by 50% between 2022 and 2023. Mr Matthysen said this could not have all come from Rwanda.

In a robust defence of Rwanda’s position, government spokesperson Yolande Makolo reiterated to the BBC that there were minerals and refining capacity in her own country.

“It’s very cynical to take an issue like what’s happening in eastern DRC, where a persecuted community is fighting for its rights… and turning [it] into an issue of material benefit,” she added.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame has also dismissed the UN experts’ reports, pouring scorn on their “expertise”.

Much of the east of DR Congo has been blighted by conflict for many years, raising questions about who has been benefitting and whether armed groups are profiting from what is dug out of the ground there.

In order to highlight the issue and its connection to the smartphone industry, the Congolese government filed criminal complaints in France and Belgium at the end of last year against subsidiaries of the tech giant Apple, accusing it of using “conflict minerals”.

Apple has disputed the allegation and pointed out that since early 2024, because of the escalating conflict and the difficulties of certification, it stopped sourcing tantalum, among other metals, from both DR Congo and Rwanda.

Other companies have not been so clear, which means that as the M23 seizes more territory those small bits of tantalum from the mines that they control could still make their way into the devices that we have come to rely on.

• Why TikTokers are quitting vapes over DR Congo
• UN report says Rwanda and Uganda are operating in DR Congo
• A quick guide to DR Congo

A small plane with six aboard has crashed into several buildings in north-east Philadelphia, setting homes and vehicles ablaze, and injuring people on the ground.

The jet was on a medical transport mission on Friday evening and was carrying four crew members, a child patient and the patient’s escort, Jet Rescue Air Ambulance, the medical aircraft company, told Reuters and other US media.

“We know that there will be loss,” Pennsylvania Gov Josh Shapiro said during a news conference at the scene of the crash, calling it an “awful aviation disaster”.

Emergency crews rushed to the scene during evening rush hour, as residents crowded streets that were littered with fiery debris and pieces of the aircraft. Many described a chaotic scene with injured people running and a neighbourhood block on fire.

Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker said city officials do not know the number of fatalities, but the city is “asking for prayers for anyone and everyone that may have been affected”.

“If you see debris, call 911, don’t touch anything,” she told city residents.

The crash happened just blocks from the Roosevelt Mall, a three-story shopping centre in a densely populated part of the Pennsylvania city.

The area where the crash occurred is filled with terraced housing and shops.

Disturbing videos of the incident online show the plane coming down quickly and sparking a huge fireball that rocketed into the sky.

Witnesses describes shrapnel from the crash damaging cars, and strewing burning debris into the streets. Photos of the aftermath of the incident show cars burned and mangled in the streets as more fires are ablaze on the sidewalk.

The plane, a Learjet 55, took off from the Northeast Philadelphia Airport about 18:30 local time and crashed less than four miles (6.4km) away, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The FAA said in a statement that the flight was en-route to Springfield-Branson National Airport in Missouri. At first, the agency said two people were on the plane but later revised that to six.

According to data on FlightAware, a flight tracking website, the plane was operated by a company called Med Jets, and had arrived in Philadelphia from Florida less than four hours earlier.

The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are investigating.

In a statement, President Donald Trump said his administration was “totally engaged”.

“So sad to see the plane go down in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. More innocent souls lost,” he said.

Weather forecasts in the area show it’s been a cloudy and rainy evening with winds measured around 10 to 20 mph.

One witness told local media that the explosion “lit up the whole sky”.

“I just saw a plane basically hit the building and it exploded. The sky lit up and I pulled over and basically, it was just real bad around here,” the witness told WPVI-TV, describing the crash as feeling like an earthquake.

Ryan Tian, 23, told The Philadelphia Inquirer said he was getting dinner when he saw a “massive fireball” that turned the sky orange.

“I thought we were getting attacked by something,” he said. As he saw people start to flee, he decided to get “outta there”.

The plane crash comes just two days after a much larger collision happened between a commercial jet and a military helicopter in Washington DC, where officials suspect all 67 people aboard both aircraft were killed.

It was the deadliest plane crash in the US in over 20 years.

A hiss and puff of compressed air shapes the smooth leather, bringing to life an all-American cowboy boot in a factory on China’s eastern coast.

Then comes another one as the assembly line continues, the sounds of sewing, stitching, cutting and soldering echoing off the high ceilings.

“We used to sell around a million pairs of boots a year,” says the 45-year-old sales manager, Mr Peng, who did not wish to reveal his first name.

That is, until Donald Trump came along.

A slew of tariffs in his first presidential term triggered a trade war between the world’s two largest economies. Six years on, Chinese businesses are bracing themselves for a sequel now that he is back in the White House.

“What direction should we take in the future?” Mr Peng asks, uncertain of what Trump 2.0 means for him, his colleagues – and China.

For Western markets that are increasingly wary of Beijing’s ambitions, trade has become a powerful bargaining chip – especially as a sluggish Chinese economy relies ever more on exports. Trump returned on a campaign promise that included crushing tariffs against Chinese-made goods, and has since threatened a 10% levy that is expected to take effect on 1 February.

He has also ordered a review of US-China trade – which buys Beijing time and Washington, negotiating room. And for now, harsher rhetoric (and higher tariffs) seem to be directed against US allies such as Canada and Mexico.

Trump may have pressed pause on the looming battle with Beijing. But many believe it’s still coming. It’s hard to find an exact figure on how many businesses are fleeing China, but major firms such as Nike, Adidas and Puma have already relocated to Vietnam. Chinese businesses too have been moving, reshaping supply chains, although Beijing remains a key player.

Mr Peng says his boss, who owns the factory, has considered moving production to South East Asia, along with many of their competitors.

It would save the firm, but they would lose their workforce. Most of the staff are from the nearby city of Nantong and have worked here for more than 20 years.

Mr Peng, whose wife died when their son was young, says the factory has been his family: “Our boss is determined not to abandon these employees.”

He is aware of the geopolitics at play, but he says he and his workers are just trying to make a living. They are still reeling from the impact of 2019, when a fourth round of Trump tariffs – 15% – hit Chinese-made consumer goods, such as clothes and shoes.

Orders have since dwindled and staff numbers, once more than 500, have dropped to just over 200. The evidence is in the empty work stations, as Mr Peng shows us around.

All around him, workers are cutting the leather into the right shape to hand it to the machinist. They have to be precise because mistakes will ruin the expensive leather, most of which has been imported from the US.

The factory is trying to keep costs low as some of their American buyers are already considering moving business away from China and the threat of tariffs.

But that would mean losing skilled workers: it can take up to a week to make one pair of boots, from flattening the leather to giving the finished boots a final polish and packing them for export.

This is what turned China into the world’s top manufacturer – labour-intensive production which is also cheap when it’s scaled up and supported by an unrivalled supply chain. And this has been years in the making.

“It was once a constant cycle of inspecting goods and shipping them out – I felt fulfilled,” says Mr Peng, who has worked here since 2015. “But orders have decreased, which makes me feel quite lost and anxious.”

Once crafted to conquer the Wild West, these cowboy boots have been made here for more than a decade. And this is a familiar story in the south of Jiangsu province, a manfucaturing hub along the Yangtze River that produces just about everything, from textiles to electric vehicles.

These are among the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods that China ships to the United States every year – a number that steadily ballooned as Washington became its biggest trading partner.

That status slipped under Trump. But it was not restored under his successor Joe Biden, who kept most Trump-era tariffs in place, as ties with Beijing frayed.

In fact, the European Union too has imposed tariffs on electric vehicle imports, accusing China of making too much, often with the support of state subsidies. Trump has echoed this – that China’s “unfair” trade practices disadvantage foreign comeptitors.

Beijing sees such rhetoric as Western attempts to stifle its growth, and it has repeatedly warned Washington that there will be no winners in a trade war. But it has also said it’s ready to talk and “properly handle differences”.

And President Trump, who has described tariffs as his “one big power” over China, certainly wants to talk.

It’s unclear as yet what he might want in return. During Trump’s honeymoon period with China in his first term he came to Beijing to ask for Xi’s help in meeting North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un. This time it is believed he might need Xi’s support to make a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine. He recently said that China had “a great deal of power over that situation”.

The threat of a 10% tariff is driven by the belief that China is “sending fentanyl to Mexico and Canada”. So he could demand that it do more to end that flow.

Or, given he welcomed a bidding war over TikTok, he may want to negotiate its ownership – or the prized technology that powers the app – because Beijing would need to agree to any such sale.

Whatever the deal may be, it could help reset US-China ties. However, the absence of one could abruptly end the chance of a second honeymoon, setting up Trump and Xi for a far more confrontational relationship.

Already business sentiment is nervous: an annual survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in China showed just over half of them were concerned about the US-China relationship deteriorating further.

Trump’s seemingly softer stance on China offers offers some relief. But his hope is still that the threat of tariffs will help drive buyers away from China and move manufacturing back to the US.

Some Chinese businesses are indeed on the move – but not to America.

An hour outside Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh, businessman Huang Zhaodong has built a new factory to cater to a flood of orders from US giants Walmart and Costco.

This is his second factory in Cambodia, and together they produce half a million garments a month, from shirts to underwear. Hangers carrying cotton trousers roll past us on an automated line, moving from one station to the next as the elastic waist is inserted and hemlines are finished.

Now, when prospective US customers lob the first question, which he has come to expect – where is he based – Mr Huang has the right answer. Not in China.

“In the case of some Chinese firms, their customers have told them: ‘If you don’t move production overseas, I’ll cancel your orders’.”

The tariffs raise tough choices for suppliers and retailers, but it’s not always clear who will bear the brunt of the cost. Sometimes it will be the customer, Mr Huang says.

“Take Walmart as an example. I sell them clothes at $5, but they usually mark it up 3.5 times. If the cost increases due to higher tariffs, the price I sell to them might rise to $6. If they mark it up by 3.5 times, the retail price would increase.”

But usually, he says, it is the supplier. If his production line was in China, he estimates an extra 10% tariff could take an extra $800,000 (£644,000) from his earnings.

“That’s more than what I make as profit. It’s huge and we can’t afford it. If you’re making clothes in China under such tariff conditions, it’s unsustainable,” he says.

Current US tariffs on Chinese goods vary from 100% on electric vehicles to 25% on steel and aluminium. Until now, several top-selling items have been exempt, including electronics, such as TVs and iPhones.

But the 10% blanket tariff Trump is proposing could affect the price of everything that is made in China and exported to the US. That applies to a lot of things – from toys and tea cups to laptops.

Mr Huang says this would encourage more factories to move elsewhere. Several new workshops have sprung up around him and Chinese companies from textile production heartlands such as Shandong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Guangdong are moving in to make winter jackets and woollen clothing.

Around 90% of clothing factories in Cambodia are now Chinese-run or Chinese-owned, according to a report by insight and analysis group Research and Markets.

Half of the country’s foreign investment flows from China. Seventy percent of roads and bridges were built using loans Beijing dispensed, according to Chinese state media.

Many of the signs on restaurants and shops are in Chinese as well as Khmer, the local language. There’s even a ring road named Xi Jinping Boulevard in honour of the Chinese president.

Cambodia is not a lone recipient. China has invested heavily in different parts of the world under President Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative – a trade and infrastructure project that also increases Beijing’s influence.

That means China has choices.

Chinese state media claims that more than half of China’s imports and exports now come from Belt and Road countries, most of them in South East Asia.

This has not happened overnight, says Kenny Yao from AlixPartners, who advises Chinese firms on how to deal with tariffs.

During Trump’s first term, many Chinese firms doubted his tariff threat, he told the BBC. Now they ask if he will follow the supply chain and slap tariffs on other countries.

Just in case he does, Mr Yao says, it would be wise for Chinese businesses to look further afield: “For example, Africa or Latin America. This is more difficult, but it is good to look at areas you have not explored before.”

As America pledges to look after itself first, Beijing is doing its best to appear a stable business partner, and there is some evidence it is working.

China has edged past the US to become the prevailing choice for countries in South East Asia, according to a survey by the Iseas Yusof-Ishak think tank in Singapore.

Even though production has moved abroad, money still flows to China – 60% of the materials being made into clothes at Mr Huang’s factories in Phnom Penh come from China.

And exports are thriving, with Beijing investing more heavily in high-end manufacturing, from solar panels to artificial intelligence. Last year’s trade surplus with the world – on the back of a nearly 6% year-on-year jump in exports – was a record $992bn.

Still, Chinese businesses – in Jiangsu and Phnom Penh – are preparing themselves for an uncertain spell, if not a turbulent one.

Mr Peng hopes the US and China can have an “amicable and calm” discussion to keep the tariffs “within a reasonable range” and avoid a trade war.

“Americans still need to purchase these products,” he said, before driving off to meet new customers.