Donald Trump’s plan for the US to “take over” and “own” Gaza, resettling its population in the process, is not going to happen. It requires the co-operation of Arab states that have rejected it.

They include Jordan and Egypt – countries that Trump wants to take in Gaza’s Palestinians – and Saudi Arabia, which might be expected to foot the bill.

Western allies of the US and Israel are also against the idea.

Some – perhaps many – Palestinians in Gaza might be tempted to get out if they had the chance.

But even if a million left, as many as 1.2m others would still be there.

Presumably the United States – the new owners of Trump’s “Riviera of the Middle East” – would have to use force to remove them.

After America’s catastrophic intervention in Iraq in 2003, that would be deeply unpopular in the US.

It would be the final end of any lingering hope that a two-state solution was possible. That is the aspiration that a conflict more than a century old could be ended with the establishment of an independent Palestine alongside Israel.

The Netanyahu government is adamantly against the idea, and over years of failed peace talks, “two states for two peoples” became an empty slogan.

But it has been a central plank of US foreign policy since the early 1990s.

The Trump plan would also violate international law.

America’s already threadbare assertions that it believes in a rules-based international order would dissolve. Russia’s territorial ambitions in Ukraine and China’s in Taiwan would be turbocharged.

Why worry about all that if it is not about to happen – at least not in the way Trump announced in Washington, watched by a grinning and clearly delighted Benjamin Netanyahu?

The answer is that Trump’s remarks, however outlandish, will have consequences.

He is the president of the United States, the most powerful man in the world – no longer a reality TV host and political hopeful trying to grab headlines.

Short-term, the disruption caused by his stunning announcement could weaken the fragile ceasefire in Gaza. One senior Arab source told me it could be its “death knell”.

The absence of a plan for Gaza’s future governance is already a fault line in the agreement.

Now Trump has provided one, and even if it does not come to pass, it presses very big buttons in the minds of Palestinians and Israelis.

It will nourish the plans and dreams of ultra-nationalist Jewish extremists who believe all the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river, and perhaps beyond, is a God-given Jewish possession.

Their leaders are part of Netanyahu’s government and keep him in power – and they’re delighted. They want the Gaza war to resume with the longer-term objective of removing the Palestinians and replacing them with Jews.

The finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said Trump had provided the answer to Gaza’s future after the 7 October attacks.

His statement said that “whoever committed the most terrible massacre on our land will find himself losing his land forever. Now we will act to finally bury, with God’s help, the dangerous idea of a Palestinian state.”

Centrist opposition leaders in Israel have been less effusive, perhaps fearing trouble ahead, but have offered a polite welcome to the plan.

Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups may feel the need to answer Trump with some kind of show of force against Israel.

For Palestinians, the conflict with Israel is driven by dispossession and the memory of what they call al-Nakba, “the catastrophe”. That was the exodus of Palestinians as Israel won its war for independence in 1948.

• Follow live updates
• Analysis: Trump’s real-estate instincts clash with America First view
• BBC Verify: Can Trump really take ownership of Gaza?

More than 700,000 Palestinians either fled or were forced from their homes by Israeli forces. All but a handful were never allowed back and Israel passed laws it still uses to confiscate their property.

Now the fear will be that it is happening again.

Many Palestinians already believed Israel was using the war against Hamas to destroy Gaza and expel the population.

It is part of their accusation that Israel is committing genocide – and now they might believe Donald Trump is adding his weight to Israel’s plans.

Just because Trump says something, that does not make it true or certain.

His statements are often more like opening gambits in a real estate negotiation than expressions of the settled policy of the United States.

Perhaps Trump is spreading some confusion while he works on another plan. He is said to crave the Nobel peace prize.

Middle East peacemakers, even when they do not ultimately succeed, have a strong track record of winning it.

As the world was digesting his Gaza announcement, he posted on his Truth Social platform his desire for a “verified nuclear peace agreement” with Iran.

The Iranian regime denies it wants nuclear weapons but there has been an open debate in Tehran about whether they are now so threatened that they need the ultimate deterrent.

For many years Netanyahu has wanted the US, with Israeli help, to destroy Iran’s nuclear sites. Doing a deal with Iran was never part of his plan.

During Trump’s first term, Netanyahu waged a long and successful campaign to persuade him to pull the US out of the nuclear deal Barack Obama’s administration signed with Iran.

If Trump wanted to throw the Israeli hard-right something to keep them happy as he makes overtures to the Iranians, he has succeeded.

But he has also created uncertainty and injected more instability into the world’s most turbulent region.

President Donald Trump’s suggestion the US could “take over” and “own” Gaza, resettling its population in the process, has been met with shock and condemnation.

The comments come as a ceasefire is under way between Hamas and Israel, and amid questions about Gaza’s post-conflict future.

The UN estimates around two thirds of buildings there have been destroyed or damaged after 15 months of fighting.

Trump’s vague proposal could signal the largest shift in US policy on the Middle East in decades, upending widespread international consensus on the need for a Palestinian state – comprising Gaza and the occupied West Bank – to exist alongside Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the idea was “worth paying attention to” but it has been roundly rejected by Arab nations and some US allies.

If Donald Trump is right about one thing, it is that decades of US diplomacy on Israel and the Palestinians have failed to resolve the conflict.

Peace proposals and presidents have come and gone but the problems have festered. Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 and the war in Gaza it triggered were the hideous results.

Trump made his millions as a property developer and, with that hat on, made a perfectly valid observation: if Gaza is to be rebuilt, from scratch in some places, it makes little sense for hundreds of thousands of civilians to be sheltering in the rubble.

The task of rebuilding Gaza will be monumental. Unexploded munitions and mountains of debris have to be removed. Water and power lines have to be repaired. Schools, hospitals and shops need to be rebuilt.

Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff has said that could take years – and while that goes on, the Palestinians will need to go somewhere.

However, rather than exploring ways of keeping them close to home, almost certainly in camps in the central and southern parts of the Gaza Strip, Trump says they should be encouraged to leave – permanently.

Trump believes that in their absence, an idyllic, American-owned “Riviera of the Middle East” will rise from the ashes, providing thousands of jobs, opportunities for investment and, ultimately, a place for “the world’s people to live”.

• BBC Verify: Can Trump really take ownership of Gaza?
• Analysis: Trump’s real-estate instincts clash with America First view

Where to begin?

Even for a president who spent much of his first term upending US Middle East policy – including moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognising Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights – this was an astonishing proposal.

In their wildest imaginations, no US president ever thought that solving the Israel-Palestinian conflict would involve taking over a chunk of Palestinian territory and evicting its population.

• LIVE: World leaders react to Trump’s Gaza comments

To be clear, to do this by force would be a grave violation of international law.

Some Palestinians would likely choose to leave Gaza and rebuild their lives elsewhere. Since October 2023, as many as 150,000 already have.

But others cannot or will not, either because they lack the financial means to do so or because their attachment to Gaza – part of the land they call Palestine – is simply too strong.

Many Gazans are descendants of people who fled or were driven from their homes in 1948 during the creation of the state of Israel – a period Palestinians call the Nakba, the Arabic word for catastrophe.

The thought of another will be too painful for many and they will cling to their reduced lives in what remains of Gaza with a fierce determination.

For Palestinians who dream of a state of their own, alongside Israel, the loss of part of it will feel like an amputation.

Gaza has been physically separated from the West Bank since 1948. Previous rounds of negotiations, as well as Trump’s 2020 “Vision for Peace”, included plans for tunnels or railways that might link the two.

Now Trump is basically telling the Palestinians to give up on Gaza once and for all.

While he does not appear to be advocating the forced deportation of civilians – which is against international law – Trump is clearly encouraging Palestinians to leave.

Palestinian officials have already accused Israel of blocking the supply of tens of thousands of caravans which could help Gazans to stay put in less damaged parts of the territory while reconstruction takes place elsewhere.

The Arab countries who Trump says should accept as many as 1.8 million Gazan refugees, mainly Egypt and Jordan, have expressed outrage.

Both have enough problems of their own without this added burden.

Gaza was occupied by Egypt for 19 years before it was seized by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War.

It is still considered occupied by Israel under international law, which Israel disputes. It says the occupation ended in 2005, when it unilaterally dismantled Jewish settlements and pulled out its military.

Around three quarters of UN members recognise Gaza as part of a sovereign state of Palestine, though the US does not.

Cut off from the outside world by fences and an Israeli maritime blockade, it has never felt like a truly independent place.

Nothing and no one moves in or out without Israel’s permission, and an international airport – opened amid much fanfare in 1998 – was destroyed by Israel in 2001 during the second Palestinian uprising.

Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade on Gaza, citing security reasons, after Hamas won Palestinian elections in 2006 and ejected its rivals from the territory after intense fighting the following year.

Long before the latest war, Palestinians had come to regard Gaza as an open prison.

• Israel and the Palestinians: History of the conflict explained

It goes without saying that the US has no legal claim to the territory and it is not at all clear how Trump intends to impose American rule.

As with his bullish claims about US control over Greenland or the Panama Canal, it is not yet clear whether Trump really means it or if the comments represent an opening, outlandish bargaining position ahead of a bruising set of negotiations on Gaza’s future.

Various plans have been discussed for the post-war governance of Gaza.

In December, the two main Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, agreed to form a joint committee to oversee its administration – an agreement which has so far come to nothing.

At other times, discussions have focused on the creation of an international peacekeeping force, possibly made up of troops from Arab countries.

Last month, Reuters reported that the UAE, US and Israel had discussed the formation of a temporary administration in Gaza until a reformed Palestinian Authority (PA), which already has control in parts of the West Bank, was ready to take over.

However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has previously publicly insisted that the PA will have no role to play in running post-war Gaza.

In a limited sense, American boots are already on the ground. A US security firm has employed around 100 former US special forces to man a vital checkpoint south of Gaza City and screen the vehicles of Palestinians returning to the north for weapons.

Egyptian security personnel have also been seen at the same checkpoint.

These could be the first, tentative signs of an expanded international – and possibly US-led – presence in Gaza.

But that is hardly a US takeover, something that would require a large-scale military intervention in the Middle East – the sort of thing Trump has long told voters he wants to avoid.

Negotiations on phase two of the two-week-old ceasefire between Israel and Hamas have barely begun but it is hard to see how Trump’s bombshell remarks will help to advance them.

If Hamas feels the end product of this whole process is a depopulated Gaza – devoid not just of Hamas, but of all Palestinians – it may conclude there is nothing to talk about and hold on to the remaining hostages it took on 7 October 2023.

Netanyahu’s critics have accused him of looking for excuses to blow up the negotiations and resume the war. They are bound to conclude that, with these comments, Trump is a willing accomplice.

On the other hand, the Israeli prime minister’s right-wing backers have expressed satisfaction with the US takeover plan, potentially reducing the risk of cabinet resignations and making Netanyahu’s immediate political future appear more assured.

In that sense, Trump has given Netanyahu a powerful incentive to keep the ceasefire going.

Asked whether he agreed the US should recognise Israeli sovereignty over the occupied West Bank, Trump said he had yet to take a position but that he would have an announcement to make in four weeks’ time.

That remark has caused alarm among Palestinians, for whom such an announcement would inevitably be seen as another nail in the coffin for a two-state solution.

Recognising the legitimacy of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank would be a hugely consequential move. Most of the rest of the world regards them as illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.

During previous rounds of peace talks, negotiators recognised that Israel would get to hold onto large settlement blocs as part of a final agreement, probably in exchange for small chunks of Israeli territory.

In 2020, Trump brokered the Abraham Accords, which secured the historic normalisation of relations between Israel and two Arab nations, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain.

The UAE signed that agreement on the understanding Israel would not annex parts of the West Bank – an understanding which may now be in jeopardy.

Swedish police said they were still investigating the motive behind the country’s deadliest mass shooting, as local media began reporting details about the gunman.

The suspect, named in reports as 35-year-old local man Rickard Andersson, was reported to be a former student of the school in Orebo, a city 157 km (98 miles) west of Stockholm, where the attack took place on Tuesday.

Eleven people died in the shooting, including the attacker, with at least six others injured.

The attack has sent shockwaves through the nation, with King Carl XVI Gustaf on Wednesday saying: “All of Sweden is mourning.”

Authorities are still yet to release details about the dead and injured. Health officials said three women and two men were in a critical but stable condition, while another woman was treated for minor injuries.

Police declined to confirm media reports naming Andersson as the suspect. Orebro police said they had identified the suspect but would “not publish his name yet, due to the investigation”.

They have not said how he died but indicated on Wednesday he had most likely killed himself after an exchange of fire with police.

Police said they were still investigating why the gunman had chose to attack the Risbergska adult educational centre. Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet reported the suspect was previously enrolled at the school but had not attended classes since 2021.

Police on Tuesday said the suspect had no apparent links to gangs and did not appear to be motivated by ideology.

They also do not believe the attack was motivated by terrorism.

“We will get back on what motives there are,” local police chief Roberto Eid Forest told reporters on Wednesday.

The suspect had no previous convictions and obtained his weapon legally, local media reported.

Sweden’s public broadcaster SVT suggested it was a hunting weapon, while Swedish Radio said police had listed the weapon as an automatic firearm.

Local police chief Mr Forest also defended authorities’ delay in releasing accurate information about the number of dead and wounded. He said the size of the school premises had led to delays in ensuring there were not more victims.

Police said they were using fingerprints, dental records and DNA to identify victims – alongside interviews with family members.

In addition to providing Swedish language classes for immigrants, the Risbergska centre also provided adult education for people aged over 20 who did not finish primary or secondary school.

Earlier, Orebro residents attended a candlelit vigil outside the educational centre, which remains cordoned off. Flags around Orebro and at government buildings, parliament and royal palaces across the country were also lowered to half-mast.

King Carl XVI Gustaf, who visited the campus on Wednesday with Queen Silvia, told reporters: “All of Sweden feels it has experienced this traumatic event.”

“All Swedes are thinking of those people who lost their loved ones,” the King told the BBC. He said he was “sure the country would overcome the tragedy… one way or another, but it will take time”.

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, who also visited the site on Wednesday, described Tuesday’s attack as a dark day in Swedish history.

“Together, we must help the injured and their relatives bear the grief and weight of this day,” he said.

“I have so much money now that I could hire someone to kill you, and nobody would know. No-one would miss you. No-one would know anything.”

Former music executive Daniel Evans says he can still remember the threat from his old boss, Sean “Diddy” Combs – then known as Puff Daddy – to a colleague. It was 1997, he says, in the New York office of Combs’s Grammy Award-winning music label Bad Boy Records.

“It was like, this is what money does to you,” he says.

Combs was often “prickly”, but Evans says power was transforming him. Just days before, the hip-hop mogul had received his biggest reward to date – $6m (£4.8m) to mark the label’s success, which boasted platinum-selling artists like The Notorious B.I.G.

That year Combs’s music career reached its peak, with his empire soon expanding into fashion, alcohol and even his own TV network.

Nearly three decades on, his legacy is in ruins as he sits in jail awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking and racketeering alongside battling dozens of lawsuits accusing him of drugging and assault at lavish parties, high-end hotels and in his label’s recording studio. He denies all the allegations.

Now the BBC has spoken to more than 20 people who worked with Combs at Bad Boy Records – including former executives, assistants and producers – who describe for the first time troubling incidents they say they witnessed during its 1990s rise.

Some executives say they had concerns after seeing Combs having sex with women in the studio, including one incident where the employee says the young woman did not seem to react when he walked in. Another staff member complained Combs asked her to bring him condoms.

The BBC also heard that corporate funds were used to fly in women from across the US for sex at the request of artists and other employees.

“There was a course of conduct that became more egregious over time and that conduct does go back to the 90s,” says Tony Buzbee, a US lawyer representing dozens of alleged victims, including one who says Combs threatened to kill her in similar terms to the incident Evans says he witnessed.

His client alleges Combs raped her on a bathroom floor at a promotional party held for The Notorious B.I.G., the label’s biggest star, in 1995. She says in her lawsuit that afterwards, Combs told her not to tell anyone or “you will disappear”.

In a statement, Combs’s legal team accused Buzbee of being “more interested in media attention than the truth” and said the hip-hop star “never sexually assaulted or trafficked anyone”.

The 55-year-old’s lawyers said they had not been provided with sufficient details about the BBC’s claims to present the facts that would “counter these fabricated accusations”.

“As we’ve said before, Mr Combs cannot dignify every publicity stunt or facially absurd claim with a response. He has full confidence in the judicial process, where the truth will prevail: these accusations are pure fiction,” they said.

A brash go-getter, Sean Combs became an overnight millionaire when he launched Bad Boy Records in 1993 with a roster of top artists.

It was Combs’s first venture, having already built a name for himself as a talent director at another music label, Uptown Records, aged 19.

“He said that he wanted to be one of the biggest artists in the world and it didn’t matter if I believed him or not,” remembers Jimmy Maynes, a former Uptown colleague.

Maynes remembers Combs having a short fuse in the office, sometimes banging “his hands up against the desk” like a “bratty kid” and yelling if he did not get his way.

Combs was eventually fired from Uptown and at the age of 23 started Bad Boy Records.

“He’s the hardest working man that I’ve ever met and always wanted people to match his energy,” says Daniel Evans, a senior executive who managed Bad Boy’s recording budgets and artists’ contracts between 1994 and 1997.

Combs described himself as the “Great Gatsby” and swiftly became known for hosting coveted celebrity bashes at New York nightclubs, on the beaches of Cancun, Mexico, and later infamous “White Parties” – named after the all-white dress code – in the Hamptons.

Even President Donald Trump attended events in the 90s, says Evans, who once saw him sit on a golden throne at Combs’s 30th birthday and exclaim: “I’m the real King of New York!”

“We were all really young. I was 24 years old,” reflects Evans, who was one of the label’s original employees. “People wanted to party, have fun, hook up and build good memories.”

But looking back, Evans says he is troubled by some of the things he witnessed about his boss’s behaviour and the company culture.

In about 1995, he says he walked in on Combs having sex with a young woman at Daddy’s House, Bad Boy’s New York recording studio near Times Square.

“I was getting ready to go home for the night and looking for my jacket. Open the door and he’s having sex with this girl,” says Evans, who thought the studio was empty as it was silent. Combs swore and shouted at him to leave. “I thought I was getting fired,” he says.

Evans remembers the young woman had been brought to the studio, presumably for a tour, by a party-promoter who was a friend of Combs. His boss seemed sober, while she was quiet and did not really talk, he says, wondering if she was high on drugs or just shy.

He says it did not seem unusual at the time. But recalling how the woman did not react when he entered the room, he says: “Knowing what I know now, there’s a lot of speculation about what state she was in… usually both parties are very responsive during the act.”

Felicia Newsome, the manager of Daddy’s House recording studio between 1994 and 2000, says inappropriate conduct in the music industry as a whole was rife at the time.

“It was abnormal if somebody reported it, but it wasn’t abnormal for it to be happening,” she says.

Newsome says an employee once called her to the studio in the middle of the night because Combs was in his underwear, about to have sex with a model and another woman. He was demanding the staff member fetch him condoms, she recalls.

“I said to Puffy, don’t ever ask anyone here to go and get condoms,” says Newsome, who arrived while they were getting dressed again. “He replied: ‘I didn’t need anything like that, ma,’ and never did it again.”

Newsome, then in her 30s, says she found Combs reasonable and that he changed his behaviour when she challenged him. On one occasion, when the studio first opened in 1995, she says Combs was unhappy about the look of the countertops and called her a “bitch” in front of staff.

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She says she demanded a public apology and temporarily shut the studio, asking him: “If I’m bringing women into this space, which is open 24 hours, how do you want to treat people?”

Combs responded that he wanted it to be an inclusive and safe environment, she says.

But while Newsome ran the studio with an “iron fist”, she says other staff were less comfortable calling Combs out.

“Bad Boy Records was a crazy house with a lot of young people who wanted to touch the King’s robes,” she says.

Former staff say the label was run by twenty-something executives and a large number of interns, some of whom were of school age. There were often sexual relationships between employees and the interns, they say.

Evans remembers an uncomfortable moment with a 14-year-old in his own team, who he says propositioned him.

“She says to me, you work really hard. If you ever want to like, get loose, you and I should kick it… but not tonight, I have a curfew.”

Evans says he sent her home and called the next day, telling her not to return to work. He did not report her, but two weeks later she was back working in the mailroom.

Artists and other employees at Combs’s record label would sometimes also request for women to be flown in to have sex at the studio, the former executive says.

“If they had a [sexual] specialty in something, they would be flown in,” says Evans, who told the BBC he knew because he controlled the budgets. Money for the flights would be set aside and logged under travel, he adds.

“It was probably like thousands of dollars,” says Evans. “I don’t think it happened all that often, but it was definitely a recording expense.”

Evans says Combs’s own requests were managed by his personal assistants. One told the BBC that Combs would often ask them to fly in women he was “messing around with” and put them up in hotels, though the assistant said they were not sex workers.

In the 2000s, the Daddy’s House recording studio further changed, two former staff say, into a culture of “sex, drugs and rock’n’roll”. Combs would regularly bring “random women” there to party, turning up with an entourage of dozens of people in “three white jeeps, with white rims and white leather seats”, they say. Other artists would demand suitcases of Ciroc vodka and one even brought a monkey to a session, according to a former executive.

The studio is one of the locations where women have since accused Combs of drugging and raping them. Model Crystal McKinney alleges the mogul plied her with alcohol and marijuana before sexually assaulting her there in 2003. That same year, a woman alleges that Combs and two associates gang raped her at the studio when she was 17.

Combs’s lawyers say he “looks forward to proving his innocence”, adding that McKinney’s claims are “without merit”.

Many ex-staff say they still find it hard to reconcile the allegations with the man they knew. “These accusations are a surprise to me, as I am sure it is to many of our circle,” says Jeffery Walker, a close friend of Combs who was part of Bad Boy’s original production team. “I’ve been to White Parties and of course studio sessions, and none of what he is accused of went down in my sight.”

Evans was also sceptical about some of the claims until he saw the footage of Casandra Ventura, Combs’s ex-partner of 10 years and a former Bad Boy artist, being brutally beaten by the rapper in a hotel in Los Angeles in 2016.

Ventura was the first person to sue Combs back in November 2023, alleging that he had trapped her in a cycle of abuse, violence, and sex trafficking during their relationship. Combs settled the lawsuit the next day for an undisclosed amount.

“It’s not the first time I’ve seen that temper,” recalls Evans, thinking back to the death threat he says he witnessed back in 1997. “It’s hard to see. The guy in the video with Cassie is almost identical to the guy who threatened the employee. So, you wonder, has anything changed?”

Over the years, Sean Combs has repeatedly reinvented himself – from Puff Daddy, to P Diddy and in recent years, “Love”.

“If I’m acting crazy, like ‘ahhh!’ that’s Diddy. If I’m dancing real smooth with a girl, that’s Puff Daddy. And if I’m looking like I’m nervous or scared or shy, that’s Sean,” he said in an interview in 2015.

With more details likely to emerge when he goes on trial in May, many of those who were close to the rapper are questioning whether they knew the real Sean Combs at all.

“One could think that he’s just a disgusting human being, but that’s not my memory of Puff,” says Jimmy Maynes, who grew up with Combs in Mount Vernon, New York.

But after a pause, he adds: “Or maybe money just gives people the freedom to be exactly who they really are, and he was that guy all along.”

If you would like to speak to Rianna or Larissa about this story you can get in touch here.

Thousands of people have attended events in Waitangi in northern New Zealand, to celebrate the country’s national day.

Waitangi Day marks the first signing of New Zealand’s founding document: The Treaty of Waitangi or Te Tiriti o Waitangi in Māori.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon bucked tradition by choosing not to be in Waitangi for the celebrations, instead attending an event in the South Island.

This year’s commemorations come at a time of increased tensions, as the government pursues policies considered by some to be anti-Māori – including a bill which would reinterpret the 184-year treaty.

On Wednesday, the eve of the holiday, hundreds of Māori protesters staged a silent demonstration by turning their backs on government ministers, signalling their dissatisfaction with the handling of Indigenous issues.

Act party leader David Seymour – who is the architect of the controversial bill in question, known as the Treaty Principles Bill – also had his microphone taken away twice at the event.

“We are sick of talking to ears that will not listen, and to minds that will not change,” Eru Kapa-Kingi – from the Toitū te Tiriti movement, which led the largest ever protest over Māori rights in 2024 – said.

Luxon announced in December that he would not be at Waitangi – choosing instead to celebrate the day in the South Island with its largest tribe – or iwi in Māori – Ngāi Tahu.

Iwi are groups of people who are joined by their shared ancestry and connection to nature. Ngāi Tahu has roughly 74,000 members, according to New Zealand’s last census.

“Today is a day to reflect on where we have come from and look forward to where we are going together as a nation,” Luxon said in a video message from Akaroa.

“The treaty is central to our history and it is also critical to our future. When Māori. communities succeed, all of New Zealand benefits. We’ll continue to deal with our differences respectfully and move forward together,” he added.

Luxon is not the first prime minister to miss the commemorations at Waitangi but his decision not to attend during a time of increased tensions between Māori and his government has drawn mixed reactions.

Ngāi Tahu said it welcomed the prime minister’s decision to celebrate with them and that it was a time to “reflect on our shared history…and strengthen the relationships between tangata whenua [Māori] and the Crown, for the benefit of all our communities in New Zealand”.

His political opponents have accused him of cowardice as his government pursues policies that many Māori consider offensive.

“When the prime minister doesn’t even want to show up to Waitangi he’s showing us he’s not the person for the job – he doesn’t want to govern for the people of this nation,” said Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson.

The Treaty of Waitangi was signed between many, but not all, Māori tribes and the British Crown at Waitangi on 6 February 1840 – giving both parties certain rights and privileges.

For Māori, this includes retaining chieftainship over their lands and resources, but differences between the Māori and English versions of the treaty have left it open to interpretation.

Nevertheless, the promise to protect indigenous land rights was repeatedly broken and the economic and cultural impacts of this, coupled with racial discrimination, has led to an inequality that is still being addressed today.

It is in this context that the anniversary of the signing of the treaty has come an important day for discussions about the state of relations between Māori and the state.

This year’s anniversary comes amid ongoing scrutiny of the Treaty Principles Bill.

The minister who has been championing proposal – Act Party leader David Seymour – has attended, despite being asked not to by his hapū (sub-tribe).

Proponents of the bill say it will promote equality among New Zealanders, but those against it say it is divisive and will further disadvantage Māori.

Concern about the bill is so high that a national forum representing several iwi (Māori tribes) recently wrote a letter to King Charles – New Zealand’s head of state – asking for his help.

“We seek your intervention to ensure that the government does not diminish the Crown’s honour,” the open letter reads.

“Please remind them to respect their responsibility to act as an honourable partner on your behalf.”

While it is unlikely the bill will pass – with Luxon and his majority National Party vowing to not back it at its second reading later this year – some of those who have participated in the public hearings about it say its very existence is an insult.

They include former justice minister Kiritapu Allan, who described the proposed legislation as an “abomination”.

“This is a bill that is about scrubbing us [Māori] from history,” she said.

Others have supported it. Economist Ananish Chaudhuri said the conversation about enshrining the Treaty principles in law was needed “if New Zealand is to remain a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural nation”.

He also spoke out against a situation in which different cultures in New Zealand are treated differently, saying his birth nation of India was a “cautionary tale”.

Other steps the government has taken that have caused anger include the dissolution the Māori Health Authority – which was set up under the last Labour government to try and create greater health equality – and the removal of Māori names from government departments.

China has accused the US of making “unfounded and false allegations” about its role in the fentanyl trade to justify tariffs on Chinese products.

The complaint was lodged with the World Trade Organization (WTO) one day after US President Donald Trump raised border taxes on Chinese goods by 10%, a measure he said was intended to address an influx of illegal drugs.

In the filing, China said the measures were “discriminatory and protectionist” and violated trade rules.

But experts have warned that China is unlikely to secure a ruling in its favour as the panel that settles trade disputes remains unable to function. One former WTO official told the BBC it has “no possibility of succeeding”.

The dispute comes as Trump’s plans for tariffs – a tax he has said he wants to see imposed on all foreign shipments into the country – are causing uncertainty across the global trade landscape.

Trump has said tariffs will encourage firms to make their products in the US, repeatedly expressing concern about the size of America’s trade deficit.

But his actions against China – which he has threatened to widen to include Canada, Mexico and Europe – have sparked concerns about their impact on the global economy, including in the US, as businesses respond to trade uncertainty by holding off on investments or pass on new costs to customers.

Sheertex, a Canadian tights-maker, on Wednesday announced that it was temporarily laying off 40% of its nearly 350 workers, citing the tariff questions.

US imports hit their highest on record in December as businesses responded to the threats of tariffs, racing to secure foreign-made toys, mobile phones and computers.

The value of goods brought into the US jumped 4% from November to $293.1bn (£234.4bn), the highest since records began in 1992, the Commerce Department said on Wednesday.

The rise also contributed to the widest trade deficit, or gap, between exports and imports in nearly two years.

The tariffs have also provoked political tension, including retaliation from China, which responded to Trump’s move with tariffs on US goods and an anti-monopoly probe of Google, among other measures.

The speed with which China filed its complaint with the WTO is an indication of Beijing’s readiness for the trade fight.

On Wednesday, Bloomberg also reported that the country’s anti-monopoly regulator was preparing for a possible investigation into Apple’s policies and App Store fees, hitting the company’s shares.

Trump’s moves – which included ordering an end of duty-free treatment for parcels worth less than $800 – will be a major “shock” to some firms, such as Shein and Temu, as they erode the ability to offer ultra-low prices, said Mark Williams, chief China economist at Capital Economics.

But he said he thought for China overall that the effects of Trump’s tariffs would not be too damaging.

“For the wider Chinese economy, this is definitely manageable,” he said.

WTO procedures give the US and China 60 days to resolve their dispute through consultations, at which point China has the right to request adjudication by a panel of judges.

But the final WTO panel that settles trade disputes – known as the appellate body – remains unable to function, as the US refuses to approve the appointment of new judges to the body.

The US also ignored a previous finding by the WTO that earlier tariffs on steel and aluminium that were imposed during Trump’s first term were against the rules.

But Tom Graham, who chaired the WTO’s appellate body in 2016 and 2019, told the BBC it would “probably be a year” before there is a decision from the first stage of Beijing’s complaint and it has little chance of progressing further.

“It may be a strong case, the way the WTO dispute settlement system used to work, but it has no possibility of succeeding here ultimately,” he said.

Jeff Moon, who worked on China trade policy for President Barack Obama, told the BBC that he expected any initial WTO decision to support China’s position.

These cases typically take years to be resolved, however, and because the appeals process has been paralysed, “a final decision will never be issued”.

The former Assistant US Trade Representative for China Affairs added that Beijing needed to file the case to support its frequently stated position that it is the US that undermines the rules-based trading system and the relationship between the two countries.

China ranked as the county with the biggest deficit in goods in December, sending $25.3bn more into the US than it purchased.

The European Union, a target of Trump’s tariff threats, had the second largest gap.

By contrast, the US enjoyed a small surplus of $2.3bn in goods trade with the UK.

Overall, the trade deficit in the US, including services, rose 17% last year to a total of $918.4bn, as imports increased faster than exports.

In December, the trade deficit in goods and services was $98.4bn, the highest since March 2022, the Commerce Department said.

Australian scientists have produced the world’s first kangaroo embryo through in vitro fertilisation (IVF), a breakthrough they say could help save other species from extinction.

Using specimens from eastern grey kangaroos, the researchers successfully injected a single sperm cell into an egg, but said achieving a live birth would require more work and “technical advancements”.

The feat provides important insights into marsupial breeding and could aid efforts to improve the genetic diversity of endangered species such as the koala, Tasmanian devil, northern hairy-nosed wombat and Leadbeater’s possum, lead researcher Andres Gambini said.

Australia houses the largest variety of marsupial mammals, but it also has the highest rate of mammal extinctions.

The University of Queensland experiment looked at the growth of kangaroo eggs and sperm in a laboratory setting before creating embryos using a method known as intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI).

The technique, which is already used on humans and some domestic animals, was tried on eastern grey kangaroos that had died. The species was selected because it is not endangered and has existing high populations.

Despite how iconic marsupial species are in Australia and the crucial role they play in its biodiversity, studies into their tissues have been limited, scientists say.

“We are now refining techniques to collect, culture and preserve marsupial eggs and sperm,” said Dr Gambini, adding that such methods would play a crucial role in safeguarding “the genetic material of these unique and precious animals”.

IVF is being used as a tool to try and preserve endangered species the world over.

Last year, scientists achieved the world’s first IVF rhino pregnancy, successfully transferring a lab-created rhino embryo into a surrogate mother in Kenya.

In 2018, IVF was also used to create the world’s first donkey embryo.

India’s biggest news organisations are seeking to join a lawsuit against OpenAI, the US startup behind ChatGPT, for alleged unauthorised use of their content.

The news organisations include some of India’s oldest publications like The Indian Express, The Hindu, The India Today group, billionaire Gautam Adani-owned NDTV, and over a dozen others.

OpenAI denies the allegations and told the BBC that it uses “publicly available data” that are in line with “widely accepted legal precedents”.

On Wednesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was in Delhi to discuss India’s plan for a low-cost AI ecosystem with IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw.

He said India “should be one of the leaders of the AI revolution” and said earlier comments from 2023, when he said Indian firms would struggle to compete, had been taken out of context.

“India is an incredibly important market for AI in general and for OpenAI in particular,” local media quoted him as saying at the event.

The legal case filed against OpenAI in November by Asian News International (ANI), India’s largest news agency, is the first of its kind in India.

ANI accuses ChatGPT of using its copyrighted material illegally – which OpenAI denies – and is seeking damages of 20m rupees ($230,000; £185,000).

The case holds significance for ChatGPT given its plans to expand in the country. According to a survey, India already has the largest user base of ChatGPT.

Chatbots like ChatGPT are trained on massive datasets collected by crawling through the internet. The content produced by nearly 450 news channels and 17,000 newspapers in India holds huge potential for this.

There is, however, no clarity on what material ChatGPT can legally collect and use for this purpose.

OpenAI is facing at least a dozen lawsuits across the world filed by publishers, artists and news organisations, who have all accused ChatGPT of using their content without permission.

The most prominent of them was filed by The New York Times in December 2023, in which the newspaper demanded “billions of dollars” in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, its backer.

“A decision by any court would also hold some persuasive value for other similar cases around the world,” says Vibhav Mithal, a lawyer specialising in artificial intelligence at the Indian law firm Anand and Anand.

Mr Mithal said the verdict in the lawsuit filed by ANI could “define how these AI models will operate in the future” and “what copyrighted news content can be used to train AI generative models [like ChatGPT]”.

A court ruling in ANI’s favour could spark further legal cases as well as opening the possibility of AI companies entering into license sharing agreements with content creators, which some companies have already started doing.

“But a ruling in OpenAI’s favour will lead to more freedom to use copyrighted protected data to train AI models,” he said.

ANI provides news to its paying subscribers and owns exclusive copyright over a large archive of text, images and videos.

In its suit filed in the Delhi High Court, ANI says that OpenAI used its content to train ChatGPT without permission. ANI has argued that this led to the chatbot getting better and has profited OpenAI.

The news agency said that before filing the suit, it had told OpenAI its content was being used unlawfully and offered to grant the company a license to use its data.

ANI says OpenAI declined the offer and put the news agency on an internal blocklist so that its data is no longer collected. It also asked ANI to disable certain web crawlers to ensure that its content was not picked up by ChatGPT.

The news agency says that despite these measures, ChatGPT picks up its content from websites of its subscribers. This has enriched OpenAI “unjustly”, it says.

ANI also says in its suit that the chatbot produces its content verbatim for certain prompts. In some instances, ANI says, ChatGPT has falsely attributed statements to the news agency, hampering its credibility and misleading the public.

Apart from seeking compensation for damages, ANI has asked the court to direct OpenAI to stop storing and using its work.

In its response, OpenAI says it opposes the case being filed in India since the company and its servers are not located in the country and the chatbot has also not been trained there.

In December, the Federation of Indian Publishers, which claims to represent 80% of Indian publishers including the Indian offices of Penguin Random House and Oxford University Press, filed an application in court saying that they were “directly affected” by this case and should be allowed to present their arguments as well.

A month later, Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA), which represents leading Indian news outlets, and three other media outlets filed a similar application. They argued that while OpenAI had entered into licensing agreements with international news publishers such as the Associated Press and Financial Times, a similar model had not been followed in India.

DNPA told the court the case would affect the livelihood of journalists and the country’s entire news industry. OpenAI has, however, argued that chatbots are not a “substitute” for news subscriptions and are not used for such purposes.

The court has not admitted these applications by the publishers yet and OpenAI has argued that the court should not hear them.

But the judge clarified that even if these associations are allowed to argue, the court will restrict itself to ANI’s claims since the other parties had not filed their own lawsuits.

Meanwhile, OpenAI told the BBC it is engaging in “constructive partnerships and conversations” with news organisations around the world, including India, to “work collaboratively”.

Analysts say the lawsuits filed against ChatGPT across the world could bring into focus aspects of chatbots that have escaped scrutiny so far.

Dr Sivaramakrishnan R Guruvayur, whose research focuses on responsible use of artificial intelligence, says that the data used to train chatbots is one such aspect.

The ANI-OpenAI case will lead the court “to evaluate the data sources” of chatbots, he said.

Governments across the world have been grappling with how to regulate AI. In 2023, Italy blocked ChatGPT saying that the chatbot’s mass collection and storage of personal data raised privacy concerns.

The European Union approved a law to regulate AI last year.

The Indian government too has indicated plans to regulate AI. Before the 2024 election, the government issued an advisory that AI tools that were “under-testing” or “unreliable” should get government permission before launching.

It also asked AI tools to not generate responses that are illegal in India or “threaten the integrity of the electoral process”.

Protesters in Bangladesh have vandalised and set fire to the former family home of deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina, as well as those of other members of her party.

The unrest was sparked by news that Hasina would address the country via social media from India, where she has been in exile since student-led protests ousted her last year.

The 77-year-old Hasina, who was in charge of Bangladesh for 20 years, was seen as an autocrat whose government ruthlessly clamped down on dissent.

On Wednesday evening, an excavator smashed down the house of Hasina’s late father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who is also Bangladesh’s founding president. The structure had been repurposed into a museum.

Hasina’s father is widely viewed as an independence hero, but anger at his daughter has tarnished his legacy among Hasina’s critics.

In a Facebook livestream, Hasina condemned the attack and demanded “justice”.

“They can demolish a building, but they can’t erase history,” she said.

Hasina, once hailed as a pro-democracy icon, has seen her reputation sour after taking office. She has been accused of rigging elections and jailing her critics, and her administration was widely seen as corrupt.

She faces arrest warrants for cracking down on the student-led protests last year, which saw hundreds of people killed.

While Hasina fled to India last August, anger has not dissipated against her and her Awami League partymates.

On Wednesday, protesters also vandalised and torched the houses and businesses of senior Awami League leaders. There have been calls on social media to rid the country of “pilgrimage sites of fascism”.

Police told the BBC’s Bengali service that around 700 protesters showed up at the residence on Wednesday night, and dozens of police officers were deployed.

Since Hasina’s ouster, a caretaker government led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus has kept the country running.

But it has struggled to quell lingering unrest. Thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets in recent months, demanding Hasina to be prosecuted for her deadly crackdown on student protesters.

While Yunus’ government tries to get Hasina extradited from India, it is also dealing with a looming economic crisis – Yunus has accused Hasina of faking Bangladesh’s economic growth and laundering billions of dollars during her rule.

Yunus has pledged to hold elections in late 2025 or early 2026.

Four-year-old Emir was at home with his family when two devastating earthquakes hit southern Turkey on 6 February 2023, claiming the lives of more than 53,500 people.

The bodies of his mother, father and 10-year-old brother were found in the wreckage of their apartment block in Antakya, a city on the Syrian border.

But there was no trace of him.

Two years on, Emir is still missing. Dozens of families continue to search for their loved ones and at least 30 of the missing are children.

Emir’s aunt Nursen Kisa arrived at the collapsed building in Antakya an hour after the earthquake and waited beside the debris for over two weeks while search and rescue operations continued.

“We thought we could find him, or at least a piece of his clothing, some remains, some sort of a trace. But there were none. Neither in the debris nor among the bodies,” she said.

Since then, she has been on a mission to find her missing nephew.

She filed a missing person’s claim at the police station, only for the authorities to call three months later to say they had no paperwork showing Emir was missing.

Her initial inquiry most likely got lost so the whole process had to start from scratch.

In the meantime Nursen posted pictures of her nephew all over social media in the hope that someone would recognise him. She visited dozens of orphanages across Turkey.

Her sister’s remains were exhumed so that DNA samples could be compared with remains that had yet to be identified.

None of her efforts were successful.

She said she had even had occasional calls from local authorities asking how Emir was coping. For her it meant that her nephew had not yet been officially recorded as missing.

Two years on from the earthquakes, the number of missing is still unclear.

In April 2023, the internal affairs minister at the time said “a missing person claim was filed for 297 people, 86 of whom were children”.

By November 2024, current Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced that 75 people were still missing and that 30 of them were children.

That contrasted with the main opposition party, who said they had a list of 140 missing people, 38 of whom were children. They shared their list with the minister but received no response, they told BBC News Turkish.

Sema Gulec, spokesperson of a foundation to locate the missing, believes the discrepancy may be because the interior ministry has not counted those whose families have officially accepted them as deceased.

After the earthquake, various allegations were made about children being rescued from under the rubble but then going missing.

The implication was that they had then been abducted, although these claims were denied by authorities.

In January 2024, the governing party and its right-wing ally voted down a parliamentary motion calling for an investigation into the missing children.

Then a commission to investigate the cases of the missing people was formed within Turkey’s Disaster Management Authority (Afad) – a government agency that operates under the interior ministry.

Afad has been using several techniques to search for the missing, says Sema Gulec, whose 24-year-old son is among the disappeared.

These techniques range from comparing DNA taken from the relatives of the missing with samples from the bodies buried without identification, to using a facial recognition system and comparing pictures of the missing with records filed with the police, she explains.

However, opposition figures have accused authorities of irregularities or incompetence. They cite the example of a young woman who was buried under a different identity, only to be exhumed and identified a year later.

“There could be dozens of others buried under false identities,” said Nermin Yildirim Kara, an MP from the main opposition party.

She also argued that some of the rubble was cleared before all necessary scanning was made, citing as an example a famous residency building in Antakya where 48 people remain unaccounted for.

“That debris was cleared in such haste that maybe some of the remains also got destroyed in the process,” she said.

BBC News Turkish approached both Afad and the interior ministry for comment, but they declined to respond.

In the meantime, families of the missing continue their search for answers.

“A proper scan was not carried out. They removed the debris immediately, and we could not stop them,” said Ayse Ambarcioglu, whose sister and six-month-old niece went missing.

“Two years have gone by already. What are [the authorities] supposed to do now – bring a piece of bone and say this belongs to your sister?”

“We would settle just for a single bone, but nothing was found,” said Caner Yurdakul, whose sister, brother-in-law and their six-year-old twin daughters disappeared after the earthquake.

The cities scarred by the devastating tremors in southern Turkey are rife with such accounts. But many relatives of the missing are determined to carry on with their search for answers.

“There is nothing yet to prove that my nephew Emir is either dead or alive,” said Nursen Kisa. “I am never going to succumb to pressure and report him as deceased.”

Don’t mess with Canada – that’s the private message to the US from the very top of Ottawa’s political system. Just like nearly a century ago with the infamous American Smoot-Hawley tariffs, Canada got its retaliation in to Donald Trump’s import taxes very quickly.

While the White House is claiming Canada’s pledge to spend $1.3bn (£1bn) on a border protection plan has given it diplomatic victory in its battle over fentanyl traffic, there was very little conceded that was not already planned by America’s northern neighbour.

Crucially, both Mexico and Canada were undeterred by a clear threat in Trump’s executive orders that any retaliation would lead to higher tariffs on imports into the US.

After consulting each other, Canada and Mexico instead both negotiated a month’s pause with Trump.

The returning US president likes making threats of tariffs on most days, and in many directions.

Since his inauguration, these have also been directed at Denmark, Colombia, China, Taiwan, the European Union as well as all of the Brics countries which include Brazil, Russia and India.

The rationale for his tariffs keeps changing and much about this situation defies logical explanation.

So, Mexico, Canada and every other country facing tariffs or the threat of them have to decipher what Trump is really playing at.

And when they’ve done that, the question for the whole world is whether what we are seeing is an attempt by the US president to rewrite the entire global monetary system – and at what risk to America?

Trump has claimed that fentanyl trafficking was the legal pretext for tariffs, allowing him to bypass Congress and use emergency powers to impose border taxes on Canada, Mexico and China, by declaring an “unusual or extraordinary threat”.

But while talking about the fentanyl trade, he also referred to Canada’s goods trade surplus with the US (which means Canada sells more to the US than it imports), and introduced the idea that Canada should become the “51st state” of America.

While any country might demand talks about both illicit and legal trade flows, it is difficult to see how to handle these conversations when there is a parallel threat of continental annexation of a free trade ally which is also part of Nato and one of the Group of Seven (G7) most advanced economies in the world.

Europe, meanwhile, seems unwilling to stir the pot as it attempts to work out the president’s precise motivations and how this feeds itself into what he decides over Transatlantic tariffs.

Trump’s long-standing animus with the EU comes from the bloc’s substantial goods trade surplus with the US, arising from areas such as high-end German car exports.

Underlying all of this is a perceived unfairness that other markets are more restrictive against America such as when it comes to the prices paid for US drugs or fines placed on US tech companies.

But if this really is about trade deficits, it is something of a mystery as to why Trump has not yet announced tariffs against the likes of Vietnam, Japan and South Korea – who have far bigger surpluses with the US.

In any case, for Trump to focus solely on goods means that he is willingly ignoring the US’s great export – services.

I put this precise point to the EU Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic last month.

He told me: “Sure, we have a trade surplus in goods, but the US has a trade surplus in services.

“And on top of it, every year, €300bn (£249bn) is flowing across the Atlantic into the American companies from our pension funds, from the saving accounts of the European citizens because they’re investing in the US. So I think that it’s a pretty balanced relationship.”

As it happens, the UK trade position with the US is more balanced, a point made to me by the Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds. In fact, on some measures, the US has a surplus with Britain.

Amid the fog of Trump’s true intentions, European negotiators have resorted to stressing co-operation, partnership and deals with the US and studiously avoided directly criticising even the extraordinary suggestion of using tariffs against Nato-ally Denmark over the fate of Greenland.

In November 2024, Stephen Miran, before becoming President Trump’s White House chief economics advisor, authored a paper laying out further questions that could determine how much more the US should tariff specific countries.

These ranged from an assessment of whether a country applies similar tariffs to the US, suppresses its currency, respects US intellectual property, pays its Nato obligations, votes against the US at the United Nations or its “leaders grandstand against the US in the international theatre”.

It also talked of forcing other nations “to choose between facing a tariff on their exports to the American consumer or applying tariffs to their imports from China”, asking: “Which will they choose?”

The president himself was pretty clear in his video address to a stunned World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January.

“Your choice,” he said to the assembled international executives. Build your goods in American factories with tax incentives, or import into the US from foreign factories and pay tariffs that would raise “hundreds of billions of dollars and even trillions of dollars” for the US Treasury.

“Most of the world has come to understand that Trump does use tariffs as a negotiating tool,” Stephen Moore, a former Trump economic advisor who recently visited the president, told me.

It may be that a part of Trump’s logic is very simple: remodel the US tax system so that everything coming into the country attracts a levy but, in return, the public sees income tax rates slashed.

“By the way, I do think at the end of the day, there will be an across-the-board tariff imposed by Trump,” says Mr Moore.

“He’s talked about this, that if you’re bringing something into the United States whether it’s from Britain, whether it’s Mexico, Canada, China, Europe, you’re going to pay a little bit more but if something is made in the United States, he’s going to lower the tax. And to a lot of Americans, that’s a very attractive proposition.”

Mr Moore has suggested a 15% universal tariff on all imports from everywhere in order to fund a cut in income tax rates down to 15%.

Mr Miran’s paper also contains a proposal that led to jaws dropping in global central banks and finance ministries: bring down the value of the dollar in order to boost US industry and exports.

Arranging this would mean a fundamental change to the way the global monetary system operates. But Mr Miran suggests that punitive tariffs could be used as leverage to make reluctant trading partners like Europe and China “become more receptive” to the idea.

He suggests that in time there could be a summit of the world’s economic powers, where allies and rivals thrash out the revaluation of the dollar, perhaps at the president’s Florida residence. It could be known as the Mar-a-Lago Accord.

Early discussions of the idea in international forums have been highly sceptical, recalling the history of similar attempts to manage global currency values.

But it is the recently published concept of the top White House economic advisor. Tariff now, tariff hard and tariff everywhere in order to, in the future, get the world to help bring down the value of the dollar.

Such a radical idea comes with risk and already simply with the tariffs, there is a danger for the White House that the US overplays its hand.

Mark Carney, who is frontrunner to replace Justin Trudeau as Canadian Liberal Party leader, and as Prime Minister, at least until an election, has a rather unique approach.

The former governor of both the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada decided to come out punching, ridiculing the fentanyl rationale and telling the BBC that Canada would retaliate “dollar for dollar” and that Canadians would “stand up to a bully”.

He said that the tariff move would rebound on the US economy itself by fuelling inflation, forcing the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates and crippling the ability of the US to sign trade deals, given they would have effectively ripped up their biggest – the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) – just a few years after the president had personally renegotiated it.

Mr Carney then publicly suggested that Canada removes a subsidy from exports to the US of its oil, and stressed that Canada’s green investments might need to be protected from US carbon emissions.

For those countries like the UK trying to avoid tariffs, he had a simple message: “Good luck”.

The clear sense was that from his own experience of having dealt with Trump at the G20, the way to deal with him was to show strength.

This is partly a calculation that the muted opposition to these policies within the US will not be sustained. Again, the harder, more strategic and more coordinated the retaliation, the more pause for thought it will give big US corporates and some in the competing courts around the President.

Elon Musk, the normally prolific social media poster on his X platform and chief executive of electric vehicle-maker Tesla, was curiously largely quiet about the single biggest move from the president.

He eventually reposted the news from the Mexican president that their tariffs had been delayed.

A leading US tech chief executive told me that his company was already making plans, assuming they would be on the receiving end of retaliatory tariffs.

His hope was that Trump’s focus on the rising value of the US stock market would create a natural restraint against excessive tariffs. Some saw the modest fall on the Dow Jones index on Monday as contributing to this week’s pauses.

Retaliation is standard procedure in trade wars.

Indeed in the most famous of them all, when US Republicans passed the calamitous 1930s Smoot-Hawley tariffs, Canada was the first to hit back, doing so before the US had even finished legislating. History points to Henry Ford being one of those begging Herbert Hoover to veto the Smoot-Hawley tariffs in 1930.

And, in 2025, the car industry is one obvious potential tariff loser.

“It’s true to say that there is no such thing as a Canadian auto industry, an American auto industry and a Mexican auto industry,” says Peter Frise, a professor of mechanical and automotive engineering at the University of Windsor.

“There are Canadian, American, and Mexican components of a North American auto industry and the integration among the three countries is absolutely foundational to how the industry works.”

Not only are models like the Honda Civic, which is hugely popular in the US, manufactured in Canada – Prof Frise says “very few” cars assembled in the US will not contain some parts that come from across the border. And so, says he adds, tariffs “would drive up costs for everyone” – US consumers included.

Another risk for Trump is that as Mr Carney and Mr Sefcovic said, they are all now responding to the direction of US trade policy by diversifying with one another. The EU is busy doing trade deals with Latin America. “There is huge demand in the outside world for free and fair trade relationships,” says Mr Sefcovic.

The UK has also restarted trade negotiations with India and the Gulf countries.

Reynolds says that the “challenging international position” means the UK has to push its “genuine competitive advantage” as the “most connected market in the world” with the US, the EU and China.

The other issue here is that if the direction of travel is a universal tariff, as Trump and his advisors keep suggesting, is there much incentive to try to avoid it?

There is some startling thinking circulating in Trumponomics circles. It is talk of that revenue grab of trillions of dollars that is spooking even allies who think they might escape the tariffs.

It sounds like a wild economic gamble. But such talk is relative, at a time when the US president is putting tariffs on his closest economic G7 and Nato partner over fentanyl, while simultaneously claiming it should become part of the US.

It could be an extensive and surprising tariff war. This week’s trade dramas are just early skirmishes.

The government has decided to dismantle Grenfell Tower, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner told a meeting with bereaved relatives and survivors.

Seventy two people died when the tower block in west London caught fire in June 2017.

The decision follows several years of debate over the future of the 24-storey tower, with some hoping it would remain in place as a lasting reminder of the tragedy and others wanting it replaced with a new memorial.

A spokesperson for Grenfell United, a group which represents bereaved families and survivors, said “no-one” at the meeting supported Rayner’s decision to “demolish the tower” and people “had been ignored”.

Separately, the head of a local residents’ association told Radio 4’s The World Tonight he and “the overwhelming majority” supported the decision to take down the tower.

A formal announcement by the government is expected to be made on Friday.

The spokesperson for Grenfell United said Rayner had refused to confirm how many bereaved and survivors had been spoken to in the “recent, short four week consultation”.

“Today’s meeting showed just how upset bereaved and survivors are about not having their views heard or considered in this decision,” they said in a statement.

“Ignoring the voices of bereaved on the future of our loved ones’ gravesite is disgraceful and unforgivable.”

Kimia Zabihyan, from Grenfell Next of Kin, which also acts for some of the bereaved families, told the BBC she had attended the meeting with Rayner where she said the tower would be deconstructed down to the ground level.

She described the meeting as “charged”, but said Rayner appeared to have come along with the “best of intentions”.

“The deputy prime minister was very clear that she has taken this decision very seriously, that it is a serious responsibility and that it is a very sensitive decision to make, but it is one that she felt she had to make,” said Ms Zabihyan, adding that Rayner said she had made the decision based on what engineers had recommended.

The government has previously been warned the structure may be unsafe due to the extent of the fire damage.

Ms Zabihyan said she understood the government’s rationale for the decision, but said many people were very unhappy.

She said that at the meeting, one person had told Rayner: “No-one cares about this more than me, because I had just bits of bone to bury of my mother so that building means a lot to me. That is where her soul is, where her ashes are. It’s in that building.”

Following the meeting, a government spokesperson said: “The priority for the deputy prime minister is to meet with and write to the bereaved, survivors and the immediate community to let them know her decision on the future of the Grenfell Tower.

“This is a deeply personal matter for all those affected, and the deputy prime minister is committed to keeping their voice at the heart of this.”

Mushtaq Lasharie, a local resident and chairman of Lancaster West Estate Residents Association, told Radio 4: “We were waiting over seven and a half years for a closure and I hope this decision will bring a closure.

“When we surveyed a few years back the overwhelming majority wanted to take it out and the reason is, number one, it is dangerous, number two, it reminds us every day.”

Emma Dent Coad, who was Labour MP for Kensington at the time of the Grenfell fire and is now an independent councillor on Kensington and Chelsea Council, said a lot of the bereaved and families were “absolutely distraught”.

She said: “We’ve been told the work will start after the 8th anniversary which is this coming June and will be gone by the 10th so that may take two years to deconstruct as they’re calling it.”

She said while there were concerns from the local community about public health issues some of the bereaved wanted the tower to stay – ” a lot of people regarded it as a sacred site”.

The fire on 14 June 2017 was originally caused by a faulty fridge in a fourth-floor flat and quickly spread around the block because it was covered in highly flammable cladding.

A public inquiry concluded in September the disaster had been the result of numerous government failures, and failure of the construction industry to act on the dangers of flammable materials on high-rise buildings.

The west London tower block was covered in combustible cladding because of the “systematic dishonesty” of firms who made and sold it, inquiry chairman Sir Martin Moore-Bick said.

Many bereaved families have called for criminal action to be brought against some of those implicated in the inquiry but police and prosecutors have said that no decision will be made on potential charges until the end of 2026.

In a 2023 report, the Grenfell Tower Memorial Commission set out a series of recommendations for a “sacred space”, designed to be a “peaceful place for remembering and reflecting”.

It said the space should include a garden, monument and dedicated space for the private expression of grief and mourning for the families who lost loved ones.

A shortlist of five potential design teams was announced last month, and a winning design team is set to be selected this summer.

The Palestinian president has said he strongly rejects President Donald Trump’s proposal for the US to take over Gaza and resettle the 2.1 million Palestinians living there.

“We will not allow the rights of our people… to be infringed on,” Mahmoud Abbas stressed, warning that Gaza was “an integral part of the State of Palestine” and forced displacement would be a serious violation of international law.

Hamas, whose 15-month war with Israel has caused widespread devastation, said Trump’s plan would “put oil on the fire” in the region.

The idea was also rejected by regional powers including Jordan and Egypt, which the US president wants to take in many of the displaced Gazans, and some key US allies.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said Gaza was an integral part of a future Palestinian state, and warned against “any form of ethnic cleansing”.

He told a meeting in New York the rights of Palestinians to live as human beings in their own land was slipping further out of reach. The world, he said, “has seen a chilling, systematic dehumanisation and demonisation of an entire people”.

Saudi Arabia said Palestinians would “not move” from their land and it would not normalise ties with Israel without the establishment of a Palestinian state.

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Trump’s proposal could “change history” and was “worth paying attention to”.

Trump’s proposal comes two weeks after the start of a fragile ceasefire in Gaza, during which Hamas has released some Israeli hostages it is holding in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

The Israeli military launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to an unprecedented cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.

• Latest updates: Trump’s Gaza takeover plan widely criticised
• ‘We won’t go out of Gaza’: Palestinians express shock and defiance
• Why does Trump want to take over Gaza and could he do it?
• Trump’s Gaza plan will be seen as flying in face of international law

More than 47,540 people have been killed and 111,600 injured in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Most of Gaza’s population has also been displaced multiple times, almost 70% of buildings are estimated to be damaged or destroyed, the healthcare, water, sanitation and hygiene systems have collapsed, and there are shortages of food, fuel, medicine and shelter.

President Trump’s first major remarks on Middle East policy shattered decades of US thinking on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“The US will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too,” he told reporters at the White House on Tuesday night, alongside the visiting Israeli prime minister.

“We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site, and get rid of the destroyed buildings.”

Trump said Palestinians living in Gaza would have to be relocated to achieve his vision of creating “the Riviera of the Middle East”, and that they would be housed in Jordan, Egypt and other countries.

When asked whether the refugees would eventually be allowed to return, he said that “the world’s people” would live in Gaza, before adding “also Palestinians”.

Trump also brushed aside previous objections from Jordan and Egypt’s leaders to taking in refugees, insisting that they would eventually “open their hearts and will give us the kind of land that we need to get this done”.

Netanyahu later said there was nothing wrong with idea of “allowing the Gazans who want to leave to leave” the territory.

“They can leave, they can then come back, they can relocate and come back. But you have to rebuild Gaza,” he told Fox News on Wednesday.

A unnamed senior Israeli official was also quoted as saying that Trump’s ideas surpassed all his “expectations and dreams”.

Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said the proposal was “the real answer to 7 October” and pledged to “definitively bury… the dangerous idea of a Palestinian state”.

The White House sought to clarify President Trump’s proposal, with spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt telling journalists the president was committed to rebuilding Gaza and “temporarily” relocating its residents. Trump said on Tuesday the displacement would be permanent.

She also said the president had not committed to sending US troops to Gaza.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has characterised the plan as a “generous offer” to rebuild Gaza, not as a hostile takeover.

And Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth praised Trump’s “outside the box” thinking and said the Pentagon was “prepared to look at all options” related to the enclave.

The Palestinian leadership condemned the plan in a statement issued on Wednesday.

“These calls represent a serious violation of international law,” President Abbas said, adding that “peace and stability will not be achieved in the region without the establishment of a Palestinian state”.

Abbas leads Hamas rivals Fatah and governs parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

He declared that Palestinians would not “give up their land, rights, and sacred sites” and that “the Gaza Strip is an integral part of the land of the State of Palestine, along with the West Bank and East Jerusalem”.

The head of the Palestinian mission to the UK, Husam Zomlot, told the BBC: “It’s a call for ethnic cleansing, for the forced displacement and expulsion of a people from their native land. It is immoral, it is illegal, and it is dangerous.”

Hamas – which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US, the UK and other countries – said in a statement that Trump was “aiming for the United States to occupy the Gaza Strip”.

It warned that his proposal was “aggressive to our people and cause, won’t serve stability in the region and will only put oil on the fire”.

Palestinians in Gaza also said the plan was completely out of the question.

“We have endured nearly a year and a half of bombings and destruction, yet we remain in Gaza,” one man told BBC Arabic.

“We would rather die in Gaza than leave it. We will stay here until we rebuild it. Trump can do as he pleases, but we firmly reject his decisions.”

The UN human rights office warned that any forcible transfer in, or deportation of, people from occupied territory was strictly prohibited under international law.

Palestinians also fear a repeat of the “Nakba”, or “catastrophe”, when hundreds of thousands fled or were driven from their homes before and during the war that followed the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.

Many of those refugees ended up in Gaza, where they and their descendants make up three quarters of the population. Another 900,000 registered refugees live in the West Bank, which Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war along with Gaza, while 3.4 million others live in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, according to the UN.

Israel unilaterally withdrew its troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005, though it retained control of its shared border, airspace and shoreline, giving it effective control of the movement of people and goods. The UN still regards Gaza as Israeli-occupied territory because of the level of control Israel has.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry said the kingdom “unequivocally rejected” Trump’s proposal for post-war Gaza and reiterated that it would continue its efforts to establish an independent Palestinian state and “not establish diplomatic relations with Israel without that”.

“Achieving lasting and just peace is impossible without the Palestinian people obtaining their legitimate rights,” it added.

Following talks in Cairo, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said he had agreed with Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa on “the importance of moving forward with early recovery projects… without the Palestinians leaving the Gaza Strip, especially with their commitment to their land and refusal to leave it”.

During a later meeting in Amman with President Abbas, Jordan’s King Abdullah II expressed “rejection of any attempts to annex land or displace Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank” and called “for supporting the steadfastness of Palestinians on their lands”, according to the royal court.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said the relocation of Palestinians from Gaza in any form was “unacceptable”, adding: “It is absurd to even consider it.”

Western governments also expressed alarm about any forced displacement.

France’s foreign ministry said it would “constitute a serious violation of international law, an attack on the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians, but also a major obstacle to the two-state solution and a major destabilising factor for our close partners Egypt and Jordan, as well as for the entire region”.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said Palestinians “must be allowed home”.

“They must be allowed to rebuild, and we should be with them in that rebuild on the way to a two-state solution,” he told Parliament.

For most Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip there is already a painful history of forced displacement that is at the heart of their response to US President Donald Trump’s plan to take over the war-torn territory.

Speaking to the BBC, residents of a tent camp in the central town of Deir al-Balah expressed shock and defiance at the idea of being permanently resettled outside.

“Even if it costs us our souls, we will not leave Gaza,” said Mahmoud Bahjat, who is from the north. “We are against Trump’s decision. He ended the war but displacing us would end our lives.”

On the other hand, many Israelis have been expressing satisfaction at the radical ideas from the White House, particularly those on the far-right who seek to resettle Gaza.

Since a ceasefire took hold in Gaza – on the eve of Trump’s inauguration last month – there have been dramatic scenes of Palestinians returning to what is left of their homes.

Families have piled up possessions into cars and donkey carts or walked long distances along the coastal road, often just to reach piles of rubble.

According to the UN, at least 1.9m people, or about 90% of the population, across Gaza became displaced during 15 months of war.

The scenes of Palestinians on the move have echoed black-and-white footage from 1948 and the mass evacuations that took place during fighting before and after the creation of the state of Israel.

More than 700,000 people were then forced from their homes. The majority of Gazans are descendants of those original refugees.

Standing between rows of plastic sheeting in the Deir al-Balah camp, Jamalat Wadi says that her family has now sacrificed enough and that they are determined to build a new home.

“We endured a year and half of war. When [the Israeli military] finally withdraw from here, we want to remove the rubble and live on the land.”

“After the US made Israel destroy our houses in Gaza, he is telling us that Gaza is destroyed and we have to leave?” Ms Wadi goes on. “If there is only one drop of blood left in our children, we won’t go out of Gaza. We won’t give up on it!”

Many Palestinians we spoke to called on Jordan and Egypt – which Trump is pressing to take displaced Gazans – and for Saudi Arabia – which he wants to normalise relations with Israel – to hold out against US pressure.

• Latest updates: Trump’s Gaza takeover plan widely criticised
• Why does Trump want to take over Gaza and could he do it?
• Trump’s Gaza plan will be seen as flying in face of international law

Since its establishment, Israel has rejected the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their historic homeland, as this would have left the Jewish people as a minority within its borders. Today, there are about 5.9m Palestinians registered by the UN, with most living in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

Israel has long argued that those who were dispossessed should be absorbed by Arab countries, pointing out that thousands of Jews left these to come to Israel during the regional turmoil after it became a state.

Israeli officials suggest that by proposing to take over war-torn Gaza, creating a “Riviera of the Middle East” after resettling Palestinians elsewhere, the Trump administration is offering fresh thinking on a long-running conflict.

While Trump notably did not back the re-establishment of settlements in Gaza, settler leaders have reacted enthusiastically to the idea of displacement, calling on the Israeli government to act immediately.

Israel occupied Gaza and the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war and began constructing settlements in both that are widely seen as illegal under international law. In 2005, Israel withdrew its troops and settlers from Gaza, although the UN still regards it as Israeli-occupied territory.

“Assuming Trump’s declarations about transferring Gazans to other countries throughout the world actualise, we need to move quickly and build settlements throughout the Gaza Strip,” stated the Nachala settlement organisation, which claims it has hundreds of activists ready to move there.

“No part of Israel should be left unsettled by Jews. If we leave any area desolate it is liable to be overtaken by our enemies,” Nachala added.

In contrast, the Israeli anti-occupation NGO, Peace Now, dismissed the Trump plan. It backs the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel as part of the long-standing international formula for peace in the region, known as the two-state solution.

Peace Now said there was “no feasible way to transfer two million Gazans” outside.

“It’s time to stop fantasising about ethnic cleansing and forced displacement in Gaza and face reality – there is only one solution that can guarantee security and stability in the Middle East: two states for two peoples and an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” it commented.

Many Israelis and Palestinians are concerned about what the latest announcements could mean for the current talks on extending the Gaza ceasefire.

The next stage of the deal is meant to see the return of some 60 remaining Israeli hostages – not all of whom are alive – and a more permanent end to the fighting.

However, the brother of one Israeli hostage held by Hamas told us: “I don’t take what Trump says too seriously. It’s not realistic. He’s shooting for the stars.”

He added that this was “like with Canada” – referring to the US leader’s suggestions that it should become his country’s “51st state”.

Some Gazans did acknowledge that they felt one aspect of President Trump’s declaration was based on reality – his comments that the small coastal strip has become “unliveable”.

Last month, a UN damage assessment showed that clearing over 50m tonnes of rubble left in Gaza as a result of the heavy Israeli bombardment could take 21 years and cost up to $1.2bn.

Bilal al-Rantisi, a former customs worker, is in shock after arriving back in Gaza City with his wife and four children having spent more than a year displaced in the south.

“We have returned to a catastrophe, the worst in history,” he said despondently. “I found neither my home nor my siblings’ homes were standing. Trump doesn’t speak in vain. He knows that Gaza is no longer a place fit for human habitation.”

He said he was hoping to sell his car and his wife’s gold jewellery to raise funds.

“I will leave Gaza at the earliest possible opportunity. Yes, all Gazans oppose displacement but putting emotions aside, if people were given the chance, many would choose to leave.”

When a real-estate developer becomes the US president, don’t be surprised if American foreign policy includes a heavy helping of real-estate development.

That’s probably the biggest conclusion to draw from Donald Trump’s stunning proposal for the US to take over Gaza and turn it into a resort for all the people of the world to enjoy – a “Riviera of the Middle East”, in his words.

It also presents the latest iteration of a question that has persisted as long as Trump has been involved at the highest level of American politics.

Should Trump’s Gaza development plan, which includes the resettlement of more than two million Palestinians and US “ownership” of the contested lands be taken literally or seriously? Both, or neither?

Trump’s proposal flies in the face of the deeply held wishes of the Palestinian people and has been summarily rejected by the Arab nations that would have to play an integral part in resettling those displaced from war-torn Gaza.

It has also triggered howls of protest from the international community, as well as the president’s domestic critics in the Democratic Party.

“Developing war-torn land like a Trump golf resort isn’t a peace plan, it’s an insult,” said Democratic Congressman Troy Carter of Louisiana. “Serious leaders pursue real solutions, not real estate deals.”

• Live Updates:Trump’s Gaza plan

• Why does Trump want to take over Gaza and could he do it?

Even some of Trump’s most steadfast Republican allies have seemed wary of the president’s suggestion that US forces could occupy Gaza, clearing rubble and removing unexploded Israeli ordinance.

“I think most South Carolinians would probably not be excited about sending Americans to take over Gaza,” Lindsey Graham, who represents South Carolina in the US Senate, said on Wednesday. “I think that might be problematic, but I’ll keep an open mind.”

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky was even more blunt.

“I thought we voted for America First,” he wrote on X. “We have no business contemplating yet another occupation to doom our treasure and spill our soldiers’ blood.”

Paul highlights what has been an apparent contradiction in the early weeks of Trump’s presidency. While Trump has culled US foreign aid and pledged to focus on American domestic concerns, he has also leavened his remarks with talk of American expansionism.

His interest in acquiring Greenland is persistent and, according to administration officials, deadly serious. His talk of making Canada the “51st state” and retaking the Panama Canal is no longer being treated like a joke.

And now Trump, one of the most vocal right-wing critics of the US invasion and reconstruction of Iraq, is suggesting a new Middle East nation-building project.

As for the specific ideas behind Trump’s latest proposal, they may be shocking for some but they shouldn’t be too much of a shock.

The president spoke of “cleaning out” Gaza and resettling Palestinians in remarks to reporters on Air Force One just days after his inauguration.

During the presidential campaign, he told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that Gaza could be “better than Monaco”, but that the Palestinians “never took advantage” of their “best location in the Middle East”.

This also isn’t the first time Trump has viewed a seemingly intractable foreign policy situation as an exciting business opportunity.

During meetings with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un in 2018, President Trump marvelled at the hermit nation’s “great beaches”, which could someday have the “best hotels”.

Those ambitious dreams have been shelved – and Trump’s Gaza vision, which would require a significant commitment of American blood and fortune at a time when it’s paring back its foreign involvements, will almost certainly meet the same fate.

But Trump’s Gaza proposal does represent a marked shift in America’s commitment to a two-state solution to the Palestinian situation.

A generous interpretation of the American strategy is that it is designed to shake up the Middle East powers and force them to commit more of their own resources, and political will, to finding a long-term solution to the situation in Gaza.

But such a strategy would come with risks.

The multi-step Israeli-Hamas ceasefire hangs in the balance. The Palestinians could view Trump’s comments as a sign that the US is not interested in a lasting peace, while Israeli hard-liners who are a key part of Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition may celebrate it as Trump’s green light for further expanding Israeli settlements.

Arab nations – some of whom worked with the first Trump administration to produce normalised relations with Israel in the Abraham Accords – may doubt whether Trump in his second term can be a reliable negotiating partner.

There are now years of evidence that Trump’s focus can shift on a moment’s notice. In the end, he could abandon all attempts at brokering a durable Middle East peace, blaming the Palestinians and their Arab allies for what he might view as their decision to reject the prospect of a better life removed from past conflicts.

Then it’s back to trade wars with Canada, condominiums in North Korea, mining sites in Greenland or some other challenge that does not divide his own party or require solving centuries of animosity with seemingly intractable ancestral concerns.

“I’m alive thanks to USAID,” says Dmytro Sherembey.

He’s been living with HIV for 24 years in Ukraine, and says the agency, which distributes billions of dollars of aid around the world, has helped prevent the virus from spreading there.

“Every second HIV-positive person in Ukraine was identified thanks to this programme,” Mr Sherembey adds.

But the future of USAID (the United States Agency for International Development) is now very uncertain.

One of US President Donald Trump’s first actions after returning to office was signing an executive order pausing almost all foreign assistance for 90 days while a review could be carried out. He has said USAID is run by “radical left lunatics” and is getting away with “tremendous fraud” – without giving evidence.

Mr Sherembey, who heads 100% Life, the largest patient-led organisation in Ukraine, recalls that when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, warehouses storing HIV medication were bombed.

It was USAID assistance that made it possible to quickly procure replacement medication and distribute it across the country, he explains.

“USAID’s slogan is that this is assistance from the American people. But it turns out that this aid could be stopped by the decision of one person,” he says.

USAID was established in 1961 by President John F Kennedy. It has around 10,000 employees and a budget of nearly $40bn (£32.25bn), out of a total of $68bn in US government foreign aid spending.

It has bases in more than 60 countries, and works in dozens of others. However, most of the work on the ground is carried out by other organisations that it contracts and funds.

The range of activities it undertakes is vast. Its work includes providing food in countries where people are starving, to operating the world’s gold-standard famine detection system, which uses data analysis to try to predict where food shortages are emerging.

• USAID staff will be put on leave starting on Friday
• What is USAID and why is Trump reportedly poised to close it?
• Inside an Islamic State camp shaken by US aid cuts
• How a US freeze upended global aid in a matter of days

Elon Musk – the world’s richest man, who has been tasked by Trump with shrinking the US federal government – has called the agency “a criminal organisation”, without providing evidence, and has said it is “time for it to die”.

But in countries such as Afghanistan, the end of USAID could cause huge problems. The agency is one of the biggest donors to the country’s health sector, funding projects that provide life-saving services to mothers and children.

A doctor responsible for USAID-funded projects there says more than 60 of his team, including midwives, nurses and doctors, were told to stay at home after funding was paused.

“The future appears bleak and the impact on patients is massive,” he says.

“If the funding halt continues, mothers will be forced to give birth at home as the facilities are closed and it will increase mortality rates,” one midwife says.

USAID’s work also branches out into areas like cybersecurity. One Iranian activist, focusing on anti-censorship, says their organisation operates with USAID funding.

“If an opposition figure, a university student, or a women’s rights activist is arrested in Iran, it is NGOs like the one I work for that immediately act so the person’s email and social media accounts are locked and removed,” says the activist, who requested anonymity due to fear of reprisals.

This has meant that if Iranian intelligence agents force detainees to reveal their passwords, they cannot access that person’s communications, the activist says.

“If an internet company works with the regime to restrict Iranians’ access to the internet, we expose them publicly and get them… sanctioned by the EU and the US,” the activist adds.

“All of this work is now about to be stopped because of the funding freeze.”

Among its other activities, USAID also grants scholarships – with 1,077 undergraduate students in Egypt alone receiving money. Trump’s pause on international spending and his comments on USAID have thrown the futures of these students into doubt.

“I feel like I don’t know my fate. I was once a top student with a bright future, but now my future looks dark, and I fear heading in the wrong direction,” said Mohamed Ashraf, one of the affected students.

Trump is a long-term critic of overseas spending, and has said it does not represent value for money for American taxpayers – singling out USAID, which he has described as wasteful. But whether he can actually shut down the agency is not yet clear.

Closing USAID altogether, as Musk wants, would likely require an act of Congress – in which Trump’s Republican Party holds slim majorities in both chambers.

The administration reportedly intends to merge the US government’s main overseas aid agency with the Department of State. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says he is now the acting head of the agency – which says thousands of its staff around the world will be put on leave at the end of the week.

For Mr Sherembey in Ukraine, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

“My life is now at risk. If my hospital runs out of this medication, I will have to search for it elsewhere,” he says.

“But the tragedy for an HIV-positive person in Ukraine is that you cannot simply go to a pharmacy and buy these drugs. You cannot buy them on the black market. HIV-positive people here have no alternatives,” he adds.

“It is barbaric that we have returned to the Stone Age.”

The view is spectacular from the top of Ponte Tower, one of the most famous buildings in the South African city of Johannesburg.

Built in 1975, standing almost 200m (656 ft) tall, it’s a long-established feature of the city skyline, once the tallest residential building in Africa.

But like the city, it’s had its ups and downs. In the 1980s it was taken over by criminal gangs, and its hollow core filled with rubbish up to 50m deep.

“The building got hijacked. There were no utilities, so most of the people were actually throwing their trash right inside the building, until it reached the 14th floor,” said Delight Sithole, who runs tours of the building.

He added: “There were some dead bodies here, illegal firearms, drugs. The smell, I’m sure it was just horrible, just really like, hell on earth.

“If you asked anybody what happens in that round building, somebody would have something interesting or scary to say about it,” said Sifiso Zikhali, who works with Mr Sithole in an organisation called Dlala Nje, which means “just play” in Zulu.

“People were scared of the neighbourhood,” he said.

Johannesburg was seen as being one of the most dangerous cities in the world.

But the building turned itself around 15 years ago in the wake of the Fifa World Cup hosted in South Africa, and people started moving back in.

After Covid, people returned and the building is now around three-quarters full.

There is no escaping the issues that Johannesburg, and South Africa, face.

Despite signs of improvement in the most recent statistics, crime is still a major issue.

Crippling power cuts that plagued the city for years, known as load-shedding, came to an end almost a year ago, but now a water crisis is looming, leaving many without.

A building fire in the Central Business District (CBD) killed almost 80 people in the winter of 2023, and exposed the issue of hijacked buildings, disused housing and apartments blocks that have been taken over by criminal gangs who charge people to live there.

• What are Johannesburg’s hijacked buildings?
• Living in a ‘hijacked’ building

This is an area that’s been regenerated by a property company called Ithemba, which is Zulu for “hope”. And it’s a company that is seeing business booming in Johannesburg.

A few days later, on a tour of one of Ithemba’s flagship residential developments called Jewel City, senior manager Alan Tait explains the turnaround.

“The demand is just phenomenal, and that demand is specifically to live in the CBD,” he said.

He said that the company currently leases 7,200 properties and is expected to double that over the next two years.

Named after its origins as a diamond dealing district, like the Ponte building the area fell into disrepair, only to see a resurgence.

“We launched Jewel City about five years ago, just as Covid was hitting. So the timing was a little bit out. But as soon as Covid lifted, the buildings filled up quite quickly,” he said.

As we near the edge of the development, he points out a long strip of lights under a flyover. They were put up to provide light in an area that had been dark for some time, largely due to the loadshedding affected the city.

It was part of an initiative by a group called JoziMyJozi which started in 2023. One of its first projects was to light up the Nelson Mandela bridge, a centrepiece of the city, that meant people once again found it safe to use.

“So the whole aim of JoziMyJozi is to bring hope back to the residents of the city,” said Bea Swanepoel, CEO of the organisation, in the courtyard behind her office in Rosebank, north of the city centre.

“And by bringing hope back, we need to show some visible improvements and impactful projects so that they can see there’s a way out of where we are currently, and to live in the city of the future, where people can be safe and where they can thrive and where there are jobs.”

The group also launched the gateway project, an effort to clean up the ten main entrances to the city, and they’ve begun to tackle everything from potholes, to homelessness to education.

Could Johannesburg one day be spoken about like London, Paris or New York?

“Well, that is the intention,” said Ms Swanepoel. “Much of what’s happening in Joburg is due to perceptions. We have a long way to go. I mean, there’s no doubt about that, but it’s not impossible. We need to get up there and be the gold standard for cities in Africa.”

The city is due to host the G20 later this year, which will bring new investment and attention to the city.

Back on 51st floor of the Ponte tower, Sifiso Zikhali gazes out of the window.

Does he think Dlala Nje is succeeding in its mission?

“Yes we are, because one of our biggest challenges was to get people coming here. We are now one of the city’s top attractions. This is our city, and whatever we face, we need at the end to find a solution for it,” he said.

• Cape Town’s digital nomads: Where idyllic lifestyle clashes with local needs
• Akon City, grazing goats and a crumbling crypto dream
• Ponte Tower: Urban slum transformed to tourist attraction

Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath are reuniting for one last time, to play a fund-raising concert in Birmingham on 5 July.

The heavy metal pioneers will headline a spectacular one-day festival at Villa Park, featuring dozens of bands they inspired, including Metallica, Pantera, Slayer, Gojira and Anthrax.

The concert will mark the first time that Black Sabbath’s original line-up – Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward – have played together in 20 years.

Osbourne, who has largely been forced to stop touring due to a combination of Parkinson’s and spinal injuries, will play a short solo set before joining his bandmates.

His wife, Sharon, told BBC News he was determined to put on one final show.

“He’s doing great. He’s doing really great,” she said. “He’s so excited about this, about being with the guys again and all his friends. It’s exciting for everyone.”

However, she said the concert would definitively be the 76-year-old’s final show.

“Ozzy didn’t have a chance to say goodbye to his friends, to his fans, and he feels there’s no been no full stop.

“This is his full stop.”

The concert, dubbed Back To The Beginning, was announced at Villa Park on Wednesday by Sharon, and Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi.

Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello, who is serving as the event’s musical director, said it would be “the greatest heavy metal show ever”.

Proceeds from the show will support Cure Parkinson’s, the Birmingham Children’s Hospital and Acorn Children’s Hospice, a Children’s Hospice supported by Aston Villa.

Other acts on the line-up include Alice In Chains, Halestorm, Lamb Of God and Mastodon.

In addition, the concert will feature a “supergroup”, with stars like Billy Corgan, Slash, Fred Durst, Wolfgang Van Halen and Tom Morello.

“It’s an endless amount of people,” said Sharon Osbourne. “They’re going to be doing some Sabbath songs, some Ozzy songs, and they’ll all mix together.

“Different little groups will be coming on, but they’re all icons.”

Black Sabbath formed in 1968, and held their first rehearsal at Newtown Community Centre, a stone’s throw from Villa Park.

They previously played a farewell show to a sold out audience of 16,000 people at the city’s NEC Arena in 2017.

The set consisted mainly of songs from their early days – including War Pigs, N.I.B and Black Sabbath – before finishing on their breakthrough hit and signature song, Paranoid.

The concert came at the end of an extensive, 81-date world tour, and Osbourne thanked the fans for their support over the band’s career.

“I’ve got to tell you something, what a journey we’ve all had,” he said.

“We started this in 1968 and now it’s 2017 – I don’t believe that, man. But you know what? We wouldn’t survive if it wasn’t for the fan base. So if you’re a veteran fan, great. If you’re new, welcome. But I can’t tell you enough how grateful we are for your support.”

Following that concert, Osbourne released two solo albums – Ordinary Man and Patient Number 9. However, he suffered a spinal injury in 2003 after a crash involving an ATV, exacerbated by a late-night fall in 2019, that required several rounds of extensive surgery.

He revealed his Parkinson’s diagnosis in 2020 and largely stepped back from touring after playing the closing ceremony of the Commonwealth Games in 2022.

However, he recently told Rolling Stone UK of his desire to return to the stage.

“I’m taking it one day at a time, and if I can perform again, I will,” he said. “But it’s been like saying farewell to the best relationship of my life.”

He added: “I’m not going to get up there and do a half-hearted Ozzy looking for sympathy. What’s the [expletive] point in that? I’m not going up there in a [expletive] wheelchair.”

After days of speculation over the precise role the world’s richest man would play in Donald Trump’s White House – how much power he would hold, whether he is a government employee at all – he took to the social media platform he owns to clarify.

“My preferred title is just ‘Tech Support,'” Elon Musk wrote on X on Tuesday. It was a knowing understatement.

As the head of the nascent Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), Musk has emerged as a dominant force in the dizzying start to Trump’s second administration.

In just two weeks he has led efforts to seize access to the federal payment system, dismantled an entire agency and offered millions of civil servants an ultimatum – quit or face being fired.

But Musk’s increasingly bold attempt to remake the federal government with the same blunt force he used to take control of companies like Twitter have put him on a collision course with the Washington establishment.

And while he has secured a place in Trump’s inner circle, observers wonder if a showdown between these two powerful personalities could be looming.

Musk’s journey from billionaire entrepreneur to White House power player was not straightforward. By his own accounting, Musk had – for decades – been a reliable vote for the Democrats.

But unhappy with Biden’s position on issues from labour laws to transgender rights, Musk began to look to the other side of the aisle in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election.

Initially, Musk called for Trump to “hang up his hat & sail into the sunset” and had backed his rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, for the Republican nomination. But he soon became the president’s biggest booster, contributing $288m to Trump and other Republican candidates and becoming a key adviser on the campaign.

By the time of Trump’s inauguration, Musk was his right-hand man, seated just behind the president’s left shoulder on the dais – an unmistakable symbol of his influence.

“You know I always say we have to be protective of our geniuses because we don’t have too many. But that one is a good one,” Trump said of Musk, after welcoming him on stage at a rally the day before.

Musk has been a near constant presence in the nation’s capital ever since.

Almost immediately after his election Trump tapped Musk to run Doge, and this new role has seemingly empowered him in a far-reaching mission to slash and transform the federal government, pushing for massive reforms with stunning speed.

Although Trump had said Musk would not be given an office in the West Wing, the tech leader and his team have moved beds into the federal personnel office next door to the White House, according to the New York Times.

He has top secret security clearance, a Trump administration official confirmed, potentially giving him access to a broad swathe of highly classified information.

His tactics – relentless, sometimes ruthless – are reminiscent of how he ran his previous companies, former employees say.

A former programme manager at Tesla, who spoke to the BBC on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said Musk “did not care” about the human cost of his decisions.

“He’s only concerned with the objective at hand. I think he views interpersonal issues and conflicts as ancillary things that are not worth his time,” he said.

Occasionally, Musk tended toward the impulsive. The manager recalled seeing Musk fire a fellow Tesla employee on the spot over an overflowing rubbish can.

“He interpreted that as a sign that this person didn’t take as much pride in his work as he should,” he said. “That was the nuance to it… but at the end of the day someone got fired because they admitted that their trash can was overflowing.”

The approach yielded a committed workforce, the employee said. If you were on board with Musk’s mission, that single-minded focus was motivating, he said, and helped fuel regular 13 plus-hour days on the job.

“He can get more out of people than anyone else I have ever seen,” he recalled, although he added that the intensity at Tesla was par for the course in Silicon Valley.

But for those in the federal government, the employee added, “it’s gotta be a culture shock.”

Nowhere has Musk’s purported work on behalf of Trump been felt as intensely as USAID.

The government agency responsible for international development went from dispensing billions in aid to programmes around the world to an effective dead stop in just over two weeks.

Trump already curtailed USAID’s work significantly when he ordered a 90-day pause in US foreign spending, while the administration reviewed the funds in order to make sure they were in line with the president’s policy goals.

But in recent days, employees have watched with increasing alarm as Musk set his sights directly on USAID, labelling their agency a “criminal organisation” on X.

Musk’s increasingly harsh rhetoric has coincided with equally drastic changes at USAID.

On 1 February, the USAID website stopped working; its X account appeared to vanish not long after. That same weekend, two top security officials were placed on administrative leave after a confrontation with Doge representatives over access to a secure facility used for reviewing classified information, the Washington Post and other US outlets reported.

On Monday, USAID employees were told to stay at home while hundreds of employees were locked out of their email. CBS, the BBC’s US news partner, reports USAID employees are being pulled out of their respective countries worldwide by Friday.

“It’s beyond repair,” Musk said of the agency during his 50-minute conversation on X Spaces early Monday morning.

“I went over it with him in detail, and he agreed that we should shut it down,” Musk said of his conversation with Trump. “And I actually checked with him a few times [and] said ‘are you sure?'”

“The comments from Elon Musk have been particularly cutting, calling us a ‘criminal organisation’ that needs to ‘die,”” said a USAID staffer, who asked not to be named because they feared retaliation from Musk and the administration.

“Coming from the wealthiest man on the planet, that feels pretty grotesque,” said the staffer, who has since been put on administrative leave along with many other colleagues.

“I see foreign service officers that have spent their entire lives serving – a large part of it overseas – and the sacrifices they made,” they said. “To be dragged through the mud like this is disrespectful.”

The upheaval at USAID has raised concerns from Democrats and experts about whether Trump and Musk’s actions are legal.

On its face, efforts by Trump and Musk to shut down USAID are “not legal because it runs afoul of what Congress has explicitly done previously,” said Jon Rogowski, a political science professor at the University of Chicago who studies the separation of powers in the US government.

Congress has established USAID as an independent agency, and the legislative branch appropriates funding.

As head of the federal agencies, however, Trump does have broad authority to bring certain USAID functions under the state department’s control, according to George Ingram, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former USAID deputy assistant administrator.

One such move included appointing Secretary of State Marco Rubio as the acting head of USAID, when in the past the agency had functioned independently of the state department, while following its guidance on foreign policy.

And influential Republicans in Congress appear ready to work with the administration to allow some degree of change.

“I’m supportive of the Trump administration’s efforts to reform and restructure the agency in a way that better serves US national security interests,” said Senator James Risch, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Though Musk does not have the authority to shut down or restructure USAID, the agency likely could not have been dismantled as swiftly and thoroughly without his influence.

“I cannot think of any precedent where a presidential administration has essentially handed over the reins to a private citizen, to remake and take control of the executive branch as they see fit,” Mr Rogowski said.

In a statement to the BBC, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Musk “is selflessly serving President Trump’s Administration as a special government employee, and he has abided by all applicable federal laws”.

Prior to Trump’s inauguration, some of Musk’s peers expressed optimism at the prospect of an injection of start-up culture in Washington.

“I think we’ve just had a very exciting moment,” Marc Benioff, the billionaire founder and CEO of Salesforce who has been vocal in his support of Trump, told the BBC in December. “It’s a new chapter for America.”

“There’s a lot of incredible people like Elon Musk in the tech industry and in the business community. And if you can tap the power of expertise to make the best of America, that’s a great vision,” he said at the time.

But two weeks into the Trump administration, some observers say not everyone in Silicon Valley is enthusiastic.

Niki Christoff, a former Salesforce executive who now runs a communication firm in DC, told the BBC that many “people in the [tech] industry seem dumbstruck by the events of the past two weeks”.

“Most CEOs of publicly traded multinational tech companies want predictability. They want stability. They want a strong dollar,” she added. “They want predictable supply chains, and a lot of the policies and the headlines coming out of Washington are creating anxiety and uncertainty.”

Dr Philip Low, a neuroscientist and CEO of neurotechnology company Neurovigil, said Musk’s playbook could wreak havoc on governmental institutions. The two were close for nearly 15 years before their relationship soured, he said.

“His pattern is to take companies, invest in them, destabilise them, and then take them over,” said Dr Low, citing Twitter as an example.

“In that context, the White House is his biggest investment to date. And he is destabilising the American government now.”

According to Dr Low, Musk will not be satisfied being a trusted deputy, which may set him on a collision course with the president, his boss.

“Knowing Elon as I do, he doesn’t want to be number two or number three. He will want to take over,” he said.

“Whatever he decides, goes,” the former Tesla employee said, echoing Dr Low. “He never takes no for an answer.”

After the shake-up at USAID, Trump made it clear that final authority would always rest with him.

When asked if he was happy with Musk after the upending of the agency, he said yes – “for the most part”.

“Sometimes we won’t agree with it, and we’ll not go where he wants to go. But I think he’s doing a great job,” he said on Monday.

“Elon can’t do and won’t do anything without our approval, and we’ll give him the approval where appropriate. Where it’s not appropriate we won’t,” the president said.

“He reports in.”

A badly burnt scroll from the Roman town of Herculaneum has been digitally “unwrapped”, providing the first look inside for 2,000 years.

The document, which looks like a lump of charcoal, was charred by the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD and is too fragile to ever be physically opened.

But now scientists have used a combination of X-ray imaging and artificial intelligence to virtually unfurl it, revealing rows and columns of text.

More work is needed to make the scroll fully legible to decipher its contents, but the team behind the project say the results are very promising.

“We’re confident we will be able to read pretty much the whole scroll in its entirety, and it’s the first time we’ve really been able to say that with high confidence,” said Stephen Parsons, project lead for the Vesuvius Challenge, an international competition attempting to unlock the Herculaneum scrolls.

Some letters are already clearly visible in the ancient text and the team believes it’s a work of philosophy.

Hundreds of carbonised scrolls were discovered in Herculaneum, which like its neighbour Pompeii was buried beneath metres of volcanic ash.

In the past, some of the documents, which are made from a thick paper-like material called papyrus, were prised open but they crumbled into pieces.

The University of Oxford’s Bodleian Library holds several of the scrolls. Thought to be unreadable, they had been left untouched for decades.

“We’ve never been convinced before that any of the techniques would be safe enough or effective enough to get any information from the scrolls,” explained Nicole Gilroy, head of book conservation.

But the promise of a hi-tech solution prompted the team to get one of the precious scrolls out of storage.

It was placed in a specially made case and taken to Diamond Light Source in Oxfordshire.

Inside this huge machine, which is called a synchrotron, electrons are accelerated to almost the speed of light to produce a powerful X-ray beam that can probe the scroll without damaging it.

“It can see things on the scale of a few thousandths of a millimetre,” explained Adrian Mancuso, director of physical sciences at Diamond.

The scan is used to create a 3D reconstruction, then the layers inside the scroll – it contains about 10m of papyrus – have to be identified.

“We have to work out which layer is different from the next layer so we can unroll that digitally,” said Dr Mancuso.

After that artificial intelligence is used to detect the ink. It’s easier said than done – both the papyrus and ink are made from carbon and they’re almost indistinguishable from each other.

So the AI hunts for the tiniest signals that ink might be there, then this ink is painted on digitally, bringing the letters to light.

“We can tell the entire scroll is full of text,” said Stephen Parsons.

“Now we can work on making it show up more clearly. We’re going to go from a handful of words to really substantial passages.”

Last year, a Vesuvius Challenge team managed to read about 5% of another Herculaneum scroll.

Its subject was Greek Epicurean philosophy, which teaches that fulfilment can be found through the pleasure of everyday things.

The Bodleian’s scroll is likely to be on the same subject – but the Vesuvius team is calling for more human and computing ingenuity to see if this is the case.

For Nicole Gilroy, the work is providing a link to the past.

“I just love that connection with whoever collected them, whoever wrote them, whoever rolled those scrolls up and put them on the shelves. There’s a real human aspect to it that I just think is really precious,” she said.

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Donald Trump’s plan for the US to “take over” and “own” Gaza, resettling its population in the process, is not going to happen. It requires the co-operation of Arab states that have rejected it.

They include Jordan and Egypt – countries that Trump wants to take in Gaza’s Palestinians – and Saudi Arabia, which might be expected to foot the bill.

Western allies of the US and Israel are also against the idea.

Some – perhaps many – Palestinians in Gaza might be tempted to get out if they had the chance.

But even if a million left, as many as 1.2m others would still be there.

Presumably the United States – the new owners of Trump’s “Riviera of the Middle East” – would have to use force to remove them.

After America’s catastrophic intervention in Iraq in 2003, that would be deeply unpopular in the US.

It would be the final end of any lingering hope that a two-state solution was possible. That is the aspiration that a conflict more than a century old could be ended with the establishment of an independent Palestine alongside Israel.

The Netanyahu government is adamantly against the idea, and over years of failed peace talks, “two states for two peoples” became an empty slogan.

But it has been a central plank of US foreign policy since the early 1990s.

The Trump plan would also violate international law.

America’s already threadbare assertions that it believes in a rules-based international order would dissolve. Russia’s territorial ambitions in Ukraine and China’s in Taiwan would be turbocharged.

Why worry about all that if it is not about to happen – at least not in the way Trump announced in Washington, watched by a grinning and clearly delighted Benjamin Netanyahu?

The answer is that Trump’s remarks, however outlandish, will have consequences.

He is the president of the United States, the most powerful man in the world – no longer a reality TV host and political hopeful trying to grab headlines.

Short-term, the disruption caused by his stunning announcement could weaken the fragile ceasefire in Gaza. One senior Arab source told me it could be its “death knell”.

The absence of a plan for Gaza’s future governance is already a fault line in the agreement.

Now Trump has provided one, and even if it does not come to pass, it presses very big buttons in the minds of Palestinians and Israelis.

It will nourish the plans and dreams of ultra-nationalist Jewish extremists who believe all the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river, and perhaps beyond, is a God-given Jewish possession.

Their leaders are part of Netanyahu’s government and keep him in power – and they’re delighted. They want the Gaza war to resume with the longer-term objective of removing the Palestinians and replacing them with Jews.

The finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said Trump had provided the answer to Gaza’s future after the 7 October attacks.

His statement said that “whoever committed the most terrible massacre on our land will find himself losing his land forever. Now we will act to finally bury, with God’s help, the dangerous idea of a Palestinian state.”

Centrist opposition leaders in Israel have been less effusive, perhaps fearing trouble ahead, but have offered a polite welcome to the plan.

Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups may feel the need to answer Trump with some kind of show of force against Israel.

For Palestinians, the conflict with Israel is driven by dispossession and the memory of what they call al-Nakba, “the catastrophe”. That was the exodus of Palestinians as Israel won its war for independence in 1948.

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More than 700,000 Palestinians either fled or were forced from their homes by Israeli forces. All but a handful were never allowed back and Israel passed laws it still uses to confiscate their property.

Now the fear will be that it is happening again.

Many Palestinians already believed Israel was using the war against Hamas to destroy Gaza and expel the population.

It is part of their accusation that Israel is committing genocide – and now they might believe Donald Trump is adding his weight to Israel’s plans.

Just because Trump says something, that does not make it true or certain.

His statements are often more like opening gambits in a real estate negotiation than expressions of the settled policy of the United States.

Perhaps Trump is spreading some confusion while he works on another plan. He is said to crave the Nobel peace prize.

Middle East peacemakers, even when they do not ultimately succeed, have a strong track record of winning it.

As the world was digesting his Gaza announcement, he posted on his Truth Social platform his desire for a “verified nuclear peace agreement” with Iran.

The Iranian regime denies it wants nuclear weapons but there has been an open debate in Tehran about whether they are now so threatened that they need the ultimate deterrent.

For many years Netanyahu has wanted the US, with Israeli help, to destroy Iran’s nuclear sites. Doing a deal with Iran was never part of his plan.

During Trump’s first term, Netanyahu waged a long and successful campaign to persuade him to pull the US out of the nuclear deal Barack Obama’s administration signed with Iran.

If Trump wanted to throw the Israeli hard-right something to keep them happy as he makes overtures to the Iranians, he has succeeded.

But he has also created uncertainty and injected more instability into the world’s most turbulent region.

After US President Donald Trump threatened Canada with steep tariffs, Monika Morelli from Montreal cancelled her subscriptions to Netflix and Amazon, two giant American companies.

She also called off a trip that she had planned for later in the year to New Orleans.

“There is something that has been irrevocably broken now, after centuries of the US and Canada being allies,” Ms Morelli, 39, told the BBC.

The threaten of import taxes, she said, plus Trump’s remarks that Canada could become the 51st US state, “have made something snap in us all”.

Trump had vowed to slap a 25% tariff on both Canada and Mexico this week, citing issues with border security.

He then struck a surprise deal with Mexico on Monday that resulted in the duties being delayed for 30 days in exchange for more Mexican troops at the border. A similar deal was agreed with Canada later in the day.

For Canadians, who had been deeply anxious about the economic consequences of the tariffs, the delay elicited a sigh of relief. But some feel the threat has caused a rift in the US-Canada relationship.

Data released on Wednesday by national pollster Angus Reid found that 91% of Canadians want their country to rely less on the US in the future, preferring that option over repairing the US-Canada relationship, though more than half still wanted to try.

The opinion survey also noted a big jump in national pride, and found that 90% of Canadians were following this issue closely, mimicking engagement levels not seen since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Shachi Kurl, president of Angus Reid, told the BBC the numbers capture “a moment of unity” in the country. They also showed that Canadians have responded to the US tariffs with a shared sense of anger, she said.

With the US being the largest customer for Canadian goods, the tariffs threaten to push the Canadian economy into a recession and put thousands of jobs at risk.

In addition to the tariffs, Trump has stated repeatedly (possibly as a joke) that Canada should instead become a US state to avoid paying the levy – a remark that has been met with fury from Canadians, and has been seen by some as a threat to their sovereignty.

The issue has made way for a surge of patriotism in Canada – notably uniting people from all political stripes at a time when the country had been deeply divided over the leadership of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his policies.

A “Buy Canadian” sentiment has been pushed by politicians and the general public, with shoppers wanting to support local businesses and avoid purchasing US-made products in protest over the potential tariffs.

Carole Chandler, a 67-year-old retired public school teacher from Halifax, said that she, like Ms Morelli, had cancelled an upcoming holiday to Florida.

“I love America and Americans,” she tells the BBC. “But I don’t want to be one.”

Even with the temporary pause on tariffs, some Canadian provinces are still pushing ahead with “Buy Local” campaigns to encourage people to spend their dollars closer to home.

On Wednesday, Manitoba’s premier Wab Kinew said his province will be spending C$140,000 ($97,800; £78,200) on advertising – including on billboards and radio – to push Manitobans to contribute to their local economy.

Provinces are also removing barriers to trade internally within Canada, and many are calling for the country to diversify its trade relationship and build ties elsewhere.

Kinew described the back and forth on the potential tariff war between the US and Canada as akin to “whiplash”.

“But through it all, to see people come together and to rally around the flag, to put the Manitoba pride first and foremost, has been very encouraging,” Kinew said.

Ms Kurl noted that the Canada-US relationship has endured for centuries, and the two countries have long been close allies and partners on the world stage.

“It’s quite an enmeshed relationship,” she said.

Canadians share not only deep economic ties with the US, but also familial bonds and the world’s longest land border. The US has also long been the top travel destination for Canadians.

She said it would not be easy to untangle those ties, and it remains to be seen whether the recent sentiments over Trump’s tariffs signal a fundamental shift between the two countries.

A lot of it, she added, could depend on how the relationship with the current US president progresses, and whether the tariff threat materialises.

As Canadians wait and see what happens, they said they were looking to support their own however they can.

“We don’t put on big displays like Americans do,” said Ms Chandler from Halifax.

But Canadian patriotism runs deep, she said.

“I have so much money now that I could hire someone to kill you, and nobody would know. No-one would miss you. No-one would know anything.”

Former music executive Daniel Evans says he can still remember the threat from his old boss, Sean “Diddy” Combs – then known as Puff Daddy – to a colleague. It was 1997, he says, in the New York office of Combs’s Grammy Award-winning music label Bad Boy Records.

“It was like, this is what money does to you,” he says.

Combs was often “prickly”, but Evans says power was transforming him. Just days before, the hip-hop mogul had received his biggest reward to date – $6m (£4.8m) to mark the label’s success, which boasted platinum-selling artists like The Notorious B.I.G.

That year Combs’s music career reached its peak, with his empire soon expanding into fashion, alcohol and even his own TV network.

Nearly three decades on, his legacy is in ruins as he sits in jail awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking and racketeering alongside battling dozens of lawsuits accusing him of drugging and assault at lavish parties, high-end hotels and in his label’s recording studio. He denies all the allegations.

Now the BBC has spoken to more than 20 people who worked with Combs at Bad Boy Records – including former executives, assistants and producers – who describe for the first time troubling incidents they say they witnessed during its 1990s rise.

Some executives say they had concerns after seeing Combs having sex with women in the studio, including one incident where the employee says the young woman did not seem to react when he walked in. Another staff member complained Combs asked her to bring him condoms.

The BBC also heard that corporate funds were used to fly in women from across the US for sex at the request of artists and other employees.

“There was a course of conduct that became more egregious over time and that conduct does go back to the 90s,” says Tony Buzbee, a US lawyer representing dozens of alleged victims, including one who says Combs threatened to kill her in similar terms to the incident Evans says he witnessed.

His client alleges Combs raped her on a bathroom floor at a promotional party held for The Notorious B.I.G., the label’s biggest star, in 1995. She says in her lawsuit that afterwards, Combs told her not to tell anyone or “you will disappear”.

In a statement, Combs’s legal team accused Buzbee of being “more interested in media attention than the truth” and said the hip-hop star “never sexually assaulted or trafficked anyone”.

The 55-year-old’s lawyers said they had not been provided with sufficient details about the BBC’s claims to present the facts that would “counter these fabricated accusations”.

“As we’ve said before, Mr Combs cannot dignify every publicity stunt or facially absurd claim with a response. He has full confidence in the judicial process, where the truth will prevail: these accusations are pure fiction,” they said.

A brash go-getter, Sean Combs became an overnight millionaire when he launched Bad Boy Records in 1993 with a roster of top artists.

It was Combs’s first venture, having already built a name for himself as a talent director at another music label, Uptown Records, aged 19.

“He said that he wanted to be one of the biggest artists in the world and it didn’t matter if I believed him or not,” remembers Jimmy Maynes, a former Uptown colleague.

Maynes remembers Combs having a short fuse in the office, sometimes banging “his hands up against the desk” like a “bratty kid” and yelling if he did not get his way.

Combs was eventually fired from Uptown and at the age of 23 started Bad Boy Records.

“He’s the hardest working man that I’ve ever met and always wanted people to match his energy,” says Daniel Evans, a senior executive who managed Bad Boy’s recording budgets and artists’ contracts between 1994 and 1997.

Combs described himself as the “Great Gatsby” and swiftly became known for hosting coveted celebrity bashes at New York nightclubs, on the beaches of Cancun, Mexico, and later infamous “White Parties” – named after the all-white dress code – in the Hamptons.

Even President Donald Trump attended events in the 90s, says Evans, who once saw him sit on a golden throne at Combs’s 30th birthday and exclaim: “I’m the real King of New York!”

“We were all really young. I was 24 years old,” reflects Evans, who was one of the label’s original employees. “People wanted to party, have fun, hook up and build good memories.”

But looking back, Evans says he is troubled by some of the things he witnessed about his boss’s behaviour and the company culture.

In about 1995, he says he walked in on Combs having sex with a young woman at Daddy’s House, Bad Boy’s New York recording studio near Times Square.

“I was getting ready to go home for the night and looking for my jacket. Open the door and he’s having sex with this girl,” says Evans, who thought the studio was empty as it was silent. Combs swore and shouted at him to leave. “I thought I was getting fired,” he says.

Evans remembers the young woman had been brought to the studio, presumably for a tour, by a party-promoter who was a friend of Combs. His boss seemed sober, while she was quiet and did not really talk, he says, wondering if she was high on drugs or just shy.

He says it did not seem unusual at the time. But recalling how the woman did not react when he entered the room, he says: “Knowing what I know now, there’s a lot of speculation about what state she was in… usually both parties are very responsive during the act.”

Felicia Newsome, the manager of Daddy’s House recording studio between 1994 and 2000, says inappropriate conduct in the music industry as a whole was rife at the time.

“It was abnormal if somebody reported it, but it wasn’t abnormal for it to be happening,” she says.

Newsome says an employee once called her to the studio in the middle of the night because Combs was in his underwear, about to have sex with a model and another woman. He was demanding the staff member fetch him condoms, she recalls.

“I said to Puffy, don’t ever ask anyone here to go and get condoms,” says Newsome, who arrived while they were getting dressed again. “He replied: ‘I didn’t need anything like that, ma,’ and never did it again.”

Newsome, then in her 30s, says she found Combs reasonable and that he changed his behaviour when she challenged him. On one occasion, when the studio first opened in 1995, she says Combs was unhappy about the look of the countertops and called her a “bitch” in front of staff.

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She says she demanded a public apology and temporarily shut the studio, asking him: “If I’m bringing women into this space, which is open 24 hours, how do you want to treat people?”

Combs responded that he wanted it to be an inclusive and safe environment, she says.

But while Newsome ran the studio with an “iron fist”, she says other staff were less comfortable calling Combs out.

“Bad Boy Records was a crazy house with a lot of young people who wanted to touch the King’s robes,” she says.

Former staff say the label was run by twenty-something executives and a large number of interns, some of whom were of school age. There were often sexual relationships between employees and the interns, they say.

Evans remembers an uncomfortable moment with a 14-year-old in his own team, who he says propositioned him.

“She says to me, you work really hard. If you ever want to like, get loose, you and I should kick it… but not tonight, I have a curfew.”

Evans says he sent her home and called the next day, telling her not to return to work. He did not report her, but two weeks later she was back working in the mailroom.

Artists and other employees at Combs’s record label would sometimes also request for women to be flown in to have sex at the studio, the former executive says.

“If they had a [sexual] specialty in something, they would be flown in,” says Evans, who told the BBC he knew because he controlled the budgets. Money for the flights would be set aside and logged under travel, he adds.

“It was probably like thousands of dollars,” says Evans. “I don’t think it happened all that often, but it was definitely a recording expense.”

Evans says Combs’s own requests were managed by his personal assistants. One told the BBC that Combs would often ask them to fly in women he was “messing around with” and put them up in hotels, though the assistant said they were not sex workers.

In the 2000s, the Daddy’s House recording studio further changed, two former staff say, into a culture of “sex, drugs and rock’n’roll”. Combs would regularly bring “random women” there to party, turning up with an entourage of dozens of people in “three white jeeps, with white rims and white leather seats”, they say. Other artists would demand suitcases of Ciroc vodka and one even brought a monkey to a session, according to a former executive.

The studio is one of the locations where women have since accused Combs of drugging and raping them. Model Crystal McKinney alleges the mogul plied her with alcohol and marijuana before sexually assaulting her there in 2003. That same year, a woman alleges that Combs and two associates gang raped her at the studio when she was 17.

Combs’s lawyers say he “looks forward to proving his innocence”, adding that McKinney’s claims are “without merit”.

Many ex-staff say they still find it hard to reconcile the allegations with the man they knew. “These accusations are a surprise to me, as I am sure it is to many of our circle,” says Jeffery Walker, a close friend of Combs who was part of Bad Boy’s original production team. “I’ve been to White Parties and of course studio sessions, and none of what he is accused of went down in my sight.”

Evans was also sceptical about some of the claims until he saw the footage of Casandra Ventura, Combs’s ex-partner of 10 years and a former Bad Boy artist, being brutally beaten by the rapper in a hotel in Los Angeles in 2016.

Ventura was the first person to sue Combs back in November 2023, alleging that he had trapped her in a cycle of abuse, violence, and sex trafficking during their relationship. Combs settled the lawsuit the next day for an undisclosed amount.

“It’s not the first time I’ve seen that temper,” recalls Evans, thinking back to the death threat he says he witnessed back in 1997. “It’s hard to see. The guy in the video with Cassie is almost identical to the guy who threatened the employee. So, you wonder, has anything changed?”

Over the years, Sean Combs has repeatedly reinvented himself – from Puff Daddy, to P Diddy and in recent years, “Love”.

“If I’m acting crazy, like ‘ahhh!’ that’s Diddy. If I’m dancing real smooth with a girl, that’s Puff Daddy. And if I’m looking like I’m nervous or scared or shy, that’s Sean,” he said in an interview in 2015.

With more details likely to emerge when he goes on trial in May, many of those who were close to the rapper are questioning whether they knew the real Sean Combs at all.

“One could think that he’s just a disgusting human being, but that’s not my memory of Puff,” says Jimmy Maynes, who grew up with Combs in Mount Vernon, New York.

But after a pause, he adds: “Or maybe money just gives people the freedom to be exactly who they really are, and he was that guy all along.”

If you would like to speak to Rianna or Larissa about this story you can get in touch here.

President Donald Trump’s suggestion the US could “take over” and “own” Gaza, resettling its population in the process, has been met with shock and condemnation.

The comments come as a ceasefire is under way between Hamas and Israel, and amid questions about Gaza’s post-conflict future.

The UN estimates around two thirds of buildings there have been destroyed or damaged after 15 months of fighting.

Trump’s vague proposal could signal the largest shift in US policy on the Middle East in decades, upending widespread international consensus on the need for a Palestinian state – comprising Gaza and the occupied West Bank – to exist alongside Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the idea was “worth paying attention to” but it has been roundly rejected by Arab nations and some US allies.

If Donald Trump is right about one thing, it is that decades of US diplomacy on Israel and the Palestinians have failed to resolve the conflict.

Peace proposals and presidents have come and gone but the problems have festered. Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 and the war in Gaza it triggered were the hideous results.

Trump made his millions as a property developer and, with that hat on, made a perfectly valid observation: if Gaza is to be rebuilt, from scratch in some places, it makes little sense for hundreds of thousands of civilians to be sheltering in the rubble.

The task of rebuilding Gaza will be monumental. Unexploded munitions and mountains of debris have to be removed. Water and power lines have to be repaired. Schools, hospitals and shops need to be rebuilt.

Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff has said that could take years – and while that goes on, the Palestinians will need to go somewhere.

However, rather than exploring ways of keeping them close to home, almost certainly in camps in the central and southern parts of the Gaza Strip, Trump says they should be encouraged to leave – permanently.

Trump believes that in their absence, an idyllic, American-owned “Riviera of the Middle East” will rise from the ashes, providing thousands of jobs, opportunities for investment and, ultimately, a place for “the world’s people to live”.

• BBC Verify: Can Trump really take ownership of Gaza?
• Analysis: Trump’s real-estate instincts clash with America First view

Where to begin?

Even for a president who spent much of his first term upending US Middle East policy – including moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognising Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights – this was an astonishing proposal.

In their wildest imaginations, no US president ever thought that solving the Israel-Palestinian conflict would involve taking over a chunk of Palestinian territory and evicting its population.

• LIVE: World leaders react to Trump’s Gaza comments

To be clear, to do this by force would be a grave violation of international law.

Some Palestinians would likely choose to leave Gaza and rebuild their lives elsewhere. Since October 2023, as many as 150,000 already have.

But others cannot or will not, either because they lack the financial means to do so or because their attachment to Gaza – part of the land they call Palestine – is simply too strong.

Many Gazans are descendants of people who fled or were driven from their homes in 1948 during the creation of the state of Israel – a period Palestinians call the Nakba, the Arabic word for catastrophe.

The thought of another will be too painful for many and they will cling to their reduced lives in what remains of Gaza with a fierce determination.

For Palestinians who dream of a state of their own, alongside Israel, the loss of part of it will feel like an amputation.

Gaza has been physically separated from the West Bank since 1948. Previous rounds of negotiations, as well as Trump’s 2020 “Vision for Peace”, included plans for tunnels or railways that might link the two.

Now Trump is basically telling the Palestinians to give up on Gaza once and for all.

While he does not appear to be advocating the forced deportation of civilians – which is against international law – Trump is clearly encouraging Palestinians to leave.

Palestinian officials have already accused Israel of blocking the supply of tens of thousands of caravans which could help Gazans to stay put in less damaged parts of the territory while reconstruction takes place elsewhere.

The Arab countries who Trump says should accept as many as 1.8 million Gazan refugees, mainly Egypt and Jordan, have expressed outrage.

Both have enough problems of their own without this added burden.

Gaza was occupied by Egypt for 19 years before it was seized by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War.

It is still considered occupied by Israel under international law, which Israel disputes. It says the occupation ended in 2005, when it unilaterally dismantled Jewish settlements and pulled out its military.

Around three quarters of UN members recognise Gaza as part of a sovereign state of Palestine, though the US does not.

Cut off from the outside world by fences and an Israeli maritime blockade, it has never felt like a truly independent place.

Nothing and no one moves in or out without Israel’s permission, and an international airport – opened amid much fanfare in 1998 – was destroyed by Israel in 2001 during the second Palestinian uprising.

Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade on Gaza, citing security reasons, after Hamas won Palestinian elections in 2006 and ejected its rivals from the territory after intense fighting the following year.

Long before the latest war, Palestinians had come to regard Gaza as an open prison.

• Israel and the Palestinians: History of the conflict explained

It goes without saying that the US has no legal claim to the territory and it is not at all clear how Trump intends to impose American rule.

As with his bullish claims about US control over Greenland or the Panama Canal, it is not yet clear whether Trump really means it or if the comments represent an opening, outlandish bargaining position ahead of a bruising set of negotiations on Gaza’s future.

Various plans have been discussed for the post-war governance of Gaza.

In December, the two main Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, agreed to form a joint committee to oversee its administration – an agreement which has so far come to nothing.

At other times, discussions have focused on the creation of an international peacekeeping force, possibly made up of troops from Arab countries.

Last month, Reuters reported that the UAE, US and Israel had discussed the formation of a temporary administration in Gaza until a reformed Palestinian Authority (PA), which already has control in parts of the West Bank, was ready to take over.

However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has previously publicly insisted that the PA will have no role to play in running post-war Gaza.

In a limited sense, American boots are already on the ground. A US security firm has employed around 100 former US special forces to man a vital checkpoint south of Gaza City and screen the vehicles of Palestinians returning to the north for weapons.

Egyptian security personnel have also been seen at the same checkpoint.

These could be the first, tentative signs of an expanded international – and possibly US-led – presence in Gaza.

But that is hardly a US takeover, something that would require a large-scale military intervention in the Middle East – the sort of thing Trump has long told voters he wants to avoid.

Negotiations on phase two of the two-week-old ceasefire between Israel and Hamas have barely begun but it is hard to see how Trump’s bombshell remarks will help to advance them.

If Hamas feels the end product of this whole process is a depopulated Gaza – devoid not just of Hamas, but of all Palestinians – it may conclude there is nothing to talk about and hold on to the remaining hostages it took on 7 October 2023.

Netanyahu’s critics have accused him of looking for excuses to blow up the negotiations and resume the war. They are bound to conclude that, with these comments, Trump is a willing accomplice.

On the other hand, the Israeli prime minister’s right-wing backers have expressed satisfaction with the US takeover plan, potentially reducing the risk of cabinet resignations and making Netanyahu’s immediate political future appear more assured.

In that sense, Trump has given Netanyahu a powerful incentive to keep the ceasefire going.

Asked whether he agreed the US should recognise Israeli sovereignty over the occupied West Bank, Trump said he had yet to take a position but that he would have an announcement to make in four weeks’ time.

That remark has caused alarm among Palestinians, for whom such an announcement would inevitably be seen as another nail in the coffin for a two-state solution.

Recognising the legitimacy of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank would be a hugely consequential move. Most of the rest of the world regards them as illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.

During previous rounds of peace talks, negotiators recognised that Israel would get to hold onto large settlement blocs as part of a final agreement, probably in exchange for small chunks of Israeli territory.

In 2020, Trump brokered the Abraham Accords, which secured the historic normalisation of relations between Israel and two Arab nations, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain.

The UAE signed that agreement on the understanding Israel would not annex parts of the West Bank – an understanding which may now be in jeopardy.

Swedish police said they were still investigating the motive behind the country’s deadliest mass shooting, as local media began reporting details about the gunman.

The suspect, named in reports as 35-year-old local man Rickard Andersson, was reported to be a former student of the school in Orebo, a city 157 km (98 miles) west of Stockholm, where the attack took place on Tuesday.

Eleven people died in the shooting, including the attacker, with at least six others injured.

The attack has sent shockwaves through the nation, with King Carl XVI Gustaf on Wednesday saying: “All of Sweden is mourning.”

Authorities are still yet to release details about the dead and injured. Health officials said three women and two men were in a critical but stable condition, while another woman was treated for minor injuries.

Police declined to confirm media reports naming Andersson as the suspect. Orebro police said they had identified the suspect but would “not publish his name yet, due to the investigation”.

They have not said how he died but indicated on Wednesday he had most likely killed himself after an exchange of fire with police.

Police said they were still investigating why the gunman had chose to attack the Risbergska adult educational centre. Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet reported the suspect was previously enrolled at the school but had not attended classes since 2021.

Police on Tuesday said the suspect had no apparent links to gangs and did not appear to be motivated by ideology.

They also do not believe the attack was motivated by terrorism.

“We will get back on what motives there are,” local police chief Roberto Eid Forest told reporters on Wednesday.

The suspect had no previous convictions and obtained his weapon legally, local media reported.

Sweden’s public broadcaster SVT suggested it was a hunting weapon, while Swedish Radio said police had listed the weapon as an automatic firearm.

Local police chief Mr Forest also defended authorities’ delay in releasing accurate information about the number of dead and wounded. He said the size of the school premises had led to delays in ensuring there were not more victims.

Police said they were using fingerprints, dental records and DNA to identify victims – alongside interviews with family members.

In addition to providing Swedish language classes for immigrants, the Risbergska centre also provided adult education for people aged over 20 who did not finish primary or secondary school.

Earlier, Orebro residents attended a candlelit vigil outside the educational centre, which remains cordoned off. Flags around Orebro and at government buildings, parliament and royal palaces across the country were also lowered to half-mast.

King Carl XVI Gustaf, who visited the campus on Wednesday with Queen Silvia, told reporters: “All of Sweden feels it has experienced this traumatic event.”

“All Swedes are thinking of those people who lost their loved ones,” the King told the BBC. He said he was “sure the country would overcome the tragedy… one way or another, but it will take time”.

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, who also visited the site on Wednesday, described Tuesday’s attack as a dark day in Swedish history.

“Together, we must help the injured and their relatives bear the grief and weight of this day,” he said.

After days of speculation over the precise role the world’s richest man would play in Donald Trump’s White House – how much power he would hold, whether he is a government employee at all – he took to the social media platform he owns to clarify.

“My preferred title is just ‘Tech Support,'” Elon Musk wrote on X on Tuesday. It was a knowing understatement.

As the head of the nascent Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), Musk has emerged as a dominant force in the dizzying start to Trump’s second administration.

In just two weeks he has led efforts to seize access to the federal payment system, dismantled an entire agency and offered millions of civil servants an ultimatum – quit or face being fired.

But Musk’s increasingly bold attempt to remake the federal government with the same blunt force he used to take control of companies like Twitter have put him on a collision course with the Washington establishment.

And while he has secured a place in Trump’s inner circle, observers wonder if a showdown between these two powerful personalities could be looming.

Musk’s journey from billionaire entrepreneur to White House power player was not straightforward. By his own accounting, Musk had – for decades – been a reliable vote for the Democrats.

But unhappy with Biden’s position on issues from labour laws to transgender rights, Musk began to look to the other side of the aisle in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election.

Initially, Musk called for Trump to “hang up his hat & sail into the sunset” and had backed his rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, for the Republican nomination. But he soon became the president’s biggest booster, contributing $288m to Trump and other Republican candidates and becoming a key adviser on the campaign.

By the time of Trump’s inauguration, Musk was his right-hand man, seated just behind the president’s left shoulder on the dais – an unmistakable symbol of his influence.

“You know I always say we have to be protective of our geniuses because we don’t have too many. But that one is a good one,” Trump said of Musk, after welcoming him on stage at a rally the day before.

Musk has been a near constant presence in the nation’s capital ever since.

Almost immediately after his election Trump tapped Musk to run Doge, and this new role has seemingly empowered him in a far-reaching mission to slash and transform the federal government, pushing for massive reforms with stunning speed.

Although Trump had said Musk would not be given an office in the West Wing, the tech leader and his team have moved beds into the federal personnel office next door to the White House, according to the New York Times.

He has top secret security clearance, a Trump administration official confirmed, potentially giving him access to a broad swathe of highly classified information.

His tactics – relentless, sometimes ruthless – are reminiscent of how he ran his previous companies, former employees say.

A former programme manager at Tesla, who spoke to the BBC on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said Musk “did not care” about the human cost of his decisions.

“He’s only concerned with the objective at hand. I think he views interpersonal issues and conflicts as ancillary things that are not worth his time,” he said.

Occasionally, Musk tended toward the impulsive. The manager recalled seeing Musk fire a fellow Tesla employee on the spot over an overflowing rubbish can.

“He interpreted that as a sign that this person didn’t take as much pride in his work as he should,” he said. “That was the nuance to it… but at the end of the day someone got fired because they admitted that their trash can was overflowing.”

The approach yielded a committed workforce, the employee said. If you were on board with Musk’s mission, that single-minded focus was motivating, he said, and helped fuel regular 13 plus-hour days on the job.

“He can get more out of people than anyone else I have ever seen,” he recalled, although he added that the intensity at Tesla was par for the course in Silicon Valley.

But for those in the federal government, the employee added, “it’s gotta be a culture shock.”

Nowhere has Musk’s purported work on behalf of Trump been felt as intensely as USAID.

The government agency responsible for international development went from dispensing billions in aid to programmes around the world to an effective dead stop in just over two weeks.

Trump already curtailed USAID’s work significantly when he ordered a 90-day pause in US foreign spending, while the administration reviewed the funds in order to make sure they were in line with the president’s policy goals.

But in recent days, employees have watched with increasing alarm as Musk set his sights directly on USAID, labelling their agency a “criminal organisation” on X.

Musk’s increasingly harsh rhetoric has coincided with equally drastic changes at USAID.

On 1 February, the USAID website stopped working; its X account appeared to vanish not long after. That same weekend, two top security officials were placed on administrative leave after a confrontation with Doge representatives over access to a secure facility used for reviewing classified information, the Washington Post and other US outlets reported.

On Monday, USAID employees were told to stay at home while hundreds of employees were locked out of their email. CBS, the BBC’s US news partner, reports USAID employees are being pulled out of their respective countries worldwide by Friday.

“It’s beyond repair,” Musk said of the agency during his 50-minute conversation on X Spaces early Monday morning.

“I went over it with him in detail, and he agreed that we should shut it down,” Musk said of his conversation with Trump. “And I actually checked with him a few times [and] said ‘are you sure?'”

“The comments from Elon Musk have been particularly cutting, calling us a ‘criminal organisation’ that needs to ‘die,”” said a USAID staffer, who asked not to be named because they feared retaliation from Musk and the administration.

“Coming from the wealthiest man on the planet, that feels pretty grotesque,” said the staffer, who has since been put on administrative leave along with many other colleagues.

“I see foreign service officers that have spent their entire lives serving – a large part of it overseas – and the sacrifices they made,” they said. “To be dragged through the mud like this is disrespectful.”

The upheaval at USAID has raised concerns from Democrats and experts about whether Trump and Musk’s actions are legal.

On its face, efforts by Trump and Musk to shut down USAID are “not legal because it runs afoul of what Congress has explicitly done previously,” said Jon Rogowski, a political science professor at the University of Chicago who studies the separation of powers in the US government.

Congress has established USAID as an independent agency, and the legislative branch appropriates funding.

As head of the federal agencies, however, Trump does have broad authority to bring certain USAID functions under the state department’s control, according to George Ingram, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former USAID deputy assistant administrator.

One such move included appointing Secretary of State Marco Rubio as the acting head of USAID, when in the past the agency had functioned independently of the state department, while following its guidance on foreign policy.

And influential Republicans in Congress appear ready to work with the administration to allow some degree of change.

“I’m supportive of the Trump administration’s efforts to reform and restructure the agency in a way that better serves US national security interests,” said Senator James Risch, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Though Musk does not have the authority to shut down or restructure USAID, the agency likely could not have been dismantled as swiftly and thoroughly without his influence.

“I cannot think of any precedent where a presidential administration has essentially handed over the reins to a private citizen, to remake and take control of the executive branch as they see fit,” Mr Rogowski said.

In a statement to the BBC, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Musk “is selflessly serving President Trump’s Administration as a special government employee, and he has abided by all applicable federal laws”.

Prior to Trump’s inauguration, some of Musk’s peers expressed optimism at the prospect of an injection of start-up culture in Washington.

“I think we’ve just had a very exciting moment,” Marc Benioff, the billionaire founder and CEO of Salesforce who has been vocal in his support of Trump, told the BBC in December. “It’s a new chapter for America.”

“There’s a lot of incredible people like Elon Musk in the tech industry and in the business community. And if you can tap the power of expertise to make the best of America, that’s a great vision,” he said at the time.

But two weeks into the Trump administration, some observers say not everyone in Silicon Valley is enthusiastic.

Niki Christoff, a former Salesforce executive who now runs a communication firm in DC, told the BBC that many “people in the [tech] industry seem dumbstruck by the events of the past two weeks”.

“Most CEOs of publicly traded multinational tech companies want predictability. They want stability. They want a strong dollar,” she added. “They want predictable supply chains, and a lot of the policies and the headlines coming out of Washington are creating anxiety and uncertainty.”

Dr Philip Low, a neuroscientist and CEO of neurotechnology company Neurovigil, said Musk’s playbook could wreak havoc on governmental institutions. The two were close for nearly 15 years before their relationship soured, he said.

“His pattern is to take companies, invest in them, destabilise them, and then take them over,” said Dr Low, citing Twitter as an example.

“In that context, the White House is his biggest investment to date. And he is destabilising the American government now.”

According to Dr Low, Musk will not be satisfied being a trusted deputy, which may set him on a collision course with the president, his boss.

“Knowing Elon as I do, he doesn’t want to be number two or number three. He will want to take over,” he said.

“Whatever he decides, goes,” the former Tesla employee said, echoing Dr Low. “He never takes no for an answer.”

After the shake-up at USAID, Trump made it clear that final authority would always rest with him.

When asked if he was happy with Musk after the upending of the agency, he said yes – “for the most part”.

“Sometimes we won’t agree with it, and we’ll not go where he wants to go. But I think he’s doing a great job,” he said on Monday.

“Elon can’t do and won’t do anything without our approval, and we’ll give him the approval where appropriate. Where it’s not appropriate we won’t,” the president said.

“He reports in.”

India’s biggest news organisations are seeking to join a lawsuit against OpenAI, the US startup behind ChatGPT, for alleged unauthorised use of their content.

The news organisations include some of India’s oldest publications like The Indian Express, The Hindu, The India Today group, billionaire Gautam Adani-owned NDTV, and over a dozen others.

OpenAI denies the allegations and told the BBC that it uses “publicly available data” that are in line with “widely accepted legal precedents”.

On Wednesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was in Delhi to discuss India’s plan for a low-cost AI ecosystem with IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw.

He said India “should be one of the leaders of the AI revolution” and said earlier comments from 2023, when he said Indian firms would struggle to compete, had been taken out of context.

“India is an incredibly important market for AI in general and for OpenAI in particular,” local media quoted him as saying at the event.

The legal case filed against OpenAI in November by Asian News International (ANI), India’s largest news agency, is the first of its kind in India.

ANI accuses ChatGPT of using its copyrighted material illegally – which OpenAI denies – and is seeking damages of 20m rupees ($230,000; £185,000).

The case holds significance for ChatGPT given its plans to expand in the country. According to a survey, India already has the largest user base of ChatGPT.

Chatbots like ChatGPT are trained on massive datasets collected by crawling through the internet. The content produced by nearly 450 news channels and 17,000 newspapers in India holds huge potential for this.

There is, however, no clarity on what material ChatGPT can legally collect and use for this purpose.

OpenAI is facing at least a dozen lawsuits across the world filed by publishers, artists and news organisations, who have all accused ChatGPT of using their content without permission.

The most prominent of them was filed by The New York Times in December 2023, in which the newspaper demanded “billions of dollars” in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, its backer.

“A decision by any court would also hold some persuasive value for other similar cases around the world,” says Vibhav Mithal, a lawyer specialising in artificial intelligence at the Indian law firm Anand and Anand.

Mr Mithal said the verdict in the lawsuit filed by ANI could “define how these AI models will operate in the future” and “what copyrighted news content can be used to train AI generative models [like ChatGPT]”.

A court ruling in ANI’s favour could spark further legal cases as well as opening the possibility of AI companies entering into license sharing agreements with content creators, which some companies have already started doing.

“But a ruling in OpenAI’s favour will lead to more freedom to use copyrighted protected data to train AI models,” he said.

ANI provides news to its paying subscribers and owns exclusive copyright over a large archive of text, images and videos.

In its suit filed in the Delhi High Court, ANI says that OpenAI used its content to train ChatGPT without permission. ANI has argued that this led to the chatbot getting better and has profited OpenAI.

The news agency said that before filing the suit, it had told OpenAI its content was being used unlawfully and offered to grant the company a license to use its data.

ANI says OpenAI declined the offer and put the news agency on an internal blocklist so that its data is no longer collected. It also asked ANI to disable certain web crawlers to ensure that its content was not picked up by ChatGPT.

The news agency says that despite these measures, ChatGPT picks up its content from websites of its subscribers. This has enriched OpenAI “unjustly”, it says.

ANI also says in its suit that the chatbot produces its content verbatim for certain prompts. In some instances, ANI says, ChatGPT has falsely attributed statements to the news agency, hampering its credibility and misleading the public.

Apart from seeking compensation for damages, ANI has asked the court to direct OpenAI to stop storing and using its work.

In its response, OpenAI says it opposes the case being filed in India since the company and its servers are not located in the country and the chatbot has also not been trained there.

In December, the Federation of Indian Publishers, which claims to represent 80% of Indian publishers including the Indian offices of Penguin Random House and Oxford University Press, filed an application in court saying that they were “directly affected” by this case and should be allowed to present their arguments as well.

A month later, Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA), which represents leading Indian news outlets, and three other media outlets filed a similar application. They argued that while OpenAI had entered into licensing agreements with international news publishers such as the Associated Press and Financial Times, a similar model had not been followed in India.

DNPA told the court the case would affect the livelihood of journalists and the country’s entire news industry. OpenAI has, however, argued that chatbots are not a “substitute” for news subscriptions and are not used for such purposes.

The court has not admitted these applications by the publishers yet and OpenAI has argued that the court should not hear them.

But the judge clarified that even if these associations are allowed to argue, the court will restrict itself to ANI’s claims since the other parties had not filed their own lawsuits.

Meanwhile, OpenAI told the BBC it is engaging in “constructive partnerships and conversations” with news organisations around the world, including India, to “work collaboratively”.

Analysts say the lawsuits filed against ChatGPT across the world could bring into focus aspects of chatbots that have escaped scrutiny so far.

Dr Sivaramakrishnan R Guruvayur, whose research focuses on responsible use of artificial intelligence, says that the data used to train chatbots is one such aspect.

The ANI-OpenAI case will lead the court “to evaluate the data sources” of chatbots, he said.

Governments across the world have been grappling with how to regulate AI. In 2023, Italy blocked ChatGPT saying that the chatbot’s mass collection and storage of personal data raised privacy concerns.

The European Union approved a law to regulate AI last year.

The Indian government too has indicated plans to regulate AI. Before the 2024 election, the government issued an advisory that AI tools that were “under-testing” or “unreliable” should get government permission before launching.

It also asked AI tools to not generate responses that are illegal in India or “threaten the integrity of the electoral process”.

A US deportation flight carrying about 100 Indian nationals accused of entering the country illegally has landed in the state of Punjab.

The military aircraft, which left Texas late on Tuesday, is now in the city of Amritsar where authorities say they have put measures in place to process the deportees.

President Donald Trump has made the mass deportation of undocumented foreign nationals a key policy. The US is said to have identified about 18,000 Indian nationals it believes entered illegally.

Trump has said India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi had assured him that the country would “do what’s right” in accepting US deportations.

Authorities in Punjab say they have set up special counters to receive the deportees, adding the individuals would be treated in a “friendly” manner.

Journalists have gathered outside police barricades near an Indian Air Force building in Amritsar.

There are 104 Indian deportees on the flight and they will be processed separately from regular passengers before boarding buses to their home states, including Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat.

Trump is increasingly using US military planes to return individuals to their home countries.

However, deportation flights to India are not new. In the US fiscal year 2024, which ended in September, more than 1,000 Indian nationals had been repatriated by charter and commercial flights.

In October, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deported more than 100 Indian nationals who lacked legal grounds to stay in the US on a chartered flight, part of a rising trend in removals to India.

That flight carrying adult men and women was also routed to Punjab, close to many deportees’ places of origin. No precise breakdown of hometowns was provided.

Much of the migration from India to US appears to originate from the Sikh-dominated state of Punjab and neighbouring Haryana, which has traditionally seen people migrating overseas. The other source of origin is Gujarat, Modi’s home state.

“That has been part of a steady increase in removals from the US of Indian nationals over the past few years, which corresponds with a general increase in encounters that we have seen with Indian nationals in the last few years as well,” Royce Bernstein Murray, assistant secretary at the US Department of Homeland Security told a media briefing in October.

Encounters refer to instances where non-citizens are stopped by US authorities while attempting to cross the country’s borders with Mexico or Canada.

A total of 5,477 Indians have been deported from the US by ICE between 2018 and 2023, according to official figures. More than 2,300 were deported in 2020, the highest in recent years.

The number of undocumented Indian immigrants in the US is disputed.

New data from Pew Research Center estimates 725,000 people as of 2022, making them the third-largest group after Mexico and El Salvador.

In contrast, the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) puts the figure at 375,000, ranking India fifth among origin countries. Unauthorised immigrants make up 3% of the US population and 22% of the foreign-born population.

In November, 1.44 million non-citizens in the US remain on ICE’s “non-detained docket with final orders of removal”, according to an ICE document, accessed by Fox News.

The highest numbers come from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico, each with over 200,000 individuals awaiting deportation.

China has 37,908 cases, while India has 17,940 on the list.

The ICE document says the US government expects foreign nations to accept their citizens but faces resistance.

ICE currently classifies 15 countries as “uncooperative”, including China, India, Iran, Russia and Venezuela. Eleven others, such as Iraq, Nicaragua and Vietnam, are considered at risk of non-compliance.

“Factors that could lead to a country being classified as uncooperative include hindering ICE’s removal efforts by refusing to conduct consular interviews when necessary; refusing to accept charter removal missions; having an unacceptable ratio of releases when compared to removals and/or unacceptable average time from executable final order of removal to removal; and/or denying or delaying issuance of travel documents, such as passports,” the document says.

India’s foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said recently that India was “firmly opposed to illegal migration, especially as it is linked to other forms of organised crime”.

“As part of India-US migration and mobility cooperation, both sides are engaged in a process to deter illegal migration, while also creating more avenues for legal migration from India to the US. We are keen to continue this cooperation.

“At the same time, the government of India would need to do the required verification, including nationality of the concerned individuals before they are deported to India.”

Last year, under former US President Joe Biden, 271,000 migrants were deported to 192 countries.

Thousands of people have attended events in Waitangi in northern New Zealand, to celebrate the country’s national day.

Waitangi Day marks the first signing of New Zealand’s founding document: The Treaty of Waitangi or Te Tiriti o Waitangi in Māori.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon bucked tradition by choosing not to be in Waitangi for the celebrations, instead attending an event in the South Island.

This year’s commemorations come at a time of increased tensions, as the government pursues policies considered by some to be anti-Māori – including a bill which would reinterpret the 184-year treaty.

On Wednesday, the eve of the holiday, hundreds of Māori protesters staged a silent demonstration by turning their backs on government ministers, signalling their dissatisfaction with the handling of Indigenous issues.

Act party leader David Seymour – who is the architect of the controversial bill in question, known as the Treaty Principles Bill – also had his microphone taken away twice at the event.

“We are sick of talking to ears that will not listen, and to minds that will not change,” Eru Kapa-Kingi – from the Toitū te Tiriti movement, which led the largest ever protest over Māori rights in 2024 – said.

Luxon announced in December that he would not be at Waitangi – choosing instead to celebrate the day in the South Island with its largest tribe – or iwi in Māori – Ngāi Tahu.

Iwi are groups of people who are joined by their shared ancestry and connection to nature. Ngāi Tahu has roughly 74,000 members, according to New Zealand’s last census.

“Today is a day to reflect on where we have come from and look forward to where we are going together as a nation,” Luxon said in a video message from Akaroa.

“The treaty is central to our history and it is also critical to our future. When Māori. communities succeed, all of New Zealand benefits. We’ll continue to deal with our differences respectfully and move forward together,” he added.

Luxon is not the first prime minister to miss the commemorations at Waitangi but his decision not to attend during a time of increased tensions between Māori and his government has drawn mixed reactions.

Ngāi Tahu said it welcomed the prime minister’s decision to celebrate with them and that it was a time to “reflect on our shared history…and strengthen the relationships between tangata whenua [Māori] and the Crown, for the benefit of all our communities in New Zealand”.

His political opponents have accused him of cowardice as his government pursues policies that many Māori consider offensive.

“When the prime minister doesn’t even want to show up to Waitangi he’s showing us he’s not the person for the job – he doesn’t want to govern for the people of this nation,” said Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson.

The Treaty of Waitangi was signed between many, but not all, Māori tribes and the British Crown at Waitangi on 6 February 1840 – giving both parties certain rights and privileges.

For Māori, this includes retaining chieftainship over their lands and resources, but differences between the Māori and English versions of the treaty have left it open to interpretation.

Nevertheless, the promise to protect indigenous land rights was repeatedly broken and the economic and cultural impacts of this, coupled with racial discrimination, has led to an inequality that is still being addressed today.

It is in this context that the anniversary of the signing of the treaty has come an important day for discussions about the state of relations between Māori and the state.

This year’s anniversary comes amid ongoing scrutiny of the Treaty Principles Bill.

The minister who has been championing proposal – Act Party leader David Seymour – has attended, despite being asked not to by his hapū (sub-tribe).

Proponents of the bill say it will promote equality among New Zealanders, but those against it say it is divisive and will further disadvantage Māori.

Concern about the bill is so high that a national forum representing several iwi (Māori tribes) recently wrote a letter to King Charles – New Zealand’s head of state – asking for his help.

“We seek your intervention to ensure that the government does not diminish the Crown’s honour,” the open letter reads.

“Please remind them to respect their responsibility to act as an honourable partner on your behalf.”

While it is unlikely the bill will pass – with Luxon and his majority National Party vowing to not back it at its second reading later this year – some of those who have participated in the public hearings about it say its very existence is an insult.

They include former justice minister Kiritapu Allan, who described the proposed legislation as an “abomination”.

“This is a bill that is about scrubbing us [Māori] from history,” she said.

Others have supported it. Economist Ananish Chaudhuri said the conversation about enshrining the Treaty principles in law was needed “if New Zealand is to remain a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural nation”.

He also spoke out against a situation in which different cultures in New Zealand are treated differently, saying his birth nation of India was a “cautionary tale”.

Other steps the government has taken that have caused anger include the dissolution the Māori Health Authority – which was set up under the last Labour government to try and create greater health equality – and the removal of Māori names from government departments.

Palestinian-Americans across the US have expressed outrage at Donald Trump’s proposal for the US to “take over” Gaza, a place many of them still consider home.

“Our right of return, it’s something we’ve thought about our whole lives,” Iman Kishawi, who was born in Gaza but now lives in the Los Angeles area, told the BBC.

She said she was “very angry” over what President Trump has said, asking: “Who are you to own the land?”

Meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Tuesday, Trump proposed the idea that Palestinians could be resettled elsewhere while the US took ownership of the territory and turned it into the “Riviera of the Middle East”.

Hosting a joint press conference with Netanyahu, the first international leader to visit the White House since Trump’s inauguration, the president said: “The US will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it, too.”

He added: “I do see a long-term ownership position, and I see it bringing great stability to that part of the Middle East.”

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His proposition – a radical departure from decades of US policy – was met with backlash.

Laila El-Haddad, a Palestinian-American author and activist, said she was “stunned”.

“It was appalling,” the Maryland resident told the BBC.

“It just showed an utter sort of callous disdain and disregard for Palestinian lives and Palestinian humanity and Palestinian dignity, like it’s as though they’re just a pawn that are being played around with,” she continued.

“He was talking about Palestinians as though, again, they existed in some vacuum, as though they had just been the unfortunate victims of some natural disaster.”

Some Republicans have defended Trump or sought to clarify his remarks, while others have greeted the proposal with scepticism and confusion.

For many Palestinian Americans, the president’s comments just reaffirm Gaza’s situation.

Tariq Luthun, a Palestinian American living in Michigan, who once told the BBC that “every day I wake up, I check to see if family members are alive“, said he was “pretty numb” to Trump’s remarks.

He called Trump’s proposal a continuation of “US imperialist policy”.

Trump is “simply saying the quiet part out loud. This is the admission of what we have seen over the course of the past several decades”, Mr Luthun added.

Iman Kishawi, who was born in Gaza in 1958 but fled because of war when she was seven years old, said she became “depressed a little” over the news.

“We need to give people a chance to live on their homeland,” the Los Angeles-area resident said, adding that losing your home is like “losing your identity”.

Just last month, after the announcement of a ceasefire following 15 months of fighting between Israel and Hamas, Ms Kishawi began contemplating her eventual return to Gaza.

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“I just have a yearning of going and belonging and helping my people,” she said.

But that fantasy has been tossed into doubt – for now – following Trump’s remarks.

“The minute you see hope coming, it’s gone,” Ms Kishawi said.

The current conflict started when hundreds of Hamas fighters stormed across Israel’s southern border on 7 October 2023, killing about 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages back to Gaza.

Israel responded with an air bombardment, then a full-scale ground invasion that has left more than 46,700 people – most of them civilians – dead, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Offensive historic tweets posted by the star of the Oscar-nominated film Emilia Pérez have led to a week of fallout and left the film’s awards campaign in disarray.

Tweets published by best actress nominee Karla Sofía Gascón, mostly between 2019 and 2024, have been widely condemned since they came to light last week.

The actress has released several statements since then, saying she was “deeply sorry to those I have caused pain”, adding that she is not racist and that many of her comments have been taken out of context.

In the days since, Hollywood has distanced itself from her posts, while Netflix appears to have refocused its campaign efforts on the film’s other nominees.

Gascón said she had been on a “rollercoaster of emotions” in the past week in her latest statement published on Instagram (she has currently deactivated her X account).

“What a coincidence I’ve been trying to send a message of hope to the world for nine months and just three days ago I casually am the worst person in the world,” she added.

The tweets saw Gascón make comments about Islam, George Floyd, and the high level of diversity at the Oscars.

Netflix has not publicly commented (BBC News approached the streamer for this article), but the company has been distancing itself from her comments in recent days.

Here is how the campaign around Gascón has changed, following the controversy.

At this time of year, film studios take out advertisements intended to make a particular film more visible to awards voters.

The movie will have already have had a separate promotional push at the time of its release, targeted at the public in the hope of securing high box office or streaming numbers.

But the so-called For Your Consideration (FYC) adverts which run during awards season are specifically intended to draw awards voters’ attention to the categories the film has been nominated in at events such as the Baftas and Oscars.

Previously, Gascón featured prominently in Netflix’s publicity material, which reminded voters that she was nominated for best leading actress.

But an updated FYC poster released on Monday almost entirely erased Gascón, instead making her co-stars Zoe Saldaña and Selena Gomez much more prominent.

“The shift suggests Netflix is trying to minimize Gascón’s contributions so that the controversy around her remarks won’t overshadow the film or the work of her co-stars and collaborators,” suggested Variety’s Clayton Davis.

Gascón has released several statements on the controversy in recent days, mostly via her social media accounts.

But she has also given an emotional, hour-long sit-down interview to CNN en Español.

It has since come to light that Gascón took part in the interview without the involvement or agreement of the film’s PR team.

The Hollywood Reporter said it had learned that the actress “set up the interview on her own without the involvement of anyone working on the film, which was distributed by Netflix”.

The fact that this line has been briefed to US journalists suggests Netflix is not only distancing itself from Gascón, but that the streamer’s own PR team may not have signed off on such an interview being granted.

Gascón had been due to appear at several events in the next week or so.

These included the AFI Awards luncheon, the Critics Choice Awards, the Directors Guild of America Awards, the Producers Guild of America Awards, and the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

However, the actress is now not expected to appear at any of them, as the turmoil continues.

And that’s not all. According to Variety, Netflix and the film’s PR team have stopped talking directly with Gascón and are only communicating through an agent.

The publication also reported the streamer “is no longer covering expenses for her travel to the various awards shows or her styling for any appearances at these events”.

It remains to be seen whether Gascón will attend the Oscars, which are scheduled to take place on 2 March.

Many film fans (ourselves included) love the so-called “Fab Five” format, which has been employed at some recent Oscars ceremonies.

This sees five previous winners of a particular category take to the stage to present the latest winner with the same prize.

For example, last year, Emma Stone was presented with the best actress trophy by previous winners Michelle Yeoh, Jennifer Lawrence, Sally Field, Jessica Lange and Charlize Theron.

Traditionally, this format sees each of the previous winners deliver a short speech, paying tribute to the current nominees, before revealing the winner.

However, it’s understood that the Academy has moved away from doing this in the acting categories this year, which means no actress will be asked to praise Gascón’s performance from the stage.

Despite speculation, the decision appears to have been unprompted by the recent controversy.

Instead, Variety reports the Academy decided to ditch the fab five format for the acting categories several weeks ago, before the tweets came to light, and instead is deploying it in different categories this year, such as best director.

Emilia Pérez, a bonkers Spanish-language musical about a Mexican drug lord who changes gender, received 13 Oscar nominations, although it was not necessarily expected to be the biggest winner on the night.

It has stiff competition in several categories, including best picture, but it was thought to be a frontrunner in a few in particular, such as best original song, and best supporting actress for Zoe Saldaña.

It was widely thought Saldaña would run away with the trophy, not just for her acclaimed performance, but also because there is a lot of goodwill from voters because of her roles in box office smashes such as the Avatar and Marvel movies.

After the tweets came to light, Saldaña said: “It makes me really sad because I don’t support [it], and I don’t have any tolerance for any negative rhetoric towards people of any group.

“I can only attest to the experience that I had with each and every individual that was a part, that is a part, of this film, and my experience and my interactions with them was about inclusivity and collaboration and racial, cultural and gender equity. And it just saddens me.”

Then, on Sunday, Saldaña used her speech at the London Critics Circle Awards to tell the audience to be “abstract with your idea of redemption”.

Oscar voters and awards pundits will be watching forthcoming events such as the Bafta Film Awards and SAG Awards to see whether Saldaña can still follow through with her expected win.

Meanwhile, director Jacque Audiard told Deadline he has avoided getting in touch with Gascón because “right now she needs space to reflect and take accountability for her actions”.

“Very unfortunately, it is taking up all the space, and that makes me very sad,” he said.

“It’s very hard for me to think back to the work I did with Karla Sofía. The trust we shared, the exceptional atmosphere that we had on the set that was indeed based on trust.

“And when you have that kind of relationship and suddenly you read something that that person has said, things that are absolutely hateful and worthy of being hated, of course that relationship is affected. It’s as if you fall into a hole. Because what Karla Sofía said is inexcusable.”

As for Emilia Pérez as a whole, the controversy could make its chances of a best picture win far less likely, particularly in a year where there is no breakout frontrunner for best picture.

“I will not bow to this regime. I will not play by its rules,” vowed journalist Mzia Amaglobeli, who has been on hunger strike in a Georgian jail for 25 days.

The founder of two news websites in Georgia, her health is declining and relatives fear for her life. She was taken to hospital this week for treatment.

Amaglobeli, 49, has been in per-trial detention since she slapped a police chief during nightly protests that have galvanised Georgians since the end of November.

They accuse their government of rigging elections and turning their back on their country’s future in the European Union.

Georgia’s increasingly authoritarian government says she committed a serious criminal offence, but her pre-trial detention has turned her into a symbol of resistance.

“Today it is me, tomorrow it could be anyone who dares to dream of a just, democratic European Georgia, untouched by Russian influence, unshaken by oppression,” Amaglobeli wrote in a letter from Rustavi prison, not far from the Georgian capital Tbilisi.

The EU’s human rights commissioner says her pre-trial detention for assaulting a police officer is unjustified.

Fourteen foreign embassies in Georgia have demanded Amaglobeli’s immediate release and a review of her case, describing her detention as another worrying example of intimidation of journalists in Georgia.

Mzia Amaglobeli was detained twice on 11 January in highly contentious circumstances, during a protest against the Georgian Dream government in the Black Sea port of Batumi.

A video promoted repeatedly on state media shows her lightly slapping the Batumi police chief on the cheek.

Georgia’s Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has condemned her actions.

“Everyone must understand that the police officer is inviolable, the police officer represents the state and the strength of the state,” Kobakhidze told a press briefing.

If found guilty of assault she faces between four and seven years in jail.

Amaglobeli is one of many hundreds of protesters to have been arrested across Georgia. Opposition leaders are among those who have been detained and in some cases injured by gangs of pro-government thugs.

Photos of the journalist alongside calls for her release adorn the main protest sites in Tbilisi as well as her home city of Batumi.

Her family, friends and colleagues describe her as a peaceful, calm and hard-working person who founded Batumi news website Batumelebi with her business partner Eter Turadze in 2001.

They went on to launch national news website, Netgazeti, and today both sites are regarded as unbiased and trustworthy news sources in Georgia’s deeply polarised media.

Batumelebi’s third-floor offices look on to the snow-capped Ajara mountains. The Georgian flag hangs from the balcony alongside the flags of the EU and Ukraine.

“Mzia is well known in journalistic circles, but she was not a public person,” says civil rights activist Malkaz Chkadua, who has taken part in the nightly protests in Batumi.

“She was only 25 years old, a young brave journalist when she started the newspaper Batumelebi which has been fighting for freedom of expression, and defending human rights through different government regimes in this country.”

Her niece Iveta, who grew up with Mzia, describes her as a workaholic.

On the night she was arrested, she was still at her office and most of her staff had gone home for the night.

Colleague and investigative journalist Irma Dimidtradze says her boss had not been taking part in the daily anti-government protests.

But when Amaglobeli learned that a friend was among several protesters detained for putting up posters for an upcoming general strike, she rushed to the police station.

“People were chanting ‘sticking up posters is not a crime’, and to demonstrate that it is not a crime, Mzia did the same thing,” says Dimitradze.

Weeks earlier, as the protests took hold, the Georgian Dream government banned face masks at protests and increased fines for making “inscriptions or drawings” on building facades.

Amaglobeli was captured on video attaching a poster to the wall of a police station before she was led away by several officers.

“We learned later in the police report that she disobeyed a lawful order of the police that she was swearing and insulting them,” said Irma Dimitradze, adding that all of it was untrue.

She was charged with an administrative offence and released. Her niece, Iveta, was with other relatives waiting for her: “When Mzia came out, I even joked with her saying: ‘Look, if you wanted to rest, to have a day off, you did not need to do this.'”

But soon the situation escalated, and more arrests followed.

Amoglobeli was seen confronting Batumi police chief Irakli Dgeubadze. As he walked away, she grabbed him by his sleeve and slapped him.

Footage taken minutes afterwards shows her being led away by police.

Off camera, she is taunted with highly threatening and abusive language which witnesses have said is the voice of the chief of police.

Amaglobeli’s lawyers say he later spat in her face and refused to give her water or access to toilets. She was also denied access to her lawyers for several hours.

Batumi prosecutors argued that her slap was motivated by “revenge”. A judge rejected bail by her legal team and remanded her in pre-trial custody.

In the dock, Amaglobeli looked defiant, wearing in a blue hoody and holding a copy of the book by Nobel Prize-winner Maria Ressa, “How to Stand Up to a Dictator: the fight for our future.”

Twenty days into her hunger strike on 31 January, Georgia’s Special Penitentiary Service urged Amaglobeli to stop “in the best interests of her health”.

Leading Georgian Dream figure in parliament Mamuka Mdinaradze said it was wrong to portray her as “a person who has committed great heroism… she should start eating and everything would be over”.

Tbilisi Mayor Kakha Kaladze, another leading light in the party, suggested Amaglobeli could come out and admit “I made a mistake, and I apologise”, as the Batumi was a dignified police officer.

However, several groups have said it is the authorities who are in the wrong by detaining her in the first place. The Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association says her prosecution is “politically motivated”.

Since the beginning of the pro-EU protests, hundreds of protesters have been detained, beaten and treated inhumanely, according to Transparency International Georgia.

More than 90 journalists have been violently attacked and their equipment damaged.

No police officers have faced charges.

Georgia’s independent Special Investigations Service, which investigates allegations made against officials says it has launched an investigation into possible abuse of power in Amaghlobeli’s case by “certain employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia”.

It says 10 police officers, including Batumi’s police chief, have been questioned as witnesses. None have been suspended from duty.

She is next due in court on 4 March.

The Argentine government led by Javier Milei has announced that it plans to pull out of the World Health Organisation (WHO).

A spokesman for President Milei said the decision to exit the WHO was triggered by “deep differences regarding health management especially during the [Covid-19] pandemic”.

The announcement comes just over two weeks after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to begin the process of withdrawing from the international health body.

The two leaders have expressed admiration for each other, with Milei calling Trump’s re-election the “greatest political comeback in history”, while the US president described his Argentine counterpart as “my favourite president”.

The decision by President Milei to withdraw his country from the WHO follows the same arguments that underpinned the withdrawal of the United States.

Both cited the response to the Covid-19 pandemic, which saw a long lockdown imposed in Argentina, as well as concerns over Chinese influence over the global health body.

The difference is the impact this is likely to have on the WHO itself.

The USA is by far the biggest individual contributor to the UN body, putting in around $950m (£760m) in 2024, nearly 15% of the total budget. The US withdrawal will pose some difficult financial questions.

Argentina on the other hand contributes roughly $8m a year. That is unlikely to make any significant material difference.

The bigger question is whether other leaders who share President Trump’s world view, as President Milei clearly does, decide to take similar action.

If more states pull out – and that is admittedly a big if – the credibility of the WHO as the one truly global health body could take a hit.

Argentine media say they expect President Milei to sign an executive order in the coming days which will begin the process of Argentina pulling out from the WHO.

Speaking at a news conference, presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni said that “we Argentines are not going to allow an international body to interfere with our sovereignty, and even less with our health”.

The spokesman argued that an exit from the WHO would provide Argentina with more flexibility to implement policies tailored to its own interests and to administer its funds as it saw fit.

President Milei, who describes himself as an “anarcho-capitalist”, has been critical of the WHO for some time but the idea of leaving the body appears to have gained traction in the days after Donald Trump signed an executive order setting in motion the US’s exit from the international body.

The two heads of state appear to share mutual admiration for each other.

Javier Milei was the first foreign leader to meet Trump after his election victory on 5 November.

Speaking at a gala at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort on the night of their meeting, Milei said that “the winds of freedom [were] blowing much stronger since Trump’s victory”.

Asked by reporters on Wednesday whether President Milei was planning to withdraw from other international bodies or treaties, the presidential spokesman refused to rule out anything.

“The president is very determined when it comes to making Argentina freer, so any link that Argentina has with bodies that go against its freedoms, we’re going to do our utmost to prevent them from interfering in the lives of Argentines.”

Environmental activists in Argentina say they fear that Milei will follow in Trump’s footsteps and also set the wheels in motion to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement – the international treaty which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

China has accused the US of making “unfounded and false allegations” about its role in the fentanyl trade to justify tariffs on Chinese products.

The complaint was lodged with the World Trade Organization (WTO) one day after US President Donald Trump raised border taxes on Chinese goods by 10%, a measure he said was intended to address an influx of illegal drugs.

In the filing, China said the measures were “discriminatory and protectionist” and violated trade rules.

But experts have warned that China is unlikely to secure a ruling in its favour as the panel that settles trade disputes remains unable to function. One former WTO official told the BBC it has “no possibility of succeeding”.

The dispute comes as Trump’s plans for tariffs – a tax he has said he wants to see imposed on all foreign shipments into the country – are causing uncertainty across the global trade landscape.

Trump has said tariffs will encourage firms to make their products in the US, repeatedly expressing concern about the size of America’s trade deficit.

But his actions against China – which he has threatened to widen to include Canada, Mexico and Europe – have sparked concerns about their impact on the global economy, including in the US, as businesses respond to trade uncertainty by holding off on investments or pass on new costs to customers.

Sheertex, a Canadian tights-maker, on Wednesday announced that it was temporarily laying off 40% of its nearly 350 workers, citing the tariff questions.

US imports hit their highest on record in December as businesses responded to the threats of tariffs, racing to secure foreign-made toys, mobile phones and computers.

The value of goods brought into the US jumped 4% from November to $293.1bn (£234.4bn), the highest since records began in 1992, the Commerce Department said on Wednesday.

The rise also contributed to the widest trade deficit, or gap, between exports and imports in nearly two years.

The tariffs have also provoked political tension, including retaliation from China, which responded to Trump’s move with tariffs on US goods and an anti-monopoly probe of Google, among other measures.

The speed with which China filed its complaint with the WTO is an indication of Beijing’s readiness for the trade fight.

On Wednesday, Bloomberg also reported that the country’s anti-monopoly regulator was preparing for a possible investigation into Apple’s policies and App Store fees, hitting the company’s shares.

Trump’s moves – which included ordering an end of duty-free treatment for parcels worth less than $800 – will be a major “shock” to some firms, such as Shein and Temu, as they erode the ability to offer ultra-low prices, said Mark Williams, chief China economist at Capital Economics.

But he said he thought for China overall that the effects of Trump’s tariffs would not be too damaging.

“For the wider Chinese economy, this is definitely manageable,” he said.

WTO procedures give the US and China 60 days to resolve their dispute through consultations, at which point China has the right to request adjudication by a panel of judges.

But the final WTO panel that settles trade disputes – known as the appellate body – remains unable to function, as the US refuses to approve the appointment of new judges to the body.

The US also ignored a previous finding by the WTO that earlier tariffs on steel and aluminium that were imposed during Trump’s first term were against the rules.

But Tom Graham, who chaired the WTO’s appellate body in 2016 and 2019, told the BBC it would “probably be a year” before there is a decision from the first stage of Beijing’s complaint and it has little chance of progressing further.

“It may be a strong case, the way the WTO dispute settlement system used to work, but it has no possibility of succeeding here ultimately,” he said.

Jeff Moon, who worked on China trade policy for President Barack Obama, told the BBC that he expected any initial WTO decision to support China’s position.

These cases typically take years to be resolved, however, and because the appeals process has been paralysed, “a final decision will never be issued”.

The former Assistant US Trade Representative for China Affairs added that Beijing needed to file the case to support its frequently stated position that it is the US that undermines the rules-based trading system and the relationship between the two countries.

China ranked as the county with the biggest deficit in goods in December, sending $25.3bn more into the US than it purchased.

The European Union, a target of Trump’s tariff threats, had the second largest gap.

By contrast, the US enjoyed a small surplus of $2.3bn in goods trade with the UK.

Overall, the trade deficit in the US, including services, rose 17% last year to a total of $918.4bn, as imports increased faster than exports.

In December, the trade deficit in goods and services was $98.4bn, the highest since March 2022, the Commerce Department said.

Chelsea footballer Samantha Kerr has told a court she believes officers at Twickenham police station treated her differently based on “what they perceived to be the colour of my skin”.

The Australia international denies causing racially aggravated harassment to PC Stephen Lovell during an incident in south-west London by calling him “stupid and white”.

The alleged incident happened after Ms Kerr was taken by a taxi driver to the station following a disagreement over payment when she was on a night out on 30 January 2023.

A video showed to Kingston Crown Court shows Ms Kerr swearing at the officer and saying it was “a racial thing”.

Ms Kerr was with her partner, West Ham midfielder Kristie Mewis, when the incident alleged happened.

Ms Kerr told the court the driver took the couple to Twickenham police station after said she “spit vomited” out of the window of his vehicle while Ms Mewis smashed the rear window as the driver had locked the doors.

The defence asked Ms Kerr how it felt being with the three police officers, including PC Lovell, at the station.

She told the court that at first she felt relieved before feeling scared again because “they were trying to tell us that we were the ones who had done something criminal here”.

She added that the conduct of two of the officers was “antagonising”.

Asked what she meant, she said: “Not believing us – telling us things hadn’t happened that I knew had happened, making me feel like a liar, second guessing myself.”

Asked by the defence, Grace Forbes, what it was like watching the video, Ms Kerr said: “It’s really hard to watch myself like that.”

Ms Kerr told the court she took a video of what was happening because she felt she needed to prove she was being treated poorly.

The court heard PC Lovell said in the video: “Do you think a taxi driver who is going to rape and kill you would take you to a police station?”

Responding, Ms Kerr said in the video that he was a “white privileged person”.

When asked in court why she said this at the time, she said PC Lovell “had no idea about the power and privilege he had in that moment or in life, because the way he commented on what the driver could have done to me showed he had never had to think about what can happen to you as a female.”

Ms Kerr also told the court she had feared for her life as she and her partner were “trapped” in the back of a taxi.

Ms Kerr told the jury she had put her head out of the window when she began to feel sick before the driver closed it and began to “drive dangerously”.

When asked, she said Ms Mewis kicked the back window with her boot a few times before it shattered and she was relieved “there was a way out”.

The footballer also told the court the murder of Sarah Everard was “prominent” in her mind, as she said the driver of the taxi had locked the doors and did not respond when she and her partner “begged” him to let them out.

Ms Kerr also told the court she had experienced “being treated differently” because of the colour of her skin.

She said she identified as “white anglo-Indian”, with her mother from Australia and father from India, the jury heard.

When questioned by the defence, she said she first experienced racism at the ages of nine or 10 years old.

She told the court there were situations where she perceived to have been treated differently, for example on social media. At a shopping centre, “if I am not dressed correctly I have often been followed round by a security guard”, she added.

Ms Kerr told the court she moved to the UK from Australia in December 2019 after signing with Chelsea.

The trial continues.