US President Donald Trump says he will announce tariffs on all steel and aluminium imports to the US, as he reshapes America’s trading relationship with the world.

The move could have a particular impact on neighbouring Canada, which is the biggest supplier of aluminium to the US. Trump has also threatened to introduce tariffs at a later date on other products from Canada, as well as Mexico.

He has already introduced a levy of 10% on all products entering from China – which has responded with its own measures.

The US president says these import taxes are needed to help the US economy and to “protect” the country from illegal immigration and the flow of drugs. Economists say they could push up prices for Americans.

Tariffs are taxes charged on goods imported from other countries.

Companies that import goods from abroad pay the tariffs to the US government.

Trump has introduced a 10% tariff on all goods from China. So, a product worth $10 would have an additional $1 charge applied to it.

The president originally said he would impose a 25% tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico, but later agreed to pause these after both countries agreed to boost border security.

Charging a percentage of a product’s value is the most common type of tariff. Another type imposes a fixed figure on imports, whatever their value.

Trump is fulfilling a campaign promise of introducing import duties against some of America’s closest trading partners.

He argues that tariffs will boost US manufacturing and protect jobs – for example in the US steel industry – as well as raising tax revenue and growing the economy.

He has also sought to justify tariffs on metals – which he also introduced during his first term – as a national security issue.

Trump also says he is using tariffs to “combat the scourge of fentanyl”, a powerful drug that causes tens of thousands of overdose deaths in the US each year.

His administration says chemicals used to make the drug come from China, while Mexican gangs supply it illegally and have fentanyl labs in Canada.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said less than 1% of fentanyl entering the US comes from his country.

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Together, China, Mexico and Canada accounted for more than 40% of imports into the US last year, making them some of Trump’s most valuable trade partners.

China

A 10% charge on all goods imported from China to the US took effect on 4 February.

Beijing retaliated with its own tariffs that took effect on 10 February. These include a 15% tariff on US coal and liquefied natural gas products, and a 10% tariff on crude oil, agricultural machinery and large engine cars.

China has repeatedly voiced its opposition to a new trade war of the kind that developed between the two countries during Trump’s first presidency.

Canada

Trump paused for 30 days a proposed tariff of 25% on all goods entering from Canada – which was also due to begin on 4 February.

Canada also paused its own retaliatory tariff of 25% on 155bn Canadian dollars’ worth ($107bn; £86bn) of US imports.

In exchange for Trump’s pause, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada was implementing a “$1.3bn border plan” to add “new choppers, technology and personnel to border,” as well as “increased resources to stop the flow of fentanyl”.

Much of the border security plan had already been announced in December.

Trump said the delay would allow the US to see “whether or not a final economic deal with Canada” could be reached.

Mexico

The proposed 25% tariffs against Mexico have also been delayed a month, as have measures by Mexico against US goods.

Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum agreed to send 10,000 members of the National Guard to the US-Mexican border to “prevent the trafficking of drugs, in particular fentanyl”.

President Sheinbaum said the US had in turn agreed to increase measures to prevent the trafficking of high-powered US weapons into Mexico.

During Trump’s previous time in office, he applied less restrictive tariffs on China. This time around, the tariffs appear to apply to all goods from China.

If the measures against goods from Mexico and Canada ultimately go ahead, a range of items are expected to become more expensive.

Car manufacturing could bear the brunt of the effects of tariffs.

Vehicle parts cross the US, Mexican and Canadian borders multiple times before a vehicle is completely assembled.

The average US car price could increase by $3,000 because of the import taxes, financial analyst TD economics suggested.

Other goods from Mexico which could be affected include fruit, vegetables, spirits and beer.

Canadian goods such as steel, lumber, grains and potatoes would also be likely to get pricier for US consumers.

Canadian energy would be tariffed at 10% instead of 25%.

Trump previously told the BBC the UK was acting “out of line”, without giving further detail, but suggested a solution could be “worked out”.

The UK’s business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, said the UK should be excluded from tariffs because the US exports more products to the UK than it imports.

The UK exports pharmaceutical products, cars and scientific instruments to the US.

Trump has also said he could impose tariffs on the EU “pretty soon”, because “they take almost nothing [from the US] and we take everything from them”.

Last year, the US had a trade deficit of $213bn with the EU – which Trump described as “an atrocity”.

The EU has said it would “respond firmly” to any tariffs. US companies Harley Davidson, which manufactures motorcycles, and whiskey distilleries such as Jack Daniel’s have previously faced EU tariffs.

Economists have warned that tariffs are likely to raise prices for US consumers.

For example, sellers may raise the price of goods they are importing if they are forced to pay higher duties.

From 2018 to 2023, tariffs on imported washing machines saw the price of laundry equipment rise by 34%, according to official statistics, before falling once the tariffs expired.

Some experts suggest that these new tariffs could prompt a wider trade war and exacerbate inflation.

Capitol Economics has said the annual rate of inflation could increase from 2.9% to as high as 4% because of the newly announced tariffs.

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Romania’s President Klaus Iohannis has resigned following pressure for him to step down ahead of a re-run of a presidential election that was controversially cancelled last year.

The December vote was voided by Romania’s top court after allegations of Russian state meddling.

The outgoing Iohannis, a pro-EU liberal, had said he would stay on in office until a successor was elected in May.

But that had been strongly criticised by far-right politicians and their supporters, who had performed well in the first round of the vote in December.

Their criticism had inspired tens of thousands of Romanians to take to the streets last month in protest against the election’s cancellation.

Opposition lawmakers had launched a motion in parliament again on Monday to move for the president’s suspension.

In response, Iohannis said he would step down, in a bid to limit what he said would have been be a “damaging” and divisive referendum for the country.

“In order to spare Romania and the Romanian citizens from crisis… I resign from the office of president of Romania,” he said. He said he would officially stand down on Wednesday.

British pop star Ed Sheeran was stopped from busking in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru on Sunday, with police saying he didn’t have the necessary permissions.

A video showing a local police officer unplugging Sheeran’s microphone on Bengaluru’s Church Street – a crowded shopping and entertainment area – has since gone viral.

Officials told the ANI news agency a request from Mr Sheeran’s team to busk on the road was rejected to avoid congestion in the area.

But Sheeran insisted on Instagram that “we had permission to busk, by the way. Hence, us playing in that exact spot was planned out before. It wasn’t just us randomly turning up. All good though. See you at the show tonight.”

The incident took place ahead of his scheduled Mathematics Tour concert at NICE Grounds in Bengaluru.

Fans criticised the police intervention online, with one saying: “We live in an uncleocracy. And there’s nothing uncles love more than to stop young people from having fun,” referring to the number of vague rules that govern the use of public spaces in India.

However PC Mohan, a local MP from the ruling BJP party, said “even global stars must follow local rules – no permit, no performance!”

Sheeran is in India for the second year in a row on a 15-day tour, having already played in Pune Hyderabad and Chennai and with more concerts scheduled for Shillong in India’s north-east and the capital Delhi.

At his Bengaluru show, Sheeran surprised fans by singing two hit local songs in the Telugu language with singer Shilpa Rao on stage.

He previously collaborated with Indian singer and actor Diljit Dosanjh during the latter’s concert in Birmingham last year.

While in India he has also collaborated with sitar musician Megha Rawoot on a version of his hit song Shape of You.

Demand for live music concerts has been increasing in India, with Sheeran’s biggest-ever tour of the country coming close on the heels of Dua Lipa’s recent performance in Mumbai and Coldplay’s multi-city tour.

With growing disposable incomes, India is an emerging player in the “concert economy”, a recent Bank of Baroda report said, with live concerts set to be worth $700-900m (£550-730m).

New Zealand has accused the Cook Islands government of a lack of transparency over its plans to strike a partnership deal with China.

The tiny Pacific Island nation’s leader, Mark Brown, is this week making his country’s first ever state visit to Beijing in order to sign the agreement.

However, New Zealand says it was not properly consulted over the plans, leading to what Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has described as a “dispute”.

The Cook Islands is hugely reliant on New Zealand under a longstanding “free association” agreement that provides it with defence and financial support. China’s growing influence in the Pacific has challenged the US and its allies, who have held sway for years.

“We value our partnership with New Zealand and we expect the same respect,” Brown said at a press conference last week. He was due to travel to China on Monday.

“Disagreements, although difficult, are an inevitable part of international relations but they should never define the entirety of our engagement.”

He has denied any dispute, saying “engagement has been consistent, respectful and open” and that the Cook Islands has the right to forge its own path as a self-governing country.

China’s foreign ministry said that both countries were important partners and that it was ready to work with the Cook Islands to “achieve new progress”.

“The China-Cook Islands relationship is not targeted at any third party and should not be subject to or be disrupted by any third party,” said spokesman Guo Jiakun.

Beijing has had diplomatic ties with the Cook Islands since 1997 and is one of its development partners.

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Under their 60-year-old agreement, the Cook Islands is self governing in “free association” with New Zealand. The two countries are expected to consult each other over issues of defence and security. Brown says the new agreement with China will cover areas including infrastructure, trade and tourism.

Deep deep-sea mining is also expected to be part of the deal. Brown believes that mining valuable minerals on the seabed could be a game-changer for the Cook Islands, creating huge economic wealth.

However, the practice, in which China is a major player, is controversial, and critics believe it will exacerbate climate change – to which the Cook Islands are already vulnerable.

Luxon said on Monday that while New Zealand had “very good relations between the Cook Islands and its people”, in this case there had not been transparency.

Asked at a press conference whether he would consider putting aid to the Cook Islands on hold, as it recently did for Kiribati due to a diplomatic snub, Luxon said he would wait to see what was in the deal.

Under the free association agreement Cook Islanders can live, work and access healthcare as New Zealand citizens – benefits some fear they could lose if relations between the two countries further sour.

There has also been criticism from some that Brown and his government did not consult the public about the China deal first – something Tina Browne, the leader of the Democratic Party, has described as “insane”.

Both she and fellow opposition leader Teariki Heather, from the Cook Islands United Party, say they have lost confidence in Brown’s leadership.

That is despite his recent U-turn on a controversial proposal to introduce a separate passport for Cook Island citizens, while also allowing them to retain New Zealand citizenship. Wellington rejected the plan last year.

The Cook Islands is not the first Pacific Island nation to strengthen its ties with China. The Solomon Islands signed a security pact with Beijing in 2022, while countries including Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea also have close relations.

French President Emmanuel Macron has used AI-generated deepfake videos to publicise the start of the AI Action Summit taking place in Paris.

In a video posted on his social media accounts, Macron reacts to a montage of deepfaked videos of himself in popular films and TV series by saying “nicely done”.

Videos of Macron inserted into popular media, using AI, have been circulating on French social media for the past few months.

In October, he told Variety that deepfakes “can be a form of harassment” for some people.

Some experts have questioned the use of the deepfakes, saying normalising them makes it harder to spot fake news.

The montage of deepfakes, which has been seen millions of times across the president’s Instagram, X and TikTok accounts, shows him inserted into a 1980s euro disco hit, an influencer’s hair tutorial and the action hero TV show MacGyver.

Videos such as these have been popular of French social media for a while, so this is Macron acknowledging that he has become a meme among some social media circles.

Then the real Macron says: “It’s pretty well done, it made me laugh.”

“But more seriously, with artificial intelligence, we can do some very big things: change healthcare, energy, life in our society,” the 47-year-old president said.

He adds: “France and Europe must be at the heart of this revolution to seize every opportunity and also to promote our own principles.”

The video was posted ahead of a two-day global AI summit starting in Paris on Monday.

The aim of the summit is to unite world leaders, tech executives, and academics to examine AI’s impact on society, governance, and the environment.

“President Macron’s deepfake might seem like harmless fun to promote the AI Summit in Paris, but it is not in general a good thing,” says Paul McKay, principal analyst at technology consultancy Forrester.

“Normalising deepfakes in this way should not be encouraged as it continues the difficulty with telling what is real and what isn’t, and is ultimately helping to establish what is fact from fiction.”

Dr Richard Whittle from Salford Business School also warns of the risk of “normalising” deepfakes videos, “both on social media and by scammers”.

He adds: “It is great to bring attention to this threat, but doing it in a way that shows how easy it is to create deepfakes risks their wider adoption.”

Prof Philip Howard, president of the International Panel on the Information Environment, says AI is increasingly being used “in innovative, sometimes playful ways, as demonstrated by President Macron’s recent video.”

But he adds: “These kinds of videos are often released when the guidelines on public communication are not clear.”

There has been some debate in the French media over whether Macron should be trivialising deepfake videos when they can be used for harm.

In October, Macron told Variety deepfakes “can disinform, which can upset our democracies”.

He said they should be regulated “by imposing responsibility on the people who disseminate this content to moderate it”.

The EU’s newly implemented AI Act, which regulates the use of artificial intelligence, has faced criticism at the Summit for stifling innovation.

The bloc also unveiled plans for a Europe-wide, open source AI model with a budget of €37.4m (£31.1m).

A global declaration of shared AI goals and ethical responsibilities is due to be revealed at the end of the Summit tomorrow.

So far the US and the UK have both declined to say whether they will sign it.

“What my parents taught me is that they used to live in peace and calm, without having to have any fear in their own country,” says 19-year-old Nick. “I would like to live in a country where I don’t have to be afraid.”

I meet him in a small bar on a street corner in the ex-mining town of Freiberg, Saxony – where he is playing darts.

It’s a cold, foggy night in February with just over two weeks to go until Germany’s national election.

Nick and his friend Dominic, who is 30, are backers or sympathetic to Alternative für Deutschland – a party that has been consistently polling second in Germany for more than a year and a half, as the far right here and elsewhere in Europe attracts an increasing number of young people, particularly men, into its orbit.

One particular reason why Nick – and many other young German men – say they are afraid is the number of attacks in Germany involving suspects who were asylum seekers – most recently, the fatal stabbing of a toddler and a man in a park in the Bavarian city of Aschaffenburg. Immigration is now Nick and Dominic’s main concern, although they don’t oppose it in all forms.

“The people who integrate, who learn, who study here, do their work – I have no problems with them,” says Dominic, though he is critical of anyone he sees as taking advantage of the asylum system.

“But these days such statements are seen as hostile,” says Dominic. “You’re called a Nazi because of Germany’s past.”

The AfD – which has long been accused of anti-migrant rhetoric – is celebrating endorsements from tech billionaire, Elon Musk, who owns the social media site X. He has hosted a live discussion with party leader Alice Weidel on the platform and dialled into a party rally.

Now, as Germany waits to see just how well the far right does in the upcoming election, the question is why so many young men in particular are being drawn to the far right and what the consequences could be for a country that’s deeply conscious of its Nazi past.

Pew research in 2024 found that 26% of German men had positive views of the AfD compared to 11% of women, and the share of men holding this opinion has risen 10 points since 2022.

In the elections for the European Parliament in 2024, according to German exit polls the number of under 24-year-olds, both male and female, who voted for the AfD in Germany rose to 16 per cent, up by 11 points from 2019.

This comes at a time of rising general anxiety among young people according to a recent study by the German Institute for Generational Research.

In a sample size of 1,000 Germans aged 16 to 25, anxiety levels were the highest amongst respondents who class themselves as far-right while they were the lowest amongst people who put themselves in the middle of the political spectrum.

Women were more likely to be concerned for their rights and those of minority groups while men were found to be more worried about conservative values that are less based around rights.

Dr Rüdiger Maas, from the German think tank the Institute for Generational Research, says parties on the left often focus on themes such as feminism, equality and women’s rights.

“Overall, men don’t see themselves in these themes,” he tells us. “That is why they have a tendency to vote further right.”

Hard, populist right parties have also done well in countries such as France, Austria, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Italy.

“Sixty per cent of young men under 30 would consider voting for the far right in EU countries and this is much higher than the share among women,” says Prof Abou-Chadi, in analysis drawn from a subset of the 2024 European Election Study.

As well as gender, migration and economic issues, social media is playing a part. Platforms like TikTok allow political groups to bypass mainstream, traditional media, which the far right regard as hostile.

It’s clear that AfD “dominates” TikTok when compared to other German parties, says Mauritius Dorn from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD). It has 539,000 followers on its parliamentary account, compared to 158,000 for the SPD who currently have the most seats in the German parliament.

And it isn’t just official accounts but a “considerable number of unofficial fan accounts also help to disseminate the party’s content”, says Mr Dorn.

Through setting up 10 “persona-based” accounts with different user profiles, they found, “those users who are more on the right-wing spectrum… see a lot of AfD content whereas users from the leftist spectrum see a more diverse set of political content.”

TikTok has said it doesn’t “differentiate” between the right, left or centre of politics and works to stay at the “forefront” of tackling misinformation.

Dorn observes that other parties recognised sites such as TikTok “too late”, which means they’re playing catch-up in establishing a strong footprint on the platform.

We’ve met one AfD influencer, Celina Brychcy – a 25-year-old TikTokker who has more than 167,000 followers – 53% of whom are male, with 76% aged between 18 and 35.

She mainly shares dance, trend and lifestyle videos, but also pro-AfD content.

Ms Brychcy says she doesn’t make money from promoting the AfD but does it because she believes in the cause and wants to “get a message across”.

Her political ideals include wanting the return of military service, more support for mothers who want or need to stay at home and stricter border controls.

When I press her about whether her views amount to a rejection of multiculturalism she replied no, but believes people should “integrate.”

“There are certain people who just don’t fit in with us Germans,” she added but repeatedly insisted she is not racist and doesn’t have “anything against foreigners.”

Ms Brychcy is also against “role reversal” when it comes to the way men and women dress.

A reaction against “gender ideology” is another issue identified by Tarik Abou-Chadi, a professor of European Politics at the University of Oxford, as feeding far-right support amongst the young – something that is echoed by the Institute for Generational Research.

They asked first-time voters whether they found the LGBTQ+ trend “übertrieben”, which literally means “exaggerated” or over the top. The respondents who showed the highest level of agreement with that question were those who planned to support the AfD.

When I challenge Ms Brychcy over whether that could be seen as retrograde, she replied that “biologically speaking, we are men and women” and thinks people should present accordingly.

Ms Brychcy tells me she has lost a couple of friends because of her politics – and now mostly spends time with those of a similar outlook.

She doesn’t agree with those who view the AfD as a dangerous movement – rather one that would offer genuine, radical change.

When I ask Ms Brychcy if she considers herself as far-right, she says that on certain issues – such as border control and crime, “Definitely yes”.

It’s a striking reply, particularly as often, the label of far-right is rejected by supporters of the AfD, including by the party leader, Alice Weidel, who insists she heads a conservative, libertarian movement.

With the horrors of the Nazis further and further in the past, this is a generation that’s grown up with parties like the AfD – whether that’s on TV talk shows or in parliament after the AfD got its first MPs in 2017.

Prof Abou-Chadi believes that the far right, generally, has become more normalised to the point, “They don’t seem so extreme any more.”

That’s despite party scandals such as a talisman of the AfD’s hard right, Björn Höcke, being fined twice last year for using a Nazi slogan, though he denied doing so knowingly.

The AfD, in three German states, is classified as right-wing extremist by authorities – including in Saxony, a designation the party unsuccessfully challenged in court.

It’s a state where the number of “right-wing extremist individuals” had reached a “new high” – according to a report released last year by Saxony’s domestic intelligence service – that showed data back to 2015.

In a shopping mall in the city of Chemnitz in Saxony, we meet a group of young men who – while they won’t go on the record – tell us they’re right wing.

Dressed in black, with uniformly short hair, they express beliefs that homosexuality is wrong and fear that the German “race” is under threat because of the growing migrant community.

They question narratives about their country’s past, seemingly a reference to the Nazi era.

Diana Schwitalla has been teaching history and social studies for eight years. She says she has had to confront a case of Holocaust denial in the classroom and has heard other troubling remarks.

“We hear the Second World War was actually a good thing, and there was a reason people died then – and that this is good. Hitler is described as a good man,” says Ms Schwitalla.

She adds, “Many students… very young students, {who} say it doesn’t matter who I vote for, they’ll do what they want ‘up there’ anyway. The question of who’s ‘up there’, I don’t get an answer to that.”

We met her over the course of two days – including at an adult vocational college in Freiberg that sits on the grounds of a former Nazi concentration camp. Jewish women, brought from Auschwitz, were used for slave labour here to make parts for aeroplanes.

We did hear some talk of opposition to the levels of immigration into Germany plus a desire for national pride.

The first day we met Ms Schwitalla, she is helping to organise a mock election for the students as a way of engaging them about democracy at another college site in the town of Flöha – about 15 miles away from Freiberg.

We spoke to Cora, Melina and Joey, all 18.

Cora says she has heard men of her age express a desire for women to be in the home harking back to a time “when women took care of the children and when the husband comes home from work, the food is cooked”. She likens it to the so-called “Trad Wife” trend of adhering to traditional gender roles.

Cora and Melina voice fears about a rollback of women’s rights – including on abortion, even – remarkably – the right to vote. “Luckily that’s not being discussed in politics yet,” says Melina, “but I’ve heard discussions about women not being allowed to vote in elections any more.”

A small group of students line up to vote around lunchtime and we watch as the results come in with “Die Linke” scoring top – the left party that’s relatively popular amongst the young but polling at only around five per cent nationwide.

The AfD came second, reinforcing what Prof Abou-Chadi has found, that, “younger people are much more likely to go for a further left or further right party than a centrist one”.

The AfD, whose signature issues include security, borders and migrant crime, are now even embracing the concept of “remigration” – a buzz-word in Europe’s far right that’s widely understood to mean mass deportations.

Speaking to people in Germany, it is clear that support for the AfD can not just be read as some form of protest vote, even if there is frustration with the parties that have traditionally governed Germany. Celina, Dominic and Nick – and others we spoke to – genuinely hope and believe that the AfD could set Germany on the path of radical change.

It’s still the case that other parties will not go into coalition with the AfD but in January a non-binding motion was passed in the German parliament thanks to AfD votes for the first time.

Prof Abou-Chadi believes in the longer term, there could be an even more seismic change.

“And as soon as the more mainstream parties start giving up the ‘firewall’ or cordon sanitaire the far right will start cannibalising the right.

“It’s very likely that, in many or most European countries, the far-right parties will be the main party on the right – or already are,” he says.

Parties like the AfD have worked hard to try and normalise themselves in the eyes of the public.

While there are people in Germany and Europe who view the far right as an extremist, even anti-democratic, force – it appears that the ‘normalisation’ effort is working, not least of all among the young.

Top picture credit: Getty

An animated film about a boy who battles demons with his magical powers has become China’s highest-grossing film ever and a source of national pride.

Ne Zha 2, based on a Chinese mythological character, has raked in more than 8 billion yuan ($1.1bn; £910m) during the week-long Lunar New Year holiday, according to ticket sales tracker Maoyan.

It broke the record set by 2021’s The Battle of Lake Changjin, a propaganda film about the 1950s Korean War, which earned about $900m.

Ne Zha 2 is being hailed as a symbol of progress in Chinese film, which has long trailed Hollywood despite a massive domestic market.

Hot off its domestic success, Ne Zha 2 will be shown overseas next week, including in the US, Canada and Australia.

To Chinese viewers, Ne Zha 2 shows how locally-made films are becoming competitive globally.

“It not only showcases the strong power of Chinese animation after its rise, but also demonstrates the infinite possibilities of traditional Chinese mythology in the modern context,” reads one review on IMDB.

Some hope it could earn another $1bn and surpass the world’s highest-grossing film of all time, 2009’s Avatar.

“Now it’s over to the Chinese people overseas to chip in,” read one comment on Weibo.

Movie ticket sales in China surge during the Lunar New Year festivities. This season saw Chinese films rake in $1.3b during the weeklong holiday period, underscoring an increase in consumer spending that Chinese authorities have been hoping for.

Aside from setting a new box-office benchmark in China, Ne Zha 2 is also the first movie ever to cross $1bn in a single market, according to Hollywood publication Deadline.

Ne Zha 2 has been praised for its script and visual effects. Figurines of the movie’s characters have flown off the shelves as fans flock to cinemas.

It builds on the success of the 2019 film Ne Zha, which made more than $725m and is China’s fifth highest-grossing film of all time.

The US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been told to stop minting one-cent coins, or pennies as they are widely called, by US President Donald Trump in an announcement on his Truth Social media account.

“Let’s rip the waste out of our great nations budget, even if it’s a penny at a time,” Trump’s post said, describing the move as a cost-cutting measure.

It comes after Elon Musk’s unofficial Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) drew attention to the cost of minting pennies in a post on X last month.

The debate over the cost and usefulness of pennies has been a long-running one in the US.

“This is so wasteful,” Trump’s Truth Social post said.

“I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies.”

According the US Mint’s 2024 annual report, making and distributing a one cent coin costs 3.69 cents.

US government officials and members of Congress have in the past proposed discontinuing the penny without success.

While its detractors have argued that the zinc and copper coin is a waste of money and resources, those who support it say that the coin keeps prices lower and boosts fund-raising for charities.

Other countries have discontinued similar coins. Canada ditched its one-cent coin in 2012 citing the cost of minting it and its falling purchasing power due to higher prices.

The declining use of cash meant the UK did not mint any new coins in 2024, after officials decided there were already enough coins in circulation.

The UK Treasury has said that 1p or 2p coins are not being scrapped, but with more people living cashless lives, there have been several years when no 2p coins were produced. 20p coins have also seen various periods without new minting.

Three more earthquakes have occurred near the Greek island of Santorini.

Residents of neighbouring Amorgos are remaining on high alert after Monday’s tremors, which followed a moderate 5.0 magnitude earthquake between the islands on Sunday evening.

The area has been rocked by seismic activity for the last two weeks, and experts have not ruled out a major earthquake.

A state of emergency will remain in place on Santorini until at least 3 March.

Sunday’s quake was preceded by three smaller ones of more than 4.0 magnitude, while the three on Monday morning were also more than 4.0 on the Richter scale.

Inspections found no damage to buildings in Santorini or Amorgos.

No injuries have been reported as a result of the earthquakes, which have numbered in the thousands since 26 January, but more than 11,000 people have left the islands.

Schools will remain closed on Santorini, Amorgos and several other islands on Monday and Tuesday.

A team of the Special Disaster Response Unit has set off for Amorgos from Patras with a special earthquake rescue vehicle, and technical teams are expected to inspect the electricity network on the island.

Kostas Papazachos, a professor of seismology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, told broadcaster ERT that the authorities had to allow for the situation to continue for most or all of February.

“Let’s hope that we will slowly move towards a gradual de-escalation,” he said.

“We will have to be a little patient and see. Let’s hope that after a couple of weeks the phenomenon will start to subside.”

He said the possibility of a major earthquake had not been completely ruled out.

The strongest quake so far was a 5.2 magnitude on Thursday. 6.0 and above is considered severe.

Greece is one of Europe’s most earthquake-prone countries, but scientists are puzzled by the current “clusters” of quakes which have not been linked to a major shock.

Meanwhile the cruise ship Viking Star, with 893 passengers and 470 crew, docked at the port of Souda in Crete early on Monday morning.

It was due to be the first cruise ship of the season in Santorini. The ship changed its route mainly to avoid cable car overcrowding in Santorini during the seismic activity.

It was a warm February night when an ominous message popped into Hannah Grundy’s inbox in Sydney.

“I will just keep emailing because I think this is worthy of your attention,” the anonymous sender wrote.

Inside was a link, and a warning in bold: “[This] contains disturbing material.”

She hesitated for a moment, fearing it was a scam.

The reality was so much worse. The link contained pages and pages of fake pornography featuring Hannah, alongside detailed rape fantasies and violent threats.

“You’re tied up in them,” she recalls. “You look afraid. You’ve got tears in your eyes. You’re in a cage.”

Written in kitschy word art on some images was Hannah’s full name. Her Instagram handle was posted, as was the suburb she lived in. She would later learn her phone number had also been given out.

That email kicked off a saga Hannah likens to a movie. She was left to become her own detective, uncovering a sickening betrayal by someone close to her, and building a case which changed her life – and Australian legal standards.

The web page was called “The Destruction of Hannah”, and at the top of it was a poll where hundreds of people had voted on the vicious ways they wanted to abuse her.

Below was a thread of more than 600 vile photos, with Hannah’s face stitched on to them. Buried in between them were chilling threats.

“I’m closing in on this slut,” the main poster said.

“I want to hide in her house and wait until she is alone, grab her from behind and… feel her struggle.”

It’s been three years now, but the 35-year-old school teacher has no trouble recalling the “pure shock” that coursed through when she and partner Kris Ventura, 33, opened the page.

“You immediately feel unsafe,” Hannah tells me, eyes wide as she grips a mug of peppermint tea in her living room.

Clicking through the website Kris had also found photos of their close friends, along with images depicting at least 60 other women, many also from Sydney.

The couple quickly realised the pictures used to create the deepfakes were from the women’s private social media accounts. And the penny dropped: this was someone they all knew.

Desperate to find out who, Hannah and Kris spent hours at the kitchen table, identifying the women, searching their social media friends lists for a common link, and methodically building a dossier of evidence.

Within four hours, they had a list of three potential suspects.

On it, but immediately discounted, was their close friend from university Andrew Hayler. The trio had met while working at a campus bar, and the staff there quickly formed deep friendships.

And Andy, as they called him – the supervisor – was the glue of the group.

He was considerate and affable, Hannah says – the kind of guy who looked out for women in the bar and made sure his female friends got home safely after a night out.

They all hung out regularly, went on holidays together, loved and trusted each other.

“I thought of him as a very close friend,” Hannah says.

“We were just so sure that he was a good person.”

But soon they’d whittled down the list to just one name: his.

When Hannah woke the next morning and went to the police station, mingling with her shock and horror was a “naive” sliver of optimism.

“We thought they’d go grab him that afternoon,” Kris says with a wry smile.

Instead, Hannah says she was met with disdain.

She recalls one New South Wales Police officer asking what she’d done to Andy. At one stage they suggested Hannah simply ask him to stop. Later, they pointed to a picture of her in a skimpy outfit and said “you look cute in this one”, she says.

New South Wales Police declined to comment to the BBC on the specifics of Hannah’s case.

But she says the way her complaint was handled made her feel like she was making “a big deal out of nothing”.

“And for me, it felt quite life-changing,” says Hannah.

Any faith she still held that police would help quickly dwindled.

Amid delays, she turned to Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, but under its powers as a regulatory body it could only offer help in taking the content down.

Desperate, the couple hired a lawyer and commissioned a digital forensics analyst to move things along.

In the meantime, to avoid tipping Andy off and to keep themselves safe, they retreated inwards.

“The world for you just gets smaller. You don’t speak to people. You don’t really go out,” Hannah says.

Intense fear and loneliness filled the void instead.

“We’d already had to suspend complete belief to understand that he’d done these things, so [the idea of] him actually coming to try and rape you or hurt you isn’t that much of a bigger stretch.”

The couple installed cameras all around their house and set up location tracking on Hannah’s devices. She began wearing a health watch 24/7, so someone would know if her heartbeat rose – or ceased.

“I stopped having the windows open because I was scared… maybe someone would come in,” Hannah explains.

“We slept with a knife in both of our bedside tables because we just thought: ‘What if?'”

Still feeling abandoned by police, Kris had taken on the burden of monitoring the site for the slightest sign of escalation towards Hannah and any of their friends – who, to protect the investigation, still did not know anything.

Guilt ate at the pair: “We had a constant battle about whether it was right to not tell them,” Hannah says.

At one point told the investigation had been suspended, Hannah and Kris forked out even more money for a detailed forensic report, and threatened to make a formal complaint to the police watchdog. All up, they spent over A$20,000 (£10,200; $12,400) trying to protect themselves and stop Andy.

Finally a new detective was assigned and within two weeks police were raiding Andy’s house. He admitted everything.

Filled with relief, then dread, Hannah began calling her friends to break the news.

“My stomach just dropped,” Jessica Stuart says, recalling the moment she learned what Andy had done to her photos.

“I felt really violated but… I don’t think I fully comprehended.”

For her, again, the sucker punch was that a friend who she loved like “family” was behind the crime. Andy had always appeared “so unassuming” and “really thoughtful” – someone she’d called for help through a difficult time.

“It’s been really hard to reconcile that those two people are actually the same person.”

The case was uncharted territory for Australia.

For at least a decade, experts have warned advances in technology would lead to a wave of AI crimes. But authorities have been caught on the back foot, leaving deepfake victims – overwhelmingly women – vulnerable.

At the time Andy was arrested in 2022, there was no offence for creating or sharing deepfake pornography in NSW, or anywhere else in Australia, and the country had never seen a case of this magnitude before.

The 39-year-old was charged with using a carriage service to menace, harass or cause offence – a low-level catch-all offence for many internet crimes – and Hannah was warned to keep her expectations low.

“We were prepared to go to court and for him to get a slap on the wrist,” she says.

But she and the 25 other women who decided to be part of the case were determined Andy be held accountable. One after the other, several gave crushing statements at his sentencing hearing last year.

“You didn’t just betray my friendship, but you shattered the sense of safety I used to take for granted,” Jess told the court. “The world feels unfamiliar and dangerous, I am constantly anxious, I have nightmares when I am able to sleep.

“Forming new friendships feels impossible, burdened by the constant question: ‘Could this person be like you?'”

When it came time for Andy to apologise to the women he’d targeted, Jess and Hannah couldn’t stomach being in the room. They walked out.

“There is nothing that he can say to me that makes it better, and I wanted him to know that,” Hannah says.

Andy told the court that creating the images had felt “empowering” as “an outlet” for a “dark” part of his psyche, but that he didn’t think they would cause real harm.

“I have really done a terrible thing and I am so very sorry,” he said.

Judge Jane Culver was not convinced of his remorse, saying while there was “some contrition”, he didn’t seem to understand the clearly “profound and ongoing” suffering that his “prolific” and “disturbing” offending had caused.

She sentenced Andy to nine years in jail – in what has been called a landmark decision.

“The gasp that went through the court… it was such a relief,” Jess says.

“It was the first time I felt like we had actually been listened to.”

Andy will be eligible for parole in December 2029, but has told the court he intends to challenge his sentence.

Nicole Shackleton, a law expert who researches technology and gender, told the BBC the “unprecedented” case set a surprising, and significant, legal standard for future cases.

The judge had recognised “this wasn’t merely something that happened online” and that such behaviour was “tied to offline violence against women”, said Dr Shackleton, from Melbourne’s RMIT University.

But Australia and other countries remain poor at regulating the use of AI and proactively investigating its misuse, experts like her argue.

Australia has recently criminalised the creation and sharing of deepfake pornography at a national level. But many other countries have legislation accused of containing loopholes, or do not criminalise deepfake pornography at all. In the UK, sharing it is an offence, but creating or soliciting it is not – though this is about to change.

And in the face of under-trained and under-resourced police forces, many victims like Hannah or private investigators – like the one who tipped her off – are left to be de facto detectives and regulators.

In a statement, NSW Police said investigations into AI crimes are a challenging, “resource and time intensive process”, and training has recently been beefed up “with the goal that every officer… can respond to these types of crimes effectively”.

The force also works with the eSafety Commissioner and tech companies to take down deepfake abuse, the statement added.

eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said removal of the distressing material is the top priority for most victim-survivors, and eSafety had “an extremely high success rate in achieving it”.

But eSafety does not have the punitive powers to pursue criminal investigations and penalties, she added in a statement to the BBC.

“You can have whatever laws you like, [but] if you have a police force that are incompetent…” Kris says, trailing off.

“We’re obviously angry at Andy. But it is also disgusting that the only way you get justice with something like this is if you’re two people in your 30s that can afford to bully the police.”

They’re determined for things to be different for future victims. In the past six months alone, two schoolboys in separate cases in NSW and Victoria have been reported to police for allegedly creating mass deepfake nudes of their classmates.

After several years of hell, Hannah is also trying to move on.

But Andy’s looming appeal threatens the hard work she’s done to rebuild her life and mental health.

Knees at her chest and feet tucked under her on the couch, she says Andy got the sentence he deserved.

“Because for me, and for the other girls, it is forever… they will always be on the internet,” she says.

She still pays for a service which scours the web for the pictures, and she worries about future friends, employers, students – her own children – finding them.

One of her biggest fears is that her best memories will never be reclaimed.

“You post things on Facebook and Instagram because they’re the happiest moments of your life. You get a dog, you buy a house, you get engaged and you post a photo.

“He had turned every single one of those moments for us into porn. And so when you see that photo… well, now I see myself getting raped.”

If Japan needed reassurances it was indeed still the US’s top ally and friend in the increasingly unstable Asia-Pacific, it got that and then some.

But what was striking about the Trump-Ishiba meeting at the White House was what didn’t happen.

Unlike most of the Trump domestic and global dynamics so far, this was neither controversial nor confrontational.

“On television, he is very frightening,” Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba told reporters after Friday’s meeting.

“But when I met him, he was very sincere, very powerful and strong willed,” he added.

There’s a lot that ties Washington and Tokyo. Japan has been the top foreign investor in the US for five consecutive years, creating thousands of jobs. And there are 54,000 US military personnel stationed in Japan.

But President Donald Trump has given his friends and foes a lot to worry about: from tariff wars against China, Canada and Mexico to his US “ownership” of Gaza proposal and his sanctions against the International Criminal Court.

“Trump has made some erratic decisions towards countries that believed themselves to be America’s friends,” said Jeffrey Hall, lecturer at Japan’s Kanda University of International Studies.

“There was a fear in Tokyo that the same might happen: that Trump might slap huge tariffs on Japan or start some dispute. But that didn’t happen,” he added.

While Trump didn’t rule out tariffs against Tokyo, it wasn’t the main feature of this meeting.

Ishiba went to Washington prepared. He’d studied. Literally. He held “study sessions” with staff and sought advice from his predecessor, Fumio Kishida.

He also had some help from the widow of the late former PM Shinzo Abe, who had a close relationship with Trump during his first presidency, forged on the golf course.

Ishiba’s homework paid off.

Apart from when Trump mistakenly referred to Nippon Steel as “Nissan”, there weren’t many eye-raising moments like the many other announcements by the US president.

In fact – as far as Japan is concerned – this meeting was reassuring.

Both leaders seemed to have met eye-to-eye on their countries’ plans to boost trade and defence ushering in a “golden-era” of Japan-US relations.

Ishiba announced his country’s plans to increase investment in the US to $1tn (£806bn), as the two economic powers rebalance trade relations.

Ishiba said Japanese car makers would boost investment, while Tokyo would expand imports of US liquified natural gas (LNG).

This would have been music to Trump’s ears and a boost to his “drill, baby, drill” announcement from his inauguration speech.

The two men also managed to find common ground on the controversial issue of Nippon Steel.

Trump said Nippon would “invest heavily” in the Pennsylvania-based US Steel without taking a majority stake.

The Japanese firm’s attempted takeover of US Steel had been previously blocked by President Joe Biden on national security grounds.

There were enough boxes ticked for Japan to breathe easy – but the main purpose of Ishiba’s visit was personal.

The Japanese PM has been in a fraught political position at home – with his minority government keeping a weak grip on power after it was humiliated in October’s general elections when they lost their ruling majority.

Ishiba was desperate for a win.

The man himself has not elicited much confidence in how he would fare opposite a notorious Trump.

“For weeks local media played up the idea that he would not succeed diplomatically – that he was clumsy, not a sociable person and that Trump would eat his lunch, if he made it to Washington,” said Mr Hall.

But Ishiba is walking away with what looks a lot like success.

The former Japanese defence minister is a veteran politician known for dense speeches in parliament. Observers have said such speeches manage to confuse some of his opponents and bore others.

But in a “Trump strategy meeting” with his staff, the biggest piece of advice he reportedly got was: “Conclusion first. Keep it simple.”

“Ishiba followed a play book to flatter Trump personally and offer him economic investments in the US instead of confronting him”, said Mr Hall.

There are several issues that Japan and the US could disagree on. Not least Trump’s proposal of a US takeover of the Gaza Strip, which sparked fierce criticism around the world.

Japan reiterated its long-standing position of supporting a two-state solution.

“We won’t change our stance,” said Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya last week.

Tokyo is also watching Trump’s trade war with China nervously.

But Hall said Japan would not be drawn into the US-China trade war if it could help it.

When it comes to China, Japan needs to strike a fine balance.

Beijing is Tokyo’s largest trading partner. China is one of the largest investment destinations for Japanese companies.

On the defence and diplomatic front both the US and Japan are challenged by China’s rising influence and assertiveness in the region and globally.

Not least with Chinese military’s now frequent and provocative moves in waters near Taiwan which Beijing sees as a renegade province.

In 2022, Japan, a pacifist nation, announced it would double its military spending by 2027, citing threats posed by China and North Korea, and saying it would acquire the ability to strike enemy bases.

The changes marked the most dramatic overhaul to Japan’s security strategy since it adopted a pacifist constitution after World War Two.

With North Korea continuing its nuclear program, South Korea in political meltdown, and the ongoing US-China rivalry, Japan has yet again presented itself as America’s least challenging and only unproblematic friend in the region.

“Japan will avoid any confrontation with Trump when possible. It will most likely become a ‘yes’ friend,” said Hall.

You’ll often hear about actors and the role of a lifetime, but for Tom McKay and Luke Dale it’s especially relevant.

For the past nine years they’ve dedicated most of their working lives to two video games – Kingdom Come: Deliverance (KCD) and its sequel.

Added together, the scripts for the role-playing epics set in 15th Century Bohemia run to more than three million words, according to their makers.

It’s thought that KCD 2, which came out last week, could be the longest single video game script ever written.

Both actors spoke to BBC Newsbeat about what it was like to be part of such a huge project and working with the game’s controversial director.

The original KCD was something of a slow-burn sleeper hit. Its review scores were respectable when it released in 2018 but it wasn’t universally acclaimed.

However, it found a passionate fanbase in the months and years afterwards and the appetite for a sequel grew.

KCD 2 arrived to positive reviews and sold one million copies within 48 hours of launching.

The sequel follows the story of Tom’s character Henry of Skalitz, a blacksmith’s son turned knight, and Luke’s character, the impulsive Sir Hans Capon.

It’s a sprawling, open-ended game that allows players to carve their own path through it.

This means it’s possible to find important characters or items outside of the storylines that revolve around them, and the game will respond to these variable possibilities.

That’s something the game’s developers have to account for, and something that Tom in particular, as the main playable character, needs to act out over and over again with subtle differences each time.

It meant hundreds of hours of studio time and repeat trips to Prague, where developer Warhorse Studios is based.

He says it was “one of the most amazing and unusual acting challenges” he’s faced.

“You would kind of go down one channel of a decision and then come halfway back up and go down another one and then maybe all the way back up to the beginning and back down,” he says.

“And that’s not an acting challenge that you ever would have in TV or film.”

The video games industry is secretive, and both Tom and Luke spent three years under a non-disclosure agreement as they made the second game.

“It was almost like working for GCHQ or something,” says Tom, referring to the British intelligence agency.

“You couldn’t talk to anyone about it and people in the studio couldn’t even talk to their partners in some cases about what they were doing.”

Tom says he would occasionally bump into fans of the game when he was working on other projects, and would have to dodge the question when they grilled him about a sequel.

He says it was more difficult when he bumped into fans of the game in the Czech Republic, where the game is celebrated as a national success story.

When they asked why he was spending so much time in Prague, Tom admits he had to bend the truth a little.

“I’d be like: ‘I just love Prague. And I come here very often for lots of holidays,” he says.

Luke says many fans “gave up hope” that a sequel was on the way, given the six-year gap between the two titles.

But when the new game was revealed, he says, there was “this incredible reception and everyone went absolutely crazy”.

It also reignited an online discourse that had erupted around the release of the original KCD.

Daniel Vávra, the co-founder and creative director of Warhorse, is a regular poster on social media and is quick to answer critics.

He defended the first KCD, when it was criticised for its lack of diversity, as being historically accurate to the time and location of its setting, although there is not universal agreement about this.

At the time he also made public statements against perceived attempts to force diversity into games, saying his upbringing in communist Czechoslovakia had made him an opponent of “censorship in the name of good intentions”.

This won him supporters among the so-called Gamergate movement, which emerged online in 2014 and is widely seen as a backlash against attempts to make gaming more inclusive.

Members celebrated Vávra for his outspoken, uncompromising approach.

But as the release of KCD 2 approached some of those voices turned against him as it emerged that the sequel features a black character and a gay love scene that can play out if players make certain decisions.

“I think it’s quite a quite an interesting thing that’s happened,” says Luke.

“With the first game there was a backlash from a more left-wing mentality and then there’s been something of a backlash this time around from the right-wing mentality.”

Both Luke and Tom, having spent the days after KCD 2’s release meeting fans, say they believe the complaints are from an unrepresentative minority.

“It’s a really good barometer of the distortion between online interaction and real world interaction,” says Tom.

“We did nine hours and it didn’t come up once.”

Luke adds: “I think to be honest with you, the people that are true big fans of gaming and this game aren’t bothered about that sort of stuff.

“It seems to be people that are really politically involved and they care very much about politics and not gaming and they’ve just used this as a weapon, but they’re not necessarily into gaming.”

Both actors praise Vávra for his “forensic understanding” of his vision for the game.

Luke points out that, although the director had the final say, many people were involved with making the game.

“So you do the scene and you’ve got three four different people coming over to you,” says Luke.

“Can you do that? Can you just be aware of this?

“Me and Tom are like: ‘OK can we distill this down?’

“And Daniel is really good at helping us to do that because it’s his brainchild and he knows exactly what he wants every time.”

Aside from their relationship with their boss, the other question is whether the co-stars also get on after all that time together.

“Definitely,” says Tom.

“There’s something really organic about spending that amount of time together.

“So you kind of get that friendship for free.”

Luke adds: “It is like putting on a really comfortable pair of clothes.

“Which is ironic because in the motion capture studio you’re literally wearing head-to-toe lycra.”

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

Kendrick Lamar’s show-stopping performance at Super Bowl on Sunday was, for many, a victory lap following his knock-out blow in a long-running beef with fellow rapper Drake.

The Compton star’s entire half-time set seemed to swiftly build to a performance of Not Like Us, his Grammy-winning takedown of Drake which was one of last year’s biggest hits… but is also now the subject of a potential libel case brought by the Canadian.

Drake was performing in Australia on Sunday, dishing out cash to several of his fans at a Melbourne show, before the whole world tuned in to watch his rival.

The origins of the argument go back more than decade. But here’s a quick reminder of where we are now and how we got here over a heated 12 months:

In March last year, producer and former Drake collaborator Metro Boomin’ and rapper Future released a collaborative album called We Don’t Trust You.

Hidden in the tracklisting was a song called Like That with an uncredited verse by Kendrick Lamar… and it was explosive.

In it, Lamar took aim at rapper J Cole’s previous claim – that himself, Kendrick and Drake were “the big three” – proclaiming: “big three – it’s just big me”.

After years of tension, the fuse had been lit.

Soon after, Drake appeared to address Kendrick’s verse at a concert in Florida.

He told the crowd: “I know that no matter what, it’s not a [person] on this earth that could ever [expletive] with me in my life!”

Two weeks later, J Cole offered his own reply to Kendrick’s verse, on a track called 7 Minute Drill, but he soon realised it had been a huge “mis-step”.

Speaking on stage at the Dreamville Festival in North Carolina, he apologised for the song, praised Lamar’s back catalogue and asked for forgiveness.

Drake then released a song called Push Ups (Drop and Give Me 50), in which he took aim at Lamar’s height, calling him a midget (he’s 5ft 4in tall) and a record label puppet who’s forced to collaborate with pop artists.

“Maroon 5 need a verse, you better make it witty / Then we need a verse for the Swifties,” he cajoled.

He also took issue with Lamar’s position in the hip-hop hierarchy, suggesting other artists had overtaken him.

More rappers, including Kanye West and Rick Ross got drawn into the feud. But Drake’s attention was solely focused on Lamar.

The Toronto star goaded his US adversary by dropping yet another diss track called Taylor Made Freestyle, which suggested Lamar was too cowardly to release music in the same week as Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department.

What’s more he used artificial intelligence to deliver the insults in the voices of Lamar’s heroes, Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg.

Lamar finally responded with a full-blown, six-minute riposte on record.

Titled Euphoria (a reference to the HBO show where Drake serves as an executive producer), it saw him brand Drake as “predictable”, a “master manipulator” and a “habitual liar”, while calling his sparring partner’s parenting skills into question.

“Let me say I’m the biggest hater,” he rapped. “I hate the way that you walk, the way that you talk, I hate the way that you dress.”

Less than 72 hours later, he followed up with a second song called 6:16 in LA.

In it, he claimed that someone inside Drake’s organisation was leaking damaging information.

“You must be a terrible person/ Everyone inside your team is whispering that you deserve it.”

In May, Drake shot back with a song called Family Matters, which took the feud to new heights.

On the track, he speculated that Lamar might be a perpetrator of domestic abuse (the star has never faced such an allegation).

Within 20 minutes, Lamar retaliated with a third diss track, Meet The Grahams, which opened with the ominous warning: “You [messed] up the minute you called out my family’s name”.

Each verse was addressed to one of Drake’s closest family members, listing the rapper’s supposed failures.

Among the claims, he said Drake had secretly fathered second child, and was addicted to gambling, sex and drugs.

Drake responded on Instagram by asking whoever had his “hidden daughter” to hand her back, adding that Lamar’s claims were a “shambles”.

But the Californian wasn’t finished and he dropped a fourth diss track, Not Like Us, in which he accused Drake of having relationships with underage women.

“Say, Drake, I hear you like ’em young / Tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A minor,” he rapped.

Drake hit back a day later, angrily denying the accusations and daring Lamar to reveal proof.

“Drake is not a name that you gonn’ see on no sex offender list, easy does it / You mentioning A minor … B sharp and tell the fans: Who was it?”

Lamar’s pop-orientated Not Like Us became a big summer club hit – picking up 21 million streams in its first three days of release.

It went on to earn one billion streams on Spotify and later five Grammy Awards, at last month’s ceremony, including song of the year.

Things took a darker turn, when a security guard outside Drake’s house was shot although there is no proof it was connected to the rappers’ feud. However, the vandalism of Drake’s OVO shop in London apparently was.

At one star-studded gig in Los Angeles in June, which was intended as a show of unity for the West Coast rap fraternity, Lamar played his biggest diss track five times.

Fast forward to January this year, and Drake decided to sue the Universal Music Group (UMG) for defamation and harassment, over its release of Not Like Us.

In papers filed in New York, Drake’s lawyers accused the record label of launching “a campaign to create a viral hit” out of a song that made the “false factual allegation that Drake is a criminal paedophile, and to suggest that the public should resort to vigilante justice in response”.

In response, Universal, which has been Drake’s label for more than a decade said his claims were not only untrue but “illogical”.

It also accused the star of trying to “silence” Lamar, who shares the same label, by taking their rap battle to the courts.

“Throughout his career, Drake has intentionally and successfully used UMG to distribute his music and poetry to engage in conventionally outrageous back-and-forth ‘rap battles’ to express his feelings about other artists,” the label said.

“He now seeks to weaponise the legal process to silence an artist’s creative expression and to seek damages from [Universal] for distributing that artist’s music.”

Which brings us to the Super Bowl. A couple of minutes into his half-time show, Lamar said: “I want to play their favourite song… but you know they love to sue.”

In the build-up to the big event, there had been questions over whether he would, or even could play it, legally-speaking.

Lamar leaned into the dilemma, teasing the song during his set, before finally giving the audience what they wanted.

When the song finally played, Kendrick self-censored the most contentious lyric. But he looked directly into the camera with a mischievous grin as he called out Drake’s name; and left intact the song’s notorious double-entendre: “Tryin’ to strike a chord and it’s probably A minor.”

That lyric echoed around the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, indicating that no amount of legal action could ever hope to diminish the song’s popularity.

In playing it, Lamar was expected to have reached more than 120 million TV viewers who had tuned in to see the game, as well as the likes of Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Taylor Swift, Sir Paul McCartney and Stormzy who were inside the stadium.

The performance was further heightened by the surprise appearance of tennis star Serena Williams, reportedly an old flame of Drake’s.

Williams, a Compton kid like Kendrick, performed the Crip Walk – a notorious Los Angeles dance move – as the headliner prowled the stage.

In a review of the gig, the Guardian said the Pulitzer prize-winning rapper “delivered the final blow to his diss track nemesis”.

While over in the US, Variety noted how Lamar had quite literally declared “game over” in the battle.

President Donald Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship in the US has sparked several legal challenges and some anxiety among immigrant families.

For nearly 160 years, the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution has established the principle that anyone born in the country is a US citizen.

But as part of his crackdown on migrant numbers, Trump is seeking to deny citizenship to children of migrants who are either in the country illegally or on temporary visas.

The move appears to have public backing. A poll by Emerson College suggests many more Americans back Trump than oppose him on this.

But how does this compare to citizenship laws around the world?

Birthright citizenship, or jus soli (right of the soil), is not the norm globally.

The US is one of about 30 countries – mostly in the Americas – that grant automatic citizenship to anyone born within their borders.

In contrast, many countries in Asia, Europe, and parts of Africa adhere to the jus sanguinis (right of blood) principle, where children inherit their nationality from their parents, regardless of their birthplace.

Other countries have a combination of both principles, also granting citizenship to children of permanent residents.

John Skrentny, a sociology professor at the University of California, San Diego, believes that, though birthright citizenship or jus soli is common throughout the Americas, “each nation-state had its own unique road to it”.

“For example, some involved slaves and former slaves, some did not. History is complicated,” he says. In the US, the 14th Amendment was adopted to address the legal status of freed slaves.

However, Mr Skrentny argues that what almost all had in common was “building a nation-state from a former colony”.

“They had to be strategic about whom to include and whom to exclude, and how to make the nation-state governable,” he explains. “For many, birthright citizenship, based on being born in the territory, made for their state-building goals.

“For some, it encouraged immigration from Europe; for others, it ensured that indigenous populations and former slaves, and their children, would be included as full members, and not left stateless. It was a particular strategy for a particular time, and that time may have passed.”

In recent years, several countries have revised their citizenship laws, tightening or revoking birthright citizenship due to concerns over immigration, national identity, and so-called “birth tourism” where people visit a country in order to give birth.

India, for example, once granted automatic citizenship to anyone born on its soil. But over time, concerns over illegal immigration, particularly from Bangladesh, led to restrictions.

Since December 2004, a child born in India is only a citizen if both parents are Indian, or if one parent is a citizen and the other is not considered an illegal migrant.

Many African nations, which historically followed jus soli under colonial-era legal systems, later abandoned it after gaining independence. Today, most require at least one parent to be a citizen or a permanent resident.

Citizenship is even more restrictive in most Asian countries, where it is primarily determined by descent, as seen in nations such as China, Malaysia, and Singapore.

Europe has also seen significant changes. Ireland was the last country in the region to allow unrestricted jus soli.

It abolished the policy after a June 2004 poll, when 79% of voters approved a constitutional amendment requiring at least one parent to be a citizen, permanent resident, or legal temporary resident.

The government said change was needed because foreign women were travelling to Ireland to give birth in order to get an EU passport for their babies.

One of the most severe changes occurred in the Dominican Republic, where, in 2010, a constitutional amendment redefined citizenship to exclude children of undocumented migrants.

A 2013 Supreme Court ruling made this retroactive to 1929, stripping tens of thousands – mostly of Haitian descent – of their Dominican nationality. Rights groups warned that this could leave many stateless, as they did not have Haitian papers either.

The move was widely condemned by international humanitarian organisations and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

As a result of the public outcry, the Dominican Republic passed a law in 2014 that established a system to grant citizenship to Dominican-born children of immigrants, particularly favouring those of Haitian descent.

Mr Skrentny sees the changes as part of a broader global trend. “We are now in an era of mass migration and easy transportation, even across oceans. Now, individuals also can be strategic about citizenship. That’s why we are seeing this debate in the US now.”

Within hours of President Trump’s order, various lawsuits were launched by Democratic-run states and cities, civil rights groups and individuals.

Two federal judges have sided with plaintiffs, most recently District Judge Deborah Boardman in Maryland on Wednesday.

She sided with five pregnant women who argued that denying their children citizenship violated the US Constitution.

Most legal scholars agree that President Trump cannot end birthright citizenship with an executive order.

Ultimately this will be decided by the courts, said Saikrishna Prakash, a constitutional expert and University of Virginia Law School professor. “This is not something he can decide on his own.”

The order is now on hold as the case makes it through the courts.

It is unclear how the Supreme Court, where conservative justices form a supermajority, would interpret the 14th Amendment if it came to it.

Trump’s justice department has argued it only applies to permanent residents. Diplomats, for example, are exempt.

But others counter that other US laws apply to undocumented migrants so the 14th Amendment should too.

It’s a chilly mid-winter afternoon in Segovia, in central Spain, and tourists are gathered at the foot of the city’s Roman aqueduct, gazing up at its famous arches and taking selfies.

Many of the visitors are Spanish, but there are also people from other European countries, Asians and Latin Americans, all drawn by Segovia’s historic charm, gastronomy and dramatic location just beyond the mountains north of Madrid.

“There was a moment during Covid when I thought ‘maybe tourism will never, ever be like it was before’,” says Elena Mirón, a local guide dressed in a fuchsia-coloured beret who is about to lead a group across the city.

“But now things are very good and I feel this year is going to be a good year, like 2023 and 2024. I’m happy, because I can live off this job I love.”

Spain received a record 94 million visitors in 2024 and is now vying with France, which saw 100 million, to be the world’s biggest foreign tourist hub.

And the tourism industry’s post-Covid expansion is a major reason why the eurozone’s fourth-biggest economy has been easily outgrowing the likes of Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom, posting an increase in GDP of 3.2% last year.

By contrast, the German economy contracted by 0.2% in 2024, while France grew by 1.1%, Italy by 0.5%, and the UK by an expected 0.9%.

This all helps explain why the Economist magazine has ranked Spain as the world’s best-performing economy.

“The Spanish model is successful because it is a balanced model, and this is what guarantees the sustainability of growth,” says Carlos Cuerpo, the business minister in the Socialist-led coalition government. He points out that Spain was responsible for 40% of eurozone growth last year.

Although he underlined the importance of tourism, Mr Cuerpo also pointed to financial services, technology, and investment as factors which have helped Spain bounce back from the depths of the pandemic, when GDP shrank by 11% in one year.

“We are getting out of Covid without scars and by modernising our economy and therefore lifting our potential GDP growth,” he adds.

That modernisation process is being aided by post-pandemic recovery funds from the EU’s Next Generation programme. Spain is due to receive up to €163bn by 2026 ($169bn; £136bn), making it the biggest recipient of these funds alongside Italy.

Spain is investing the money in the national rail system, low-emissions zones in towns and cities, as well as in the electric vehicle industry and subsidies for small businesses.

“Public spending has been high, and is responsible for approximately half our growth since the pandemic,” says María Jesús Valdemoros, lecturer in economics at Spain’s IESE Business School.

Other major European economies have seen their growth stymied by their greater reliance than Spain on industry, which, she says, “is suffering a lot at the moment due to factors such as the high cost of energy, competition from China and other Asian countries, the cost of the transition to a more sustainable environmental model and trade protectionism”.

Since Covid, the other major economic challenge for Spain has been the cost-of-living crisis triggered by supply-chain bottlenecks and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Inflation peaked at an annual rate of 11% in July of that year, with energy prices hitting Spaniards particularly hard, but by the end of 2024 it had fallen back to 2.8%.

Madrid believes that subsidies it introduced to cut the cost of fuel consumption and encourage public transport use were key in mitigating the impact of the energy price rises, as well as several increases to the minimum wage.

At the height of the European energy crisis, Spain and Portugal also negotiated with Brussels a so-called “Iberian exception”, allowing them to cap the price of gas used to generate electricity in order to reduce consumers’ bills.

Mr Cuerpo argues that such measures have helped counter Spain’s traditional vulnerability to economic turmoil.

“Spain is proving to be more resilient to successive shocks – including the inflation shock that came with the war in Ukraine,” he said. “And I think this is part of the overall protective shield that we have put in place for our consumers and for our firms.”

The country’s green energy output is seen as another favourable factor, not just in guaranteeing electricity, but also spurring investment. Spain has the second-largest renewable energy infrastructure in the EU.

The latter is a boon for a country that is Europe’s second-biggest car producer, according to Wayne Griffiths, the British-born CEO of Seat and Cupra. Although Spanish electric vehicle production is lagging behind the rest of Europe, he sees enormous potential in that area.

“[In Spain] we have all the factors you need to be successful: competitive, well-trained people and also an energy policy behind that,” he says. “There’s no point in making zero-emission cars if you’re using dirty energy.”

Despite these positives, a longstanding weakness of Spain’s economy has been a chronically high jobless rate, which is the biggest in the EU and almost double the block’s average. However, the situation did improve in the last quarter of 2024, when the Spanish jobless unemployment rate declined to 10.6%, its lowest level since 2008.

Meanwhile the number of people in employment in Spain now stands at 22 million, a record high. A labour reform, encouraging job stability, is seen as a key reason for this.

This reform increased restrictions on the use of temporary contracts by companies, favouring greater flexibility in the use of permanent contracts. It has reduced the number of workers in temporary employment without hindering job creation.

Also, although the arrival of immigrants has driven a fierce political debate, their absorption into the labour market is seen by many as crucial for a country with a rapidly ageing population.

The Socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has been outspoken in underlining the need for immigrants, describing their contribution to the economy as “fundamental”.

The European Commission has forecast that Spain will continue to lead growth among the bloc’s big economies this year and remain ahead of the EU average. However, challenges are looming on the horizon.

The heavy reliance on tourism – and a growing backlash against the industry by local people – is one concern.

Another is Spain’s vast public debt, which is higher than the country’s annual economic output.

María Jesús Valdemoros warns that this is “an imbalance that we need to correct, not just because the EU’s new fiscal norms demand it, but because it could cause financial instability”.

In addition, a housing crisis has erupted across the country, leaving millions of Spaniards struggling to find affordable accommodation.

With an uncertain and deeply polarised political landscape, it is difficult for Sánchez’s minority government to tackle such problems. But, while it attempts to resolve these conundrums, Spain is enjoying its status as the motor of European growth.

“What my parents taught me is that they used to live in peace and calm, without having to have any fear in their own country,” says 19-year-old Nick. “I would like to live in a country where I don’t have to be afraid.”

I meet him in a small bar on a street corner in the ex-mining town of Freiberg, Saxony – where he is playing darts.

It’s a cold, foggy night in February with just over two weeks to go until Germany’s national election.

Nick and his friend Dominic, who is 30, are backers or sympathetic to Alternative für Deutschland – a party that has been consistently polling second in Germany for more than a year and a half, as the far right here and elsewhere in Europe attracts an increasing number of young people, particularly men, into its orbit.

One particular reason why Nick – and many other young German men – say they are afraid is the number of attacks in Germany involving suspects who were asylum seekers – most recently, the fatal stabbing of a toddler and a man in a park in the Bavarian city of Aschaffenburg. Immigration is now Nick and Dominic’s main concern, although they don’t oppose it in all forms.

“The people who integrate, who learn, who study here, do their work – I have no problems with them,” says Dominic, though he is critical of anyone he sees as taking advantage of the asylum system.

“But these days such statements are seen as hostile,” says Dominic. “You’re called a Nazi because of Germany’s past.”

The AfD – which has long been accused of anti-migrant rhetoric – is celebrating endorsements from tech billionaire, Elon Musk, who owns the social media site X. He has hosted a live discussion with party leader Alice Weidel on the platform and dialled into a party rally.

Now, as Germany waits to see just how well the far right does in the upcoming election, the question is why so many young men in particular are being drawn to the far right and what the consequences could be for a country that’s deeply conscious of its Nazi past.

Pew research in 2024 found that 26% of German men had positive views of the AfD compared to 11% of women, and the share of men holding this opinion has risen 10 points since 2022.

In the elections for the European Parliament in 2024, according to German exit polls the number of under 24-year-olds, both male and female, who voted for the AfD in Germany rose to 16 per cent, up by 11 points from 2019.

This comes at a time of rising general anxiety among young people according to a recent study by the German Institute for Generational Research.

In a sample size of 1,000 Germans aged 16 to 25, anxiety levels were the highest amongst respondents who class themselves as far-right while they were the lowest amongst people who put themselves in the middle of the political spectrum.

Women were more likely to be concerned for their rights and those of minority groups while men were found to be more worried about conservative values that are less based around rights.

Dr Rüdiger Maas, from the German think tank the Institute for Generational Research, says parties on the left often focus on themes such as feminism, equality and women’s rights.

“Overall, men don’t see themselves in these themes,” he tells us. “That is why they have a tendency to vote further right.”

Hard, populist right parties have also done well in countries such as France, Austria, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Italy.

“Sixty per cent of young men under 30 would consider voting for the far right in EU countries and this is much higher than the share among women,” says Prof Abou-Chadi, in analysis drawn from a subset of the 2024 European Election Study.

As well as gender, migration and economic issues, social media is playing a part. Platforms like TikTok allow political groups to bypass mainstream, traditional media, which the far right regard as hostile.

It’s clear that AfD “dominates” TikTok when compared to other German parties, says Mauritius Dorn from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD). It has 539,000 followers on its parliamentary account, compared to 158,000 for the SPD who currently have the most seats in the German parliament.

And it isn’t just official accounts but a “considerable number of unofficial fan accounts also help to disseminate the party’s content”, says Mr Dorn.

Through setting up 10 “persona-based” accounts with different user profiles, they found, “those users who are more on the right-wing spectrum… see a lot of AfD content whereas users from the leftist spectrum see a more diverse set of political content.”

TikTok has said it doesn’t “differentiate” between the right, left or centre of politics and works to stay at the “forefront” of tackling misinformation.

Dorn observes that other parties recognised sites such as TikTok “too late”, which means they’re playing catch-up in establishing a strong footprint on the platform.

We’ve met one AfD influencer, Celina Brychcy – a 25-year-old TikTokker who has more than 167,000 followers – 53% of whom are male, with 76% aged between 18 and 35.

She mainly shares dance, trend and lifestyle videos, but also pro-AfD content.

Ms Brychcy says she doesn’t make money from promoting the AfD but does it because she believes in the cause and wants to “get a message across”.

Her political ideals include wanting the return of military service, more support for mothers who want or need to stay at home and stricter border controls.

When I press her about whether her views amount to a rejection of multiculturalism she replied no, but believes people should “integrate.”

“There are certain people who just don’t fit in with us Germans,” she added but repeatedly insisted she is not racist and doesn’t have “anything against foreigners.”

Ms Brychcy is also against “role reversal” when it comes to the way men and women dress.

A reaction against “gender ideology” is another issue identified by Tarik Abou-Chadi, a professor of European Politics at the University of Oxford, as feeding far-right support amongst the young – something that is echoed by the Institute for Generational Research.

They asked first-time voters whether they found the LGBTQ+ trend “übertrieben”, which literally means “exaggerated” or over the top. The respondents who showed the highest level of agreement with that question were those who planned to support the AfD.

When I challenge Ms Brychcy over whether that could be seen as retrograde, she replied that “biologically speaking, we are men and women” and thinks people should present accordingly.

Ms Brychcy tells me she has lost a couple of friends because of her politics – and now mostly spends time with those of a similar outlook.

She doesn’t agree with those who view the AfD as a dangerous movement – rather one that would offer genuine, radical change.

When I ask Ms Brychcy if she considers herself as far-right, she says that on certain issues – such as border control and crime, “Definitely yes”.

It’s a striking reply, particularly as often, the label of far-right is rejected by supporters of the AfD, including by the party leader, Alice Weidel, who insists she heads a conservative, libertarian movement.

With the horrors of the Nazis further and further in the past, this is a generation that’s grown up with parties like the AfD – whether that’s on TV talk shows or in parliament after the AfD got its first MPs in 2017.

Prof Abou-Chadi believes that the far right, generally, has become more normalised to the point, “They don’t seem so extreme any more.”

That’s despite party scandals such as a talisman of the AfD’s hard right, Björn Höcke, being fined twice last year for using a Nazi slogan, though he denied doing so knowingly.

The AfD, in three German states, is classified as right-wing extremist by authorities – including in Saxony, a designation the party unsuccessfully challenged in court.

It’s a state where the number of “right-wing extremist individuals” had reached a “new high” – according to a report released last year by Saxony’s domestic intelligence service – that showed data back to 2015.

In a shopping mall in the city of Chemnitz in Saxony, we meet a group of young men who – while they won’t go on the record – tell us they’re right wing.

Dressed in black, with uniformly short hair, they express beliefs that homosexuality is wrong and fear that the German “race” is under threat because of the growing migrant community.

They question narratives about their country’s past, seemingly a reference to the Nazi era.

Diana Schwitalla has been teaching history and social studies for eight years. She says she has had to confront a case of Holocaust denial in the classroom and has heard other troubling remarks.

“We hear the Second World War was actually a good thing, and there was a reason people died then – and that this is good. Hitler is described as a good man,” says Ms Schwitalla.

She adds, “Many students… very young students, {who} say it doesn’t matter who I vote for, they’ll do what they want ‘up there’ anyway. The question of who’s ‘up there’, I don’t get an answer to that.”

We met her over the course of two days – including at an adult vocational college in Freiberg that sits on the grounds of a former Nazi concentration camp. Jewish women, brought from Auschwitz, were used for slave labour here to make parts for aeroplanes.

We did hear some talk of opposition to the levels of immigration into Germany plus a desire for national pride.

The first day we met Ms Schwitalla, she is helping to organise a mock election for the students as a way of engaging them about democracy at another college site in the town of Flöha – about 15 miles away from Freiberg.

We spoke to Cora, Melina and Joey, all 18.

Cora says she has heard men of her age express a desire for women to be in the home harking back to a time “when women took care of the children and when the husband comes home from work, the food is cooked”. She likens it to the so-called “Trad Wife” trend of adhering to traditional gender roles.

Cora and Melina voice fears about a rollback of women’s rights – including on abortion, even – remarkably – the right to vote. “Luckily that’s not being discussed in politics yet,” says Melina, “but I’ve heard discussions about women not being allowed to vote in elections any more.”

A small group of students line up to vote around lunchtime and we watch as the results come in with “Die Linke” scoring top – the left party that’s relatively popular amongst the young but polling at only around five per cent nationwide.

The AfD came second, reinforcing what Prof Abou-Chadi has found, that, “younger people are much more likely to go for a further left or further right party than a centrist one”.

The AfD, whose signature issues include security, borders and migrant crime, are now even embracing the concept of “remigration” – a buzz-word in Europe’s far right that’s widely understood to mean mass deportations.

Speaking to people in Germany, it is clear that support for the AfD can not just be read as some form of protest vote, even if there is frustration with the parties that have traditionally governed Germany. Celina, Dominic and Nick – and others we spoke to – genuinely hope and believe that the AfD could set Germany on the path of radical change.

It’s still the case that other parties will not go into coalition with the AfD but in January a non-binding motion was passed in the German parliament thanks to AfD votes for the first time.

Prof Abou-Chadi believes in the longer term, there could be an even more seismic change.

“And as soon as the more mainstream parties start giving up the ‘firewall’ or cordon sanitaire the far right will start cannibalising the right.

“It’s very likely that, in many or most European countries, the far-right parties will be the main party on the right – or already are,” he says.

Parties like the AfD have worked hard to try and normalise themselves in the eyes of the public.

While there are people in Germany and Europe who view the far right as an extremist, even anti-democratic, force – it appears that the ‘normalisation’ effort is working, not least of all among the young.

Top picture credit: Getty

A computer engineer who lost £620m-worth of Bitcoin wants to buy the tip where he believes it was buried.

James Howells, from Newport, claimed his ex-girlfriend mistakenly chucked out a hard drive containing 8,000 bitcoins in 2013.

He tried to sue the city council to get access to the site on Newport’s Docks Way, or get £495m in compensation, but his case was dismissed by a judge.

Newport council said it was making no further comment on the matter.

The authority is planning to close the tip in the 2025-26 financial year.

It has planning permission for a solar farm on the land, expected to power the council’s new bin lorries.

Mr Howells said: “The council planning on closing the landfill so soon is quite a surprise, especially since it claimed at the High Court that closing the landfill to allow me to search would have a huge detrimental impact on the people of Newport, whilst at the same time they were planning to close the landfill anyway.”

The landfill holds more than 1.4m tonnes of waste.

Mr Howells believes the hard drive is in an area of 100,000 tonnes.

“I would be potentially interested in purchasing the landfill site,” he said.

“I have discussed this option recently with investment partners and it is very much on the table.”

Mr Howells also wants to appeal Judge Keyser’s decision to throw out his case.

The judge said there were no grounds for the claim and “no realistic prospect” of succeeding at trial.

He ruled too much time had passed between the hard drive being lost and the claim being brought.

Bitcoin is often described as a cryptocurrency, a virtual currency or a digital currency and is a type of money that is completely virtual – there are no physical coins or notes.

You can use it to buy products and services, but not many shops accept Bitcoin.

In China it is illegal to trade or mine Bitcoin and its use is restricted in countries including Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

It’s a chilly mid-winter afternoon in Segovia, in central Spain, and tourists are gathered at the foot of the city’s Roman aqueduct, gazing up at its famous arches and taking selfies.

Many of the visitors are Spanish, but there are also people from other European countries, Asians and Latin Americans, all drawn by Segovia’s historic charm, gastronomy and dramatic location just beyond the mountains north of Madrid.

“There was a moment during Covid when I thought ‘maybe tourism will never, ever be like it was before’,” says Elena Mirón, a local guide dressed in a fuchsia-coloured beret who is about to lead a group across the city.

“But now things are very good and I feel this year is going to be a good year, like 2023 and 2024. I’m happy, because I can live off this job I love.”

Spain received a record 94 million visitors in 2024 and is now vying with France, which saw 100 million, to be the world’s biggest foreign tourist hub.

And the tourism industry’s post-Covid expansion is a major reason why the eurozone’s fourth-biggest economy has been easily outgrowing the likes of Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom, posting an increase in GDP of 3.2% last year.

By contrast, the German economy contracted by 0.2% in 2024, while France grew by 1.1%, Italy by 0.5%, and the UK by an expected 0.9%.

This all helps explain why the Economist magazine has ranked Spain as the world’s best-performing economy.

“The Spanish model is successful because it is a balanced model, and this is what guarantees the sustainability of growth,” says Carlos Cuerpo, the business minister in the Socialist-led coalition government. He points out that Spain was responsible for 40% of eurozone growth last year.

Although he underlined the importance of tourism, Mr Cuerpo also pointed to financial services, technology, and investment as factors which have helped Spain bounce back from the depths of the pandemic, when GDP shrank by 11% in one year.

“We are getting out of Covid without scars and by modernising our economy and therefore lifting our potential GDP growth,” he adds.

That modernisation process is being aided by post-pandemic recovery funds from the EU’s Next Generation programme. Spain is due to receive up to €163bn by 2026 ($169bn; £136bn), making it the biggest recipient of these funds alongside Italy.

Spain is investing the money in the national rail system, low-emissions zones in towns and cities, as well as in the electric vehicle industry and subsidies for small businesses.

“Public spending has been high, and is responsible for approximately half our growth since the pandemic,” says María Jesús Valdemoros, lecturer in economics at Spain’s IESE Business School.

Other major European economies have seen their growth stymied by their greater reliance than Spain on industry, which, she says, “is suffering a lot at the moment due to factors such as the high cost of energy, competition from China and other Asian countries, the cost of the transition to a more sustainable environmental model and trade protectionism”.

Since Covid, the other major economic challenge for Spain has been the cost-of-living crisis triggered by supply-chain bottlenecks and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Inflation peaked at an annual rate of 11% in July of that year, with energy prices hitting Spaniards particularly hard, but by the end of 2024 it had fallen back to 2.8%.

Madrid believes that subsidies it introduced to cut the cost of fuel consumption and encourage public transport use were key in mitigating the impact of the energy price rises, as well as several increases to the minimum wage.

At the height of the European energy crisis, Spain and Portugal also negotiated with Brussels a so-called “Iberian exception”, allowing them to cap the price of gas used to generate electricity in order to reduce consumers’ bills.

Mr Cuerpo argues that such measures have helped counter Spain’s traditional vulnerability to economic turmoil.

“Spain is proving to be more resilient to successive shocks – including the inflation shock that came with the war in Ukraine,” he said. “And I think this is part of the overall protective shield that we have put in place for our consumers and for our firms.”

The country’s green energy output is seen as another favourable factor, not just in guaranteeing electricity, but also spurring investment. Spain has the second-largest renewable energy infrastructure in the EU.

The latter is a boon for a country that is Europe’s second-biggest car producer, according to Wayne Griffiths, the British-born CEO of Seat and Cupra. Although Spanish electric vehicle production is lagging behind the rest of Europe, he sees enormous potential in that area.

“[In Spain] we have all the factors you need to be successful: competitive, well-trained people and also an energy policy behind that,” he says. “There’s no point in making zero-emission cars if you’re using dirty energy.”

Despite these positives, a longstanding weakness of Spain’s economy has been a chronically high jobless rate, which is the biggest in the EU and almost double the block’s average. However, the situation did improve in the last quarter of 2024, when the Spanish jobless unemployment rate declined to 10.6%, its lowest level since 2008.

Meanwhile the number of people in employment in Spain now stands at 22 million, a record high. A labour reform, encouraging job stability, is seen as a key reason for this.

This reform increased restrictions on the use of temporary contracts by companies, favouring greater flexibility in the use of permanent contracts. It has reduced the number of workers in temporary employment without hindering job creation.

Also, although the arrival of immigrants has driven a fierce political debate, their absorption into the labour market is seen by many as crucial for a country with a rapidly ageing population.

The Socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has been outspoken in underlining the need for immigrants, describing their contribution to the economy as “fundamental”.

The European Commission has forecast that Spain will continue to lead growth among the bloc’s big economies this year and remain ahead of the EU average. However, challenges are looming on the horizon.

The heavy reliance on tourism – and a growing backlash against the industry by local people – is one concern.

Another is Spain’s vast public debt, which is higher than the country’s annual economic output.

María Jesús Valdemoros warns that this is “an imbalance that we need to correct, not just because the EU’s new fiscal norms demand it, but because it could cause financial instability”.

In addition, a housing crisis has erupted across the country, leaving millions of Spaniards struggling to find affordable accommodation.

With an uncertain and deeply polarised political landscape, it is difficult for Sánchez’s minority government to tackle such problems. But, while it attempts to resolve these conundrums, Spain is enjoying its status as the motor of European growth.

British pop star Ed Sheeran was stopped from busking in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru on Sunday, with police saying he didn’t have the necessary permissions.

A video showing a local police officer unplugging Sheeran’s microphone on Bengaluru’s Church Street – a crowded shopping and entertainment area – has since gone viral.

Officials told the ANI news agency a request from Mr Sheeran’s team to busk on the road was rejected to avoid congestion in the area.

But Sheeran insisted on Instagram that “we had permission to busk, by the way. Hence, us playing in that exact spot was planned out before. It wasn’t just us randomly turning up. All good though. See you at the show tonight.”

The incident took place ahead of his scheduled Mathematics Tour concert at NICE Grounds in Bengaluru.

Fans criticised the police intervention online, with one saying: “We live in an uncleocracy. And there’s nothing uncles love more than to stop young people from having fun,” referring to the number of vague rules that govern the use of public spaces in India.

However PC Mohan, a local MP from the ruling BJP party, said “even global stars must follow local rules – no permit, no performance!”

Sheeran is in India for the second year in a row on a 15-day tour, having already played in Pune Hyderabad and Chennai and with more concerts scheduled for Shillong in India’s north-east and the capital Delhi.

At his Bengaluru show, Sheeran surprised fans by singing two hit local songs in the Telugu language with singer Shilpa Rao on stage.

He previously collaborated with Indian singer and actor Diljit Dosanjh during the latter’s concert in Birmingham last year.

While in India he has also collaborated with sitar musician Megha Rawoot on a version of his hit song Shape of You.

Demand for live music concerts has been increasing in India, with Sheeran’s biggest-ever tour of the country coming close on the heels of Dua Lipa’s recent performance in Mumbai and Coldplay’s multi-city tour.

With growing disposable incomes, India is an emerging player in the “concert economy”, a recent Bank of Baroda report said, with live concerts set to be worth $700-900m (£550-730m).

President Donald Trump has said he is “committed to buying and owning” the Gaza Strip and relocating the two million Palestinians living there, despite global condemnation of the plan he unveiled last week.

He told reporters that he might allow Middle East countries to be involved in rebuilding parts of the territory and that he would make sure the Palestinian refugees would “live beautifully”.

Both the Palestinian Authority and the armed group Hamas, whose 16-month war with Israel has caused widespread devastation in Gaza, reiterated that Palestinian land was “not for sale”.

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised Trump’s proposal as “revolutionary and creative”.

It comes three weeks into a fragile ceasefire in Gaza, during which Hamas has released some of the 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.

More than 48,180 people have been killed 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.

Trump repeated his pledge to take over post-war Gaza as he flew to New Orleans on Air Force One to watch the Super Bowl on Sunday.

“I’m committed to buying and owning Gaza. As far as us rebuilding it, we may give it to other states in the Middle East to build sections of it. Other people may do it through our auspices. But we’re committed to owning it, taking it, and making sure that Hamas doesn’t move back,” he said, without explaining who he would buy Gaza from and how the US would own it.

“There’s nothing to move back into. The place is a demolition site… The remainder will be demolished,” he added. “But we’ll make it into a very good site for future development by somebody.”

Trump said people from all over the world would be able to move to Gaza and promised to “take care of the Palestinians”.

“We’re going to make sure they live beautifully and in harmony and peace and that they’re not murdered.”

“They don’t want to go back to Gaza. They only go back because they have no alternative,” he added.

The president also again expressed confidence that he could persuade neighbouring Egypt and Jordan to help, despite their previous public rejections of his requests to take in refugees from Gaza.

Jordan’s King Abdullah is due to meet Trump in Washington on Tuesday, while Israel’s president said Trump would also hold talks with Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the coming days.

Israel’s prime minister praised Trump’s proposal at a cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on Sunday.

“For a full year, we have been told that on the ‘day after’, the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organisation], the Palestinian Authority, needs to be in the Strip,” Netanyahu said.

“President Trump came with a completely different vision, much better for the State of Israel, a revolutionary and creative vision, which we are discussing. He is very determined to carry it out. This also opens many possibilities before us.”

The Palestinian Authority’s foreign ministry said: “The rights of our people and our land are not for sale, exchange or bargaining.”

“The Israeli government and Prime Minister Netanyahu are trying to cover up the crimes of genocide, forced displacement and annexation which they have committed against our people,” it added.

“For this purpose, they continue to promote slogans and positions which are separate from the political reality and far from the requirements of the political solutions to the conflict.”

A political official from Hamas – which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US, the UK and other countries – said Trump’s remarks were “absurd” and reflected “deep ignorance of Palestine and the region”.

“Gaza is not a property to be sold and bought. It is an integral part of our occupied Palestinian land,” Izzat al-Rishq stated.

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 occupied West Bank, 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.

Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz also strongly criticised Trump’s plan on Sunday, calling it a “scandal”.

“I say this with the Egyptian government, with the Jordanian government and with the people who can count on human dignity: the relocation of a population is unacceptable and against international law,” he said during a televised pre-election debate.

Palestinian officials and Arab states also condemned comments made by Netanyahu in a TV interview last week.

An Israeli journalist was discussing efforts to normalise diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia when he mistakenly said there would be no progress without the creation of a “Saudi state”.

“A Palestinian state.” Netanyahu corrected him, before adding: “Unless you want the Palestinian state to be in Saudi Arabia? They have a lot of territory.”

Egypt called the suggestion “reckless” and something that “directly infringes upon Saudi sovereignty”, while Jordan said it was “a flagrant violation of international law”.

Saudi Arabia said on Sunday that it appreciated the “condemnation, disapproval and total rejection announced by the brotherly countries towards what Benjamin Netanyahu stated regarding the displacement of the Palestinian people from their land”.

An animated film about a boy who battles demons with his magical powers has become China’s highest-grossing film ever and a source of national pride.

Ne Zha 2, based on a Chinese mythological character, has raked in more than 8 billion yuan ($1.1bn; £910m) during the week-long Lunar New Year holiday, according to ticket sales tracker Maoyan.

It broke the record set by 2021’s The Battle of Lake Changjin, a propaganda film about the 1950s Korean War, which earned about $900m.

Ne Zha 2 is being hailed as a symbol of progress in Chinese film, which has long trailed Hollywood despite a massive domestic market.

Hot off its domestic success, Ne Zha 2 will be shown overseas next week, including in the US, Canada and Australia.

To Chinese viewers, Ne Zha 2 shows how locally-made films are becoming competitive globally.

“It not only showcases the strong power of Chinese animation after its rise, but also demonstrates the infinite possibilities of traditional Chinese mythology in the modern context,” reads one review on IMDB.

Some hope it could earn another $1bn and surpass the world’s highest-grossing film of all time, 2009’s Avatar.

“Now it’s over to the Chinese people overseas to chip in,” read one comment on Weibo.

Movie ticket sales in China surge during the Lunar New Year festivities. This season saw Chinese films rake in $1.3b during the weeklong holiday period, underscoring an increase in consumer spending that Chinese authorities have been hoping for.

Aside from setting a new box-office benchmark in China, Ne Zha 2 is also the first movie ever to cross $1bn in a single market, according to Hollywood publication Deadline.

Ne Zha 2 has been praised for its script and visual effects. Figurines of the movie’s characters have flown off the shelves as fans flock to cinemas.

It builds on the success of the 2019 film Ne Zha, which made more than $725m and is China’s fifth highest-grossing film of all time.

“I want to play their favourite song… but you know they love to sue,” said Kendrick Lamar, a couple of minutes into his Super Bowl half-time show.

Everyone knew what he was referring to. Not Like Us, his brutal takedown of rap rival Drake, was one of last year’s breakout hits, earning one billion streams on Spotify and five Grammy Awards, including song of the year.

But there were questions over whether Lamar would play it – or even could play it – at the Super Bowl, after Drake filed a defamation lawsuit for lyrics that branded him a sexual predator, which he denies.

Lamar leaned into the dilemma, teasing the song over and over during his set, before finally giving the audience what they wanted.

When the song finally played, Kendrick self-censored the most contentious lyric, in which he calls Drake a “certified paedophile”.

But he looked directly into the camera with a mischievous grin as he called out Drake’s name; and left intact the song’s notorious double-entendre: “Tryin’ to strike a chord and it’s probably .”

That lyric echoed around the Caesars Superdome in Louisiana, indicating that no amount of legal action could ever hope to diminish the song’s popularity.

In playing it, Lamar was expected to have reached more than 120 million TV viewers who had tuned in to see the game in which the Philadelphia Eagles defeated the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22 to deny them an unprecedented third straight Super Bowl.

The performance was further heightened by the surprise appearance of tennis star Serena Williams, who performed the Crip Walk – a notorious Los Angeles dance move – as Lamar prowled the stage.

Drake’s lawyers are suing Lamar’s record label Universal Music Group over the track, accusing it of trying to “create a viral hit” out of a song that made “false factual allegations” about the star.

Sunday marked the first time that a solo rapper had headlined the Super Bowl, and Lamar brought an elaborate stage show, full of dancers, fireworks and special guests.

But the rapper’s lyrics have always explored the contradictions between ego and self-doubt, and his Super Bowl set put that conflict in the spotlight.

He performed on a giant noughts and crosses board, flipping between introspective deep cuts (typically staged inside the Xs) and crowd-pleasing chart hits (which took place in the Os).

Actor Samuel L Jackson, dressed as Uncle Sam, acted as emcee – berating Lamar when he became too self-indulgent, and praising his duets with R&B singer SZA.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Jackson said, after the duo performed All The Stars, a ballad from the soundtrack to Marvel’s Black Panther movie.

“That’s what America wants, nice and calm.”

It was a caricature, critiquing the expectation that Lamar would tone down his act for the TV audience.

“Too loud, too reckless, too ghetto,” scolded Jackson at one point – but Lamar wasn’t prepared to compromise.

“The revolution about to be televised,” he intoned at the top of his set.

“The picked the right time but the wrong guy.”

And whatever Lamar performed, the energy was electrifying.

Early highlights included Humble and DNA, both taken from the rapper’s Pulitzer Prize-winning album DAMN, and whose tectonic beats rattled around the stadium.

The set, which is available to watch on YouTube, also included Squabble Up, Man At The Garden and another Drake diss track, Euphoria.

Unlike most Super Bowl performers, Lamar isn’t much of a mover, but he had a charismatic swagger as he walked in step with his dancers; and clever staging gave the show momentum – especially on nervy, angular tracks like Peekaboo.

SZA also gave the set a lift, with supple vocals and improbably flexible choreography that helped soften Lamar’s edgier instincts.

Not Like Us was the undoubted climax, but Lamar took a victory lap on the bouncy West Coast anthem TV Off, where he boasted, ““.

He was joined on stage by the song’s producer, Mustard, who clutched a football while sporting the world’s baggiest jeans – before Lamar pointed an imaginary remote control at the camera and intoned, “Game Over”.

For fans, it was a powerful performance, full of Easter eggs – including a snippet of the unreleased song Bodies.

Casual viewers might have agreed more with Samuel L Jackson’s plea for Lamar to keep it light; especially as some of his more densely-written lyrics were rendered unintelligible by the stadium’s cavernous echo.

And it was noticeable that Lamar omitted to play his civil rights anthem Alright, in a year where the NFL chose to remove the phrase “end racism” from the end zone of the football field.

The phrase had been present at the Super Bowl since 2020, amid the Black Lives Matter protests – for which Alright had become the unofficial soundtrack.

Many had expected Lamar to make a bigger statement, especially with President Donald Trump in attendance, but the star’s performance remained resolutely uncontroversial – unless, of course, your name is Drake.

Nonetheless, Lamar’s show was sleek and streamlined – as many fans had expected, after audio of the backing track leaked on Thursday.

The only interruption came at the climax of the 13-minute set, when a protester climbed on top of Lamar’s black Buick GNX car and unfurled a combined Palestinian and Sudanese flag, before being tackled by security officers.

The NFL later said in a statement that the protester was part of the 400-member cast who took part in the show.

The career-spanning set crammed 11 songs into 13 minutes. Here’s what Kendrick played.

1. Bodies
2. Squabble Up
3. Humble
4. DNA
5. Euphoria
6. Man At The Garden
7. Peekaboo
8. Luther (with SZA)
9. All The Stars (with SZA)
10. Not Like Us
11. TV Off

Before the show, it had been rumoured that Taylor Swift might swoop down from her VIP suite to join Lamar on stage.

The pair duetted on a remix of her single Bad Blood in 2015 – and fans hoped they might perform it live for the first time at the Super Bowl.

In the end, Swift opted just to watch the show, along with other celebrity attendees including Paul McCartney, Stormzy, Lady Gaga, Jay-Z, Ice Spice, Doechii, Paul Rudd, Bradley Cooper and Winnie Harlow.

Maybe it was for the best: Some reports suggested that Swift had been booed at the stadium, where almost 80% of fans supported the Philadelphia Eagles, rather than her boyfriend Travis Kelce’s team.

Before kick-off, Lady Gaga made a surprise appearance on Bourbon Street, in the middle of New Orleans’ historic French Quarter.

The star, who played her own Super Bowl half-time show in 2017, played a touching rendition of her song Hold My Hand, honouring the victims of the New Year’s Day terror attack that claimed the lives of 14 people in the city.

Gaga was surrounded by first responders as she played a black baby grand piano in the middle of the road.

“Here on Bourbon Street, always the heart and soul of New Orleans, this year began with a terror attack that tried to shatter its spirit,” said former American footballer Michael Strahan during the pre-filmed segment.

“But the resilience of New Orleans is matched by the resolve of our country.”

Musical performances before the game also included R&B artist Ledisi, who performed Lift Every Voice and Sing, often referred to as the Black National anthem, joined by 125 youth choir members.

Musician Troy Andrews, popularly known as Trombone Shorty, and Christian singer-songwriter Lauren Daigle played America the Beautiful – giving the track a feel-good New Orleans vibe.

And just before the game began, New Orleans native Jon Batiste sang the American National Anthem, adding a few jazz flourishes from his multi-coloured grand piano.

President Donald Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship in the US has sparked several legal challenges and some anxiety among immigrant families.

For nearly 160 years, the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution has established the principle that anyone born in the country is a US citizen.

But as part of his crackdown on migrant numbers, Trump is seeking to deny citizenship to children of migrants who are either in the country illegally or on temporary visas.

The move appears to have public backing. A poll by Emerson College suggests many more Americans back Trump than oppose him on this.

But how does this compare to citizenship laws around the world?

Birthright citizenship, or jus soli (right of the soil), is not the norm globally.

The US is one of about 30 countries – mostly in the Americas – that grant automatic citizenship to anyone born within their borders.

In contrast, many countries in Asia, Europe, and parts of Africa adhere to the jus sanguinis (right of blood) principle, where children inherit their nationality from their parents, regardless of their birthplace.

Other countries have a combination of both principles, also granting citizenship to children of permanent residents.

John Skrentny, a sociology professor at the University of California, San Diego, believes that, though birthright citizenship or jus soli is common throughout the Americas, “each nation-state had its own unique road to it”.

“For example, some involved slaves and former slaves, some did not. History is complicated,” he says. In the US, the 14th Amendment was adopted to address the legal status of freed slaves.

However, Mr Skrentny argues that what almost all had in common was “building a nation-state from a former colony”.

“They had to be strategic about whom to include and whom to exclude, and how to make the nation-state governable,” he explains. “For many, birthright citizenship, based on being born in the territory, made for their state-building goals.

“For some, it encouraged immigration from Europe; for others, it ensured that indigenous populations and former slaves, and their children, would be included as full members, and not left stateless. It was a particular strategy for a particular time, and that time may have passed.”

In recent years, several countries have revised their citizenship laws, tightening or revoking birthright citizenship due to concerns over immigration, national identity, and so-called “birth tourism” where people visit a country in order to give birth.

India, for example, once granted automatic citizenship to anyone born on its soil. But over time, concerns over illegal immigration, particularly from Bangladesh, led to restrictions.

Since December 2004, a child born in India is only a citizen if both parents are Indian, or if one parent is a citizen and the other is not considered an illegal migrant.

Many African nations, which historically followed jus soli under colonial-era legal systems, later abandoned it after gaining independence. Today, most require at least one parent to be a citizen or a permanent resident.

Citizenship is even more restrictive in most Asian countries, where it is primarily determined by descent, as seen in nations such as China, Malaysia, and Singapore.

Europe has also seen significant changes. Ireland was the last country in the region to allow unrestricted jus soli.

It abolished the policy after a June 2004 poll, when 79% of voters approved a constitutional amendment requiring at least one parent to be a citizen, permanent resident, or legal temporary resident.

The government said change was needed because foreign women were travelling to Ireland to give birth in order to get an EU passport for their babies.

One of the most severe changes occurred in the Dominican Republic, where, in 2010, a constitutional amendment redefined citizenship to exclude children of undocumented migrants.

A 2013 Supreme Court ruling made this retroactive to 1929, stripping tens of thousands – mostly of Haitian descent – of their Dominican nationality. Rights groups warned that this could leave many stateless, as they did not have Haitian papers either.

The move was widely condemned by international humanitarian organisations and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

As a result of the public outcry, the Dominican Republic passed a law in 2014 that established a system to grant citizenship to Dominican-born children of immigrants, particularly favouring those of Haitian descent.

Mr Skrentny sees the changes as part of a broader global trend. “We are now in an era of mass migration and easy transportation, even across oceans. Now, individuals also can be strategic about citizenship. That’s why we are seeing this debate in the US now.”

Within hours of President Trump’s order, various lawsuits were launched by Democratic-run states and cities, civil rights groups and individuals.

Two federal judges have sided with plaintiffs, most recently District Judge Deborah Boardman in Maryland on Wednesday.

She sided with five pregnant women who argued that denying their children citizenship violated the US Constitution.

Most legal scholars agree that President Trump cannot end birthright citizenship with an executive order.

Ultimately this will be decided by the courts, said Saikrishna Prakash, a constitutional expert and University of Virginia Law School professor. “This is not something he can decide on his own.”

The order is now on hold as the case makes it through the courts.

It is unclear how the Supreme Court, where conservative justices form a supermajority, would interpret the 14th Amendment if it came to it.

Trump’s justice department has argued it only applies to permanent residents. Diplomats, for example, are exempt.

But others counter that other US laws apply to undocumented migrants so the 14th Amendment should too.

Hundreds of migrants were arrested in January as part of a UK-wide crackdown on illegal working, the government has said.

Enforcement teams raided 828 premises including nail bars, car washes, and restaurants and made 609 arrests – a 73% increase on the previous January.

Home Office Minister Dame Angela Eagle told the BBC the decision to release footage of the arrests was to send a message about the realities of working illegally and she defended the government’s approach as “compassionate”.

Later on Monday, MPs will debate the government’s immigration bill. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp has called it a “weak bill that won’t stop the boats”.

Vape shops in Cheshire and a grocery warehouse in south London were among the places raided.

Those arrested made the journey to the UK through a mix of routes, including by crossing the Channel and by overstaying legitimately-granted visas.

Despite having won a landslide election victory seven months ago, senior Labour strategists are already increasingly worried about losing voters concerned about immigration to Reform come the next election.

• Chris Mason’s analysis: Ministers want to show toughness on immigration

Party figures believe that merely describing the arrests and deportations is not enough – hence the decision to release footage today of them taking place, allowing people to see with their own eyes.

But there are others in the Labour Party who fear that focusing on illegal immigration only increases the salience of an issue where they could never and would never want to adopt as hardline an approach as Reform.

Some Labour MPs, particularly on the left of the party, believe the government should do more to establish safe and legal routes for people to come to the UK and talk about the benefits of immigration.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Dame Angela was asked if releasing footage of the raids aligned with Sir Keir Starmer’s previous pledge to create an immigration system “based on compassion and dignity”.

“I don’t believe for one minute that enforcing the law and ensuring that people who break the law face the consequences of doing that, up to and including deportation, arrest, is not compassionate,” she said.

She added that it is “important that we show what we are doing and it’s important that we send messages to people who may have been sold lies about what will await them in the UK if they get themselves smuggled in”.

The government also intends to reduce the number of hotels housing asylum seekers, Dame Angela said.

Speaking to BBC Breakfast on Monday, she said there were plans to close nine of the 218 hotels currently in use by the end of March.

From the start of the Labour government in July up to 31 January, 3,930 arrests were made over 5,424 visits by immigration enforcement officers, the Home Office said.

A total of 1,090 civil penalty notices were also issued, with employers facing a fine of up to £60,000 per worker if found liable.

During the same period, four of the “biggest return flights in the UK’s history” were also carried out, the Home Office said, returning more than 800 people.

But Reform UK leader Nigel Farage described the new figures released by the government as feeble, compared with the numbers that had entered the country.

Across the 31 days of January, there were 1,098 people who arrived in the UK illegally on small boats.

The government said it launched a social media campaign in Vietnam in December and Albania in January discouraging people from making the journey to the UK.

The adverts highlight stories from migrants who entered the UK illegally “only to face debt, exploitation and a life far from what they were promised”, the Home Office said.

Dame Angela said this campaign was introduced to counter “quite sophisticated ads” placed online by people smugglers, which “tell lies about the situation in Britain, about how easy it is to get jobs”.

People who come to the UK illegally are “more likely to be living in squalid conditions, being exploited by vicious gangs”, she said.

Later, the government’s Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill will be debated in the House of Commons in its second reading.

The bill aims to introduce a raft of new offences and counter terrorism-style powers to clamp down on people smugglers bringing migrants across the Channel.

But Labour ministers have not provided a specific target on when a drop in small boat crossings could be expected.

The Conservatives said they had put forward an amendment to the immigration bill in a bid to include their own immigration proposals: to double how long it takes migrants to get indefinite leave to remain and, after that, require them to wait five years rather than one before they can apply for citizenship.

Philp added that “an effective removals deterrent is needed” to stop small boat crossings, something he said Labour had scrapped, a reference to the former government’s plan to send illegal migrants to Rwanda.

A nationwide blackout in Sri Lanka has been blamed on a monkey that intruded into a power station south of Colombo.

Power is gradually being restored across the island nation of 22 million people, with medical facilities and water purification plants being given priority.

“A monkey has come in contact with our grid transformer, causing an imbalance in the system,” Energy Minister Kumara Jayakody told reporters.

The blackout started at about 11:00 local time (05:30 GMT) on Sunday, forcing many to rely on generators. Officials said it may take a few hours to get power back.

On social media, people criticised the authorities while making fun of the incident.

“A rogue monkey knocked out Sri Lanka’s entire power grid after triggering a total failure at a substation in Colombo,” X user Mario Nawfal wrote.

“One monkey = total chaos. Time to rethink infrastructure?” he added.

Another X user, Sreeni R, posted an illustration of the monkey god Hanuman, who according to the Hindu epic Ramayana, set Sri Lanka on fire during a war with the demon king Ravana who ruled the country.

“Sri Lanka tasted monkey business in the past,” he wrote.

“Only in Sri Lanka can a group of monkeys fighting inside a power station cause an islandwide power outage,” wrote Jamila Husain, editor-in-chief of local newspaper Daily Mirror.

In a report published on Monday, the newspaper said engineers have been warning consecutive governments “for years” to upgrade its power grid or face frequent blackouts.

“The national power grid is in such a weakened state that frequent islandwide power outages maybe expected if there is a disturbance even in one of our lines,” it quoted an unnamed senior engineer saying.

Sri Lanka experienced widespread blackouts during its economic crisis in 2022.

US Vice-President JD Vance has suggested the power of US judges is beginning to reach its limit, as the White House responds to a flurry of lawsuits that aim to stall its agenda.

“Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” he wrote on X.

Vance’s remarks on Sunday came less than 24 hours after a judge blocked members of Trump’s newly created advisory body, the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), from accessing sensitive treasury department systems.

The Trump administration, seeking to swiftly and dramatically reshape the federal government, is being challenged by legal hurdles – including more than two dozen lawsuits.

During his three weeks in office, Trump has signed dozens of executive orders, many of which are alleged by his Democratic opponents to have exceeded his constitutional authority.

Cases filed by Democrats have prevented several of these orders from going into effect, with federal judges issuing temporary blocks.

Speaking to ABC on Sunday, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy suggested Trump’s dramatic cost-cutting – including for its main overseas aid agency, USAID – amounted to “the most serious constitutional crisis the country has faced, certainly since Watergate”.

On Saturday, a judge blocked Doge personnel – led by tech billionaire Elon Musk – from accessing sensitive treasury payment systems and people’s personal data after 19 state attorneys general sued the administration.

Among the other Trump actions being challenged in court cases are:

• Ending birthright citizenship
• Migrant transfers to Guantanamo
• Establishment of Doge
• Offering federal workers a buyout incentive
• Housing of transgender inmates
• Ban on transgender individuals serving in the military
• Ban on DEIA initiatives in the executive branch
• Removal of independent agency leaders

As Trump made his way to New Orleans for the Super Bowl on Sunday, he told reporters the judge’s ruling was a “disgrace”, the New York Times reported.

Trump appointed Musk to lead Doge to slash what he describes as wasteful government spending.

Musk himself called the ruling “insane”, asking: “How on Earth are we supposed to stop fraud and waste of taxpayer money without looking at how money is spent?”

• Judge blocks Musk team access to Treasury Department records
• Trump defends Musk and says Doge will look at military spending
• Inside Musk’s race to upend government

In Vance’s social media post, he cited other types of decision-making by the executive branch that he suggested were outside the scope of courts’ legal purview.

“If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal,” Vance wrote. “If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal.”

Liz Cheney, a former Republican House representative who campaigned in the presidential election against Trump, snapped back at Vance.

“If you believe any of the multiple federal courts that have ruled against you so far are exceeding their statutory or constitutional authority, your recourse is to appeal,” Cheney wrote on X.

“You don’t get to rage-quit the Republic just because you are losing. That’s tyranny.”

The case against Doge’s access to the treasury was filed in federal court in New York City.

It alleges the Trump administration violated federal law by allowing Musk’s team access to the department’s central payment system.

The payment system handles tax refunds and social security benefits, and contains a vast network of Americans’ personal and financial data.

A hearing for the case has been set for Friday.

A nationwide blackout in Sri Lanka has been blamed on a monkey that intruded into a power station south of Colombo.

Power is gradually being restored across the island nation of 22 million people, with medical facilities and water purification plants being given priority.

“A monkey has come in contact with our grid transformer, causing an imbalance in the system,” Energy Minister Kumara Jayakody told reporters.

The blackout started at about 11:00 local time (05:30 GMT) on Sunday, forcing many to rely on generators. Officials said it may take a few hours to get power back.

On social media, people criticised the authorities while making fun of the incident.

“A rogue monkey knocked out Sri Lanka’s entire power grid after triggering a total failure at a substation in Colombo,” X user Mario Nawfal wrote.

“One monkey = total chaos. Time to rethink infrastructure?” he added.

Another X user, Sreeni R, posted an illustration of the monkey god Hanuman, who according to the Hindu epic Ramayana, set Sri Lanka on fire during a war with the demon king Ravana who ruled the country.

“Sri Lanka tasted monkey business in the past,” he wrote.

“Only in Sri Lanka can a group of monkeys fighting inside a power station cause an islandwide power outage,” wrote Jamila Husain, editor-in-chief of local newspaper Daily Mirror.

In a report published on Monday, the newspaper said engineers have been warning consecutive governments “for years” to upgrade its power grid or face frequent blackouts.

“The national power grid is in such a weakened state that frequent islandwide power outages maybe expected if there is a disturbance even in one of our lines,” it quoted an unnamed senior engineer saying.

Sri Lanka experienced widespread blackouts during its economic crisis in 2022.