China has warned the US it is ready to fight “any type” of war after hitting back against President Donald Trump’s mounting trade tariffs.

The world’s top two economies have edged closer to a trade war after Trump slapped more tariffs on all Chinese goods. China quickly retaliated imposing 10-15% tariffs on US farm products.

“If war is what the US wants, be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war, we’re ready to fight till the end,” China’s embassy said on X, reposting a line from a government statement on Tuesday.

It is some of the strongest rhetoric so far from China since Trump became president and comes as leaders gathered in Beijing for the annual National People’s Congress.

On Wednesday, China’s Premier Li Qiang announced that China would again boost its defence spending by 7.2% this year and warned that “changes unseen in a century were unfolding across the world at a faster pace.” This increase was expected and matches the figure announced last year.

Leaders in Beijing are trying to send a message to people in China that they are confident the country’s economy can grow, even with the threat of a trade war.

China has been keen to portray an image of being a stable, peaceful country in contrast to the US, which Beijing accuses of being embroiled in wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.

China may also hope to capitalise on Trump’s actions relating to US allies such as Canada and Mexico, which have also been hit by tariffs, and will not want to ramp up the rhetoric too far to scare off potential new global partners.

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The Premier’s speech in Beijing on Tuesday emphasised that China would continue to open up and hoped to attract more foreign investment.

China has, in the past emphasised that it is ready to go to war. Last October, President Xi called for troops to strengthen their preparedness for war as they held military drills around the self-governing island of Taiwan. But there is a difference between military preparedness and a readiness to go to war.

The Chinese embassy in Washington’s post quoted a foreign ministry statement in English from the previous day, which also accused the US of blaming China for the influx of the drug fentanyl

“The fentanyl issue is a flimsy excuse to raise US tariffs on Chinese imports,” the foreign ministry spokesperson said.

“Intimidation does not scare us. Bullying does not work on us. Pressuring, coercion or threats are not the right way of dealing with China,” he added.

The US-China relationship is always one of the most contentious in the world. This post on X has been widely shared and could be used by the China hawks in Trump’s cabinet as evidence that Beijing is Washington’s biggest foreign policy and economic threat.

Officials in Beijing had been hopeful that US–China relations under Trump could get off to a more cordial start after he invited Xi to his inauguration. Trump also said the two leaders had “a great phone call” just a few days before he entered the White House.

There were reports that the two leaders were due to have another call last month. That did not happen.

Xi had already been battling persistently low consumption, a property crisis and unemployment.

China has pledged to pump billions of dollars into its ailing economy and its leaders unveiled the plan as thousands of delegates attend the National People’s Congress, a rubber-stamp parliament, which passes decisions already made behind closed doors.

China has the world’s second-largest military budget at $245bn but it is far smaller than that of the US. Beijing spends 1.6% of GDP on its military, far less than the US or Russia, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

However, analysts believe China downplays how much it spends on defence.

A PhD student who has been convicted of drugging and raping 10 women “may turn out to be one of the most prolific sexual predators that we’ve ever seen in this country”, according to the lead detective on the case.

Chinese national Zhenhao Zou, 28, attacked two women who have been identified and another eight who have yet to be traced, his trial at Inner London Crown Court heard.

He filmed nine of the assaults as “souvenirs”, and kept a trophy box of victims’ belongings, jurors heard.

Judge Rosina Cottage described him as “dangerous and predatory sexual offender” and warned him he faces a “very long” jail term when he is sentenced on 19 June.

The Met Police’s Cdr Kevin Southworth said the video evidence showed there may be as many as 50 further victims, whom they are “desperate to trace”.

“Such is the insidious nature of these offences, I think there is a possibility that many more victim survivors may not even know that he has, in fact, raped them,” he said.

Zou, who was studying at University College London, was also found guilty of voyeurism, possession of extreme pornographic images and false imprisonment.

The crimes he has been convicted of took place between 2019 and 2024.

Seven of the rapes took place during the pandemic in China. The evidence of those attacks was videos shown to the jury that he kept of him having sex with unconscious and semi-conscious women. Police have never identified them.

Four of the rapes took place in London. Two women were identified and gave evidence; the other two rapes were of the same woman, but she has never been tracked down.

Jurors had to watch footage of nine of the rapes during court proceedings, appearing visibly upset and being given regular breaks as the troubling material was shown.

Some of the attacks were filmed at his flats in Bloomsbury and Elephant and Castle, others at an unknown location in China.

Those prosecutions were possible because foreign nationals who are living in the UK can be charged with offences committed abroad if the crime is also illegal in the country where it took place.

When he was arrested in January of last year, Zou told the jury he had discussed sexual preferences with one of the women he filmed, and she had said she liked “uniform role play”.

“We specifically discussed the kinds of role play I like, which was rape role play,” he said. He told the court this was how the videos came to be made.

The student comes from a wealthy family, and had enough money to afford a Rolex watch, a wardrobe full of designer clothes, and cosmetic procedures including a hair transplant and facial surgery.

He also paid £4,000 a month in rent.

Zou also kept items from victims, such as jewellery and clothing.

The Met Police has launched an appeal to find any other of his potential victims.

“If you’re a woman who’s in any way had a one-on-one encounter with this man Zou, then we would like to hear from you,” Cdr Southworth said.

Saira Pike from the Crown Prosecution Service said: “I’d like to express my heartfelt thanks to the courageous women who came forward to report Zhenhao Zou’s heinous crimes.

“They have been incredibly strong and brave – there is no doubt that their evidence helped us to secure today’s verdict.

“Zou is a serial rapist and a danger to women.”

The jury found Zou guilty of:

• 11 counts of rape, with two of the offences relating to one victim
• Three counts of voyeurism
• 10 counts of possession of an extreme pornographic image
• One count of false imprisonment
• Three counts of possession of a controlled drug with intent to commit a sexual offence

He was cleared of two further counts of possession of an extreme pornographic image, and five counts of possession of controlled drugs to commit a sexual offence.

President Donald Trump declared “the American Dream is unstoppable” as he addressed a raucous joint session of the US Congress for the first time since he returned to power.

In the longest presidential speech to lawmakers on record, he outlined his vision for his second term, as Republicans applauded a high-octane six weeks that has reshaped domestic and foreign policy.

Trump was heckled by Democrats and he goaded them in turn during the rowdy primetime address, during which he said his administration was “just getting started”.

The Republican president has moved to slash the federal workforce and crack down on immigration, while imposing tariffs on America’s biggest trading partners and shaking up the transatlantic alliance over the war in Ukraine.

Here are six of the key takeaways.

Following a second day of market turbulence, Trump played down the potential economic fallout from a trade war he ignited this week, including 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada, and an additional 10% on Chinese imports.

But in contrast with the ovations that greeted his other policy objectives, many Republicans remained seated, a sign of how Trump’s import taxes have divided his party.

“Tariffs are about making America rich again and making America great again,” he said.

“And it’s happening. And it will happen rather quickly. There’ll be a little disturbance, but we’re okay with that. It won’t be much.”

Trump added that reciprocal tariffs tailored to US trading partners would “kick in” on 2 April.

Earlier in the day, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Fox Business that Trump could announce a trade deal with Mexico and Canada as soon as Wednesday.

• Trump will ‘probably’ cut tariffs, says commerce chief
• What are tariffs, and why is Trump using them?

Trump said he had received an “important letter” from Ukraine’s leader earlier in the day, which appeared to match what Volodymyr Zelensky posted publicly on social media.

Ukraine’s president had said he was now ready to work under Trump’s “strong leadership” to end the war and “come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer”.

“I appreciate that he sent this letter,” Trump told lawmakers.

Zelensky offered the olive branch a day after Trump paused all military aid to the beleaguered US ally.

It followed an acrimonious Oval Office meeting last week when the two leaders argued in front of TV cameras, before cancelling plans to sign a minerals deal that would allow the US to profit from an economic partnership involving Ukraine’s resources.

Trump was reportedly hoping to announce during his speech to Congress that the deal had finally been sealed. But it did not materialise.

• Live updates: Trump ‘appreciates’ Zelensky’s message
• Trump and Zelensky’s fraying relationship, in their own words

Despite most of his 99-minute speech focusing on domestic issues, Trump’s worldview also came more sharply into focus.

There are places in the world he wants to expand US influence and others where he wants to withdraw.

Repeating his desire for the US to acquire Greenland, he vowed “we’re going to get it – one way or the other”. And he said his administration would “reclaim” the Panama Canal.

There were several mentions of African countries when he rattled through a list of what he described as wasteful spending under his predecessor, Joe Biden.

Liberia, Mali, Mozambique and Uganda were all places unfairly benefiting from US aid, he said.

But his most pointed remark was about Lesotho, which he said was a country “nobody has ever heard of” despite receiving $8m (£6.2m) to promote LGBT rights.

• Why does Trump want Greenland and what do its people think?

Early on Trump name-checked his billionaire adviser Elon Musk, who was watching from the gallery.

The tech mogul’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) taskforce has moved to fire tens of thousands of federal workers, cut billions of dollars in foreign aid and slash programmes across the US government.

The SpaceX and Tesla boss, wearing a dark suit with a blue tie, stood and acknowledged the cheers from the crowd.

“Thank you, Elon,” the 78-year-old president said. “He’s working very hard. He didn’t need this.”

Musk’s cuts have sparked some angry scenes at town hall meetings and his instructions to federal employees have at times been overruled by members of Trump’s cabinet.

In the chamber, Democratic lawmakers held up signs saying “Musk steals” and “false”.

Doge claims to have saved $105bn already but that figure can’t be independently verified. Receipts have been published for $18.6bn worth of savings but accounting errors have been reported by US media outlets that have analysed the figures.

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Within the first five minutes of the address, Al Green of Texas was escorted out of the chamber by the sergeant-at-arms after refusing to comply with the House Speaker’s demands that he stop heckling the president and take his seat.

As Trump spoke, other Democrats held up signs saying “This is a lie”.

With Republicans in control of the White House, House of Representatives and Senate, Democrats have been largely leaderless as they work to hone their message and counter the blitz of activity from the Trump administration.

Many Democratic women arrived in the House chamber wearing pink pantsuits in protest. Dozens from their party – some of them wearing the words “Resist” printed on the backs of their shirts – exited the chamber during the speech.

“There is absolutely nothing I can say to make them happy,” Trump said, appearing to revel in the partisan rancour.

Democratic leadership chose Elissa Slotkin of Michigan – a first-term senator elected in a battleground state that Trump won in November – to deliver the party’s official response.

She accused Trump of an “unprecedented giveaway to his billionaire friends” and warned “he could walk us right into a recession”.

Trump pledged to voters that he would beat inflation on his return to office and he used the speech to say his focus would be to reduce the cost of energy, by opening up the country to new oil and gas drilling.

“We have more liquid gold under our feet than any nation on earth, and by far, and now I fully authorize the most talented team ever assembled to go and get it. It’s called drill, baby, drill.”

The soaring cost of eggs has been headline news in recent weeks, and Trump made clear who he felt was responsible.

“Joe Biden especially let the price of eggs get out of control – and we are working hard to get it back down,” he added.

Egg prices rose as the Biden administration directed millions of egg-laying birds to be culled last year amid a bird flu outbreak, though prices have continued rising during the early stages of Trump’s second presidency.

Inflation was slightly elevated at 3% last month, but way down from its peak of 9.1% in 2022.

Only one in three Americans approve of Trump’s handling of cost of living, according to a Reuters/Ipsos survey on Tuesday.

• Fact-checking Trump’s address to Congress

Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second presidential term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

Canada’s Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly has told the BBC she takes US President Donald Trump’s remarks on making Canada the 51st state of his country “very seriously”.

“This is not a joke anymore,” Joly told Newsnight. “There’s a reason why Canadians, when they go out on a hockey game, are booing the American national anthem… We’re insulted. We’re mad. We’re angry.”

Her comments come after Trump imposed 25% tariffs on products entering the US from Canada on Tuesday. Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called that a “very dumb thing to do” and announced retaliatory tariffs.

However, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Trump would “probably” announce a deal to reduce tariffs on Wednesday.

In response, Joly told the BBC that “at the end of the day, the only one that really takes a decision is President Trump”.

She said no Trump administration secretaries had contacted their Canadian counterparts on Monday or Tuesday about tariffs.

Trump and Trudeau, however, are expected to speak over the phone on Wednesday morning, according to sources who spoke to CNN and the Toronto Star.

Trump announced 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico on 4 February, but delayed implementation until 4 March. Canadian energy imports face a 10% tariff.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford implemented a 25% surcharge on electricity exports to three US states, and if tariffs escalated, said he would consider cutting Michigan, New York and Minnesota off from Canadian power.

Trump also imposed a 10% tariff on goods worth more than $800 (£645) from China in February, which doubled in March. China responded with its own tariffs.

The White House said when it introduced the tariffs that it was “taking bold action to hold [the three countries] accountable to their promises of halting illegal immigration and stopping poisonous fentanyl and other drugs from flowing into our country”.

Fentanyl is linked to tens of thousands of overdose deaths in the US each year.

Trudeau said his country was responsible for less than 1% of fentanyl entering the US.

Canada had introduced new border security measures in December, in response to Trump’s tariff threats before he took office.

“We didn’t want this trade war. We did everything that was required under the executive order to make sure our border was safe and secure,” Joly told the BBC, but said “this is a bogus excuse on the part of the Trump administration against us”.

Joly said Canada was the “canary in the coal mine”, with the Europeans next, and the UK after that. Trump has threatened 25% tariffs on the European Union as well.

She said Canada and the UK should work together: “That’s also why I went to London to make sure that if there are tariffs imposed, we should work on counter-tariffs well.”

Joly said Canada’s public displays of displeasure against the US are not “against the American people. We’re the best friends of the American people”.

She called the tariffs on the US’s biggest trading partner an “existential threat”.

“We cannot let our guard down,” she said. “We need to make sure that we fight back.”

The US and Israel have rejected an Arab plan for the post-war reconstruction of the Gaza Strip that would allow the 2.1 million Palestinians living there to stay in place.

The proposal, endorsed by Arab leaders at a summit in Cairo, is their alternative to President Donald Trump’s idea for the US to take over Gaza and permanently resettle its population.

The Palestinian Authority and Hamas welcomed the Arab plan, which calls for Gaza to be governed temporarily by a committee of independent experts and for international peacekeepers to be deployed there.

But both the White House and Israeli foreign ministry said it failed to address realities in Gaza and stood by Trump’s vision.

The summit took place amid growing concern that Gaza’s fragile ceasefire deal could collapse after the six-week first phase expired last Saturday.

Israel has blocked aid from entering the territory to pressure Hamas to accept a new US proposal for a temporary extension of the truce, during which more hostages held in Gaza would be released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.

Hamas has insisted the second phase should begin as agreed, leading to an end of the war and a full Israeli troop withdrawal.

The $53bn (£41bn) Arab plan for rebuilding Gaza once the war ends was presented by Egypt at an emergency Arab League summit on Tuesday.

A statement endorsing the plan stressed “the categorical rejection of any form of displacement of the Palestinian people”, describing such an idea as “a gross violation of international law, a crime against humanity and ethnic cleansing”.

The plan envisages reconstruction taking place over three phases and taking five years, during which some 1.5 million displaced Gazans would be moved into 200,000 prefabricated housing units and 60,000 repaired homes.

In the first phase, which would last six months and cost $3bn, millions of tonnes of rubble and any unexploded ordnance would be cleared.

The second phase, lasting two years and costing $20bn, would see housing and utilities rebuilt. An airport, two seaports and an industrial zone would be built during the third phase, which would take another two years and cost $30bn.

The Arab plan also proposes that an “administrative committee” made up of independent Palestinian technocrats run post-war Gaza for a transitional period while “working towards empowering the Palestinian Authority to return”.

Hamas – which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US, UK and others – took full control of Gaza in 2007, ousting forces from the Fatah-dominated PA in violent clashes a year after winning parliamentary elections. The PA was left governing parts of the occupied West Bank.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who heads the PA, told the summit that he welcomed the Arab plan and urged Donald Trump to support it.

Hamas said it appreciated “the Arab position rejecting attempts to displace our people”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ruled out any future role in Gaza for Hamas or the PA.

However, Israel’s foreign ministry swiftly rejected the Arab League’s statement endorsing the Egyptian plan, saying it “fails to address the realities of the situation following 7 October 2023, remaining rooted in outdated perspectives”.

“Now, with President Trump’s idea, there is an opportunity for the Gazans to have free choice based on their free will. This should be encouraged!” it added.

“Instead, Arab states have rejected this opportunity, without giving it a fair chance, and continue to level baseless accusations against Israel.”

White House National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said the Arab plan did “not address the reality that Gaza is currently uninhabitable and residents cannot humanely live in a territory covered in debris and unexploded ordnance.”

“President Trump stands by his vision to rebuild Gaza free from Hamas. We look forward to further talks to bring peace and prosperity to the region.”

Trump proposed last month that the US would “own” Gaza and relocate its population, so that it could be rebuilt and turned into the “Riviera of the Middle East”.

He said the displaced Palestinians would have no right of return because they would have “much better housing” in Egypt, Jordan and other countries.

The Assistant Secretary General of the Arab League, Hossam Zaki, told the BBC on Wednesday that Trump’s approach was unacceptable.

“It is based on the forced displacement of Palestinians out of their homes and of their land. This is against international law and, we have said this time and again, this is not a way to treat this man-made crisis,” he said.

“This is a war that has been waged by Israel partly with the aim of driving Palestinians out of their territory,” he added.

He also described the Israeli foreign ministry’s response to the Arab plan as “against humanity and against morals”.

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

Many of those refugees ended up in Gaza, where they and their descendants make up three-quarters of the population. Another 900,000 registered refugees live in the West Bank, while 3.4 million others live in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, according to the UN.

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 48,400 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.

China has set an economic growth target for this year of “around 5%” and pledged to pump billions of dollars into its ailing economy, which is now facing a trade war with the US.

Its leaders unveiled the plan as thousands of delegates attend the National People’s Congress, a rubber-stamp parliament, which passes decisions already made behind closed doors.

But the week-long gathering is closely watched for clues on Beijing’s policy changes – and this year is more significant than most.

President Xi Jinping had already been battling persistently low consumption, a property crisis and unemployment, before Donald Trump’s new 10% levy on Chinese imports came into effect on Tuesday.

This follows the 10% tariff imposed in early February, taking the total US levy to 20%. And it hits what has been a rare bright spot for the Chinese economy: exports.

Beijing hit back almost immediately on Tuesday, just as it did last month. It announced retaliatory action that included 10%-15% tariffs on certain agriculture imports from the US. This is key because China is the biggest market for these goods, such as American corn, wheat and soybeans.

At the opening of this week’s meeting, known as Two Sessions, China vowed to make domestic demand the “main engine and anchor” of its economic growth.

Beijing was able to meet its 5% target for the last two years but growth was driven by strong exports, which resulted in a nearly trillion-dollar record trade surplus.

Repeating that is going to be much harder this year.

“If the tariffs linger, Chinese exports to the US could drop by a quarter to a third,” said Harry Murphy Cruise, head of China economics at Moody’s Analytics.

Beijing is going to have to rely more than ever on domestic spending to achieve 5% growth – but that has been one of its biggest challenges.

On Wednesday, Chinese Premier Li Qiang said consumption has been sluggish and pledged to “vigorously boost” household demand.

“Domestically, the foundation for China’s sustained economic recovery and growth is not strong enough.”

“Internationally, changes unseen in a century are unfolding across the world at a faster pace,” Li said, as he noted the rise of protectionism around the world.

Beijing has already rolled out schemes to encourage its people to spend more, including allowing them to trade in and replace consumer goods like kitchen appliances, cars, phones and electronic devices.

The government now aims to put more money into ordinary Chinese people’s pockets and help cut the country’s reliance on exports and investment.

Beijing’s plans include issuing 1.3 trillion yuan ($179bn; £140bn) in special treasury bonds this year to help fund its stimulus measures. Local governments will also be allowed to increase the amount of money they borrow to 4.4 trillion yuan, up from 3.9 trillion yuan, according to the annual “Work Report”.

In a rare move, Beijing raised its fiscal deficit – the difference between the government’s spending and revenue – by one percentage point to 4% of gross domestic product (GDP), the highest level in decades.

The hike signals Beijing’s commitment to increase spending to shore up growth. It has long sought to keep the deficit at or below 3% of GDP to demonstrate fiscal discipline.

It also announced plans to create more than 12 million jobs in cities, setting a target for urban unemployment at around 5.5% for 2025. The figure stood at 5.1% last year.

The government also pledged to provide more support to high-tech industries, restore stability in the property market, and expand elderly care programmes for its ageing population.

Whether these measures will be enough to boost consumption is the key question.

Harsh pandemic-era restrictions along with a prolonged real estate crisis and a government crackdown on tech and finance companies have fuelled pessimism among Chinese people. And a weak social safety net means savings have become especially crucial in case of unexpected out-of-pocket expenses.

But China’s leadership is optimistic. CPCC spokesman Liu Jieyi told reporters ahead of the session that while the economy was facing challenges such as low demand, it was “important to recognise that China’s economic fundamentals are stable, there are many advantages, resilience is strong, and potential is significant”.

Investment in what President Xi calls “high-quality development”, which covers high-tech industries from renewables to artificial intelligence (AI), is also expected to be a major focus.

The world’s second-largest economy, China has long vied to become a global leader in tech, partly to reduce its reliance on the West.

State media has already touted recent examples like DeepSeek and Unitree Robotics, both of which have caught global attention, as examples of China’s “technological progress”.

The success of DeepSeek in particular saw an AI-driven stock rally, with analysts noting renewed interest in China among foreign investors.

A commentary in the state-run Xinhua newspaper said “China’s new energy industries and overall green transition, driven by its cutting-edge technologies, will continue to be important growth drivers”.

But the new US levies – which come on top of tariffs from Trump’s first term – could stymie these plans, not least because they could dampen investor sentiment.

“The chaos that tariffs leave in their wake is kryptonite for investment,” Mr Murphy Cruise says. “Tariffs are set to deliver a one-two punch to China’s economy, landing blows to both exports and investment.”

Also on Wednesday, China announced a 7.2% increase in its national defence budget, the same rate of growth as last year.

A second Sydney nurse who allegedly appeared in a video that made threats towards Israeli patients has been charged by police.

Ahmad Rashad Nadir, 27, and Sarah Abu Lebdeh, 26, were both suspended from their duties at Bankstown Hospital in February after the video was released online. It was filmed on an anonymous online platform which pairs people randomly for a chat.

Authorities say there is “no evidence” the pair actually harmed patients.

Mr Nadir was charged on Wednesday with using a carriage service to threaten, menace or harass, and with possessing a prohibited drug.

Carriage services refer to modern communication systems such as phones and the internet.

Ms Lebdeh was charged last week with three offences: threatening violence to a group, using a carriage service to threaten to kill, and using a carriage service to harass or cause offence.

Neither person has entered a plea to the charges, but Mr Nadir apologised last month through his lawyer.

In the footage, which appeared to have been filmed inside a hospital and was published by an Israeli content creator, Ms Abu Lebdeh and Mr Nadir allegedly bragged about refusing to treat Israeli patients, killing them, and said they would go to hell.

The video spread widely online and caused public outcry, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese describing it as “disgusting” and “vile”.

Earlier this month Australia passed tougher laws against hate crimes following a wave of unrelated antisemitic attacks.

In recent months, there have been a series of arson and graffiti incidents involving homes, cars, and synagogues in Jewish communities across Australia.

There have also been rising incidents of islamophobia. A Western Australian teenager was charged on Wednesday after allegedly threatening to launch a Christchurch massacre-inspired attack on a Sydney mosque.

A British man detained in India for six years without trial over a high-profile corruption case must be released on bail, the Delhi High Court has ruled.

Christian James Michel, an arms consultant, is accused of bribing Indian officials to win a multimillion-dollar helicopter contract for British-Italian defence company AgustaWestland. He denies the charge.

He was extradited to India from the United Arab Emirates in 2018 and has been in custody ever since, in what a judge called an “exceptional” situation.

The AgustaWestland controversy was one of several corruption cases linked to India’s former ruling Congress party, some of which fizzled out eventually.

In 2010 the Indian government signed a deal with AgustaWestland’s parent company to purchase 12 helicopters.

The alleged irregularities came to light when India’s federal auditor reported that the government may have vastly overpaid for the $753m (£455m) deal, which was eventually scrapped in 2014.

According to court documents, Mr Michel is alleged to have received around €42m ($44.7m, £25m) for securing the contract. His lawyer has argued that there is no evidence to connect him with the alleged offence.

India’s financial crime fighting agency and domestic crime bureau have held separate investigations into Mr Michel.

But both of those investigations have yet to be concluded and trials have yet to begin, leading to a “prolonged incarceration” of Mr Michel, the Delhi High Court noted.

The judge said his six years in pre-trial custody was also “alarmingly close” to the maximum punishment of seven years’ imprisonment for money laundering, which is one of the charges he faces.

The court decided to grant him bail in one of the cases, after the Supreme Court did the same in another case on 18 February.

This means that Mr Michel is now free to leave Delhi’s high-security Tihar jail, but he cannot leave India as his passport has been seized.

The deal for 12 three-engine AW-101 helicopters was signed in February 2010 after AgustaWestland beat off competition from US and Russian rivals.

The aircraft were intended for an elite squadron of the Indian air force which ferries around the president, the prime minister and other VIPs.

Only three of the helicopters were delivered to India before the deal was scrapped.

Italian prosecutors suspected that kickbacks worth almost $67.6m were paid to Indian officials to secure the contract.

Giuseppe Orsi, the former chief of AgustaWestland’s parent company which at the time was called Finmeccanica, and Bruno Spagnolini, the former head of AgustaWestland, were tried in Italy on fraud and corruption charges.

Both were acquitted in 2018. Indian officials have said their acquittals would have no bearing on the case in India.

India’s air force chief at the time of the deal was arrested for bribery in 2016, and later released on bail.

US actor Jesse Eisenberg has been awarded Polish citizenship by President Andrzej Duda, after telling the story of the Jewish population during World War Two in his Oscar-winning film A Real Pain.

Eisenberg wrote, directed and starred in the film, about two American cousins who travel to Poland to honour their grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, who was based on Eisenberg’s own great aunt.

He told the citizenship ceremony: “While we were filming this movie in Poland, and I was walking the streets and starting to get a little more comfortable in the country, something so obvious occurred to me, which is that my family had lived in this place for far longer than we lived in New York.

“And of course, the history ended so tragically.”

He continued: “In addition to that tragedy of history is also the tragedy that my family didn’t feel any connection any more to Poland, and that saddened me and confirmed for me that I really wanted to try to reconnect as much as possible.

“And I really hope that tonight in this ceremony and this amazing honour is the first step of me, and on behalf of my family, reconnecting to this beautiful country.”

Eisenberg was inspired to make A Real Pain after the death of his great aunt Doris at the age of 106 in 2019. She grew up in Poland but fled to the US in 1938. Other family members who remained in Poland were killed during the Holocaust.

President Duda said: “I am delighted that people from across the ocean acknowledge their heritage, recognise that their ancestors hail from the Republic [of Poland] and seek to forge a connection with our country.”

Eisenberg was nominated for an Oscar for writing the film, while his co-star Kieran Culkin won the award for best supporting actor.

Friedrich Merz, who’s expected to become Germany’s next chancellor, has announced a political deal to raise hundreds of billions of euros in extra spending on defence and infrastructure.

“In view of the threats to our freedom and peace on our continent, the rule for our defence now has to be ‘whatever it takes’,” he said.

Merz, whose conservatives won Germany’s election last month, said he and his likely coalition partners from the centre left would put new proposals to parliament next week.

He has spoken of a need for urgency on German spending in light of “recent decisions by the American government”.

Merz, 69, did not elaborate but he has been outspoken in his criticism of President Donald Trump’s treatment of Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office.

Earlier this week he said European leaders had to show “we are in a position to act independently in Europe”.

At a news conference on Tuesday, alongside leaders from the Social Democrats and his conservative sister party in Bavaria, Merz said Germany was counting on the US to stand by “mutual alliance commitments… but we also know that the resources for our national and alliance defence must now be significantly expanded”.

Merz said, in English, he would do “whatever it takes” to protect freedom and peace – a reference to Mario Draghi’s vow to save the euro in 2012 when he was European Central Bank president.

At the heart of his proposals is a special €500bn (£415bn) fund to repair Germany’s creaking infrastructure, as well as loosening stringent budget rules to allow investment in defence.

In the wake of Europe’s financial crisis, Germany imposed a “debt brake” or limiting the budget deficit to 0.35% of national economic output (GDP) in normal times.

The new defence proposal recommends that “necessary defence spending” above 1% of GDP should be exempt from debt brake restrictions, with no upper limit.

Although Germany has provided more aid to Ukraine than any other European country, its military is notoriously underfunded.

Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrat-led government set up a €100bn fund after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but most of that has already been allocated.

Germany will have to find an extra €30bn a year just to meet the current Nato target of 2% of GDP on defence, and security experts believe it will need to raise its target closer to 3%.

Scholz was due to meet Friedrich Merz and Social Democrat leaders on Wednesday on the eve of an EU summit devoted to Ukraine and European defence. His government fell apart late last year because the three parties in coalition could not agree to reforming debt restrictions.

The debt brake has been written into Germany’s constitution, or Basic Law, and any change would require a two-thirds majority in parliament, which is not a foregone conclusion because of the large number of seats held by the far-right AfD and the Left party.

However, the new parliament will not convene until late March and this measure will initially go before the old parliament.

Boris Pistorius, the Social Democrat defence minister in the outgoing government, said the spending plans were a “big, important step” even if they were far from being a coalition deal. Ten days after Germany’s elections, the parties are taking part in exploratory talks, which continue on Thursday.

Pistorius told German TV that removing defence from national debt rules was not about armaments as much as “the security of our country – nothing more, nothing less”.

Social Democrat leader Lars Klingbeil, standing alongside Merz on Tuesday, gave details of the plan to re-invest in German infrastructure, saying: “Our country is wearing itself out.”

Loans of €500bn would go into a fund to cover repairs to roads, railways and other critical infrastructure; €100bn of the money would go to Germany’s 16 federal states, with a loosening of the debt brake to allow the states to rack up small amounts of debt too.

Six weeks into his presidency, Donald Trump came to a US Capitol controlled by his Republican Party to take a lengthy victory lap.

“We have accomplished more in 43 days than most administrations accomplished in four years or eight years, and we are just getting started,” he told the joint session of Congress.

In typical Trumpian hyperbole, he said that “many” believed his to be the most successful start to a presidency in US history. He noted what he said was a change in the national mood toward “pride” and “confidence”. He compared himself to George Washington, and boasted about the size of his electoral victory.

The whirlwind start to his presidency offered plenty of material for Trump to cover, and he didn’t shy away from it.

He ticked through a lengthy list of tangible accomplishments – hundreds of executive orders and actions, a freeze on foreign aid, lower levels of illegal border crossing, and the withdrawal from international organisations and agreements.

He also spoke at length about his ban on transgender athletes in women’s sports and moves to get “woke ideology” out of US schools and the military.

“Wokeness is trouble. Wokeness is bad. It’s gone, it’s gone, and we feel so much better for it, don’t we?”

Meanwhile, Democrats – who filled up half the audience in the House chamber – sat in icy silence, as the president repeatedly blamed them, former President Joe Biden and “radical left lunatics” for all the nation’s ills.

Several dozen responded by holding up small black signs with words like “false” and “lies”.

The president seemed to enjoy putting the “bully” in the presidential bully pulpit.

He needled his political adversaries, mocking their refusal to cheer his remarks, dusting off his “Pocahontas” nickname for Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, and wryly noting that attempts to prosecute him “didn’t work out” for his opponents.

Texas congressman Al Green was not around to see any of that, however.

At the very start of Trump’s speech, the Democrat had harangued the president, his mostly inaudible comments punctuated with repeated thrusts of his cane. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson called for decorum and the House Sergeant-at-Arms escorted the congressman from the chamber.

Green would tell reporters outside the Capitol that he was protesting proposed cuts to the government-run Medicaid health insurance for low-income Americans.

• LIVE – latest updates and analysis
• Six takeaways from Trump’s speech

After about half an hour of touting his opening actions, Trump turned to the tasks he still needed to accomplish. That made up the bulk of a speech that stretched for more than an hour and 40 minutes. It was standard presidential address fare, and Trump’s rhetorical flourishes began to blur together.

While he said “small business optimism” was up, he blamed Biden for the current state of the economy – including high egg prices. He promised to “rescue” the economy and make getting “dramatic and immediate relief to working families” his highest priority.

He called out Elon Musk in the audience, and said his Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) would reduce inflation by cutting wasteful spending and fraud, prompting him to recite a laundry list of purported examples in foreign aid and other government programmes.

Trump leaned heavily into promises of further progress on immigration enforcement and offered an animated defence of his tariff policies, saying that they were “protecting the soul of our country”, even if most economists warn they will lead to higher prices for American consumers.

The president acknowledged that adding a tax on imported goods from Canada, Mexico and China might cause a “disturbance” and that US farmers might feel a “period of indigestion”.

But nothing in his comments suggested that he was backing away from a budding trade war that has roiled the stock market in recent days – in fact, he promised to move forward with reciprocal tariffs on all US trade partners next month.

• What are tariffs and why is Trump using them?

Trump once again promised to balance the budget, prompting a round of applause from Republican legislators. He provided no details about the kind of steep cuts such a promise would require, however.

In fact, he quickly turned to discussing the tax cuts he hopes Congress will enact – including his campaign promises of no taxes on tips, overtime or Social Security. Any of those, if enacted, would add hundreds of billions of dollars to the current nearly $2tn budget deficit.

Foreign policy is rarely front and centre in these presidential addresses, and that was the case this time despite how Trump has shaken up global politics in the first weeks of his second term.

He repeated his desire for an American annexation of Greenland, promised American control of the Panama Canal and only made brief mention of Gaza and the Middle East.

• Why does Trump want Greenland?

The president spoke more extensively about negotiating with Russia for peace in Ukraine. And he took pleasure in reading from a letter he said he’d just received from Volodymyr Zelensky – which was similar to a message the Ukrainian leader posted on X earlier in the day.

“He said: ‘My team and I stand ready to work under President Trump’s strong leadership to get a peace that lasts. We do really value how much America has done to help Ukraine maintain its sovereignty and independence.’

Trump added that Zelensky had said he was ready to sign an agreement on minerals and security “at any time that is convenient for you”.

“I appreciate that,” Trump told the chamber, offering a hint of a possible cooling of the acrimony between the two leaders.

By the time Trump wrapped up and Democrats practically sprinted for the exits, his speech had set a modern record for the longest presidential address to Congress. Much like the first six weeks of Trump’s presidency, there was plenty for his supporters to love, and lots for his critics – at least those who tuned in – to jeer.

Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second presidential term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

Elissa Slotkin, a US Senate Democrat, gave her party’s response to Trump’s congressional address, taking the new Trump administration to task for bringing with it chaos and recklessness.

Early in her remarks, she attacked the White House on the economy and warned that if Trump was “not careful, he could walk us right into a recession”.

Slotkin also took a shot at the Department of Government Efficiency, the cost-cutting project led by Elon Musk, saying change is needed “but doesn’t need to be chaotic or make us less safe”.

Speaking from Michigan before a backdrop of US flags, Slotkin was much more concise and much less animated than the president, who regaled Republicans on the House floor for an hour and 40 minutes.

She made a quick reference to Democrats’ stinging election defeat in November, but then quickly pivoted to Trump.

“Americans made it clear that prices are too high and that government needs to be more responsive to their needs. America wants change,” she said.

“But there is a responsible way to make change, and a reckless way. And, we can make that change without forgetting who we are as a country, and as a democracy.”

Throughout the election, voters frequently said the economy was their number one concern, and Democrats’ defeat was blamed on not addressing it sufficiently.

Weeks into Trump’s presidency, economic concerns remain high, as prices of a number of goods have not dropped, and prices on some items, like eggs, have risen.

“Grocery and home prices are going up, not down – and he hasn’t laid out a credible plan to deal with either,” she said.

Slotkin also talked about immigration, another topic where Democrats poll worse than Republicans, highlighting a lack of empathy by the Trump administration toward undocumented immigrants.

“The border without actually fixing our broken immigration system is dealing with the symptom not the disease. America is a nation of immigrants,” she said.

She cited the public berating of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday during a meeting withTrump and Vice-President JD Vance, too.

“That scene in the Oval Office wasn’t just a bad episode of reality TV. It summed up Trump’s whole approach to the world,” she said.

“He believes in cozying up to dictators like Vladimir Putin and kicking our friends, like Canada, in the teeth.”

For many, Tuesday night was their first time meeting Slotkin, who won the US Senate seat in the swing state of Michigan last year.

A former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analyst, Slotkin became the youngest Democratic woman elected to the Senate at 48, when she won her seat in a state that former Vice-President Kamala Harris lost last November.

Slotkin gave her speech after Trump’s, which is not a traditional State of the Union address but was expected to serve the same purpose.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer called Slotkin a “rising star” in the party last week as he announced her as the pick to provide the Democratic Party’s rebuttal. He said she was “great on both economic and national security” topics.

Slotkin is new to the Senate, but she served in Congress as a member of Michigan’s delegation to the House of Representatives. She was first elected in the Democrats’ 2018 wave of success, flipping a Republican seat.

Prior to her political career, she held a variety of government jobs. She held national security positions in Presidents George W Bush and Barack Obama’s administrations.

She served in Bush’s National Security Council, and, under Obama, she served as acting assistant secretary of defence for international security affairs and in the State Department.

The CIA recruited Slotkin, who is fluent in Arabic and Swahili, shortly after she earned a graduate degree in international affairs at Columbia University in New York City. She served three tours in Iraq as a CIA analyst.

The moderate Democrat focused her 2024 Senate campaign on lowering costs for Americans, a move that helped propel her to a narrow victory over former Congressman Mike Rogers, even as Trump won the state.

Slotkin is a member of the committees on Armed Forces; Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs; Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry; and Veterans Affairs.

In his address to Congress, which ran for more than an hour and a half, President Donald Trump made a series of claims about the state of the US under his predecessor Joe Biden and the achievements of his first weeks in office.

He returned to key campaign themes including illegal immigration, rising prices and what he called “appalling waste” in government spending.

BBC Verify has looked into the facts behind some of his key claims.

Trump said he inherited an “economic catastrophe” from Biden.

This is misleading. The US economy was growing at an annual rate of 2.3% in the final quarter of 2024 under the previous administration. It expanded by 2.8% over 2024 as a whole according to official US statistics.

The International Monetary Fund estimates that the US growth rate in 2024 was faster than any other nation in the G7.

On rising prices, Trump added “we suffered the worst inflation in 48 years, but perhaps even in the history of our country”.

Inflation under Biden peaked at 9.1% in June 2022 – the highest level since 1981 – so not quite as far back as Trump claimed.

The 2022 peak was in the context of high inflation in the rest of the world in the wake of the Covid pandemic and a global energy shock. The inflation rate had dropped to 3% by the time Trump took office.

Inflation has also been much higher than 9% at several other points in US history, including the 1940s and 1920s.

Trump went on to blame Biden for egg prices, claiming he “let the price of eggs get out of control”.

Prices are high, but this has been linked to a bird flu outbreak in the US.

Egg prices rose under Biden in 2023, and in January a dozen eggs averaged over $5, according to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). That is 53% above the average for the whole of 2024.

The USDA has said a bird flu outbreak has led to US farmers having to kill millions of chickens, creating egg shortages, and has announced a $1bn (£780m) plan to help combat the issue.

The outbreak started in February 2022 and last year the Biden administration allocated more than $800m to tackle it.

The Trump administration recently fired a number of USDA officials who worked on the government’s response to bird flu as part of cost-cutting measures by the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge). They are now reportedly attempting to rehire some of them.

Trump praised Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) and claimed the advisory body had found “hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud” in federal government spending.

No evidence has been provided for this figure.

On its official website, Doge states that it has saved an estimated $105bn, from fraud detection, contract and grant cancellations, real estate lease terminations, asset sales, workforce reductions, programmatic changes, and regulatory savings.

However, that figure cannot be independently verified as, so far, Doge has only published “receipts” for contract, grant and real estate lease cancellations on the website. These add up to about $18.6bn. We have asked the White House for evidence of the remaining $86bn of savings.

US media outlets have also highlighted some accounting errors. For example, Doge initially listed its largest saving of $8bn from scrapping an immigration agency contract – it later corrected this to $8m.

Speaking about his actions to tackle illegal immigration, Trump said that “as a result, illegal border crossings last month were by far the lowest ever recorded”.

This is true.

In February 2025, 8,326 encounters of migrants at the south-west border with Mexico were recorded by US Border Patrol.

This is the lowest level since monthly records began in 2000.

By comparison, there were 140,641 encounters by US Border Patrol at this border in February last year under Biden.

Numbers fell to 47,316 in December 2024.

Continuing with illegal migration, Trump claimed: “Over the past four years, 21 million people poured into the United States”.

There is no evidence for a figure this high.

Encounters with migrants at the borders – a measure of illegal migration – reached 10 million under Biden but this does not mean this many people stayed in the US.

It is impossible to know exactly how many illegal immigrants have come to the US, as many will have evaded law enforcement agencies, but several estimates put the number at around half what Trump stated.

A report published by the Office of Homeland Security last year estimated the number of illegal immigrants living in the US, as of January 2022, at 11 million.

It says about a fifth of them arrived in 2010 or later but the majority arrived before this time, some as early as the 1980s.

On US aid to Ukraine, Trump claimed: “We’ve spent perhaps $350bn… and they [Europe] have spent $100bn. What a difference that is.”

BBC Verify is unable to find any evidence for Trump’s $350bn claim and some figures suggest Europe has spent more as whole when all aid to Ukraine is included.

The US is, by some margin, the largest single donor to Ukraine. But Europe combined has spent more money than the US, according to the Kiel Institute think tank.

It calculates that between 24 January 2022 and the end of 2024, Europe as a whole spent $138.7bn on Ukraine, while the US spent $119.7bn.

• How much has the US given to Ukraine?
• Fact-checking Elon Musk’s claims in the Oval Office

The US Department of Defense has a higher figure of $182.8bn – taking into account a broader range of US military activity in Europe – but this is still considerably less than Trump’s figure.

We have asked the White House where it comes from.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

Lesotho’s government says it is shocked by US President Donald Trump saying that “nobody has ever heard of” the southern African nation.

Trump, addressing the US Congress in his first speech since his return to the Oval Office, made the reference as he listed cuts made to what he said was wasteful expenditure.

“Eight million dollars to promote LGBTQI+ in the African nation of Lesotho, which nobody has ever heard of,” Trump said, eliciting laughter from some US lawmakers.

A spokesperson for Lesotho’s foreign affairs department told the BBC that Lesotho enjoyed “warm and cordial” relations with the US.

Lesotho is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the US’s African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa), which gives favourable trade access to some countries to promote their economic growth.

According to the US government, the two countries traded goods worth $240m (£187m) in 2024, mostly exports from Lesotho to the US, in particular textiles and clothing.

Lesotho’s Foreign Affairs Minister Lejone Mpotjoane said it was “shocking” to hear a head of state “refer to another sovereign state in that manner”.

“To my surprise, ‘the country that nobody has heard of’ is the country where the US has a permanent mission,” Mr Mpotjoane told the BBC.

“Lesotho is a member of the UN and of a number of other international bodies. And the US has an embassy here and [there are] a number of US organisations we’ve accommodated here in Maseru.”

Officials dismissed Trump’s remarks as “off the cuff” and a “political statement”, adding that they were “uncalled-for” given the good relations between the two nations.

“We maintain very warm and cordial relations with the US. They’ve got a mission in Maseru and we also have [one] in Washington,” foreign affairs spokesperson Kutloano Pheko told the BBC.

Mr Pheko was unable to confirm Trump’s comments on the funding that went to LGBTQ organisations, saying that as the money went directly to them, they would be best placed to comment.

Mr Mpotjoane, on his part, confirmed that the country had been affected by Trump’s sudden decision to pause aid funding to countries around the world.

Many organisations, mostly non-governmental, were thrown into chaos after the Trump administration announced a permanent end to the US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) funding as part of a wider cost-cutting drive to reduce US government spending.

Pepfar was launched in 2003 by then US President George W Bush and its finances are distributed via the US government’s main overseas aid agency USAID, whose funding has also been cut.

Lesotho is among those countries that benefited from Pepfar, its health ministry told South African publication GroundUp in February, with TB and HIV programmes among those receiving the critical funds.

But Mr Mpotjoane declined to criticise this decision, saying it was the US’s “prerogative to cut aid if they want to”.

After years of speculation, Tesla could finally be making its India debut.

The American electric vehicle (EV) giant has begun hiring for a dozen jobs in Delhi and Mumbai. It is also reportedly hunting for showrooms in both cities.

Asia’s third largest economy offers an interesting growth opportunity for Tesla’s futuristic cars as its global EV sales plummet and competition from Chinese manufacturers gets more intense.

But there’s a million-dollar question – can Tesla compete in India’s price-sensitive market?

Tata Motors currently holds pole position in India’s EV market – with over 60% market share. MG Motors – jointly owned by India’s JSW and a Chinese firm – is second at 22%. They are followed by Mahindra and Mahindra.

EVs made by these companies cost less than half of what consumers will have to shell out – around $40,000 (£31,637) – for just the base model of Tesla. It will, therefore, be seen as a luxury car, competing with higher-end EVs made by Hyundai, BMW and Mercedes.

Simply in volume terms, this will make India a tiny market for Tesla chief Elon Musk, unless the company introduces a low-cost model specifically for the country.

Besides price, India’s road conditions could pose a challenge.

Tesla cars have very low ground clearance – or the distance between the lowest point of the car’s undercarriage and the ground. This will make adapting to Indian roads difficult. To operate in the country, existing models may have to be re-engineered – which would drive up manufacturing costs.

Will Tesla do this just for one developing market where it could have only a small presence?

“It’s been a challenge even with other global original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) at the high end with small volumes. You can’t justify these major engineering changes,” Hormazd Sorabjee, editor of Autocar India magazine, told the BBC.

Also, amidst all the hype, it is easy to forget that EV sales still make up less than 3% of overall passenger vehicle sales in India. Even critical ancillary infrastructure, like charging stations, have taken years to come up. While they have picked up pace, there are only around 25,000 charging stations across India.

In effect, Tesla will be jostling for space in a very small, albeit growing, EV market.

But at a policy level, India appears to be making every effort to woo the carmaker.

The country has outlined an ambitious national vision to go electric. It plans to have 30% of private cars, 70% of commercial cars, 40% of buses and 80% of two and three-wheelers go electric by 2030. Most provincial governments have also established their own EV policies to incentivise demand and supply.

Subsidies offered by India on electric cars are also the highest among major economies, according to HSBC Securities. They amount to as much as 46% of the price of the country’s top-selling electric car model.

It’s no surprise then that passenger EV sales have grown astronomically by over 2,000% in less than five years – going from a low base of 4,700 annually to a 100,000 cars.

“The price difference between regular cars and EVs has reduced a lot, making customers rethink their choice,” says Jyoti Gulia, founder of JMK Research.

In April last year, India also cut import taxes on EVs for global carmakers which committed to investing $500m (£400m) and starting local production within three years.

Tesla and other imported electric vehicles costing over $35,000 (£27,550) can now enjoy a lower import duty of 15% on up to 8,000 vehicles. This came after Musk complained that high import duties had prevented the firm from launching its cars in the world’s fastest-growing major economy.

“It’s quite clever, as it forces a global player to localise – which is the way the game works: come and build in India,” says Sorabjee.

The proposed policy could put Indian domestic carmakers at a disadvantage, however, given that the investment requirement for foreign players is “not significant” compared to Indian players in this segment, an HSBC research paper warns.

Import duty of 15% is also “much lower” than the tax on comparable combustion engine cars in India which also pay an additional road tax, according to HSBC.

Domestic EV players say having a “level playing field” is important, but appear unperturbed by Tesla’s impending entry for now.

“We welcome competition,” Rajesh Jejurikar, Mahindra and Mahindra’s Executive Director and CEO, told the BBC. His company feels that more players will strengthen India’s existing EV ecosystem and is working to improve the appeal of their offerings.

Critical issues like “range anxiety” – the worry whether an EV’s battery charge will be enough to complete a journey – have been addressed through “robust battery integration and rigorous real-world testing across diverse road conditions”, says Mr Jejurikar, adding that the brand is deploying cutting-edge technology into their product.

It will be hard to beat Tesla’s edge in this area though, and coupled with sturdier batteries and a better user interface, it will certainly differentiate Tesla cars from others in the market, says Sorabjee.

What might also give Tesla tailwind is the rising share of premium vehicles in the Indian auto market. As a global brand with a perceived “cool quotient”, owning a Tesla will be a status symbol for the young, aspirational Indian population.

But none of this – India’s EV policy or the growing demand for premium cars among India’s affluent – has yet led to a commitment from Tesla to put manufacturing dollars into an EV facility.

For now, it appears the carmaker will only ship units from its factories abroad.

When that changes will depend on a lot of things – how quickly India’s affluent consumer base widens, and what tariff structures look like once India completes trade negotiations with the US.

President Donald Trump has already voiced displeasure over Tesla potentially building a factory in India to avoid high tariffs. In an interview with Fox News recently, he said that this would be “unfair” to the US.

Could Trump’s ‘America First’ policy diminish Musk’s appetite for starting manufacturing units in India then?

The question is moot, but for now it does look like India will first get glitzy Tesla showrooms for its rich, rather than job-creating Tesla factories for its under-employed masses.

“China will fight to the bitter end of any trade war,” the foreign ministry spokesperson in Beijing declared, after China announced tit-for-tat tariffs on agricultural imports from the US.

This came within minutes of a new 10% US levy on Chinese imports that came into effect on Tuesday – which adds to existing tariffs both from Trump’s first term and those announced last month.

But China’s latest retaliatory measures are an opening swing, not a direct punch.

It shows some strength, and it has the potential to sting parts of the United States, but also leaves room to negotiate or escalate if necessary.

“We advise the US to put away its bullying face and return to the right track of dialogue and co-operation before it is too late,” foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian added.

This is the second round of tariffs the two countries have imposed on each other since February. But this time China is hitting Donald Trump where it has the potential to hurt – by targeting farmers, who are some of his core supporters.

Almost 78% of farming-dependent counties in the US endorsed Mr Trump in 2024.

China is one of their biggest customers for produce such as chicken, beef, pork and soybeans and now all those products will face a 10-15% tax which will come into effect on 10 March.

“The tariffs are broadly negative for US agricultural markets. It is going to have a bearish influence on prices. There are enough corn and soybean supplies in the world for China to make a switch, it is more of an issue for the US, because 30% of US soybeans still go to China,” Ole Houe, of Ikon commodities, told Reuters news agency.

Beijing may hope that this will apply some pressure on the Trump administration ahead of any potential negotiations.

The latest announcements raise the prospect of an all-out trade war between the world’s top two economies and in various ministry statements, China is making two things very clear.

Firstly, it is prepared to continue to fight.

“Pressure, coercion and threats are not the right way to deal with the Chinese side,” said Mr Lin.

But secondly, it is also willing to talk.

Beijing is not ramping up the rhetoric or the tariffs in the same way it did in 2018, during the last Trump administration. Back then it imposed a tariff of 25% on US soybeans.

“China’s tariffs impact a limited number of US products, and remain below the 20% level. This is by design. China’s government is signalling that they do not want to escalate, they want to de-escalate,” according to Even Pay, an analyst with Trivium China.

The prospect of talks was raised last month. The White House said there would be a call between President Xi and Donald Trump. That never happened.

So will these talks take place and who will make the first move?

China is unlikely to want to go first. It will not want to be seen kowtowing to Washington.

And in contrast to Canada and Mexico, Beijing has not announced new measures to target the flow of fentanyl. It simply repeated past statements that fentanyl is a “US problem” and that China has the strictest drug policies in the world.

On Tuesday, the State Council released a White Paper titled “Controlling Fentanyl-related substances – China’s contribution”.

It outlines the measures Beijing says it has already made to crack down on Fentanyl-related crimes and the precursor chemicals used to make the drug. It adds that it is “diligently fulfilling international drug control obligations”.

So, while China hasn’t picked up the phone to Washington, this document forms part of the country’s message which appears to be saying – we are already doing what we can on fentanyl.

Despite stating that China “will not yield”, these latest tariffs are bound to sting.

The cumulative 20% tax on all Chinese goods comes on top of a slew of tariffs Trump imposed in his first term on tens of billions of dollars of Chinese imports. And China’s population is already concerned about a sluggish economy.

Thousands of delegates are gathering in the capital this week to take part in an annual parliamentary session, most of which will focus on the economy.

House prices are still falling, and youth unemployment remains stubbornly high. A potential trade war with the US could prompt more money worries for businesses and consumers across the country at a time when the Communist Party wants people to spend to help the economy to grow.

But Beijing will also see an opportunity as Donald Trump sows uncertainty among his international allies.

It can partly place the blame for any further economic woes at Washington’s door and state that it’s the fault of the US for starting a trade war.

The state media outlet Xinhua has in recent days released a series of parodies poking fun at a United States that is prepared to tax its allies and neighbours. The skits portray Washington as a bully echoing the words coming from the leaders of Canada and Mexico.

At the same time, China’s Commerce Ministry has reiterated that it is prepared to work with other countries around the world to combat Mr Trump’s tariffs.

Beijing appears to be looking for potential allies in this trade war while also trying to cast Washington as a troublemaker who is prepared to target friends and foes alike.

All at a time when Donald Trump’s “America First” doctrine has many in Europe and the UK wondering if the US-led world order is already in doubt.

“I just wanna talk about girls.”

Cat Burns couldn’t be clearer about what’s on her mind in her new track.

Called – you guessed it – Girls! she says it marks a shift from her more “serious” records and is her shot at writing music she didn’t have access to growing up.

“I feel like I never had a song like that for me,” she says. “Especially for all the queer girls.”

She says she’s leaning into a new era where she feels increasingly confident celebrating her sexuality.

The singer, 24, has enjoyed in meteoric rise in the past few years.

Her single Go, first released in 2020, became a viral hit on TikTok in 2023 – rising to number 2 in the charts, and propelling Cat on to a Brits Critics’ Choice award nomination later that year.

She tells BBC Newsbeat having songs like that is “super important”, especially growing up and figuring out who you are.

“It’s nice to know that people like you exist and exist freely,” she says.

“And I think the ‘fun-ness’ of the song can show people who aren’t lesbian or queer or bi or whatever that we are just normal human beings who like just so happen to like the same sex.”

In the past year, the charts have been dominated more than once by queer women writing openly about gay relationships.

Chappell Roan’s Good Luck, Babe! tells the story of being in love with a woman struggling to come to terms with their sexuality and spent 16 weeks in the UK top 10.

And after Billie Eilish claimed she was “outed” by Variety magazine in 2023, she followed up with her album Hit Me Hard and Soft, including the single Lunch which explored her desire for women.

Billboard described the track, which peaked at number two in the UK chart, as “a glorious queer awakening”.

Before that though, there’s been slim pickings for mainstream pop songs that celebrate authentic lesbian relationships.

Take, for example, Katy Perry’s 2008 debut I Kissed A Girl.

It’s “a brilliant pop song”, Cat says, but doesn’t go any deeper than the first stage of exploring sexuality.

“I think it’s always good when we make room and allow space for lesbian and queer artists to speak about it whilst we’re further into our journey,” she says.

“Where it’s less curiosity and trying… and it’s more like: ‘No, I’m into it now and really delving to my experience as a queer woman’.”

And the more voices that add to that, the better, Cat says.

“The more representation and more space for different types of queer artist, it can just help paint a more vivid picture of what the community’s actually like and who exists within that community.

“Having people like Reneé Rapp and Chappell Roan and, hopefully, someone like myself, we’re starting to show people that we’re not a monolith and we vary across the spectrum.”

Cat, who’s previously spoken about her ADHD and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnoses, says she “falls into so many different groups” and wants to celebrate differences.

“I just want to continue to show people that we’re just not all one way,” she says.

“What you know of something might not always be true.”

As for why it seems more artists are getting comfortable writing about their sexuality, Cat credits social media as well as other artists that have gone before.

“Social media has allowed more queer artists to be queer loudly,” she says.

“Safety-wise, before it was harder. There’s so many icons that have paved the way.

“I’m really happy that I was able to make a song like Girls!, for it to be received the way it has been and for me to be so able to be open about what it’s about.”

With more artists loudly celebrating the LGBT community, Cat says the fan base now has the opportunity to be loud back in their support.

“The LGBTQ + community, we’re a very hard fan base,” she says. “We love our favourite artists down and will do forever.

“We champion and love loads of straight artists, which is great.

“But I think it’s nice that, in the last five to 10 years, we’re now getting queer artists being able to be championed and loved by our own community.”

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

From dazzling costumes to exuberant parties, Trinidad’s carnival is often dubbed “the greatest show on Earth”.

But some of its elements are not exactly eco-friendly and the festivities are estimated to produce 3.4 tonnes of waste every year according to Carnicycle, a local initiative aiming to make festivities more sustainable.

Danii McLetchie, who co-founded Carnicycle in 2018, says that while carnival “is a big part of our culture” it also has a very negative environmental impact “from the events, to the textiles, to costumes” used by the masqueraders, spectators and vendors taking part in the annual parade on the two days preceding Ash Wednesday.

Producing and transporting just a single carnival costume bra can generate approximately 37.68kg (83lb) of CO2 emissions, Carnicycle estimates based on calculations made using an online tool provided by Swedish tech company Doconomy.

Danii and her team are working to have that estimate verified by a third party, but with tens of thousands of masqueraders parading every year, she says the amount of emissions is cause for concern.

To reduce those emissions, Carnicycle has started a recycling programme, collecting unused costumes that would have been dumped or burned by masquerade bands, which use new costume designs every year.

Carnicycle also puts up collection bins at hotels and other venues so discarded costumes can be reused.

“Up until last year we collected around 10,000 pieces of costume materials,” Danii told the BBC, describing the arduous task of completely stripping down truckloads of costumes to preserve feathers, beads and other materials for future use.

The salvaged materials are sold to costume designers, ravers, and people in the burlesque industry, who save by buying second hand.

Carnicycle also rents out the large backpack pieces which are a popular part of the costumes worn at Trinidad’s carnival. Their price can run up to $700 (£550), depending on size.

Danii explains that they came up with the idea after hearing revellers complain not just about the expense but also about the weight of the backpack pieces. “‘I’m paying this much money but then it’s heavy and by the time it’s lunch I just want to throw it away’,” Danni recalls people saying.

Carnicycle rents the backpacks to masqueraders long enough so that they can pose for photos, but are freed from carrying their load during the parade.

Danii and Carnicycle’s co-founder Luke Harris – who both hold down full-time jobs in addition to their environmental initiative – are not the only ones dedicating their spare time to making Trinidad’s carnival both fun and eco-friendly

Lawyer Aliyah Clarke and fashion designer Kaleen Sanois started a side business called 2nd Closet – a pop-up thrift shop where people can buy and sell pre-owned clothing.

The two have also been making video tutorials with tips on how to transform costumes into beachwear and outfits for other occasions.

Aliya told the BBC it was something she first did for herself: “After I was finished with my costume I would rip it apart, literally down to the wire, and figure out how to make this into something else to wear outside of carnival.”

Now she is sharing her ideas in a video segment the two millennials have dubbed “Tipsy Tuesday”.

They also offer a closet-sorting service, which involves coming to a person’s home and sorting through unwanted clothing, to rescue items fit for sale at their pop-up thrift shop.

In what Kaleen believes is a testament to the work they have been doing, they were asked to sort the sprawling closet of Machel Montano, a musician known as the “King of Soca” and a superstar in the carnival world.

“Clothes are personal things, especially for somebody like Machel who has so many big moments tied to his pieces,” Kaleen explains.

After sorting through Machel’s shoes and clothes, 2nd Closet organised a two-day pop-up shop, giving people a chance to buy items worn by Machel on stage and in his music videos.

“People came with pictures, and were like ‘I’m looking for this piece’,” Aliyah recalls of fans’ enthusiasm for the second-hand items.

But costumes and outfits are not the only items being recycled to make Trinidad’s festivities more environmentally friendly.

At Fete with the Saints, a party many regard as one of the best of Trinidad’s carnival, food is eaten with biodegradable wooden cutlery and the drinks are poured into reusable cups.

The organisers of the fete – a fundraiser for one of Trinidad and Tobago’s top secondary schools – also hire “bin detectives” to ensure patrons properly sort and dispose their rubbish for recycling.

It is estimated that this year the bin detectives helped to more than double the amount of recyclables captured, compared with the two previous years combined.

“Over the past three years we’ve actually prevented over one million single-use plastics from entering the landfill, I think maybe over five tonnes of glass,” says Vandana Mangroo, co-founder of Close the Loop Caribbean, a company which started working with the organisers of Fete with the Saints in 2023 to make the event more sustainable.

Joseph Hadad, co-chairman of the party’s organising committee, says that those behind the event knew that their efforts to make it greener would “add some layer of costs and more labour”. But he is adamant “it worked” and insists that the party spirit has not been dampened.

These green efforts are being welcomed by patrons such as Roland Riley, who hailed it as “a good initiative by Fete with the Saints to go that route”.

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US President Donald Trump has said that “nobody has ever heard of” the African country of Lesotho – a comment that has “shocked” its government.

It is a small country in southern Africa that almost entirely consists of mountains and is completely surrounded by South Africa.

Here are nine things to know about the country:

The Kingdom of Lesotho is made up mostly of highlands, where many villages can only be reached on horseback, by foot or light aircraft.

It is known as the “Kingdom in the Sky” and is the only independent state in the world that lies entirely above 1,000 meters (3,281 ft) in elevation, according to Encyclopaedia Brittanica. Its lowest point is at 1,400m.

It is known to have one of the world’s most intimidating airstrips to land on – the Matekane Airstrip has a short runway and with long drops at both ends.

The Business Insider website describes flying from the airport as “essentially the same as when a bird is pushed out of the nest in order to learn to fly”.

Lesotho is completely encircled by South Africa, but separated by the forbidding mountain ranges.

Not much of its land is available for farming, with its population vulnerable to food shortages and relying on income from jobs in South Africa. Over the decades thousands of workers have been forced by the lack of job opportunities at home to find work in South Africa.

The people of Lesotho share some cultural and language similarities with South Africans. Their language, Sesotho, is also one of South Africa’s 11 official languages.

Resources are scarce in Lesotho – a consequence of the harsh environment of the highland plateau and limited agricultural space in the lowlands.

Its biggest resource is water – known locally as white gold – which is exported to South Africa. Diamonds are another major export.

• Who benefits from Lesotho’s ‘white gold’?

When you think of skiing and snowboarding, you may imagine the snowy slopes of Europe and North America.

But Lesotho has been making itself known on the snowsports scene. It has the highest ski resort in sub-Saharan Africa, one of just a handful on the continent.

Afriski is situated 3,222m above sea level, high up in Lesotho’s Maloti mountains and attracts visitors from Africa and beyond.

• Is Lesotho the next top ski resort?

People from Lesotho are referred to as Basotho.

Some of the cultural items associated with the Basotho people are their blankets and the Basotho traditional conical hats, known as the mokorotlo. The hat is a national symbol and appears in the middle of the country’s flag.

The blankets are made from thick wool, with their intricate and colourful patterns each telling a different story of the Basotho people’s history. The Basotho wear them as shawls at special events and give them as gifts.

Lesotho has one of the highest rates of HIV prevalence in the world, with one in five adults living with HIV, and more infections per 100,000 people than most other countries, including neighbouring Namibia, Botswana and Eswatini.

The US government has committed nearly $1bn to help the country deal with HIV since 2006, including for prevention, care and treatment services, according to the US State Department.

Prince Harry and his close friend Lesotho’s Prince Seeiso have set up a charity in the country – Sentebale, which means “forget me not”. The charity works with local communities in Lesotho at grassroots level, helping young people affected by HIV/Aids.

Prince Harry first went to Lesotho as a 19-year-old and has returned to the country many times since then.

Lesotho is one of the largest sub-Saharan African exporters of clothing to the US, according to the US government’s International Trade Administration (ITA) website.

The exports, which include jeans and textiles, are done through the US trade programme, African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) which allows eligible African countries to send some of goods to the US without paying taxes.

It is ranked second by value of goods exported under the deal.

• ‘Our textiles use iconic symbols of Lesotho’

The mountain kingdom has the world’s highest suicide rate, with 87.5 people per 100,000 of the population taking their own life every year, according to the World Health Organization.

This is nearly 10 times the global average of nine and more than double the country with the second highest rate, Guyana, which has about 40.

There is no single reason for this shocking statistic – experts point to the abuse of drugs and alcohol, the shortage of jobs and the lack of mental health counselling.

• The small African country with the world’s highest suicide rate

The level of destruction in Jabalia when viewed from the air is truly astonishing.

A Hiroshima-like wasteland stretches as far as the eye can see. The mangled carcasses of buildings dot the churned-up landscape, some leaning at crazy angles.

Great undulating waves of rubble make it all but impossible to make out the geography of this once bustling, tightly packed refugee camp.

And yet, as a drone camera flies over the wreckage, it picks out splashes of blue and white where small tent camps have been set up in patches of open ground.

And figures, clambering over broken buildings, moving along streets of dirt, where food markets are springing up under tin roofs and canvas awnings. Children using a collapsed roof as a slide.

After more than six weeks of Gaza’s fragile ceasefire, Jabalia is slowly coming back to life.

In the neighbourhood of al-Qasasib, Nabil has returned to a four-storey house that’s somehow still standing, even if it lacks windows, doors and – in some places – walls.

He and his relatives have made crude balconies out of wooden pallets and strung-up tarpaulin to keep out the elements.

“Look at the destruction,” he says as he surveys Jabalia’s ocean of ruins from a gaping upper floor.

“They want us to leave without rebuilding it? How can we leave. The least we can do is rebuild it for our children.”

To cook a meal, Nabil lights a fire on the bare staircase, stoking it carefully with pieces of torn-up cardboard.

On another floor, Laila Ahmed Okasha washes up in a sink where the tap ran dry months ago.

“There’s no water, electricity or sewage,” she says. “If we need water, we have to go to a far place to fill up buckets.”

She says she cried when she came back to the house and found it wrecked.

She blames Israel and Hamas for destroying the world she once knew.

“Both of them are responsible,” she says. “We had a decent, comfortable life.”

Soon after the war began in October 2023, Israel told Palestinians in the northern part of the Gaza Strip – including Jabalia – to move south for their own safety.

Hundreds of thousands of people heeded the warning, but many stayed, determined to ride out the war.

Laila and her husband Marwan clung on until October last year, when the Israeli military reinvaded Jabalia, saying Hamas had reconstituted fighting units inside the camp’s narrow streets.

After two months of sheltering in nearby Shati camp, Leila and Marwan returned to find Jabalia almost unrecognisable.

“When we came back and saw how it was destroyed, I didn’t want to stay here anymore,” Marwan says.

“I had a wonderful life, but now it’s a hell. If I have the chance to leave, I’ll go. I won’t stay one more minute.”

Stay or go? The future of Gaza’s civilian population is now the subject of international debate.

In February, Donald Trump suggested that the US should take over Gaza and that nearly two million Palestinian residents should leave, possibly for good.

Faced with international outrage and fierce opposition from Arab leaders, Trump has subsequently appeared to back away from the plan, saying he recommended it but would not force it on anyone.

In the meantime, Egypt has led Arab efforts to come up with a viable alternative, to be presented at an emergency Arab summit in Cairo on Tuesday.

Crucially, it says the Palestinian population should remain inside Gaza while the area is reconstructed.

Donald Trump’s intervention has brought out Gaza’s famously stubborn side.

“If Trump wants to make us leave, I’ll stay in Gaza,” Laila says. “I want to travel on my own free will. I won’t leave because of him.”

Across the way sits a nine-storey yellow block of flats so spectacularly damaged it’s hard to believe it hasn’t collapsed.

The upper floors have caved in entirely, threatening the rest. In time, it will surely have to be demolished, but for now it’s home to yet more families. There are sheets in the windows and washing hanging to dry in the late winter sunshine.

Most incongruously of all, outside a makeshift plastic doorway on a corner of the ground floor, next to piles of rubble and rubbish, stands a headless mannequin, wearing a wedding gown.

It’s Sanaa Abu Ishbak’s dress shop.

The 45-year-old seamstress, mother of 11, set up the business two years before the war but had to abandon it when she fled south in November 2023.

She came back as soon as the ceasefire was announced. With her husband and daughters, she’s been busy clearing debris from the shop, arranging dresses on hangers and getting ready for business.

“I love Jabalia camp,” she says, “and I won’t leave it till I die.”

Sanaa and Laila seem equally determined to stay put if they can. But both women speak differently when they talk of the young.

“She doesn’t even know how to write her own name,” Laila says of her granddaughter.

“There’s no education in Gaza.”

The little girl’s mother was killed during the war. Laila says she still talks to her at night.

“She was the soul of my soul and she left her daughter in my hands. If I have the chance to travel, I will do so for the sake of my granddaughter.”

The speaker of the house in New Zealand’s parliament says he will not consider any further complaints from lawmakers over the use of the country’s Māori name in proceedings.

“Aotearoa is regularly used as a name of New Zealand,” Speaker Gerry Brownlee said in a ruling in Parliament on Tuesday.

His comments come after Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters asked Brownlee to bar the use of the name Aotearoa, and suggested a referendum would be needed for anyone to use it in parliament.

While New Zealand is the legal name of the country and can be changed only by law, Aotearoa, which translates to “land of the long white cloud”, has long been used when referring to New Zealand in Māori.

“It [Aotearoa] appears on our passports and it appears on our currency,” Brownlee said on Tuesday. The name is also used in the Māori version of New Zealand’s national anthem, which is commonly heard before the English version.

“If other members do not like certain words, they don’t have to use them. But it’s not a matter of order, and I don’t expect to have further points of order raised about it,” he added.

MPs are allowed to use any of the country’s three official languages – English, Māori and New Zealand sign language – when speaking in Parliament.

• Thousands gather for Waitangi Day with Māori rights in focus
• New Zealand mountain gets same legal rights as a person

The objection by Peters, who is Māori, arose last month, when Green MP Ricardo Menéndez March used it during a parliamentary session.

“Why is someone who applied to come to this country in 2006 allowed to ask a question of this Parliament that changes this country’s name without the referendum and sanction of the New Zealand people?” Peters asked.

Menéndez March is originally from Mexico but is a New Zealand citizen, as all MPs must be.

Shane Jones, another government minister who is a member of Peters’ New Zealand First party and is also Māori, questioned “the appropriateness of recent immigrants telling Māori what the name of our country should be?”

At the time, Brownlee encouraged lawmakers to use the name Aotearoa New Zealand instead in order to avoid any confusion but said it was not a requirement.

Not all Māori have the same connection to the name Aotearoa, which was originally used to describe New Zealand’s North Island only. However, it is often used by non-Māori out of respect for indigenous people.

Winston Peters said on Tuesday that he disagreed with Brownlee’s ruling, Radio New Zealand (RNZ) reported.

He added that he only had a problem with Aotearoa being used in Parliament, not of Māori in general, and that, if a question was addressed to him in future using the name, he would not answer.

The use of Māori in public has grown considerably across New Zealand in recent decades, following advocacy from indigenous leaders.

A petition was launched in 2022 by the Māori Party, an official political party, to officially change the country’s name to Aotearoa, which received more than 70,000 signatures.

“New Zealand is a Dutch name and has no connection to this whenua [land]. How many people in Aotearoa can even point to ‘old’ Zealand on a map?” Māori Party Co-leader Rawiri Waititi said at the time.

Since the current administration came into power in 2023, it has required that government departments prioritise their English names and communicate primarily in English, unless they are specifically related to Māori.

Another of the coalition’s members, the Act party, is also seeking to redefine the terms of New Zealand’s founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi, which has been met with fierce opposition.

Florida has launched a criminal investigation into British-American influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate, who flew to the state last week from Romania, where they faced rape and human-trafficking charges.

Florida’s attorney general, James Uthmeier, said investigators have issued search warrants and subpoenas as part of a “now-active” inquiry.

In the US, the brothers also face a civil suit from a woman alleging they coerced her into sex work, and then defamed her after she gave evidence to Romanian authorities. They strongly deny all the allegations against them.

A former kickboxer and self-described misogynist who appeared on UK TV show Big Brother, Andrew Tate has millions of followers online.

Andrew, 38, and his brother Tristan, 36, face separate charges in the UK of rape and human trafficking. They deny those allegations too.

Uthmeier, a Republican, said in Tuesday’s statement: “Last week, I directed my office to work with our law enforcement partners to conduct a preliminary inquiry into Andrew and Tristan Tate.

“Based on a thorough review of the evidence, I’ve directed the Office of Statewide Prosecution to execute search warrants and issue subpoenas in the now-active criminal investigation into the Tate brothers.”

The Tate brothers’ lawyer Joseph McBride released a statement later Tuesday on the investigation.

“Today, Attorney General James Uthmeier threw ethics law out of the window when he publicly took a side in an ongoing Florida lawsuit where Andrew and Tristan Tate are suing a Florida woman for orchestrating a sophisticated plot to use sex as a weapon to ruin their lives,” the statement read in part.

Mr McBride called the attorney general’s comments “inflammatory” and “biased”.

The Tates were first arrested in Romania in December 2022, with Andrew accused of rape and human trafficking and Tristan suspected of human trafficking. They moved to Romania from the UK several years ago.

They both denied the charges and spent several months under house arrest. A year later, in August 2024, they faced new allegations including sex with a minor and trafficking underage persons, all of which they deny.

• Who is Andrew Tate? The self-proclaimed misogynist influencer
• Why did Andrew and Tristan Tate go to the US?

The Tates are understood to be required to return to Bucharest at the end of March to satisfy prosecutors’ terms; however, it is too early to say whether they will comply.

Police in the English county of Bedfordshire are still seeking Andrew’s extradition on separate and unrelated allegations of rape and human trafficking, as well as tax evasion.

In the UK, four British women have filed a civil case against Andrew Tate in the country’s High Court, alleging he raped and coercively controlled them, charges they also deny.

Those plaintiffs said it was clear he would not face criminal prosecution in Romania and appealed to UK authorities to take action.

US star Adrien Brody has been nominated for the UK’s most prestigious theatre awards, the Oliviers, just days after being named best actor at the Oscars.

Brody appeared on the London stage in The Fear of 13 last year, just before the start of the film awards season, which saw him win a Bafta, Golden Globe and Academy Award for his role in The Brutalist.

Other Olivier nominees this year include John Lithgow, who is also nominated for best actor, for playing Roald Dahl in the play Giant.

Lesley Manville, Ben Whishaw, Imelda Staunton, Meera Syal, Billy Crudup, Mark Strong and Paapa Essiedu are among the other acting nominees.

In The Fear of 13, Brody portrayed Nick Yarris, a man who was wrongfully convicted for murder and spent 22 years on Death Row.

Other plays in the running this year include Kyoto, Shifters, Giant and The Years, which have five nominations each.

Romola Garai has two nominations – going up against herself in the best supporting actress category for her roles in Giant and The Years.

Fiddler On The Roof scored the most nominations overall with 13 nods, including best musical revival.

That ties the record for the most Olivier nominations, after musical Hamilton also received 13 nods in 2018.

The Oliviers will be hosted by singer-songwriter Beverley Knight and actor and singer Billy Porter on Sunday 6 April at the Royal Albert Hall.

Best new play

• The Fear Of 13 by Lindsey Ferrentino
• Giant
• Kyoto
• Shifters
• The Years

Best new musical

• The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button
• MJ The Musical
• Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet Of 1812
• Why Am I So Single?

Best new entertainment or comedy play

• Ballet Shoes
• Inside No 9 Stage/Fright
• Spirited Away adapted
• Titanique

Best revival

• The Importance Of Being Earnest
• Machinal
• Oedipus
• Waiting For Godot

Best musical revival

• Fiddler On The Roof
• Hello, Dolly!
• Oliver!
• Starlight Express

Best actress

• Heather Agyepong for Shifters
• Lesley Manville for Oedipus
• Rosie Sheehy for Machinal
• Meera Syal for A Tupperware Of Ashes
• Indira Varma for Oedipus

Best actor

• Adrien Brody for The Fear Of 13
• Billy Crudup for Harry Clarke
• Paapa Essiedu for Death Of England: Delroy
• John Lithgow for Giant at Jerwood Theatre Downstairs
• Mark Strong for Oedipus

Best actor (musical)

• John Dagleish for The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button
• Adam Dannheisser for Fiddler On The Roof
• Myles Frost for MJ The Musical
• Simon Lipkin for Oliver!
• Jamie Muscato for Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet Of 1812

Best actress (musical)

• Chumisa Dornford-May for Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet Of 1812
• Lauren Drew for Titanique
• Clare Foster for The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button
• Lara Pulver for Fiddler On The Roof
• Imelda Staunton for Hello, Dolly!

Best supporting actor

• Jorge Bosch for Kyoto
• Tom Edden for Waiting For Godot
• Elliot Levey for Giant
• Ben Whishaw for Bluets at Jerwood

Best supporting actress

• Sharon D Clarke for The Importance Of Being Earnest
• Romola Garai for Giant
• Romola Garai for The Years
• Gina McKee for The Years

Best director

• Eline Arbo for The Years
• Jordan Fein for Fiddler On The Roof
• Nicholas Hytner for Giant
• Robert Icke for Oedipus

Best supporting actress (musical)

• Liv Andrusier for Fiddler On The Roof
• Amy Di Bartolomeo for The Devil Wears Prada
• Beverley Klein for Fiddler On The Roof
• Maimuna Memon for Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet Of 1812

Best supporting actor (musical)

• Andy Nyman for Hello, Dolly!
• Raphael Papo for Fiddler On The Roof
• Layton Williams for Titanique at Criterion Theatre
• Tom Xander for Mean Girls at Savoy Theatre

Best family show

• Brainiac Live
• Maddie Moate’s Very Curious Christmas
• The Nutcracker
• Rough Magic

Best new production in affiliate theatre

• Animal Farm
• Boys On The Verge Of Tears
• English
• Now, I See by Lanre Malaolu
• What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank

Best new dance production

• Assembly Hall
• Frontiers: Choreographers Of Canada
• Theatre Of Dreams
• An Untitled Love

Best set design

• Spirited Away
• Ballet Shoes
• Coriolanus
• Fiddler On The Roof

Best lighting design

• Oliver!
• Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet Of 1812
• Starlight Express
• Fiddler On The Roof

Outstanding achievement in dance

• Sarah Chun for her performance in Three Short Ballets at Royal Opera House
• Tom Visser for his lighting design of Angels’ Atlas as part of Frontiers: Choreographers Of Canada
• Eva Yerbabuena for her performance in Yerbagüena

Best theatre choreographer

• Matthew Bourne for Oliver!
• Julia Cheng for Fiddler On The Roof
• Hofesh Shechter for Oedipus
• Christopher Wheeldon for MJ The Musical
• Hugh Durrant for Robin Hood
• Sachiko Nakahara for Spirited Away
• Tom Scutt for Fiddler On The Roof
• Gabriella Slade for Starlight Express

Best sound design

• Nick Lidster for Fiddler On The Roof
• Christopher Shutt for Oedipus
• Thijs van Vuure for The Years
• Koichi Yamamoto for Spirited Away

Outstanding musical contribution

• Mark Aspinall for Musical Supervision & Additional Orchestrations for Fiddler On The Roof
• Darren Clark for music supervision, orchestrations & arrangements and Mark Aspinall for musical direction, music supervision, orchestrations & arrangements for The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button
• Dave Malloy for orchestrations and Nicholas Skilbeck for musical supervision for Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet Of 1812
• Asaf Zohar for compositions and Gavin Sutherland for dance arrangements & orchestration for Ballet Shoes

Best new opera production

• Duke Bluebeard’s Castle
• Festen
• L’Olimpiade
• The Tales Of Hoffmann

Outstanding achievement in opera

• Aigul Akhmetshina for her performance in Carmen
• Allan Clayton for his performance in Festen
• Jung Young-doo for his direction of Lear

Food prices in Gaza have spiked and aid food parcels could soon run out after Israel blocked the entry of humanitarian aid, the UN’s humanitarian agency said.

OCHA’s partners reported that flour and vegetable prices more than doubled in some cases, with Gazans telling the BBC the same.

If the block continues, “at least 80 community kitchens may soon run out of stock” and remaining food parcels that “will support 500,000 people, will soon run out”, OCHA said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chose to stop aid at the weekend, accusing Hamas of stealing supplies and refusing a US proposal to extend the Israel-Hamas ceasefire. A Hamas spokesman said the halt was “cheap blackmail”.

Thousands of aid trucks had surged into Gaza each week under the ceasefire that started on 19 January.

After the ceasefire’s first phase expired on Saturday, Netanyahu’s office accused Hamas of stealing aid “to finance its terror machine”.

Hamas has previously denied stealing humanitarian aid in Gaza.

Netanyahu also said Hamas was refusing to accept a six-week ceasefire extension, under different terms from those previously agreed, as proposed by US President Donald Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff.

After the halt of aid in response, OCHA said on Tuesday that some community kitchens which remain operational “will need to start to adjust meal content or reduce the number of meals prepared to cope with anticipated shortages”.

Partners would also “be forced to reduce food rations”. While they are distributing previously dispatched food parcels, remaining supplies are expected to run out soon.

As a result, Abu Qais Aryan, from Khan Younis, told BBC Arabic the cost of basic goods doubled over Sunday night. Prices had already doubled or tripled since the war began, he said.

Other residents said the price of a kilo of tomatoes rose overnight from five shekels (£1) to ten, and a kilo of cucumbers from six to 17 shekels.

“We could barely afford to buy a kilo of tomatoes just to satisfy our hunger,” said one man, Issam, adding that people could not buy food “because there is no cash liquidity”.

Issa Meit, a resident of Gaza City, said there was a shortage of goods and very high consumption, and he was “very afraid that prices will increase again”.

“The recent decision is unfair as it wrongs our children. How will our children live in light of these high prices that will increase in an arbitrary way?” he said.

Some blamed merchants for hiking prices, saying they were exploiting the situation.

Merchant Mahmoud Abu Mohsen told BBC Arabic he raised prices because the wholesalers he purchases from did as well.

“For example, I used to buy sugar for five shekels, three shekels, or four shekels, but now I buy sugar for six shekels, meaning I don’t make more than a small profit,” he said. “The news that Netanyahu announced is what caused a stir among the people.”

Doctors Without Borders (MSF)’s spokeswoman Caroline Seguin said in a statement the “news has created uncertainty and fear, causing food prices to spike”.

“Israel is once again blocking an entire population from receiving aid, using it as a bargaining chip,” Seguin said. “This is unacceptable, outrageous, and will have devastating consequences.”

Qatar and Egypt, which helped mediate the ceasefire, condemned Israel’s move.

Qatar’s foreign ministry called the decision “a clear violation of the ceasefire agreement” and “international humanitarian law” in a statement. Egypt’s foreign ministry accused Israel of using starvation as “a weapon against the Palestinian people”, the AFP news agency reported.

David Mencer, Israeli government diplomacy spokesman for the prime minister’s office, said in a video briefing that “Hamas has hoarded for months and months of supplies. They have enough food to fuel an obesity epidemic.”

“The supplies are there but Hamas doesn’t share,” he added.

Many Gazans use aid: a month ago, OCHA said more than a million people – roughly half of the population – had received food assistance since the ceasefire began.

All aid, not just food, is affected by the blockade. Charity Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) said that inside Gaza, it had some medicine in reserve for its clinics and assistive devices for people with disabilities, in addition to hygiene kits.

“However, we don’t currently have high aid reserves as most items entering were for immediate distribution,” the charity said. “Unfortunately, we don’t have stock that we can use during a long closure of Gaza.”

The ceasefire aimed to end 15 months of conflict, after Hamas killed about 1,200 people and took another 251 hostage in its attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.

Israel responded with an air and ground campaign in Gaza that killed at least 48,405 people, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

One of Nigeria’s most senior politicians, Godswill Akpabio, has denied allegations of sexual harassment brought against him by a fellow senator.

Senate President Akpabio told Wednesday’s session that he had been raised very well by his late mother and had never harassed any woman.

In an interview with Arise Television on Friday, senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan alleged that Akpabio had made inappropriate advances towards her during a visit to his residence in southern Akwa Ibom state, on 8 December 2023.

She said that Akpabio had taken her by the hand, led her around his house, and made sexual advances towards her while her husband walked behind them, talking on his phone.

She further alleged that Akpabio had, on a separate occasion, insinuated that she should “take care of him” if she wanted her motions to receive favourable consideration in the senate.

The senator alleged that he was behaving like a university lecturer who consistently failed his student who had refused to sleep with him.

But this was denied by Akpabio.

“At no time did I ever harass any woman. I was raised very well by my late single mother, and I have always upheld respect for women. I was even awarded the most gender-friendly governor in Nigeria,” he noted.

The issue has generated huge debate in Nigeria with many calling for an independent investigation.

In a social media post, Akpabio’s predecessor, and political rival, Bukola Saraki said the issues raised were too serious to be simply brushed aside.

Earlier on Wednesday, two groups of protesters gathered at the assembly ground in the capital, Abuja – one backing Akpabio and the other in support of his colleague, chanting ”Akpabio must go.”

Senator Uduaghan used Wednesday’s plenary session to submit a formal petition calling for an investigation into Akpabio’s behaviour.

As the president, Akpabio permitted Uduaghan to proceed, directing that her petition be referred to the senate committee on the code of conduct, ethics, and public petitions.

Before becoming senate president less than two years ago, Akpabio was governor of the oil-rich Akwa Ibom state for eight years and also minister of Niger Delta affairs under former President Muhammadu Buhari.

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Pope Francis was well-rested and woke up just after 08:00 local time (07:00 GMT) on Wednesday, the Vatican said.

Church officials said the Pontiff spent the night on “non-invasive mechanical ventilation”.

The update comes after the Vatican said on Tuesday evening that the Pope was stable after suffering two episodes of respiratory failure on Monday. Tuesday’s statement said that Pope Francis “remained afebrile, always alert, co-operative with therapies and well-oriented”.

The 88-year-old pontiff has been in hospital since mid-February, undergoing treatment for pneumonia.

After Monday’s episodes, the Pope had begun using an oxygen mask and ventilator to assist his breathing.

It was the second time the mechanical intervention had been used, after spending two days on the ventilator following an “isolated” breathing crisis involving vomiting on Friday, the Vatican said.

In Tuesday’s update, the Holy See said Pope Francis had switched back to high-flow oxygen therapy.

During the day, he alternated prayer and rest. On Tuesday morning, he received the Eucharist, it added.

Pope Francis is due to miss the procession and Mass on Wednesday that marks the first day of Lent, the six-week period leading to Easter.

He has been unable to deliver his traditional Angelus prayer in person on each of the last three Sundays.

The Pope was admitted to hospital on 14 February after experiencing breathing difficulties for several days.

He was first treated for bronchitis before being diagnosed with pneumonia in both lungs.

The pontiff is particularly susceptible to pneumonia, an infection of the lungs that can be caused by bacteria, viruses or fungi, after he contracted pleurisy – an inflammation of the lungs – as a young man and had a partial lung removal.

Vatican sources stress, as they have all along, that the Pope’s condition remains complex – his doctors remain cautious – and he is not out of danger.

China has warned the US it is ready to fight “any type” of war after hitting back against President Donald Trump’s mounting trade tariffs.

The world’s top two economies have edged closer to a trade war after Trump slapped more tariffs on all Chinese goods. China quickly retaliated imposing 10-15% tariffs on US farm products.

“If war is what the US wants, be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war, we’re ready to fight till the end,” China’s embassy said on X, reposting a line from a government statement on Tuesday.

It is some of the strongest rhetoric so far from China since Trump became president and comes as leaders gathered in Beijing for the annual National People’s Congress.

On Wednesday, China’s Premier Li Qiang announced that China would again boost its defence spending by 7.2% this year and warned that “changes unseen in a century were unfolding across the world at a faster pace.” This increase was expected and matches the figure announced last year.

Leaders in Beijing are trying to send a message to people in China that they are confident the country’s economy can grow, even with the threat of a trade war.

China has been keen to portray an image of being a stable, peaceful country in contrast to the US, which Beijing accuses of being embroiled in wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.

China may also hope to capitalise on Trump’s actions relating to US allies such as Canada and Mexico, which have also been hit by tariffs, and will not want to ramp up the rhetoric too far to scare off potential new global partners.

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The Premier’s speech in Beijing on Tuesday emphasised that China would continue to open up and hoped to attract more foreign investment.

China has, in the past emphasised that it is ready to go to war. Last October, President Xi called for troops to strengthen their preparedness for war as they held military drills around the self-governing island of Taiwan. But there is a difference between military preparedness and a readiness to go to war.

The Chinese embassy in Washington’s post quoted a foreign ministry statement in English from the previous day, which also accused the US of blaming China for the influx of the drug fentanyl

“The fentanyl issue is a flimsy excuse to raise US tariffs on Chinese imports,” the foreign ministry spokesperson said.

“Intimidation does not scare us. Bullying does not work on us. Pressuring, coercion or threats are not the right way of dealing with China,” he added.

The US-China relationship is always one of the most contentious in the world. This post on X has been widely shared and could be used by the China hawks in Trump’s cabinet as evidence that Beijing is Washington’s biggest foreign policy and economic threat.

Officials in Beijing had been hopeful that US–China relations under Trump could get off to a more cordial start after he invited Xi to his inauguration. Trump also said the two leaders had “a great phone call” just a few days before he entered the White House.

There were reports that the two leaders were due to have another call last month. That did not happen.

Xi had already been battling persistently low consumption, a property crisis and unemployment.

China has pledged to pump billions of dollars into its ailing economy and its leaders unveiled the plan as thousands of delegates attend the National People’s Congress, a rubber-stamp parliament, which passes decisions already made behind closed doors.

China has the world’s second-largest military budget at $245bn but it is far smaller than that of the US. Beijing spends 1.6% of GDP on its military, far less than the US or Russia, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

However, analysts believe China downplays how much it spends on defence.

A PhD student who has been convicted of drugging and raping 10 women “may turn out to be one of the most prolific sexual predators that we’ve ever seen in this country”, according to the lead detective on the case.

Chinese national Zhenhao Zou, 28, attacked two women who have been identified and another eight who have yet to be traced, his trial at Inner London Crown Court heard.

He filmed nine of the assaults as “souvenirs”, and kept a trophy box of victims’ belongings, jurors heard.

Judge Rosina Cottage described him as “dangerous and predatory sexual offender” and warned him he faces a “very long” jail term when he is sentenced on 19 June.

The Met Police’s Cdr Kevin Southworth said the video evidence showed there may be as many as 50 further victims, whom they are “desperate to trace”.

“Such is the insidious nature of these offences, I think there is a possibility that many more victim survivors may not even know that he has, in fact, raped them,” he said.

Zou, who was studying at University College London, was also found guilty of voyeurism, possession of extreme pornographic images and false imprisonment.

The crimes he has been convicted of took place between 2019 and 2024.

Seven of the rapes took place during the pandemic in China. The evidence of those attacks was videos shown to the jury that he kept of him having sex with unconscious and semi-conscious women. Police have never identified them.

Four of the rapes took place in London. Two women were identified and gave evidence; the other two rapes were of the same woman, but she has never been tracked down.

Jurors had to watch footage of nine of the rapes during court proceedings, appearing visibly upset and being given regular breaks as the troubling material was shown.

Some of the attacks were filmed at his flats in Bloomsbury and Elephant and Castle, others at an unknown location in China.

Those prosecutions were possible because foreign nationals who are living in the UK can be charged with offences committed abroad if the crime is also illegal in the country where it took place.

When he was arrested in January of last year, Zou told the jury he had discussed sexual preferences with one of the women he filmed, and she had said she liked “uniform role play”.

“We specifically discussed the kinds of role play I like, which was rape role play,” he said. He told the court this was how the videos came to be made.

The student comes from a wealthy family, and had enough money to afford a Rolex watch, a wardrobe full of designer clothes, and cosmetic procedures including a hair transplant and facial surgery.

He also paid £4,000 a month in rent.

Zou also kept items from victims, such as jewellery and clothing.

The Met Police has launched an appeal to find any other of his potential victims.

“If you’re a woman who’s in any way had a one-on-one encounter with this man Zou, then we would like to hear from you,” Cdr Southworth said.

Saira Pike from the Crown Prosecution Service said: “I’d like to express my heartfelt thanks to the courageous women who came forward to report Zhenhao Zou’s heinous crimes.

“They have been incredibly strong and brave – there is no doubt that their evidence helped us to secure today’s verdict.

“Zou is a serial rapist and a danger to women.”

The jury found Zou guilty of:

• 11 counts of rape, with two of the offences relating to one victim
• Three counts of voyeurism
• 10 counts of possession of an extreme pornographic image
• One count of false imprisonment
• Three counts of possession of a controlled drug with intent to commit a sexual offence

He was cleared of two further counts of possession of an extreme pornographic image, and five counts of possession of controlled drugs to commit a sexual offence.

Whether Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision to patch up relations with his US counterpart Donald Trump is wise depends on who you ask in Ukraine.

“A very bad decision,” remarked blogger and army serviceman Yuriy Kasyanov, who thinks the US “won’t help Ukraine with anything” after this mineral deal is signed.

“The president behaved with dignity” said former MP Boryslav Bereza, who described Zelensky’s softening of tone as an “apology”.

Last night, Ukraine’s leader gave his evening address from the courtyard outside Kyiv’s Presidential Office. It was the same spot where he gave the now famous “we are all here” speech with his cabinet on the second day of Russia’s invasion.

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Back then, he’d turned down offers to leave. Many in the West expected Russia to be in the capital within days, with the president being captured or killed.

Three years on, it seems his choice to keep fighting has gradually been taken away from him.

He said he was ready to work under Trump’s “strong leadership” and that it was “time to make things right”.

Washington’s hostile rhetoric, Oval Office meeting and the “pausing” of US military aid have forced him to bend to Trump’s peace vision.

Up until last week, Zelensky had held firm that Ukraine would only agree to peace if its security was guaranteed, otherwise it would fight on.

He also accused Trump of living in a “disinformation space” after the US president repeated some of Moscow’s claims.

All of this served as a prelude to Friday’s fiery exchange with Trump and US Vice-President JD Vance, who accused Zelensky of having “disrespected” the US and ultimately told him to leave.

The Ukrainian leader had a warmer reception from European leaders at the weekend – but while they pledged to help secure Ukraine in the future, they made clear peace would still require US involvement.

Then, on Tuesday, Trump paused US military aid to Ukraine, raising concerns it may only be able to hold out for a matter of months – and leaving Zelensky to make his peace with the situation.

In a letter to the US president, he even gave specifics on what the first stage of a peace process could involve, including a naval and aerial ceasefire – proposals first suggested by France’s President Emmanuel Macron over the weekend.

Trump said he appreciated the letter, in a sign of cooling tensions between the two leaders, and that Zelensky had agreed to strike a peace deal.

What is more telling is Zelensky’s willingness now to sign a mineral deal without the security guarantees he is hoping for – and had portrayed as essential until very recently.

The US has suggested the presence of US companies mining for natural resources would be enough to put Russia off breaking a ceasefire. However, American businesses didn’t exactly put Moscow off from launching its full-scale invasion.

What’s even more telling are the lack of compromises Russia would seemingly have to make in any peace agreement.

Perhaps Zelensky has run out of political road, and with his European allies acknowledging that they still need the US, Washington seems still to be the only place for him to turn to.

Canada’s Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly has told the BBC she takes US President Donald Trump’s remarks on making Canada the 51st state of his country “very seriously”.

“This is not a joke anymore,” Joly told Newsnight. “There’s a reason why Canadians, when they go out on a hockey game, are booing the American national anthem… We’re insulted. We’re mad. We’re angry.”

Her comments come after Trump imposed 25% tariffs on products entering the US from Canada on Tuesday. Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called that a “very dumb thing to do” and announced retaliatory tariffs.

However, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Trump would “probably” announce a deal to reduce tariffs on Wednesday.

In response, Joly told the BBC that “at the end of the day, the only one that really takes a decision is President Trump”.

She said no Trump administration secretaries had contacted their Canadian counterparts on Monday or Tuesday about tariffs.

Trump and Trudeau, however, are expected to speak over the phone on Wednesday morning, according to sources who spoke to CNN and the Toronto Star.

Trump announced 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico on 4 February, but delayed implementation until 4 March. Canadian energy imports face a 10% tariff.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford implemented a 25% surcharge on electricity exports to three US states, and if tariffs escalated, said he would consider cutting Michigan, New York and Minnesota off from Canadian power.

Trump also imposed a 10% tariff on goods worth more than $800 (£645) from China in February, which doubled in March. China responded with its own tariffs.

The White House said when it introduced the tariffs that it was “taking bold action to hold [the three countries] accountable to their promises of halting illegal immigration and stopping poisonous fentanyl and other drugs from flowing into our country”.

Fentanyl is linked to tens of thousands of overdose deaths in the US each year.

Trudeau said his country was responsible for less than 1% of fentanyl entering the US.

Canada had introduced new border security measures in December, in response to Trump’s tariff threats before he took office.

“We didn’t want this trade war. We did everything that was required under the executive order to make sure our border was safe and secure,” Joly told the BBC, but said “this is a bogus excuse on the part of the Trump administration against us”.

Joly said Canada was the “canary in the coal mine”, with the Europeans next, and the UK after that. Trump has threatened 25% tariffs on the European Union as well.

She said Canada and the UK should work together: “That’s also why I went to London to make sure that if there are tariffs imposed, we should work on counter-tariffs well.”

Joly said Canada’s public displays of displeasure against the US are not “against the American people. We’re the best friends of the American people”.

She called the tariffs on the US’s biggest trading partner an “existential threat”.

“We cannot let our guard down,” she said. “We need to make sure that we fight back.”

The US and Israel have rejected an Arab plan for the post-war reconstruction of the Gaza Strip that would allow the 2.1 million Palestinians living there to stay in place.

The proposal, endorsed by Arab leaders at a summit in Cairo, is their alternative to President Donald Trump’s idea for the US to take over Gaza and permanently resettle its population.

The Palestinian Authority and Hamas welcomed the Arab plan, which calls for Gaza to be governed temporarily by a committee of independent experts and for international peacekeepers to be deployed there.

But both the White House and Israeli foreign ministry said it failed to address realities in Gaza and stood by Trump’s vision.

The summit took place amid growing concern that Gaza’s fragile ceasefire deal could collapse after the six-week first phase expired last Saturday.

Israel has blocked aid from entering the territory to pressure Hamas to accept a new US proposal for a temporary extension of the truce, during which more hostages held in Gaza would be released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.

Hamas has insisted the second phase should begin as agreed, leading to an end of the war and a full Israeli troop withdrawal.

The $53bn (£41bn) Arab plan for rebuilding Gaza once the war ends was presented by Egypt at an emergency Arab League summit on Tuesday.

A statement endorsing the plan stressed “the categorical rejection of any form of displacement of the Palestinian people”, describing such an idea as “a gross violation of international law, a crime against humanity and ethnic cleansing”.

The plan envisages reconstruction taking place over three phases and taking five years, during which some 1.5 million displaced Gazans would be moved into 200,000 prefabricated housing units and 60,000 repaired homes.

In the first phase, which would last six months and cost $3bn, millions of tonnes of rubble and any unexploded ordnance would be cleared.

The second phase, lasting two years and costing $20bn, would see housing and utilities rebuilt. An airport, two seaports and an industrial zone would be built during the third phase, which would take another two years and cost $30bn.

The Arab plan also proposes that an “administrative committee” made up of independent Palestinian technocrats run post-war Gaza for a transitional period while “working towards empowering the Palestinian Authority to return”.

Hamas – which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US, UK and others – took full control of Gaza in 2007, ousting forces from the Fatah-dominated PA in violent clashes a year after winning parliamentary elections. The PA was left governing parts of the occupied West Bank.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who heads the PA, told the summit that he welcomed the Arab plan and urged Donald Trump to support it.

Hamas said it appreciated “the Arab position rejecting attempts to displace our people”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ruled out any future role in Gaza for Hamas or the PA.

However, Israel’s foreign ministry swiftly rejected the Arab League’s statement endorsing the Egyptian plan, saying it “fails to address the realities of the situation following 7 October 2023, remaining rooted in outdated perspectives”.

“Now, with President Trump’s idea, there is an opportunity for the Gazans to have free choice based on their free will. This should be encouraged!” it added.

“Instead, Arab states have rejected this opportunity, without giving it a fair chance, and continue to level baseless accusations against Israel.”

White House National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said the Arab plan did “not address the reality that Gaza is currently uninhabitable and residents cannot humanely live in a territory covered in debris and unexploded ordnance.”

“President Trump stands by his vision to rebuild Gaza free from Hamas. We look forward to further talks to bring peace and prosperity to the region.”

Trump proposed last month that the US would “own” Gaza and relocate its population, so that it could be rebuilt and turned into the “Riviera of the Middle East”.

He said the displaced Palestinians would have no right of return because they would have “much better housing” in Egypt, Jordan and other countries.

The Assistant Secretary General of the Arab League, Hossam Zaki, told the BBC on Wednesday that Trump’s approach was unacceptable.

“It is based on the forced displacement of Palestinians out of their homes and of their land. This is against international law and, we have said this time and again, this is not a way to treat this man-made crisis,” he said.

“This is a war that has been waged by Israel partly with the aim of driving Palestinians out of their territory,” he added.

He also described the Israeli foreign ministry’s response to the Arab plan as “against humanity and against morals”.

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

Many of those refugees ended up in Gaza, where they and their descendants make up three-quarters of the population. Another 900,000 registered refugees live in the West Bank, while 3.4 million others live in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, according to the UN.

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 48,400 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.

President Donald Trump declared “the American Dream is unstoppable” as he addressed a raucous joint session of the US Congress for the first time since he returned to power.

In the longest presidential speech to lawmakers on record, he outlined his vision for his second term, as Republicans applauded a high-octane six weeks that has reshaped domestic and foreign policy.

Trump was heckled by Democrats and he goaded them in turn during the rowdy primetime address, during which he said his administration was “just getting started”.

The Republican president has moved to slash the federal workforce and crack down on immigration, while imposing tariffs on America’s biggest trading partners and shaking up the transatlantic alliance over the war in Ukraine.

Here are six of the key takeaways.

Following a second day of market turbulence, Trump played down the potential economic fallout from a trade war he ignited this week, including 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada, and an additional 10% on Chinese imports.

But in contrast with the ovations that greeted his other policy objectives, many Republicans remained seated, a sign of how Trump’s import taxes have divided his party.

“Tariffs are about making America rich again and making America great again,” he said.

“And it’s happening. And it will happen rather quickly. There’ll be a little disturbance, but we’re okay with that. It won’t be much.”

Trump added that reciprocal tariffs tailored to US trading partners would “kick in” on 2 April.

Earlier in the day, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Fox Business that Trump could announce a trade deal with Mexico and Canada as soon as Wednesday.

• Trump will ‘probably’ cut tariffs, says commerce chief
• What are tariffs, and why is Trump using them?

Trump said he had received an “important letter” from Ukraine’s leader earlier in the day, which appeared to match what Volodymyr Zelensky posted publicly on social media.

Ukraine’s president had said he was now ready to work under Trump’s “strong leadership” to end the war and “come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer”.

“I appreciate that he sent this letter,” Trump told lawmakers.

Zelensky offered the olive branch a day after Trump paused all military aid to the beleaguered US ally.

It followed an acrimonious Oval Office meeting last week when the two leaders argued in front of TV cameras, before cancelling plans to sign a minerals deal that would allow the US to profit from an economic partnership involving Ukraine’s resources.

Trump was reportedly hoping to announce during his speech to Congress that the deal had finally been sealed. But it did not materialise.

• Live updates: Trump ‘appreciates’ Zelensky’s message
• Trump and Zelensky’s fraying relationship, in their own words

Despite most of his 99-minute speech focusing on domestic issues, Trump’s worldview also came more sharply into focus.

There are places in the world he wants to expand US influence and others where he wants to withdraw.

Repeating his desire for the US to acquire Greenland, he vowed “we’re going to get it – one way or the other”. And he said his administration would “reclaim” the Panama Canal.

There were several mentions of African countries when he rattled through a list of what he described as wasteful spending under his predecessor, Joe Biden.

Liberia, Mali, Mozambique and Uganda were all places unfairly benefiting from US aid, he said.

But his most pointed remark was about Lesotho, which he said was a country “nobody has ever heard of” despite receiving $8m (£6.2m) to promote LGBT rights.

• Why does Trump want Greenland and what do its people think?

Early on Trump name-checked his billionaire adviser Elon Musk, who was watching from the gallery.

The tech mogul’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) taskforce has moved to fire tens of thousands of federal workers, cut billions of dollars in foreign aid and slash programmes across the US government.

The SpaceX and Tesla boss, wearing a dark suit with a blue tie, stood and acknowledged the cheers from the crowd.

“Thank you, Elon,” the 78-year-old president said. “He’s working very hard. He didn’t need this.”

Musk’s cuts have sparked some angry scenes at town hall meetings and his instructions to federal employees have at times been overruled by members of Trump’s cabinet.

In the chamber, Democratic lawmakers held up signs saying “Musk steals” and “false”.

Doge claims to have saved $105bn already but that figure can’t be independently verified. Receipts have been published for $18.6bn worth of savings but accounting errors have been reported by US media outlets that have analysed the figures.

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Within the first five minutes of the address, Al Green of Texas was escorted out of the chamber by the sergeant-at-arms after refusing to comply with the House Speaker’s demands that he stop heckling the president and take his seat.

As Trump spoke, other Democrats held up signs saying “This is a lie”.

With Republicans in control of the White House, House of Representatives and Senate, Democrats have been largely leaderless as they work to hone their message and counter the blitz of activity from the Trump administration.

Many Democratic women arrived in the House chamber wearing pink pantsuits in protest. Dozens from their party – some of them wearing the words “Resist” printed on the backs of their shirts – exited the chamber during the speech.

“There is absolutely nothing I can say to make them happy,” Trump said, appearing to revel in the partisan rancour.

Democratic leadership chose Elissa Slotkin of Michigan – a first-term senator elected in a battleground state that Trump won in November – to deliver the party’s official response.

She accused Trump of an “unprecedented giveaway to his billionaire friends” and warned “he could walk us right into a recession”.

Trump pledged to voters that he would beat inflation on his return to office and he used the speech to say his focus would be to reduce the cost of energy, by opening up the country to new oil and gas drilling.

“We have more liquid gold under our feet than any nation on earth, and by far, and now I fully authorize the most talented team ever assembled to go and get it. It’s called drill, baby, drill.”

The soaring cost of eggs has been headline news in recent weeks, and Trump made clear who he felt was responsible.

“Joe Biden especially let the price of eggs get out of control – and we are working hard to get it back down,” he added.

Egg prices rose as the Biden administration directed millions of egg-laying birds to be culled last year amid a bird flu outbreak, though prices have continued rising during the early stages of Trump’s second presidency.

Inflation was slightly elevated at 3% last month, but way down from its peak of 9.1% in 2022.

Only one in three Americans approve of Trump’s handling of cost of living, according to a Reuters/Ipsos survey on Tuesday.

• Fact-checking Trump’s address to Congress

Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second presidential term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

In his address to Congress, which ran for more than an hour and a half, President Donald Trump made a series of claims about the state of the US under his predecessor Joe Biden and the achievements of his first weeks in office.

He returned to key campaign themes including illegal immigration, rising prices and what he called “appalling waste” in government spending.

BBC Verify has looked into the facts behind some of his key claims.

Trump said he inherited an “economic catastrophe” from Biden.

This is misleading. The US economy was growing at an annual rate of 2.3% in the final quarter of 2024 under the previous administration. It expanded by 2.8% over 2024 as a whole according to official US statistics.

The International Monetary Fund estimates that the US growth rate in 2024 was faster than any other nation in the G7.

On rising prices, Trump added “we suffered the worst inflation in 48 years, but perhaps even in the history of our country”.

Inflation under Biden peaked at 9.1% in June 2022 – the highest level since 1981 – so not quite as far back as Trump claimed.

The 2022 peak was in the context of high inflation in the rest of the world in the wake of the Covid pandemic and a global energy shock. The inflation rate had dropped to 3% by the time Trump took office.

Inflation has also been much higher than 9% at several other points in US history, including the 1940s and 1920s.

Trump went on to blame Biden for egg prices, claiming he “let the price of eggs get out of control”.

Prices are high, but this has been linked to a bird flu outbreak in the US.

Egg prices rose under Biden in 2023, and in January a dozen eggs averaged over $5, according to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). That is 53% above the average for the whole of 2024.

The USDA has said a bird flu outbreak has led to US farmers having to kill millions of chickens, creating egg shortages, and has announced a $1bn (£780m) plan to help combat the issue.

The outbreak started in February 2022 and last year the Biden administration allocated more than $800m to tackle it.

The Trump administration recently fired a number of USDA officials who worked on the government’s response to bird flu as part of cost-cutting measures by the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge). They are now reportedly attempting to rehire some of them.

Trump praised Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) and claimed the advisory body had found “hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud” in federal government spending.

No evidence has been provided for this figure.

On its official website, Doge states that it has saved an estimated $105bn, from fraud detection, contract and grant cancellations, real estate lease terminations, asset sales, workforce reductions, programmatic changes, and regulatory savings.

However, that figure cannot be independently verified as, so far, Doge has only published “receipts” for contract, grant and real estate lease cancellations on the website. These add up to about $18.6bn. We have asked the White House for evidence of the remaining $86bn of savings.

US media outlets have also highlighted some accounting errors. For example, Doge initially listed its largest saving of $8bn from scrapping an immigration agency contract – it later corrected this to $8m.

Speaking about his actions to tackle illegal immigration, Trump said that “as a result, illegal border crossings last month were by far the lowest ever recorded”.

This is true.

In February 2025, 8,326 encounters of migrants at the south-west border with Mexico were recorded by US Border Patrol.

This is the lowest level since monthly records began in 2000.

By comparison, there were 140,641 encounters by US Border Patrol at this border in February last year under Biden.

Numbers fell to 47,316 in December 2024.

Continuing with illegal migration, Trump claimed: “Over the past four years, 21 million people poured into the United States”.

There is no evidence for a figure this high.

Encounters with migrants at the borders – a measure of illegal migration – reached 10 million under Biden but this does not mean this many people stayed in the US.

It is impossible to know exactly how many illegal immigrants have come to the US, as many will have evaded law enforcement agencies, but several estimates put the number at around half what Trump stated.

A report published by the Office of Homeland Security last year estimated the number of illegal immigrants living in the US, as of January 2022, at 11 million.

It says about a fifth of them arrived in 2010 or later but the majority arrived before this time, some as early as the 1980s.

On US aid to Ukraine, Trump claimed: “We’ve spent perhaps $350bn… and they [Europe] have spent $100bn. What a difference that is.”

BBC Verify is unable to find any evidence for Trump’s $350bn claim and some figures suggest Europe has spent more as whole when all aid to Ukraine is included.

The US is, by some margin, the largest single donor to Ukraine. But Europe combined has spent more money than the US, according to the Kiel Institute think tank.

It calculates that between 24 January 2022 and the end of 2024, Europe as a whole spent $138.7bn on Ukraine, while the US spent $119.7bn.

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The US Department of Defense has a higher figure of $182.8bn – taking into account a broader range of US military activity in Europe – but this is still considerably less than Trump’s figure.

We have asked the White House where it comes from.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

US actor Jesse Eisenberg has been awarded Polish citizenship by President Andrzej Duda, after telling the story of the Jewish population during World War Two in his Oscar-winning film A Real Pain.

Eisenberg wrote, directed and starred in the film, about two American cousins who travel to Poland to honour their grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, who was based on Eisenberg’s own great aunt.

He told the citizenship ceremony: “While we were filming this movie in Poland, and I was walking the streets and starting to get a little more comfortable in the country, something so obvious occurred to me, which is that my family had lived in this place for far longer than we lived in New York.

“And of course, the history ended so tragically.”

He continued: “In addition to that tragedy of history is also the tragedy that my family didn’t feel any connection any more to Poland, and that saddened me and confirmed for me that I really wanted to try to reconnect as much as possible.

“And I really hope that tonight in this ceremony and this amazing honour is the first step of me, and on behalf of my family, reconnecting to this beautiful country.”

Eisenberg was inspired to make A Real Pain after the death of his great aunt Doris at the age of 106 in 2019. She grew up in Poland but fled to the US in 1938. Other family members who remained in Poland were killed during the Holocaust.

President Duda said: “I am delighted that people from across the ocean acknowledge their heritage, recognise that their ancestors hail from the Republic [of Poland] and seek to forge a connection with our country.”

Eisenberg was nominated for an Oscar for writing the film, while his co-star Kieran Culkin won the award for best supporting actor.

Lesotho’s government says it is shocked by US President Donald Trump saying that “nobody has ever heard of” the southern African nation.

Trump, addressing the US Congress in his first speech since his return to the Oval Office, made the reference as he listed cuts made to what he said was wasteful expenditure.

“Eight million dollars to promote LGBTQI+ in the African nation of Lesotho, which nobody has ever heard of,” Trump said, eliciting laughter from some US lawmakers.

A spokesperson for Lesotho’s foreign affairs department told the BBC that Lesotho enjoyed “warm and cordial” relations with the US.

Lesotho is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the US’s African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa), which gives favourable trade access to some countries to promote their economic growth.

According to the US government, the two countries traded goods worth $240m (£187m) in 2024, mostly exports from Lesotho to the US, in particular textiles and clothing.

Lesotho’s Foreign Affairs Minister Lejone Mpotjoane said it was “shocking” to hear a head of state “refer to another sovereign state in that manner”.

“To my surprise, ‘the country that nobody has heard of’ is the country where the US has a permanent mission,” Mr Mpotjoane told the BBC.

“Lesotho is a member of the UN and of a number of other international bodies. And the US has an embassy here and [there are] a number of US organisations we’ve accommodated here in Maseru.”

Officials dismissed Trump’s remarks as “off the cuff” and a “political statement”, adding that they were “uncalled-for” given the good relations between the two nations.

“We maintain very warm and cordial relations with the US. They’ve got a mission in Maseru and we also have [one] in Washington,” foreign affairs spokesperson Kutloano Pheko told the BBC.

Mr Pheko was unable to confirm Trump’s comments on the funding that went to LGBTQ organisations, saying that as the money went directly to them, they would be best placed to comment.

Mr Mpotjoane, on his part, confirmed that the country had been affected by Trump’s sudden decision to pause aid funding to countries around the world.

Many organisations, mostly non-governmental, were thrown into chaos after the Trump administration announced a permanent end to the US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) funding as part of a wider cost-cutting drive to reduce US government spending.

Pepfar was launched in 2003 by then US President George W Bush and its finances are distributed via the US government’s main overseas aid agency USAID, whose funding has also been cut.

Lesotho is among those countries that benefited from Pepfar, its health ministry told South African publication GroundUp in February, with TB and HIV programmes among those receiving the critical funds.

But Mr Mpotjoane declined to criticise this decision, saying it was the US’s “prerogative to cut aid if they want to”.

Florida has launched a criminal investigation into British-American influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate, who flew to the state last week from Romania, where they faced rape and human-trafficking charges.

Florida’s attorney general, James Uthmeier, said investigators have issued search warrants and subpoenas as part of a “now-active” inquiry.

In the US, the brothers also face a civil suit from a woman alleging they coerced her into sex work, and then defamed her after she gave evidence to Romanian authorities. They strongly deny all the allegations against them.

A former kickboxer and self-described misogynist who appeared on UK TV show Big Brother, Andrew Tate has millions of followers online.

Andrew, 38, and his brother Tristan, 36, face separate charges in the UK of rape and human trafficking. They deny those allegations too.

Uthmeier, a Republican, said in Tuesday’s statement: “Last week, I directed my office to work with our law enforcement partners to conduct a preliminary inquiry into Andrew and Tristan Tate.

“Based on a thorough review of the evidence, I’ve directed the Office of Statewide Prosecution to execute search warrants and issue subpoenas in the now-active criminal investigation into the Tate brothers.”

The Tate brothers’ lawyer Joseph McBride released a statement later Tuesday on the investigation.

“Today, Attorney General James Uthmeier threw ethics law out of the window when he publicly took a side in an ongoing Florida lawsuit where Andrew and Tristan Tate are suing a Florida woman for orchestrating a sophisticated plot to use sex as a weapon to ruin their lives,” the statement read in part.

Mr McBride called the attorney general’s comments “inflammatory” and “biased”.

The Tates were first arrested in Romania in December 2022, with Andrew accused of rape and human trafficking and Tristan suspected of human trafficking. They moved to Romania from the UK several years ago.

They both denied the charges and spent several months under house arrest. A year later, in August 2024, they faced new allegations including sex with a minor and trafficking underage persons, all of which they deny.

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The Tates are understood to be required to return to Bucharest at the end of March to satisfy prosecutors’ terms; however, it is too early to say whether they will comply.

Police in the English county of Bedfordshire are still seeking Andrew’s extradition on separate and unrelated allegations of rape and human trafficking, as well as tax evasion.

In the UK, four British women have filed a civil case against Andrew Tate in the country’s High Court, alleging he raped and coercively controlled them, charges they also deny.

Those plaintiffs said it was clear he would not face criminal prosecution in Romania and appealed to UK authorities to take action.