US President Donald Trump has said he is finding it “more difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine” than Russia in attempts to broker peace between the two nations.

The US is “doing very well with Russia”, and “it may be easier dealing with” Moscow than Kyiv, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday.

Hours earlier, Trump had said he was “strongly considering” large-scale sanctions and tariffs on Russia until a ceasefire with Ukraine was reached.

Meanwhile, the US has temporarily suspended Ukraine’s access to some satellite imagery, space technology company Maxar told BBC Verify, after Trump had already paused military aid to the country.

It comes exactly one week after an extraordinary White House exchange, in which Trump berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for being “disrespectful” to the US.

That public dressing-down was followed this week by Trump pausing all US military aid and intelligence-sharing with Kyiv.

Russia then conducted a large-scale missile and drone attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure on Thursday night.

Trump’s threat of further sanctions on the already heavily sanctioned Russia was apparently in response to this attack. He said he was considering new tariffs because “Russia is absolutely ‘pounding’ Ukraine on the battlefield right now”.

But within hours, Trump said Russian President Vladimir Putin was acting as anyone else would.

“I think he’s hitting them [Ukraine] harder than he’s been hitting them,” Trump said. “And I think probably anyone in that position would be doing that right now.”

He added that he believes Putin wants to end the war but he cannot say the same of Ukraine.

“I want to know they [Ukraine] want to settle and I don’t know they want to settle,” Trump said, when asked why he had cut off aid to Kyiv.

Trump’s direct diplomacy with Putin stunned Nato allies, because the West has shunned contacts with Moscow since Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Despite Trump’s row with Zelensky, the tone from his foreign policy team in the last two days has sounded more conciliatory towards Ukraine, after its arm-wrenching in the form of cutting off military and intelligence support.

The Americans want Zelensky to sign a deal that would give them a major stake in Ukrainian minerals, and for him to agree to a quick truce with Moscow.

Zelensky has been pushing for firm security guarantees for Kyiv, to be agreed as part of the deal. Speaking on Friday, Trump said such a security guarantee could be discussed later and would be the “easy part”.

Meanwhile, space technology company Maxar told BBC Verify on Friday that the US had temporarily suspended Ukrainian access to some high quality imagery from US satellites.

Satellite imagery is an important tool during a war as it allows armies to gather intelligence on their rivals.

Maxar, a US-based company, has contracts to provide satellite imagery to various governments and companies.

One of those is the Global Enhanced GEOINT Deliver (GEGD) program, which gives users access to high quality imagery collected by the US government.

“The US government has decided to temporarily suspend Ukrainian accounts in GEGD,” Maxar told the BBC. “Each customer makes their own decisions on how they use and share that data.”

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, part of the US Department of Defense, confirmed the suspension was “in accordance with the administration’s directive on support to Ukraine”.

Next week, Trump’s senior officials will travel to Saudi Arabia to meet Zelensky’s team amid growing pressure for him to sign up to Trump’s demands.

Ukraine’s president has said he hopes the talks will be “meaningful”. On Friday, he said his country was “ready for peace as soon as possible” and had proposed “concrete steps” to achieve it.

“Every day, new Russian strikes and reality itself prove that it is Russia that must be forced to peace,” he added.

Zelensky has expressed regret in the days since his public clash with Trump and worked to mend relations with the US.

On Thursday, US special envoy Steve Witkoff said Trump had received a letter from Zelensky that included an “apology” and “sense of gratitude”.

“Hopefully, we get things back on track with the Ukrainians, and everything resumes,” Witkoff said.

UK officials have said around 20 countries are interested in joining a “coalition of the willing” to help Ukraine, as European leaders forge ahead with plans for much bigger military expenditure.

Fighting on the ground in Ukraine continued on Friday, with five people killed by Russian troops the Donetsk region, according to local authorities.

Oscar-winning actor Gene Hackman died of natural causes about a week after his wife Betsy Arakawa, who died after contracting a rare virus, a New Mexico medical investigator has said.

Hackman, 95, died at his Santa Fe home from coronary artery disease, with advanced Alzheimer’s disease a contributing factor.

Ms Arakawa, 65, died in the same house from hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS), a respiratory illness caused by exposure to infected rodents. Her cause of death was listed as natural.

Authorities believe she passed away about seven days before her husband, to whom she had been married for more than 30 years. During his career, Hackman won two Academy Awards for The French Connection and Unforgiven.

It is likely that Ms Arakawa died first on 11 February, Dr Heather Jarrell of the New Mexico Medical Investigator’s Office told a news conference on Friday.

She said it was “reasonable to conclude” that Hackman had died on 18 February.

Ms Arakawa’s last known movements and correspondence were on 11 February, when she was seen going to a grocery store, a CVS pharmacy and a pet store, before returning home in the early evening.

Given that Hackman was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease it is “quite possible that he was not aware that she [his wife] was deceased”, said Dr Jarrell.

She told reporters she was “not aware of his normal daily functioning capability”.

Hackman had “significant heart disease, and ultimately that’s what resulted in his death”, Dr Jarrell said, adding that he had had chronic high blood pressure.

He had not eaten anything recently, but had shown no indications of dehydration, she added.

At the news conference, New Mexico Public Health Veterinarian Erin Phipps emphasised that hantavirus infections were extremely rare.

HPS is transmitted through contact with rodent droppings, urine or saliva, often when contaminated dust is inhaled.

She noted that 136 cases had been reported in the state over the past 50 years, with 42% resulting in fatalities.

Dr Phipps said evidence of rodent activity had been found in some buildings on the property, though the risk inside the main house was considered “low”.

Investigators are trying to determine how Ms Arakawa contracted the illness. Hackman tested negative for hantavirus.

The couple were found in their home after neighbourhood security conducted a welfare check and saw their bodies on the ground through the window.

The remains were discovered in advanced stages of decomposition.

Hackman’s body was in a sideroom next to the kitchen, with a walking cane and a pair of sunglasses nearby, according to a search warrant affidavit.

Ms Arakawa’s body was in the bathroom, with scattered pills close to her.

Sheriff’s deputies found medication for thyroid and blood pressure treatment, along with pain reliever Tylenol, according to a court-filed inventory.

Citing privacy laws, authorities did not disclose who had been prescribed the drugs.

One of the couple’s three dogs was also found dead inside a crate near Ms Arakawa, while the other two dogs were alive.

The cause of death for the dog is yet to be determined, officials say. Dr Phipps told reporters that dogs did not get sick from hantavirus.

Initial investigations found no signs of forced entry or foul play at the couple’s $3.8m (£3m) home. Tests for carbon monoxide poisoning were negative, and no significant gas leaks were detected.

Hackman is survived by three adult children from his previous marriage.

Hackman met Ms Arakawa when she was working part-time at a California gym in the mid-1980s, the New York Times has previously reported.

He won best actor Oscar for his role as Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle in William Friedkin’s 1971 thriller The French Connection, and another for best supporting actor for playing Little Bill Daggett in Clint Eastwood’s Western film Unforgiven in 1992.

A relative latecomer to Hollywood, Hackman saw his breakthrough come in his thirties, when he was nominated for an Oscar for portraying Buck Barrow in 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde – opposite Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway – and again for I Never Sang for My Father in 1970.

Both films saw him recognised in the supporting actor category. He was also nominated for best leading actor in 1988 for playing an FBI agent in Mississippi Burning.

He played more than 100 roles during his career, including supervillain Lex Luthor in the Christopher Reeve-starring Superman movies in the 1970s and 1980s.

Hackman featured opposite many other Hollywood heavyweights including Al Pacino in 1973’s Scarecrow and Gene Wilder in 1974’s Young Frankenstein.

His last big-screen appearance came as Monroe Cole in Welcome to Mooseport in 2004, after which he stepped back from Hollywood for a quieter life in New Mexico.

As dawn approached on the morning of 7 October 2023, many of the partygoers at the Nova music festival near Gaza’s border took illegal recreational drugs like MDMA or LSD.

Hundreds of them were high when, shortly after sunrise, Hamas gunmen attacked the site.

Now neuroscientists working with survivors from the festival say there are early signs that MDMA – also known as ecstasy or molly – may have provided some psychological protection against trauma.

The preliminary results, currently being peer-reviewed with a view to publication in the coming months, suggest that the drug is associated with more positive mental states – both during the event and in the months afterwards.

The study, carried out by scientists at Israel’s Haifa University, could contribute to a growing scientific interest in how MDMA might be used to treat psychological trauma.

It is thought to be the first time scientists have been able to study a mass trauma event where large numbers of people were under the influence of mind-altering drugs.

Hamas gunmen killed 360 people and kidnapped dozens more at the festival site where 3,500 people had been partying.

“We had people hiding under the bodies of their friends for hours while on LSD or MDMA,” said Prof Roy Salomon, one of those leading the research.

“There’s talk that a lot of these substances create plasticity in the brain, so the brain is more open to change. But what happens if you endure this plasticity in such a terrible situation – is it going to be worse, or better?”

The research tracked the psychological responses of more than 650 survivors from the festival. Two-thirds of these were under the influence of recreational drugs including MDMA, LSD, marijuana or psilocybin – the compound found in hallucinogenic mushrooms – before the attacks took place.

“MDMA, and especially MDMA that was not mixed with anything else, was the most protective,” the study has found, according to Prof Salomon.

He said those on MDMA during the attack appeared to cope much better mentally in the first five months afterwards, when a lot of processing takes place.

“They were sleeping better, had less mental distress – they were doing better than people who didn’t take any substance,” he said.

The team believes pro-social hormones triggered by the drug – such as oxytocin, which helps promote bonding – helped reduce fear and boost feelings of camaraderie between those fleeing the attack.

And even more importantly, they say, it appears to have left survivors more open to receiving love and support from their families and friends once they were home.

Clearly, the research is limited only to those who survived the attacks, making it hard to determine with any certainty whether specific drugs helped or hindered victims’ chances of escape.

But researchers found that many survivors, like Michal Ohana, firmly believe it did play a role – and say that belief, in itself, may help them to recover from the event.

“I feel like it saved my life, because I was so high, like I’m not in the real world,” she told me. “Because regular humans can’t see all these things – it’s not normal.”

Without the drug, she believes she would have just frozen or collapsed to the floor, and been killed or captured by the gunmen.

Clinicians in various countries have already experimented with MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in a trial setting – though only Australia has approved it as a treatment.

Countries that have rejected it include the US, where the Food and Drug Administration cited concerns about the design of the studies, that the treatment may not offer long-lasting benefits, and about the potential risk for heart problems, injury and abuse.

MDMA is classified as a Class A drug in the UK, and has been linked to liver, kidney and heart problems.

In Israel, where MDMA is also illegal, psychologists can only use it to treat clients on an experimental research basis.

The preliminary findings from the Nova study are being closely followed by some of those Israeli clinicians experimenting with MDMA as treatment for PTSD after 7 October.

Dr Anna Harwood-Gross, a clinical psychologist and director of research at Israel’s Metiv Psychotrauma Centre, described the initial findings as “really important” for therapists like her.

She is currently experimenting with using MDMA to treat PTSD within the Israeli military, and had worried about the ethics of inducing a vulnerable psychological state in clients when there is a war going on.

“At the beginning of the war, we questioned whether we were able to do this,” she said. “Can we give people MDMA when there’s a risk of an air raid siren? That’s going to re-traumatise them potentially. This study has shown us that even if there’s a traumatic event during therapy, the MDMA might also help process that trauma.”

Dr Harwood-Gross says early indications of therapeutic MDMA use are encouraging, even among military veterans with chronic PTSD.

It has also upended old assumptions about the “rules” of therapy – especially the length of sessions, which have to be adjusted when working with clients under the influence of MDMA, she says.

“For example, it’s changed our thoughts about 50-minute therapy sessions, with one patient and one therapist,” Dr Harwood-Gross told me. “Having two therapists, and long sessions – up to eight hours long – is a new way of doing therapy. They’re looking at people very holistically and giving them time.”

She says this new longer format is showing promising results, even without patients taking MDMA, with a success rate of 40% in the placebo group.

Israeli society itself has also changed its approach to trauma and therapy following the 7 October attacks, according to Danny Brom, a founding director of the METIV Psychotrauma Centre at Herzog Hospital in Jerusalem, and a senior figure in the industry.

“It’s as if this is the first trauma we’re going through,” he said. “I’ve seen wars here, I’ve seen lots of terrorist attacks and people said, ‘We don’t see trauma here’.

“Suddenly, there seems to be a general opinion that now everyone is traumatised, and everyone needs treatment. It’s a wrong approach.”

What broke, he said, is the sense of security many Jews believed Israel would provide them. These attacks uncovered a collective trauma, he says, linked to the Holocaust and generations of persecution.

“Our history is full of massacres,” psychologist Vered Atzmon Meshulam told me. “As a psychologist now in Israel, we are faced with an opportunity to work with lots of traumas that weren’t previously being treated, like all our narratives for 2,000 years.”

Collective trauma, combat trauma, mind-altering drugs, sexual assault, hostages, survivors, body-collectors, the injured and the bereaved – Israel’s trauma specialists are facing a complex cocktail of issues from the clients now flooding into therapy.

The scale of that mental health challenge is mirrored in Gaza, where vast numbers of people have been killed, injured or left homeless after a devastating 15-month war – and where there are scant resources to help a deeply traumatised population.

The war in Gaza, triggered by the Hamas attacks on Israeli communities in October 2023, was suspended in January in a six-week truce, during which Israeli hostages held by Hamas were exchanged for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

But there is little sense on either side that the peace and security needed to begin healing has arrived.

The truce expired last weekend, with 59 Israeli hostages still in Hamas captivity. Many Gazans are waiting, with their bags packed, for war to resume.

Meanwhile Nova survivor Michal Ohana says she feels that with the passage of time, some are expecting her to have moved on from the attacks, but she is still affected.

“I wake up with this, and I go to sleep with this, and people don’t understand,” she told me.

“We live this every day. I feel the country supported us in the first months, but now after one year, they feel: ‘OK, you need to go back to work, back to life.’ But we can’t.”

A South Carolina man convicted of bludgeoning his ex-girlfriend’s parents to death has become the first US death row inmate to be executed by firing squad in the last 15 years.

Brad Sigmon was shot to death just after 18:00 local time (23:00 GMT) on Friday by three state corrections department volunteers firing rifles at his chest with specially designed bullets.

Sigmon, 67, was convicted of murdering David and Gladys Larke with a baseball bat in 2001 before kidnapping his ex-girlfriend at gunpoint. She managed to escape as he shot at her.

He had requested death by firing squad over the other two state-approved methods of execution: electric chair and lethal injection.

Chrysti Shain, of the South Carolina Department of Corrections, said Sigmon was pronounced dead by a doctor at 18:08.

Three members of the Larke family were present to witness his death, she said, as well as Sigmon’s spiritual adviser.

Sigmon was strapped to a chair, which had a basin underneath to catch blood, witnesses said.

He told witnesses he wanted his final statement “to be one of love and a calling to my fellow Christians to help us end the death penalty”.

“An eye for an eye was used as justification to the jury for seeking the death penalty,” he added.

“At that time, I was too ignorant to know how wrong that was. Why? Because we no longer live under the Old Testament law but now live under the New Testament.”

After his final statement, a hood was placed over his head.

A curtain that concealed three volunteers opened at 18:01. At 18:05, the trio fired from 15ft (4.6m) away without any countdown.

Jeffrey Collins, a reporter for the Associated Press news agency, said at a news conference that Sigmon had a red bullseye target placed over his heart.

When he was shot, his chest rose and fell several times, the reporter added.

A doctor performed an exam that took about 90 seconds, before declaring him dead.

The .308 Winchester Tap Urban bullets used are designed to break apart on impact and cause maximum damage. Medical experts have debated the amount of pain they may cause.

Anna Dobbins, a reporter for WHFF-TV, added that Sigmon had worn a black jump suit but his bare arms had “flexed” when he was shot.

“I did see a splash of blood when the bullets entered his body,” she told the news conference.

All the shots were fired simultaneously, she said, and witnesses were unable to see the guns.

Prison guards also offered witnesses ear plugs to protect their ears from the sound of the shots, added a reporter for the Post and Courier newspaper.

Counselling services are being offered to any prison staff who were traumatised by the execution, said Ms Shain.

Sigmon’s lawyer, Bo King, had been hoping for a last-minute stay of execution by the South Carolina governor and accused the state of withholding information about the lethal injection process.

“Brad only wanted assurances that these drugs were not expired, or diluted, or spoiled—what any of us would want to know about the medication we take, or the food we eat, much less the means of our death,” he said in a statement after his death.

“It is unfathomable that, in 2025, South Carolina would execute one of its citizens in this bloody spectacle.”

King said his client had been suffering from mental illness, and that the friendships he formed in prison were proof he had been rehabilitated.

“Brad is someone who, for his last meal, asked to get three buckets of original recipe Kentucky Fried Chicken so he could share with the guys that he’s incarcerated with on death row,” he told a WYFF-TV earlier on Friday.

“With his last meal, he wanted to share something special with them,” he said, later telling reporters that the request to share had been denied.

Officials later confirmed his last meal as four pieces of fried chicken, green beans, mashed potatoes with gravy, biscuits, cheesecake and sweet tea. The meal was served on Wednesday evening.

Since 1977 only three people had died by firing squad, all three of them in the state of Utah. The last to die had been Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010.

Ahead of Sigmon’s execution, anti-death penalty protesters held a rally outside the jail in the city of Columbia.

They held signs saying “all life is precious” and “thou shalt not kill”.

The state allows witnesses to observe the death from behind bulletproof glass, but the executioners are hidden from view to protect their identities.

South Carolina passed a law in 2023 requiring that the identities of the execution team members remain secret.

Syrian security forces are alleged to have executed dozens of people belonging to the Alawite minority in the coastal province of Latakia, according to a war monitoring group.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said 162 civilians have been killed in “field executions” in the region – a heartland of deposed president Bashir al-Assad, who also belongs to the Alawite sect.

An interior ministry source told the country’s official news agency Sana that “individual violations” had occurred on the coast and pledged to put a stop to them.

BBC News has not been able to verify claims that the killings were committed by the forces of Syria’s new rulers.

The total killed includes 13 women and five children, the SOHR told the AFP news agency.

Syria’s new rulers, who ousted Assad in December, said a military operation is now being launched in the former president’s home town of Qardaha.

In his first statement since the violence broke out, the country’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa said Syria would pursue the “remnants” of the ousted Assad regime and bring them to trial, Reuters reports.

This follows clashes between government forces and fighters loyal to Assad, which left more than 70 dead.

A curfew has been imposed in the cities of Homs, Latakia and Tartous, where the fighting has broken out, and the governor of Latakia has said all power to the province has been cut.

Earlier, BBC Verify confirmed two videos that showed a body being dragged behind a car in Latakia.

The violence has left the Alawite community in “a state of horror”, a Syrian activist in the city told BBC Newshour.

“They are feeling so fearful. They are in a state of shock,” said the activist, who did not want to use his name for fear of reprisals.

“They don’t know what to do. There is no government or state who is ready to help them, to protect them, ” he added.

The United Nation’s special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, said in a statement he was “deeply concerned” by reports of the clashes and killings.

He called on all parties to “refrain from actions that could further inflame tensions, escalate conflict, exacerbate the suffering of affected communities, destabilize Syria, and jeopardize a credible and inclusive political transition.”

The region is the heartland of the Alawite minority and a stronghold of the Assad family, which belongs to the sect.

Estimations of the number of people killed in the violence vary, and the BBC has been unable to independently verify them.

Residents say they have been targets of sectarian violence, with one Alawite woman telling BBC Arabic that many Syrians are “scared” regardless of if they were on the coast or in the capital.

She added that “everyone is terrified from the current incitement”, and fears they will become “scapegoats”.

Turkey and Russia have warned that the bloodshed, the worst since the toppling of Assad in December, threatens the stability of the entire region. Germany has urged Syria to avoid a “spiral of violence” after the clashes.

Alawites, whose sect is an offshoot of Shia Islam, make up around 10% of Syria’s population, which is majority Sunni.

A new Bollywood film – Mrs – has once again laid bare a stark reality: even in well-educated households in India a woman’s role is often confined to unpaid domestic work.

The protagonist, married to a gynaecologist, finds herself trapped in an endless cycle of cooking, cleaning and caregiving. Her dreams are sidelined not by force, but by relentless criticism and quiet coercion.

While the film, which is a remake of the hit Malayalam movie The Great Indian Kitchen, has sparked conversation – and pushback, especially from men on social media – its themes resonate with hard data.

A recent government survey reveals that Indian women spend over seven hours a day on unpaid domestic and caregiving work – more than twice the time men do. Data shows that women spend 289 minutes on unpaid domestic work and 137 minutes on unpaid caregiving, whereas men spend 88 minutes on chores and 75 minutes on care work.

They also spent less time than men doing paid work and engaging in self-care activities.

What’s disappointing is that the last such survey which came out six years ago had similar results. Despite the government launching campaigns to empower women, the situation hasn’t changed much.

India’s Time Use Surveys (TUS) track how people spend their time across various activities. Surveyors gather data nationwide by asking individuals aged six to 59 how they spent the previous day. The first TUS was released in 2019, with the second published last week.

When the government released findings from the second Time Use Survey (TUS), it highlighted two key shifts: women aged 15 to 59 spent 10 minutes less on unpaid domestic work, while their participation in employment and related activities rose by just over three percentage points.

The survey concluded this marked a “shift from unpaid to paid activities” for women – a positive sign that they were spending less time on domestic chores and more time in paid employment.

However, economists argue this isn’t necessarily true. Even if it is, the slight drop in domestic work suggests women are still juggling paid jobs with a heavier load of unpaid work than men.

Ashwini Deshpande, an economics professor at Ashoka University, says TUS data should be analysed alongside India’s Female Labour Force Participation Rate (FLFPR) for a deeper understanding of how women spend their time. FLFPR measures the percentage of women aged 15 and above in the labour force.

According to government data, the FLFPR grew from about 23% in 2017-2018 to 37% in 2022-2023. Prof Deshpande says that this increase is not solely due to an increase in employment opportunities for women, but has also been spurred by economic distress.

“Women are not waiting for their time spent on domestic chores to reduce to take up jobs. Research shows that women want to work to supplement household incomes and so they end up working ‘double-shifts’, doing paid work outside the home and unpaid work inside,” Prof Deshpande says.

• Coronavirus: How India’s lockdown sparked a debate over maids
• Coronavirus in India: Did men do more housework during lockdown?

Indian women aren’t alone in shouldering a disproportionate share of household and caregiving work – it’s a global reality. However, the gap in time spent on domestic work is significantly wider in India.

Where globally women spend about 2.8 hours more than men on domestic and care work, for Indian women, this difference is closer to four hours.

Sociologists attribute this to India’s deeply patriarchal society, which continues to enforce strict gender norms. Even among the educated elite, women remain confined by roles upheld and perpetuated not just by men, but also by women.

This rigid enforcement of gender roles doesn’t just shape women’s lives – it also shapes the way stories about them are received.

So, while Mrs struck a chord with many, it also faced sharp criticism – especially from men on social media.

A men’s rights group accused it of “spreading toxicity” against traditional joint families, while others dismissed its premise altogether.

Kajol Srinivasan, a Mumbai-based comedian, says the film ruffled feathers because it held up an uncomfortable mirror to society.

She told the BBC how her father, who quit his job at 40 to take over household duties while her mother continued working, quickly realised that housework was no easy task.

“The first week he was excited; he cooked different dishes and deep-cleaned the house,” she says.

• The Great Indian Kitchen: Serving an unsavoury tale of sexism in home
• Coronavirus in India: ‘PM Modi, please make men share housework!’

But then he began to find the work tedious and couldn’t continue beyond a week.

“My father realised that housework was not just about work, it was also an imbalance in power. The power always stays with the breadwinner; no matter how well you cook, there are no accolades,” she says.

She believes that women are expected and raised to accept this lower rung of power.

“When Indian men talk about what they like about their wives and mothers, it often has a lot to do with how much they have sacrificed for them or how much they take care of them or the home,” Ms Srinivasan says.

India’s Time Use Survey shows that social change is slow, and it may take time before women spend less on domestic work.

In the meantime, films like Mrs spark conversations around everyday questions many prefer to avoid – like, who’s doing the dishes?

After years of wrangling with authorities, students in Thailand can now let their hair down. Literally.

On Wednesday, Thailand’s Supreme Administrative Court annulled a 50-year-old directive by the education ministry, which had previously set out rules on hairstyles for school students: short hair for boys and ear-length bobs for girls.

In practice, hairstyle rules have been gradually relaxed across many schools. But some still used the 1975 junta-issued directive as a guideline, and would cut the hair of students who didn’t adhere.

The 1975 directive violated individual freedoms protected by the constitution and was out of touch with today’s society, the court said.

The court decision this week came in response to a petition, filed by 23 public school students in 2020, which argued that the 1975 directive was unconstitutional.

Student activists have long campaigned for hairstyle rules to be relaxed, saying it infringes on their human dignity and personal freedom over their bodies.

One of them is Panthin Adulthananusak, who recently graduated from university.

“In the eyes of kids like us back then… even though it seemed impossible, we wanted to do something,” he told the BBC. “If no student in Thai history rose up to challenge the power of the adults that suppressed us, it would be a lifelong embarrassment.”

In response to such campaigns, the education ministry in 2020 allowed students to have longer hairstyles – but there remained some restrictions. Boys’ hair could not cover the nape of their necks, while girls with long hair had to tie it up.

Those regulations were revoked in 2023, with then education minister Trinuch Thienthong announcing that students, parents and school authorities should negotiate their own common ground on what is acceptable for hairstyles in their schools.

But through all these changes, some schools continued to follow the standard laid out in the original 1975 directive.

Schools have traditionally associated short hair with discipline and tidiness – an argument that has been repeated by many social media users this week. But in recent years reports of schools banning bangs or dyed hair have sparked public outcry across Thailand.

In some parts of the country, teachers are known to shoddily cut students’ hair during morning assembly to punish them for flouting hairstyle rules. Such practices have continued even as education authorities warned teachers against it.

In January, the Ministry of Education reiterated that it had repealed restrictions on hair length for all students, saying it recognised the “importance of promoting diversity and fairness in all aspects of education”.

Wednesday’s court decision, which also says that schools’ hairstyle rules should consider the freedom and dignity of students, reaffirms the official push to leave hair choices up to students themselves.

But Panthin said the revoking of the decades-old directive “still leaves a hole for schools to set their own rules”. In cases where schools have more conservative management, he suggested, restrictions could remain in place.

Nonetheless, Panthin said he “felt glad that what I had seen and fought all along was acknowledged and there was a tangible progress”.

“I hope this court’s ruling will set a new standard for the understanding about basic human rights at the school.”

Han Dong-Hoon was driving home from dinner in Seoul on December 3, scanning the radio, when he heard a breaking news update: President Yoon Suk-Yeol was preparing to deliver an emergency address.

Han, then the leader of Yoon’s People Power Party (PPP), was widely seen as one of the presiden’t closest allies. Yet that was Han’s first hint that Yoon was about to do something unprecedented.

By midnight, the president had plunged the country into a political maelstrom, declaring martial law as part of a self-proclaimed bid to eliminate “anti-state forces” and North Korea sympathisers.

“When I first heard the news of martial law, I thought, ‘We must stop it, because if it isn’t lifted that very night, a bloodbath might occur,'” Han tells BBC Korean.

“The fear and terror that South Korea’s decades-long, hard-won achievements might suddenly collapse were overwhelming.”

Soon after Yoon’s announcement, the opposition’s Democratic Party leader hosted a live stream urging people to assemble in protest outside the National Assembly building in central Seoul.

Thousands responded, clashing with police and blocking military units as opposition lawmakers rushed into the assembly building, clambering over fences and walls in a desperate attempt to block Yoon’s order.

Han was among them.

The late-night martial law edict seemed to have come from nowhere. It was, and remains, unclear who in Yoon’s party supported or even knew of the move before it was made. But in the hours that followed, Han would help lead a successful attempt to overturn Yoon’s order and have the declaration lifted.

Weeks later, he would also play a key role in impeaching the disgraced president – a move that would see him branded a “traitor” by mainstream members of the PPP, and ultimately lead to his resignation as party leader.

Han says he has “no regrets” about overturning Yoon’s martial law attempt, insisting that he’d “choose the same again”.

But in many people’s eyes, his subsequent decision to impeach the very president he’d helped get elected was a surprising heel turn for someone formerly viewed as Yoon’s right-hand man.

“We have experienced so much together over many years,” Han says of his relationship with Yoon.

“I find the current situation extremely painful and regretful. Both the president and I worked in good faith for the betterment of our country – yet I must say that I deeply regret how things have turned out.”

For years, Han and Yoon were inseparable allies. Having both attended Seoul National University, the two forged a close bond as prosecutors while jointly investigating corruption in the country’s halls of power.

Han gained political prominence when Yoon was narrowly elected president in May 2022, after beating his opponent by less than 1% of the vote.

Han was made Minister of Justice and later entrusted with the key role of Emergency Countermeasures Committee Chairman for the PPP, becoming the leader of the ruling party at the age of 50.

Yoon’s time in office was beleaguered by scandals and political failures – not least of all his landslide loss to the opposition Democratic Party last April.

The result of those parliamentary elections was widely seen as a vote of no confidence against Yoon, and rendered him a lame-duck president.

For most of Yoon’s administration, the PPP’s conservative base was enthusiastic about Han. The lawyer-turned-politician had quickly emerged as a likely party candidate for the next presidential election, originally scheduled for 2027.

Now, as the increasing likelihood of a 2025 election looms amid the fallout of Yoon’s ill-fated martial law attempt, Han’s reputation is largely defined by the way he acted during and after that fateful night.

While some still see him as a fresh and promising political figure, many view him as having betrayed the very president who had furthered his career.

In the weeks following Yoon’s abortive martial law order, the embattled president curried favour among PPP hardliners by refusing to cede political ground.

While he apologised for the events of December 3, he refused to resign, instead holing up in his official residence in defiance of calls for his impeachment.

He rallied his base and defended his decision by playing on unsubstantiated fears that the country was in danger.

It was these staunch Yoon loyalists who would come to turn against Han.

Despite having rejected Yoon’s martial law declaration on December 3, Han initially opposed the impeachment motion put forth against the president by South Korea’s political opposition – siding with almost every other PPP member in boycotting the first vote on December 7.

Days later, Han changed course. This was after allegations had emerged that during the martial law attempt Yoon had ordered key political figures – including Han – to be arrested. In allegiance with his close political aides, Han threw his full support behind a second and ultimately successful impeachment attempt, ousting Yoon as president.

“I wanted nothing more than for this government to succeed,” Han tells the BBC, reflecting on the storm of condemnation that then followed from within his own party ranks.

“I initially sought an orderly early resignation plan for the president – a plan I earnestly pursued, but which ultimately failed,” he adds.

“I am deeply pained by the outcome and empathise with those who remain unconvinced and heartbroken. Nonetheless, I believe it was a necessary decision for South Korea’s continued progress and development.”

Yoon has been suspended from his presidential duties and is currently under investigation on insurrection charges. Han, meanwhile, stepped down as PPP leader in mid-December, maintaining that although Yoon’s impeachment was painful, he did not regret his decision.

In the two months that followed, Han says he took some time to “quietly reflect” on whether he could have done more during such a turbulent period for South Korea.

“And I wrote a book,” he adds: a memoir, titled “The People Come First”, which chronicles the two weeks following Yoon’s martial law declaration.

It’s no surprise the book has become a bestseller: after all, it claims to be a first-hand account of events that have already gone down as some of the most dramatic in South Korea’s political history. It hit shelves on 26 February, one day after the Constitutional Court held its final hearing on Yoon’s impeachment trial.

It also hints at Han’s future ambitions. Publishing a memoir is seen as a common first step in launching a political campaign in South Korea, and some believe “The People Come First” underscores Han’s hopes to run as the PPP’s presidential candidate, if the court impeaches Yoon and triggers a snap election.

Within the book’s 384 pages, Han also discusses the need for constitutional reform and suggests that if he were to become president, he would change South Korea’s five-year presidential term to four years.

Should he choose to run, the memoir serves to remind South Koreans where he stands on crucial issues – and that he is no longer an ally of a disgraced president.

As it stands, the odds look stacked against him. A recent poll found that Han’s approval rating to become the next president sat at 6% – a fraction of the 22% rating he scored in January 2024. The decline of his political fortunes is compounded by the critics within the PPP, who accuse him of failing to protect both his former party and the president.

But Han plays down the suggestion that his memoir is intended as a political tool.

“I have published a book in which I truthfully express what I experienced and thought during these events,” he tells the BBC. “I am not returning with any specific political manoeuvre, but simply to share that message with you all.”

Another message Han seems eager to share is one of contrition towards the people of South Korea. He doesn’t regret voting to impeach his president and former ally, he insists, but he does regret this.

“Yoon did impose martial law, and I believe that was a wrong act – one that does not align with the principles of liberal democracy,” he says. “As the leader of the ruling party that put that president in office, I want to express my deepest apologies to the people.”

“I am truly sorry that our actions, and the reactions we displayed, hurt the people. I think we must overcome and resolve this crisis.”

It may have been drowned out this week as US President Donald Trump walked back tariffs on his closest neighbours – and biggest trading partners – almost as soon as they were in place.

But despite the dizzying back-and-forth with Canada and Mexico, the White House made clear that it is serious about its economic vision. And it is willing to pay the price of some short-term economic harm to pursue it.

“There’ll be a little disturbance,” Trump warned in his address to Congress on Tuesday. “But we’re okay with that.”

Some scepticism about that comfort might be understandable, given the abrupt policy turns on tariffs Trump has made, as financial markets dropped and the outcry from US businesses intensified.

Those who see Trump’s tariff threats as economic bluster might be tempted to conclude that he wants to talk tough, but flinches at the first signs of economic damage.

But that view is to some extent undermined by the trade war against China he started in his first term which has seriously intensified.

In just a few weeks, Trump has raised taxes to at least 20% on all Chinese imports.

It means the average effective tariff rate on imports from China now stands at roughly 34%, because taxes on some sectors – like electric vehicles and steel – stand at much higher rates.

The 25% tariff on Mexican and Canadian goods hasn’t completely gone away either. The levy still stands on goods that aren’t compliant with a trade deal that Trump negotiated in his first term – and so some goods coming from both neighbours will still be subject to it.

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The White House also says its much-touted reciprocal tariffs targeting nearly all US trade partners are still in the pipeline. The details, they say, will be unveiled on 2 April, with rates tailor-made to address whatever policies other countries impose that officials consider unfair – whether in the form of taxes on US tech firms, Value-Added Taxes, or other import rules.

“It’s a certainty – reciprocal tariffs are coming,” Trump’s senior adviser on trade and manufacturing Peter Navarro told business broadcaster CNBC on Friday.

He said the White House had seen signs that its threats alone were prompting car companies to start taking action and bolster their supply chains in the US – exactly the kind of investment that Donald Trump says his tariffs will spur.

“They’re getting the picture,” Navarro said.

Navarro and others say the nitty-gritty of tariff rates is not their focus. Rather, they are using trade levies as a means to create a new version of America, where the country has a different relationship with its global partners.

That America has more local manufacturing, a smaller government and pays less for the military defence of its allies.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent – a former Wall Street hedge fund boss not known as a tariff hawk – this week pointed to political discussions in Germany about boosting its military spending as an “early, big win”.

“The international trading system consists of a web of relationships – military economic, political. One cannot take a single aspect in isolation,” he said, as he tried to sell the administration’s strategy to a tariff-sceptical audience at the Economic Club of New York.

“This is how President Trump sees the world – not as a zero-sum game but as inter-linkages that can be re-ordered to advance the interests of American people.”

For Trump, tariffs are a key tool for re-ordering that web. And the treasury secretary made clear that the likely short-term harm – higher prices – is an acceptable trade-off.

“Access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream,” Bessent said.

For now, polls indicate Trump’s voter base remains behind him. But how the next months unfold – and what happens in particular with consumer prices – could prove a real test of that message.

A tropical storm is expected to make landfall on Australia’s eastern coast on Saturday morning as tens of thousands of people have been evacuated and more than 230,000 households left without power.

Initially called Cyclone Alfred, the weather front was downgraded to a tropical low with winds set to reach up to 85km/h, less strong than first forecast.

The Bureau of Meteorology said the storm is currently sitting off Bribie Island and is moving slowly north, and expected to cross the mainland coast between the island and Maroochydore.

Authorities are still warning people to stay indoors, with fines for those who visit beaches, as heavy rain and flooding is still expected.

On Saturday morning, senior meteorologist Miriam Bradbury from the Bureau of Meteorology, said there is an ongoing risk of widespread severe weather, especially rainfall.

“Our 24-hour rainfall totals could easily exceed 200mm or more over the next couple of days as that system slows and moves inland,” she told ABC News Breakfast.

“The rain is still coming through in full force, and we’re still seeing widespread flash-flooding, widespread impacts, likely to continue through today and well into tomorrow as well,” she added.

The ex-tropical cyclone has already caused flooding which authorities fear could worsen over the weekend. New South Wales police said on Friday that one man was missing after his vehicle was swept into a fast-flowing river.

Four million people across Queensland and northern New South Wales are in the firing line of the storm.

But its slow progress, described by weather experts as “walking pace” and “erratic”, has raised concerns of flash and riverine flooding in low-lying areas.

Stephen Valentine and his wife, who live in Logan city south of Brisbane, have prepared some 30 litres of water, food for themselves and their pets, and set up “protected rooms” in their home situated away from windows.

“At the moment we are as prepared as we can be for something that none of us have been through… Nothing has come this far south across the south,” said Mr Valentine, who grew up in the city.

“We would get the edge of a cyclone ever so often, but not to this level,” he added.

While Queensland isn’t a stranger to cyclones – it’s the most disaster-prone state in Australia – it’s rare they come so far south.

“These are tough times, but Australians are tough people, and we are resilient people,” said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Thursday, echoing the Gold Coast’s acting Mayor Donna Gates, who has said Cyclone Alfred is a “scary proposition” for the region.

Nearly 1,000 schools have closed, public transport has been suspended and airports are shut. Flights aren’t expected to resume until Sunday at the earliest. Elective surgeries have also been cancelled.

The last time a cyclone hit was in 1974, when Wanda hit in January and then two months later, Zoe crossed the coast.

Flooding though, is more common. In February 2022, thousands of homes were damaged along much of Australia’s east after heavy rain.

Authorities have been keen to prepare communities ahead of Cyclone Alfred. The council opened sandbag depots across the region to help residents protect their homes.

“It’s surreal. We know it’s coming, but it’s very quiet,” said Anthony Singh, a resident of the Brisbane suburb of West End. He waited for four hours on Wednesday to pick up sandbags to protect his home.

Fellow resident Mark Clayton, helped to co-ordinate the sandbag collection, shovelling more than 140 tonnes of sand.

“I think people are a bit apprehensive,” he says. “Are the buildings going to stay up, are the roofs going to stay on? People expect a lot of trees to come down and to lose power for an extended period of time.”

With supermarkets now shut and people mostly sheltering at home, there’s a lot of uncertainty as Australians wait for the storm to hit.

But some die-hard surfers have thrown caution to the increasing wind.

“This is what we look forward to,” said surfer Jeff Weatherall as he waited for a jet ski to pick him up from Kirra beach and carry him into the big waves. “This is the fifth day straight – I’ve done nothing but eat, sleep, surf and do it again.”

Kirra beach is famous for its breakers and surfers have been busy this week seizing the strong winds.

“There are people that are going to lose their houses, but at the moment, you’re taking the good of it all. This is just crazy surf,” said surfer Donnie Neal.

Meanwhile Albanese have warned people to take the cyclone warnings seriously.

“This isn’t a time for sightseeing or for seeing what it’s like to experience these conditions firsthand,” he said.

“Please stay safe. Be sensible.”

Work is under way to make all men in Poland undergo military training, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said.

In a speech to the Polish parliament, Tusk said the government aimed to give full details in the coming months.

Efforts are being made to “prepare large-scale military training for every adult male in Poland,” he told the Sejm.

“We will try to have a model ready by the end of this year so that every adult male in Poland is trained in the event of war, so that this reserve is comparable and adequate to the potential threats.”

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Tusk said the Ukrainian army has 800,000 soldiers, whilst Russia has around 1.3 million and he wants to increase the size of the Polish army, including reservists, to 500,000 from around 200,000 now.

“We’re talking about the need to have an army of half a million in Poland, including the reservists,” he said.

“It seems if we organise things wisely, and I’m talking constantly with the Minister of Defence, we will have to use several courses of action. That means the reservists, but also intensive training to make those who do not go into the army fully-fledged and competent soldiers during a conflict,” he added.

Tusk said women may also undergo military training, but “war, is still to a greater extent the domain of men”.

The prime minister said his government was also “carefully examining” France’s proposal to include Europe under its nuclear umbrella.

“I would like to know first of all in detail what it means in terms of the authority over these weapons,” he said.

Tusk pointed out Ukraine was invaded after it got rid of its own nuclear arsenal, adding Warsaw would like to acquire its own nuclear weapons, however remote a possibility that may be.

“Today, it is clear that we would be safer if we had our own nuclear arsenal, that is beyond doubt. In any case the road to that would be very long and there would have to be a consensus too,” he said.

Poland is already planning to spend 4.7% of its economic output on defence this year, the highest proportion in the Nato alliance.

Tusk told parliament that spending should increase to 5% of GDP.

Earlier, President Duda proposed amending the constitution to make defence spending at a level of 4% of GDP compulsory

The prime minister also said he supports Poland withdrawing from the Ottawa convention that bans the use of antipersonnel landmines, and also possibly from the Dublin convention that bans the use of cluster munitions.

Poland has ramped up defence spending since Russia’s full-scale invasion of neighbouring Ukraine in 2022.

It has signed arms contracts worth around $20bn (£15.5bn) with the United States to buy 250 M1A2 Abrams battle tanks, 32 F-35 jets, 96 Apache helicopters, Javelin missiles, and artillery rocket systems.

Warsaw has also signed contracts with South Korea to purchase K2 tanks and FA-50 light combat aircraft.

There is growing anxiety among Poles about their future security following US President Donald Trump’s decision to suspend military supplies to Ukraine. Most Poles believe supporting Ukraine is in their own security interests.

Mirosław Kaznowski, the deputy mayor of Milanówek, a small town outside Warsaw, told BBC News this week that a friend of his has decided to invest in a start-up to build low-cost underground bomb shelters for businesses and homes.

His friend said interest was high, he added.

Subscribers to Joshuanette Francis’s YouTube channel – set up to document her journey after being diagnosed with osteoarthritis at just 24 – did not see the tears.

Neither were they privy to the days when she tackled the most acute personal struggles, alone behind closed doors.

After being told she could lose the ability to walk by age 40, Joshuanette was determined to embrace life, hiking every nature trail in her native Antigua and visiting each one of the Caribbean island’s touted 365 beaches while she still could.

Consistently upbeat and smiling in her videos and in public, her private tears were amplified when she lost her job as a restaurant supervisor – because of her condition, she says – followed by her mortgage and her dream of building her own home.

Six years on, the young mother’s sunny persona is the one she uses to fight her public battle: championing the rights of others living with a disability in a country where inequity is rife and crucial resources are in short supply.

She channels her energy into a pioneering non-profit she founded in 2023, Good Humans 268, which strives for a brighter future for people with physical challenges.

“Arthritis has changed my life so much, I can only imagine what it must be like for someone with a major disability,” Joshuanette tells the BBC.

Osteoarthritis, a degenerative joint disease that causes pain and stiffness, typically affects older people, but can strike at any age.

“I couldn’t believe it when I was diagnosed. My biggest fear was, what happens to life now?” Joshuanette says.

Good Humans’ far-reaching work ranges from pushing for the establishment of an equal rights tribunal to preside over purported discriminatory practices, to a recycling programme that in turn employs local residents with disabilities.

The latter has already been implemented in more than 80 local schools, diverting about a million bottles and cans from the national dump site. Eight people have been hired to sort and process, and sometimes repurpose, the waste.

Good Humans has also launched a nationwide educational programme to encourage more residents to recycle, something Kelisha Pigott was employed to assist with.

She says working with the organisation has been life-changing.

“There are a lot of people with disabilities out there who have no one to turn to. Joshuanette has moulded me to believe in myself more. It’s because of her that I took the chance to apply for university and got in,” Kelisha enthuses.

She hopes her online degree in tourism management will help her eventually merge her small travel company with Good Humans to create additional job opportunities.

“Change starts with us. I was amazed to see how much plastic we diverted from landfill in a short space of time; imagine if everyone did it,” she says.

There have been some smaller triumphs too. Like the case of the 10-year-old girl who for several years couldn’t use the toilet at school unassisted because of the lack of wheelchair-friendly facilities. That indignity went largely overlooked until Joshuanette took it on as a personal endeavour, leading to the creation of an accessible bathroom.

“We must shift the way we do things. People with disabilities must be able to do the same things everyone else can,” Joshuanette says passionately. “I’m so excited by what I know Good Humans can achieve.”

Plans include rolling out the recycling scheme to private households and ultimately creating a purpose-built centre to consolidate the group’s diverse work.

Still, she’s aware of the challenges ahead. Even a stroll around the capital, St John’s, is fraught with hazards for many with an impairment, thanks to omnipresent open gutters, crudely covered drains and cracked paving.

“Accessibility is a serious concern,” says Bernard Warner, head of the country’s disability association. “For a start, there’s a lack of access to assistive devices to help people live more meaningfully.”

Both Bernard’s group and Good Humans have been calling for legislation passed in 2017, which seeks to protect the rights of those with disabilities, to be enforced. An equal rights tribunal was a key part of the act, but has never been created.

“There’s a lot of discrimination; people are treated with indifference or turned away from employment opportunities,” Bernard says. “And due to poverty, most don’t have money to hire lawyers.”

Bernard lost his right leg when his motorbike was struck by a drunk driver in 1996. Despite a lengthy court case, which ruled in his favour, he has never received compensation.

“After years of torment, I now rally for a better society,” he explains. “We have to alter our mindset with how we view people with disabilities. We’ve been leaving them out for too long. Even now, I see high-rise buildings going up with no disability access,” he adds.

Kelly Hedges, principal of the Victory Centre for children with special needs, agrees. Her school currently has 27 students aged five to 18.

“The challenge is, when students leave us as young adults, where do they go? People are still wary about hiring people with special needs or disabilities. Unless they have personal connections or can go to work with a parent, they generally just stay home,” she says.

The Victory Centre is among the schools to have joined Good Humans’ recycling scheme.

“As Good Humans becomes bigger and needs more staff, hopefully our children can segue into positions there, become contributing members of society and live more independently,” Kelly adds.

Joshuanette believes that mental health should be a key focus of disability awareness. Despite her largely positive outlook, she admits depression struck again recently when she turned 30 and still could not afford her own home.

She continues to battle for compensation against the company she says fired her unfairly.

“Fighting is exhausting,” she says. “But change will only happen when more people talk about disability and demand change.”

In January, days after the first-month anniversary of the fall of the Assad regime in a lightning Islamist-led rebel offensive in Syria, a group of young men – some of them armed – were gathered, checking their phones in the nearly empty interior ministry headquarters in Damascus.

With Bashar al-Assad gone, they had arrived from Idlib, a region in the country’s north-west that for years was the only opposition-controlled province in the country.

Virtually overnight, they had been catapulted to positions once controlled by hand-picked Assad supporters and, led by Ahmad al-Sharaa, were in charge of a fractured country devastated by 13 years of civil war.

One of them, around 30 years old, had recently been appointed as a high-profile security official, and welcomed me to a room where any sign of the old regime had been removed. Tall and shy, the official made notes on his iPad while acknowledging that the new rulers faced enormous security challenges, including the threat coming from Assad loyalists.

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The dismantling of the decades-old apparatus behind the oppressive machine of the Assads, such as the country’s army and the ruling Baath party, meant the sacking of hundreds of thousands of people.

“There are Assad-affiliated people who haven’t engaged with the reconciliation process,” said the official, who requested anonymity to be able to discuss sensitive issues, citing the new authorities’ call for former members of the security forces to surrender their weapons and ties to the old government.

“Our eyes are on everyone, but we don’t want to give the impression that we’re after them. That’s why there haven’t been massive raids.”

Since then the violence has escalated, particularly in the coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartous, a stronghold of the Assad family, but clashes were relatively contained. Until Thursday.

As forces linked to the government carried out an operation in the countryside of Latakia province, targeting a former Assad official, they were ambushed by gunmen.

At least 13 members of the security forces were killed, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, in what a regional official described as a well-planned attack carried out by “remnants of the Assad militias”.

Initially limited to the Jableh area, the unrest spread more widely. Videos posted online showed heavy gunfire in different areas. The authorities sent reinforcements and, on Friday, further clashes killed more than 120 people, the Syrian Observatory said.

It marked the most violent day since Assad’s fall and the biggest challenge yet to interim President Sharaa’s transitional government and his efforts to consolidate authority.

According to the Institute for the Study of War, a research group, former Assad regime members are likely to form the most effective insurgent cells against Syria’s new rulers with the ability to coordinate attacks.

“[They] already have pre-existing networks that they can leverage to rapidly organize insurgent cells. These networks are military, intelligence, and political networks and criminal syndicates who were regime supporters and lost significant economic and political influence in the aftermath of Assad’s fall,” they said in a report.

Syria’s coastal areas are also the heartland of Assad’s Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shia Islam. Its members held prominent roles in the Assad government but, with the arrival of Sunni Muslim-led rebels, lost the power and privilege they once had. They now say they are under attack and discrimination, despite Sharaa’s pledges to respect different religious sects.

On Friday, activists said gunmen had killed dozens of male residents in Alawite areas, which will further exacerbate tensions – and possibly drive support for insurgents in their anti-government push. The Syrian Observatory said the gunmen were from the government’s security forces, although this has not been verified.

The authorities also faced resistance from the Druze forces in the south, although a deal was reached earlier this week

The government in Damascus does not control the whole of Syria, where different factions – supported by different countries – exercise power over different regions.

But for Sharaa, the challenge goes beyond the task of trying to keep the country safe.

As Western suspicions over his intentions continue, his authorities are also struggling to get crippling sanctions imposed on Syria under the former regime lifted, a vital move to revive the economy of a country where nine in every 10 people are in poverty.

US President Donald Trump has hit China with a second tariff in as many months, which means imports from there now face a levy of at least 20%.

This is his latest salvo against Beijing, which already faces steep US tariffs, from 100% on Chinese-made electric vehicles to 15% on clothes and shoes.

Trump’s tariffs strike at the heart of China’s manufacturing juggernaut – a web of factories, assembly lines and supply chains that manufacture and ship just about everything, from fast fashion and toys to solar panels and electric cars.

China’s trade surplus with the world rose to a record $1tn (£788bn) in 2024, on the back of strong exports ($3.5tn), which surpassed its import bill ($2.5tn).

It has long been the world’s factory – it has thrived because of cheap labour and state investment in infrastructure ever since it opened its economy to global business in the late 1970s.

So how badly could Trump’s trade war hurt China’s manufacturing success?

Tariffs are taxes charged on goods imported from other countries.

Most tariffs are set as a percentage of the value of the goods, and it’s generally the importer who pays them.

So, a 10% tariff means a product imported to the US from China worth $4 would face an additional $0.40 charge applied to it.

Increasing the price of imported goods is meant to encourage consumers to buy cheaper domestic products instead, thus helping to boost their own economy’s growth.

Trump sees them as a way of growing the US economy, protecting jobs and raising tax revenue. But economic studies of the impact of tariffs which Trump imposed during his first term in office, suggest the measures ultimately raised prices for US consumers.

Trump has said his most recent tariffs are aimed at pressuring China to do more to stop the flow of the opioid fentanyl to the US.

He also imposed 25% tariffs on America’s neighbours Mexico and Canada, saying its leaders were not doing enough to crack down on the cross-border illegal drug trade.

Yes, analysts say.

Exports have been the “saving grace” of China’s economy and if the taxes linger, exports to the US could drop by a quarter to a third, Harry Murphy Cruise, an economist at Moody’s analytics, told the BBC.

The sheer value of China’s exports – which account for a fifth of the country’s earnings – means that a 20% tariff could weaken demand from overseas and shrink the trade surplus.

“The tariffs will hurt China,” Alicia Garcia-Herrero, chief economist for Asia-Pacific at Natixis in Hong Kong, told the BBC. “They really need to do much more. They need to do what Xi Jinping has already said – boost domestic demand.”

That is a tall task in an economy where the property market is slumping and disillusioned youth are struggling to find high-paying jobs.

Chinese people have not been spending enough to recharge the economy – and Beijing has just announced a slew of stimulus measures to boost consumption.

While tariffs can slow Chinese manufacturing, they cannot stop or replace it that easily, analysts say.

“Not only is China the big exporter, it is sometimes the only exporter like for solar panels. If you want solar panels you can only go to China,” Ms Garcia-Herrero said.

China had begun pivoting from making garments and shoes to advanced tech such as robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) long before Trump became president. And that has given China an “early mover” advantage, not to mention the scale of production in the world’s second-largest economy.

Chinese factories can produce high-end tech in large quantities at a low cost, said Shuang Ding, chief China economist at Standard Chartered.

“It’s really difficult to find a replacement… China’s status as a market leader is very difficult to topple.”

China has responded with counter tariffs of 10-15% on US agricultural goods, coal, liquefied natural gas, pick-up trucks, and some sports cars.

And it has targeted US firms in aviation, defence and tech with export restrictions and announced an anti-monopoly investigation against Google.

China has also spent years adapting to tariffs from Trump’s first term. Some Chinese manufacturers have moved factories out of the country, for instance. And supply chains have come to rely more on Vietnam and Mexico by exporting from there to bypass the tariffs.

And yet, Trump’s recent tariffs on Mexico would not hurt China too much because Vietnam is a bigger backdoor for Chinese goods, Ms Garcia-Herrero said.

“Vietnam is the key here. If tariffs are imposed on Vietnam, I think it will be very tough,” she said.

What concerns China more than tariffs, analysts says, is US restrictions on advanced chips.

These restrictions have been a major sticking point between the two countries but they have also fuelled China’s determination to invest in homegrown tech that is independent of the West.

It’s why Chinese AI firm DeepSeek shocked Silicon Valley and unnerved Washington when it released a chatbot that rivals OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The firm had reportedly stockpiled Nvidia chips before the US began cutting off China’s access to the most advanced ones.

Although this could “impact China’s competitiveness, I don’t think that would affect China’s status as a manufacturing power,” Mr Ding of Standard Chartered said.

On the other hand, any ground China gains in advanced tech manufacturing will boost its high-value exports.

It happened because of state support, an unrivalled supply chain and cheap labour, analysts say.

“The combination of globalisation, as well as China’s pro-business policies and market potential, helped to attract the initial wave of foreign investors,” Chim Lee, an analyst at The Economist Intelligence Unit, told the BBC.

The government then doubled down, investing heavily in building a sprawling network of roads and ports to bring in raw materials and take Chinese-made goods to the world. What also helped was a stable exchange rate between the Chinese yuan and the US dollar.

A shift in recent years towards advanced tech has made sure that it will continue to be relevant and ahead of its competitors, analysts say.

China already has plenty of economic clout from being a manufacturing powerhouse. But there is also a political opportunity as Trump’s tariffs upend America’s relationship with the world.

“The door is ajar for China to position itself as an advocate of free trade and a stable global force,” said Mr Cruise of Moody’s.

But that is not easy, given Beijing has been accused of flouting international trade norms, such as imposing a tariff of more than 200% on imports of Australian wine in 2020.

Analysts say China must also look beyond the US, which is still the top destination for its exports. China is the third-biggest market for US exports, after Canada and Mexico.

Chinese trade with Europe, South East Asia and Latin America has been growing, but it’s hard to imagine that the world’s two biggest economies can stop relying on each other.

Two years ago, on his bank adviser’s suggestion, Rajesh Kumar pulled out his savings – fixed deposits included – and shifted to mutual funds, stocks and bonds.

With India’s stock market booming, Mr Kumar, a Bihar-based engineer, joined millions investing in publicly traded companies. Six years ago, only one in 14 Indian households channelled their savings into the stock market – now, it’s one in five.

But the tide has turned.

For six months, India’s markets have slid as foreign investors pulled out, valuations remained high, earnings weakened and global capital shifted to China – wiping out $900bn in investor value since their September peak. While the decline began before US President Donald Trump’s tariff announcements, they have now become a bigger drag as more details emerge.

India’s benchmark Nifty 50 share index, which tracks the country’s top 50 publicly traded companies, is on its longest losing streak in 29 years, declining for five straight months. This is a significant slump in one of the world’s fastest-growing markets. Stock brokers are reporting that their activity has dropped by a third.

“For more than six months now, my investments have been in the red. This is the worst experience in the last decade that I have been invested in stock market,” Mr Kumar says.

Mr Kumar, 55, now keeps little money in the bank, having shifted most of his savings to the stock market. With his son’s 1.8 million-rupee ($20,650; £16,150) private medical college fee due in July, he worries about selling investments at a loss to cover it. “Once the market recovers, I’m thinking of moving some money back to the bank,” he says.

His anxieties reflect those of millions of middle-class Indians who have poured into the stock market from cities big and small – part of a financial revolution.

The go-to investment route is Systematic Investment Plans (SIPs), where funds collect fixed monthly contributions. The number of Indians investing through SIPs has soared past 100 million, nearly trebling from 34 million five years ago. Many first-time investors, lured by the promise of high returns, enter with limited risk awareness – often influenced by a wave of social media “finfluencers” on platforms like Instagram and YouTube, a mixed bag of experts and amateurs alike.

Meet Tarun Sircar, a retired marketing manager, and you get a glimpse of India’s new investor.

When his public provident fund – a government-backed tax-free investment – matured last year, he sought a way to secure his retirement. Burnt by past stock market losses, he turned to mutual funds – this time with an adviser’s help and a buoyant market.

“I’ve put 80% of my savings into mutual funds, keeping just 20% in the bank. Now my adviser warns me – Don’t check your investments for six months, unless you want a heart attack!”

For now, Mr Sircar isn’t entirely sure if moving his retirement fund into the stock market was the right decision. “I’m both ignorant and confident,” he says with wry candour. “Ignorant about what’s happening and why the market is reacting this way, yet confident because Instagram ‘experts’ make investing sound like a fast track to millions. At the same time, I know I might be caught in a web of deception and hype.”

Mr Sircar says he was drawn to the markets by TV shows hyping stocks and excited chatter in WhatsApp groups. “The TV anchors talk up the market and people in my WhatsApp group boast about their stock market gains,” he says.

In his sprawling apartment complex, even teenagers discuss investments – in fact, during a badminton game, a teenager gave him a hot tip on a telecom stock. “When you hear all this around you, you start thinking – why not give it a shot? So I did, and then the markets crashed.”

Mr Sircar lives in hope. “My fingers are crossed. I am sure the markets will recover, and my fund will be back in green.”

There are others who have taken more risks and already lost money. Lured by get-rich-quick videos, Ramesh (name changed), an accounting clerk from a small industrial town in western India, borrowed money to invest in stocks during the pandemic.

Hooked to YouTube influencers, he dived into risky penny stocks and trading in derivatives. This month, after losing over $1,800 – more than his annual salary – he shut his brokerage account and swore off the market.

“I borrowed this money, and now creditors are after me,” he says.

Ramesh is one of 11 million Indians who lost a combined $20bn in futures and options trades before regulators stepped in.

“This crash is unlike the one during the Covid pandemic,” says financial adviser Samir Doshi. “Back then, we had a clear path to recovery with vaccines on the horizon. But with the Trump factor in play, uncertainty looms – we simply don’t know what’s next.”

Fuelled by digital platforms, low-cost brokerages and government-driven financial inclusion, investing has become more accessible – smartphones and user-friendly apps have simplified market participation, drawing a broader, younger audience seeking alternatives to traditional assets.

On the flip side, many new Indian investors need a reality check. “The stock market isn’t a gambling den – you must manage expectations,” says Monika Halan, author and financial educator. “Invest in equity only what you won’t need for at least seven years. If you’re taking on risk, understand the downside: How much could I lose? Can I afford that loss?”

This market crash couldn’t have hit India’s middle class at a worse time. Economic growth is slowing, wages remain stagnant, private investment has been sluggish for years and job creation isn’t keeping pace. Amid these challenges, many new investors, lured by rising markets, are now grappling with unexpected losses.

“In normal times, savers can take short-term setbacks, because they have steady incomes, which keep adding to their savings,” noted Aunindyo Chakravarty, a financial analyst.

“Now, we are in the midst of a massive economic crisis for the middle-class. On the one side, white-collar job opportunities are reducing, and raises are low. On the other, the real inflation faced by middle-class households – as opposed to the average retail inflation that the government compiles – is at its highest in recent memory. A stock market correction at such a time is disastrous for middle-class household finances.”

Financial advisers like Jaideep Marathe believe that some people will start taking money out of the market and move them to safer bank deposits if the volatility continues for another six to eight months. “We are spending a lot of time telling clients not to liquidate their portfolios and to treat this as a cyclical event.”

But clearly, all hope is not lost – most believe that the market is correcting itself from previous highs.

Foreign investor selling has eased since February, suggesting the market downturn may be nearing its end, says veteran market expert Ajay Bagga. Following the correction, valuations for many stock market indices have dipped below their 10-year average, providing some respite.

Mr Bagga expects GDP and corporate earnings to improve, aided by a $12bn income-tax giveaway in the federal budget and falling interest rates. However, geopolitical risks – Middle East and Ukraine conflicts, and Trump’s tariff plans – will keep investors cautious.

In the end, the market meltdown might serve as a hard lesson for new investors.

“This correction is a much-needed wake-up call for those who entered the market just three years ago, enjoying 25% returns – that’s not normal,” says Ms Halan. “If you don’t understand markets, stick to bank deposits and gold. At least you have control.”

It’s more than seven years since Jagtar Singh Johal was snatched from the bustling streets of Jalandhar in northern India.

The young Sikh activist, from Dumbarton in the west of Scotland, had been visiting the state of Punjab to celebrate his wedding.

But as he walked through the busy streets and crowded markets on 4 November 2017, he was surrounded by officers from the local police force.

His family say he was grabbed, a hood was placed over his head and he was forced into a vehicle in broad daylight.

He was taken into custody – where he has remained ever since.

Jagtar has not been convicted of any crimes, and was this week acquitted in the first of nine cases against him.

The Indian government says that he’s a dangerous terrorist who helped plan the killings of seven people.

But his family says he’s an innocent man who has been tortured by his jailers, and there are growing calls for the 38-year-old to be released and allowed to return home after the “seven-year nightmare”.

The charges he faces range from membership of a terrorist gang to conspiracy to murder, but in each of the cases his alleged activity is the same.

The prosecution says Jagtar was documenting the violence against Sikhs in the Punjab region during the bloodshed of the mid-1980s through his website, but that his activism went further.

It says that through his work on the website he made links with figures intent on destabilising India through violence.

It says that in 2013 Jagtar travelled to Paris and handed over about £3,000 to members of the Khalistan Liberation Force (KLF), an armed organisation which has carried out violent attacks in pursuit of a putative Sikh homeland called Khalistan.

It says this money was used to purchase weapons which were then used in acts of terrorism in the Punjab, namely the targeted killings of seven Hindu and other religious and political leaders, and the attempted murder of another during a particularly volatile period in the region across 2016 and 2017.

That the violence took place is not in dispute.

What is less clear is the role that this man from Dumbarton, with no criminal history, may have played in it.

Jagtar’s brother Gurpreet originally thought his brother had been abducted, before learning that he was in the custody of the Punjab Police.

In the following days, Gurpreet learned that Jagtar was accused of being an active member of a terror cell – and that he claimed he had been tortured in his cell.

A handwritten note passed from Jagtar to his defence lawyer detailed how he’d been beaten and subjected to electric shocks, and how officers entered his cell with a petrol container and threatened to burn him alive, before coercing him to sign a blank piece of paper.

Gurpreet’s concern for his brother only grew when, in December 2017, a video appeared showing Jagtar in a police cell, allegedly confessing to his role in a series of killings in the Punjab region.

Gurpreet began a campaign to free his brother, telling politicians and the media that Jagtar was a peaceful activist who had been falsely implicated.

For seven years Jagtar has waited for progress to be made in the various cases against him and his eight co-accused.

Eight of the cases have been brought by the Indian government’s counter-terror branch, the National Investigation Agency (NIA).

There have been hundreds of hearings, beset by procedural delays, as each trial grinds its way through the courts in Delhi.

Jagtar’s representatives from the legal charity Reprieve have criticised the process as unfair and say no “credible” evidence has been presented against Jagtar.

They say his confession is coerced, obtained through torture and therefore inadmissible as evidence.

But now the ninth case, in the District Court of Moga, Punjab, has finally provided some clarity in this murky and intriguing story.

After seven years, we finally received a verdict.

Judge Harjeet Singh found that the prosecution “has failed to collect cogent and convincing evidence… regarding participation of the accused in unlawful activities or otherwise”.

He said it had also “failed to lead any evidence that the accused were members of [a] terrorist organization”.

And he said: “The prosecution has miserably failed to prove the commission of the [conspiracy] offences by all the accused.

“Thus, all the accused are liable to be acquitted.”

All the charges of conspiracy, raising funds for a terrorist gang, and membership of a terrorist gang were rejected.

Jagtar was acquitted of all the charges against him in this case.

Three of his co-accused were found guilty of gun possession and given two-year sentences. They have already spent seven years in jail.

But why did it take years to reach this point – and what does the acquittal mean for the other cases against Jagtar, who is still being held in a maximum security prison in Delhi?

To understand this we need to look at the evidence which did make it into court.

DSP Balwinder Singh was one of the officers who arrested Jagtar in November 2017.

The judgement tells us that in his evidence DSP Singh “admitted that no incriminating article/thing/document [was] recovered from Jagtar Singh Johal in this case, during his investigation and no documentary evidence was produced or in the file regarding links of other accused with Jagtar Singh Johal during his investigation”.

On the central allegation that Jagtar travelled to Paris to hand over money to members of the KLF, the judgement says that DSP Singh could not tell the date, month and year of that visit.

“He admitted that during his investigation, no material in the shape of letter heads or logo of KLF or any other banned organization… was recovered from the accused,” said the judge.

“This causes a serious dent in the case of the prosecution.”

The other arresting officer’s evidence was that “nothing incriminating” was recovered from Jagtar at the time of his arrest or afterwards.

Perhaps the most curious testimony came from witness Kanwaljit Singh, a property dealer who gave a police statement saying that he was visited by Jagtar and another accused in the spring of 2017.

He said Jagtar told him that he had collected funds to carry out attacks on “hardline Hindu leaders” in the Punjab.

But, according to the judge, “careful scrutiny of the statements shows that no reliance can be placed on” his evidence.

At Jagtar’s trial, Kanwaljit Singh admitted that he himself had previously been active in an armed Sikh group, had served time in jail and, most importantly, that he had never met Jagtar or the other man who he had put in the frame with his police statement.

He said he had approached the police after reading about Jagtar in a newspaper following his arrest.

This is just one witness in a case which Jagtar’s legal representatives from Reprieve say is characterised by unreliable, even tainted, testimony.

They point to the statement given by a different man which they say is “almost identical, word for word” to the statement given by Kanwaljit Singh.

The prosecution failed to produce this man in court and now say he is dead, so he cannot speak to his statement.

Reprieve alleges that these men are “stock witnesses” – people improperly influenced or coerced by the authorities into giving evidence in a case.

The organisation’s caseworkers also highlighted the confession statement of Harmeet Singh Mintoo, the former KLF leader whom Jagtar allegedly met in Paris.

Mintoo retracted this statement and died in prison before he could finish challenging it through the courts.

Reprieve says other witnesses in the case have similarly retracted the statements they gave to police when appearing to give evidence at trial, with some even testifying their statements had been falsified.

The prosecution’s case included an elaborate cast of characters, meetings and plots from the UK, across Europe and into Pakistan and India, culminating in the grisly murders of seven people.

In this one case at least, no evidence has been found for any of it.

Reprieve’s interim deputy executive director, Dan Dolan, says the case against Jagtar was “absurdly weak from the start”.

“Seven years of his life have been wasted, with proceedings dragging out, when it was plain all along that there was never any solid evidence,” he told the BBC.

“The process is the punishment – the cases are no more than a thin excuse to keep him in jail.”

The remaining cases against Jagtar are scheduled to be heard in Delhi, in a different court. The potential punishments are much more severe, including the death penalty, in the event of conviction.

They are brought by the NIA under India’s Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, which exists to clamp down on any activity which might “threaten the unity, integrity, security or sovereignty of India, or to strike terror in people or any section of people of India”.

Its critics say it is a draconian law which can label people as terrorists without due process, and which is disproportionately used against minorities in the country.

There is also likely to be evidence from “protected witnesses” in the NIA’s cases, whose full identities are not known. Reprieve says their statements have not provided any more evidence beyond what was heard in the Moga case where Jagtar was acquitted.

Nevertheless, Reprieve argues that because the allegations against Jagtar in every case are “all-but identical”, the Moga verdict should mean his acquittal in all the others too.

Dan Dolan says it’s now over to the UK government to secure Jagtar’s release.

Meanwhile, in an apparent strengthening of its position, a UK government minister said in parliament this week that Jagtar’s release “needs to happen urgently”.

Gurpreet, who has limited contact with his brother over video calls, continues to live in hope.

“To be vindicated in court is a great feeling,” he said.

“Jagtar’s smile and spark are back. He spoke to our dad for only the third time in seven years yesterday and they were in high spirits thanks to the acquittal.

“Ministers are saying all the right things but what counts is action. This judgement can be the beginning of the end of our family’s seven-year nightmare, if the government acts now.”

This week a spokesperson for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) welcomed the progress in the case.

“The UK government remains committed to working for faster progress on Jagtar’s case, and the FCDO continue to work to support Mr Johal and his family,” it said.

The Indian government has not responded to a request for comment on the verdict in the Moga case, but has previously said that due process has been followed in the case.

The Indian authorities have also previously denied the allegations of torture.

St Patrick’s Day is associated with its fair share of traditions, from wearing a sprig of shamrock, to attending a church service to sipping one (or several) pints of stout.

For politicians from the island of Ireland there’s one other annual tradition – a visit to Washington DC.

Every March dozens of people including politicians, business people and lobbyists from the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland descend on the capital of the United States.

This year, a number of Northern Ireland politicians are refusing to make the trip over Donald Trump’s policies.

But what is the point of the events in the week running up to St Patrick’s Day, and if they didn’t happen, would anyone back home notice any difference?

Two of the main things that governments in Dublin and Belfast – as well as businesses – want to see come out of the trips are US investment and strong trading relationships.

Two men who have been to Washington several times as part of St Patrick’s Day events say there is no doubt the trips deliver results.

Steve Aiken took part in Washington St Patrick’s Day trips as the chief executive of the British-Irish Chamber of Commerce and later as leader of the Ulster Unionist Party.

The Stormont assembly member said it was impossible to build relationships to improve business and political ties without meeting face to face.

“It is all about the ability to talk to people you do not normally get the chance to talk to,” he said.

“As we learned during Covid, doing business over Zoom is not really doing business.

“You need to be in a room to do it and if you want to influence you have to be there to talk the talk; you cannot do it from 3,500 miles away.”

Aiken said that contrary to what the perception might be, it was not “a holiday”.

“You need to be over your brief and able to talk authoritatively and you need to have the answers to those questions – and you will be asked lots of questions and you will have a lot thrown at you,” he said.

Former Sinn Féin politician Máirtín Ó Muilleoir knows about both the benefits of being in the room and the disappointment of missing out.

The publisher of the Irish Echo attended the White House twice in that role, but did not travel to Washington during his time as Northern Ireland’s finance minister, after the Stormont Executive collapsed two months before the 2017 festivities.

He said the mood in the United States in the run-up to St Patrick’s Day made it the ideal time for Irish politicians and businesses to make their pitch.

“You think of the biggest companies in the US, they will all have promotions linked to St Patrick’s Day,” he said.

“You will go to a city in the US where there will be adverts everywhere.

“That means they are already doing some of the work for you.”

He said he believed there would be a major financial services announcement for Belfast in the coming days.

One of the eye-catching parts of the St Patrick’s Day schedule in Washington is when the taoiseach (Irish prime minister) hands over a bowl of shamrock to the US president in the Oval Office.

It is a tradition that dates back to 1952 and was part of a move by the Irish ambassador at the time to improve relations between the two countries after they had soured over Ireland’s neutrality in World War Two.

The tradition has continued and is an opportunity for the leader of a country as small as the Republic of Ireland to meet the US president face to face.

Apart from helping to develop a positive relationship between the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and the United States, it is slightly harder to pin down direct outcomes from the yearly visits – after all, there is a lot more to the relationship than just St Patrick’s Day.

In the 1990s, in particular, the visits were seen as important in the process that eventually led to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, which largely ended the worst of three decades of violence known as the Troubles.

In 1995, the then Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams attended the White House – a year after President Bill Clinton intervened to grant him a US visa – a move opposed by the UK government.

Five years later, and two years after the 1998 Belfast Agreement, Adams posed for photos at the White House with President Clinton and then UUP leader David Trimble – a reflection of how times had changed.

Both Aiken and Ó Muilleoir say the visits are key for investment and US jobs in Northern Ireland.

In 2024 there were 285 US firms in Northern Ireland employing 31,915 people – up from 140 firms and 21,270 employees in 2010.

But Esmond Birnie, senior economist at Ulster University, said a direct link could not be drawn.

“It is impossible to quantify whether these political visits actually lead to investment or sales, so you cannot really prove it one way or another,” he said.

“On balance, the benefits are likely to be smaller than the fundamentals of training, skills, innovation and productivity and so forth.”

Dr Birnie said factors such as Northern Ireland’s location in both the UK and the European single market, relatively low labour costs and relatively low-level and unobtrusive regulations by continental European standards all made US companies keen to invest.

There was once a time when Irish-Americans were prominent at the top of US politics, with figures such as Senator Teddy Kennedy and House of Representatives Speaker Tip O’Neill promoting Irish interests in the corridors of power.

This was partly the result of years of high levels of emigration from Ireland to the US – the 1930 US census recorded 923,600 residents who were born on the island of Ireland.

By the turn of the century that had fallen to 169,600.

The end of the Troubles also meant fewer headlines about Northern Ireland.

“One of the problems every politician or influencer from the island of Ireland has – north or south – is to keep people interested in what is going on,” Aiken said.

“With everything else going on in the world, we are quite far down the list.”

Ó Muilleoir, however, said Ireland still had a privileged position in the US.

“I once met the consul of Switzerland in Manhattan and I was bemoaning the sense we did not have as much influence in New York anymore,” he said

“He said he had walked from Wall Street to Central Park and every block he saw an Irish flag – but he did not see any Swiss flags.”

Sinn Féin is boycotting events this year over President Donald Trump’s stance on the Israel-Gaza conflict, meaning Northern Ireland First Minister Michelle O’Neill, the party’s deputy leader, will not be present.

The Social Democratic and Labour Party also said it would not attend if invited, and the Alliance Party is taking a similar stance.

Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly, of the Democratic Unionist Party, has said she will go to Washington DC, saying it was important to “maintain long and rewarding” relationships with the US.

Ó Muilleoir said politicians had to weigh up the pros and cons.

“This is probably the most difficult time to be in the White House on St Patrick’s,” he said.

“We are not the only people with moral dilemmas; it is for everybody to make their own choice.”

LED technology has been used to address a number of skin issues, such as eczema, mild to moderate acne, psoriasis and sun damage in a medical setting.

But the at-home LED market is on the verge of becoming a massive industry – with masks and other devices retailing for anything from £40 to £1,500.

The technology harnesses the power of light-emitting diodes (LEDs), which then stimulate skin cells when they are exposed to the skin repeatedly.

Mask developers make big claims that at-home LED masks can be used to treat acne scars, sun damage and fine lines – but does this stand up to scrutiny?

The LED market is set to be worth £600m globally by 2032 – which is nearly double what airflow technology like the Dyson Airwrap will be worth at the same point.

According to consultant dermatologist Dr Jonathan Kentley, LED technology works by causing the skin to absorb light energy, which then triggers cellular changes in a process known as photobiomodulation (PBM).

“This allows new blood vessels and skin cells to be formed, along with more collagen and elastin,” he tells the BBC.

“PBM has also been used to treat acne as it has anti-inflammatory effects and reduces the amount of oil in the skin,” he adds.

A recent comprehensive study of PBM stated that more clinical trials on humans need to take place to fully understand how it actually works.

US space agency Nasa first began studying the effect of LEDs in the 1990s to see if it could help in cell regeneration.

Since then, medical-grade devices have been used by dermatologists “for many years”, according to Dr Kentley.

But at-home masks have only been on the retail market for about five years and cost a fraction of the medical devices.

The main differences between medical devices and High Street masks are the strength of the LEDs, the number of bulbs on the device and how close they sit to the skin’s surface when being used.

Dr Justine Kluk, who runs her own dermatology clinic and specialises in treating acne, believes that while at-home masks “sound promising”, mask wholesale manufacturers are “speculating” about their benefits.

“I don’t believe anyone has run clinical trials of the LED mask at home to see if it is the same dose as a device you would use in a clinic or hospital,” she tells the BBC.

“No-one is testing these devices in big enough sample sizes for long enough periods of time for us to feel really confident.

“So I believe the benefits from using one of these masks is probably very modest,” she adds.

Skincare makes up nearly half of all global sales in the beauty industry – and is set to continue to grow more than the likes of haircare, make-up and fragrance in the next year.

This is being boosted by Generation Z (those born between 1995 and 2009) and even Generation Alpha (born 2010 to now) whose skincare fascination is said to be fuelled by social media trends.

Dr Kluk says she has noticed “that people’s interest in at-home skin care and treatments has increased hugely since Covid” and believes the “visually interesting” element of the at-home LED mask makes it such an eye-catching product to sell online.

“People sitting watching TV wearing a red LED mask increases people’s curiosity.

“Every other consultation I’ve had for the last six months, has involved people asking me about LED masks,” she adds.

When you search LED masks on social media platforms such as TikTok, you will be met with hundreds of videos with users showing off their results after using one of these at-home devices.

Natalie O’Neill, 29, tells the BBC she started to use a mask “out of curiosity to see if I would notice any difference” and did not use it to treat an existing skin condition like acne.

The skincare content creator says: “I noticed a change in my skin after a couple of weeks and felt it prevented breakouts really well.”

She adds that the mask has helped to “keep my skin tone looking more even” and faded marks on her face more quickly.

O’Neill was not paid to promote a particular mask and caveats all her content on this technology by saying she uses it alongside a consistent skincare routine.

“Getting red light or LED therapy in a clinic is not immediately transferable to a mask, which a lot of consumers don’t realise – I’m OK with that because I have the right expectations,” she adds.

Part of the appeal of LED masks is that they are easy to use and therefore have a low barrier to entry for potential buyers.

Laurence Newman is the chief executive of CurrentBody, whose at-home LED mask is one of the world’s best sellers.

He started selling professional equipment to clinics more than 25 years ago and began developing an at-home LED mask in 2009, bringing out the company’s first device just under 10 years later.

“We see that people use it for 10 minutes and get an instant glow afterwards,” he tells the BBC.

Newman says that women in particular “are moving towards totally non-invasive skincare” and looking for ways to improve their skin without botox and fillers.

Newman says the masks his company sells have been developed using the same technology as medical devices, which have a minimum requirement light wavelengths.

He emphasises that the at-home LED mask market and indeed at-home beauty technology market are in their infancy, with “a real movement of education” growing.

Dr Kentley concludes that “PBM is mostly considered safe, even at high levels” so using any form of LED technology is unlikely to “cause damage to cells”, however more research into how exactly PBM works is needed to understand what it can do.

“There have been many experimental and clinical studies into the use of PBM for various dermatologic conditions, however they have varied in the parameters of the device and treatment protocols,” he adds.

“Many of these studies were small and unstandardised and often paid for by the manufacturers so it is difficult to draw concrete conclusions”.

He says if someone is keen to buy a device they should make sure they choose one that has EU safety certifications and a high density of LED bulbs on the mask to ensure enough energy is being delivered to the skin.

Dr Kluk also says that she does not “want to discourage anyone” who is intrigued by the technology but wants “them to understand that this is a lot of money to spend on a device, which could potentially support a good skincare routine, or if it’s severe like acne, a good prescription regimen and some lifestyle measures – but it’s unlikely to do enough on its own.”

Wind and wave power is set to be included in calculations of the size of countries’ economies for the first time, as part of changes approved at the United Nations.

Assets like oilfields were already factored in under the rules – last updated in 2008.

This update aims to capture areas that have grown since then, such as the cost of using up natural resources and the value of data.

The changes come into force in 2030, and could mean an increase in estimates of the size of the UK economy making promises to spend a fixed share of the economy on defence or aid more expensive.

The economic value of wind and waves can be estimated from the price of all the energy that can be generated from the turbines in a country.

The update also treats data as an asset in its own right on top of the assets that house it like servers and cables.

Governments use a common rule book for measuring the size of their economies and how they grow over time.

These changes to the rule book are “tweaks, rather than a rewrite”, according to Prof Diane Coyle of the University of Cambridge.

Ben Zaranko of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) calls it an “accounting” change, rather than a real change. He explains: “We’d be no better off in a material sense, and tax revenues would be no higher.”

But it could make economies look bigger, creating a possible future spending headache for the UK government.

For example, Labour has committed to allocating fixed percentages of the size of the economy on defence and aid.

If the new rules increase the estimated size of the economy by 2-3% in 2030, it might add £2bn to defence spending.

That is a tiny share of the total government budget, but large compared with the cuts to overseas aid (£6bn) that are currently funding extra defence spending or the headroom that the government has left to meet its self-imposed fiscal rules (£10bn).

The government spending watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), will not be including the impact of these new rules on the government finances in their assessment of the government finances this March.

This makes the new rules a possible future headache for the Chancellor rather than an immediate one.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

About 200 million viewers, 37 countries taking part and cries of “Nul Points” on the horizon.

Eurovision fever has been ramping up with Remember Monday announced as the UK’s entry to the world’s largest live music event.

And with all three members of the group having a background in musical theatre, they know more than most about how to put on a show.

“Our performance is theatrical,” Holly-Anne Hull tells BBC Newsbeat, as Lauren Byrne adds: “We haven’t shied away from it”.

Despite the pressure of years of disappointing results for the UK, the trio, completed by Charlotte Steele, have been busy in rehearsals and say they’re “feeling good” about their chances in Basel, Switzerland.

With the exception of Sam Ryder’s second place in 2022, the UK’s been stuck in the bottom half of the leader board for a decade – even the star power of Olly Alexander couldn’t pull the country higher than 18th.

To break out of the rut needs a roll of the dice and Holly-Anne says “we were a real risk”.

Not least because they hadn’t even written their entry when they found out they’d be representing the country.

“That was really scary – finding out we got it and we were like: ‘But what do we sing?'”

The song they’ve gone for, What The Hell Just Happened?, crosses a few different genres, including country, pop and, of course, musical theatre.

It may be risky, but Remember Monday aren’t the only ones feeling confident it could break them into the top half of the leaderboard.

“I think all the evidence points towards a better result at Eurovision this year,” Euro Trip podcast host, Rob Lilley-Jones, tells Newsbeat.

With a country background, Remember Monday can bring something “a little bit different for the UK”, he says.

“No other country is doing anything like this at Eurovision this year.”

Lauren says the group’s love of country can be traced through to their passion for storytelling through music and they’ve already been making waves in the genre.

Last year they were recognised as best trio by the British Country Music Association and have toured the US as well as the UK, racking up hundreds of thousands of streams on Spotify along the way.

Rather than a public vote, the entry was chosen by a team made up of UK record labels, publishers, songwriters, BBC Music and BBC Introducing.

They worked closely with Sam Ryder’s manager, David May, in the hope he could find another contender for the top spot.

Since Remember Monday were unveiled as the UK entry, reaction has been largely positive on social media, but after a difficult few years in the competition there is some scepticism too.

Lauren, Holly-Anne and Charlotte found out in December they’d be heading to the 69th Eurovision competition in Switzerland.

“Andrew [Cartmell, the BBC’s head of delegation for the UK] was like: ‘So first things first girls, what are you doing in May next year?’,” Lauren says of the day they found out.

Charlotte received the news while visiting her grandad in hospital while Lauren was parked up at a service station.

“We just go dead silent and just release so many tears,” Holly-Anne says.

“We were just sobbing. It’s so surreal.”

Like former entrants Sam Ryder and Mae Muller, they credit TikTok with getting their break.

They’ve got more than half a million followers on the app with a combined 11.3 million likes across their videos.

“It really has changed our lives – without sounding too dramatic,” Charlotte says.

“We started posting in lockdown and when we came out we put on a gig, our first one in a long time, and it sold out in like 24 hours.”

They thought it was their families who “spent a lot of money on tickets”.

“We walked out on stage and we didn’t recognise anyone – it was all new faces.

“It was that gig that spurred us on to do this full-time.”

It’s only been about 18 months since they decided to take the plunge and focus fully on the band but they go back much further.

First meeting at school in Hampshire, the trio used to skip classes to practise instead.

“We have been singing for years and years for fun because we adore singing with each other,” says Holly-Anne.

“It’s our version of shopping or getting our nails done.”

They hope that legacy of friendship will be the secret to going the distance in this year’s competition.

“We have each other, we are best mates, we’re each other’s therapists.”

Remember Monday also marks the first time since a girl group has represented the UK in more than 25 years and podcast host Rob thinks this might give them an edge too.

“It’s going to be really exciting to follow their journey all the way through to Switzerland.

“I don’t know if Remember Monday are going to win Eurovision, there are so many different things there at play – but I think we’ve got a good chance,” he says.

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

It is the most natural thing in the world to look for common ground with someone you have just met.

But every week, BBC presenter and comedian Elis James goes one step further by testing the stereotype that people from Wales, a country of more than three million people, somehow all know each other.

The Cymru Connection, where James has 60 seconds to find a mutual connection, began in earnest when a Welshman living in Japan called James’ Radio 5 Live show and podcast last year.

“I discovered [the caller] was from Aberystwyth,” said James. “Within 20 seconds I derailed the call and I named about 20 people from Aberystwyth and he knew about 18 of them.

“We thought ‘there might be a feature in this’.”

The hurried and tense one-minute exchanges have had hundreds of thousands of views across TikTok, YouTube and Instagram, with listeners from outside Wales often amused – if slightly baffled.

“This is genuinely a superpower,” said one person in the social media comments.

“Nah, just genuinely Welsh,” replied another.

So far 30 callers have put James to the test, with his success rate hovering just north of 50%.

James, from Carmarthenshire, believes it is instinctive for people from Wales to try to find a mutual connection.

“I’ve never been on holiday without bumping into a Welsh person and then after about half a minute you’re like, ‘well do you know so-and-so if you’re from Merthyr?’ and they always do.”

Together with his co-host, comedian John Robins, James said the feature “clearly has resonated with our Welsh listeners”.

The desire to connect is not a phenomenon exclusive to the Welsh.

“I find that people from the north of England do it and certainly the Irish and the Scots do it,” said James.

“In the south-east of England I think there’s too many people, too many places.”

James believes the urge to connect is particularly relevant to people from smaller countries.

“I was doing stand-up in Brussels and there was a guy in the front row who’d been taught by my auntie and uncle,” he said.

“All the Americans thought it was a set up and all the people from smaller countries were like ‘no, no, that makes sense’.

“I [also] did stand-up in Auckland in New Zealand. On the first night, I’d only been in the country a couple of days, there was a girl from Lampeter and she knew my auntie’s farm.”

It is one thing to find these links organically, but under time pressure it becomes harder.

As The Cymru Connection theme music kicks in each week, James is often seen putting his head in his hands.

“I find it immensely stressful,” he said.

“It pays off because as long as I Cymru Connect I’m floating on air for hours. If I fail I’m incredibly depressed for about a day.

“Often if I’m wearing a jumper or a jacket I’ve got to take it off because I start to sweat. So the head in hands, that’s genuine, it’s very, very authentic, I’m not putting it on for effect.

“I always start with where people grew up and where they went to school, and how old they are.

“The stats have proven it doesn’t always work. But that’s where I begin.”

James and Robins have worked together for more than a decade – firstly on XFM and now for the BBC – but have been friends for much longer.

“It’s quite an interesting thing to observe because it’s obviously a very natural interaction for Welsh people,” said Robins, from Bristol.

“I watch Elis connecting thinking ‘is this really happening every week?’ and it is. It’s on national radio.”

But why is it happening?

Dr Martin Graff, a psychologist at the University of South Wales, believes “we all want to meet people who have a degree of familiarity to ourselves”.

“In Wales there’s three million of us – we’re a fairly exclusive club. Therefore when we meet someone Welsh it’s kind of thrilling.

“From an evolutionary angle, meeting someone who is familiar makes them more predictable.

“If people’s behaviour is more predictable we feel safer in their company.”

Born and bred in Bridgend, I couldn’t finish my interview without putting James to the test – could he find a Cymru Connection with me?

Robins, who acts as adjudicator, declared in advance that mutual BBC colleagues did not count.

Despite that, after roughly 45 seconds, James managed to name somebody he knew who was in the year above me at school.

Job done – our very own Cymru Connection.

Dolly Parton offered an emotional tribute to her late husband, Carl Thomas Dean, who died earlier this week.

The legendary country artist released a new song titled, If You Hadn’t Been There, in an Instagram post on Friday.

“I fell in love with Carl Dean when I was 18 years old,” Parton wrote. “We have spent 60 precious and meaningful years together. Like all great love stories, they never end. They live on in memory and song. He will always be the star of my life story, and I dedicate this song to him.”

The pair were together for six decades before he died on Monday aged 82.

Her voice trembles as she sings the new song, “If you hadn’t been there / Where would I be? / Without your trust, love, and belief”.

“You made me drеam / More than I dared,” she continues. “And I wouldn’t be hеre / If you hadn’t been there.”

The cover of the track includes an old photo showing Parton with her arms wrapped around Dean.

Parton, 79, expressed her gratitude for fans’ support after her husband’s death.

“This is a love note to family, friends, and fans,” she wrote on Instagram on Thursday. “Thank you for all the messages, cards, and flowers that you’ve sent to pay your respects for the loss of my beloved husband Carl. I can’t reach out personally to each of you but just know it has meant the world to me. He is in God’s arms now and I am okay with that. I will always love you.”

The singer, known for songs such as 9-5 and Jolene, met Dean outside a laundromat the first day she arrived in Nashville as an 18-year-old aspiring singer.

“I was surprised and delighted that while he talked to me, he looked at my face (a rare thing for me),” Parton said when recalling their first meeting.

“He seemed to be genuinely interested in finding out who I was and what I was about.”

Two years later, in 1966, the pair married.

They lived a private life – Dean was rarely seen in public – and did not have children together.

The Duchess of Sussex has announced that With Love, Meghan will be back for a second series.

The eight-part Netflix show, which sees Meghan share cooking, gardening and hosting tips with friends and famous guests at a California estate, launched on the streaming platform on Tuesday.

A few hours later, the former Suits actress officially launched her new brand As Ever, with an updated website revealing raspberry spread and flower sprinkes will be among the first products to be sold.

Tudum, the official companion site to Netflix, confirmed that filming had completed on the second season of the show and it will be streamed in the autumn.

The announcement came after the first series attracted critical reviews in both the UK and the US.

Since its launch on Tuesday, one review in The Guardian described it as a “gormless lifestyle filler” and “so pointless it might be the Sussexes’ last TV show”, while The Telegraph gave it two stars and branded it “insane” and an “exercise in narcissism”.

The series has a rating of 33% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

However, the BBC’s royal correspondent Sean Coughlan wrote that “the new Netflix series…is about escapism and aspiration, it’s a glass of something sparkling on a grey day”.

The show centres around Meghan preparing treats, foods and gifts at a beautiful property, although not her own home, in Montecito.

She makes pasta, crudités, focaccia, frittata and baked fish, and along with advice on how to make guests feel extra special, she shows viewers how to arrange flowers and make DIY bath salts.

Guests in the first series include American actress and producer Mindy Kaling, celebrity chef Roy Choi, designer Tracy Robbins and cosmetics entrepreneur Victoria Jackson.

On Friday, Meghan posted a video to Instagram which showed her wearing a hat with the writing “lettuce romaine calm” stitched across the front of it.

The caption read: “Lettuce romaine calm… or not (!) because I’m thrilled to share that Season 2 of ‘With Love, Meghan’ is coming!”

In a second post, she wrote: “If you’re loving Season 1, just wait until you see the fun we cooked up on Season 2!

“Thanks for joining the party, and an endless thanks to the amazing team and crew who helped bring it all to life!”

The first series was originally due to air in January but was postponed until March due to the Los Angeles wildfires.

In a statement at the time, Netflix described the upcoming programme as a “heartfelt tribute to the beauty of southern California”, adding that it was delaying its launch due to “ongoing devastation” in the US state.

US President Donald Trump has said he is finding it “more difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine” than Russia in attempts to broker peace between the two nations.

The US is “doing very well with Russia”, and “it may be easier dealing with” Moscow than Kyiv, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday.

Hours earlier, Trump had said he was “strongly considering” large-scale sanctions and tariffs on Russia until a ceasefire with Ukraine was reached.

Meanwhile, the US has temporarily suspended Ukraine’s access to some satellite imagery, space technology company Maxar told BBC Verify, after Trump had already paused military aid to the country.

It comes exactly one week after an extraordinary White House exchange, in which Trump berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for being “disrespectful” to the US.

That public dressing-down was followed this week by Trump pausing all US military aid and intelligence-sharing with Kyiv.

Russia then conducted a large-scale missile and drone attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure on Thursday night.

Trump’s threat of further sanctions on the already heavily sanctioned Russia was apparently in response to this attack. He said he was considering new tariffs because “Russia is absolutely ‘pounding’ Ukraine on the battlefield right now”.

But within hours, Trump said Russian President Vladimir Putin was acting as anyone else would.

“I think he’s hitting them [Ukraine] harder than he’s been hitting them,” Trump said. “And I think probably anyone in that position would be doing that right now.”

He added that he believes Putin wants to end the war but he cannot say the same of Ukraine.

“I want to know they [Ukraine] want to settle and I don’t know they want to settle,” Trump said, when asked why he had cut off aid to Kyiv.

Trump’s direct diplomacy with Putin stunned Nato allies, because the West has shunned contacts with Moscow since Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Despite Trump’s row with Zelensky, the tone from his foreign policy team in the last two days has sounded more conciliatory towards Ukraine, after its arm-wrenching in the form of cutting off military and intelligence support.

The Americans want Zelensky to sign a deal that would give them a major stake in Ukrainian minerals, and for him to agree to a quick truce with Moscow.

Zelensky has been pushing for firm security guarantees for Kyiv, to be agreed as part of the deal. Speaking on Friday, Trump said such a security guarantee could be discussed later and would be the “easy part”.

Meanwhile, space technology company Maxar told BBC Verify on Friday that the US had temporarily suspended Ukrainian access to some high quality imagery from US satellites.

Satellite imagery is an important tool during a war as it allows armies to gather intelligence on their rivals.

Maxar, a US-based company, has contracts to provide satellite imagery to various governments and companies.

One of those is the Global Enhanced GEOINT Deliver (GEGD) program, which gives users access to high quality imagery collected by the US government.

“The US government has decided to temporarily suspend Ukrainian accounts in GEGD,” Maxar told the BBC. “Each customer makes their own decisions on how they use and share that data.”

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, part of the US Department of Defense, confirmed the suspension was “in accordance with the administration’s directive on support to Ukraine”.

Next week, Trump’s senior officials will travel to Saudi Arabia to meet Zelensky’s team amid growing pressure for him to sign up to Trump’s demands.

Ukraine’s president has said he hopes the talks will be “meaningful”. On Friday, he said his country was “ready for peace as soon as possible” and had proposed “concrete steps” to achieve it.

“Every day, new Russian strikes and reality itself prove that it is Russia that must be forced to peace,” he added.

Zelensky has expressed regret in the days since his public clash with Trump and worked to mend relations with the US.

On Thursday, US special envoy Steve Witkoff said Trump had received a letter from Zelensky that included an “apology” and “sense of gratitude”.

“Hopefully, we get things back on track with the Ukrainians, and everything resumes,” Witkoff said.

UK officials have said around 20 countries are interested in joining a “coalition of the willing” to help Ukraine, as European leaders forge ahead with plans for much bigger military expenditure.

Fighting on the ground in Ukraine continued on Friday, with five people killed by Russian troops the Donetsk region, according to local authorities.

Oscar-winning actor Gene Hackman died of natural causes about a week after his wife Betsy Arakawa, who died after contracting a rare virus, a New Mexico medical investigator has said.

Hackman, 95, died at his Santa Fe home from coronary artery disease, with advanced Alzheimer’s disease a contributing factor.

Ms Arakawa, 65, died in the same house from hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS), a respiratory illness caused by exposure to infected rodents. Her cause of death was listed as natural.

Authorities believe she passed away about seven days before her husband, to whom she had been married for more than 30 years. During his career, Hackman won two Academy Awards for The French Connection and Unforgiven.

It is likely that Ms Arakawa died first on 11 February, Dr Heather Jarrell of the New Mexico Medical Investigator’s Office told a news conference on Friday.

She said it was “reasonable to conclude” that Hackman had died on 18 February.

Ms Arakawa’s last known movements and correspondence were on 11 February, when she was seen going to a grocery store, a CVS pharmacy and a pet store, before returning home in the early evening.

Given that Hackman was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease it is “quite possible that he was not aware that she [his wife] was deceased”, said Dr Jarrell.

She told reporters she was “not aware of his normal daily functioning capability”.

Hackman had “significant heart disease, and ultimately that’s what resulted in his death”, Dr Jarrell said, adding that he had had chronic high blood pressure.

He had not eaten anything recently, but had shown no indications of dehydration, she added.

At the news conference, New Mexico Public Health Veterinarian Erin Phipps emphasised that hantavirus infections were extremely rare.

HPS is transmitted through contact with rodent droppings, urine or saliva, often when contaminated dust is inhaled.

She noted that 136 cases had been reported in the state over the past 50 years, with 42% resulting in fatalities.

Dr Phipps said evidence of rodent activity had been found in some buildings on the property, though the risk inside the main house was considered “low”.

Investigators are trying to determine how Ms Arakawa contracted the illness. Hackman tested negative for hantavirus.

The couple were found in their home after neighbourhood security conducted a welfare check and saw their bodies on the ground through the window.

The remains were discovered in advanced stages of decomposition.

Hackman’s body was in a sideroom next to the kitchen, with a walking cane and a pair of sunglasses nearby, according to a search warrant affidavit.

Ms Arakawa’s body was in the bathroom, with scattered pills close to her.

Sheriff’s deputies found medication for thyroid and blood pressure treatment, along with pain reliever Tylenol, according to a court-filed inventory.

Citing privacy laws, authorities did not disclose who had been prescribed the drugs.

One of the couple’s three dogs was also found dead inside a crate near Ms Arakawa, while the other two dogs were alive.

The cause of death for the dog is yet to be determined, officials say. Dr Phipps told reporters that dogs did not get sick from hantavirus.

Initial investigations found no signs of forced entry or foul play at the couple’s $3.8m (£3m) home. Tests for carbon monoxide poisoning were negative, and no significant gas leaks were detected.

Hackman is survived by three adult children from his previous marriage.

Hackman met Ms Arakawa when she was working part-time at a California gym in the mid-1980s, the New York Times has previously reported.

He won best actor Oscar for his role as Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle in William Friedkin’s 1971 thriller The French Connection, and another for best supporting actor for playing Little Bill Daggett in Clint Eastwood’s Western film Unforgiven in 1992.

A relative latecomer to Hollywood, Hackman saw his breakthrough come in his thirties, when he was nominated for an Oscar for portraying Buck Barrow in 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde – opposite Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway – and again for I Never Sang for My Father in 1970.

Both films saw him recognised in the supporting actor category. He was also nominated for best leading actor in 1988 for playing an FBI agent in Mississippi Burning.

He played more than 100 roles during his career, including supervillain Lex Luthor in the Christopher Reeve-starring Superman movies in the 1970s and 1980s.

Hackman featured opposite many other Hollywood heavyweights including Al Pacino in 1973’s Scarecrow and Gene Wilder in 1974’s Young Frankenstein.

His last big-screen appearance came as Monroe Cole in Welcome to Mooseport in 2004, after which he stepped back from Hollywood for a quieter life in New Mexico.

As dawn approached on the morning of 7 October 2023, many of the partygoers at the Nova music festival near Gaza’s border took illegal recreational drugs like MDMA or LSD.

Hundreds of them were high when, shortly after sunrise, Hamas gunmen attacked the site.

Now neuroscientists working with survivors from the festival say there are early signs that MDMA – also known as ecstasy or molly – may have provided some psychological protection against trauma.

The preliminary results, currently being peer-reviewed with a view to publication in the coming months, suggest that the drug is associated with more positive mental states – both during the event and in the months afterwards.

The study, carried out by scientists at Israel’s Haifa University, could contribute to a growing scientific interest in how MDMA might be used to treat psychological trauma.

It is thought to be the first time scientists have been able to study a mass trauma event where large numbers of people were under the influence of mind-altering drugs.

Hamas gunmen killed 360 people and kidnapped dozens more at the festival site where 3,500 people had been partying.

“We had people hiding under the bodies of their friends for hours while on LSD or MDMA,” said Prof Roy Salomon, one of those leading the research.

“There’s talk that a lot of these substances create plasticity in the brain, so the brain is more open to change. But what happens if you endure this plasticity in such a terrible situation – is it going to be worse, or better?”

The research tracked the psychological responses of more than 650 survivors from the festival. Two-thirds of these were under the influence of recreational drugs including MDMA, LSD, marijuana or psilocybin – the compound found in hallucinogenic mushrooms – before the attacks took place.

“MDMA, and especially MDMA that was not mixed with anything else, was the most protective,” the study has found, according to Prof Salomon.

He said those on MDMA during the attack appeared to cope much better mentally in the first five months afterwards, when a lot of processing takes place.

“They were sleeping better, had less mental distress – they were doing better than people who didn’t take any substance,” he said.

The team believes pro-social hormones triggered by the drug – such as oxytocin, which helps promote bonding – helped reduce fear and boost feelings of camaraderie between those fleeing the attack.

And even more importantly, they say, it appears to have left survivors more open to receiving love and support from their families and friends once they were home.

Clearly, the research is limited only to those who survived the attacks, making it hard to determine with any certainty whether specific drugs helped or hindered victims’ chances of escape.

But researchers found that many survivors, like Michal Ohana, firmly believe it did play a role – and say that belief, in itself, may help them to recover from the event.

“I feel like it saved my life, because I was so high, like I’m not in the real world,” she told me. “Because regular humans can’t see all these things – it’s not normal.”

Without the drug, she believes she would have just frozen or collapsed to the floor, and been killed or captured by the gunmen.

Clinicians in various countries have already experimented with MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in a trial setting – though only Australia has approved it as a treatment.

Countries that have rejected it include the US, where the Food and Drug Administration cited concerns about the design of the studies, that the treatment may not offer long-lasting benefits, and about the potential risk for heart problems, injury and abuse.

MDMA is classified as a Class A drug in the UK, and has been linked to liver, kidney and heart problems.

In Israel, where MDMA is also illegal, psychologists can only use it to treat clients on an experimental research basis.

The preliminary findings from the Nova study are being closely followed by some of those Israeli clinicians experimenting with MDMA as treatment for PTSD after 7 October.

Dr Anna Harwood-Gross, a clinical psychologist and director of research at Israel’s Metiv Psychotrauma Centre, described the initial findings as “really important” for therapists like her.

She is currently experimenting with using MDMA to treat PTSD within the Israeli military, and had worried about the ethics of inducing a vulnerable psychological state in clients when there is a war going on.

“At the beginning of the war, we questioned whether we were able to do this,” she said. “Can we give people MDMA when there’s a risk of an air raid siren? That’s going to re-traumatise them potentially. This study has shown us that even if there’s a traumatic event during therapy, the MDMA might also help process that trauma.”

Dr Harwood-Gross says early indications of therapeutic MDMA use are encouraging, even among military veterans with chronic PTSD.

It has also upended old assumptions about the “rules” of therapy – especially the length of sessions, which have to be adjusted when working with clients under the influence of MDMA, she says.

“For example, it’s changed our thoughts about 50-minute therapy sessions, with one patient and one therapist,” Dr Harwood-Gross told me. “Having two therapists, and long sessions – up to eight hours long – is a new way of doing therapy. They’re looking at people very holistically and giving them time.”

She says this new longer format is showing promising results, even without patients taking MDMA, with a success rate of 40% in the placebo group.

Israeli society itself has also changed its approach to trauma and therapy following the 7 October attacks, according to Danny Brom, a founding director of the METIV Psychotrauma Centre at Herzog Hospital in Jerusalem, and a senior figure in the industry.

“It’s as if this is the first trauma we’re going through,” he said. “I’ve seen wars here, I’ve seen lots of terrorist attacks and people said, ‘We don’t see trauma here’.

“Suddenly, there seems to be a general opinion that now everyone is traumatised, and everyone needs treatment. It’s a wrong approach.”

What broke, he said, is the sense of security many Jews believed Israel would provide them. These attacks uncovered a collective trauma, he says, linked to the Holocaust and generations of persecution.

“Our history is full of massacres,” psychologist Vered Atzmon Meshulam told me. “As a psychologist now in Israel, we are faced with an opportunity to work with lots of traumas that weren’t previously being treated, like all our narratives for 2,000 years.”

Collective trauma, combat trauma, mind-altering drugs, sexual assault, hostages, survivors, body-collectors, the injured and the bereaved – Israel’s trauma specialists are facing a complex cocktail of issues from the clients now flooding into therapy.

The scale of that mental health challenge is mirrored in Gaza, where vast numbers of people have been killed, injured or left homeless after a devastating 15-month war – and where there are scant resources to help a deeply traumatised population.

The war in Gaza, triggered by the Hamas attacks on Israeli communities in October 2023, was suspended in January in a six-week truce, during which Israeli hostages held by Hamas were exchanged for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

But there is little sense on either side that the peace and security needed to begin healing has arrived.

The truce expired last weekend, with 59 Israeli hostages still in Hamas captivity. Many Gazans are waiting, with their bags packed, for war to resume.

Meanwhile Nova survivor Michal Ohana says she feels that with the passage of time, some are expecting her to have moved on from the attacks, but she is still affected.

“I wake up with this, and I go to sleep with this, and people don’t understand,” she told me.

“We live this every day. I feel the country supported us in the first months, but now after one year, they feel: ‘OK, you need to go back to work, back to life.’ But we can’t.”

US President Donald Trump called a meeting of his cabinet secretaries on Thursday to discuss Elon Musk and his efforts to slash government spending and personnel numbers.

It turned heated, according to media reports.

Musk accused Secretary of State Marco Rubio of failing to cut enough staff at the state department, reports the New York Times.

The tech mogul told Rubio he was “good on TV”, according to the newspaper, pointedly skipping any praise of his work as America’s top diplomat.

The billionaire also clashed with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy over whether Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) task force had tried to lay off air traffic controllers who are already in short supply in the Federal Aviation Administration, according to the New York Times.

Duffy’s department has been under scrutiny after two US airline crashes since Trump took office in January.

After listening to the back and forth, the Republican president reportedly intervened to make clear he still supported Doge, but from now on cabinet secretaries would be in charge and the Musk team would only advise.

A state department spokeswoman told the newspaper that Rubio felt the cabinet meeting was “an open and productive discussion”. The White House has not responded to BBC requests for further comment.

The hastily planned gathering could provide evidence that the president has decided to curtail the sweeping power the SpaceX and Tesla boss and his Doge cost-cutting initiative have commanded in the early weeks of his administration.

Trump first commented on the substance of Thursday’s meeting, which was disclosed only in after-the-fact media reports, through a post that evening on his social media site, Truth Social.

He said that he had instructed his secretaries to work with Doge on “cost-cutting measures”.

“As the secretaries learn about, and understand, the people working for the various departments, they can be very precise as to who will remain, and who will go,” he wrote, adding that they should use a “scalpel” not a “hatchet”.

Just a few weeks ago, Musk wielded a shiny chainsaw at a conservative conference – a visible symbol of aggressive attempts to slash government spending that have angered Democrats and concerned some officials in the Trump administration.

Musk’s team had sent multiple emails from an official government account to millions of federal workers, encouraging them to accept months of advance pay in exchange for their resignations.

Federal workers were instructed to provide accounts of their weekly accomplishments or risk firing – a request some agencies instructed their employees to ignore.

Doge also ordered the dismissal of many newly hired government employees who, because of their “probationary” status, did not have full civil service protections.

Some government agencies have since rescinded these orders because employees deemed essential, such as those who oversee nuclear weapon security, had been affected.

• Four big things Trump and his team took on this week
• What does the Department of Education do – and can Trump dismantle it?
• Trump team hits pause on tariffs – but still sees them as vital tool

During an Oval Office event on Friday, Trump responded to questions about the cabinet meeting – and reports of its heated exchanges. He insisted there was “no clash”. He praised both Rubio and Musk and said the two get along “great”.

Trump’s Thursday Truth Social post, however, appears to give department heads more authority to push back against Musk.

It also may be an attempt to insulate the Trump administration from lawsuits that allege Musk is wielding too much power for someone who, unlike cabinet secretaries, is not subject to Senate review and confirmation.

Several federal judges overseeing these cases have already expressed concern about Musk’s authority – concerns that may be further fuelled by Trump’s comments during his address to Congress on Tuesday that the billionaire is, in fact, the man in charge of Doge.

Musk and Trump have formed a formidable partnership so far – as the richest man in the world and the most powerful politician in America. Washington has been rife with speculation for months about whether that partnership could ultimately fracture.

Those predictions, however, have usually been followed by renewed signs of comity between the two men.

On Friday night, Musk was seen boarding Air Force One with the president for a flight to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida for the weekend.

The cabinet room dust-up may be the first crack in the foundation – but there is plenty of evidence that Trump still supports Musk’s broader efforts and goals, even if he might prefer he use a scalpel in the days ahead, not a chainsaw.

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.

US President Donald Trump has said he is “strongly considering large-scale sanctions” and tariffs on Russia until a ceasefire and peace deal with Ukraine is reached.

Trump said he was contemplating the move because “Russia is absolutely ‘pounding’ Ukraine on the battlefield right now”.

Trump’s comments marked a sharp change in tone. Since coming into office, he has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and blamed Ukraine’s leader for not wanting peace with Russia.

Hours later, however, the US president told reporters he was “finding it more difficult to deal with Ukraine”, and repeated that he trusted Putin.

Last Friday, Trump berated Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office. Days earlier, he had even called him a dictator and blamed Ukraine for starting the war which began on 24 February 2022 when Putin launched a full-scale invasion of the neighbouring country.

The public dressing-down was followed this week by Trump pausing all US military aid and intelligence-sharing with Kyiv.

It is not clear if this enabled Russia’s large-scale missile and drone attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure on Thursday night.

On Friday morning, Trump issued his threat of sanctions tariffs against Russia – apparently over the attack.

“They [Russia] are bombing the hell out of them [Ukraine] right now… and I put a statement out, a very strong statement ‘can’t do that, can’t do that’,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Friday.

Asked if that was a result of the US pause in military co-operation with Ukraine, Trump said Putin was doing “what anyone else would do”.

And he justified the US move by saying: “I want to know they [Ukraine] want to settle and I don’t know they want to settle.”

In Friday’s post, Trump wrote: “I am strongly considering large scale Banking Sanctions, Sanctions, and Tariffs on Russia until a Cease Fire and FINAL SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT ON PEACE IS REACHED. To Russia and Ukraine, get to the table right now, before it is too late.”

He did not provide any details as to how such sanctions and tariffs against Russia may work.

Moscow is already under the heaviest Western sanctions in its history, many of which target its oil exports and foreign currency reserves.

It has been able to get around them to a large extent by selling discounted oil to India and China, while importing many of the goods it previously got from the West through countries like Kazakhstan.

China is reported to be helping to sustain Russia’s war effort with large volumes of dual-use technology, which it denies.

The White House administration cannot have failed to notice the chorus of criticism that all the pressure for a peace deal is being piled on just Ukraine, not Russia. So it is possible that Trump’s threat is an attempt to present itself as being more even-handed.

The problem is, we simply do not know what was discussed and what was agreed in that “lengthy and highly productive” 90-minute phone call that Donald Trump suddenly announced he had held last month with the Russian president.

So far, Vladimir Putin has played a clever hand, sitting back and doubtless enjoying watching the transatlantic alliance come apart at the seams.

Compared to that gain, the threat of US tariffs is unlikely to bother him unduly.

A South Carolina man convicted of bludgeoning his ex-girlfriend’s parents to death has become the first US death row inmate to be executed by firing squad in the last 15 years.

Brad Sigmon was shot to death just after 18:00 local time (23:00 GMT) on Friday by three state corrections department volunteers firing rifles at his chest with specially designed bullets.

Sigmon, 67, was convicted of murdering David and Gladys Larke with a baseball bat in 2001 before kidnapping his ex-girlfriend at gunpoint. She managed to escape as he shot at her.

He had requested death by firing squad over the other two state-approved methods of execution: electric chair and lethal injection.

Chrysti Shain, of the South Carolina Department of Corrections, said Sigmon was pronounced dead by a doctor at 18:08.

Three members of the Larke family were present to witness his death, she said, as well as Sigmon’s spiritual adviser.

Sigmon was strapped to a chair, which had a basin underneath to catch blood, witnesses said.

He told witnesses he wanted his final statement “to be one of love and a calling to my fellow Christians to help us end the death penalty”.

“An eye for an eye was used as justification to the jury for seeking the death penalty,” he added.

“At that time, I was too ignorant to know how wrong that was. Why? Because we no longer live under the Old Testament law but now live under the New Testament.”

After his final statement, a hood was placed over his head.

A curtain that concealed three volunteers opened at 18:01. At 18:05, the trio fired from 15ft (4.6m) away without any countdown.

Jeffrey Collins, a reporter for the Associated Press news agency, said at a news conference that Sigmon had a red bullseye target placed over his heart.

When he was shot, his chest rose and fell several times, the reporter added.

A doctor performed an exam that took about 90 seconds, before declaring him dead.

The .308 Winchester Tap Urban bullets used are designed to break apart on impact and cause maximum damage. Medical experts have debated the amount of pain they may cause.

Anna Dobbins, a reporter for WHFF-TV, added that Sigmon had worn a black jump suit but his bare arms had “flexed” when he was shot.

“I did see a splash of blood when the bullets entered his body,” she told the news conference.

All the shots were fired simultaneously, she said, and witnesses were unable to see the guns.

Prison guards also offered witnesses ear plugs to protect their ears from the sound of the shots, added a reporter for the Post and Courier newspaper.

Counselling services are being offered to any prison staff who were traumatised by the execution, said Ms Shain.

Sigmon’s lawyer, Bo King, had been hoping for a last-minute stay of execution by the South Carolina governor and accused the state of withholding information about the lethal injection process.

“Brad only wanted assurances that these drugs were not expired, or diluted, or spoiled—what any of us would want to know about the medication we take, or the food we eat, much less the means of our death,” he said in a statement after his death.

“It is unfathomable that, in 2025, South Carolina would execute one of its citizens in this bloody spectacle.”

King said his client had been suffering from mental illness, and that the friendships he formed in prison were proof he had been rehabilitated.

“Brad is someone who, for his last meal, asked to get three buckets of original recipe Kentucky Fried Chicken so he could share with the guys that he’s incarcerated with on death row,” he told a WYFF-TV earlier on Friday.

“With his last meal, he wanted to share something special with them,” he said, later telling reporters that the request to share had been denied.

Officials later confirmed his last meal as four pieces of fried chicken, green beans, mashed potatoes with gravy, biscuits, cheesecake and sweet tea. The meal was served on Wednesday evening.

Since 1977 only three people had died by firing squad, all three of them in the state of Utah. The last to die had been Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010.

Ahead of Sigmon’s execution, anti-death penalty protesters held a rally outside the jail in the city of Columbia.

They held signs saying “all life is precious” and “thou shalt not kill”.

The state allows witnesses to observe the death from behind bulletproof glass, but the executioners are hidden from view to protect their identities.

South Carolina passed a law in 2023 requiring that the identities of the execution team members remain secret.

It may have been drowned out this week as US President Donald Trump walked back tariffs on his closest neighbours – and biggest trading partners – almost as soon as they were in place.

But despite the dizzying back-and-forth with Canada and Mexico, the White House made clear that it is serious about its economic vision. And it is willing to pay the price of some short-term economic harm to pursue it.

“There’ll be a little disturbance,” Trump warned in his address to Congress on Tuesday. “But we’re okay with that.”

Some scepticism about that comfort might be understandable, given the abrupt policy turns on tariffs Trump has made, as financial markets dropped and the outcry from US businesses intensified.

Those who see Trump’s tariff threats as economic bluster might be tempted to conclude that he wants to talk tough, but flinches at the first signs of economic damage.

But that view is to some extent undermined by the trade war against China he started in his first term which has seriously intensified.

In just a few weeks, Trump has raised taxes to at least 20% on all Chinese imports.

It means the average effective tariff rate on imports from China now stands at roughly 34%, because taxes on some sectors – like electric vehicles and steel – stand at much higher rates.

The 25% tariff on Mexican and Canadian goods hasn’t completely gone away either. The levy still stands on goods that aren’t compliant with a trade deal that Trump negotiated in his first term – and so some goods coming from both neighbours will still be subject to it.

• Trump expands exemptions from Canada and Mexico tariffs
• What are tariffs and why is Trump using them?
• China says it is ready for ‘any type of war’ with US

The White House also says its much-touted reciprocal tariffs targeting nearly all US trade partners are still in the pipeline. The details, they say, will be unveiled on 2 April, with rates tailor-made to address whatever policies other countries impose that officials consider unfair – whether in the form of taxes on US tech firms, Value-Added Taxes, or other import rules.

“It’s a certainty – reciprocal tariffs are coming,” Trump’s senior adviser on trade and manufacturing Peter Navarro told business broadcaster CNBC on Friday.

He said the White House had seen signs that its threats alone were prompting car companies to start taking action and bolster their supply chains in the US – exactly the kind of investment that Donald Trump says his tariffs will spur.

“They’re getting the picture,” Navarro said.

Navarro and others say the nitty-gritty of tariff rates is not their focus. Rather, they are using trade levies as a means to create a new version of America, where the country has a different relationship with its global partners.

That America has more local manufacturing, a smaller government and pays less for the military defence of its allies.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent – a former Wall Street hedge fund boss not known as a tariff hawk – this week pointed to political discussions in Germany about boosting its military spending as an “early, big win”.

“The international trading system consists of a web of relationships – military economic, political. One cannot take a single aspect in isolation,” he said, as he tried to sell the administration’s strategy to a tariff-sceptical audience at the Economic Club of New York.

“This is how President Trump sees the world – not as a zero-sum game but as inter-linkages that can be re-ordered to advance the interests of American people.”

For Trump, tariffs are a key tool for re-ordering that web. And the treasury secretary made clear that the likely short-term harm – higher prices – is an acceptable trade-off.

“Access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream,” Bessent said.

For now, polls indicate Trump’s voter base remains behind him. But how the next months unfold – and what happens in particular with consumer prices – could prove a real test of that message.

The remains of an indigenous woman murdered by a serial killer have been found after a search of a landfill in the Canadian province of Manitoba, police say.

Morgan Harris’ remains were recovered at the Prairie Green Landfill, north of the city of Winnipeg, said officials. Authorities had been searching for Harris, 39, and Marcedes Myran, 26, both of Long Plain First Nation. Police say two sets of remains have been found.

Harris and Myran were among four indigenous women killed in 2022 by convicted murderer Jeremy Skibicki, who dumped their bodies in two different landfills over a three-month span.

The search of the Prairie Green Landfill began late last year following a lengthy pressure campaign by indigenous leaders.

Cambria Harris, Morgan’s daughter, said in a Facebook post on Friday that the discovery of her mother’s remains was a “very bittersweet moment”.

“Please keep our families in your hearts tonight and every day going forward as we trust this process,” the post said.

Police initially declined to search the landfill, and a federal government study concluded that a search could take three years and cost up to C$184m (£100m; $128m), with workers exposed to hazardous chemicals.

Manitoba eventually pledged C$20m to search for the remains – funds that were matched by the federal government.

Skibicki was convicted in July last year of the murders of Harris and Myran, as well as of killing a third woman, Rebecca Contois, 24, of O-Chi-Chak-Ko-Sipi First Nation, and a still-unidentified woman who has been given the name Buffalo Woman.

Their murders went undetected for months until a man looking for scrap metal in a bin outside Skibicki’s apartment found partial human remains, identified as belonging to Ms Contois.

Canada has long faced a crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. According to the RCMP, indigenous women make up 10% of the population of missing women in Canada and 16% of female homicides. Indigenous women make up about 4% of the female population in Canada.

A tropical storm is expected to make landfall on Australia’s eastern coast on Saturday morning as tens of thousands of people have been evacuated and more than 230,000 households left without power.

Initially called Cyclone Alfred, the weather front was downgraded to a tropical low with winds set to reach up to 85km/h, less strong than first forecast.

The Bureau of Meteorology said the storm is currently sitting off Bribie Island and is moving slowly north, and expected to cross the mainland coast between the island and Maroochydore.

Authorities are still warning people to stay indoors, with fines for those who visit beaches, as heavy rain and flooding is still expected.

On Saturday morning, senior meteorologist Miriam Bradbury from the Bureau of Meteorology, said there is an ongoing risk of widespread severe weather, especially rainfall.

“Our 24-hour rainfall totals could easily exceed 200mm or more over the next couple of days as that system slows and moves inland,” she told ABC News Breakfast.

“The rain is still coming through in full force, and we’re still seeing widespread flash-flooding, widespread impacts, likely to continue through today and well into tomorrow as well,” she added.

The ex-tropical cyclone has already caused flooding which authorities fear could worsen over the weekend. New South Wales police said on Friday that one man was missing after his vehicle was swept into a fast-flowing river.

Four million people across Queensland and northern New South Wales are in the firing line of the storm.

But its slow progress, described by weather experts as “walking pace” and “erratic”, has raised concerns of flash and riverine flooding in low-lying areas.

Stephen Valentine and his wife, who live in Logan city south of Brisbane, have prepared some 30 litres of water, food for themselves and their pets, and set up “protected rooms” in their home situated away from windows.

“At the moment we are as prepared as we can be for something that none of us have been through… Nothing has come this far south across the south,” said Mr Valentine, who grew up in the city.

“We would get the edge of a cyclone ever so often, but not to this level,” he added.

While Queensland isn’t a stranger to cyclones – it’s the most disaster-prone state in Australia – it’s rare they come so far south.

“These are tough times, but Australians are tough people, and we are resilient people,” said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Thursday, echoing the Gold Coast’s acting Mayor Donna Gates, who has said Cyclone Alfred is a “scary proposition” for the region.

Nearly 1,000 schools have closed, public transport has been suspended and airports are shut. Flights aren’t expected to resume until Sunday at the earliest. Elective surgeries have also been cancelled.

The last time a cyclone hit was in 1974, when Wanda hit in January and then two months later, Zoe crossed the coast.

Flooding though, is more common. In February 2022, thousands of homes were damaged along much of Australia’s east after heavy rain.

Authorities have been keen to prepare communities ahead of Cyclone Alfred. The council opened sandbag depots across the region to help residents protect their homes.

“It’s surreal. We know it’s coming, but it’s very quiet,” said Anthony Singh, a resident of the Brisbane suburb of West End. He waited for four hours on Wednesday to pick up sandbags to protect his home.

Fellow resident Mark Clayton, helped to co-ordinate the sandbag collection, shovelling more than 140 tonnes of sand.

“I think people are a bit apprehensive,” he says. “Are the buildings going to stay up, are the roofs going to stay on? People expect a lot of trees to come down and to lose power for an extended period of time.”

With supermarkets now shut and people mostly sheltering at home, there’s a lot of uncertainty as Australians wait for the storm to hit.

But some die-hard surfers have thrown caution to the increasing wind.

“This is what we look forward to,” said surfer Jeff Weatherall as he waited for a jet ski to pick him up from Kirra beach and carry him into the big waves. “This is the fifth day straight – I’ve done nothing but eat, sleep, surf and do it again.”

Kirra beach is famous for its breakers and surfers have been busy this week seizing the strong winds.

“There are people that are going to lose their houses, but at the moment, you’re taking the good of it all. This is just crazy surf,” said surfer Donnie Neal.

Meanwhile Albanese have warned people to take the cyclone warnings seriously.

“This isn’t a time for sightseeing or for seeing what it’s like to experience these conditions firsthand,” he said.

“Please stay safe. Be sensible.”

Giant trolley scales are being trialled at a Tesco store in Gateshead sparking a mixed reaction from shoppers.

Trolleys are weighed before checkout to identify any items customers who have used Scan as you Shop might have missed or scanned twice.

But some shoppers are unsure whether the new technology will take off with some likening it to airport security. “Am I at border control or Tesco?” one Reddit user posted, while another joked “No clubcard? Deported!”

Others questioned whether the scales were aimed at cracking down on self-scan shoplifters or cutting back on checkout staff. Tesco declined to comment.

Tesco Clubcard members already have the option to use Scan as you Shop handsets as they fill their trolleys then check out and pay at the end.

Now in the Gateshead Trinity Square Extra store, shoppers can push their trolley on to the scales and if the weight matches the items they’ve scanned they pay as normal. If there is a discrepancy a staff member will do a manual rescan of the whole trolley.

Although some Reddit users who commented on the photo of the scales were positive with one saying “they are 10x more convenient and faster”, many were more critical of their introduction.

“More and more the honest shopper is treated like a thief,” one said, while another wrote “the point of all this is to save on staff”.

Business retail consultant Ged Futter told the BBC this was about loss prevention and staffing costs.

“There is no way this is about making it quicker for the shopper. It’s supposed to be scan and go – this is scan and stop while your trolley is weighed.”

He said self-scan had increased the rate of shoplifting but instead of putting staff back on tills, supermarkets were trying to use even more technology to stop thefts.

“This is supermarkets saying, ‘we know there are thefts so what we are going to do is treat every customer in exactly the same way to reduce theft’.

“They’re forgetting that trust is the most important thing for all of the retailers and it works both ways. If customers don’t feel trusted or think they’re being treated like thieves they will go somewhere else.”

The British Retail Consortium has said shoplifting is “out of control” after its annual crime survey found incidents of customer theft reported by retailers in the UK rose by 3.7 million to 20.4 million, and cost retailers £2bn.

Separate figures published by the Office for National Statistics revealed shoplifting offences reported by police in England and Wales rose by 23% to more than 492,000 over the same period.

That is the highest figure since current recording practices began in 2003.

Retail criminologist Prof Emmeline Taylor told the BBC she had seen similar trolley scales used in European supermarkets and there was “definitely an element of trying to control loss” but added “let’s not forget a lot of scan and go loss can be accidental”.

A random audit of 20,000 scan and go baskets found 43% had at least one error, a 2022 global study on self-checkout found.

Prof Taylor said Tesco’s scales were “quite foreboding and reminiscent of security scanners”.

“They don’t want to give the impression that they are pointing the finger at their honest customer,” she said.

“They will need to balance how they respond when there is a weight discrepancy because you can lose a customer for life if they feel they’ve been wrongly accused of something.”

She said she could see customers getting frustrated using the scales.

“You’ve left your handbag in the trolley, you’ve got to take your child out of the seat, you might be queueing behind someone who has been stopped and you can’t get through so the trial needs to focus on minimising friction points in the customer experience.”

The scales are the latest example of supermarkets turning to technology to streamline time and costs. The ratio of self-scan to staffed tills continues to be fiercely debated. Some shoppers love the speed and convenience while others are fed up of hearing “unexpected item in the bagging area”.

In August upmarket north of England supermarket chain Booths got rid of self-scan altogether, while Asda and Morrisons said they would put more staff back on manned tills.