Israel’s army has admitted its soldiers made mistakes over the killing of 15 emergency workers in southern Gaza on 23 March.

The convoy of Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) ambulances, a UN car and a fire truck from Gaza’s Civil Defence came under fire near Rafah.

Israel originally claimed troops opened fire because the convoy approached “suspiciously” in darkness without headlights or flashing lights. It said movement of the vehicles had not been previously co-ordinated or agreed with the army.

Mobile phone footage, filmed by one of the paramedics who was killed, showed the vehicles did have lights on as they answered a call to help wounded people.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) insists at least six of the medics were linked to Hamas – but has so far provided no evidence. It admits they were unarmed when the soldiers opened fire.

The mobile video, originally shared by the New York Times, shows the vehicles pulling up on the road when, without warning, shooting begins just before dawn.

The footage continues for more than five minutes, with the paramedic, named as Refat Radwan, heard saying his last prayers before the voices of Israeli soldiers are heard approaching the vehicles.

An IDF official briefed journalists on Saturday evening, saying the soldiers had earlier fired on a car containing three Hamas members.

When the ambulances responded and approached the area, aerial surveillance monitors informed the soldiers on the ground of the convoy “advancing suspiciously”.

When the ambulances stopped beside the Hamas car, the soldiers assumed they were under threat and opened fire, despite no evidence any of the emergency team was armed.

Israel has admitted its earlier account claiming the vehicles approached without lights was inaccurate, attributing the report to the troops involved.

The video footage shows the vehicles were clearly marked and the paramedics wore reflective hi-vis uniform.

The soldiers buried the bodies of the 15 dead workers in sand to protect them from wild animals, the official said, claiming the vehicles were moved and buried the following day to clear the road.

They were not uncovered until a week after the incident because international agencies, including the UN, could not organise safe passage to the area or locate the spot.

When an aid team found the bodies they also discovered Refat Radwan’s mobile phone containing footage of the incident.

The Israeli military official denied any of the medics were handcuffed before they died and said they were not executed at close range, as some reports had suggested.

Earlier this week, a surviving paramedic told the BBC the ambulances had their lights on and denied his colleagues were linked with any militant group.

The IDF promised a “thorough examination” of the incident, saying it would “understand the sequence of events and the handling of the situation”.

The Red Crescent and many other international organisations are calling for an independent investigation.

Israel renewed its aerial bombardment and ground offensive in Gaza on 18 March after the first phase of a ceasefire deal came to an end and negotiations on a second phase stalled.

More than 1,200 people have since been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

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

More than 50,600 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s health ministry.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy has criticised Israeli authorities for denying two Labour MPs entry to the country and detaining them.

He described the move as “unacceptable, counterproductive, and deeply concerning”, adding that the Foreign Office had been in touch with both MPs to offer support.

Abtisam Mohamed and Yuan Yang were refused entry because they intended to “spread hate speech” against Israel, the Israeli population and immigration authority said in a statement.

Lammy said: “I have made clear to my counterparts in the Israeli government that this is no way to treat British Parliamentarians.”

Yang, the MP for Earley and Woodley, and Mohamed, the MP for Sheffield Central, flew to the country from London Luton Airport with two aides on Saturday afternoon.

The Israeli immigration authority said Interior Minister Moshe Arbel had denied entry to all four passengers after they were questioned. It also accused them of travelling to “document the security forces”.

The UK Foreign Office said the group was part of a parliamentary delegation.

Israel’s immigration authority contested this claim, saying the delegation had not been acknowledged by any Israeli official.

A spokesperson for the Interior Ministry said the MPs had left the country as of 06:00 local time (04:00 BST) on Sunday.

Lammy said in a statement: “The UK government’s focus remains securing a return to the ceasefire and negotiations to stop the bloodshed, free the hostages and end the conflict in Gaza.”

Long, flowing wigs and weave extensions have dominated the catwalks of Ivory Coast’s massively popular beauty pageants for years.

Contestants in the West African nation often spend a huge amount of money on their appearance, from outfits to hairdos – with very few choosing the natural look.

In more than six decades, there have only been two notable exceptions, the most recent was Marlène-Kany Kouassi, who took the Miss Ivory Coast title in 2022 – looking resplendent with her short natural hair, the crown becoming her only adornment.

Her victory was not only unusual in Ivory Coast but across the world, where Western beauty standards are often the desired look both for those entering contests and for the judges.

Changes are slowly creeping in – last December Angélique Angarni-Filopon, from the French Caribbean island of Martinique, made headlines when she was crowned Miss France, mainly because of her age – she is 34 – and she also sported short Afro hair.

But this year the organisers of the Ivorian competition are shaking things up right from the start.

Wigs, weaves and hair extensions have been banned from the preliminary stages of the competition, which are held in 13 cities across the country (as well as two abroad for those in the diaspora).

“We want the candidates to be natural – whether with braids or straightened hair, it should be their own. Beauty must be raw,” Victor Yapobi, president of the Miss Ivory Coast organising committee, told the BBC.

Ivory Coast is the only African country enforcing the ban for a national competition.

Mr Yapobi said the organisers in Ivory Coast had long been trying to promote a more natural look – for example cosmetic surgery is a no-no and skin lightening is frowned upon.

“We decided this year to truly showcase the natural beauty of these young women,” he said.

Other changes have also been implemented, like allowing slightly shorter women to compete – the minimum is now 1.67m (5.4ft), increasing the age by three years to 28 and – crucially – lowering the entrance fee by more than $30 (£25) to $50.

“This change in criteria is because we observed these young women were putting up a lot of money to participate, and it was becoming a bit of a budget drain.”

When the BBC joined the first preliminary pageant in Daloa, the main city in the western region of Haut-Sassandra, one contestant was overjoyed by the new rules – feeling it gave her a better chance of success as she prefers not to wear wigs.

“I would see other girls with long, artificial hair, and they looked so beautiful,” 21-year-old Emmanuella Dali, a real estate agent, told the BBC.

“This rule gives me more pride as a woman – as an African woman.”

The move aimed at celebrating natural African beauty has sparked a lively debate across the country, where wigs and extensions are popular.

As a fashion choice, many women love the creativity that wigs and weaves allow them. They also serve as what is called “protective style”, which means minimising the daily pulling and tugging on hair that can cause breakages.

This was reflected by some contestants in Daloa who felt the rule removed an element of personal expression.

“I’m a wigs fan. I love wigs,” said contestant and make-up artist Astrid Menekou. The 24-year-old told the BBC she was initially shocked by the no-wig, no-extensions stipulation.

“I didn’t expect this rule! But now? I like my hair, and that’s OK.”

The new rule has made the competitors think more about concepts of beauty – and changed some opinions, like those of Laetitia Mouroufie.

“Last year, I had extensions because I thought that’s what beauty meant,” the 25-year-old student told the BBC.

“This year, I feel more confident being myself.”

Should the competition influence attitudes beyond the pageant world, it could have huge economic implications.

Wigs from human hair, which can last for years if cared for properly, can range in price from an estimated $200 to $4,000, while synthetic ones cost around $10 to $300.

Ivory Coast’s hair industry is worth more than $300m a year, with wigs and weaves making up a significant share of that market.

“This rule is not good for us,” Ange Sea, a 30-year-old hairdresser in Daloa, told the BBC.

“Many women love wigs. This will hurt our business and we make more money when working with wigs and weaves.”

At her salon, glue will be used to carefully attach wigs to make them look more natural and women will spend hours having weaves and extensions put in.

It shows how deeply engrained wig culture is in West Africa, despite a natural hair movement that has been gaining momentum among black women around the world over the last decade.

Natural hair products have become much more readily available and natural hair influencers proliferate on social media worldwide with advice on how to manage and style natural hair, which can be time-consuming.

It used to be considered unprofessional to wear one’s hair naturally and it would have been extraordinary to see black female TV stars on screen or CEOs in the boardroom with natural hair.

According to Florence Edwige Nanga, a hair and scalp specialist in the main Ivorian city of Abidjan, this is often still the case in Ivory Coast.

“Turn on the TV [here], and you’ll see almost every journalist wearing a wig,” the trichologist told the BBC.

“These beauty enhancements are fashionable, but they can also cause problems – like alopecia or scalp infections,” she warned.

With the preliminary rounds under way, arguments over whether pageants should be setting beauty rules or women should decide such things for themselves continues.

The outcome may be that there is more of an acceptance of both in Ivory Coast, allowing women to switch styles up – between natural hair and wigs and weaves.

Mr Yapobi said the feedback he had received over the new rules was “extraordinary” and clearly showed it was having an impact.

“Everyone congratulates us. Everyone, even from abroad. I receive emails and WhatsApp messages from everywhere congratulating us for wanting to return to our roots.”

He said no decision had been taken about whether the wig ban would apply to the 15 contestants who make it to the final of Miss Ivory Coast 2025.

This extravaganza will take place at a hotel in Abidjan at the end of June and will be broadcast on national TV.

“If it works, we’ll continue and carry on this initiative in the years to come,” Mr Yapobi said.

For Doria Koré, who went on to be named Miss Haut-Sassandra, her crown holds even more significance: “Winning with natural hair shows the true beauty of African women.”

Ms Dali said she was walking away with something even more valuable – self-confidence: “I didn’t win, but I feel proud. This is who I am.”

India is a cricket-crazy nation, and it seems the AI chatbot ChatGPT hasn’t missed that fact.

So, when its founder Sam Altman fed it the prompt: “Sam Altman as a cricket player in anime style”, the bot seems to have immediately generated an image of Altman wielding a bat in a bright blue India jersey.

Altman shared his anime cricketer avatar on X on Thursday, sending Indian social media users into a tizzy.

Though the tech billionaire had shared AI-generated images before – joining last week’s viral Studio Ghibli trend – it was the India jersey that got people talking.

While some Indian users said they were delighted to see Altman sporting their team’s colours, many were quick to speculate about his motives behind sharing the image.

“Sam trying hard to attract Indian customers,” one user said.

“Now awaiting your India announcement. How much are you allocating out of that $40bn to India,” another user asked, alluding to the record funding recently secured by Altman for his firm, OpenAI, which owns ChatGPT.

Yet another user put into words a pattern he seemed to have spotted in Altman’s recent social media posts – and a question that seems to be on many Indian users’ minds.

“Over the past few days, you’ve been praising India and Indian customers a lot. How did this sudden love for India come about? It feels like there’s some deep strategy going on behind the scenes,” he wrote on X.

While the comment may sound a bit conspiratorial, there’s some truth to at least part of it.

Just hours before Altman shared his image in the cricket jersey, he’d shared a post on X praising India’s adoption of AI technology. He said it was “amazing to watch” and that it was “outpacing the world”.

This post too went viral in India, while the media wrote numerous stories documenting users’ reactions to it.

Someone even started a Reddit thread which quite comically aired the Redditor’s curiosity, and perhaps, confusion.

“Can someone tell me what Sam Altman is talking about here in his tweet?” the person posted on Reddit sharing Altman’s post.

A few days earlier, Altman had retweeted Studio Ghibli-style images of Prime Minister Narendra Modi which were shared by the federal government’s citizen engagement platform.

All these posts of Altman have generated a fair amount of comments questioning his motives.

The scepticism around Altman’s perceived courting of India could be because of his past views on the country’s AI capabilities.

During a visit in 2023, he had sounded almost dismissive of small Indian start-ups making AI tools that could compete with OpenAI’s creations.

Asked at a event how a small, smart team with a low budget of about $10m could build substantial AI foundational models, he answered that it would be “totally hopeless” to attempt this but that entrepreneurs should try anyway.

But when Altman visited India again this year, he had changed his tune.

In a meeting with federal minister Ashwini Vaishnaw in February, Altman expressed an eagerness to collaborate with India on making low-cost AI models.

He also praised India for its swift pace of adopting AI technologies and revealed that the country was OpenAI’s second-largest market, with users tripling over the past year.

The praise comes even as his company is locked in a legal battle with some of India’s biggest news media companies over the alleged unauthorised use of their content.

Experts say that Altman’s seemingly newfound affinity for India might have to do with the country’s profitability as a market.

According to the International Trade Administration, the AI market in India is projected to reach $8bn by 2025, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 40% from 2020 to 2025.

Nikhil Pahwa, founder-editor of MediaNama.com, a technology policy website, says that when it comes to founders of AI companies making “grand statements” about India, it has much to do with the country’s massive user base. He adds that Altman isn’t the only CEO wooing India.

In January, Aravind Srinivas, founder of Perplexity, an AI search engine, also expressed an eagerness to work with Indian AI start-ups.

Mr Srinivas said in a post on X that he was ready to invest $1m and five hours of his time per week to “make India great again in the context of AI”.

Technology writer Prasanto K Roy believes that the Ghibli-trend revealed India’s massive userbase for ChatGPT and, potentially, other AI platforms as well. And with competitor AI models like Gemini and Grok quickly gaining Indian users, Altman may be keen to retain existing users of his firm’s services and also acquire new ones, he says.

“India is a very large client base for all global AI foundational models and with ChatGPT being challenged by the much cheaper DeepSeek AI, Altman is likely eager to acquire more Indian customers and keep Indian developers positively aligned towards building on top of OpenAI’s services,” Mr Pahwa says.

“So when it comes to these grand overtures towards India, there’s no real love; it’s just business,” he adds.

President Donald Trump has built another wall, and he thinks everyone else is going to pay for it. But his decision to impose sweeping tariffs of at least 10% on almost every product that enters the US is essentially a wall designed to keep work and jobs within it, rather than immigrants out.

The height of this wall needs to be put in historical context. It takes the US back a century in terms of protectionism. It catapults the US way above the G7 and G20 nations into levels of customs revenue, associated with Senegal, Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan.

What occurred this week was not just the US starting a global trade war, or sparking a rout in stock markets. It was the world’s hyper power firmly turning its back on the globalisation process it had championed, and from which it handsomely profited in recent decades.

And in so doing, using the equation that underpinned his grand tariff reveal on the Rose Garden’s lawns, the White House also turned its back on some fundamentals of both conventional economics and diplomacy.

Trump talked a lot about 1913 in his announcement. This was a turning point when the US both created federal income tax and significantly lowered its tariffs.

Before this point, from its inception, the US government was funded mainly by tariffs, and was unapologetically protectionist, based on the strategy of its first Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton.

The basic lesson the White House has taken from this is that high tariffs made America, made it “great” the first time, and also meant that there was no need for a federal income tax.

On this side of the Atlantic, underpinning globalisation and free trade are the theories of 19th-Century British economist David Ricardo. In particular, the 1817 Theory of Comparative Advantage.

There are equations, but the basics are pretty easy to understand: Individual countries are good at making different things, based on their own natural resources and the ingenuity of their populations.

Broadly speaking, the whole world, and the countries within it, are better off, if everyone specialises in what they are best at, and then trades freely.

Here in Britain this remains a cornerstone of the junction between politics and economics. Most of the world still believes in comparative advantage. It is the intellectual core of globalisation.

But the US was never a full convert at the time. The underlying reluctance of the US never disappeared. And this week’s manifestation of that was the imaginative equation created by the US Trade Representative to generate the numbers on Trump’s big board.

It is worth unpacking the rationale for these so-called “reciprocal” tariffs. The numbers bear little resemblance to the published tariff rates in those countries.

The White House said adjustments had been made to account for red tape and currency manipulation. A closer look at the, at-first, complicated looking equation revealed it was simply a measure of the size of that country’s goods trade surplus with the US. They took the size of the trade deficit and divided it by the imports.

In the hour before the press conference a senior White House official explained it quite openly. “These tariffs are customised to each country, calculated by the Council of Economic Advisers… The model they use is based on the concept the trade deficit that we have is the sum of all the unfair trade practices, the sum of all cheating.”

This is really important. According to the White House, the act of selling more goods to the US than the US sells to you, is by definition “cheating” and is deserving of a tariff that is calculated to correct that imbalance.

This is why the surreal stories about the US tariffing rarely visited islands only inhabited by penguins matter. It reveals the actual method.

The long-term aim, and the target of the policy, is to get the US $1.2 trillion trade deficit and the largest country deficits within that down to zero. The equation was simplistically designed to target those countries with surpluses, not those with recognisable quantifiable trade barriers. It targeted poor countries, emerging economies and tiny irrelevant islets based on that data.

While these two different factors overlap, they are not the same thing.

There are many reasons why some countries have surpluses, and some have deficits. There is no inherent reason why these numbers should be zero. Different countries are better at making different products, and have different natural and human resources. This is the very basis of trade.

The US appears no longer to believe in this. Indeed if the same argument was applied solely to trade in services, the US has a $280bn (£216bn) surplus in areas such as financial services and social media tech.

Yet services trade was excluded from all the White House calculations.

There is something bigger here. As the US Vice President JD Vance said in a speech last month, globalisation has failed in the eyes of this administration because the idea was that “rich countries would move further up the value chain, while the poor countries made the simpler things”.

That has not panned out, especially in the case of China, so the US is moving decisively away from this world.

For the US, it is not David Ricardo who matters, it is David Autor, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) economist and the coiner of the term “China shock”.

In 2001, as the world was distracted by the aftermath of 9/11, China joined the World Trade Organisation (WTO), having relatively free access to US markets, and so transforming the global economy.

Living standards, growth, profits and stock markets boomed in the US as China’s workforce migrated from the rural fields to the coastal factories to produce exports more cheaply for US consumers. It was a classic example of the functioning of “comparative advantage”. China generated trillions of dollars, much of which was reinvested in the US, in the form of its government bonds, helping keep interest rates down.

Everyone was a winner. Well, not quite. Essentially US consumers en masse got richer with cheaper goods, but the quid pro quo was a profound loss of manufacturing to East Asia.

Autor’s calculation was that by 2011, this “China shock” saw the loss of one million US manufacturing jobs, and 2.4 million jobs overall. These hits were geographically concentrated in the Rust Belt and the south.

The trade shock impact on lost jobs and wages was remarkably persistent.

Autor further updated his analysis last year and found that while the Trump administration’s first term dabble with tariff protection had little net economic impact, it did loosen Democrat support in affected areas, and boosted support for Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

Fast forward to this week, and the array of union car workers and oil and gas workers celebrating the tariffs in the White House.

So the promise is that these jobs will return, not just to the Rust Belt, but across the US. This is indeed likely to some degree. The President’s clear message to foreign companies is to avoid the tariffs by moving your factories. The carrots offered by Biden followed by the stick from Trump could well lead to material progress on this.

But the President’s characterisation of the past half century of freer trade as having “raped and pillaged” the US obviously doesn’t reflect the overall picture, even if it has not worked for specific regions, sectors or demographics.

The US service sector thrived, dominating the world from Wall Street and Silicon Valley. US consumer brands used hyper-efficient supply chains stretching into China and East Asia to make incredible profits selling their aspirational American products everywhere.

The US economy did very well indeed. The problem, simply, was that it was not evenly distributed among sectors. And what the US lacked was levels of redistribution and adaptation to spread that wealth across the country. This reflects America’s political choices.

Now, as the US chooses to reshore its manufacturing with a sudden jolt of protectionism, other countries also have choices as to whether to support the flows of capital and trade that have made the US rich.

The world’s consumers have choices.

It is little wonder major blue chip American companies, which have built cash machines on hyper-efficient East Asian supply chains producing cheaply and then selling to the whole world based on their attractive aspirational brands, have a big problem.

Their share prices are particularly badly affected because the president has both decimated their supply chain strategies, and also risks greatly impairing their brand image amongst global consumers.

Ultimately, this is the first social media trade war. The experience of Tesla’s sale slump and Canada’s backlash against US goods may prove contagious. That would be as powerful as any counter-tariff.

These countries that bet on being the workshops for US consumers have choices over trade too. New alliances will form and intensify that seek to cut out an erratic US.

The President’s sensitivity to this was apparent when he threatened to increase tariffs if the EU and Canada joined forces over retaliation. This would be the nightmare scenario.

In the game theory of trade wars, credibility does matter. The US has unrivalled military and technological might, which helps. But to transform the global trading system using an arbitrary formula, that throws up transparent absurdities, even without the penguins, is likely to encourage the other side to resist.

This is especially the case when the rest of the world thinks that the loaded gun that the President is holding is being aimed at his own foot. The stock market fell most in the US. Inflation will go up most in the US. It is Wall Street now calculating a more-than-evens chance of a recession in the US.

Perhaps there is some substance to the theory that the real objective here is to weaken the dollar and lower US borrowing costs.

For now, the US is checking out of the global trade system it created. It can continue without it. But the transition is going to be very messy indeed.

Crowds of protesters have gathered in cities across the US to denounce President Trump, in the largest nationwide show of opposition since the president took office in January.

The “Hands Off” protest planners aimed to hold rallies in 1,200 locations, including in all 50 US states. Thousands of people turned out in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Washington DC, among other cities, on Saturday.

Protesters cited grievances with Trump’s agenda ranging from social to economic issues.

Coming days after Trump’s announcement that the US would impose import tariffs on most countries around the world, gatherings were also held outside the US, including in London, Paris and Berlin.

In Boston, some protesters said they were motivated by immigration raids on US university students that have led to arrests and deportation proceedings.

Law student Katie Smith told BBC News that she was motivated by Turkish international student Rumeysa Ozturk, whose arrest near Boston-area Tufts University by masked US agents was caught on camera last month.

“You can stand up today or you can be taken later,” she said, adding: “I’m not usually a protest girlie.”

In London, protesters held signs reading, “WTAF America?”, “Stop hurting people” and “He’s an idiot”.

They chanted “hands off Canada”, “hands off Greenland” and “hands off Ukraine”, referencing Trump’s changes to US foreign policy. Trump has repeatedly expressed interest in annexing Canada and Greenland. He also got into a public dispute with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and has struggled to negotiate a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia.

In Washington DC, thousands of protesters gathered to watch speeches by Democratic lawmakers. Many remarks focused on the role played in Trump’s administration by wealthy donors – most notably Elon Musk, who has served as an advisor to the president and spearheaded an effort to dramatically cut spending and the federal workforce.

Florida Congressman Maxwell Frost denounced the “billionaire takeover of our government”.

“When you steal from the people, expect the people to rise up. At the ballot box and in the streets,” he shouted.

The protests come after a bruising week for the president and his allies. Republicans won a closely watched special Florida congressional election on Tuesday, but with slimmer margins than they had hoped. Wisconsin voters elected a Democratic judge to serve on the state supreme court, roundly rejecting a Musk-backed Republican candidate by almost 10 percentage points.

In both states, Democrats sought to tap into voter anger towards the Trump administration’s policies and Elon Musk’s influence.

Some polls show approval ratings for President Trump to be slipping slightly.

One Reuters/Ipsos poll released earlier this week found that his approval rating had dropped to 43%, its lowest point since Trump began his second term in January. When he was inaugurated on 20 January, his approval rating was 47%.

The same poll found that 37% of Americans approve of his handling of the economy, while 30% approve of his strategy to address the cost of living in the US.

Another recent poll, from Harvard Caps/Harris, found that 49% of registered voters approve of Trump’s performance in office, down from 52% last month. The same poll, however, found that 54% of voters believe he is doing a better job than Joe Biden did as president.

One protester in Washington named Theresa told the BBC that she was there because “we’re losing our democratic rights”.

“I’m very concerned about the cuts they’re making to the federal government,” she said, adding that she is also concerned about retirement and education benefits.

Asked if she thought Trump was receiving the protesters’ message, she said: “Well, let’s see. [Trump has] been golfing just about every day.”

Trump held no public events on Saturday, and spent the day golfing at a resort he owns in Florida. He was scheduled to play golf again on Sunday.

The White House released a statement defending Trump’s positions, saying he would continue to protect programs such as Medicare and pointing to Democrats as the threat.

“President Trump’s position is clear: he will always protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid for eligible beneficiaries. Meanwhile, the Democrats’ stance is giving Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare benefits to illegal aliens, which will bankrupt these programs and crush American seniors.”

One of Trump’s top immigration advisors, Tom Homan, told Fox News on Saturday that protesters held a rally outside of his New York home, but that he was in Washington at the time.

“They can protest a vacant house all they want,” Homan said, adding that their presence “tied up” law enforcement and prevented officials from seeing to more important tasks.

“Protests and rallies, they don’t mean anything,” Homan continued.

“So go ahead and exercise your first amendment [free speech] rights. It’s not going to change the facts of the case.”

India’s longest and most holy river, the Ganges, is home to thousands of dolphins. But their survival is under threat.

But these aren’t like the ones found in oceans. They don’t leap out of the water in spectacular arcs; surface for long intervals or swim in an upright position. Instead, they swim sideways, spend much of their time underwater, have long snouts and are almost completely blind.

These are Gangetic dolphins, a species of river dolphin – and India’s national aquatic animal – that’s found largely in the Ganges-Brahmaputra river system in the northern part of the country.

A new survey finds India’s rivers host around 6,327 river dolphins – 6,324 Gangetic and just three Indus dolphins. A majority of the Indus dolphins are found in Pakistan as the river flows through both the South Asian countries.

Both these dolphin species are classified as “endangered” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Researchers from the Wildlife Institute of India surveyed 58 rivers across 10 states between 2021 and 2023 to produce the first comprehensive count of India’s river dolphins.

The origins of river dolphins are as fascinating as the creatures themselves. Often called “living fossils”, they evolved from marine ancestors millions of years ago, say scientists.

When the sea once flooded low-lying areas of South Asia, these dolphins moved inland – and when the waters receded, they stayed. Over time, they adapted to murky, shallow rivers, developing traits that set them apart from their ocean-dwelling cousins.

Experts say the new survey is crucial for tracking river dolphin populations. Since 1980, at least 500 dolphins have died – many accidentally caught in fishing nets or killed deliberately – highlighting the ongoing threat to the species.

Conservationist Ravindra Kumar Sinha says that up until the early 2000s, there was very little awareness about river dolphins.

In 2009, the Gangetic river dolphin was declared India’s national aquatic animal to boost conservation. Steps like a 2020 action plan and a dedicated research centre in 2024 have since helped revive its numbers.

However, conservationists say there’s still a long way to go.

Dolphins continue to be poached for their flesh and blubber, from which oil is extracted to use as fishing bait. Other times, they collide with boats or get caught in fishing lines and die.

Nachiket Kelkar of the Wildlife Conservation Trust told Sanctuary Asia magazine that many fishermen often didn’t report accidental deaths of dolphins fearing legal trouble.

Under Indian wildlife laws, accidental or targeted dolphin killings are treated as “hunting” and carry strict penalties. As a result, many poor fishermen quietly dispose of the carcasses to avoid fines.

River cruise tourism, which has picked up in India in the past decade, has further threatened their habitat. Dozens of cruise trips operate on both the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers.

“There’s no doubt that disturbances from cruises will gravely impact the dolphins, which are sensitive to noise,” conservationist Ravindra Kumar Sinha told The Guardian newspaper.

Mr Sinha believes that increased vessel traffic could push Gangetic dolphins towards extinction, much like it did to Baiji dolphins in China’s Yangtze river.

River dolphins face threats partly due to their own evolution. Nearly blind, they rely on echolocation – high-pitched sound pulses that bounce off objects and return as echoes – to navigate murky waters. While this trait suits their habitat, it also makes them vulnerable to modern threats.

Their poor eyesight and slow swimming speed make river dolphins especially prone to collisions with boats and other obstacles. Adding to their vulnerability is their slow reproductive cycle – they mature between six and 10 years of age and females typically give birth to just one calf every two to three years.

But Mr Sinha is hopeful about the future of river dolphins in India. “Government initiatives have played a big role in saving the dolphins. A lot has been done but a lot more remains to be done too,” he says.

Pained cries rang out in front of former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s official residence on Friday, as judges of the Constitutional Court judges confirmed his impeachment.

“I came here with hope in my heart, believing we would win … It’s so unfair,” 64-year-old Won Bog-sil told BBC Korean from the rally, where thousands had gathered in support of Yoon.

These scenes were live streamed to thousands more on YouTube – a platform popular with not just Yoon’s supporters but the president himself.

A disgraced Yoon is now stripped of his power, but he leaves behind an ever more divided South Korea.

Last December, Yoon’s shock martial law declaration cost him the confidence of much of the country. But among his supporters, his ongoing legal troubles have only further buttressed the image of a wronged saviour.

Many of them echo narratives peddled by influential right-wing YouTubers who support Yoon: that martial law was necessary to protect the country from pro-North Korea opposition lawmakers and a dangerously powerful opposition, and that Yoon’s conservative party was a victim of election fraud.

All this has culminated in a fringe movement that has become both more energised and extreme, spilling out from behind computer screens onto the streets.

“Stop the Steal” signs have become a fixture at pro-Yoon rallies – co-opted from supporters of US President Donald Trump, whose own political career has been helped by a network of conservative YouTubers.

Shortly after Yoon’s arrest in January, enraged supporters stormed a courthouse in Seoul, armed with metal beams, assaulting police officers who stood in their way.

Last month, an elderly man died after setting himself on fire near Seoul City Hall weeks earlier. A stack of fliers accusing opposition leaders of being pro-North Korean forces were found near him.

“If they remain here, our country will become a communist nation,” the fliers read. “There is no future for this country, no future for the youth.”

Even conservatives have been surprised and divided by this new trend of violence.

“He has watched too many trashy YouTube videos,” read one op-ed in Korea JoongAng Daily – one of many conservative news outlets that have become increasingly at odds with Yoon supporters. “A compulsive watcher of biased YouTube content can live in a fanatic world dominated by conspiracies.”

From the outset Yoon embraced right-wing YouTubers, inviting some of them to his inauguration in 2022.

In January, as he defied attempts to arrest him, the president told supporters that he was watching their rallies on YouTube livestream. PPP lawmakers said Yoon had urged them to consume “well-organised information on YouTube” instead of “biased” legacy media.

Entwined on these YouTube channels are narratives of the opposition Democratic Party being obsequious to Beijing and trying to curry favour with Pyongyang.

After the Democratic Party won at the polls by a landslide last April, some of these channels claimed that Yoon was a victim of electoral interference led by China, and that North Korea sympathisers lurking among the opposition were behind the ruling party’s defeat. Similar claims were echoed by Yoon when he tried to justify his short-lived martial law declaration.

These narratives have found resonance in an online audience that harbours a general distrust of mainstream media and worries about South Korea’s neighbours.

“I think [the election was] totally fraudulent, because when you vote, you fold the paper, but they kept finding papers that were not folded,” Kim, who gave only his surname, told the BBC at a pro-Yoon rally in January. Claims like these have not waned despite a previous Supreme Court ruling that the voting slips were not manipulated.

Kim, 28, is among a contingent of young men who have become the new faces of South Korea’s right-wing.

Young Perspective, a YouTube channel with more than 800,000 subscribers run by someone who describes himself as “a young man who values freedom”, often shares clips from parliamentary sessions showing PPP politicians taking down opposition members.

Another popular YouTuber is Jun Kwang-hoon, a pastor and founder of the evangelical Liberty Unification Party, who posts videos of politically loaded sermons urging his 200,000 subscribers to join pro-Yoon rallies. This is in line with the historically strong protestant support for conservatism in South Korea.

Nam Hyun-joo, an employee at a theological school, told the BBC that she believed the Chinese Communist Party was “the main actor behind the election fraud”. Standing alone outside the Constitutional Court in the biting January cold, she held a protest sign denouncing the judiciary.

Other voices dominating the virtual realm are a snapshot of the rest of Yoon’s support base: middle-aged or elderly men. One of them runs A Stroke of Genius, one of the largest pro-Yoon YouTube channels with 1.6 million subscribers. His livestreams of rallies and monologues pillorying Yoon’s opponents regularly rack up tens of thousands of views, with the comments section flooded with calls to “protect President Yoon”.

In the tumultuous months since Yoon’s martial law declaration, it appears that his party’s popularity has not suffered.

In fact, quite the opposite: While the PPP’s approval ratings sank to 26.2% in the days after Yoon declared martial law, it rebounded to more than 40% just weeks later – much higher than before the chaos.

Buoyed by the loyalty of his supporters, Yoon wrote in a letter to them in January that it was only after being impeached that he “felt like a president”.

“Everyone’s kind of scratching their heads a bit here,” Michael Breen, a Seoul-based consultant and former journalist who covered the Koreas, tells the BBC. While conservatives in South Korea have been “very divided and feeble” over the last decade, he says, Yoon is “now more popular with them than he was before he tried to introduce martial law”.

This solidarity has likely been fuelled by a shared dislike of the opposition, which has launched multiple attempts to impeach members of Yoon’s cabinet, pushed criminal investigations against Yoon and his wife, and used its parliamentary majority to impeach Yoon’s replacement Han Duck-soo.

“I think the opposition party’s power in the assembly went to its head,” says Mr Breen. “Now they’ve shot themselves in the foot.”

An embattled Yoon has become larger than life, rebranded as a martyr who saw martial law as the only way to save South Korea’s democracy.

“If it wasn’t for the good of the country, he wouldn’t have chosen martial law, where he would have to pay with his life if he failed,” a pro-Yoon rally attendee, who gave only his surname Park, told the BBC.

This has also contributed to a widening chasm within the PPP. While some have joined pro-Yoon rallies, others crossed party lines to vote for Yoon’s impeachment.

“Why are people worshipping him like a king? I can’t understand it,” said PPP lawmaker Cho Kyoung-tae, who supported Yoon’s impeachment.

Kim Sang-wook, another PPP lawmaker who has emerged as a prominent anti-Yoon voice among conservatives, said he was pressured to leave the party after supporting Yoon’s impeachment. And now YouTubers, according to Kim, have become the president’s public relations machine.

Worries have simmered over an increasingly ungovernable group within the conservative movement. And as influential left-wing YouTubers similarly rally anti-Yoon protesters, there are also concerns that political differences are being driven ever deeper into the fabric of South Korea’s society.

“Much damage has already been done in terms of radicalising the right, and the left as well for that matter,” US-based lawyer and Korea expert Christopher Jumin Lee told the BBC.

He added that at this point “any compromise with a conservative party that continues to embrace Yoon will likely be seen as anathema”.

“By driving his insurrection attempt into the centre of Korean politics, Yoon has effectively executed a decade’s worth of polarisation.”

The Fab Four came together on stage this week for an all-star Beatles announcement that left some of the internet swooning.

No, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr aren’t reuniting through AI for a joint album with Taylor Swift.

Instead, the 60s rock ‘n’ roll icons will be played by four leading heartthrobs of the moment: Paul Mescal (McCartney), Harris Dickinson (Lennon), Joseph Quinn (Harrison) and Barry Keoghan (Starr), in a big-screen quadrilogy directed by Sir Sam Mendes – all set for release in 2028.

Each actor fits the mould of “the internet’s boyfriends” – a term defined by Glamour magazine as “a famous or semi-famous male person whom your entire Twitter feed has a crush on at the same time”.

When Sir Sam walked out on stage with his “band” at Las Vegas’ CinemaCon on Tuesday, the message was clear.

If 1960s Beatlemania was defined by teenage girls fainting and screaming, the plan now is arguably to get Gen Z – in internet parlance – “screaming, crying, throwing up” from behind their phone screens in excitement.

“Each star brings their own brand of modern-day hysteria,” says the Evening Standard’s celebrity reporter Lisa McLoughlin, “the kind fuelled by social media virality and fan video edits”.

This is particularly true of Mescal, whose “popularity mirrors a smidge the frenzy the Beatles once sparked”.

After shooting to fame in 2020’s BBC adaptation of Normal People, the Irishman scored an Oscar nomination as a tormented father in Aftersun, before finding blockbuster status in Gladiator II – rising from indie heartbreaker to Hollywood heartthrob.

Similar is true of fellow Irishman Keoghan. Also Oscar-nominated for Banshees of Inisherin, he embraced rugged sex symbol status in last year’s cult hit Saltburn.

Dickinson and Quinn are earlier in their trajectory, but still burning bright – the former recently starring alongside Nicole Kidman in erotic thriller Babygirl and the latter turning heads in Netflix’s Stranger Things.

McLoughlin describes the casting as “logical and predictable” – a strategic move as the band look to secure their legacy with a new generation, while studios grapple with the ambition of luring streaming era, post-Covid, audiences back to the cinema not once, but four times in close proximity.

The timing and scope of the project sums up the Beatles’ unique heritage as the best-selling band of all-time – the catalyst for shifting youth culture and the boundaries of pop.

It’s been 56 years since all four members last recorded together. Lennon was shot dead just over a decade later at 40, while Harrison died of cancer in 2001, aged 58. The two surviving Beatles, Sir Paul and Sir Ringo, are now into their 80s.

And yet, as the band’s only official biographer Hunter Davies told Radio 4’s Today programme on Wednesday: “The strange thing about the Beatles is that the longer we get from them, the bigger they become”.

Recent years have seen Sir Paul seemingly work to bookend the Beatles’ music – becoming Glastonbury’s oldest ever headliner at 80, before driving the 2023 release of Now and Then, a “final” Beatles track rebuilt from Lennon’s demo vocals. It became the band’s 18th UK number one single, over five decades from their last, and won a Grammy.

The forthcoming biopics appear to be a way of continuing this on the big screen.

Four years on from Peter Jackson’s sprawling Get Back docuseries, this is the first time that all four band members and their estates have granted full life story and music rights for a scripted film.

The casting reflects the distinct identities and histories of the members, each offering something different to lovelorn girls and copycat boys so intoxicated by Beatlemania.

McLoughlin feels the choices “make commercial sense” as the perfect foil for an audience now two generations removed from the original Beatlemania.

“They all have dedicated younger fan bases (many of whom may not be regular cinema-goers or deeply connected to the Beatles), acting credibility and experience leading or co-leading major productions”.

Each film will focus on an individual member of the band. “They intersect in different ways – sometimes overlapping, sometimes not,” Sir Sam explained.

“They’re four very different human beings. Perhaps this is a chance to understand them a little more deeply.”

The Barbenheimer phenomenon of summer 2023 highlighted the increasing influence online audience reactions hold on cultural currency.

It also turbocharged Hollywood’s acceptance of “event cinema” as a way to lure younger audiences. A generation that Warner Bros Discovery’s executive director Vera Chien previously told Forbes, already see the streaming-social media relationship as the norm.

Sir Sam’s four-film schedule plays into this. It’s aimed at creating what Sony executive Tom Rothman described as “the first bingeable theatrical experience”.

“Frankly, we need big cinematic events to get people out of the house,” Sir Sam said.

Films can now develop distinct digital identities through audience projection, as seen by the viral success of Saltburn.

The makers of the Beatles biopics are arguably betting on its cast of “internet boyfriends” pulling younger audiences – without the same nostalgic attachment to the Beatles – engaged on social media and, executives hope, looking up from phone screen to big screen.

The extent to which musical performances will feature is unknown.

But the Beatle biopics could capitalise on the booming money-spinning genre that’s found awards success over the past decade. .

It’s also proven fertile heartthrob ground, with the Beatles cast following Jacob Elordi and Austin Butler’s turns as Elvis, alongside Timothee Chalamet’s Oscar-nominated take as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown.

Still, there are risks, says Dade Hayes, business writer at Deadline and co-author of Binge Times.

He says that whilst he commends Rothman’s “clever handle” and the cinephile in him values the biopics’ “bold statement about the value of cinemas and communal viewing,” market realities present cautionary signs.

First, the UK box office is yet to fully bounce back from the pandemic, whilst US takings are more than 20% below pre-Covid levels. “If people aren’t dying to return at regular intervals to cinemas,” says Hayes, “then you are holding an expensive set of assets that are hard to monetise”.

And a multi-release strategy relies on the “fuse being lit with the first instalment”, Hayes says.

He points to Kevin Costner’s Horizon films, originally envisioned as a multi-part theatrical franchise, only to flounder once the first instalment tanked, as an example of the dangers.

For McLoughlin, the three-year gap between the casting announcement and 2028 release date adds further risk, especially in the fast-moving online space where fanbases can shift.

But beyond industry dynamics there’s also a cast talking point much closer to home.

The Beatles biopics, celebrating four Scouse lads who conquered the world and put Liverpool on the map, will not feature any local talent in the lead roles.

As one Liverpudlian put it in a TikTok video liked over 200,000 times: “I love Mescal as much as the next gal but [the lack of representation] is breaking my heart”.

McLoughlin agrees, pointing out that James Corden last week urged the TV industry to be “bolder” and back ideas that “might scare you a little.” She feels film studios should do the same.

“The Beatles themselves were unknown until they weren’t,” she says. “This could have been a chance for a newcomer to have their own Beatles moment – rising from obscurity in real-time”.

And perhaps the biggest missed opportunity of all McLoughlin adds, is the failure to put Liverpudlian actors front and centre in a Beatles biopic. “The band is Liverpool’s greatest cultural export, yet the city’s deep talent pool was completely overlooked,” she adds.

Social media, meanwhile, is already awash with doubt over Keoghan’s ability to deliver a consistent Scouse accent, questioning his attempts in Saltburn.

Still, as Hunter Davies put it, the Beatles have long been more than just a local band. They keep growing.

Way back in 1966, Lennon infamously described them as bigger than Jesus. Over five decades on, the studio behind the four films – and perhaps cinema in general – is no doubt banking on a Beatlemania revival.

Sam was lying in bed one morning when her tenant in a house she owned in Margate sent her a photo of a piece of graffiti that had appeared on the wall outside.

Astonishingly, it looked like a Banksy. It would turn out to be perhaps the graffiti artist’s most interesting new artwork of recent years, Valentine’s Day Mascara (pictured above), which was revealed in Margate on Valentine’s Day, 2023.

Bamboozled, Sam googled: what do you do when you wake up with a Banksy on your wall?

“What did Google say about that?” I asked her.

“Nothing! And I was like, I need to contact the council, I need to find an art gallery who can advise me.”

Sam called Julian Usher at Red Eight Gallery. Julian’s team, conscious that new Banksys are under immediate threat from street cleaners, the weather, rival graffiti artists and other art dealers, promised he’d be in Margate within the hour: “We knew we had to get the piece covered,” say Julian.

And there was another reason Julian got to Margate double-quick: if Banksy chooses your wall for one of his drawings, you could be seriously in the money.

For the second season of my BBC Radio 4 podcast The Banksy Story, which is called When Banksy Comes To Town, I’ve been following the very different fates of two sets of homeowners who wake up one day to find a Banksy on their wall. The season shows just how important his graffiti becomes for a local community – and why people disagree so vehemently about what should happen after it’s discovered.

Sam became the custodian of Valentine’s Day Mascara, which speaks to the theme of domestic violence, incidents of which usually spike each Valentine’s Day. It’s a complicated bit of work. A peppy 50s housewife with a black eye has bludgeoned her partner. A real pan with flecks of red is at her feet, and his painted legs are upended into the real fridge-freezer that Banksy left by the wall. A broken plastic chair testifies to the fight they have had.

Later on the day it appeared, refuse collectors arrived to spirit away the fridge-freezer. This precipitated a free-for-all, with the public helping themselves to the remnants. It was mayhem.

A media scrum, a wrong-footed local council, millions of global onlookers. Exactly, one suspects, what Banksy wanted.

And this time, just for laughs, he left behind oil painter Peter Brown, commissioned to capture the scenes he would miss. I spoke to Pete “The Street” Brown for my series. “The whole reason I was employed was because Banksy was questioning what was the art about,” Pete explained. “Is it about the graffiti? Or is it about the reaction afterwards, and what happens to it?”

As luck would have it, Pete was captured on video just as Banksy’s team were putting the finishing touches to Valentine’s Day Mascara – a video that The Banksy Story managed to obtain. In it we can see that one of Banksy’s team let a local kid play with their drone.

“They’re in the process of putting a large piece on a wall and yet they’re taking the time to teach a kid how to fly a drone,” says Steph Warren, who used to work with Banksy and who appeared in my first series – about the artist’s rise and rise. “Very sweet!”

Alongside Sam, I’ve been following the story of Gert and Gary. They, like Sam, did not want me to use their last name. A 30ft-high seagull appeared one morning on the wall of their buy-to-let in Lowestoft in Suffolk. The bird needed to be massive for Banksy’s ambitious visual gag to work. The artist had shoved large yellow insulation strips into a skip that now looked like a fast-food container that the seagull divebombed to steal chips.

Banksy had chosen his wall well. Visitors arriving by train were treated to this witty meditation on the scourge of Britain’s seaside towns, equal parts warning and celebration. The Lowestoft Seagull was part of Banksy’s Great British Staycation, his post-Covid lockdown campaign to cheer us all up at the prospect of a summer holiday spent in the UK.

But Gert was not cheered-up at all. “It’s not a seagull, it’s an albatross!” she quipped when I went to interview her.

“How did you know it was a Banksy?” I asked.

“There was scaffolding erected on the side of the house. I tried to find out if it was a particular scaffolding firm, but there was no phone number,” Gert replied. “On the Monday morning the letting agency informed me that I could possibly have a Banksy. By then the scaffolding had gone and this seagull appeared.”

This fits with what we know of Banksy’s modus operandi. He claims hiding in plain sight is the best way to remain invisible. “If questioned about your legitimacy,” he wrote in his book Wall & Piece, “simply complain about the hourly rate.”

It’s a good gag. But how fun is it for the folk on the other end of his spray can?

I found that with good hustling skills a Banksied homeowner might see their bank balance expanded, but it’s not an easy process.

As Gert explains, exasperated, “Lowestoft people commented that it belongs to Lowestoft… But nobody’s turned up to say, ‘we’ll help you protect it’. It doesn’t belong to the person filming it, or the person taking pictures with their children. The problem is mine!”

Gert had to contend with people putting their children into the skip for photo opportunities, the council trying to charge her for Perspex screens, and the threat of a Preservation Order which might have cost her £40,000 a year.

And the two stories I’ve been following have ended up having entirely different outcomes.

Both artworks have been taken off the houses they were painted on – a complex, expensive operation that uses specialist equipment – so they can be sold. But while the Banksy in Margate is now on the verge of selling for well over £1m, with a sizeable chunk set to go to a domestic violence charity, and with the piece remaining in the town for the foreseeable future, the Banksy up the coast in Lowestoft languishes in a climate-controlled warehouse, costing its owners £3,000 per month.

It has cost Gert and her partner Gary around £450,000 so far to preserve the piece and although there are buyers sniffing around, nobody has bought it yet. Speaking about the situation, Gary told me: “I’m so angry at what’s going on.”

Not everyone approves of people trying to sell Banksy’s street art.

Steph Warren – who starred in the first series of The Banksy Story as the only person ever to work for Banksy without signing his non-disclosure agreement – suggests that worried homeowners should simply “get busy with five litres of white emulsion and paint it out”.

Owner of street-art gallery Stelladore in St Leonards, Warren is a purist, who feels that art made for the street should remain there, no matter it’s value. “With Banksy, where he puts the art is fundamental,” she says. “Remove the work from the precise place on the streets that he put it, and the work instantly loses its power. Context is everything.”

But Banksy has elevated graffiti into a new art form, now monetised – street art. Banksy’s signed prints can sell for six-figure sums. Graffiti, or street art, has not just come of age, it is now an asset class. Given this, how can any homeowner feel okay about scrubbing away a Banksy without feeling as if they have smashed a Ming vase?

One thing I know for sure: if you wake up with a Banksy on your wall, you’ll have to make a series of clever decisions to come out of it unscathed. As Sam says, after two years of dealing with the Banksy circus, “going back to normal life now is going to be terribly boring”.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced that the US is immediately revoking visas issued to all South Sudanese passport holders due to the African nation refusing to accept its citizens who have been removed from the US.

Rubio, in a statement on Saturday, added that the US will also block any arriving citizens of South Sudan, the world’s newest country, at US ports of entry.

He blamed “the failure of South Sudan’s transitional government to accept the return of its repatriated citizens in a timely manner”.

A cornerstone of President Donald Trump’s immigration policy is removing unlawful migrants from the US, with the promise of “mass deportations”.

“It is time for the Transitional Government of South Sudan to stop taking advantage of the United States,” said Rubio.

“Every country must accept the return of its citizens in a timely manner when another country, including the United States, seeks to remove them,” he added.

It comes as fears grow that South Sudan may again descend into civil war.

On 8 March, the US ordered all its non-emergency staff in South Sudan to leave as regional fighting broke out, threatening a fragile peace deal agreed in 2018.

South Sudanese in the US were previously granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which allows them to remain in the US for a set period of time.

TPS for South Sudanese in the US had been due to expire by 3 May.

South Sudan, the world’s newest nation, gained independence in 2011 after seceding from Sudan.

But just two years later, following a rift between President Salva Kiir and Vice-President Riek Machar, the tensions erupted into a civil war, in which more than 400,000 people were killed.

A 2018 power-sharing agreement between the two stopped the fighting, but key elements of the deal have not been implemented – including a new constitution, an election and the reunification of armed groups into a single army.

Sporadic violence between ethnic and local groups has continued in parts of the country.

Since returning to office, the Trump administration has clashed with international governments over deportations of their nationals from the US.

In January, Colombian President Gustavo Petro barred two US military flights carrying deported migrants from landing in his South American country.

Petro relented after Trump promised to place crippling tariffs and sanctions on Colombia.

The son of a British couple who were detained by the Taliban nine weeks ago is calling on the US to help secure their release from an Afghan prison.

Peter Reynolds, 79, and wife Barbie, 75, were arrested on 1 February while returning to their home in the central Bamiyan province.

Their son, Jonathan, called on the White House to intervene after Faye Hall, an American who was detained alongside them, was released last week by the Taliban, which returned to power in Afghanistan in 2021.

He told BBC News the detention of his parents – who have lived in Afghanistan for 18 years and ran education projects – had been “harrowing and exhausting” for their family.

Mr Reynolds said: “Anybody who has the ability to unlock that key and let them out, whether it be the Taliban, whether it be the British government or whether it be the American government, I would ask – do it now, please.

“And if you have the ability to put the pressure on the people who hold that key, do it now, please.”

Ms Hall became the fourth US citizen to be released by the Taliban since January after talks between officials in Kabul – in what the group described as a “goodwill gesture” towards the Trump administration.

That prompted Mr Reynolds to appeal to US President Donald Trump directly to aid in Peter and Barbie’s release, in a video taken outside the White House earlier this week.

Mr Reynolds, a US citizen, told BBC News that his parents had not been formally accused of any crime.

He said: “They’ve been in and out of court, which is infuriating for them because there’s no charges and they are told every single time: yes, they are innocent, it’s just a formality, we’ve made a mistake.”

An Afghan interpreter was also arrested alongside the British couple.

Mr Reynolds said his parents had sought to work with the Taliban and had “been open” about their work in the country.

He said he believes his mother received “the only certificate for a woman to actually teach and train even men”, despite women typically being banned from employment under Taliban rule.

“They deeply love the country,” he added.

The couple married in Kabul in 1970 and later became Afghan citizens. They are being held separately in prison and Peter’s health has deteriorated while detained, Mr Reynolds said.

He said he had been able to speak to his parents via a prison payphone and described the conversations as “excruciatingly painful”.

“Just to think of your parents, elderly parents and grandparents to my kids – and they’ve got great-grandkids even – and wondering if we’re going to see them again,” he said.

“We want to see our parents again, to hug them and hold them.”

Mr Reynolds said securing his parents release was “complex” as they wish to remain in Afghanistan and continue their education work.

“They want to be released from prison because they’ve done nothing wrong, but they want to be released so they can carry on doing the work they’re doing – which just speaks to the character and the stamina and the vision and conviction that they have,” he added.

He said the UK government had been “very supportive” and discussions with he US State Department had been “encouraging”.

A Taliban official told the BBC in February that the group planned to release the couple “as soon as possible”.

The UK shut its embassy in Kabul after the Taliban returned to power. The Foreign Office said this means its ability to help UK nationals in Afghanistan is “extremely limited”.

The US began collecting a 10% “baseline” tariff on all imports on Saturday as President Donald Trump urged Americans to “hang tough” after market turmoil.

The UK and France are among hundreds of countries impacted and its leaders have said nothing is off the table. While China, which has been hit the hardest by President Trump’s tariffs, announced a significant retaliatory response.

All three major stock indexes in the US plunged more than 5% on Friday, with the S&P 500 dropping almost 6%, capping the worst week for the US stock market since 2020.

In Washington DC, New York and other cities thousands gathered to protest against a range of Trump’s policies – from the economy to government cuts.

Trump described the market volatility as “an economic revolution”, which the US “will win”.

“Hang tough, it won’t be easy, but the end result will be historic,” he added in a post on Truth Social.

His policy changes have sent shockwaves through global supply chains.

In the UK, the FTSE 100 fell almost 5% – its steepest in five years, while Asian markets also dropped and exchanges in Germany and France faced similar declines.

Billionaire Elon Musk, a close ally of Trump and responsible for the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), said the US and Europe could move towards a “zero-tariff situation”, which could create “a free-trade zone between Europe and North America”.

His comments, made as he travelled to meet government ministers in Italy, came days before the Trump administration introduces tariffs on goods of up to 50% on 9 April to what it calls the “worst offenders” for trade imbalances with the US.

The EU is due to be hit with a 20% levy.

In his first term in office, Trump scorned a proposed free-trade deal with the EU, called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment partnership, but a bubbling trade war was ended after he put threats to impose tariffs on European cars aside in 2018.

British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer had a series of calls with world leaders following Trump’s tariffs announcement on Wednesday.

• Starmer’s response to Trump tariffs is both to slow down and go faster

In a readout issued after Sir Keir’s conversation with French President Emmanuel Macron, Downing Street said the pair “agreed that a trade war was in nobody’s interests but nothing should be off the table”.

Sir Keir and Macron also “shared their concerns about the global economic and security impact, particularly in South East Asia”.

China, the world’s second largest economy, was hardest hit by Trump’s “reciprocal tariffs” towards nations he deems unfriendly to America’s interest.

On Friday, Beijing announced retaliatory tariffs of 34% on US imports – the same as Washington imposed on imports from China. Beijing also filed a complaint against the new tariffs to the World Trade Organisation.

In a statement a day later, China’s foreign ministry urged Washington to “stop using tariffs as a weapon to suppress China’s economy and trade, and stop undermining the legitimate development rights of the Chinese people”.

In Washington DC and across the US, around 1,200 demonstrations were expected to take place on Saturday, marking the largest single day of protest against President Trump and Musk since the White House announced policy changes to how the US government is led – expanding the power of the executive branch.

The White House is yet to comment on the protests, but Trump was pictured by an AP photographer – excluded from the press pool – with an issue of the New York Post in his hand, open to an article about China.

The impact on trade since tariffs came into place has been palpable.

In the UK, Jaguar Land Rover announced it would “pause” all shipments to the US as it works to “address the new trading terms”.

On a quick drive around the small Ohio town of Delta, you can spot nearly as many Trump flags as American stars-and-stripes banners.

And at the petrol station near the Ohio Turnpike, the pumps bear relics of the last administration, with slogans slamming Trump’s predecessor: “Whoever voted for Biden owes me gas money!”

This is Trump country – the Republican ticket easily won here in November’s presidential election by a margin of almost two-to-one. And while the markets are in turmoil following Trump’s unveiling of expansive global tariffs this week, plenty of people in Delta and hundreds of Midwestern towns like it still back the president’s plans.

Those plans, to impose tariffs of between 10% and 50% on almost every country, have upended global trade and led to warnings that prices could soon rise for American consumers. Trump, meanwhile, has said the move will address unfair trade imbalances, boost US industry and raise revenue.

For some in Delta, the president’s argument about fairness resonates.

“I don’t want people in other countries to suffer, I really don’t,” said Mary Miller, manager of the Delta Candy Emporium, which sits in the middle of the village’s Main Street. “But we need to have an even playing field.”

Miller, a three-time Trump voter, believes other countries haven’t played fair on trade. And like many here, she prefers to buy American-made goods.

As she watches over her stock of multi-coloured confectionaries, many of them made in the US, and weighs up how they might be impacted by fresh import taxes, she recalls how decades ago she heard that one of her favourite brands was moving its factories abroad. She hasn’t bought another pair of Levi’s jeans since.

Miller is unfazed by the possibility of price increases, which many economists say these new tariffs will bring.

“Sometimes you have to walk through fire to get to the other side,” she said.

“If tariffs bring companies and business back to hard-working American people like the ones who live here, then it’s worth it.”

• Trump’s agenda grapples with political and economic reality

These sentiments are common in Delta, a village of around 3,300 people less than 100 miles (160km) south of Detroit, even as other Midwestern towns brace for sharp shocks.

The automotive industry, with its complicated global supply chains, seems particularly vulnerable to the impact of major new tariffs, with companies in Michigan to the north and Indiana to the west already announcing factory shutdowns and job cuts.

But on the outskirts of Delta, there is a cluster of steel businesses that have been here since the 1990s and which may be better placed in a new era of American protectionism.

One of these businesses, North Star BlueScope, has urged Trump to expand tariffs on steel and aluminium. At the same time, however, it has asked for an exemption for the raw materials it needs, such as scrap metal.

North Star BlueScope did not respond to interview requests, but in a back room at the nearby Barn Restaurant, a few local steelworkers who had just finished the night shift were drinking beers together early on Friday morning.

The workers, who asked not to be named, mostly laughed and shrugged when asked about the sweeping new tariffs that were announced by Trump at the White House on Wednesday.

It was a pretty clear indication that this economic news is unlikely to ruin their weekend.

Outside the restaurant, some Delta locals considered the possible upsides of these import taxes.

“Nobody’s frantic. We’re not going to lose any sleep over it,” said Gene Burkholder, who has a decades-long career in the agriculture industry.

Although he owns some stocks, Mr Burkholder said they were long-term investments and he was not obsessing over the sharp drops in the two days following the president’s announcement.

“If you have some spare cash, maybe it’s a good time to buy some shares while they’re cheap,” he said.

A couple of booths over, as she finished eating breakfast with her son Rob, Louise Gilson said – quietly – that she did not really trust the president.

But Gilson, along with many people here, said she wanted to see action. She wholeheartedly agreed when another diner commented: “Trump may be wrong, but at least he’s trying.”

“The other people wouldn’t have done squat,” she said, referring to the Democratic Party.

The Gilsons agreed that the big local industrial employers have generally been good neighbours, contributing to the local economy, charities and the wider community, even as they have seen some less desirable effects of industrial development and worry about unequal sharing of the economic pie.

And as they recounted Delta’s history, they described a gradual erosion in quality of life that they believe has made many people willing to roll the dice even when economists say Trump’s tariff plan comes with stark risks.

“It was a good little town to grow up in,” Rob Gilson recalled. But he said it now seemed less safe and friendly than when he was growing up in the 60s and 70s.

“It seems like the heart of America is gone,” he said.

Delta, Louise Gilson added, “is the kind of place where 25% or 30% of the people are struggling with their demons”.

And while these issues have little to do with tariffs, the challenges faced by people in towns like Delta may go some way to explaining why many are willing to give President Trump the benefit of the doubt, even as markets plunge on faraway Wall Street.

The prime minister has said he is prepared to use industrial policy to “shelter British business from the storm” expected from US President Donald Trump’s wave of tariffs.

Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Sir Keir Starmer said he will continue to seek a trade deal with the US to avoid some tariffs, but mooted state intervention to protect the national interest.

“Some people may feel uncomfortable about this – the idea the state should intervene directly to shape the market has often been derided,” he said. “But we simply cannot cling on to old sentiments when the world is turning this fast.”

The UK was among nations hit with a 10% “baseline” import duty this week.

• UK draws up list of US products it could hit with tariffs
• Tariffs have shaken the markets – how worried should we be?
• Jaguar Land Rover to pause US shipments over tariffs

In addition to the 10% tariffs, a 25% tariff has been put on UK car exports, as well as steel and aluminium products. Many nations will face much higher tariffs of up to 50%, starting on 9 April.

Trump has said his intervention was aimed at encouraging US consumers to buy more American goods and boost the domestic economy.

But the announcement – and retaliatory tariffs from countries such as China – led to stocks plunging more than 5% amid fears of a global recession.

Jaguar Land Rover announced on Saturday it would “pause” all shipments to the US as it works to “address the new trading terms”.

Sir Keir wrote: “This week we will turbocharge plans that will improve our domestic competitiveness, so we’re less exposed to these kinds of global shocks.

“We stand ready to use industrial policy to help shelter British business from the storm.”

The prime minister admitted some may feel “uncomfortable” with the government intervening in the economy, but said the UK could not “cling to old sentiments when the world is turning this fast”.

He has not ruled out further tax rises in the autumn, but pointed out the government had resisted doing so in its Spring Statement.

An industrial strategy promised in Labour’s election manifesto is due to be unveiled this summer. Elements of that could now be adapted and brought forward to aid UK firms.

In the Telegraph, Sir Keir reiterated the government’s position that it would “keep calm and fight for the best deal” with the US, but said “all options remain on the table”.

He added: “I will only strike a deal if it is right for British business and the security of working people.”

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has urged the prime minister to strike a “deep and meaningful trade deal” with the US, that “delivers growth without compromising on standards”.

The UK exported nearly £60bn worth of goods to the US last year, mainly machinery, cars and pharmaceuticals.

On Wednesday, the government published a 400-page list of US goods it could include in any possible tariff response. Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds told MPs the government would consult with businesses on how retaliatory tariffs could affect them.

The list covers 27% of imports from the US – chosen because they would have a “more limited impact” on the UK economy, the Department for Business and Trade said.

Sir Keir said he would also seek to reduce trade barriers with other economies to limit the impact of US tariffs on UK exports.

Over the weekend, the prime minister spoke to several world leaders to discuss how to respond to the US tariffs.

In a phone call with French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday, the pair agreed a trade war was “in nobody’s interests” but “nothing should be off the table”.

But both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats say UK families and businesses will first feel the impact of the National Insurance hike for employers that takes effect today.

Jaguar Land Rover has announced it will “pause” all shipments to the US as it works to “address the new trading terms” after tariffs were imposed earlier this week.

A 25% levy on car imports came into force on Thursday, one of several measures announced by US President Donald Trump which have sent shockwaves through global supply chains.

The US is the second largest export market for the UK’s car industry, after the European Union.

In a statement, a Jaguar Land Rover spokesperson said the company was “taking some short-term actions including a shipment pause in April, as we develop our mid to longer-term plans”.

The Coventry-based car manufacturer – which also has sites in Solihull and Wolverhampton – said the US is an “important market for JLR’s luxury brands”.

More cars are exported to the US from the UK than any other good. In a 12-month period up to the end of the third quarter of 2024, the trade was worth £8.3bn, according to the UK trade department.

An initial wave of tariffs on cars came into effect from 3 April, with import taxes on auto parts due to follow next month.

A separate 10% tariff will be imposed on all other UK imports, with higher rates in place for some other major economies.

Global stock markets have incurred heavy losses in recent days as firms grapple with how to adapt to the new trading environment.

• Trump tells US to ‘hang tough’ over tariffs
• The Trump tariffs explained

The FTSE 100 – which measures the performance of the 100 leading firms listed on the London Stock Exchange – plummeted by 4.9% on Friday, its steepest fall since the start of the pandemic.

Exchanges in Germany and France also saw similar declines.

Sir Keir Starmer has said the UK will take a calm approach to the trade tariffs and has ruled out “jumping into a trade war”.

The prime minister spoke to his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron on Saturday, the first of several discussions planned between Sir Keir and European leaders over the weekend.

Downing Street said Sir Keir and Macron had agreed “a trade war was in nobody’s interest” but “nothing should be off the table”.

On Thursday, the prime minister warned the global economy was “entering a new era” and said there would “clearly” be an impact on the UK.

The government is consulting on products it could impose retaliatory measures on but talks between UK and US officials continue on a possible trade deal which the British governments hopes would see tariffs relaxed.

Sir Keir is holding talks with other European leaders to discuss how to respond to the White House’s trade moves.

The Nike Air Jordan 1 is, in some ways, the iconic US trainer. It’s a popular line by a large American brand, created four decades ago for homegrown basketball legend Michael Jordan.

But although Nike sells most of its products in the US, almost all of its trainers are made in Asia – a region targeted by President Donald Trump’s tariffs salvo against foreign countries he accuses of “ripping off” Americans.

Nike’s shares fell 14% the day after the tariffs announcement, on fears over the impact they could have on the company’s supply chain.

Follow live updates

So what will all this mean for the price of Nike’s trainer?

It depends on how much of the cost increase Nike decides to pass on to customers, if any, and how long they think the tariffs will actually be in place for.

Goods from Vietnam, Indonesia and China face some of the heaviest US import taxes – between 32% to 54%.

Hopes remain that Trump might be willing to negotiate those rates lower. On Friday, he said he had had a “very productive” call with the leader of Vietnam, helping Nike shares to recover some ground after their steep Thursday falls.

But most analysts think the firm’s prices will have to go up.

Swiss bank UBS estimates that there will be a 10% to 12% increase in the prices of goods that come from Vietnam – where Nike produces half of its shoes.

Meanwhile, Indonesia and China account for almost all of the balance of its trainer production.

“Our view is that, given how extensive the list of tariffs is, the industry will realise there are few ways to mitigate the impact in the medium term other than by raising prices,” UBS analyst Jay Sole said in a note.

David Swartz, senior equity analyst at Morningstar, agrees that price rises are likely but says any large price increase would reduce demand.

“This is a very competitive industry. My guess is that it would be difficult for Nike to raise prices by much more than 10-15%. I don’t think it could offset most of the tariff,” he says.

Many other western brands such as H&M, Adidas, Gap and Lululemon will be facing the same predicament.

Nike is already facing a tight bottom line.

It had around $51bn (£39.6bn) in sales in its most recent fiscal year. The cost of making products, including shipping, third-party profits and warehouse fees, consumed only about 55% of revenue, giving it a healthy gross profit margin of more than 40%.

But that profit gets whittled away once you add in the cost of other business operations. A third of its revenue, for example, is consumed by selling and administrative expense.

By the time you factor in interest and taxes, Nike’s profit margin has shrunk to about 11%.

That is across all its products, as they don’t break down costs separately for its different items.

Rahul Cee, who set up the trainer review website Sole Review, says there are other ways Nike could keep retail prices low.

Mr Cee, who trained as a footwear designer and worked for Nike and Vans in India, says one way could be to downgrade the level of tech in the trainer.

“So instead of using high-performance midsole foams and construction, stick to injection moulded EVA (ethylene-vinyl acetate),” he says.

Another option would be instead of bringing out a new design every one to two years, to refresh the design cycle every three to four years.

Simeon Siegel, managing director at BMO Capital Markets, says most companies were looking at Wednesday’s announcement as “still far from the final conclusion”.

“I don’t think that many people believe that those numbers are etched in stone just yet,” he says.

Theoretically, Nike is such a big brand that it should be able to put up prices without it hitting their sales, he says, but adds: “Do they have it right now is the question and do they have it across their product offering is another?”

Even before the announcement, Nike was facing a slump in sales that had curbed its ability to command full price for its shoes.

Finance chief Matthew Friend has also cited tariffs as an example of developments that were affecting consumer confidence.

And Nike relies heavily on US sales, with the market contributing to roughly $21.5bn of its sales – almost everything it sells in its largest market of North America.

Sentiment in the US is a “significant concern” for Nike as it directly affects demand for its footwear, says Sheng Lu, a professor of fashion and apparel studies at the University of Delaware.

But ultimately he says firms may be forced to pass the cost of the levies on to consumers.

“Nike is very likely to raise prices if the tariff war persists. There is no way for brands to absorb a 30% to 50% increase in sourcing costs.”

He adds: “How US trading partners react against the reciprocal tariff policy will also have a major impact.”

China has already hit back with a 34% tariff of its own.

Part of the rationale behind Trump’s tariff policy is because he wants more companies to manufacture their goods in the US.

However, Prof Lu does not see Nike, or other companies, significantly reshaping its supply chain any time soon “due to the complexity involved in footwear manufacturing”.

That includes the time needed to “consider a long list of factors when deciding where to source their products – quality, costs, speed to market and various social and environmental compliance risks”.

Matt Powers from the Powers Advisory Group says the lack of American textile mills will make it “difficult and expensive [for Nike] to pivot production back to the US”.

Mr Powers added: “This transition, if pursued, would take years and require significant investment.”

Nike did not respond to BBC requests for comment for this article.

We also contacted 30 suppliers in Asia but none responded.

When Rachel Chinouriri played London’s O2 Arena last month, she cried.

The new wave indie songwriter was there as the support act for Sabrina Carpenter, just a week after her first Brit Awards, where she was nominated for artist of the year.

Seven years after her debut single, those milestones felt like a validation.

No wonder she shed a tear.

“A lot of it was stress relief,” says the 26-year-old, “but I also felt strangely at home.

“I was just like, ‘Wow, is this my life’.”

Chinouriri was booked for the tour after Carpenter fell in love with her song All I Ever Asked and started playing it as her walk-on music in the US.

We speak on the 14th date, as she prepares to play Assago, Italy. By this point, she’s having a blast – bounding across the catwalk every night, and dropping to her knees between songs to talk to the audience at eye level.

But she admits the first couple of shows were “slightly rough”.

“I filmed Graham Norton for the first time on Friday, then it was the Brit Awards on Saturday. The tour started in Dublin on Monday, and I had to film a music video on my day off.”

“I was having a lot of first time experiences and trying to figure out what I was comfortable with on the road,” she says.

“I’d say from show five, I was starting to enjoy myself.”

If there were nerves, they didn’t show.

The singer’s infectious energy and knotty pop-rock songs have been picking up new fans in every city. One reviewer called her set “the perfect sweet treat before the main feast”. At the end of March, she surpassed 4 million monthly listeners on Spotify for the first time. Adele sent her a bouquet of roses.

Rachel Chinouriri is officially having a moment – but it hasn’t come quickly.

A former Brit School student, she released her first single, So My Darling, in 2018, and spent the next few years honing her sound.

The 2019 EP Mama’s Boy was a mellow blend of soulful pop, while 2021’s Four° In Winter was full of atmospheric electronic soundscapes.

Underneath it all, though, Chinouriri was an indie kid. Raised in Croydon by strict Zimbabwean parents, she’d only been allowed to listen to Christian music at home. When they went out, the singer and her siblings would blast out hits by Coldplay, MIA, Lily Allen and Daughter.

Once she incorporated those sounds to her music, Chinouriri’s career took off. All I Ever Asked – a chirpy rock anthem that disguises a desperately sad story about being undervalued – won her support slots with Lewis Capaldi and Louis Tomlinson.

Florence Pugh declared herself a fan, and ended up starring in the video for Never Need Me, a killer kiss-off to a boyfriend who left her dangling.

For a musician who’d suffered crippling anxiety as a teenager (“I was pulling my hair out, and having panic attacks”) the success was entirely unexpected.

“British culture is quite self-deprecating,” she says, “so when I was younger, I just didn’t believe I could do these things.

“Even the fact I can say I’m a two-time Brit nominee is still quite surreal. Then I’m like, Why is it surreal?

“I do deserve it because I’ve been making music since I was 16, and I haven’t stopped’.”

Chinouriri’s debut album, the noughties-flavoured What A Devastating Turn Of Events, was finally released last May.

Initially charting at number 17, it has continued to sell steadily, thanks to the continued popularity of All I Ever Asked on TiKTok, as well as Chinouriri’s scene-stealing festival performances.

Reflecting on her rise, she says there is a “privilege to having a slow-paced career”.

“I’ve seen what happens when you skyrocket or go viral. If I’d a massive hit song when I was 21, I wouldn’t have been ready in any way, shape or form – mentally or professionally. I’d be panicking.

“So now that things are skyrocketing, I just need to remember that what I’m good at is writing how I feel and turning those feelings into music.

“And even though there’s more opinions about what I’m doing now, I need to trust my gut.”

What A Devastating Turn Of Events was a huge emotional purge. Among the topics she discussed: Racism, school bullying, self-harm, alcoholism, alienation and toxic relationships.

A recurring theme was men who take more from a relationship than they put back in.

“I’m quite a caregiver by nature, and that attracts boys who need a lot of help, or are very insecure,” the singer reflects.

“I tend to be the person’s ‘mother’, which isn’t fun, because I have to be the strong one and there’s no room for my emotions.”

But the days of heartbreak are over. Last year, the singer unexpectedly found herself in a new kind of relationship, one where her needs are as important as her partner’s.

It’s written all over her new EP, Little House. “” she sings, totally besotted, on the ballad Indigo.

The lead single, Can We Talk About Isaac, even uses her new partner’s real name. His photo is on the artwork.

“It’s quite a brave move,” she laughs, “but I’m a hopeless romantic, and I don’t want to lose being able to document my life in song.

“It’s a risk that whoever wants to date me was going to have to take!”

The title track documents their chance meeting at a pub: “With two pints in his hands, he came over and said, ‘Nice to meet you’.”

“He’s very sweet, he’s got a very simple friendship group, he likes going to the pub – but he does so much for me. It’s the first experience I’ve ever had of being taken care of.

“He’s changed my life, no matter what happens between us. We’re both just really in love with each other and having a having a blast.”

At the moment, though, the couple have been forced apart. The Sabrina Carpenter tour lasts five weeks, after which Chinouriri sets off for her first headline tour of North America.

It comes six months after the singer had to pull out of a US support slot with alt-pop star Remi Wolf.

She says the dates would have left her penniless, even with financial support from her record label.

“As much as I would have loved that tour, I wouldn’t have been able to pay my rent, which was very, very scary,” she says.

“My fans were like, ‘Let’s help out. Let’s do a GoFundMe for 10 grand’, but it was far beyond 10 grand.

“It was like, who’s going to pay for visas, where’s your band going to sleep, what are people going to eat?

“It was a big wake up call. It made me reassess; do I need to be styled all the time? Do I need to travel this way all the time?

“So now, I’m able to go back now in full force and upgrade my venues and sell out almost the entire tour, which is mental.”

The cancellation taught her to slow down instead of grabbing every opportunity she’s offered.

It’s a sign that Chinouriri is finally shedding the self-doubt that clouded her early career.

The success of the Sabrina Carpenter tour is a prime example.

“There’s always a risk as an opener, that people might be completely uninterested, but this has been the complete opposite,” she says.

“Having the entire arena sing songs with you is such a blessed feeling to have.”

It won’t be long before she’s selling out those arenas on her own.

Val Kilmer is joking around in his trailer on the set of Top Gun, pretending to bark demands into a packet of More cigarettes as if it’s a phone and he’s talking to the studio boss.

“He wants more! More sex! More drugs! More wine! More tobacco! More headaches! More ulcers! More herpes! More women! And less of Tom Cruise!”

Co-stars Rick Rossovich and Barry Tubb, also on a break from playing the film’s elite fighter pilots, are in the trailer too, cracking up with laughter.

Rossovich, aka Kilmer’s on-screen partner Slider, is apparently the person who wants “more”. Wearing shades but no shirt, he proceeds to pretend to throw a chair at Kilmer’s head, before jumping out of the trailer into the sunshine and dancing off.

Kilmer took his video camera everywhere to film behind the scenes, and picked these snapshots of the carefree tomfoolery on the Top Gun set in 1985 as the opening shots for a 2021 documentary about his life.

“He had the first video camera I’d ever seen,” recalls Tubb, who played Wolfman. “They got so tired of telling him to turn it off on the set of Top Gun that they finally just let it go.

“We had a fun time with it because we tried to catch everyone on the toilet with the video camera. That was our goofing around. So there’s video somewhere of everyone with the door open on the toilet. We were goofballs.”

He adds: “Cruise never hung out with us. It was all of us, except for Cruise. He was method acting as the loner, and we were all at this beach hotel, riding motorcycles down hallways and things.”

And Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson, “unlike some producers, threw parties every other night”, he says. “And so it was definitely in the air.”

Tubb is one of many former co-stars who have been fondly remembering Kilmer’s acting and his antics, following his death at the age of 65.

“He was the coolest cat I’ve ever met,” Tubb tells BBC News. “Not only did he have great acting chops, but he was funny as hell.”

Top Gun was a breakthrough for Kilmer, who played Iceman, the rival to Cruise’s hotshot Maverick at the US Navy’s academy for elite fighter pilots.

On screen, saving the USA from Soviet MiG jets was serious business. Off screen, filming in California and Nevada, things were less serious.

“As Sean Penn once said, working in Hollywood is like being in high school with money,” Tubb says.

“I was 22 years old, and I was the younger of the bunch.

“We had a deal that if one of us wanted to go to Mexico, all of us had to go. And Val had his van from high school, so we would all pile into Val’s van and go over to Mexico for dinner.

“We were young and bulletproof.”

Tubb whispered one of the film’s famous lines when the class watched a video of aerial dogfights: “This gives me a hard-on.”

That came about after he played a practical joke by switching the real tape in the academy’s VHS player for a pornographic video.

“[Director] Tony Scott heard me say that and he said, ‘Keep that in’. We were doing things like that. We were cutting up and having fun the whole time.”

Kilmer originally didn’t want to appear in the film, saying he throught the script was silly and he disliked its warmongering.

To the audition, he “wore oversize gonky Australian shorts in nausea green” in an attempt to put the producers off, he wrote in his autobiography.

“I read the lines indifferently. And yet, amazingly, I was told I had the part.”

The script contained “very little” substance to Iceman’s character, he said in his documentary.

“So I attempted to make him real. I manifested a backstory for him, where he had a father who ignored him, and as a result, was driven by the need to be perfect in every way. This obsession with perfection is what made him so arrogant.”

He added that he would “purposely play up the rivalry between Tom’s character and mine off screen” as well as on.

“What ended up happening is the actors, in true method fashion, split into two distinct camps.

“You had Maverick and Goose on one side, and Slider, Hollywood, Wolfman and me, Iceman, on the other.

“It was fun to play up the conflict between our characters, but in reality I’ve always thought of Tom as a friend, and we’ve always supported each other.”

By the time a sequel was finally shot in 2018 and 2019, Kilmer had suffered from throat cancer. He had a tracheotomy operation, affecting his voice and making it difficult to speak.

But Cruise was the one who insisted Iceman should return. The pair shared a highly emotional scene as Kilmer’s character, now an admiral, typed out part of his side of the conversation on a screen, before sharing a hug.

“Cruise couldn’t have been cooler,” Kilmer said. “Tom and I took up where we left off. The reunion felt great.”

Many of the cast had remained friends after the original film, Tubb says, and Rossovich’s home in the Hollywood Hills became the “Top Gun club house”.

“I remember going to Rick’s house and they were painting Rick’s kitchen, and Val got up on top of the refrigerator and did 20 minutes of Hamlet. Never missed a word.”

Kilmer was “an actors’ actor”, who raised the bar for the rest of the cast, Tubb says.

“He had a level of artistry that transcended the Hollywood norm.

“Val was a cool cat. Also, he could back it up. I remember seeing The Doors movie and I just saw Jim Morrison.

“His ability to disappear into characters was incredible. Same with Iceman.”

He adds: “Val, among his peers, was well loved. He came fully loaded.”

The love for Kilmer has shone through in the tributes from his fellow actors.

Kelly McGillis, who played Cruise’s love interest Charlie and starred with Kilmer in 1999’s At First Sight, told the BBC in a statement: “I need some time to process what Val has meant in my walk here on Earth.

“He was an enigmatic presence sprinkled here & there throughout my journey. A force with depth & weight which will take some time to sort out.

“There are just so many feelings at the moment.

“Gratitude being the first.”

English actor and dancer Will Kemp, who appeared alongside Kilmer in the 2004 slasher film Mindhunters, said the news of his death came as a “real shock”.

He recalls how the star had set him at ease and made him laugh with his “wicked sense of humour” when he was a nervous young actor on his first production.

“I entered into it with sort of trepidation really because I had heard all sorts of rumours about possible bad behaviour on set, and also he’s this acting legend that I’d grown up with.

“But Val was really sweet, fun, generous, but really, really unpredictable!”

His memories of his first ever big scene will forever be tied up with Kilmer.

“I have a very clear memory of the first scene that I shot that was in a helicopter, and we’re flying around with [director] Renny Harlin shouting, ‘why are we not shooting?’

“We’re halfway through take one, and Val – totally unscripted – somehow pulls out a cheeseburger and was just casually munching on it.

“He turns over to me and goes, ‘hey, is everybody having fun?’

“It just blew my mind.”

Kemp, also known for his portrayal of the Swan in Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake, admitted Kilmer’s acting methods on set sometimes appeared to be “crazy” while at other times there were “moments of absolute genius”.

He added: “He created so many iconic characters and was a real enigmatic movie star.”

India is a cricket-crazy nation, and it seems the AI chatbot ChatGPT hasn’t missed that fact.

So, when its founder Sam Altman fed it the prompt: “Sam Altman as a cricket player in anime style”, the bot seems to have immediately generated an image of Altman wielding a bat in a bright blue India jersey.

Altman shared his anime cricketer avatar on X on Thursday, sending Indian social media users into a tizzy.

Though the tech billionaire had shared AI-generated images before – joining last week’s viral Studio Ghibli trend – it was the India jersey that got people talking.

While some Indian users said they were delighted to see Altman sporting their team’s colours, many were quick to speculate about his motives behind sharing the image.

“Sam trying hard to attract Indian customers,” one user said.

“Now awaiting your India announcement. How much are you allocating out of that $40bn to India,” another user asked, alluding to the record funding recently secured by Altman for his firm, OpenAI, which owns ChatGPT.

Yet another user put into words a pattern he seemed to have spotted in Altman’s recent social media posts – and a question that seems to be on many Indian users’ minds.

“Over the past few days, you’ve been praising India and Indian customers a lot. How did this sudden love for India come about? It feels like there’s some deep strategy going on behind the scenes,” he wrote on X.

While the comment may sound a bit conspiratorial, there’s some truth to at least part of it.

Just hours before Altman shared his image in the cricket jersey, he’d shared a post on X praising India’s adoption of AI technology. He said it was “amazing to watch” and that it was “outpacing the world”.

This post too went viral in India, while the media wrote numerous stories documenting users’ reactions to it.

Someone even started a Reddit thread which quite comically aired the Redditor’s curiosity, and perhaps, confusion.

“Can someone tell me what Sam Altman is talking about here in his tweet?” the person posted on Reddit sharing Altman’s post.

A few days earlier, Altman had retweeted Studio Ghibli-style images of Prime Minister Narendra Modi which were shared by the federal government’s citizen engagement platform.

All these posts of Altman have generated a fair amount of comments questioning his motives.

The scepticism around Altman’s perceived courting of India could be because of his past views on the country’s AI capabilities.

During a visit in 2023, he had sounded almost dismissive of small Indian start-ups making AI tools that could compete with OpenAI’s creations.

Asked at a event how a small, smart team with a low budget of about $10m could build substantial AI foundational models, he answered that it would be “totally hopeless” to attempt this but that entrepreneurs should try anyway.

But when Altman visited India again this year, he had changed his tune.

In a meeting with federal minister Ashwini Vaishnaw in February, Altman expressed an eagerness to collaborate with India on making low-cost AI models.

He also praised India for its swift pace of adopting AI technologies and revealed that the country was OpenAI’s second-largest market, with users tripling over the past year.

The praise comes even as his company is locked in a legal battle with some of India’s biggest news media companies over the alleged unauthorised use of their content.

Experts say that Altman’s seemingly newfound affinity for India might have to do with the country’s profitability as a market.

According to the International Trade Administration, the AI market in India is projected to reach $8bn by 2025, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 40% from 2020 to 2025.

Nikhil Pahwa, founder-editor of MediaNama.com, a technology policy website, says that when it comes to founders of AI companies making “grand statements” about India, it has much to do with the country’s massive user base. He adds that Altman isn’t the only CEO wooing India.

In January, Aravind Srinivas, founder of Perplexity, an AI search engine, also expressed an eagerness to work with Indian AI start-ups.

Mr Srinivas said in a post on X that he was ready to invest $1m and five hours of his time per week to “make India great again in the context of AI”.

Technology writer Prasanto K Roy believes that the Ghibli-trend revealed India’s massive userbase for ChatGPT and, potentially, other AI platforms as well. And with competitor AI models like Gemini and Grok quickly gaining Indian users, Altman may be keen to retain existing users of his firm’s services and also acquire new ones, he says.

“India is a very large client base for all global AI foundational models and with ChatGPT being challenged by the much cheaper DeepSeek AI, Altman is likely eager to acquire more Indian customers and keep Indian developers positively aligned towards building on top of OpenAI’s services,” Mr Pahwa says.

“So when it comes to these grand overtures towards India, there’s no real love; it’s just business,” he adds.

On a bustling weekday in Toronto, Shauna Daniels was out “hunting for stripes”.

It’s a term she uses for shopping for the iconic – and increasingly rare – coloured stripes that are emblematic of Canada’s oldest corporation, the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC).

Sales of HBC’s striped merchandise – from handcrafted wool blankets to patio umbrellas – have skyrocketed since the company announced it would be liquidating all of its department stores nationwide.

On eBay, the blankets, which normally retailed for about C$300, were being sold for over C$1,000 ($710; £540).

The stripes have become “a symbol and an emblem of a tremendous chapter for the country”, Ms Daniels told the BBC while browsing on her lunch break.

“It’s emotional,” she added, as she recalled going ice skating in the city centre as a child with her parents, and passing by the department store’s window displays.

This HBC stripes fever has arrived amid a growing movement to “buy Canadian” in the face of tariffs from the United States, and a surge of national pride in response.

Sales of the merchandise have increased so much since news of the impending closures was announced that the company was able to make good on some of its debts – it owes almost almost one billion dollars to creditors – and keep six stores from liquidating.

Still, 80 Hudson’s Bay stores, as well as a handful of Saks Fifth Avenue and Saks Off 5th stores in Canada have gone into liquidation sales.

It’s a sorry fate for one of Canada’s most recognisable brands.

Founded in 1670, HBC was granted a royal charter to control trade in parts of Canada. The company began trading woolen “point” blankets – made overseas in the Oxfordshire town of Witney – with local indigenous communities.

The blankets themselves were often striped with rich colours – indigo, red, canary yellow and emerald green, said to be popular during Queen Anne’s reign, from 1702-1714.

That history – of colonialism and imperialism – has led some to critique the company’s place in Canadiana. But the blanket’s stripes endured, becoming a symbol of not just the the Hudson’s Bay Company, but Canada’s rugged past.

By the time the former British colony had become its own nation, HBC had pivoted from the no-longer booming fur trade, and had opened its first retail store in Winnipeg in 1881.

The company began manufacturing the blankets for mass retail in 1929, and soon the HBC stripes were appearing on a wide range of home décor. Toronto-based interior designer Kate Thornley-Hall has repurposed blankets into her own designs, from pillow cushions to ottomans.

“It’s an enduring reminder of the pivotal role that the Hudson’s Bay played in the development of our country,” she told the BBC.

With branches in every major city, a Hudson’s Bay department store became a major attraction. Filigreed stone facades made these stores not just a place to pick up necessities, but a destination for tourists and locals alike.

In 2008, private equity firm NRDC purchased the company, turning this quintessentially Canadian retailer American. But the company’s fortunes soon took a downturn, as department stores began to lose ground to online shopping.

Retail analyst Bruce Winder told the BBC that the pandemic only accelerated this shift in consumer habits, leaving legacy retailers like Sears, HBC and the American mall struggling to retain shoppers.

“Canadians, if they want to save, they go to places like Amazon or Walmart or Dollarama,” he said.

If they want to buy higher-end goods, they are more likely to go to a boutique or directly to a brand’s website.

NRDC, which owns Saks Fifth Avenue, also diverted its attention elsewhere, acquiring Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman in 2024.

Soon, Hudson’s Bay was struggling to pay its landlords and suppliers. Trump’s looming tariffs also caused its creditors to be concerned about the company’s ability to pay them back, Mr Winder said.

Some shoppers hope that the resurgence in demand for the blankets and other stripes merchandise will give the brand a second life.

“I hope that people will again be drawn to shopping and luxury, rather than online fast fashion,” Ms Thornley-Hall said.

Analyst Mr Winder thinks that, while the return of the department store is unlikely, there could be space for the company to license its iconic stripes to another company, or open up small, HBC-branded boutiques.

“I think it tells us that the brand has some affinity in Canada, albeit probably with select items, based on their heritage,” he said.

India’s longest and most holy river, the Ganges, is home to thousands of dolphins. But their survival is under threat.

But these aren’t like the ones found in oceans. They don’t leap out of the water in spectacular arcs; surface for long intervals or swim in an upright position. Instead, they swim sideways, spend much of their time underwater, have long snouts and are almost completely blind.

These are Gangetic dolphins, a species of river dolphin – and India’s national aquatic animal – that’s found largely in the Ganges-Brahmaputra river system in the northern part of the country.

A new survey finds India’s rivers host around 6,327 river dolphins – 6,324 Gangetic and just three Indus dolphins. A majority of the Indus dolphins are found in Pakistan as the river flows through both the South Asian countries.

Both these dolphin species are classified as “endangered” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Researchers from the Wildlife Institute of India surveyed 58 rivers across 10 states between 2021 and 2023 to produce the first comprehensive count of India’s river dolphins.

The origins of river dolphins are as fascinating as the creatures themselves. Often called “living fossils”, they evolved from marine ancestors millions of years ago, say scientists.

When the sea once flooded low-lying areas of South Asia, these dolphins moved inland – and when the waters receded, they stayed. Over time, they adapted to murky, shallow rivers, developing traits that set them apart from their ocean-dwelling cousins.

Experts say the new survey is crucial for tracking river dolphin populations. Since 1980, at least 500 dolphins have died – many accidentally caught in fishing nets or killed deliberately – highlighting the ongoing threat to the species.

Conservationist Ravindra Kumar Sinha says that up until the early 2000s, there was very little awareness about river dolphins.

In 2009, the Gangetic river dolphin was declared India’s national aquatic animal to boost conservation. Steps like a 2020 action plan and a dedicated research centre in 2024 have since helped revive its numbers.

However, conservationists say there’s still a long way to go.

Dolphins continue to be poached for their flesh and blubber, from which oil is extracted to use as fishing bait. Other times, they collide with boats or get caught in fishing lines and die.

Nachiket Kelkar of the Wildlife Conservation Trust told Sanctuary Asia magazine that many fishermen often didn’t report accidental deaths of dolphins fearing legal trouble.

Under Indian wildlife laws, accidental or targeted dolphin killings are treated as “hunting” and carry strict penalties. As a result, many poor fishermen quietly dispose of the carcasses to avoid fines.

River cruise tourism, which has picked up in India in the past decade, has further threatened their habitat. Dozens of cruise trips operate on both the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers.

“There’s no doubt that disturbances from cruises will gravely impact the dolphins, which are sensitive to noise,” conservationist Ravindra Kumar Sinha told The Guardian newspaper.

Mr Sinha believes that increased vessel traffic could push Gangetic dolphins towards extinction, much like it did to Baiji dolphins in China’s Yangtze river.

River dolphins face threats partly due to their own evolution. Nearly blind, they rely on echolocation – high-pitched sound pulses that bounce off objects and return as echoes – to navigate murky waters. While this trait suits their habitat, it also makes them vulnerable to modern threats.

Their poor eyesight and slow swimming speed make river dolphins especially prone to collisions with boats and other obstacles. Adding to their vulnerability is their slow reproductive cycle – they mature between six and 10 years of age and females typically give birth to just one calf every two to three years.

But Mr Sinha is hopeful about the future of river dolphins in India. “Government initiatives have played a big role in saving the dolphins. A lot has been done but a lot more remains to be done too,” he says.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has fired one of his deputies for taking a “lavish” trip to Antarctica with his wife during Nowruz, the Persian new year.

The president’s office described Shahram Dabiri’s trip as “unjustifiable and unacceptable given the ongoing economic challenges” in Iran.

A picture of Dabiri and his wife posing in front of MV Plancius, which was bound for Antarctica, circulated widely on social media and caused outrage in Iran.

In a statement on Saturday, Pezeshkian said Dabari had been removed as vice president of parliamentary affairs for “indefensible” actions, regardless of whether they were financed from his own pocket.

“In a government that seeks to follow the values of the first Shia Imam (Imam Ali), and amid significant economic pressures on our people, the lavish travels of government officials, even when personally financed, are indefensible,” Pezeshkian said.

Iran’s economy is under significant strain, and subject to Western sanctions due in part to its support of groups including Hamas and Hezbollah, which have been proscribed terrorist organisations by the US, UK and the EU.

Iran’s unemployment rate as of October 2024 was 8.4%, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), while its annual inflation rate was 29.5%.

Pezeshkian said Dabiri’s actions “starkly contradict the principle of simplicity that is paramount for those in positions of authority”.

The Antarctica expedition on the MV Plancius reportedly has a starting cost equivalent to $6,685 (£5,187).

Usually, visits to the coldest and least populated continent in the world are carried out by scientists and seasoned explorers.

However, tourism voyages on cruises have surged in popularity in recent years. The Dutch vessel pictured in the picture of Dabiri, for example, was used by the Royal Netherlands Navy for military and civilian research between 1976 and 2004.

It is not clear what expedition package Dabiri chose or what mode of transport he took from Iran to Antarctica.

On one of the many package deals available online, explorers need to embark and disembark from Ushuaia, one of the southernmost points of Argentina. The town is about 3,079km (1,913 miles) from Buenos Aires, the Argentinian capital.

The Iranian president was elected last year with a promise to revive the economy and improve Iranians’ daily lives. He replaced Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash.

Iranian media reported that many of Pezeshkian’s supporters urged him to remove Dabiri from post as the public grew disgruntled over the trip.

An artist whose official portrait of Donald Trump was publicly lambasted by the president said his comments are “directly and negatively impacting” her business, threatening its future.

British-born artist Sarah A Boardman painted Trump’s official portrait for the Denver State Capitol Gallery of Presidents, where it hung for six years.

In January Trump described Boardman’s picture as “truly the worst” in a post on Truth Social, adding that is had been distorted and the artist had lost her talent as she aged. It was later removed.

In a statement Ms Boardman said her business was now in “danger of not recovering”.

• Trump bemoans a portrait of him – but gets a new one from Putin

“President Trump is entitled to comment freely, as we all are, but the additional allegations that I ‘purposefully distorted’ the portrait, and that I ‘must have lost my talent as I got older’ are now directly and negatively impacting my business of over 41 years which now is in danger of not recovering,” she said.

Ms Hardman was commissioned by the Colorado State Capitol Advisory Committee in Denver.

She said that for the six years the portrait hung in the Colorado State Capitol Building Rotunda, she had received “overwhelmingly positive reviews and feedback”.

“Since President Trump’s comments, that has changed for the worst,” she added.

“I completed the portrait accurately, without ‘purposeful distortion’, political bias, or any attempt to caricature the subject, actual or implied. I fulfilled the task per my contract.”

The US president has paid close attention to cultivating his image, and made headlines in January by unveiling an official portrait that was variously described by critics as serious or ominous.

Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff confirmed receipt of a new work from Moscow, saying he had been asked to transport it back to Washington. Witkoff described the picture as a “beautiful portrait” by a “leading Russian artist.”

MP Dan Norris has been arrested on suspicion of rape, child sex offences, child abduction and misconduct in a public office.

The Labour Party says it “immediately suspended” the MP for North East Somerset and Hanham after being made aware of his arrest.

Avon and Somerset Police confirmed that a man in his 60s was arrested on Friday and released on conditional bail.

BBC News has contacted Norris for comment.

Norris, 65, was elected as the MP for North East Somerset and Hanham in 2024, defeating the Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg.

He had previously been in Parliament from 1997 to 2010 representing the seat of Wansdyke.

The MP was a junior minister under Gordon Brown and was an assistant whip under Tony Blair.

Norris has also served as the Mayor of the West of England since 2021 but is due to step down ahead of May’s local elections.

According to the West of England Combined Authority website, Norris previously worked as an NSPCC-trained child protection officer.

In a statement, Avon and Somerset Police said: “In December 2024, we received a referral from another police force relating to alleged non-recent child sex offences having been committed against a girl.

“Most of the offences are alleged to have occurred in the 2000s but we’re also investigating an alleged offence of rape from the 2020s.

“An investigation, led by officers within Operation Bluestone, our dedicated rape and serious sexual assault investigation team, remains ongoing and at an early stage.

“The victim is being supported and given access to any specialist help or support she needs.

“A man, aged in his 60s, was arrested on Friday (April 4) on suspicion of sexual offences against a girl (under the Sexual Offences Act 1956), rape (under the Sexual Offences Act 2003), child abduction and misconduct in a public office.

“He’s been released on conditional bail for enquiries to continue.”

A Labour Party spokesperson said on Saturday: “Dan Norris MP was immediately suspended by the Labour Party upon being informed of his arrest.

“We cannot comment further while the police investigation is ongoing.”

The suspension means Mr Norris, the MP for North East Somerset and Hanham, is also understood to have had the party whip suspended, meaning he is not able to sit as a Labour MP in the Commons.

Prince Andrew’s involvement with an alleged Chinese spy came at a time his chief aide and other royals believed his reputation was “irrecoverable”.

Previously secret documents detail how ex-advisor Dominic Hampshire saw Yang Tengbo as Andrew’s “only light at the end of the tunnel” after his Newsnight interview in 2019.

The documents also reveal details of Andrew’s “communication channel” with China’s President Xi Jinping – including sending an annual birthday letter – and how MI5 intervened to warn against Andrew having contact with the alleged spy.

The documents were disclosed after the BBC and other media outlets pushed for them to be released by the courts.

Mr Yang has denied all wrongdoing.

Newly released papers include Mr Hampshire’s full witness statement, which he wrote in support of Mr Yang and sought to keep private.

It sheds new light on links between the royal and alleged spy, who became a close advisor on Andrew’s business ventures. The document also reveals:

• Mr Hampshire believed there were “leaks everywhere at all sorts of levels” in the Royal Household that made it difficult to keep Andrew’s plans private
• Andrew’s activities were discussed at two meetings between King Charles, the duke and Mr Hampshire – for which Andrew was smuggled into Windsor Castle to avoid press attention
• There was tension among aides advising Andrew, which led to his private secretary being excluded from some meetings regarding the duke’s business plans

Mr Hampshire’s statement details how Andrew believed that, with the help of Mr Yang, he could salvage a prominent public position by pursuing business opportunities in China – even though, as his aide acknowledged, ties to Beijing are “not a good look anywhere or for anyone”.

Andrew had a “communication channel” with the Chinese president, the document reveals, which Mr Hampshire said was largely used to promote his Pitch@Palace start-up business initiative in China.

He said that because of “cultural differences”, Mr Yang helped him draft letters to Xi, including in relation to plans for the Eurasia Fund, an investment vehicle which Andrew was seeking to raise money for.

In a separate document released on Friday, Mr Yang confirmed he personally pitched the fund to Xi and the wider Chinese government.

Mr Hampshire said in his witness statement that there was “nothing to hide” in the exchanges between Andrew and Xi – and they were full of “top-level nothingness”, such as birthday wishes.

Mr Hampshire said the late Queen Elizabeth II knew about the contacts with China and they were “perhaps even encouraged”.

• Who is alleged Chinese spy linked to Prince Andrew?

He described Andrew as a “valuable communication point with China” – though the document reveals that Mr Hampshire thought “China would prefer a different royal”.

After the papers were released on Friday, Buckingham Palace emphasised the King had no connection with Mr Yang.

The alleged spy was not “mentioned at any time or in any way” in meetings with Andrew, the Palace said, and there was no approval given for any business relationships with him.

These latest revelations show how much Andrew had become an isolated figure after his disastrous 2019 BBC Newsnight interview – as well as the palace intrigue surrounding his attempts to recover his position.

The fallout from the interview led the prince to withdraw from public duties and led to the end of Pitch@Palace events in the UK and China, a scheme widely seen as one of Andrew’s more successful ventures.

Mr Yang had lived in the UK since 2002 and became a trusted confidant to Andrew in the wake of the interview.

Commenting on the mood in the Palace after the interview, which saw him questioned over his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Mr Hampshire said it was “clear” the duke’s “reputation was irrecoverable”.

The documents show how as Andrew’s public status fell, Mr Yang’s role as a potential bridge to business opportunities in China grew in its importance.

Separately, Mr Hampshire also reflected on his worries about people trying to ingratiate themselves with Andrew “in order to make excessive money out the Duke or their association with him”.

In December, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac) said Mr Yang had formed an “unusual degree of trust” with Andrew.

It found Mr Yang had not disclosed his links to an arm of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) which is involved in clandestine “political interference”.

That term is used for suspected Chinese state agents who use their position to secretly influence key decision-makers in the British state, including politicians, academics and business leaders.

These agents aim to subtly and slowly make key figures amenable to the aims of the CCP in a long-term operation often referred to as “elite capture”.

It was previously revealed Mr Hampshire credited Mr Yang with salvaging Andrew’s reputation in China.

Russell Brand has been charged with rape, indecent assault and sexual assault between 1999 and 2005.

The charges relate to four separate women.

Brand has been interviewed multiple times by police since an investigation by the Sunday Times, the Times and Channel 4’s Dispatches in September 2023 revealed multiple serious allegations against him.

In a new video posted on X this afternoon, Brand said: “What I never was, was a rapist. I’ve never engaged in non-consensual activity.”

He added: “I’m now going to have the opportunity to defend these charges in court and I’m incredibly grateful for that.”

In a short statement, the Metropolitan Police said it had written to Brand to inform him that he was being charged with one allegation of rape, one allegation of indecent assault, one of oral rape and two further counts of sexual assault.

The force said it is alleged that:

• In 1999 a woman was raped in the Bournemouth area.
• In 2001 a woman was indecently assaulted in the Westminster area of London.
• In 2004 a woman was orally raped and sexually assaulted in the Westminster area of London.
• Between 2004 and 2005, a woman was sexually assaulted in the Westminster area of London.

Brand has been told to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on 2 May, but he is believed to be in the United States.

In these situations, where a suspect may be overseas, prosecutors seek to agree the defendant’s return. If there is no co-operation from a suspect, authorities then consider seeking extradition.

In February a civil case for “personal injury” and “sexual abuse” was lodged against Brand at the High Court in London by an anonymous woman, referred to in court documents as AGX.

Jaswant Narwal of the Crown Prosecution Service said: “We have today authorised the Metropolitan Police to charge Russell Brand with a number of sexual offences.

“We carefully reviewed the evidence after a police investigation into allegations made following the broadcast of a Channel 4 documentary in September 2023.

“We have concluded that Russell Brand should be charged with offences including rape, sexual assault and indecent assault. These relate to reported non-recent offences between 1999 and 2005, involving four women.

“The Crown Prosecution Service reminds everyone that criminal proceedings are active, and the defendant has the right to a fair trial. It is extremely important that there be no reporting, commentary or sharing of information online which could in any way prejudice these proceedings.”

The Metropolitan Police’s detective superintendent Andy Furphy, who is leading the investigation, said: “The women who have made reports continue to receive support from specially trained officers.

“The Met’s investigation remains open and detectives ask anyone who has been affected by this case, or anyone who has any information, to come forward and speak with police. A dedicated team of investigators is available via email at CIT@met.police.uk.

“Support is also available by contacting the independent charity, Rape Crisis at 24/7 Rape and Sexual Abuse Support Line.”

Brand, who was born in Essex, rose to fame as a stand-up comedian, performing at the Hackney Empire in 2000 and later the Edinburgh Fringe.

He later moved into broadcasting, hosting national television and radio programmes.

The turning point in his career came in the mid-2000s, when he hosted Big Brother’s Big Mouth, a companion show to the hugely popular reality series Big Brother.

It provided the springboard he was looking for and led to him becoming one of the most sought-after presenters in the UK.

Brand went on to host the NME, MTV and Brit awards ceremonies, had his own debate series by E4, and fronted the UK leg of charity concert Live Earth.

But he was never far away from controversy, particularly at awards ceremonies – which provided the kind of live, anything-can-happen chaos where he was most at home.

His career included hosting radio shows on the BBC, in particular for 6 Music and Radio 2, between 2006 and 2008.

But inappropriate phone calls he made to the Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs during a show in 2008 prompted a huge scandal – and ultimately led to his dismissal.

He rebounded with a Hollywood career, starring in films like Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him To The Greek.

Recent years have seen him take a new direction – particularly since the start of the Covid pandemic in 2020.

Brand grew his following on YouTube as he discussed scepticism surrounding the disease.

He has developed a cult following for his views on politics and society, through videos which challenge the mainstream reporting of a range of subjects and often amplify conspiracy theories. He has also established himself as a wellness guru.

A Russian missile attack on the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih has killed at least 18 people and left dozens wounded, Ukrainian officials have said.

Nine of the dead were children, said President Volodymyr Zelensky, who grew up in Kryvyi Rih. Local officials said a ballistic missile had hit a residential area.

Images showed at least one victim lying in a playground, while a video showed a large section of a 10-storey block of flats destroyed and victims lying on the road.

Russia’s defence ministry later claimed a “high-precision missile strike” had targeted a meeting of “unit commanders and Western instructors” in a restaurant, and that up to 85 were killed. It provided no evidence.

Ukraine’s military responded by saying that Russia was spreading false information to try to “cover up its cynical crime”. It said Moscow had fired an Iskander-M ballistic missile with a cluster warhead to maximise casualties.

The attack, early on Friday evening, was among the deadliest on Kryvyi Rih since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, and comes as US President Donald Trump pushes for a ceasefire.

Zelensky wrote on social media that at least five buildings had been damaged in Friday’s strike: “There is only one reason why this continues: Russia doesn’t want a ceasefire, and we see it.”

The head of Kryvyi Rih’s defence, Oleksandr Vilkul, said a residential area was hit.

“The missile exploded in the air… to injure more people,” he said. “Children were killed on or near a playground.”

Serhii Lysak, the head of the Dnipropetrovsk region where Kryvyi Rih is located, said more than 40 people were treated for wounds, and the youngest was only three months old.

Later on Friday, Vilkul reported more explosions, saying the city was under a “mass” drone attack that triggered fires in at least four locations.

He said one elderly woman burned to death in a private house hit by a drone. Another five people were injured elsewhere.

Military chiefs from both the UK and France met Zelensky in Kyiv earlier in the day to discuss plans for foreign peacekeepers to be stationed in Ukraine as part of a potential ceasefire deal.

But there has been little sign of a let-up in the violence.

Kryvyi Rih also came under attack earlier this week when a building in the centre was struck, leaving four people dead.

On Thursday, Russian drone strikes on the north-eastern city of Kharkiv claimed another five lives, local officials said.

• US says Putin will make decision on ceasefire in ‘weeks, not months’
• Rosenberg: Trump takes US-Russia relations on rollercoaster ride

France and the UK have accused Russia of dragging its feet on the Ukraine peace deal. UK Foreign Minister David Lammy told reporters at a Nato summit in Brussels that the Russian leader “could accept a ceasefire now, [but] he continues to bombard Ukraine, its civilian population”.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Russians knew the American position, “and we will know from their answers very soon whether they are serious about proceeding with real peace or whether it is a delay tactic”.

Kryvyi Rih is about 40 miles (70km) from the front line in eastern Ukraine and with a population of 600,000 it is reputed to be the longest city in Europe.

A 24-year-old bull rider has died after sustaining injuries while competing in a rodeo event in Texas, the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association said.

Dylan Grant was injured after being bucked off by a bull in the arena during the second round of the Wharton County Youth Fair Xtreme Bulls event on Thursday evening local time.

Medics rushed him into an ambulance where they began working to stabilise him. He was then taken by helicopter to a hospital in Houston, where he died.

The association sent its condolences to Grant’s family, friends and “the entire rodeo/bull riding community”, while loved ones mourned him on social media as a son, brother and friend.

Friends and family posted on Facebook grieving his death, with one calling him “the life of the party” and “the kindest soul”.

“The rodeo world is a small one, and the bull riding world is even smaller. But within it, Dylan made a big impact,” another post said, adding that “we never imagined we’d get the call saying Dylan didn’t make it home at all”.

Grant was from Laramie, Wyoming and competed for the University of Wyoming rodeo team.

The team posted on Facebook that it was “heartbroken” to learn of his death, saying its thoughts and prayers were with Grant’s mother and father “during this unthinkable time”.

Grant graduated in 2023 with a degree in Physical Education Teacher Education, the university team said.

“Dylan was a champion of life inside and outside of the arena,” the team said.

Grant competed in multiple professional rodeo events in his career, obtaining his Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association permit in 2018 and buying his association card in 2024, the group said.

The potential for injury requiring medical intervention for rodeo athletes is high, a study published in the Kansas Journal of Medicine said.

The study identified 70 patients from rodeos treated at a trauma centre over 10 years. Head injuries were most common, reported in around half of patients. One person died as a result of their injuries.

Another article published in Sports Medicine found bull riding was responsible for the greatest proportion of rodeo injuries.

Crowds of protesters have gathered in cities across the US to denounce President Trump, in the largest nationwide show of opposition since the president took office in January.

The “Hands Off” protest planners aimed to hold rallies in 1,200 locations, including in all 50 US states. Thousands of people turned out in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Washington DC, among other cities, on Saturday.

Protesters cited grievances with Trump’s agenda ranging from social to economic issues.

Coming days after Trump’s announcement that the US would impose import tariffs on most countries around the world, gatherings were also held outside the US, including in London, Paris and Berlin.

In Boston, some protesters said they were motivated by immigration raids on US university students that have led to arrests and deportation proceedings.

Law student Katie Smith told BBC News that she was motivated by Turkish international student Rumeysa Ozturk, whose arrest near Boston-area Tufts University by masked US agents was caught on camera last month.

“You can stand up today or you can be taken later,” she said, adding: “I’m not usually a protest girlie.”

In London, protesters held signs reading, “WTAF America?”, “Stop hurting people” and “He’s an idiot”.

They chanted “hands off Canada”, “hands off Greenland” and “hands off Ukraine”, referencing Trump’s changes to US foreign policy. Trump has repeatedly expressed interest in annexing Canada and Greenland. He also got into a public dispute with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and has struggled to negotiate a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia.

In Washington DC, thousands of protesters gathered to watch speeches by Democratic lawmakers. Many remarks focused on the role played in Trump’s administration by wealthy donors – most notably Elon Musk, who has served as an advisor to the president and spearheaded an effort to dramatically cut spending and the federal workforce.

Florida Congressman Maxwell Frost denounced the “billionaire takeover of our government”.

“When you steal from the people, expect the people to rise up. At the ballot box and in the streets,” he shouted.

The protests come after a bruising week for the president and his allies. Republicans won a closely watched special Florida congressional election on Tuesday, but with slimmer margins than they had hoped. Wisconsin voters elected a Democratic judge to serve on the state supreme court, roundly rejecting a Musk-backed Republican candidate by almost 10 percentage points.

In both states, Democrats sought to tap into voter anger towards the Trump administration’s policies and Elon Musk’s influence.

Some polls show approval ratings for President Trump to be slipping slightly.

One Reuters/Ipsos poll released earlier this week found that his approval rating had dropped to 43%, its lowest point since Trump began his second term in January. When he was inaugurated on 20 January, his approval rating was 47%.

The same poll found that 37% of Americans approve of his handling of the economy, while 30% approve of his strategy to address the cost of living in the US.

Another recent poll, from Harvard Caps/Harris, found that 49% of registered voters approve of Trump’s performance in office, down from 52% last month. The same poll, however, found that 54% of voters believe he is doing a better job than Joe Biden did as president.

One protester in Washington named Theresa told the BBC that she was there because “we’re losing our democratic rights”.

“I’m very concerned about the cuts they’re making to the federal government,” she said, adding that she is also concerned about retirement and education benefits.

Asked if she thought Trump was receiving the protesters’ message, she said: “Well, let’s see. [Trump has] been golfing just about every day.”

Trump held no public events on Saturday, and spent the day golfing at a resort he owns in Florida. He was scheduled to play golf again on Sunday.

The White House released a statement defending Trump’s positions, saying he would continue to protect programs such as Medicare and pointing to Democrats as the threat.

“President Trump’s position is clear: he will always protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid for eligible beneficiaries. Meanwhile, the Democrats’ stance is giving Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare benefits to illegal aliens, which will bankrupt these programs and crush American seniors.”

One of Trump’s top immigration advisors, Tom Homan, told Fox News on Saturday that protesters held a rally outside of his New York home, but that he was in Washington at the time.

“They can protest a vacant house all they want,” Homan said, adding that their presence “tied up” law enforcement and prevented officials from seeing to more important tasks.

“Protests and rallies, they don’t mean anything,” Homan continued.

“So go ahead and exercise your first amendment [free speech] rights. It’s not going to change the facts of the case.”

Israel’s army has admitted its soldiers made mistakes over the killing of 15 emergency workers in southern Gaza on 23 March.

The convoy of Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) ambulances, a UN car and a fire truck from Gaza’s Civil Defence came under fire near Rafah.

Israel originally claimed troops opened fire because the convoy approached “suspiciously” in darkness without headlights or flashing lights. It said movement of the vehicles had not been previously co-ordinated or agreed with the army.

Mobile phone footage, filmed by one of the paramedics who was killed, showed the vehicles did have lights on as they answered a call to help wounded people.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) insists at least six of the medics were linked to Hamas – but has so far provided no evidence. It admits they were unarmed when the soldiers opened fire.

The mobile video, originally shared by the New York Times, shows the vehicles pulling up on the road when, without warning, shooting begins just before dawn.

The footage continues for more than five minutes, with the paramedic, named as Refat Radwan, heard saying his last prayers before the voices of Israeli soldiers are heard approaching the vehicles.

An IDF official briefed journalists on Saturday evening, saying the soldiers had earlier fired on a car containing three Hamas members.

When the ambulances responded and approached the area, aerial surveillance monitors informed the soldiers on the ground of the convoy “advancing suspiciously”.

When the ambulances stopped beside the Hamas car, the soldiers assumed they were under threat and opened fire, despite no evidence any of the emergency team was armed.

Israel has admitted its earlier account claiming the vehicles approached without lights was inaccurate, attributing the report to the troops involved.

The video footage shows the vehicles were clearly marked and the paramedics wore reflective hi-vis uniform.

The soldiers buried the bodies of the 15 dead workers in sand to protect them from wild animals, the official said, claiming the vehicles were moved and buried the following day to clear the road.

They were not uncovered until a week after the incident because international agencies, including the UN, could not organise safe passage to the area or locate the spot.

When an aid team found the bodies they also discovered Refat Radwan’s mobile phone containing footage of the incident.

The Israeli military official denied any of the medics were handcuffed before they died and said they were not executed at close range, as some reports had suggested.

Earlier this week, a surviving paramedic told the BBC the ambulances had their lights on and denied his colleagues were linked with any militant group.

The IDF promised a “thorough examination” of the incident, saying it would “understand the sequence of events and the handling of the situation”.

The Red Crescent and many other international organisations are calling for an independent investigation.

Israel renewed its aerial bombardment and ground offensive in Gaza on 18 March after the first phase of a ceasefire deal came to an end and negotiations on a second phase stalled.

More than 1,200 people have since been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

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

More than 50,600 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s health ministry.

President Donald Trump has built another wall, and he thinks everyone else is going to pay for it. But his decision to impose sweeping tariffs of at least 10% on almost every product that enters the US is essentially a wall designed to keep work and jobs within it, rather than immigrants out.

The height of this wall needs to be put in historical context. It takes the US back a century in terms of protectionism. It catapults the US way above the G7 and G20 nations into levels of customs revenue, associated with Senegal, Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan.

What occurred this week was not just the US starting a global trade war, or sparking a rout in stock markets. It was the world’s hyper power firmly turning its back on the globalisation process it had championed, and from which it handsomely profited in recent decades.

And in so doing, using the equation that underpinned his grand tariff reveal on the Rose Garden’s lawns, the White House also turned its back on some fundamentals of both conventional economics and diplomacy.

Trump talked a lot about 1913 in his announcement. This was a turning point when the US both created federal income tax and significantly lowered its tariffs.

Before this point, from its inception, the US government was funded mainly by tariffs, and was unapologetically protectionist, based on the strategy of its first Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton.

The basic lesson the White House has taken from this is that high tariffs made America, made it “great” the first time, and also meant that there was no need for a federal income tax.

On this side of the Atlantic, underpinning globalisation and free trade are the theories of 19th-Century British economist David Ricardo. In particular, the 1817 Theory of Comparative Advantage.

There are equations, but the basics are pretty easy to understand: Individual countries are good at making different things, based on their own natural resources and the ingenuity of their populations.

Broadly speaking, the whole world, and the countries within it, are better off, if everyone specialises in what they are best at, and then trades freely.

Here in Britain this remains a cornerstone of the junction between politics and economics. Most of the world still believes in comparative advantage. It is the intellectual core of globalisation.

But the US was never a full convert at the time. The underlying reluctance of the US never disappeared. And this week’s manifestation of that was the imaginative equation created by the US Trade Representative to generate the numbers on Trump’s big board.

It is worth unpacking the rationale for these so-called “reciprocal” tariffs. The numbers bear little resemblance to the published tariff rates in those countries.

The White House said adjustments had been made to account for red tape and currency manipulation. A closer look at the, at-first, complicated looking equation revealed it was simply a measure of the size of that country’s goods trade surplus with the US. They took the size of the trade deficit and divided it by the imports.

In the hour before the press conference a senior White House official explained it quite openly. “These tariffs are customised to each country, calculated by the Council of Economic Advisers… The model they use is based on the concept the trade deficit that we have is the sum of all the unfair trade practices, the sum of all cheating.”

This is really important. According to the White House, the act of selling more goods to the US than the US sells to you, is by definition “cheating” and is deserving of a tariff that is calculated to correct that imbalance.

This is why the surreal stories about the US tariffing rarely visited islands only inhabited by penguins matter. It reveals the actual method.

The long-term aim, and the target of the policy, is to get the US $1.2 trillion trade deficit and the largest country deficits within that down to zero. The equation was simplistically designed to target those countries with surpluses, not those with recognisable quantifiable trade barriers. It targeted poor countries, emerging economies and tiny irrelevant islets based on that data.

While these two different factors overlap, they are not the same thing.

There are many reasons why some countries have surpluses, and some have deficits. There is no inherent reason why these numbers should be zero. Different countries are better at making different products, and have different natural and human resources. This is the very basis of trade.

The US appears no longer to believe in this. Indeed if the same argument was applied solely to trade in services, the US has a $280bn (£216bn) surplus in areas such as financial services and social media tech.

Yet services trade was excluded from all the White House calculations.

There is something bigger here. As the US Vice President JD Vance said in a speech last month, globalisation has failed in the eyes of this administration because the idea was that “rich countries would move further up the value chain, while the poor countries made the simpler things”.

That has not panned out, especially in the case of China, so the US is moving decisively away from this world.

For the US, it is not David Ricardo who matters, it is David Autor, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) economist and the coiner of the term “China shock”.

In 2001, as the world was distracted by the aftermath of 9/11, China joined the World Trade Organisation (WTO), having relatively free access to US markets, and so transforming the global economy.

Living standards, growth, profits and stock markets boomed in the US as China’s workforce migrated from the rural fields to the coastal factories to produce exports more cheaply for US consumers. It was a classic example of the functioning of “comparative advantage”. China generated trillions of dollars, much of which was reinvested in the US, in the form of its government bonds, helping keep interest rates down.

Everyone was a winner. Well, not quite. Essentially US consumers en masse got richer with cheaper goods, but the quid pro quo was a profound loss of manufacturing to East Asia.

Autor’s calculation was that by 2011, this “China shock” saw the loss of one million US manufacturing jobs, and 2.4 million jobs overall. These hits were geographically concentrated in the Rust Belt and the south.

The trade shock impact on lost jobs and wages was remarkably persistent.

Autor further updated his analysis last year and found that while the Trump administration’s first term dabble with tariff protection had little net economic impact, it did loosen Democrat support in affected areas, and boosted support for Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

Fast forward to this week, and the array of union car workers and oil and gas workers celebrating the tariffs in the White House.

So the promise is that these jobs will return, not just to the Rust Belt, but across the US. This is indeed likely to some degree. The President’s clear message to foreign companies is to avoid the tariffs by moving your factories. The carrots offered by Biden followed by the stick from Trump could well lead to material progress on this.

But the President’s characterisation of the past half century of freer trade as having “raped and pillaged” the US obviously doesn’t reflect the overall picture, even if it has not worked for specific regions, sectors or demographics.

The US service sector thrived, dominating the world from Wall Street and Silicon Valley. US consumer brands used hyper-efficient supply chains stretching into China and East Asia to make incredible profits selling their aspirational American products everywhere.

The US economy did very well indeed. The problem, simply, was that it was not evenly distributed among sectors. And what the US lacked was levels of redistribution and adaptation to spread that wealth across the country. This reflects America’s political choices.

Now, as the US chooses to reshore its manufacturing with a sudden jolt of protectionism, other countries also have choices as to whether to support the flows of capital and trade that have made the US rich.

The world’s consumers have choices.

It is little wonder major blue chip American companies, which have built cash machines on hyper-efficient East Asian supply chains producing cheaply and then selling to the whole world based on their attractive aspirational brands, have a big problem.

Their share prices are particularly badly affected because the president has both decimated their supply chain strategies, and also risks greatly impairing their brand image amongst global consumers.

Ultimately, this is the first social media trade war. The experience of Tesla’s sale slump and Canada’s backlash against US goods may prove contagious. That would be as powerful as any counter-tariff.

These countries that bet on being the workshops for US consumers have choices over trade too. New alliances will form and intensify that seek to cut out an erratic US.

The president’s sensitivity to this was apparent when he threatened to increase tariffs if the EU and Canada joined forces over retaliation. This would be the nightmare scenario.

In the game theory of trade wars, credibility does matter. The US has unrivalled military and technological might, which helps. But to transform the global trading system using an arbitrary formula, that throws up transparent absurdities, even without the penguins, is likely to encourage the other side to resist.

This is especially the case when the rest of the world thinks that the loaded gun that the president is holding is being aimed at his own foot. The stock market fell most in the US. Inflation will go up most in the US. It is Wall Street now calculating a more-than-evens chance of a recession in the US.

Perhaps there is some substance to the theory that the real objective here is to weaken the dollar and lower US borrowing costs.

For now, the US is checking out of the global trade system it created. It can continue without it. But the transition is going to be very messy indeed.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy has criticised Israeli authorities for denying two Labour MPs entry to the country and detaining them.

He described the move as “unacceptable, counterproductive, and deeply concerning”, adding that the Foreign Office had been in touch with both MPs to offer support.

Abtisam Mohamed and Yuan Yang were refused entry because they intended to “spread hate speech” against Israel, the Israeli population and immigration authority said in a statement.

Lammy said: “I have made clear to my counterparts in the Israeli government that this is no way to treat British Parliamentarians.”

Yang, the MP for Earley and Woodley, and Mohamed, the MP for Sheffield Central, flew to the country from London Luton Airport with two aides on Saturday afternoon.

The Israeli immigration authority said Interior Minister Moshe Arbel had denied entry to all four passengers after they were questioned. It also accused them of travelling to “document the security forces”.

The UK Foreign Office said the group was part of a parliamentary delegation.

Israel’s immigration authority contested this claim, saying the delegation had not been acknowledged by any Israeli official.

A spokesperson for the Interior Ministry said the MPs had left the country as of 06:00 local time (04:00 BST) on Sunday.

Lammy said in a statement: “The UK government’s focus remains securing a return to the ceasefire and negotiations to stop the bloodshed, free the hostages and end the conflict in Gaza.”

Sam was lying in bed one morning when her tenant in a house she owned in Margate sent her a photo of a piece of graffiti that had appeared on the wall outside.

Astonishingly, it looked like a Banksy. It would turn out to be perhaps the graffiti artist’s most interesting new artwork of recent years, Valentine’s Day Mascara (pictured above), which was revealed in Margate on Valentine’s Day, 2023.

Bamboozled, Sam googled: what do you do when you wake up with a Banksy on your wall?

“What did Google say about that?” I asked her.

“Nothing! And I was like, I need to contact the council, I need to find an art gallery who can advise me.”

Sam called Julian Usher at Red Eight Gallery. Julian’s team, conscious that new Banksys are under immediate threat from street cleaners, the weather, rival graffiti artists and other art dealers, promised he’d be in Margate within the hour: “We knew we had to get the piece covered,” say Julian.

And there was another reason Julian got to Margate double-quick: if Banksy chooses your wall for one of his drawings, you could be seriously in the money.

For the second season of my BBC Radio 4 podcast The Banksy Story, which is called When Banksy Comes To Town, I’ve been following the very different fates of two sets of homeowners who wake up one day to find a Banksy on their wall. The season shows just how important his graffiti becomes for a local community – and why people disagree so vehemently about what should happen after it’s discovered.

Sam became the custodian of Valentine’s Day Mascara, which speaks to the theme of domestic violence, incidents of which usually spike each Valentine’s Day. It’s a complicated bit of work. A peppy 50s housewife with a black eye has bludgeoned her partner. A real pan with flecks of red is at her feet, and his painted legs are upended into the real fridge-freezer that Banksy left by the wall. A broken plastic chair testifies to the fight they have had.

Later on the day it appeared, refuse collectors arrived to spirit away the fridge-freezer. This precipitated a free-for-all, with the public helping themselves to the remnants. It was mayhem.

A media scrum, a wrong-footed local council, millions of global onlookers. Exactly, one suspects, what Banksy wanted.

And this time, just for laughs, he left behind oil painter Peter Brown, commissioned to capture the scenes he would miss. I spoke to Pete “The Street” Brown for my series. “The whole reason I was employed was because Banksy was questioning what was the art about,” Pete explained. “Is it about the graffiti? Or is it about the reaction afterwards, and what happens to it?”

As luck would have it, Pete was captured on video just as Banksy’s team were putting the finishing touches to Valentine’s Day Mascara – a video that The Banksy Story managed to obtain. In it we can see that one of Banksy’s team let a local kid play with their drone.

“They’re in the process of putting a large piece on a wall and yet they’re taking the time to teach a kid how to fly a drone,” says Steph Warren, who used to work with Banksy and who appeared in my first series – about the artist’s rise and rise. “Very sweet!”

Alongside Sam, I’ve been following the story of Gert and Gary. They, like Sam, did not want me to use their last name. A 30ft-high seagull appeared one morning on the wall of their buy-to-let in Lowestoft in Suffolk. The bird needed to be massive for Banksy’s ambitious visual gag to work. The artist had shoved large yellow insulation strips into a skip that now looked like a fast-food container that the seagull divebombed to steal chips.

Banksy had chosen his wall well. Visitors arriving by train were treated to this witty meditation on the scourge of Britain’s seaside towns, equal parts warning and celebration. The Lowestoft Seagull was part of Banksy’s Great British Staycation, his post-Covid lockdown campaign to cheer us all up at the prospect of a summer holiday spent in the UK.

But Gert was not cheered-up at all. “It’s not a seagull, it’s an albatross!” she quipped when I went to interview her.

“How did you know it was a Banksy?” I asked.

“There was scaffolding erected on the side of the house. I tried to find out if it was a particular scaffolding firm, but there was no phone number,” Gert replied. “On the Monday morning the letting agency informed me that I could possibly have a Banksy. By then the scaffolding had gone and this seagull appeared.”

This fits with what we know of Banksy’s modus operandi. He claims hiding in plain sight is the best way to remain invisible. “If questioned about your legitimacy,” he wrote in his book Wall & Piece, “simply complain about the hourly rate.”

It’s a good gag. But how fun is it for the folk on the other end of his spray can?

I found that with good hustling skills a Banksied homeowner might see their bank balance expanded, but it’s not an easy process.

As Gert explains, exasperated, “Lowestoft people commented that it belongs to Lowestoft… But nobody’s turned up to say, ‘we’ll help you protect it’. It doesn’t belong to the person filming it, or the person taking pictures with their children. The problem is mine!”

Gert had to contend with people putting their children into the skip for photo opportunities, the council trying to charge her for Perspex screens, and the threat of a Preservation Order which might have cost her £40,000 a year.

And the two stories I’ve been following have ended up having entirely different outcomes.

Both artworks have been taken off the houses they were painted on – a complex, expensive operation that uses specialist equipment – so they can be sold. But while the Banksy in Margate is now on the verge of selling for well over £1m, with a sizeable chunk set to go to a domestic violence charity, and with the piece remaining in the town for the foreseeable future, the Banksy up the coast in Lowestoft languishes in a climate-controlled warehouse, costing its owners £3,000 per month.

It has cost Gert and her partner Gary around £450,000 so far to preserve the piece and although there are buyers sniffing around, nobody has bought it yet. Speaking about the situation, Gary told me: “I’m so angry at what’s going on.”

Not everyone approves of people trying to sell Banksy’s street art.

Steph Warren – who starred in the first series of The Banksy Story as the only person ever to work for Banksy without signing his non-disclosure agreement – suggests that worried homeowners should simply “get busy with five litres of white emulsion and paint it out”.

Owner of street-art gallery Stelladore in St Leonards, Warren is a purist, who feels that art made for the street should remain there, no matter it’s value. “With Banksy, where he puts the art is fundamental,” she says. “Remove the work from the precise place on the streets that he put it, and the work instantly loses its power. Context is everything.”

But Banksy has elevated graffiti into a new art form, now monetised – street art. Banksy’s signed prints can sell for six-figure sums. Graffiti, or street art, has not just come of age, it is now an asset class. Given this, how can any homeowner feel okay about scrubbing away a Banksy without feeling as if they have smashed a Ming vase?

One thing I know for sure: if you wake up with a Banksy on your wall, you’ll have to make a series of clever decisions to come out of it unscathed. As Sam says, after two years of dealing with the Banksy circus, “going back to normal life now is going to be terribly boring”.

European Union firms will try to export goods via Northern Ireland in an attempt to get a reduced tariff rate when exporting to the US, a Nobel prize winning economist has suggested.

US President Donald Trump has imposed a 10% tariff on UK goods but a 20% tariff on EU goods.

Northern Ireland is part of UK customs territory but also has an open trade border with the Republic of Ireland, which is in the EU.

Paul Krugman made the comments in conversation with the journalist Ezra Klein.

“Probably a lot of EU goods trans-ship through Northern Ireland to get the lower tariff rate,” he said.

Typically goods cannot just be exported via a lower tariff country to get a lower tariff.

Instead they need to undergo “substantial transformation” in the lower tariff country which usually means some form of processing, although the rules differ from product to product.

Mr Krugman won the Nobel prize for economics in 2008 for his work on on international trade theory and economic geography.

The US began collecting a 10% “baseline” tariff on all imports on Saturday as President Donald Trump urged Americans to “hang tough” after market turmoil.

The UK and France are among hundreds of countries impacted and its leaders have said nothing is off the table. While China, which has been hit the hardest by President Trump’s tariffs, announced a significant retaliatory response.

All three major stock indexes in the US plunged more than 5% on Friday, with the S&P 500 dropping almost 6%, capping the worst week for the US stock market since 2020.

In Washington DC, New York and other cities thousands gathered to protest against a range of Trump’s policies – from the economy to government cuts.

Trump described the market volatility as “an economic revolution”, which the US “will win”.

“Hang tough, it won’t be easy, but the end result will be historic,” he added in a post on Truth Social.

His policy changes have sent shockwaves through global supply chains.

In the UK, the FTSE 100 fell almost 5% – its steepest in five years, while Asian markets also dropped and exchanges in Germany and France faced similar declines.

Billionaire Elon Musk, a close ally of Trump and responsible for the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), said the US and Europe could move towards a “zero-tariff situation”, which could create “a free-trade zone between Europe and North America”.

His comments, made as he travelled to meet government ministers in Italy, came days before the Trump administration introduces tariffs on goods of up to 50% on 9 April to what it calls the “worst offenders” for trade imbalances with the US.

The EU is due to be hit with a 20% levy.

In his first term in office, Trump scorned a proposed free-trade deal with the EU, called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment partnership, but a bubbling trade war was ended after he put threats to impose tariffs on European cars aside in 2018.

British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer had a series of calls with world leaders following Trump’s tariffs announcement on Wednesday.

• Starmer’s response to Trump tariffs is both to slow down and go faster

In a readout issued after Sir Keir’s conversation with French President Emmanuel Macron, Downing Street said the pair “agreed that a trade war was in nobody’s interests but nothing should be off the table”.

Sir Keir and Macron also “shared their concerns about the global economic and security impact, particularly in South East Asia”.

China, the world’s second largest economy, was hardest hit by Trump’s “reciprocal tariffs” towards nations he deems unfriendly to America’s interest.

On Friday, Beijing announced retaliatory tariffs of 34% on US imports – the same as Washington imposed on imports from China. Beijing also filed a complaint against the new tariffs to the World Trade Organisation.

In a statement a day later, China’s foreign ministry urged Washington to “stop using tariffs as a weapon to suppress China’s economy and trade, and stop undermining the legitimate development rights of the Chinese people”.

In Washington DC and across the US, around 1,200 demonstrations were expected to take place on Saturday, marking the largest single day of protest against President Trump and Musk since the White House announced policy changes to how the US government is led – expanding the power of the executive branch.

The White House is yet to comment on the protests, but Trump was pictured by an AP photographer – excluded from the press pool – with an issue of the New York Post in his hand, open to an article about China.

The impact on trade since tariffs came into place has been palpable.

In the UK, Jaguar Land Rover announced it would “pause” all shipments to the US as it works to “address the new trading terms”.

Long, flowing wigs and weave extensions have dominated the catwalks of Ivory Coast’s massively popular beauty pageants for years.

Contestants in the West African nation often spend a huge amount of money on their appearance, from outfits to hairdos – with very few choosing the natural look.

In more than six decades, there have only been two notable exceptions, the most recent was Marlène-Kany Kouassi, who took the Miss Ivory Coast title in 2022 – looking resplendent with her short natural hair, the crown becoming her only adornment.

Her victory was not only unusual in Ivory Coast but across the world, where Western beauty standards are often the desired look both for those entering contests and for the judges.

Changes are slowly creeping in – last December Angélique Angarni-Filopon, from the French Caribbean island of Martinique, made headlines when she was crowned Miss France, mainly because of her age – she is 34 – and she also sported short Afro hair.

But this year the organisers of the Ivorian competition are shaking things up right from the start.

Wigs, weaves and hair extensions have been banned from the preliminary stages of the competition, which are held in 13 cities across the country (as well as two abroad for those in the diaspora).

“We want the candidates to be natural – whether with braids or straightened hair, it should be their own. Beauty must be raw,” Victor Yapobi, president of the Miss Ivory Coast organising committee, told the BBC.

Ivory Coast is the only African country enforcing the ban for a national competition.

Mr Yapobi said the organisers in Ivory Coast had long been trying to promote a more natural look – for example cosmetic surgery is a no-no and skin lightening is frowned upon.

“We decided this year to truly showcase the natural beauty of these young women,” he said.

Other changes have also been implemented, like allowing slightly shorter women to compete – the minimum is now 1.67m (5.4ft), increasing the age by three years to 28 and – crucially – lowering the entrance fee by more than $30 (£25) to $50.

“This change in criteria is because we observed these young women were putting up a lot of money to participate, and it was becoming a bit of a budget drain.”

When the BBC joined the first preliminary pageant in Daloa, the main city in the western region of Haut-Sassandra, one contestant was overjoyed by the new rules – feeling it gave her a better chance of success as she prefers not to wear wigs.

“I would see other girls with long, artificial hair, and they looked so beautiful,” 21-year-old Emmanuella Dali, a real estate agent, told the BBC.

“This rule gives me more pride as a woman – as an African woman.”

The move aimed at celebrating natural African beauty has sparked a lively debate across the country, where wigs and extensions are popular.

As a fashion choice, many women love the creativity that wigs and weaves allow them. They also serve as what is called “protective style”, which means minimising the daily pulling and tugging on hair that can cause breakages.

This was reflected by some contestants in Daloa who felt the rule removed an element of personal expression.

“I’m a wigs fan. I love wigs,” said contestant and make-up artist Astrid Menekou. The 24-year-old told the BBC she was initially shocked by the no-wig, no-extensions stipulation.

“I didn’t expect this rule! But now? I like my hair, and that’s OK.”

The new rule has made the competitors think more about concepts of beauty – and changed some opinions, like those of Laetitia Mouroufie.

“Last year, I had extensions because I thought that’s what beauty meant,” the 25-year-old student told the BBC.

“This year, I feel more confident being myself.”

Should the competition influence attitudes beyond the pageant world, it could have huge economic implications.

Wigs from human hair, which can last for years if cared for properly, can range in price from an estimated $200 to $4,000, while synthetic ones cost around $10 to $300.

Ivory Coast’s hair industry is worth more than $300m a year, with wigs and weaves making up a significant share of that market.

“This rule is not good for us,” Ange Sea, a 30-year-old hairdresser in Daloa, told the BBC.

“Many women love wigs. This will hurt our business and we make more money when working with wigs and weaves.”

At her salon, glue will be used to carefully attach wigs to make them look more natural and women will spend hours having weaves and extensions put in.

It shows how deeply engrained wig culture is in West Africa, despite a natural hair movement that has been gaining momentum among black women around the world over the last decade.

Natural hair products have become much more readily available and natural hair influencers proliferate on social media worldwide with advice on how to manage and style natural hair, which can be time-consuming.

It used to be considered unprofessional to wear one’s hair naturally and it would have been extraordinary to see black female TV stars on screen or CEOs in the boardroom with natural hair.

According to Florence Edwige Nanga, a hair and scalp specialist in the main Ivorian city of Abidjan, this is often still the case in Ivory Coast.

“Turn on the TV [here], and you’ll see almost every journalist wearing a wig,” the trichologist told the BBC.

“These beauty enhancements are fashionable, but they can also cause problems – like alopecia or scalp infections,” she warned.

With the preliminary rounds under way, arguments over whether pageants should be setting beauty rules or women should decide such things for themselves continues.

The outcome may be that there is more of an acceptance of both in Ivory Coast, allowing women to switch styles up – between natural hair and wigs and weaves.

Mr Yapobi said the feedback he had received over the new rules was “extraordinary” and clearly showed it was having an impact.

“Everyone congratulates us. Everyone, even from abroad. I receive emails and WhatsApp messages from everywhere congratulating us for wanting to return to our roots.”

He said no decision had been taken about whether the wig ban would apply to the 15 contestants who make it to the final of Miss Ivory Coast 2025.

This extravaganza will take place at a hotel in Abidjan at the end of June and will be broadcast on national TV.

“If it works, we’ll continue and carry on this initiative in the years to come,” Mr Yapobi said.

For Doria Koré, who went on to be named Miss Haut-Sassandra, her crown holds even more significance: “Winning with natural hair shows the true beauty of African women.”

Ms Dali said she was walking away with something even more valuable – self-confidence: “I didn’t win, but I feel proud. This is who I am.”

An artist whose official portrait of Donald Trump was publicly lambasted by the president said his comments are “directly and negatively impacting” her business, threatening its future.

British-born artist Sarah A Boardman painted Trump’s official portrait for the Denver State Capitol Gallery of Presidents, where it hung for six years.

In January Trump described Boardman’s picture as “truly the worst” in a post on Truth Social, adding that is had been distorted and the artist had lost her talent as she aged. It was later removed.

In a statement Ms Boardman said her business was now in “danger of not recovering”.

• Trump bemoans a portrait of him – but gets a new one from Putin

“President Trump is entitled to comment freely, as we all are, but the additional allegations that I ‘purposefully distorted’ the portrait, and that I ‘must have lost my talent as I got older’ are now directly and negatively impacting my business of over 41 years which now is in danger of not recovering,” she said.

Ms Hardman was commissioned by the Colorado State Capitol Advisory Committee in Denver.

She said that for the six years the portrait hung in the Colorado State Capitol Building Rotunda, she had received “overwhelmingly positive reviews and feedback”.

“Since President Trump’s comments, that has changed for the worst,” she added.

“I completed the portrait accurately, without ‘purposeful distortion’, political bias, or any attempt to caricature the subject, actual or implied. I fulfilled the task per my contract.”

The US president has paid close attention to cultivating his image, and made headlines in January by unveiling an official portrait that was variously described by critics as serious or ominous.

Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff confirmed receipt of a new work from Moscow, saying he had been asked to transport it back to Washington. Witkoff described the picture as a “beautiful portrait” by a “leading Russian artist.”

On a bustling weekday in Toronto, Shauna Daniels was out “hunting for stripes”.

It’s a term she uses for shopping for the iconic – and increasingly rare – coloured stripes that are emblematic of Canada’s oldest corporation, the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC).

Sales of HBC’s striped merchandise – from handcrafted wool blankets to patio umbrellas – have skyrocketed since the company announced it would be liquidating all of its department stores nationwide.

On eBay, the blankets, which normally retailed for about C$300, were being sold for over C$1,000 ($710; £540).

The stripes have become “a symbol and an emblem of a tremendous chapter for the country”, Ms Daniels told the BBC while browsing on her lunch break.

“It’s emotional,” she added, as she recalled going ice skating in the city centre as a child with her parents, and passing by the department store’s window displays.

This HBC stripes fever has arrived amid a growing movement to “buy Canadian” in the face of tariffs from the United States, and a surge of national pride in response.

Sales of the merchandise have increased so much since news of the impending closures was announced that the company was able to make good on some of its debts – it owes almost almost one billion dollars to creditors – and keep six stores from liquidating.

Still, 80 Hudson’s Bay stores, as well as a handful of Saks Fifth Avenue and Saks Off 5th stores in Canada have gone into liquidation sales.

It’s a sorry fate for one of Canada’s most recognisable brands.

Founded in 1670, HBC was granted a royal charter to control trade in parts of Canada. The company began trading woolen “point” blankets – made overseas in the Oxfordshire town of Witney – with local indigenous communities.

The blankets themselves were often striped with rich colours – indigo, red, canary yellow and emerald green, said to be popular during Queen Anne’s reign, from 1702-1714.

That history – of colonialism and imperialism – has led some to critique the company’s place in Canadiana. But the blanket’s stripes endured, becoming a symbol of not just the the Hudson’s Bay Company, but Canada’s rugged past.

By the time the former British colony had become its own nation, HBC had pivoted from the no-longer booming fur trade, and had opened its first retail store in Winnipeg in 1881.

The company began manufacturing the blankets for mass retail in 1929, and soon the HBC stripes were appearing on a wide range of home décor. Toronto-based interior designer Kate Thornley-Hall has repurposed blankets into her own designs, from pillow cushions to ottomans.

“It’s an enduring reminder of the pivotal role that the Hudson’s Bay played in the development of our country,” she told the BBC.

With branches in every major city, a Hudson’s Bay department store became a major attraction. Filigreed stone facades made these stores not just a place to pick up necessities, but a destination for tourists and locals alike.

In 2008, private equity firm NRDC purchased the company, turning this quintessentially Canadian retailer American. But the company’s fortunes soon took a downturn, as department stores began to lose ground to online shopping.

Retail analyst Bruce Winder told the BBC that the pandemic only accelerated this shift in consumer habits, leaving legacy retailers like Sears, HBC and the American mall struggling to retain shoppers.

“Canadians, if they want to save, they go to places like Amazon or Walmart or Dollarama,” he said.

If they want to buy higher-end goods, they are more likely to go to a boutique or directly to a brand’s website.

NRDC, which owns Saks Fifth Avenue, also diverted its attention elsewhere, acquiring Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman in 2024.

Soon, Hudson’s Bay was struggling to pay its landlords and suppliers. Trump’s looming tariffs also caused its creditors to be concerned about the company’s ability to pay them back, Mr Winder said.

Some shoppers hope that the resurgence in demand for the blankets and other stripes merchandise will give the brand a second life.

“I hope that people will again be drawn to shopping and luxury, rather than online fast fashion,” Ms Thornley-Hall said.

Analyst Mr Winder thinks that, while the return of the department store is unlikely, there could be space for the company to license its iconic stripes to another company, or open up small, HBC-branded boutiques.

“I think it tells us that the brand has some affinity in Canada, albeit probably with select items, based on their heritage,” he said.