A day before Donald Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs are scheduled to kick in, the US president appears locked in a high-stakes game of chicken, with the world’s economy hanging in the balance.

Some nations labelled “worst offenders” are scrambling to make nice with the White House to end this game before it reaches a potentially devastating climax.

China, in contrast, is playing a different game, one of retaliation and resistance.

Meanwhile, Trump has pressed ahead, even as some allies – in Congress and on Wall Street – wonder if he’s going too far. On Sunday, when asked what level of market fall he would tolerate before changing course, he snapped that it was a “stupid question”.

So is it all a negotiating tactic as many investors and politicians hope – or is he playing a longer game aimed at permanently restructuring the global economy and America’s place in it? In this new world, whether a country is an ally or an adversary depends on whether that nation is giving the US a good deal.

On Monday afternoon, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the first world leader to visit the president since his trade announcement, tried his hand at playing Trump’s new game. He pledged that his nation – which has been slotted for tariffs of 17% – would drop its trade barriers and move to eliminate its trade surplus with the US.

“We think it is the right thing to do,” he said. “I think Israel can serve as a model to many countries that ought to do the same.”

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Other nations appear to be pursuing a similar strategy in the hopes of a positive result.

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba called Trump on Monday morning, prompting Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to state that the US was beginning negotiations with the nation to “implement the president’s vision for the new Golden Age of Global Trade”.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Europe was “ready to negotiate” with the US, offering a mutual reduction of tariffs on industrial goods to zero – a proposal that Trump praised during remarks at the Oval Office, while saying it was still “not enough”.

There were no such gestures from China. On Monday morning, America’s top economic competitor announced that it was responding to Trump’s 34% tariff increase with an additional 34% of its own.

That prompted Trump to threaten another 50% to US tariffs on China if it does not back down by Tuesday.

“China has chosen to isolate itself by retaliating and doubling down on previous negative behaviour,” Bessent posted on X. “Over 50 countries have responded both openly and positively to Donald Trump’s historic action to create a fairer, more prosperous system of global trade.”

China’s reaction to Trump’s latest move was equally blunt.

“We have stressed more than once that pressuring or threatening China is not a right way to engage with us,” Chinese Embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu told BBC partner CBS News. “China will firmly safeguard its legitimate rights and interests.”

Such a series of reactions and reprisals from China and the US appeared to be exactly what investors feared last week, as American stock indexes dropped by double-digit percentages.

By Monday a growing chorus of business leaders were speaking out against Trump’s tariff plan, including Wall Street financiers who had been strong public supporters of his administration – trying, it appeared, to get the president to back down by force of will alone.

Meanwhile, US markets were poised to jump at any reason for hope. When a social media post on Monday morning indicated that the president was contemplating a 90-day delay on new tariffs – perhaps drawn from a misinterpretation of comments made by Trump economic adviser Kevin Hassett on Fox News – US stock indexes soared. The S&P 500 index added $2.4tn in market value for about 10 minutes, only for it to all vanish once the White House quickly denied the president was contemplating such a move.

Trump further closed the door on Monday afternoon, saying he was not “looking at” any kind of delay. It was still full speed ahead on tariffs.

“We’re going to have one shot at this,” he said.

Perhaps the most concerning message for investors and foreign leaders hoping for a last-minute reprieve – and an exit ramp to stability – came from one of Trump’s top trade advisers, Peter Navarro.

“This is not a negotiation,” he wrote in a Financial Times opinion piece published on Monday afternoon. “President Trump is always willing to listen. But to those world leaders who, after decades of cheating, are suddenly offering to lower tariffs – know this: that’s just the beginning.”

So if this is about the start of broader systemic change – what is the desired end goal worth potentially tanking the global economy?

One theory is that Trump has a plan with several of his top advisers – the “Mar-a-Lago accord”, it is called – with the ultimate goal of compelling America’s trading partners to weaken the US dollar on the international currency exchange. Such a move would make American exports more affordable to foreign markets and diminish the value of China’s large reserves of US currency.

It’s a plan pushed by Trump economic adviser Stephen Miran, although he has denied that it is current administration policy.

That’s just one of the possible explanations for the current stock market mayhem that Trump has purposefully instigated – one that many other prominent economists warn is risky. It is far from the only one.

Ever since Trump shocked the world with his sweeping tariff plan, White House officials have fanned out across media to preach patience and offer a selection of sometimes contradictory explanations as to the strategy behind Trump’s global trade war. He is doing it to raise revenue and protect American industry – or as a negotiating tool. The tariffs are permanent – or they are temporary. They will prompt individual deals with other nations – or compel some grand multilateral agreement.

As Trump presses on to Wednesday’s tariff cliff with no signs of backing away, he seems willing to keep the world guessing.

Madonna has said she and Sir Elton John have “buried the hatchet” and put an end to their decades-long feud.

Sir Elton, 78, has repeatedly accused Madonna of lip syncing over the years, prompting Madonna’s team – back in 2004 – to respond that she did not “spend her time trashing other artists”.

The music legends reconciled over the weekend after Madonna went to “confront” Sir Elton following his performance on Saturday Night Live (SNL), she wrote on Instagram.

“The first thing out of his mouth was ‘forgive me’, and the wall between us fell down,” she added.

The Vogue singer, 66, said she had been a fan of Sir Elton since she was a teenager.

“Seeing him perform when I was in high school changed the course of my life,” the post read.

“Over the decades it hurt me to know that someone I admired so much shared his dislike of me publicly as an artist. I didn’t understand it.”

The strain on the pair’s relationship has its roots in the noughties.

In 2004, Sir Elton ridiculed Madonna’s nomination in the Best Live Act category at the Q Awards, using explicit language.

He asked: “Since when has lip syncing been live?”

“Anyone who lip syncs in public on stage when you pay £75 to see them should be shot,” he continued.

Madonna’s team denied that she did not sing live.

Sir Elton doubled down on his criticism in the years that followed, and in 2012 said Madonna didn’t stand a “chance” of beating him to the Golden Globe for best original song.

After picking up the award for her song Masterpiece, Madonna told reporters she hoped Sir Elton would “speak to me for the next couple of years”.

“He’s been known to get mad at me.”

In her post on Monday, Madonna suggested the reconciliation may lead to a musical partnership.

“He told me [he] had written a song for me and he wanted to collaborate.”

In response, Sir Elton thanked Madonna for “forgiving me and my big mouth”.

The singer added that he was not proud of what he had said over the years, especially considering Madonna’s “ground-breaking work… paving the way for an entire generation of female artists to succeed and be true to themselves”.

“I’m increasingly distressed by all the divisiveness in our world at the moment,” he said in a comment on her Instagram post.

“By pulling together, I’m hopeful that we can make great things happen for those who really need support, and have a lot of fun doing it.”

The Supreme Court has granted a request by the Trump administration to temporarily block a lower court order requiring that a deported Salvadorian man be returned to the US.

Chief Justice John Roberts agreed to pause a ruling that Kilmar Abrego Garcia should be brought back from El Salvador by midnight on Monday.

The government has said Mr Garcia was deported on 15 March due to an “administrative error”, although they also allege he is a member of the MS-13 gang, which his lawyer denies.

In its emergency appeal to America’s highest court, the Trump administration argued the Maryland judge lacked authority to issue the order and that US officials cannot compel El Salvador to return Mr Garcia.

US Solicitor General D John Sauer wrote in his emergency court filing: “The United States does not control the sovereign nation of El Salvador, nor can it compel El Salvador to follow a federal judge’s bidding.”

He added: “The Constitution charges the president, not federal district courts, with the conduct of foreign diplomacy and protecting the nation against foreign terrorists, including by effectuating their removal.”

US Attorney General Pamela Bondi welcomed Justice Roberts’ stay, and said the administration will “continue to fight this case and protect the executive branch from judicial overreach”.

Chief Justice Roberts’ administrative stay on Monday afternoon will allow the Supreme Court time to consider the case.

Mr Garcia, 29, is being held at a maximum security prison in El Salvador known as the Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot), along with hundreds of other men the US has deported over allegations of criminal and gang activity.

His wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, is a US citizen and has called for his release. He was reportedly working as a sheet metal worker when he was detained last month.

Mr Garcia entered the US illegally as a teenager. In 2019 he was arrested with three other men in Maryland and detained by federal immigration authorities.

During a hearing before an immigration judge, the homeland security department said a “proven and reliable source” had confirmed that Mr Garcia had ties to MS-13, a street gang that started in Los Angeles but with roots in El Salvador.

But Mr Garcia’s attorneys argued that their client had no gang connections or criminal history.

Another immigration judge granted Mr Garcia protection from deportation in 2019 on the grounds that he might be at risk of persecution from local gangs in his home country.

The family’s lawyer, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, called Mr Garica’s deportation last month “the equivalent of a forcible expulsion”.

Responding to the chief justice’s order on Monday afternoon, Mr Sandoval-Moshenberg said: “This is just a temporary administrative stay, we have full confidence that the Supreme Court will resolve this matter as quickly as possible.”

Last week, US District Judge Paula Xinis, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, grilled the Trump administration’s attorney during a hearing over the deportation.

Justice department lawyer Erez Reuveni told her that Mr Garcia “should not have been removed”.

Over the weekend, Bondi announced Mr Reuveni – a 15-year veteran of the department – had been placed on paid administrative leave for failing to “zealously advocate on behalf of the United States”.

In a scathing opinion released on Sunday, Judge Xinis found that the US government’s error “shocks the conscience”.

She said the government had acted “without any lawful authority” and was holding Mr Garcia in “direct contravention” of US law.

The Trump administration escalated the case to a Maryland appeals court, which denied their request to stay Judge Xinis’ order.

The Supreme Court then issued its ruling just hours ahead of the deadline to return Mr Garcia by 23:59 EDT on Monday night (03:59 GMT Tuesday).

The Trump administration had called that deadline “impossible”.

Donald Trump has threatened China with an extra 50% tariff on goods imported into the US if it does not withdraw its 34% counter-tariff, as global markets continue to fall.

Beijing retaliated on Sunday, following last week’s decision by Trump to slap a 34% tax on Chinese imports as part of his “Liberation Day” that set a minimum 10% levy on nearly all of America’s trading partners.

In a social media post on Monday, Trump gave China until Tuesday to scrap its countermeasure or face the 50% tax.

In response, the Chinese embassy in the US accused Washington of “economic bullying”, and said that Beijing “will firmly safeguard its legitimate rights and interests”.

If Trump acts on his threat, US companies could face a total rate of 104% on Chinese imports- as it comes on top of 20% tariffs already put in place in March and the 34% announced last week.

There are fears that this could deepen a trade war between the world’s two biggest economies and global rivals.

In his post on Truth Social, Trump also warned that “all talks with China concerning their requested meetings with us [on tariffs] will be terminated!”

Also on Monday, the US president said he was not considering a pause on the global import tariffs to allow for negotiations with other countries.

“We’re not looking at that. We have many, many countries that are coming to negotiate deals with us, and there are going to be fair deals,” he said.

Trump said China had introduced its countermeasure “despite my warning that any country that Retaliates against the U.S. by issuing additional Tariffs… will be immediately met with new and substantially higher Tariffs”.

Beijing shot back, saying that “pressuring or threatening China is not a right way to engage”.

“The US hegemonic move in the name of ‘reciprocity’ serves its selfish interests at the expense of other countries’ legitimate interests and puts ‘America first’ over international rules,” Chinese embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu said in a statement.

“This is a typical move of unilateralism, protectionism and economic bullying.”

Speaking from the White House, the US president said there could be both permanent tariffs and negotiations.

“We have $36tn (£28tn) debt for a reason,” he said, adding that the US would be talking to China among other countries to make a “fair deal and a good deal”.

“It’s now America first,” Trump said.

The tariffs would come as a major blow to China’s manufacturers, for whom the US is a key market for exports.

China’s top exports to the US include electrical products and other machinery, computers, furniture, toys, vehicles and equipment.

The US’s top exports to China are oilseeds and grains, as well aircraft, machinery and pharmaceuticals.

Uncertainty around the tariffs led to a turbulent day on global stock markets.

Markets worldwide have plunged since Trump announced the global tariffs.

The value of US stock markets dropped sharply again on opening on Monday, while Europe’s biggest markets, including London’s FTSE 100, closed more than 4% down.

Asian share indexes had nosedived on Monday, with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index falling by more than 13%, its biggest one-day fall since 1997. However, most showed a slight correction on Tuesday with most bourses opening higher.

The impact on the FTSE 100, America’s S&P 500, Germany’s Dax and Japan’s Nikkei has been wide-ranging.

Trump’s post on Monday also indicated that negotiations on countries’ tariff rates would “begin taking place immediately”.

Trump met Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, on Monday in the White House. Netanyahu said that his country would eliminate the trade imbalance with the US, which he said was the “right thing to do”.

“We intend to do it very quickly… and we’re going to also eliminate trade barriers.”

Israel faces a 17% tariff from April 9 under Trump’s “Liberation Day” policy.

The US president also posted earlier that Japan was sending a negotiation team to discuss tariffs.

And Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, offered Trump a “zero-for-zero tariff” deal – although she previously said that she had not ruled out retaliation.

“We are also prepared to respond through countermeasures and defend our interests,” she said.

Trump said later that the EU had been formed “to really do damage to the United States and trade”.

The US and Iran will hold “direct talks” over a possible nuclear deal on Saturday, says Donald Trump.

The meeting has also been confirmed by Iran’s foreign minister who called it “as much an opportunity as it is a test”.

The US president on Monday said discussions between Washington and Tehran would be at “very high level” and warned it would be a “very bad day for Iran” if no agreement was reached.

Last month, Trump raised the prospect of military action against Iran after its supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly rejected the offer of direct talks.

Trump disclosed the talks after a White House meeting with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, who has also previously raised the prospect of attacking Iran to stop it from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Speaking in the Oval Office, Trump said: “We have a very big meeting on Saturday [with Iran], and we’re dealing with them directly… And maybe a deal is going to be made, that would be great.”

Trump later said Iran would be in “great danger” if the talks were not successful, adding: “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, and if the talks aren’t successful, I actually think it’ll be a very bad day for Iran.”

The president did not provide further details about the talks, including how progressed they are or which officials have been involved.

Iran’s foreign minister confirmed Washington and Tehran will meet in Oman on 12 April.

Abbas Araqchi wrote on X: “It is as much an opportunity as it is a test. The ball is in America’s court.”

In March, Trump sent a letter to Iran’s leader via an intermediary from the United Arab Emirates setting out his willingness to negotiate.

That offer was rejected by Iran, though its leadership signalled a willingness to discuss a possible deal with the US via a third party.

Curbing Iran’s ability to build nuclear weapons has been a key foreign policy goal for the US and its allies for decades.

In 2015, then-President Barack Obama made an agreement with Iran under which it would limit its nuclear activities and allow international inspectors into the country to ensure facilities were being solely used for civilian purposes and not weapons production.

In return, Iran was to be offered relief from sanctions, which have crippled its economy.

That agreement was co-signed by China, France, Germany, Russia and the UK.

However, in 2016, Trump unilaterally pulled the US out of the deal, which he had been strongly critical of during his first presidential election campaign.

In the years that followed, Iran has increasingly breached its terms. The International Atomic Energy Agency has warned Tehran has built up large stockpiles of enriched uranium, which can be used to make nuclear bombs.

In recent months, Trump has repeatedly raised the prospect of negotiating a new agreement with Iran, while threatening military action if one can not be reached.

Israel sees preventing its rival Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon as central to its long-term security. It has reportedly weighed up striking its production facilities in recent months.

Last year, Israel said it had hit an Iranian nuclear site in retaliation for Iran’s earlier missile attack on Israel.

Speaking at the White House, Netanyahu said: “We and the United States are both united in the goal that Iran does not ever get nuclear weapons.

“If it can be done diplomatically in a full way, the way it was done in Libya, I think that would be a good thing.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has publicly acknowledged for the first time that his troops are active in Russia’s Belgorod region.

“We continue to carry out active operations in the border areas on enemy territory, and that is absolutely just – war must return to where it came from,” he said on Monday.

His comments also referred to Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukraine still holds a small area after a major offensive last year. Moscow has since retaken most of the territory.

Zelensky said “the main objective” was to protect Ukraine’s Sumy and Kharkiv border regions, and to “ease the pressure” on other parts of the vast front line, particularly in the eastern Donetsk region.

Russia’s military had last month reported Ukrainian attempts to cross over into the Belgorod region – but said such attacks had been rebuffed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and Moscow currently controls about 20% of Ukraine’s territory.

In his video address late on Monday, Zelensky said he had been briefed by his top commander Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi about the situation on the front, “including our presence in the Kursk and Belgorod regions”.

Zelensky thanked several army units defending Ukraine, including the 225th Assault Regiment deployed in the Belgorod region.

“Well done, guys! I’m proud of each and every one who is fighting for Ukraine!” the president said.

He provided no further details. It is his first explicit acknowledgement of Ukrainian troops in Belgorod.

On 18 March, Zelensky had indirectly confirmed that Ukrainian troops were there.

“There is an operation there,” he said when asked by reporters to comment on a Russian defence ministry statement that Ukrainian troops had unsuccessfully tried to enter the western part of the Belgorod region.

Russia had said that all Ukrainian attempts to advance towards the villages of Demidovka and Prilesye had been rebuffed, and a cross-border raid had been prevented.

However, several Russian military bloggers at the time reported fighting in Demidovka itself, which lies about two kilometres (1.2 miles) from the Ukrainian border.

The US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) had also said in an update on 21 March that “Ukrainian forces recently advanced in Belgorod”.

“Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces advanced and are consolidating positions on the outskirts of Demidovka and Prilesye,” the ISW said, adding that such claims were unconfirmed.

In the past two days, Russian military bloggers had reported that Ukrainian forces were withdrawing from the Demidovka area.

Ukraine’s operation in Belgorod is believed to be on a much smaller scale compared to its actions in Kursk, where Kyiv at one point seized a number of villages including the regional town of Sudzha.

Zelensky and his top commanders have repeatedly said that such incursions have forced Moscow to redeploy troops from the Donetsk region, where Russian troops have been making steady – although slow – advances in recent months.

Ukraine could also be hoping to exchange the Russian areas it holds for parts of Ukrainian regions occupied by Moscow in any future peace negotiations that are being pushed for by the US.

A number of war analysts – both in Ukraine and the West – have questioned the military expedience of Kyiv’s operations on Russian soil, pointing to reported high combat casualties and weapons supply difficulties.

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A “miracle” baby girl has become the first child in the UK to be born to a mother using a donated womb.

The baby’s mum, Grace Davidson, 36, was born without a functioning uterus, and received her sister’s womb in 2023 – in what was then the UK’s only successful womb transplant.

Two years after that pioneering operation, Grace gave birth to her first child in February. She and her husband, Angus, 37, have named their daughter Amy after Grace’s sister, who donated her womb.

Holding baby Amy – who weighed just over two kilos (four and a half pounds) – for the first time was “incredible” and “surreal”, new mum Grace says.

“It was quite overwhelming because we’d never really let ourselves imagine what it would be like for her to be here,” she says. “It was really wonderful.”

Grace and Angus, who live in north London but are originally from Scotland, hope to have a second child using the transplanted womb.

The couple initially wished to remain anonymous, but following the safe arrival of baby Amy are now speaking to the BBC about their “little miracle”.

The surgical team told the BBC they have carried out three further womb transplants using deceased donors since Grace’s transplant. They aim to carry out a total of 15 as part of a clinical trial.

Grace was born with a rare condition, Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome, where the womb is missing or underdeveloped, but with functioning ovaries. When the BBC first spoke to her in 2018, she was hoping her mother could donate her uterus to allow her to have children – but it proved to be unsuitable.

The BBC met Grace and husband Angus again in 2019 when one of Grace’s two sisters, Amy Purdie, was being assessed to find out if she could donate her womb to Grace. Amy and her husband already had two children and did not want any more.

Prior to surgery both sisters had counselling. Grace and Angus also had fertility treatment and still have several embryos in storage. Grace says she was given the option of surrogacy or adoption, but carrying her own baby felt “really important”.

“I have always had a mothering instinct,” she says, “but for years I had been suppressing it because it was too painful to go there.”

The first baby born as a result of a womb transplant was in Sweden in 2014. Since then around 135 such transplants have been carried out in more than a dozen countries, including the US, China, France, Germany, India and Turkey. Around 65 babies have been born.

Originally scheduled to take place in late 2019, the sisters’ transplant operation fell through and then looked in doubt for several years during the Covid pandemic.

When it eventually took place, in February 2023, it took a team of more than 30 medics around 17 hours to remove Amy’s womb and transplant it to Grace.

Isabel Quiroga, the surgeon who led the transplant team at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford, says although the procedure carried risks for both sisters, it was “life-enhancing and life-creating – and you can’t have better than that.”

Amy says she did not feel the sense of loss some women experience after a hysterectomy, because of the “dramatic” and immediate benefits to her sister. Grace had her first ever period within two weeks of the transplant and became pregnant on the first attempt at IVF.

It was “incredible” to feel her baby’s first kick, she says, adding the entire pregnancy had been “really special”.

Baby Amy was born by Caesarean section at Queen Charlotte’s hospital in west London on 27 February. Grace and Angus say they hope to have a second child – as soon as the medical team say the time is right.

The donated womb will be removed after the birth of a second child. This will allow Grace to stop taking the daily immunosuppressants she is currently on to ensure her body does not reject her sister’s womb. Taking these drugs can increase the risks of developing some cancers, especially if taken over many years – but surgeon Isabel Quiroga says these risks should return to baseline once the womb is removed.

Prof Richard Smith, a gynaecological surgeon at Imperial College London, who led the organ retrieval team, has been researching womb transplantation for more than two decades.

He says his team is thrilled about the birth of baby Amy and that she will give hope to many of the 15,000 women in the UK of childbearing age who do not have a functioning uterus, of whom around 5,000 were born without a womb.

Mr Smith heads a charity called Womb Transplant UK, which paid the NHS costs for Grace’s transplant operation. All the medical staff gave their time for free.

He told the BBC around 10 women have embryos in storage or are undergoing fertility treatment, a requirement for being considered for womb transplantation. Each transplant costs around £30,000, he says, and the charity has sufficient funds to do two more.

The surgical team has permission to perform 15 womb transplants as part of a clinical trial, five with living and 10 with deceased donors. No details have been made public about the three women who have so far received wombs from deceased donor organs. NHS Blood and Transplant told the BBC extra consent is sought from families for such rare donations.

Baby Amy’s father, Angus, says he and Grace will never be able to thank his wife’s sister enough for enabling them to become parents. It was an “absolute no brainer” that they would name Amy after her aunt, Angus says.

The baby’s middle name is Isabel, after the surgeon who led the womb transplantation team.

For Grace, having baby Amy has brought her even closer to her sister.

“It was incredibly difficult to let her do that for me,” she says, “it’s a huge act of sisterly love.”

Ruben Vardanyan is one of Armenia’s richest men, but his millions are of little use now that he is facing a possible life term in jail in neighbouring Azerbaijan.

The two neighbouring Caucasus countries have agreed the text of a historic peace deal to end decades long conflict over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, but Vardanyan and 15 other former ethnic Armenian leaders are not part of the agreement.

They are on trial in a military court in Baku, accused of war crimes dating back decades.

Vardanyan, a 56-year-old Russian-Armenian entrepreneur, is facing 42 charges including planning and waging war, mercenary activities and terrorism.

A picture of him in court appeared to show bruises on his forehead and there have been allegations of torture, denied by Azerbaijan which insists his rights have been respected in custody.

It marks a dramatic downfall for a man who made his fortune in Russia and once rubbed shoulders with celebrities such as George and Amal Clooney.

He set up Russia’s first investment bank back in the early 1990s, and as founder of the country’s prestigious business management school “Skolkovo” he enjoyed the reputation of a progressive visionary, a Western-friendly voice in Russia’s business community in the 2000’s.

But a 2019 investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project said that employees of his investment bank built a financial system laundering billions of dollars in the mid-2000s.

Vardanyan denied being aware of any criminal activities, and was never legally charged.

He spent hundreds of millions of dollars on philanthropic projects in Armenia, and transformed a quiet town in the snow-capped mountains in the north of the country, setting up a school with the aim of attracting students from all over the world.

“This school was imagined as an institution that would bring Armenia to the world and the world to Armenia,” says Adam Armanski, the principal of the United World Colleges (UWC) of Dilijan.

Everything changed for Ruben Vardanyan in September 2022 when he decided to move to Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous region that was historically populated by ethnic Armenians but part of Soviet Azerbaijan.

Armenia and Azerbaijan had already fought two full scale wars over the region, which was internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan.

The first Karabakh war in the 1990s resulted in the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Azeris.

Then, in 2020, Azerbaijan – backed by Turkey – regained control of big swathes of the lost territory, while the Karabakh enclave remained in the hands of ethnic Armenian separatists.

Within months of Vardanyan’s arrival Azerbaijani authorities blocked the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh with the Republic of Armenia, subjecting the region’s population to severe food shortages.

Vardanyan renounced his Russian citizenship and became the de facto prime-minister of Nagorno-Karabakh, which Armenians call Artsakh. He used his name, contacts and the ability to speak fluent English to raise the awareness of the plight of Karabakh Armenians.

“My father did more interviews with international media in three months than all the other Nagorno-Karabakh presidents in 30 years. The amount of attention this was receiving from the Western media clearly irritated Azerbaijan,” his son David Vardanyan told the BBC.

There had been speculation that Vardanyan had moved there to avoid international sanctions imposed on Russia’s billionaires with links to the Kremlin.

The government in Baku considered his decision to take up the position as illegal.

His son insists he was driven by the desire to help local Armenians.

“We had an argument on our last family holiday, I was completely against his decision, which was putting the entire family at risk. He said he would not be able to live with himself knowing he did nothing for the Armenians of Karabakh.”

His father’s long-term friend Arman Jilavian said even the remotest of chances of helping ethnic Armenians remain in their ancestral land was enough for him.

“Some would say this was irrational, some say this was super calculated political move. I think none is true,” he says.

In September 2023 Azerbaijan launched a military operation and took control of the entire territory in 24 hours.

Nagorno-Karabakh’s leaders capitulated and more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians were forced to leave their homes.

Vardanyan was arrested by Azerbaijani authorities as he joined a mass exodus to Armenia.

Much of his time since has been spent in solitary confinement, his family says.

He has already been on hunger strike twice, protesting at what he has called a lack of proper judicial process, amid allegations of torture.

Fifteen other former Karabakh leaders are also being tried in Baku’s military court for alleged war crimes committed since the late 1980s.

Vardanyan has been dealt with separately, but many in Armenia see all the cases as show trials.

Only the main Azerbaijani state TV channel has been allowed to film the trials.

Azerbaijan insists it is complying with international legal standards, and that it has a responsibility to hold to account those suspected of having committed war crimes.

But last month, the government in Baku ordered the closure of the local offices of the International Red Cross, the only international organisation with access to Armenian prisoners.

The European Parliament has adopted a resolution on the “unlawful detention and sham trials of Armenian hostages”, calling for their immediate release.

Vardanyan returns to court on Tuesday, but supporters fear his case will be overshadowed by a historic peace deal taking shape between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The details are yet to be made public but officials say the draft text does not include the issue of the prisoners on trial or the right of ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh to return to their homes.

The failure to mention the prisoners has prompted criticism of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s government at home and abroad.

But Arsen Torosyan, the MP from the Armenian governing party Civil Contract believes this issue needs to be solved separately.

“It is a peace treaty between the conflicting countries with a long history of hatred between each other. I personally think that only completing or signing of this peace treaty can make ground to solve the issue of political prisoners. I don’t see any other way to do it.”

Vardanyan has warned this is a mistake.

“This is not the trial of just me and 15 others – this is the trial of all Armenians,” he said in a voice message to supporters.

“If you don’t understand this – it is a big tragedy because this is not the end of the story, not the end of the conflict, it’s only the next stage of the conflict, for all sides.”

The Metropolitan Police is deciding what action to take after receiving a report accusing 10 British nationals of war crimes and crimes against humanity while they served in Israel’s military in Gaza.

The 240-page report “will now be assessed by specialist officers to determine whether any UK-based investigation may be required”, a Counter Terrorism Policing spokesperson said.

A summary of the dossier accused the Britons of being involved in the forced displacement of civilians and coordinated attacks on protected sites.

BBC News has contacted the Israel Defense Forces for a response. Israel previously described a report accusing it of similar crimes as “completely false”.

The new dossier, submitted to the Met’s War Crimes Team on behalf of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and the Public Interest Law Centre, said the offences took place between October 2023 and May 2024.

The 10 British nationals have not been named publicly. They are accused of “indiscriminate attacks” on civilian areas, including hospitals, and the “targeted killing” of civilians and aid workers.

Some served at officer level in the Israeli military, according to the summary of the report, and some were Israeli dual nationals.

The Met has received around 180 referrals relating to the war in Gaza since the conflict began.

“At this time, there is no UK-based investigation into any matters relating to this particular conflict,” a statement from the force added.

Human rights lawyer Michael Mansfield KC, one of those behind the report, called on the Met to take it “seriously”, “investigate” and try the individuals if proven.

The war in Gaza was triggered by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on 7 October 2023. About 1,200 people were killed and 251 others taken back to Gaza as hostages.

More than 50,750 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory offensive since then, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

A Belgian prince’s attempt to claim social security benefits on top of his six-figure royal allowance has been rejected by a court.

Prince Laurent – the younger brother of King Philippe – received €388,000 (£295,850; $376,000) from state funds last year but said that his work entitles him and his family to social security.

He had argued that he was partly self-employed because of the duties he carries out as a royal, as well as running an animal welfare charity for the past decade.

Laurent, 61, said he was acting out of “principle” rather than for money. The court disagreed.

“When a migrant comes here, he registers, he has a right to [social security],” he told Belgian broadcaster RTBF.

“I may be a migrant too, but one whose family established the state in place.”

But on Monday a court in Brussels turned down Laurent’s request on the grounds that the prince can be considered neither self-employed nor an employee.

However, according to broadcaster VTM the judge acknowledged that the prince should actually be entitled to a pension – but said gaps in legislation made that impossible and called for the law to be amended.

His lawyer, Olivier Rijckaert, told Belgian newspaper Le Soir that Laurent’s request had not been based on a “whim” and insisted on its symbolism, saying that social security is “granted by Belgian law to all residents, from the most deprived to the richest”.

Mr Rijckaert also said that most of the prince’s allowance is spent on his assistant’s salary and various travel expenses.

This means Laurent is left with about €5000 (£4300; $5500) a month but no social security benefits, such as the right to claim back some medical expenses.

The prince – who has three adult children with British-born wife Claire Coombs – has also expressed his concerns over his family’s wellbeing since the royal allowance will be cut when he dies.

Laurent took legal action against the Belgian state after his application for social security was refused. A first hearing was held in November 2024.

According to RTBF, the prince and his legal counsel have not yet decided whether to appeal the court’s decision.

Laurentm who is the 15th in the Belgian line of succession, is no stranger to controversy and is sometimes termed the – the “cursed prince” – in Belgium.

In 2018, the Belgian federal parliament voted to dock his monthly allowance for a year after he attended a Chinese embassy reception without government permission, in full naval uniform.

He has also racked up several speeding fines and has been criticised for attending meetings in Libya when the late Muammar Gaddafi was still in power.

US President Donald Trump’s tariffs have ignited wildfires across global stock markets, but does that mean we are heading for a recession?

The first thing to stress is that what happens in the stock market is not the same as what happens in the economy – falling share prices do not always mean economic misery ahead.

But sometimes they do.

Very large falls in stock market values, like these, mean there has been a fundamental reappraisal of future profits for the companies that make up the stock markets of the world.

What markets quite reasonably expect is that increased tariffs will mean that costs will rise and profits will fall.

That doesn’t mean that a recession is inevitable but the chances are clearly much higher than they were before Trump announced the most severe and wide-ranging tariffs seen in a century.

An economy is defined as being in recession when the total of everything we and the government spend or export shrinks for two successive three-month periods.

Between October and December last year, the UK economy grew a tiny 0.1% and the latest monthly data showed it shrank by the same amount in January.

The first estimate of how the UK economy fared in February will be released this coming Friday.

So, we are a long way off being able to tell whether we have hit that definition.

• FOLLOW LIVE: Markets continue to fall in tariff turmoil
• Why Asian markets are seeing such steep falls
• How do share price falls affect me?

However, in the bloodbath of stock market falls, there are some particularly gory and worrying casualties.

Banks are often seen as proxies for economies. As one well respected market watcher told me today: “The thing that made me catch my breath was the fall in the banks.”

HSBC and Standard Chartered – which operate at the intersection of international trade between east and west – were both down more than 10% overnight before recovering some ground.

Other warning signs are not on stock markets but commodity exchanges.

Copper and oil prices are considered barometers of global economic health.

Both have fallen more than 15% since Trump dropped his tariff bombshell.

There haven’t been many truly global recessions.

The 1930s, the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis and the panic around the pandemic are three rare examples of when we saw synchronised downturns in major economies.

It is still considered unlikely that we would see something on that scale this time but the chances of recession in the US, UK and European Union have been significantly upgraded by most economic analysts.

On the plus side for UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves, the government’s borrowing costs are likely to dip by around £5bn to £6bn a year as investors flock to the relative safety of government bonds.

But that will be more than offset by hits to government tax receipts if and when the economy as a whole goes into reverse.

Shares in the US stemmed their losses on Monday, as investors clung to hopes that US President Donald Trump would turn from tariffs to trade deals.

The S&P 500, which tracks 500 of the biggest companies in the US, ended the day down about 0.2%, after a wild day of trading that saw shares gyrating from losses to gains in some of the sharpest swings since the Covid-19 pandemic.

The respite came despite Trump escalating his tariff threats against China, as US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he was opening negotiations with Japan, and looking forward to talks with other nations.

Trump offered mixed signals, saying he expected some tariffs to be permanent and some to be negotiated.

“They can both be true,” he said, while rejecting calls that he delay the import taxes he unveiled on goods from every country in the world last Wednesday.

The White House has said more than 50 countries have reached out to discuss trade.

“I believe that sooner or later, we will be at the negotiating table,” European Union trade official Maroš Šefčovič said, as the bloc prepared to vote on how to respond.

In the days after Trump’s announcement, stock markets in the US and in the UK were hit by their worst one-day falls since the beginning of the Covid pandemic in 2020.

The S&P 500 has seen more than 10% of its value wiped out over three days – a drop almost as steep as the declines seen during the 2008 financial crisis and at the onset of the pandemic in 2020.

The index is now trading at levels seen roughly a year ago, reflecting widespread concerns about the impact of the tariffs on the US and global economies.

“It is frustrating for investors,” said Mike Mussio, president of FBB Capital. “This feels like kind of an unforced error in terms of policy.”

High profile business leaders in the US including Jamie Dimon, Trump-backer Bill Ackman and Daniel Loeb have started to speak out amid the market rout.

But Trump has doubled down on his strategy.

On Monday, he threatened to hit imports from China with an additional 50% tariff, unless Beijing withdraws the retaliatory measures it announced last week.

That would take the tax on Chinese goods coming into the US to at least 104% – as it comes on top of the 34% tariff he announced on goods from China last week, which themselves added to the tariff of at least 20% imposed since January.

China’s decision to impose retaliatory tariffs of 34% on the US had already escalated worries about a trade war between the two nations

If world leaders are unable to agree terms with Trump, the tariffs may have a destructive effect on economies globally, analysts have warned.

“Fundamentally, investors are worried about a big hit to corporate [profits] and a massive slowdown in economic growth,” said Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell.

In early trading on Monday, the S&P 500 fell, briefly dropping more than 20% since its most recent peak in February – which would mark a milestone known as a “bear market”.

But a rumour that the White House was considering putting tariffs on hold sent shares surging more than 7% in a matter of minutes.

Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at S&P Dow Jones indices, said that he had seen few comparable swings in a career spanning more than four decades on Wall Street.

“That’s enormous,” he said. “There’s a lot of uncertainty here and that’s what’s driving the market.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 0.9%, but the Nasdaq was roughly flat, up 0.1%.

European markets closed lower, with London’s FTSE 100 falling 4.4% to 7,702, its lowest level in more than a year.

Shares in Paris and Berlin also dropped, while earlier leading indexes in Asia had plunged in what one analyst described as a “bloodbath”.

The fears weighed on the price of oil which fell more than 4%, before gaining back some ground.

Meanwhile, copper, an indicator of economic growth because it is widely used in industry, fell roughly 3%, while the price of gold, which is usually seen as a “safe” investment, also dropped.

• FOLLOW LIVE: Markets continue to fall in tariff turmoil
• Is the world heading into recession?
• Why Asian markets are seeing such steep falls
• How do share price falls affect me?

Donald Trump has threatened China with an extra 50% tariff on goods imported into the US if it does not withdraw its 34% counter-tariff, as global markets continue to fall.

Beijing retaliated on Sunday, following last week’s decision by Trump to slap a 34% tax on Chinese imports as part of his “Liberation Day” that set a minimum 10% levy on nearly all of America’s trading partners.

In a social media post on Monday, Trump gave China until Tuesday to scrap its countermeasure or face the 50% tax.

In response, the Chinese embassy in the US accused Washington of “economic bullying”, and said that Beijing “will firmly safeguard its legitimate rights and interests”.

If Trump acts on his threat, US companies could face a total rate of 104% on Chinese imports- as it comes on top of 20% tariffs already put in place in March and the 34% announced last week.

There are fears that this could deepen a trade war between the world’s two biggest economies and global rivals.

In his post on Truth Social, Trump also warned that “all talks with China concerning their requested meetings with us [on tariffs] will be terminated!”

Also on Monday, the US president said he was not considering a pause on the global import tariffs to allow for negotiations with other countries.

“We’re not looking at that. We have many, many countries that are coming to negotiate deals with us, and there are going to be fair deals,” he said.

Trump said China had introduced its countermeasure “despite my warning that any country that Retaliates against the U.S. by issuing additional Tariffs… will be immediately met with new and substantially higher Tariffs”.

Beijing shot back, saying that “pressuring or threatening China is not a right way to engage”.

“The US hegemonic move in the name of ‘reciprocity’ serves its selfish interests at the expense of other countries’ legitimate interests and puts ‘America first’ over international rules,” Chinese embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu said in a statement.

“This is a typical move of unilateralism, protectionism and economic bullying.”

Speaking from the White House, the US president said there could be both permanent tariffs and negotiations.

“We have $36tn (£28tn) debt for a reason,” he said, adding that the US would be talking to China among other countries to make a “fair deal and a good deal”.

“It’s now America first,” Trump said.

The tariffs would come as a major blow to China’s manufacturers, for whom the US is a key market for exports.

China’s top exports to the US include electrical products and other machinery, computers, furniture, toys, vehicles and equipment.

The US’s top exports to China are oilseeds and grains, as well aircraft, machinery and pharmaceuticals.

Uncertainty around the tariffs led to a turbulent day on global stock markets.

Markets worldwide have plunged since Trump announced the global tariffs.

The value of US stock markets dropped sharply again on opening on Monday, while Europe’s biggest markets, including London’s FTSE 100, closed more than 4% down.

Asian share indexes had nosedived on Monday, with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index falling by more than 13%, its biggest one-day fall since 1997. However, most showed a slight correction on Tuesday with most bourses opening higher.

The impact on the FTSE 100, America’s S&P 500, Germany’s Dax and Japan’s Nikkei has been wide-ranging.

Trump’s post on Monday also indicated that negotiations on countries’ tariff rates would “begin taking place immediately”.

Trump met Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, on Monday in the White House. Netanyahu said that his country would eliminate the trade imbalance with the US, which he said was the “right thing to do”.

“We intend to do it very quickly… and we’re going to also eliminate trade barriers.”

Israel faces a 17% tariff from April 9 under Trump’s “Liberation Day” policy.

The US president also posted earlier that Japan was sending a negotiation team to discuss tariffs.

And Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, offered Trump a “zero-for-zero tariff” deal – although she previously said that she had not ruled out retaliation.

“We are also prepared to respond through countermeasures and defend our interests,” she said.

Trump said later that the EU had been formed “to really do damage to the United States and trade”.

A billionaire backer of Donald Trump has urged the US president to pause his recently announced trade tariffs, or risk “a self-induced, economic nuclear winter”.

Amid market turmoil, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman said the president should take three months to allow countries to renegotiate their trading relationships with the US.

On Monday, Mr Ackman’s warning was echoed by other prominent Wall Street figures, with JPMorgan Chase chairman Jamie Dimon saying that Trump’s tariffs risked pushing up prices for Americans.

Despite the shockwaves, the American president is moving ahead, with the White House rushing to label a rumour he might put new tariffs on pause as “fake news”.

The rumour on Monday morning that Trump was considering a 90-day pause briefly lifted a swiftly sinking stock market after it was reported on financial network CNBC.

The White House almost immediately shot down the report, showing Trump’s commitment to his new import taxes. Stock prices largely stabilised afterward.

The “baseline” tariffs of 10% on most countries’ goods that Trump announced last week have already gone into effect, while the higher “reciprocal” rates he wants to impose on the “worst offenders” are expected later this week. Some countries are seeking to negotiate lower rates with the White House.

The new tariffs, added to steep levies Trump has already put on goods from Canada and Mexico, as well as all automobile imports, are worrying business and economic leaders that they will push up prices for American consumers and spark a global trade war.

The head of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, said on Monday that the tariffs will raise prices and possibly inflation, and contribute to an economic downturn, according to media reports.

“Most CEOs I talk to would say we are probably in a recession right now,” Larry Fink, the firm’s CEO, told a meeting of the Economic Club of New York.

Goldman Sachs on Sunday said there is a 45% probability of the US entering a recession within the year, after estimating a 35% probability a week ago, before Trump unveiled his tariff plans at an event called “Liberation Day”.

Trump says the import taxes will boost his country with new jobs and investment.

He defended them on Sunday, telling reporters aboard Air Force One that “sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something”.

In his post on X on Sunday, Mr Ackman acknowledged the Trump argument that the global trade system had “disadvantaged” the US.

But, he wrote, tariffs that Trump had imposed were “massive and disproportionate”, and did not distinguish between American friends and enemies.

Mr Ackman, the billionaire founder of Pershing Square hedge fund management company, became a high-profile supporter of Trump, a Republican, in July 2024.

He had previously backed the rival Democratic Party, and his intervention was seen as an important electoral endorsement from the world of business.

• Live updates as Trump’s tariff turmoil deepens
• Asian stocks see their worst drop in decades
• ‘Sometimes you have to take medicine’: Trump defends plan
• How UK might handle the tariffs
• Faisal Islam: The fallout will be messy

The “reciprocal” rates from the Trump administration, which can reach up to 50%, will be levied on some important manufacturing centres in Asia.

Numerous countries have vowed to respond, and China has already retaliated with new tariffs of its own on goods imported from the US. Trump on Monday threatened to put an additional 50% tariff on goods from the country, which would bring the total taxes he intends to charge to more than 100%.

Trump had launched an “economic war against the whole world at once” that risked shattering investor confidence in the US, Mr Ackman commented.

Mr Ackman said the American leader now had “an opportunity to call a 90-day time out, negotiate and resolve unfair asymmetric tariff deals, and induce trillions of dollars of new investment in our country”.

His post on Sunday indicated that he felt the ball was back in Trump’s court – after an earlier message on X which urged leaders of other countries to “pick up the phone” to make a deal with Trump.

As stock markets around the world continued their slump on Monday, the head of banking giant JPMorgan Chase offered his own take, warning of “many uncertainties” around the new tariffs policy.

In a letter to shareholders, Mr Dimon said the tariffs will “likely increase inflation and are causing many to consider a greater probability of a recession”.

“The quicker this issue is resolved, the better because some of the negative effects increase cumulatively over time and would be hard to reverse,” he wrote.

Trump’s officials have downplayed the recession risk. The baseline 10% tariff is already in effect, with the higher rates faced by some countries due to come into effect on Wednesday.

Speaking aboard the presidential plane on a flight back to Washington DC on Sunday, Trump himself said European and Asian countries were “dying to make a deal”.

Markets are reeling from US President Donald Trump’s tariff announcements, but the American leader is standing by his decisions, defending his policies and saying “sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something”.

Experts answered some of the questions you sent us as the world tries to make sense of the turmoil and wonders how long it will continue.

Read their answers below.

Simon Jack, the BBC’s business editor, said the FTSE 100, which represents the 100 biggest companies publicly listed in the UK, were all “put in a big bucket back in 1984” and given a certain weighting in that bucket depending on how big those companies were.

The stock market is a reflection of their total value over time. The bigger the company, the more weight it has in the index. For example, an AstraZeneca or an HSBC has more weight than others.

It works the same in the US with the S&P500, which is made up of the 500 biggest companies, with an enormous concentration in some names like Apple, Nvidia and Amazon.

The stock market tells you how the value of the shares in those companies has changed – with a focus on those biggest names.

Generally speaking, it is an indication of what some of our biggest companies are worth, and when they go up or down, it tells you something about the sentiment of whether their profits are likely to rise or fall in the future.

Jack explains that what happens in stock markets is not necessarily the same thing that happens in the economy. They can be linked, but they are not exactly the same.

Some people invest directly in shares – and this will definitely affect them. These are some big falls, some of the biggest we have seen in a couple days since pandemic panic gripped the markets back in 2020.

The other way that people are exposed to these changes is through their pension funds. Pension fund investing is a long term game. Not all of your money will go into shares – some will go into government bonds, and the closer you get to retirement, the more weighting you will have in things like cash and government bonds, so the less this will affect you.

There are two types of pensions: a defined benefit pension – where you get a promised percentage of your salary at retirement – and defined contribution – where your pension pots value will rise and fall with financial markets.

Pensions are exposed right now, but pension investing is a long term game.

The warning sign flashing here is not the value of your pension pot – it is what is going to happen to the economies in which we all live and work.

A lot of people are saying the chance of recession in both the US, UK – and even globally – have gone up a notch, which has implications for things like jobs and wages.

There is growing scepticism about tariffs among Americans, although views still fall along partisan lines.

According to one poll released last week, slightly more than half of Republicans, 52%, think tariffs help the economy, but 58% of independents say they hurt the economy, as do 89% of Democrats.

However, that survey was held before Trump’s global tariffs came into effect and trillions of dollars was wiped off the value of the US stock market. We will find out in the coming days how the economic turmoil has changed public sentiment.

One of the key factors in President Trump’s 2024 election victory was that more voters trusted him to improve the US economy, and especially to tackle high prices.

Yet most economists warn that tariffs could drive up prices for US consumers as almost all imported goods will face a tax.

There could be inflation and we could also see an economic downturn, and potentially a recession.

Some think that the whole exercise is about an economic proxy war with China and the entire game is about just trying to level that playing field a little bit, Jack said.

But Trump is right in one regard, which is that American markets are much more open to foreign goods than a lot of foreign markets are open to US goods.

The UK, for example, puts a 10% tariff on US imported cars, 14% on some kinds of beef, and 8% on other things. So there are barriers both ways.

And while Trump says that other countries have been ripping off the US, it is American corporations that have reasonably pursued shareholder value by trying to put their production facilities in the strategically and economically best places.

It is the head of American corporations who opened subsidiaries in Ireland, where there is a low tax rate, and put manufacturing in Vietnam or Cambodia. In a way this has been the sort of rational pursuit of maximum profit, a system which has made the US very rich indeed.

China is getting very rich indeed as well, and it is certainly moving up the value chain.

There is a feeling that the US was very comfortable when China was making cheap sneakers and t-shirts, but when China starts making supercomputers and missiles the US gets a little bit more concerned, and that is one of the reasons you are seeing some of these tensions come to the fore.

That is really the unknown question right now, Davison said, but one thing we can expect is more volatility.

We got a little bit of a sense of how markets react on Friday when Trump said he had spoken with Vietnamese officials and there was potentially a deal in the works for Vietnam.

The country has been hit with a 46% tariff by the US, which is quite a significant level, and Vietnam has indicated that it could reduce to zero all its tariffs on US goods going into that country. Stocks like Nike and Lululemon actually increase on that news, because these are apparel companies that have a very big presence in Vietnam.

Broadly, I believe we are going to see markets go down, but you could see particular stocks moving in a more positive direction as there are indications that there may be some exemptions allowed.

We do not know what Trump will allow – he has sent some big signals at times saying that his policies will never change, but has also suggested that some deals are possible.

The British woman at the centre of a Netflix documentary on how she allegedly duped her son and left him in debt to fund her champagne-sipping lifestyle has been charged with fraud in Singapore.

Alleged victims of Dionne Marie Hanna, 84, filed police reports after watching Con Mum, local media report.

They accuse the Singapore resident of taking their money with the promise that they would be reimbursed through her inheritance from Brunei’s royal family.

The ploy is similar to the one she allegedly used against London pastry chef Graham Hornigold, after she contacted him in 2020, claiming to be his long-lost mother.

A DNA test later proved that Ms Hanna was indeed Mr Hornigold’s mother.

Ms Hanna, who was charged with five counts of fraud, appeared before a district court on Saturday via video link. She was seen lying on a hospital bed, accompanied by an investigating officer, Singapore’s Channel NewsAsia reported.

She is accused of deceiving three men in Singapore and France into transferring money to her accounts, claiming the funds were needed as legal fees and for the opening of new bank accounts.

Ms Hanna sought their sympathy by saying she was terminally ill and vouched to reimburse them through inheritance, claiming that she is part of the Brunei royal family. Her son questions these claims in the documentary.

In exchange for their money, she also made promises to donate millions of dollars to a mosque and a Muslim non-profit organisation in Singapore, the court heard.

It is unclear how much money her alleged victims lost, but Singapore police said preliminary investigations show she is involved in at least five cases of cheating with losses amounting to more than S$200,000 ($149,000; £115,400).

If convicted, Ms Hanna faces up to 20 years in jail and a fine.

Con Mum, which was released on Netflix on 25 March, follows Mr Hornigold’s reunion with Ms Hanna in the UK during the pandemic.

She presented herself as a wealthy, illegitimate daughter of the sultan of Brunei, initially showering Mr Hornigold, his then-partner Heather Kaniuk and his friends with lavish gifts, from cars to homes.

Though initially sceptical, Mr Hornigold, who has worked in Michelin-starred restaurants and founded Longboys Doughnuts, quickly developed a close relationship with his mother.

Over time however, Ms Hanna began to leave Mr Hornigold and his friends to foot her escalating bills – Mr Hornigold said in the film that he lost £300,000 – while she disappeared.

The film suggests that Ms Hanna had previously been convicted in the UK for shoplifting and fraud.

Palestinian detainees released back to Gaza have told the BBC they were subjected to mistreatment and torture at the hands of Israeli military and prison staff, adding to reports of misconduct within Israel’s barracks and jails.

One man said he was attacked with chemicals and set alight. “I thrashed around like an animal in an attempt to put the fire out [on my body],” said Mohammad Abu Tawileh, a 36-year-old mechanic.

We have conducted in-depth interviews with five released detainees, all of whom were arrested in Gaza in the months after Hamas and other groups killed about 1,200 people in Israel and took 251 hostage. The men were held under Israel’s Unlawful Combatants Law, a measure by which people suspected of posing a security risk can be detained for an unspecified period without charge, as Israel set out to recover the hostages and dismantle the proscribed terror group.

The men say they were accused of having links with Hamas and questioned over the location of hostages and tunnels, but were not found to be involved in the 7 October 2023 attacks – a condition Israel had set for anyone released under the recent ceasefire deal.

Some of those freed under the deal were serving sentences for other serious crimes, including the killing of Israelis, but that was not the case for our interviewees. We also asked the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Israel Prison Service (IPS) if there were any convictions or accusations against the men but they did not respond to that question.

In the men’s testimony:

• They each describe being stripped, blindfolded, cuffed and beaten
• Some also say they were given electric shocks, menaced by dogs, and denied access to medical care
• Some say they witnessed the deaths of other detainees
• One says he witnessed sexual abuse
• Another says he had his head dunked in chemicals and his back set on fire

We have seen reports by a lawyer who visited two of the men in prison, and have spoken to medical staff who treated some of them on their return.

The BBC sent a lengthy right of reply letter to the IDF which laid out in detail the men’s allegations and their identities.

In its statement, the IDF did not respond to any of the specific allegations, but said it “completely rejects accusations of systematic abuse of detainees”.

It said some of the cases raised by the BBC would be “examined by the relevant authorities”. It added that others “were brought without sufficient detail, without any detail regarding the identity of the detainees, making them impossible to examine”.

It continued: “The IDF takes any… actions which contradict its values very seriously… Specific complaints about inappropriate behaviour by detention facility staff or insufficient conditions are forwarded for examination by the relevant authorities and are dealt with accordingly. In appropriate cases, disciplinary actions are taken against the staff members of the facility, and criminal investigations are opened.”

The IPS said it was not aware of any of the claims of abuse described in our investigation, in its prisons. “[A]s far as we know, no such events have occurred under IPS responsibility,” it added.

Dr Lawrence Hill-Cawthorne, co-director of the Centre for International Law at the University of Bristol, said the treatment the men described was “entirely inconsistent with both international law and Israeli law”, and in some cases would “meet the threshold of torture”.

“Under international law, the law of armed conflict requires you to treat all detainees humanely,” he said. “The obligations relating to the basic needs of detainees are unaffected by any alleged wrongdoing.”

The five Palestinians interviewed in depth were returned earlier this year under the ceasefire deal with Hamas – the group that led the 7 October 2023 attacks on Israel.

They were among about 1,900 Palestinian prisoners and detainees exchanged for 33 Israeli hostages, eight dead and 25 living, some of whom have described being abused, starved and threatened by their Hamas captors.

Female hostages previously released have detailed physical and sexual assaults in captivity.

Israel says forensic tests show some of the dead hostages returned in the ceasefire, including children, were killed by Hamas, though the group denies this.

The five released Palestinian detainees all described the same pattern – being arrested in Gaza, taken into Israel to be detained first in military barracks before being moved on to prison, and finally released back to Gaza months later.

They said they had been abused at every stage of the process.

More than a dozen other released detainees, whom the BBC spoke to more briefly as they arrived home in Gaza, also gave accounts of beatings, hunger and disease.

These, in turn, align with testimony given by others to Israeli human rights group B’Tselem and the United Nations, which in July detailed reports from returning detainees that they had been stripped naked, deprived of food, sleep and water, subjected to electric shocks and burned with cigarettes, and had dogs set on them.

A further report by UN experts last month documented cases of rape and sexual assault, and said using this as a threat was “standard operating procedure” for the IDF. Israel responded to say it “categorically rejects the unfounded allegations”.

As Israel does not currently allow international journalists free access to Gaza, our interviews were conducted by phone call and text message, and also in person by our contracted freelancers in the territory.

All five men told us their abuse had begun at the moment of their arrest – when they said they had been stripped, blindfolded and beaten.

Mechanic Mohammad Abu Tawileh told us he had been tortured for days.

He was taken by soldiers to a building not far from the location of his arrest in March 2024, he said, and held in a room – the sole detainee there – for three days of interrogation by troops.

Soldiers mixed chemicals used for cleaning into a pot, he told us, and dunked his head in them. The interrogators then punched him, he said, and he fell to the rubble-strewn floor, injuring his eye. He said they then covered his eye with a cloth, which he said “worsened his injury”.

They also set him alight, he told us.

“They used an air freshener with a lighter to set my back on fire. I thrashed around like an animal in an attempt to put the fire out. It spread from my neck down to my legs. Then, they repeatedly hit me with the bottoms of their rifles, and had sticks with them, which they used to hit and poke me on my sides,” he said.

They then “continued pouring acid on me. I spent around a day and a half being washed with [it],” he told us.

“They poured it on my head, and it dripped down my body while I was sitting on the chair.”

Eventually, he said, soldiers poured water on his body, and drove him into Israel where he received medical treatment in hospital, including skin grafts.

Most of his treatment, he said, took place at a field hospital at Sde Teiman barracks, an IDF base near Beersheba in southern Israel. He said he was cuffed naked to a bed and given a nappy instead of access to a toilet. Israeli doctors at this hospital have previously told the BBC shackling patients and forcing them to wear nappies is routine.

When the BBC interviewed Mr Abu Tawileh shortly after his release, his back was covered in red welts. The residual pain from his burns still woke him up, he said, and his vision had been affected.

The BBC was not able to speak to anyone who witnessed an attack on Mr Abu Tawileh, but a specialist eye doctor who treated him on his return to Gaza confirmed that he had suffered a chemical burn to the eye, damaging the skin around it. He also said Mr Abu Tawileh’s vision was weakening, due to either the chemicals or other trauma.

We showed images of his injuries and gave details of his testimony to several UK doctors, who said they appeared consistent with his account, though they noted there were limitations to what they could assess by looking at photos.

The BBC gave extensive details of this account to the IDF, giving it five days to investigate. It did not respond directly to Mr Abu Tawileh’s allegations but said it took any actions “which contradict its values very seriously”.

It said it would “examine” some of the cases, but did not respond to follow-up questions about whether this included Mr Abu Tawileh.

Others we interviewed also described abuse at the point of arrest.

“They cuffed us and hit us. No-one would give me a drop of water,” said Abdul Karim Mushtaha, a 33-year-old poultry slaughterhouse worker, who told us he was arrested in November 2023 at an Israeli checkpoint while following evacuation orders with his family. A report filed by a lawyer who later visited Mr Mushtaha noted he had been “subjected to severe beatings, humiliation, degradation and stripping during his arrest until he was transferred to prison”.

Two said they had then been left outside in the cold for hours, and two said Israeli soldiers stole their belongings and money.

The BBC gave details of the allegations of theft to the IDF, which described it as “contrary to the law and IDF values”. It said it would “thoroughly” examine the cases if more details were provided.

All our interviewees, including Mr Mushtaha, said they were transferred to the Israeli barracks of Sde Teiman, where Mr Abu Tawileh also said he received treatment in its field hospital.

One interviewee told us he was mistreated on the way there. He asked for his name not to be published for fear of reprisals, so we are calling him “Omar”.

He said Israeli soldiers stood and spat on him, and others with him, calling them “sons of pigs” and “sons of Sinwar” – referring to the Hamas leader and architect of the 7 October attacks, killed by Israel five months ago.

“They made us listen to a voice recording that said: ‘What you did to our children, we will do to your children’,” said the 33-year-old, who worked for an electrical cable company.

Sde Teiman has been the focus of previous serious complaints in the wake of the October 2023 attacks. Several soldiers stationed there were charged in February after they were filmed assaulting a detainee, resulting in his hospitalisation for a torn rectum and a punctured lung. In a separate case, a soldier at the base was sentenced after he admitted to the aggravated abuse of Palestinian detainees from Gaza.

Three of the men we spoke to alleged that dogs were used to intimidate detainees at Sde Teiman and other facilities.

“We would get beaten up when they took us from the barracks to the medical clinic or the interrogation room – they’d set [muzzled] dogs on us, tighten our cuffs,” said Mr Abu Tawileh who was held in general detention in the barracks, as well as being treated there.

The BBC asked the IDF to respond to allegations it frequently used dogs to intimidate and attack detainees. It said: “The use of dogs to harm detainees is prohibited.”

It also said there were “experienced terrorists considered to be very dangerous among the detainees held in IDF detention facilities” and that “in exceptional cases there is extended shackling during their detention”.

Several detainees said they had been forced to assume stress positions, including having their arms lifted above their heads for hours.

“We would be sitting on our knees from 5am until 10pm, when it was time to sleep,” said Mr Abu Tawileh.

Hamad al-Dahdouh, another interviewee, said beatings at the barracks “targeted our heads and sensitive areas like the eyes [and] ears”.

The 44-year-old, who worked as a farmer before the war, said he had suffered temporary back and ear damage as a result, and his rib cage had been fractured.

The IDF did not respond to this allegation.

Mr Dahdouh and some of the other released detainees said electric shocks were also used during interrogations or as punishment.

“The oppression units would bring dogs, sticks and stun guns, they would electrocute and beat us,” he said.

They would be subjected to beatings and intimidation every time they were moved, Mr Abu Tawileh added.

During these interrogations they had been accused of links with Hamas, the men added.

“Anyone who was imprisoned… they said: ‘You are a terrorist’,” said Mr Mushtaha. “They always tried to tell us that we had taken part in 7 October. They all had a grudge.

“I told them: ‘If I am Hamas or anyone else, would I be moving through the safe passage? Would I have listened to your calls to leave?'”

He said interrogations would go through the night.

“For three nights, I couldn’t sleep because they were torturing me. Our hands were tied and put above our heads for hours, and we weren’t wearing anything. Any time you would say ‘I’m cold’… they would fill a bucket with cold water, pour it on you and switch on the fan.”

Mr Dahdouh said their interrogators told them that whoever is from Gaza “is affiliated with terrorist groups”, and when detainees asked if they could challenge this in court they were told there was no time for that.

He said he was not given access to a lawyer. The IDF told the BBC: “Israeli law grants the right to judicial review in a civil district court, legal representation by an attorney, and the right of appeal to the Supreme Court.”

“Omar” said he was taken for three days of interrogation when he first arrived at Sde Teiman.

He said the detainees were dressed in thin overalls and held in a freezing room, with loud speakers playing Israeli music.

When the questioning was over, the men said they were led back to the barracks blindfolded.

“We didn’t know if night had come or morning had come. You don’t see the sun. You don’t see anything,” said Omar.

The IDF said it had “oversight mechanisms”, including closed-circuit cameras, “to ensure that detention facilities are managed in accordance with IDF orders and the law”.

Omar and Mr Mushtaha said they were then transferred to Ketziot prison, where they described a “welcoming ceremony” of beatings and other abuse.

Omar said he witnessed sexual assault at Ketziot.

“They took the clothes off some of the guys and would do shameful acts… They forced guys to perform sex acts on each other. I saw it with my own eyes. It wasn’t penetrative sex. He would tell one guy to suck another guy. It was obligatory.”

The BBC did not receive any other reports of this nature, but the Palestinian Prisoners Society, which tracks conditions of Palestinians in Israeli jails, described sexual abuse of detainees held in Ketziot as a “common occurrence”. This ranged from rape and sexual harassment to the beatings of genitals, it said.

The group said that while it had not received testimony of forced sexual acts between detainees, it had been told some had been made to look at each other naked and had been thrown on top of each other naked.

A report by B’Tselem has also gathered allegations of sexual violence, including from one prisoner who said guards attempted to rape him with a carrot.

The BBC put the allegation that prisoners were forced to perform sexual acts on each other to the Israel Prison Service (IPS). It replied that it was “not aware” of the sexual abuse claim or any of the other claims made about treatment and conditions at Ketziot and other prisons that the BBC had gathered.

It said: “IPS is a law enforcement organisation that operates according to the provisions of the law and under the supervision of the state comptroller and many other official critiques.

“All prisoners are detained according to the law. All basic rights required are fully applied by professionally trained prison guards. We are not aware of the claims you described and, as far as we know, no such events have occurred under IPS responsibility.

“Nonetheless, prisoners and detainees have the right to file a complaint that will be fully examined and addressed by official authorities.”

Omar said they were also hit with batons at Ketziot prison.

“After we got tortured, I was in pain all night – from my back to my legs. The guys would carry me from my mattress to the toilet. My body, my back, my legs – my whole body was blue from beatings. For nearly two months I couldn’t move.”

Mr Mushtaha described having his head slammed into a door, and his genitals hit.

“They would strip us naked. They would Taser us. They would hit us in a sensitive place. They would tell us ‘We will castrate you’,” he said.

He said beatings were “meant to break your bones”, and that detainees would sometimes be grouped together and have hot water poured over them.

“The amount of torture was enormous,” he added.

Both he and Omar also described incidents of what they said amounted to medical negligence.

“My hands were all blisters and swollen,” said Mr Mushtaha.

“If people could have seen my legs they would have said they needed to be amputated from the inflammation… [Guards] would just tell me to wash my hands and legs with water and soap.

“But how was I meant to do this, when there was only water for one hour a day [between us], and as for soap, every week they would bring [only] a spoon of shampoo,” he added.

Mr Mushtaha said he was told by guards that: “As long as you have a pulse you are in good shape. As long as you are standing, you’re in good shape. When your pulse is gone, we will come to treat you.”

A report by a lawyer who visited both Mr Mushtaha and Omar in Ketziot last September said of Mr Mushtaha: “The prisoner, like the rest of the prisoners, suffers from pain due to boils on his hands, feet and buttocks, and there is no cleanliness and he is not provided with any kind of treatment.”

Mr Mushtaha also provided the BBC with a report compiled by a doctor in Gaza, which confirmed he was still infected with scabies on the day of his release.

Omar said detainees were beaten for requesting medical care.

The lawyer noted that Omar needed attention for “pimples spreading on the skin – in the groin and buttocks due to the harsh prison conditions” including lack of toiletries and polluted water. “The prisoner says that even when it is his turn to shower he tries to avoid it because the water… causes itching and inflammation.”

All the detainees added they had been given limited access to food and water while in detention at various facilities – several reported losing significant amounts of weight.

Omar said he lost 30kg (4st 10lb). The lawyer said Omar told him food was “almost non-existent” in the first few months, though conditions later “improved a little”.

Mr Mushtaha described food there being left outside their caged compounds for cats and birds to eat from first.

Another of our interviewees, Ahmed Abu Seif, said he was taken to a different prison – Megiddo, near the occupied West Bank, after being arrested on his 17th birthday.

He said Israeli authorities would regularly storm their cells there and spray them with tear gas.

“We would feel suffocated and unable to breathe well for four days after each tear gas attack,” according to Ahmed, who said he had been held in the prison’s youth wing.

“There was no consideration of us being children, they treated us like the militants of 7 October.”

During interrogations he had his nails pulled out, he told us. When the BBC filmed him the day after his release, he showed us how several of his toenails were still affected, as well as scars on his hands he said had been caused by handcuffs and dog scratches.

The IPS did not respond to this allegation.

Two of the men said they had witnessed the deaths of fellow detainees in Sde Teiman and Ketziot – one through beatings, including the use of dogs, and one through medical negligence.

The names and dates they gave of the incidents match media reports and accounts from human rights groups.

At least 63 Palestinian prisoners – 40 of them from Gaza – have died in Israeli custody since 7 October 2023, the Palestinian Prisoners Society told the BBC.

The IPS did not respond to questions about deaths of Palestinians in custody, while the IDF said it was “aware of cases of detainee deaths, including those who were detained with pre-existing illness or injury resulting from combat”.

“According to procedures, an investigation is opened by the Military Police Criminal Investigation Division (MPCID) into every detainee death,” it added.

The abuse continued right up to the moment they were freed in February, some of the men said.

“On the release day, they treated us brutally. They tightened the handcuffs and when they wanted to make us move they put our hands above our heads and pulled us,” Mr Mushtaha said.

“They said: ‘If you interact with Hamas or work with Hamas, you will be targeted.’ They said: ‘We will send a missile directly to you.'”

Ahmed, 17, also said conditions worsened after the ceasefire deal was signed in January. “The soldiers intensified the aggression against us knowing we were getting released soon.”

It was only once the detainees were transferred to the Red Cross bus for transportation back to Gaza that they felt “safe”, Omar said.

Footage showed some being returned in sweatshirts with the Star of David on them and the words: “We do not forget and we do not forgive” written in Arabic.

An official at Gaza’s European Hospital, which assessed the conditions of returned detainees, said skin conditions, including scabies, were common, and medics had observed many cases of “extreme emaciation and malnutrition” and “the physical effects of torture”.

Legal expert Dr Lawrence Hill-Cawthorne told us: “Certainly the use of chemicals to burn the detainee and submerge their head would meet the threshold of torture, as would the use of electric shocks, removal of toenails, and severe beatings. These, or comparable acts, have all been recognised to constitute torture by international bodies,” as have the use of stress positions and loud music.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which conducts interviews with returning detainees, said it could not comment on individuals’ conditions due to privacy concerns.

It added that it was eager to be granted access to those still detained – something which has not been allowed since the 7 October attacks.

“The ICRC remains deeply concerned about the wellbeing of detainees and emphasises the urgent need for it to resume visits to all places of detention. We continue to request access in bilateral and confidential dialogue with the parties,” it told the BBC.

Fifty-nine hostages are still being held in Gaza, 24 of whom are believed to be alive. The ICRC has never been granted access to them in their 18 months in captivity, and their loved ones have grave concerns over their wellbeing.

For many of the released Palestinian detainees, returning to Gaza was both a moment of celebration and of despair.

Mr Abu Tawileh said his family was shocked by his appearance when he was released, and added he was still affected by his experience.

“I am unable to do anything because of my injury, because my eye hurts, and it tears and feels itchy, and all of the burns on my body feels itchy as well. This is bothering me a lot,” he said.

Teenager Ahmed said he now wants to leave Gaza.

“I want to emigrate because of the things we saw in detention, and because of the mental torture of fearing the bombs falling on our heads. We wished for death but couldn’t find it.”

Motor racing legend Sir Jackie Stewart has emotionally recounted the moment his wife forgot who he was, as his charity funds a new dementia blood test.

The three-time F1 champion said Lady Stewart inquired “where’s Jackie?” while sitting with him.

He said the changes he had seen in his wife were the reason he had founded Race Against Dementia, which is funding a new blood test trial developed by the University of Cambridge.

The study hopes to detect signs of frontotemporal dementia decades before it develops.

Lady Stewart was diagnosed with the same type of dementia in 2014, and Sir Jackie said the behaviour and language changes he had witnessed were “horrendous”.

“Just the other day it was time for dinner, she’s getting up and I’m sitting close by, and she says, ‘Where’s Jackie?’ That’s the first time that’s happened and that’s only a few weeks ago,” he said.

“A bad feeling came over me,” he added, describing Lady Stewart’s mind as being in “a new world”.

Sir Jackie, who lives in Buckinghamshire but is from Scotland, described how his wife of more than 60 years had been diagnosed with dementia after she lost control of her small car and it landed on its roof.

No-one had been hurt, he said, but the incident had led to an “awareness that something wasn’t right”.

A decade later, Sir Jackie said the progression of the disease was such that Lady Stewart could no longer walk.

“I know that Helen doesn’t mean it when she suddenly goes round and hits me, or the [specialist dementia] nurses,” he said.

“She can hit somebody quite often, she uses language that she’s never ever said in her life and it comes like that [clicks his fingers] and I say ‘darling, darling, don’t say that’.

“She says ‘Why?’ And she’ll give me a row for doing that. That’s usually after 17:00.”

‘“Sundowning” is a common feature of dementia, where the brain tires and a person becomes more agitated later in the day.

Sir Jackie created an accessible home in Switzerland for Lady Stewart without steps or obstacles – and they employ nurses and specialist neurosurgeons.

He said he was aware of the privilege his F1 career had afforded him, and that for many families the only option was residential care.

“I visit homes for people with dementia and I leave in tears because people are completely lost,” he said.

One in three people will develop dementia in their lifetime, which Sir Jackie describes as a “disaster”.

He said friends and a former secretary had also been diagnosed and understanding the brain was “bigger than going to the moon”.

Research progress had been “very slow”, with the medical profession “failing so far” and diseases like cancer being prioritised, he said.

His charity is now funding the development of a new blood test trial to detect signs of frontotemporal dementia 10 to 20 years before it is diagnosed.

Dr Maura Malpetti, senior research fellow at the University of Cambridge, said the ON-FIRE study was looking at the type of frontotemporal dementia that was not genetic – where diagnoses could not necessarily be predicted.

Dr Malpetti said people with frontotemporal dementia were often misdiagnosed.

“It is confused with psychiatric conditions because of the behavioural changes or the language problems,” she said.

Her team is looking at how the presence of certain proteins in the blood could indicate the likelihood of future inflammation in the brain.

Changes in the blood could be present decades before the onset of physical symptoms and they were usually only picked up by scans, which took longer to carry out and required specialist equipment.

A major problem facing trials for new dementia drugs is that they often involve patients who have already received a diagnosis.

It means they are already showing symptoms – but by this time, it may be too late for the drugs to make a difference.

Identifying individuals decades before they show symptoms allows researchers to trial drugs to see if they reduce the risk of dementia.

Three hundred patients were being recruited at 20 centres across England and Dr Malpetti said the trial would eventually be rolled out to 1,000 participants.

The study is one of a number of dementia blood tests being developed in the UK, including one at the University of Oxford.

Dr Malpetti said they hoped to see “tremendous” developments in the next five years because of the number of inflammation studies.

“I think there’s been a revelation in the field of blood tests because this allows us to use more accessible and scalable tests,” she said.

Dr Malpetti said they would freeze the samples so that if a new inflammation marker was discovered, they could go back and test that in the blood.

She added an earlier diagnosis would empower families, allowing them to contribute to research to find a cure.

“The earlier we understand the changes in the brain, maybe we can stop or slow down the symptoms while the person is still well,” she said.

Sir Jackie said Formula One brought funding and business acumen to health research.

The most recent fundraiser was the One Lap Challenge ahead of the Bahrain Grand Prix.

“When you have a problem in Formula One [clicks his fingers] it’s fixed… they’re also changing it [technology] all the time, because they have enthusiasm, and they see the results,” he said.

Dr Malpetti said she hoped charities like Race against Dementia could transform research, helping it to progress faster.

Sir Jackie said he hoped a cure could be found in his lifetime.

“I want this to happen just as much as I wanted to be world champion,” he said. “It’s terribly important.”

Adrien Brody, Cate Blanchett and Idris Elba were among the stars walking the red carpet ahead of Sunday’s Olivier Awards.

The event is the biggest night in UK theatre, celebrating the best stage productions of the last 12 months. Lesley Manville and John Lithgow were among the big winners.

• Watch Oliviers’ red carpet highlights on iPlayer

Here are a few of the stars who posed for pictures ahead of the ceremony at London’s Royal Albert Hall:

North Korea has held the Pyongyang International Marathon for the first time in six years, welcoming some 200 foreign runners to the streets of the reclusive country’s capital.

The marathon, which was launched in 1981, took place annually in April to celebrate the birth of its founding leader Kim Il Sung.

Before Sunday’s marathon, the race was last held in 2019, wherein 950 foreigners participated. North Korea sealed itself off the following year, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit.

North Korea has been slow to reopen since, allowing only Russian tourists into its capital since last year.

Runners have had to enter the country as part of an organised tour group, as was the case before the pandemic.

Koryo Tours, a Beijing-based travel agency listed as an “exclusive partner” on the event website, offers six-day marathon tours at 2,195 euros ($2,406) including flights to and from Beijing.

“The Pyongyang Marathon is an extremely unique experience as it provides an opportunity to interact with locals,” the agency wrote on its website.

Sunday’s marathon route took participants past landmarks across the city, including the Kim Il Sung stadium, the Arch of Triumph built to commemorate Kim Il Sung’s role in resisting Japanese rule, and the Mirae Future Scientists’ Street said to be a residential district for scientists and engineers.

Pictures online show the stadium – where runners start and finish their race – filled with spectators, many of them cheering and waving gold-coloured paper flags.

Pak Kum Dong, a North Korean runner, told Reuters news agency: “The eyes of our people on me helped me to bear the difficulties whenever I feel tired.”

There is no publicly available information on race results.

North Korea had only started to scale back Covid-19 restrictions in the middle of 2023.

In Feburary, it allowed some Western tourists into the remote, eastern city Rason, but suspended those tours just weeks after.

In This City Is Ours, Liverpool actor James Nelson-Joyce plays a leading gang member who is struggling to balance his criminal career and family life, against a backdrop of changing modern masculinity.

So it’s not hard to see why the new BBC drama has been dubbed by reviewers as the “Scouse Sopranos” – with reference to the acclaimed US mafia boss Tony and his equally conflicting set-up.

Nelson-Joyce plays the notorious Michael Kavanagh, who works for drug lord and lifelong friend Ronnie Phelan, played by Sean Bean. And the plot focuses on the power struggle between Michael and Ronnie’s son Jamie – played by Nelson-Joyce’s real life football friend and fellow Scouser Jack McMullen – as to who will take over the business when the top dog retires to Spain, via the Wirral.

Inconveniently though, Michael falls in love with Diana (Hannah Onslow). The couple are trying for a baby but due to his low sperm count need to try IVF to start a family.

It’s not an ideal environment for domestic bliss to blossom – or good for Michael’s street cred – but it does provide the scene for the 36-year-old actor’s “most amazing” TV experience to date.

“It’s about Michael allowing himself to be vulnerable,” Nelson-Joyce tells BBC News.

“Because a lot of men put up this brave wall where it’s like, I can’t be seen to be that person,” he adds. “It’s took Diana to be that breath of fresh air in his life.”

He believes it is important to show on screen how “we are allowed to change”.

“Because Michael’s identity throughout has been as Ronnie’s right-hand man, so he’s always been the one you don’t mess with.

“Whereas for the first time in his life, he’s allowing himself to be who he wants to be; this loving partner who’s reliable, who’s safe and who doesn’t lie to his partner.”

The rising star, who has been mentioned as potential future James Bond, previously appeared opposite Sheffield actor Bean in another Merseyside crime drama, Time.

And he has featured alongside another Liverpudlian, Stephen Graham, in Time, Little Boy Blue, and the recent historical drama A Thousand Blows.

He says his latest character’s respect for his partner in crime, Ronnie, was a mirror of his real life working relationship with Bean, who he describes as “a gift” of a co-star and a “kind human being”.

Graham is “so supportive” of Nelson-Joyce’s career too. The former’s own headline-grabbing new show, Adolescence, also tackles toxic masculinity and its potentially deadly effects.

This City is Ours’ Bafta-winning director Saul Dibb (The Sixth Commandment) notes how Nelson-Joyce has played “hard men” roles before but has not been able to demonstrate “all of the other qualities” he possesses, until now.

The Telegraph has awarded the show five stars, calling it a “superb crime thriller of betrayals and shifting loyalties”. Critic Anita Singh noted that it “doesn’t quite live up to” the Sopranos “but it comes close”.

In a four-star review, the Independent said Nelson-Joyce’s “conflicted gangster” and the show’s “moral ambivalence” elevated it “above the average boilerplate crime drama”.

The Guardian’s Lucy Mangan awarded three stars, however, suggesting “the fantastic performances don’t do enough to lift this Scouse Sopranos.”

But the Sunday Times’ Carol Midgley offered another four-star review, saying it “is as much about family dynamics and the human condition as it is about gangsters and violence”.

The show’s creator and writer Stephen Butchard (The Last Kingdom) tells us he is “happy” with comparisons to the “brilliant” New Jersey-based crime show “because that really is about a family”.

“We haven’t got as many cured meats,” he jokes, of Mr Soprano’s favourite food.

Another reference point was Shakespeare, he explains, to “explore those huge human emotions of your ambition and greed and love and betrayal.”

“Once greed and secrets take hold, the fabric of any society, including a family, begins to fray,” he adds.

Former engineer Butchard was keen to capture the “vibrancy” of his native Liverpool, which he describes as a “really handsome” and “friendly” modern world city.

Beautiful vistas of the city’s skyline and glamorous waterfront are juxtaposed with life on its streets (along with shots of the gang’s dealings in sunny Marbella and Malaga).

“I didn’t want to show a Liverpool that has been seen previously on the television,” he says.

“Because this story could be told in any city around the world, but then it’s only when you come to the characters that you can give them that Liverpool inflection, bite and hopefully humour, and reflect the mood of the city.”

He says he was was impressed with the “wonderful” Scouse accents perfected by the non-local members of the extended fictional crime family, including Onslow, Julie Graham and Laura Aikman, as well as Derry Girls star Saoirse-Monica Jackson.

As for genuine Scouser Nelson-Joyce, just when he thought he was out, the producers may have pulled him back in for a second series.

“We want to do a season two” says the star.

“It would be mad if there wasn’t” offers Dibb.

Both underline the overwhemingly positive responses they’ve received, particularly from viewers with purple bins.

“Because they’re the people who know if we’ve got all the details right,” says the London director, adding that Liverpudlians would “not hold back” in saying so if not.

He recounts how a train conductor told actor Michael Noble – who plays Michael’s confidant/enforcer, Banksey – that they had “done they city proud”.

The reaction has been “really lovely” and “a bit crazy” adds Nelson-Joyce.

“It feels like the whole city loves it,” he says. “I think people really bought the relationship between me and Hannah and really wanted us to work.”

His celebrity pal, ex-Liverpool footballer Jamie Carragher told him personally last week that he thought the show was “[expletive] brilliant”.

Tony Soprano could not have put it better himself.

Torrential rains and floods have killed at least 33 people in Kinshasa – the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo – according to officials.

“The republic will not abandon you,” President Félix Tshisekedi promised victims on Monday, saying he had called a government crisis meeting.

Desperate residents are trying to flee the floodwaters by wading, swimming or paddling to safety in homemade canoes.

The city is home to 17 million people and sits on the Congo river, which is one of the biggest in the world and stretches across the country.

Flooding is common – the river recently reached its highest level in six decades.

Parts of the capital are prone to soil erosion and in recent years the Congolese president has warned that the climate crisis is making flooding worse.

Many homes in west Kinshasa were swept away following flooding overnight from Friday into Saturday.

About half of the city’s 26 districts are affected in total, according to the capital’s mayor, who says search and rescue teams have been sent out.

Worst affected are the city’s outskirts as well as some of its poorest neighbourhoods.

“The water has reached 1.5 metres high. We have just managed to save ourselves, the rest is trapped in our homes,” Christophe Bola who lives in the Ndanu area told the AFP news agency.

Other local residents have told reporters they are angry with the authorities, accusing them of being too slow to react and not sending enough help.

The floods have also left people across much of Kinshasa struggling with water shortages, after water treatment pumps in the city were themselves inundated.

The city’s busiest road, which connects the centre with the international airport, is impassable, as is some of the motorway that connects the capital to the country’s main port, Matadi.

At least one tributary leading off the Congo river – the N’djili river – has burst its banks, trapping many residents there, said Deputy President Jacquemain Shabani in a statement on Sunday.

It is said to be one of the more polluted rivers which Congolese scientists say contains high levels of fecal matter and other waste.

Sewage maintenance is poor in many areas of Kinshasa, and there is little evidence of town planning.

Last year the government announced plans to tackle this long-standing problem.

Further heavy downpours are expected in Kinshasa in the coming weeks, as well as in the eastern city of Goma which was seized by rebel forces earlier this year.

The national meteorological agency also warns of heavy rains elsewhere, especially in the north and north-east of the country.

• US envoy says he’s working on DR Congo minerals deal
• Who’s pulling the strings in the DR Congo crisis?
• Death sentence overturned for three Americans over DR Congo coup attempt
• Your phone, a rare metal and the war in DR Congo

Abtisam Mohamed has said the Israeli government’s decision to stop her and fellow Labour MP Yuan Yang from entering the country was “about censorship and control”.

Mohamed and Yang had been travelling to Israel and the occupied West Bank as part of a parliamentary delegation but were detained at the airport on Saturday before flying back to the UK to following day.

In a statement to MPs, Foreign Office Minister Hamish Falconer said he believed it was the first time a British MP had been barred from entering Israel.

He said their treatment had been “unacceptable and deeply concerning” and was “no way to treat democratically elected representatives of a close partner nation”.

On Saturday, the Israeli embassy in London said its country would “not allow the entry of individuals or entities that act against the state and its citizens”.

It said Mohamed and Yang had “accused Israel of false claims” and were “actively involved in promoting sanctions against Israeli ministers”.

Speaking for the first time since the incident, Mohamed said Yang and herself had been “denied entry based on our legitimate political opinions, which are firmly aligned with international law”.

“This act was not just a diplomatic affront. This wasn’t about security. It was about control and censorship,” the MP for Sheffield Central added.

Yang, the Berkshire MP for Earley and Woodley, told the House of Commons she had “understood the risks” of travelling to the region.

“I did not, however, anticipate the risks of detention and deportation from a British ally.”

She added: “People around the world are listening to us, our voice is powerful, and we must continue to use it without fear or favour.”

On Sunday, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch backed Israel’s right to “control its borders”.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy branded her comments “disgraceful” but on Monday Badenoch said she stood by them.

Her stance was echoed in Parliament by the Conservative shadow Foreign Office spokesperson Wendy Morton.

She said the UK Foreign Office’s guidance said “Israeli authorities decide if you can enter Israel” and that “some visitors may face longer searches and questioning, including those who are considered to have publicly criticised the State of Israel”.

Morton asked Falconer if he accepted that “British nationals visiting Israel, a country that is at war, should be aware of those requirements and consider them carefully before making decisions to travel and that they therefore travel to Israel at their own risk?”

Falconer said he was “truly surprised” by her response and urged Badenoch to apologise for her comments.

He said Israel had the right to decide who came to the country but added: “On this occasion, the two members of Parliament were given clearance to enter and so it was known to the Israeli government before they arrived at the airport that they would be travelling.”

Liberal Democrat MP Monica Harding said she was “deeply disappointed” by Morton’s comments.

She also asked about a BBC report on Palestinian detainees who said they had been mistreated and tortured by Israeli military and prison staff. The Israel Defense Forces said it “completely rejects accusations of systematic abuse of detainees”.

Harding said the report was “deeply disturbing” and asked if it had been raised with Israel.

Falconer replied that the government would continue to have discussions about “concerning reports”.

Mohamed and Yang received support from Foreign Affairs Committee chairwoman Dame Emily Thornberry, who said their treatment was “an insult to our Parliament”.

However, Conservative Bob Blackman noted that there had been instances of the UK “refusing to admit elected politicians who wanted to come to this country”.

The DUP’s Sammy Wilson accused Labour MPs of displaying “faux outrage” and said that some in their party had in the past campaigned to exclude US President Donald Trump from coming to the UK.

Nigerian police have withdrawn a summons issued to one of the country’s most respected traditional leaders after it was widely condemned.

The emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi, is engaged in a tussle for the crown with his cousin Aminu Ado Bayero, who is said to enjoy the support of the national government.

Prior to the recent Eid al-Fitr celebration, police in Kano banned the annual horse parade, or durbar, fearing trouble between supporters of the rival claimants.

However, Sanusi chose to ride on horseback after Eid prayers, accompanied by local vigilantes.

This led to clashes between rival groups which saw one man stabbed to death, prompting the police to order Sanusi to appear at the national police headquarters in the capital, Abuja.

However, this prompted an outcry with many Nigerians saying it showed a lack of respect to the emirate, which is one of the oldest institutions in the country.

Traditional leaders in Nigeria hold few constitutional powers but are able to exert significant influence as they are seen as custodians of both religion and tradition.

In response to the strong reaction against the summons and following the intervention of “respected stakeholders”, Nigeria’s police chief said that officers would instead go to Kano to obtain Sanusi’s statement.

The emir has not commented on the summons.

Sanusi returned to the Kano throne last year after he was ousted in 2020 for “insubordination” to the then Kano state government under Abdullahi Ganduje.

Sanusi, a former head of Nigeria’s central bank, was reappointed by Kano’s current Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf last May, and Bayero was sacked after four years as emir.

However, some of Bayero’s supporters have gone to court, maintaining he is the rightful emir.

While Sanusi is living in the emir’s official residence, Bayero is residing in one of the emirate’s smaller palaces.

The US Commerce Secretary has defended the country’s decision to impose tariffs on a group of uninhabited islands, which are populated only by penguins and seals.

The imposition of tariffs on the Heard and McDonald islands was meant to close “ridiculous loopholes” and would prevent other countries from shipping through the islands to reach the US, Howard Lutnick told the BBC’s US partner CBS.

Authorities in Australia reacted with surprise last week when they found out about the tariffs on the island, which sits 4,000km (2,485 mi) from Australia.

Its trade minister Don Farrell told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation the tariffs were “clearly a mistake” and indicated a “rushed process”.

But when asked about the inclusion of the Australian territory on Trump’s tariffs list, Lutnick said: “If you leave anything off the list, the countries that try to basically arbitrage America go through those countries to us.”

“The President knows that, he’s tired of it, and he’s going to fix that.”

Lutnick’s interview was one of several given by US government officials to defend the president’s new tariffs after all three major stock indexes in the US plunged more than 5% on Friday, in the worst week for the US stock market since 2020.

Shipping products through one port to another in a process known as transshipment is common in global trade. But Pew Charitable Trusts, a public policy organisation, says this method can also “enable bad actors to obscure or manipulate data” around the shipping events.

They estimate that hundreds of millions of dollars of tuna and similar species are illegally moved via this method in the western and central Pacific each year.

It’s difficult to get a clear picture on the imports from the Heard and McDonald islands to the US.

According to export data from the World Bank, the islands have, over the past few years, usually exported a small amount of products to the US.

It peaked in 2022, when the US imported US$1.4m (A$2.3m; £1.1m) from the territory, nearly all of it unnamed “machinery and electrical” products.

Also included on Trump’s list was the British Indian Ocean territory, which is solely occupied by military personnel and requires a permit to visit. World Bank export data shows the territory exported US$414,350 to the US in 2022.

A judge has sided with a coalition of civil liberties groups and news organisations – including the BBC – and ruled a legal row between the UK government and Apple over data privacy cannot be held in secret.

The Home Office wants the right to be able access information secured by Apple’s Advanced Data Protection (ADP) system, citing powers given to it under the Investigatory Powers Act.

At the moment Apple has no such capability – such data can only be accessed by the user – and says it does not want to create what it calls a “backdoor” into ADP because of concerns it would eventually be exploited by hackers and criminals.

The government’s request prompted fierce criticism from privacy campaigners and some US politicians.

In February, Apple pulled ADP from the UK and in March it launched legal proceedings against the government, in a case which is being heard by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal.

The government argued it would damage national security if the nature of the legal action and the parties to it were made public – what are known as the “bare details of the case”.

In a ruling published on Monday morning, the tribunal rejected that request – pointing to the extensive media reporting of the row and highlighting the legal principle of open justice.

“It would have been a truly extraordinary step to conduct a hearing entirely in secret without any public revelation of the fact that a hearing was taking place,” it states.

“For the reasons that are set out in our private judgement, we do not accept that the revelation of the bare details of the case would be damaging to the public interest or prejudicial to national security,” it later adds.

In a statement the Home Office said it would not comment on legal proceedings or individual notices but said its “first priority is to keep people safe.”

“There are longstanding and targeted investigatory powers that allow the authorities to investigate terrorists, paedophiles and the most serious criminals and they are subject to robust safeguards including judicial authorisations and oversight to protect people’s privacy,” it added.

It stressed it was not seeking blanket data access – and any requests to view individual accounts protected by ADP would need a court approved warrant.

Civil and digital rights organisations in the UK, which criticised the Home Office request, have welcomed Monday’s ruling.

They, along with news organisations – including the BBC – made legal representations for the case to be heard in public.

“This is bigger than the UK and Apple,” said Jim Killock, executive director of Open Rights Group.

“The Court’s judgment will have implications for the privacy and security of millions of people around the world.”

The Open Rights Group campaigned alongside Big Brother Watch and Index on Censorship against the proposal to hold the hearing in secret.

Big Brother Watch interim director Rebecca Vincent says the judgement is “effectively chipping away at the pervasive climate of secrecy surrounding the Investigatory Powers Tribunal’s consideration of the Apple case”.

“The Home Office’s order to break encryption represents a massive attack on the privacy rights of millions of British Apple users, which is a matter of significant public interest and must not be considered behind closed doors,” she adds.

Apple declined to comment.

In a previous statement it told the BBC: “Apple remains committed to offering our users the highest level of security for their personal data and are hopeful that we will be able to do so in the future in the United Kingdom.

“As we have said many times before we have never built a backdoor or master key to any of our products or services and we never will.”

ADP is an opt-in data security tool designed to provide users of devices such as iPhones with a more secure way to protect data such as photos and notes stored in their iCloud accounts.

It uses what is known as end-to-end encryption (E2EE), meaning only the user has the “key” necessary to unscramble and access the data.

E2EE is also used to protect data on messaging services including WhatsApp and Signal.

It makes the data very secure – but poses a problem for law enforcement agencies.

They can request to view information stored with lower levels of protection – but companies such as Apple have no way of allowing them to view files secured with E2EE because they do not possess such a capability.

Campaign group Privacy International said the right of individuals also needed to be protected – and welcomed today’s ruling.

“Executive decisions affecting the privacy and security of billions of people globally should be open to legal challenge in the most transparent way possible”, it said.

Algeria has closed its airspace to all flights to and from Mali as the row over a drone that was shot down close to their common border escalates.

On Sunday, Mali accused its northern neighbour of being a sponsor and exporter of terrorism after Algeria attacked one of its drones last week.

A strongly worded statement from Mali’s foreign ministry challenged Algeria’s earlier explanation that the unmanned surveillance aircraft had violated its airspace.

The statement described the downing of the drone as a “hostile premeditated action”. Algeria described the allegations as “lacking in seriousness [and they]… warrant no attention or response”.

Mali’s armed forces are fighting ethnic Tuareg separatists in the north. They have a stronghold in the town of Tinzaoutin, which straddles the Mali-Algeria border.

The shooting down of the drone raised diplomatic tensions, as Mali, along with its allies Niger and Burkina Faso, recalled their ambassadors from Algiers.

Last year, the three junta-led countries formed a regional bloc, the Alliance of Sahel States, known by its French acronym AES.

In their joint statement condemning Algeria, they said the shooting down of the drone “prevented the neutralisation of a terrorist group that was planning terrorist acts against the AES”.

Mali has also summoned the Algerian ambassador in Bamako over the incident, declaring that it would file a complaint with “international bodies”. It also withdrew from a regional security grouping that includes Algeria.

In its response on Monday, Algeria said it noted the Malian and AES statements with “deep dismay”. It described Mali’s allegations as an attempt to divert attention away from its own failures.

It also said this was the third violation of its airspace in recent months.

“Due to the repeated violations of our airspace by Mali, the Algerian government has decided to close it to air traffic coming from or to Mali, effective today,” Algeria’s defence ministry said on Monday.

Last Wednesday, Algeria acknowledged that it had shot down an “armed reconnaissance drone” close to Tinzaoutin saying it had “penetrated our airspace over a distance of 2km”.

But the junta in Bamako denied that the drone had violated Algeria’s airspace. It said that the aircraft’s wreckage was found 9.5km inside its borders.

Giving more details on Monday, Algeria said that the aircraft had entered its airspace “then exited before returning on an attack trajectory”.

Mali regularly accuses Algeria of giving shelter to Tuareg armed groups.

The north African country once served as a key mediator during more than a decade of conflict between Mali and the separatists. Their relations have soured since 2020 after the military took power in Bamako.

Algeria recently deployed troops along its borders to prevent the infiltration of militants and weapons from jihadist groups who operate in Mali and other countries in West Africa’s Sahel region.

India’s weather department has warned of high temperatures in parts of northern India, including capital Delhi, for this week.

The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) has said northern and central states – including Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat – can expect maximum temperatures to cross 40C.

It has issued a yellow alert which means that the heat is tolerable for the general public but can cause moderate health concerns for infants, the elderly and people with chronic diseases.

Northern India usually sees heatwaves between April and June, but in recent years, global warming and climate change have caused extreme temperatures to arrive earlier and last longer.

According to the IMD forecast, the highest temperature in Delhi is expected to hit 41C on Monday afternoon. The average temperature for the city last year was 37C.

People have been advised to avoid heat exposure, wear lightweight and breathable cotton clothing and cover their heads with a cloth or umbrella outdoors.

The capital recorded a maximum temperature of 38.2C on Sunday.

Last week, IMD chief Mrutyunjay Mohapatra said most parts of India would experience an intense heatwave this summer, with above-normal temperatures expected across most of the country.

States like Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha could see as many as 10 to 11 heatwave days, Mr Mohapatra said.

“From April to June, most parts of north and east India, central India and the plains of north-west are expected to experience two-to-four more heatwave days than normal,” he added.

Heatwaves usually start occurring in northern India from the end of April, but we are seeing that their occurrence has recently been exacerbated by climate change, says Mahesh Palawat, vice president of meteorology and climate change at weather forecasting company Skymet.

“We go straight from winter to summer; the spring season in northern India is shrinking,” he said.

“In the coming days, we will see wind speeds slowing down with clear skies. This naturally leads to a rise in temperature,” Mr Palawat added.

Last year, India recorded its hottest day ever at 50.5C in Rajasthan state. More than 40,000 suspected cases of heatstroke were also reported.

One weather station in Delhi in May recorded a maximum temperature of 52.9C, although the government later said it was due to a sensor error and revised it down by 3C.

Nearly 150 people died due to the heatwave in 2024, according to official data but independent researchers said the toll was much higher.

A day before Donald Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs are scheduled to kick in, the US president appears locked in a high-stakes game of chicken, with the world’s economy hanging in the balance.

Some nations labelled “worst offenders” are scrambling to make nice with the White House to end this game before it reaches a potentially devastating climax.

China, in contrast, is playing a different game, one of retaliation and resistance.

Meanwhile, Trump has pressed ahead, even as some allies – in Congress and on Wall Street – wonder if he’s going too far. On Sunday, when asked what level of market fall he would tolerate before changing course, he snapped that it was a “stupid question”.

So is it all a negotiating tactic as many investors and politicians hope – or is he playing a longer game aimed at permanently restructuring the global economy and America’s place in it? In this new world, whether a country is an ally or an adversary depends on whether that nation is giving the US a good deal.

On Monday afternoon, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the first world leader to visit the president since his trade announcement, tried his hand at playing Trump’s new game. He pledged that his nation – which has been slotted for tariffs of 17% – would drop its trade barriers and move to eliminate its trade surplus with the US.

“We think it is the right thing to do,” he said. “I think Israel can serve as a model to many countries that ought to do the same.”

• Wild market swings as tariffs rattle US economy
• Trump threatens new 50% tariffs on China
• Billionaire Trump backer warns of ‘economic nuclear winter’ over tariffs

Other nations appear to be pursuing a similar strategy in the hopes of a positive result.

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba called Trump on Monday morning, prompting Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to state that the US was beginning negotiations with the nation to “implement the president’s vision for the new Golden Age of Global Trade”.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Europe was “ready to negotiate” with the US, offering a mutual reduction of tariffs on industrial goods to zero – a proposal that Trump praised during remarks at the Oval Office, while saying it was still “not enough”.

There were no such gestures from China. On Monday morning, America’s top economic competitor announced that it was responding to Trump’s 34% tariff increase with an additional 34% of its own.

That prompted Trump to threaten another 50% to US tariffs on China if it does not back down by Tuesday.

“China has chosen to isolate itself by retaliating and doubling down on previous negative behaviour,” Bessent posted on X. “Over 50 countries have responded both openly and positively to Donald Trump’s historic action to create a fairer, more prosperous system of global trade.”

China’s reaction to Trump’s latest move was equally blunt.

“We have stressed more than once that pressuring or threatening China is not a right way to engage with us,” Chinese Embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu told BBC partner CBS News. “China will firmly safeguard its legitimate rights and interests.”

Such a series of reactions and reprisals from China and the US appeared to be exactly what investors feared last week, as American stock indexes dropped by double-digit percentages.

By Monday a growing chorus of business leaders were speaking out against Trump’s tariff plan, including Wall Street financiers who had been strong public supporters of his administration – trying, it appeared, to get the president to back down by force of will alone.

Meanwhile, US markets were poised to jump at any reason for hope. When a social media post on Monday morning indicated that the president was contemplating a 90-day delay on new tariffs – perhaps drawn from a misinterpretation of comments made by Trump economic adviser Kevin Hassett on Fox News – US stock indexes soared. The S&P 500 index added $2.4tn in market value for about 10 minutes, only for it to all vanish once the White House quickly denied the president was contemplating such a move.

Trump further closed the door on Monday afternoon, saying he was not “looking at” any kind of delay. It was still full speed ahead on tariffs.

“We’re going to have one shot at this,” he said.

Perhaps the most concerning message for investors and foreign leaders hoping for a last-minute reprieve – and an exit ramp to stability – came from one of Trump’s top trade advisers, Peter Navarro.

“This is not a negotiation,” he wrote in a Financial Times opinion piece published on Monday afternoon. “President Trump is always willing to listen. But to those world leaders who, after decades of cheating, are suddenly offering to lower tariffs – know this: that’s just the beginning.”

So if this is about the start of broader systemic change – what is the desired end goal worth potentially tanking the global economy?

One theory is that Trump has a plan with several of his top advisers – the “Mar-a-Lago accord”, it is called – with the ultimate goal of compelling America’s trading partners to weaken the US dollar on the international currency exchange. Such a move would make American exports more affordable to foreign markets and diminish the value of China’s large reserves of US currency.

It’s a plan pushed by Trump economic adviser Stephen Miran, although he has denied that it is current administration policy.

That’s just one of the possible explanations for the current stock market mayhem that Trump has purposefully instigated – one that many other prominent economists warn is risky. It is far from the only one.

Ever since Trump shocked the world with his sweeping tariff plan, White House officials have fanned out across media to preach patience and offer a selection of sometimes contradictory explanations as to the strategy behind Trump’s global trade war. He is doing it to raise revenue and protect American industry – or as a negotiating tool. The tariffs are permanent – or they are temporary. They will prompt individual deals with other nations – or compel some grand multilateral agreement.

As Trump presses on to Wednesday’s tariff cliff with no signs of backing away, he seems willing to keep the world guessing.

Donald Trump has threatened China with an extra 50% tariff on goods imported into the US if it does not withdraw its 34% counter-tariff, as global markets continue to fall.

Beijing retaliated on Sunday, following last week’s decision by Trump to slap a 34% tax on Chinese imports as part of his “Liberation Day” that set a minimum 10% levy on nearly all of America’s trading partners.

In a social media post on Monday, Trump gave China until Tuesday to scrap its countermeasure or face the 50% tax.

In response, the Chinese embassy in the US accused Washington of “economic bullying”, and said that Beijing “will firmly safeguard its legitimate rights and interests”.

If Trump acts on his threat, US companies could face a total rate of 104% on Chinese imports- as it comes on top of 20% tariffs already put in place in March and the 34% announced last week.

There are fears that this could deepen a trade war between the world’s two biggest economies and global rivals.

In his post on Truth Social, Trump also warned that “all talks with China concerning their requested meetings with us [on tariffs] will be terminated!”

Also on Monday, the US president said he was not considering a pause on the global import tariffs to allow for negotiations with other countries.

“We’re not looking at that. We have many, many countries that are coming to negotiate deals with us, and there are going to be fair deals,” he said.

Trump said China had introduced its countermeasure “despite my warning that any country that Retaliates against the U.S. by issuing additional Tariffs… will be immediately met with new and substantially higher Tariffs”.

Beijing shot back, saying that “pressuring or threatening China is not a right way to engage”.

“The US hegemonic move in the name of ‘reciprocity’ serves its selfish interests at the expense of other countries’ legitimate interests and puts ‘America first’ over international rules,” Chinese embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu said in a statement.

“This is a typical move of unilateralism, protectionism and economic bullying.”

Speaking from the White House, the US president said there could be both permanent tariffs and negotiations.

“We have $36tn (£28tn) debt for a reason,” he said, adding that the US would be talking to China among other countries to make a “fair deal and a good deal”.

“It’s now America first,” Trump said.

The tariffs would come as a major blow to China’s manufacturers, for whom the US is a key market for exports.

China’s top exports to the US include electrical products and other machinery, computers, furniture, toys, vehicles and equipment.

The US’s top exports to China are oilseeds and grains, as well aircraft, machinery and pharmaceuticals.

Uncertainty around the tariffs led to a turbulent day on global stock markets.

Markets worldwide have plunged since Trump announced the global tariffs.

The value of US stock markets dropped sharply again on opening on Monday, while Europe’s biggest markets, including London’s FTSE 100, closed more than 4% down.

Asian share indexes had nosedived on Monday, with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index falling by more than 13%, its biggest one-day fall since 1997. However, most showed a slight correction on Tuesday with most bourses opening higher.

The impact on the FTSE 100, America’s S&P 500, Germany’s Dax and Japan’s Nikkei has been wide-ranging.

Trump’s post on Monday also indicated that negotiations on countries’ tariff rates would “begin taking place immediately”.

Trump met Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, on Monday in the White House. Netanyahu said that his country would eliminate the trade imbalance with the US, which he said was the “right thing to do”.

“We intend to do it very quickly… and we’re going to also eliminate trade barriers.”

Israel faces a 17% tariff from April 9 under Trump’s “Liberation Day” policy.

The US president also posted earlier that Japan was sending a negotiation team to discuss tariffs.

And Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, offered Trump a “zero-for-zero tariff” deal – although she previously said that she had not ruled out retaliation.

“We are also prepared to respond through countermeasures and defend our interests,” she said.

Trump said later that the EU had been formed “to really do damage to the United States and trade”.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has publicly acknowledged for the first time that his troops are active in Russia’s Belgorod region.

“We continue to carry out active operations in the border areas on enemy territory, and that is absolutely just – war must return to where it came from,” he said on Monday.

His comments also referred to Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukraine still holds a small area after a major offensive last year. Moscow has since retaken most of the territory.

Zelensky said “the main objective” was to protect Ukraine’s Sumy and Kharkiv border regions, and to “ease the pressure” on other parts of the vast front line, particularly in the eastern Donetsk region.

Russia’s military had last month reported Ukrainian attempts to cross over into the Belgorod region – but said such attacks had been rebuffed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and Moscow currently controls about 20% of Ukraine’s territory.

In his video address late on Monday, Zelensky said he had been briefed by his top commander Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi about the situation on the front, “including our presence in the Kursk and Belgorod regions”.

Zelensky thanked several army units defending Ukraine, including the 225th Assault Regiment deployed in the Belgorod region.

“Well done, guys! I’m proud of each and every one who is fighting for Ukraine!” the president said.

He provided no further details. It is his first explicit acknowledgement of Ukrainian troops in Belgorod.

On 18 March, Zelensky had indirectly confirmed that Ukrainian troops were there.

“There is an operation there,” he said when asked by reporters to comment on a Russian defence ministry statement that Ukrainian troops had unsuccessfully tried to enter the western part of the Belgorod region.

Russia had said that all Ukrainian attempts to advance towards the villages of Demidovka and Prilesye had been rebuffed, and a cross-border raid had been prevented.

However, several Russian military bloggers at the time reported fighting in Demidovka itself, which lies about two kilometres (1.2 miles) from the Ukrainian border.

The US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) had also said in an update on 21 March that “Ukrainian forces recently advanced in Belgorod”.

“Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces advanced and are consolidating positions on the outskirts of Demidovka and Prilesye,” the ISW said, adding that such claims were unconfirmed.

In the past two days, Russian military bloggers had reported that Ukrainian forces were withdrawing from the Demidovka area.

Ukraine’s operation in Belgorod is believed to be on a much smaller scale compared to its actions in Kursk, where Kyiv at one point seized a number of villages including the regional town of Sudzha.

Zelensky and his top commanders have repeatedly said that such incursions have forced Moscow to redeploy troops from the Donetsk region, where Russian troops have been making steady – although slow – advances in recent months.

Ukraine could also be hoping to exchange the Russian areas it holds for parts of Ukrainian regions occupied by Moscow in any future peace negotiations that are being pushed for by the US.

A number of war analysts – both in Ukraine and the West – have questioned the military expedience of Kyiv’s operations on Russian soil, pointing to reported high combat casualties and weapons supply difficulties.

• Election rumours swirl in Ukraine – could Zelensky be mulling a summer poll?
• Rosenberg: Trump takes US-Russia relations on rollercoaster ride
• US says Putin will make decision on ceasefire in ‘weeks, not months’

The US and Iran will hold “direct talks” over a possible nuclear deal on Saturday, says Donald Trump.

The meeting has also been confirmed by Iran’s foreign minister who called it “as much an opportunity as it is a test”.

The US president on Monday said discussions between Washington and Tehran would be at “very high level” and warned it would be a “very bad day for Iran” if no agreement was reached.

Last month, Trump raised the prospect of military action against Iran after its supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly rejected the offer of direct talks.

Trump disclosed the talks after a White House meeting with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, who has also previously raised the prospect of attacking Iran to stop it from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Speaking in the Oval Office, Trump said: “We have a very big meeting on Saturday [with Iran], and we’re dealing with them directly… And maybe a deal is going to be made, that would be great.”

Trump later said Iran would be in “great danger” if the talks were not successful, adding: “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, and if the talks aren’t successful, I actually think it’ll be a very bad day for Iran.”

The president did not provide further details about the talks, including how progressed they are or which officials have been involved.

Iran’s foreign minister confirmed Washington and Tehran will meet in Oman on 12 April.

Abbas Araqchi wrote on X: “It is as much an opportunity as it is a test. The ball is in America’s court.”

In March, Trump sent a letter to Iran’s leader via an intermediary from the United Arab Emirates setting out his willingness to negotiate.

That offer was rejected by Iran, though its leadership signalled a willingness to discuss a possible deal with the US via a third party.

Curbing Iran’s ability to build nuclear weapons has been a key foreign policy goal for the US and its allies for decades.

In 2015, then-President Barack Obama made an agreement with Iran under which it would limit its nuclear activities and allow international inspectors into the country to ensure facilities were being solely used for civilian purposes and not weapons production.

In return, Iran was to be offered relief from sanctions, which have crippled its economy.

That agreement was co-signed by China, France, Germany, Russia and the UK.

However, in 2016, Trump unilaterally pulled the US out of the deal, which he had been strongly critical of during his first presidential election campaign.

In the years that followed, Iran has increasingly breached its terms. The International Atomic Energy Agency has warned Tehran has built up large stockpiles of enriched uranium, which can be used to make nuclear bombs.

In recent months, Trump has repeatedly raised the prospect of negotiating a new agreement with Iran, while threatening military action if one can not be reached.

Israel sees preventing its rival Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon as central to its long-term security. It has reportedly weighed up striking its production facilities in recent months.

Last year, Israel said it had hit an Iranian nuclear site in retaliation for Iran’s earlier missile attack on Israel.

Speaking at the White House, Netanyahu said: “We and the United States are both united in the goal that Iran does not ever get nuclear weapons.

“If it can be done diplomatically in a full way, the way it was done in Libya, I think that would be a good thing.”

Madonna has said she and Sir Elton John have “buried the hatchet” and put an end to their decades-long feud.

Sir Elton, 78, has repeatedly accused Madonna of lip syncing over the years, prompting Madonna’s team – back in 2004 – to respond that she did not “spend her time trashing other artists”.

The music legends reconciled over the weekend after Madonna went to “confront” Sir Elton following his performance on Saturday Night Live (SNL), she wrote on Instagram.

“The first thing out of his mouth was ‘forgive me’, and the wall between us fell down,” she added.

The Vogue singer, 66, said she had been a fan of Sir Elton since she was a teenager.

“Seeing him perform when I was in high school changed the course of my life,” the post read.

“Over the decades it hurt me to know that someone I admired so much shared his dislike of me publicly as an artist. I didn’t understand it.”

The strain on the pair’s relationship has its roots in the noughties.

In 2004, Sir Elton ridiculed Madonna’s nomination in the Best Live Act category at the Q Awards, using explicit language.

He asked: “Since when has lip syncing been live?”

“Anyone who lip syncs in public on stage when you pay £75 to see them should be shot,” he continued.

Madonna’s team denied that she did not sing live.

Sir Elton doubled down on his criticism in the years that followed, and in 2012 said Madonna didn’t stand a “chance” of beating him to the Golden Globe for best original song.

After picking up the award for her song Masterpiece, Madonna told reporters she hoped Sir Elton would “speak to me for the next couple of years”.

“He’s been known to get mad at me.”

In her post on Monday, Madonna suggested the reconciliation may lead to a musical partnership.

“He told me [he] had written a song for me and he wanted to collaborate.”

In response, Sir Elton thanked Madonna for “forgiving me and my big mouth”.

The singer added that he was not proud of what he had said over the years, especially considering Madonna’s “ground-breaking work… paving the way for an entire generation of female artists to succeed and be true to themselves”.

“I’m increasingly distressed by all the divisiveness in our world at the moment,” he said in a comment on her Instagram post.

“By pulling together, I’m hopeful that we can make great things happen for those who really need support, and have a lot of fun doing it.”

The US Supreme Court is allowing President Donald Trump to continue to use a rarely-invoked wartime powers law to carry out rapid mass deportations of alleged gang members – for now.

A lower court had temporarily blocked the deportations of alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador on 15 March, ruling that the administration’s actions under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act needed further scrutiny.

Trump has alleged that the migrants were “conducting irregular warfare” against the US and could therefore be removed under the Act.

While the ruling is a win for the administration, the 5-4 ruling clarified that deportees must be given an opportunity to challenge their removal.

“The notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs,” the justices wrote in the unsigned decision on Monday.

“The only question is which court will resolve that challenge,” they wrote.

Monday’s ruling said the challenge – brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of five migrants – was raised improperly in a Washington DC court and not in Texas, where the migrants are confined.

Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court’s three liberal justices in dissenting with the majority ruling.

In the dissent, they wrote that the administration’s “conduct in this litigation poses an extraordinary threat to the rule of law”.

At least 137 people have been deported by the Trump administration under the Alien Enemies Act, a move widely condemned by rights groups.

The act, last used in World War Two, grants the US president sweeping powers to order the detention and deportation of natives or citizens of an “enemy” nation without following the usual processes.

It was passed as part of a series of laws in 1798 when the US believed it would enter a war with France.

Trump called Monday’s ruling a “great day for justice in America”.

“The Supreme Court has upheld the Rule of Law in our Nation by allowing a President, whoever that may be, to be able to secure our Borders, and protect our families and our Country, itself,” he wrote on Truth Social.

Monday’s decision vacates an earlier ruling by federal judge James Boasberg, which had temporarily blocked the use of the law to carry out the deportations.

Boasberg had dismissed the government’s response to his order as “woefully insufficient”. The White House said the judge’s order itself was not lawful and was issued after two flights carrying the men had already left the US.

A federal appeals court later kept Boasberg’s block in place.

Rights groups and some legal experts have called the invocation of the Act unprecedented, arguing it has only previously been used after the US officially declared a war, which under the US constitution only Congress can do.

The Supreme Court has granted a request by the Trump administration to temporarily block a lower court order requiring that a deported Salvadorian man be returned to the US.

Chief Justice John Roberts agreed to pause a ruling that Kilmar Abrego Garcia should be brought back from El Salvador by midnight on Monday.

The government has said Mr Garcia was deported on 15 March due to an “administrative error”, although they also allege he is a member of the MS-13 gang, which his lawyer denies.

In its emergency appeal to America’s highest court, the Trump administration argued the Maryland judge lacked authority to issue the order and that US officials cannot compel El Salvador to return Mr Garcia.

US Solicitor General D John Sauer wrote in his emergency court filing: “The United States does not control the sovereign nation of El Salvador, nor can it compel El Salvador to follow a federal judge’s bidding.”

He added: “The Constitution charges the president, not federal district courts, with the conduct of foreign diplomacy and protecting the nation against foreign terrorists, including by effectuating their removal.”

US Attorney General Pamela Bondi welcomed Justice Roberts’ stay, and said the administration will “continue to fight this case and protect the executive branch from judicial overreach”.

Chief Justice Roberts’ administrative stay on Monday afternoon will allow the Supreme Court time to consider the case.

Mr Garcia, 29, is being held at a maximum security prison in El Salvador known as the Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot), along with hundreds of other men the US has deported over allegations of criminal and gang activity.

His wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, is a US citizen and has called for his release. He was reportedly working as a sheet metal worker when he was detained last month.

Mr Garcia entered the US illegally as a teenager. In 2019 he was arrested with three other men in Maryland and detained by federal immigration authorities.

During a hearing before an immigration judge, the homeland security department said a “proven and reliable source” had confirmed that Mr Garcia had ties to MS-13, a street gang that started in Los Angeles but with roots in El Salvador.

But Mr Garcia’s attorneys argued that their client had no gang connections or criminal history.

Another immigration judge granted Mr Garcia protection from deportation in 2019 on the grounds that he might be at risk of persecution from local gangs in his home country.

The family’s lawyer, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, called Mr Garica’s deportation last month “the equivalent of a forcible expulsion”.

Responding to the chief justice’s order on Monday afternoon, Mr Sandoval-Moshenberg said: “This is just a temporary administrative stay, we have full confidence that the Supreme Court will resolve this matter as quickly as possible.”

Last week, US District Judge Paula Xinis, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, grilled the Trump administration’s attorney during a hearing over the deportation.

Justice department lawyer Erez Reuveni told her that Mr Garcia “should not have been removed”.

Over the weekend, Bondi announced Mr Reuveni – a 15-year veteran of the department – had been placed on paid administrative leave for failing to “zealously advocate on behalf of the United States”.

In a scathing opinion released on Sunday, Judge Xinis found that the US government’s error “shocks the conscience”.

She said the government had acted “without any lawful authority” and was holding Mr Garcia in “direct contravention” of US law.

The Trump administration escalated the case to a Maryland appeals court, which denied their request to stay Judge Xinis’ order.

The Supreme Court then issued its ruling just hours ahead of the deadline to return Mr Garcia by 23:59 EDT on Monday night (03:59 GMT Tuesday).

The Trump administration had called that deadline “impossible”.

The US Commerce Secretary has defended the country’s decision to impose tariffs on a group of uninhabited islands, which are populated only by penguins and seals.

The imposition of tariffs on the Heard and McDonald islands was meant to close “ridiculous loopholes” and would prevent other countries from shipping through the islands to reach the US, Howard Lutnick told the BBC’s US partner CBS.

Authorities in Australia reacted with surprise last week when they found out about the tariffs on the island, which sits 4,000km (2,485 mi) from Australia.

Its trade minister Don Farrell told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation the tariffs were “clearly a mistake” and indicated a “rushed process”.

But when asked about the inclusion of the Australian territory on Trump’s tariffs list, Lutnick said: “If you leave anything off the list, the countries that try to basically arbitrage America go through those countries to us.”

“The President knows that, he’s tired of it, and he’s going to fix that.”

Lutnick’s interview was one of several given by US government officials to defend the president’s new tariffs after all three major stock indexes in the US plunged more than 5% on Friday, in the worst week for the US stock market since 2020.

Shipping products through one port to another in a process known as transshipment is common in global trade. But Pew Charitable Trusts, a public policy organisation, says this method can also “enable bad actors to obscure or manipulate data” around the shipping events.

They estimate that hundreds of millions of dollars of tuna and similar species are illegally moved via this method in the western and central Pacific each year.

It’s difficult to get a clear picture on the imports from the Heard and McDonald islands to the US.

According to export data from the World Bank, the islands have, over the past few years, usually exported a small amount of products to the US.

It peaked in 2022, when the US imported US$1.4m (A$2.3m; £1.1m) from the territory, nearly all of it unnamed “machinery and electrical” products.

Also included on Trump’s list was the British Indian Ocean territory, which is solely occupied by military personnel and requires a permit to visit. World Bank export data shows the territory exported US$414,350 to the US in 2022.

A billionaire backer of Donald Trump has urged the US president to pause his recently announced trade tariffs, or risk “a self-induced, economic nuclear winter”.

Amid market turmoil, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman said the president should take three months to allow countries to renegotiate their trading relationships with the US.

On Monday, Mr Ackman’s warning was echoed by other prominent Wall Street figures, with JPMorgan Chase chairman Jamie Dimon saying that Trump’s tariffs risked pushing up prices for Americans.

Despite the shockwaves, the American president is moving ahead, with the White House rushing to label a rumour he might put new tariffs on pause as “fake news”.

The rumour on Monday morning that Trump was considering a 90-day pause briefly lifted a swiftly sinking stock market after it was reported on financial network CNBC.

The White House almost immediately shot down the report, showing Trump’s commitment to his new import taxes. Stock prices largely stabilised afterward.

The “baseline” tariffs of 10% on most countries’ goods that Trump announced last week have already gone into effect, while the higher “reciprocal” rates he wants to impose on the “worst offenders” are expected later this week. Some countries are seeking to negotiate lower rates with the White House.

The new tariffs, added to steep levies Trump has already put on goods from Canada and Mexico, as well as all automobile imports, are worrying business and economic leaders that they will push up prices for American consumers and spark a global trade war.

The head of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, said on Monday that the tariffs will raise prices and possibly inflation, and contribute to an economic downturn, according to media reports.

“Most CEOs I talk to would say we are probably in a recession right now,” Larry Fink, the firm’s CEO, told a meeting of the Economic Club of New York.

Goldman Sachs on Sunday said there is a 45% probability of the US entering a recession within the year, after estimating a 35% probability a week ago, before Trump unveiled his tariff plans at an event called “Liberation Day”.

Trump says the import taxes will boost his country with new jobs and investment.

He defended them on Sunday, telling reporters aboard Air Force One that “sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something”.

In his post on X on Sunday, Mr Ackman acknowledged the Trump argument that the global trade system had “disadvantaged” the US.

But, he wrote, tariffs that Trump had imposed were “massive and disproportionate”, and did not distinguish between American friends and enemies.

Mr Ackman, the billionaire founder of Pershing Square hedge fund management company, became a high-profile supporter of Trump, a Republican, in July 2024.

He had previously backed the rival Democratic Party, and his intervention was seen as an important electoral endorsement from the world of business.

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The “reciprocal” rates from the Trump administration, which can reach up to 50%, will be levied on some important manufacturing centres in Asia.

Numerous countries have vowed to respond, and China has already retaliated with new tariffs of its own on goods imported from the US. Trump on Monday threatened to put an additional 50% tariff on goods from the country, which would bring the total taxes he intends to charge to more than 100%.

Trump had launched an “economic war against the whole world at once” that risked shattering investor confidence in the US, Mr Ackman commented.

Mr Ackman said the American leader now had “an opportunity to call a 90-day time out, negotiate and resolve unfair asymmetric tariff deals, and induce trillions of dollars of new investment in our country”.

His post on Sunday indicated that he felt the ball was back in Trump’s court – after an earlier message on X which urged leaders of other countries to “pick up the phone” to make a deal with Trump.

As stock markets around the world continued their slump on Monday, the head of banking giant JPMorgan Chase offered his own take, warning of “many uncertainties” around the new tariffs policy.

In a letter to shareholders, Mr Dimon said the tariffs will “likely increase inflation and are causing many to consider a greater probability of a recession”.

“The quicker this issue is resolved, the better because some of the negative effects increase cumulatively over time and would be hard to reverse,” he wrote.

Trump’s officials have downplayed the recession risk. The baseline 10% tariff is already in effect, with the higher rates faced by some countries due to come into effect on Wednesday.

Speaking aboard the presidential plane on a flight back to Washington DC on Sunday, Trump himself said European and Asian countries were “dying to make a deal”.

Shares in the US stemmed their losses on Monday, as investors clung to hopes that US President Donald Trump would turn from tariffs to trade deals.

The S&P 500, which tracks 500 of the biggest companies in the US, ended the day down about 0.2%, after a wild day of trading that saw shares gyrating from losses to gains in some of the sharpest swings since the Covid-19 pandemic.

The respite came despite Trump escalating his tariff threats against China, as US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he was opening negotiations with Japan, and looking forward to talks with other nations.

Trump offered mixed signals, saying he expected some tariffs to be permanent and some to be negotiated.

“They can both be true,” he said, while rejecting calls that he delay the import taxes he unveiled on goods from every country in the world last Wednesday.

The White House has said more than 50 countries have reached out to discuss trade.

“I believe that sooner or later, we will be at the negotiating table,” European Union trade official Maroš Šefčovič said, as the bloc prepared to vote on how to respond.

In the days after Trump’s announcement, stock markets in the US and in the UK were hit by their worst one-day falls since the beginning of the Covid pandemic in 2020.

The S&P 500 has seen more than 10% of its value wiped out over three days – a drop almost as steep as the declines seen during the 2008 financial crisis and at the onset of the pandemic in 2020.

The index is now trading at levels seen roughly a year ago, reflecting widespread concerns about the impact of the tariffs on the US and global economies.

“It is frustrating for investors,” said Mike Mussio, president of FBB Capital. “This feels like kind of an unforced error in terms of policy.”

High profile business leaders in the US including Jamie Dimon, Trump-backer Bill Ackman and Daniel Loeb have started to speak out amid the market rout.

But Trump has doubled down on his strategy.

On Monday, he threatened to hit imports from China with an additional 50% tariff, unless Beijing withdraws the retaliatory measures it announced last week.

That would take the tax on Chinese goods coming into the US to at least 104% – as it comes on top of the 34% tariff he announced on goods from China last week, which themselves added to the tariff of at least 20% imposed since January.

China’s decision to impose retaliatory tariffs of 34% on the US had already escalated worries about a trade war between the two nations

If world leaders are unable to agree terms with Trump, the tariffs may have a destructive effect on economies globally, analysts have warned.

“Fundamentally, investors are worried about a big hit to corporate [profits] and a massive slowdown in economic growth,” said Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell.

In early trading on Monday, the S&P 500 fell, briefly dropping more than 20% since its most recent peak in February – which would mark a milestone known as a “bear market”.

But a rumour that the White House was considering putting tariffs on hold sent shares surging more than 7% in a matter of minutes.

Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at S&P Dow Jones indices, said that he had seen few comparable swings in a career spanning more than four decades on Wall Street.

“That’s enormous,” he said. “There’s a lot of uncertainty here and that’s what’s driving the market.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 0.9%, but the Nasdaq was roughly flat, up 0.1%.

European markets closed lower, with London’s FTSE 100 falling 4.4% to 7,702, its lowest level in more than a year.

Shares in Paris and Berlin also dropped, while earlier leading indexes in Asia had plunged in what one analyst described as a “bloodbath”.

The fears weighed on the price of oil which fell more than 4%, before gaining back some ground.

Meanwhile, copper, an indicator of economic growth because it is widely used in industry, fell roughly 3%, while the price of gold, which is usually seen as a “safe” investment, also dropped.

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