Suddenly, Donald Trump’s trade war is in much sharper focus.

Rather than a fight on all fronts against the world, this now looks far more like a fight on familiar Trumpian territory: America v China.

The 90-day pause on the higher “retaliatory” tariffs levied on dozens of countries still leaves a universal across-the-board tariff of 10% in place.

But China – which ships everything from iPhones to children’s toys and accounts for around 14% of all US imports – has been singled out for much harsher treatment with an eye-watering rate of 125%.

Trump said the increase was due to Beijing’s readiness to retaliate with its own 84% levy on US goods, a move the president described as showing a “lack of respect”.

But for a politician who first fought his way to the White House on the back of an anti-China message, there is much more to this than simple retaliation.

For Trump, this is about the unfinished business of that first term in office.

“We didn’t have the time to do the right thing, which we’re doing now,” he told reporters.

The aim is nothing less than the upending of an established system of global trade centred on China as the factory of the world, as well as the once widely held view that underpinned it – the idea that more of this trade was, in and of itself, a good thing.

To understand just how central this is to the US president’s thinking, you need to go back to the time before anyone ever thought of him as a possible candidate for office, let alone a likely winner.

In 2012, when I first reported from Shanghai – China’s business capital – increased trade with the country was seen by almost everyone – global business leaders, Chinese officials, visiting foreign governments and trade delegations, foreign correspondents and learned economists – as a no brainer.

It was boosting global growth, providing an endless supply of cheap goods, enriching China’s army of new factory workers increasingly embedded in global supply chains, and providing lucrative opportunities to multinational corporations selling their wares to its newly minted middle classes.

Within a few of years of my arrival, China had surpassed the US to become the world’s biggest market for Rolls Royce, General Motors and Volkswagen.

• What are tariffs and why is Trump using them?
• US pauses higher tariffs for most countries but hits China harder
• Trump steps back from cliff edge of all-out global trade war

There was a deeper justification, too.

As China got richer, so the theory went, Chinese people would begin to demand political reform.

Their spending habits would also help China transition to a consumer society.

But the first of those aspirations never happened, with China’s ruling Communist Party only tightening its grip on power.

And the second one didn’t happen fast enough, with China not only still dependent on exports, but openly planning to become ever more dominant.

Its infamous policy blueprint – published in 2015 and entitled Made in China 2025 – set out a huge state-backed vision of becoming a global leader in a number of key manufacturing sectors, from aerospace to ship building to electric vehicles.

And so it was that same year, a political outsider launched his run for US president, making the case repeatedly on the campaign trail that China’s rise had hollowed out the American economy, driven Rust Belt decline and cost blue-collar workers their livelihoods and dignity.

Trump’s first-term trade war broke the mould and shattered the consensus. His successor, President Joe Biden, kept much of his tariffs on China in place.

And yet, even though they have undoubtedly caused China some pain, they have not done much to change the economic model.

China now produces 60% of the world’s electric cars – a large proportion of them made by its own homegrown brands – and 80% of the batteries that power them.

So, now Trump is back, with this tit-for-tat escalation on levies.

It would, arguably, be the biggest shock ever delivered to the established global trading system, were it not for all the other on-again off-again tariff measures the US president has rolled out in recent days.

What happens next depends on two key questions.

Firstly, whether China takes up that offer to negotiate.

And secondly, assuming it eventually does, whether China is willing to make the kind of major concessions that America is looking for, including a complete overhaul of its export driven economic model.

In answering them, the first thing to say is that we are in completely unchartered territory, so we should be wary of anyone who says they know how Beijing is likely to react.

But there are certainly reasons to be cautious.

China’s vision of its economic strength – one based on strong exports and a tightly protected domestic market – is now closely bound up with its idea of national rejuvenation and the supremacy of its one-party system.

Its tight control over the information sphere means it will be unlikely to drop its barriers to American technology companies, for example.

But there is a third question, and it is one for America to answer.

Does the US still believe in free trade? Donald Trump often suggests that tariffs are a good thing, not merely as a means to an end, but as an end in themselves.

He talks about the benefit of a protectionist barrier for America, in order to stimulate domestic investment, encourage American companies to bring those foreign supply chains back home, and raise tax revenues.

And if Beijing believes that is indeed the primary purpose of the tariffs, it may decide there is nothing to negotiate anyway.

Rather than championing the idea of economic co-operation, the world’s two biggest superpowers may find themselves locked in a fight for winner-takes-all economic supremacy.

If so, that really would mark a shattering of the old consensus, and a very different, possibly very dangerous, future.

Australia has swiftly turned down China’s offer to “join hands” against Donald Trump’s tariffs, as Washington escalates its trade war with Beijing.

The White House recently imposed an import tax of 10% on Australian goods, but for China – Australia’s biggest trading partner – raised tariffs to 125%.

China’s ambassador to Australia Xiao Qian argued joint resistance is “the only way” to stop the “hegemonic and bullying behaviour of the US”, appealing for Canberra’s cooperation in an opinion piece on Thursday.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, however, said Australians would “speak for ourselves”, while the country’s defence minister said the nation would not be “holding China’s hand”.

“It’s about pursuing Australia’s national interests, not about making common calls with China,” Richard Marles told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Hours earlier, Trump had dramatically changed course on his sweeping tariffs scheme, announcing a 90-day pause for countries hit with high US tariffs. In the meantime, a tariff of 10% would apply.

China was the exception though. Instead, the US imposed an extra bump on import fees, after Beijing announced it would impose 84% counter-tariffs on the US.

Canberra has expressed anger over the tariffs but has said it will not retaliate, instead seeking further negotiations with the White House.

In his opinion piece for Nine Newspapers, Mr Xiao said the US had “weaponised” trade issues and expressed concern that a “weak compromise” would enable Trump to “sabotage the international order” and drag the world economy into a “quagmire” and an “abyss”.

Australia and China have a “mutually beneficial and long-standing co-operation” and need to work together to “safeguard a fair and free trading environment”, he added.

“The international community… should firmly say no to unilateralism and protectionism.”

Albanese told reporters on Thursday that Australia’s trade relationship with China was an important one, but said Australia was focussed on looking for other export opportunities outside of the US.

“Eighty percent of trade does not involve the United States. There are opportunities for Australia and we intend to seize them,” he said.

Marles said Australia is also looking to lessen its reliance on China, to bolster “economic resilience”, adding that the country’s focus would be on diversifying trade, in particular with Indonesia, India, the UK and the UAE.

Australian Trade Minister Don Farrell has held meetings with Japan, Singapore, South Korea and India in recent days.

“This week is Passover – the festival of freedom,” Liri Albag, an Israeli soldier held hostage in Gaza for 15 months by Hamas, told a crowd of thousands gathered in Tel Aviv last weekend. “But what kind of freedom is it when 59 people are still in Hamas hell?”

In recent weeks, powerful voices have joined the fight to bring home Israel’s remaining hostages – those of the captives released during the latest ceasefire deal that began in January and lasted two months.

Despite their ongoing trauma, frailty and grief, a number of ex-hostages have felt compelled to give their harrowing testimony on stage at demonstrations, in long TV interviews or in meetings overseas with world leaders.

They have detailed their own harsh treatment and expressed fears for the fate of others left behind, especially since Israel cut off all humanitarian aid to Gaza at the start of March and restarted its military offensive two weeks later, saying this was to put pressure on Hamas.

Twenty-four of those who have been held captive since the deadly Hamas-led attacks on Israel of 7 October 2023 are still believed to be alive.

Witnessing the collapse of the ceasefire has been unbearable, the former hostages say.

“We have no time. The earth is burning under our feet,” insisted Gadi Moses, an 80-year-old farmer abducted by Palestinian Islamic Jihad from Kibbutz Nir Oz and freed in January, who also spoke at Saturday’s rally in Hostages Square.

“I’m not really here. Only half of me is standing here,” said Omer Wenkert, another former hostage, in his emotive address. “Part of us, part of all of us, is still captive in Gaza.”

He called on Israeli leaders to take action on the hostages saying: “Prime Minister Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, it’s on you to get them back.”

Many of the released hostages want a return to the original ceasefire deal which brought them home in exchange for some 1,800 Palestinians being freed by Israel.

The agreement was meant to see a second phase in which remaining Israeli captives would be returned and the war would end.

However, Israel now rejects this and is pushing instead for more hostages to be freed through an extension of the first phase of the truce.

Hamas has agreed only to an extension involving the release of fewer hostages than Israel will accept, and ultimately wants to return to the original ceasefire framework.

Since appearing on stage, flanked by masked gunmen and looking pale and thin, at a Hamas handover ceremony in Gaza City in February, US-Israeli hostage Keith Siegel has turned into an active campaigner.

He was part of a group of eight ex-hostages that met President Donald Trump in the Oval Office last month – crediting him with securing the recent deal that brought back 25 hostages and the bodies of eight others and urging him to help get ceasefire negotiations back on track.

“It’s urgent and every day that goes on is just more and more suffering and more and more possible death and psychological devastation,” Mr Siegel told 60 Minutes on the US network CBS.

Mr Siegel described how he and others with whom he was initially held – including women and children – had been forced to adjust to life in the tunnels.

“We were gasping for our breath,” he recalled.

He said there was constant abuse: “I witnessed a young woman who was being tortured by the terrorist. I mean literal torture, not just in the figurative sense.”

A prominent former hostage, Yarden Bibas, gave his first interview to 60 Minutes, speaking in English, hoping his powerful story and ceasefire message would reach the US president.

“I’m here because of Trump. I’m here only because of him. I think he’s the only one who can stop this war again,” Mr Bibas said. “He has to convince Netanyahu, he has to convince Hamas, I think he can do it.”

Hamas filmed the anguish of Mr Bibas after telling him in late 2023 that his wife Shiri and two children had been blown up in an Israeli air strike, although Israeli officials later said forensic evidence showed his boys were killed by their captors.

“They were murdered in cold blood, bare hands,” Mr Bibas said, remembering how the men holding him used to taunt him over his family’s fate. “They used to tell me: ‘Ah, it doesn’t matter, you’ll get a new wife, you’ll get new kids, better wife, better kids’.”

The small, red-haired Bibas boys, Ariel and Kfir, have become a symbol of the horror of the events of 7 October.

On the day in February that Yarden Bibas buried them with their mother, after their bodies were returned, thousands of Israelis turned out along the route of the funeral procession to pay their last respects.

Given his ordeal, many were surprised to see Mr Bibas quickly turn to lobbying. But hours after Israel renewed its bombardment of Gaza on 18 March, he joined other former hostages standing in silent protest in Hostages Square.

Mr Bibas told CBS how terrifying it was to be held in a tunnel when Israel’s warplanes struck.

“You don’t know when it’s going to happen and when it happens, you’re afraid for your life,” he said. “The whole earth would move like an earthquake, but underground.”

He explained his constant fear for his best friend, David Cunio, who remains in Gaza with his brother, Ariel.

Mr Cunio’s wife Sharon and children were released in the first truce of the Gaza war in November 2023.

“I lost my wife and kids,” Mr Bibas concluded. “Sharon must not lose her husband.”

Eli Sharabi – like Mr Bibas, Mr Siegel and Mr Moses – was kidnapped from his home next to Gaza.

When he was released, looking gaunt and hollow-eyed after nearly 500 days in captivity, it was clear his captors had not told him what most Israelis already knew – that his British-born wife, Lianne and teenage daughters, Noiya and Yahel, were among some 1,200 people killed on 7 October.

Just three weeks after his release, Mr Sharabi gave a heart-wrenching TV interview to Israel’s Channel 12 TV. He described how he had learnt the fate of his family from a social worker he knew after the Red Cross handed him to the Israeli army.

“I said: ‘Bring me my wife and the girls’,” Mr Sharabi recalled, only for the social worker to respond: “Osnat [his sister] and your Mum will tell you.”

“Obviously there was nothing to tell, she had said it all,” he went on, his voice breaking. “The worst disaster had happened.”

Mr Sharabi – who has since met Trump and addressed the UN Security Council – said he decided he must talk about his experiences even as he was processing his loss because: “It’s very simple, no-one must be left behind.”

He described his painful goodbye to Alon Ohel, a young musician kidnapped from the Nova music festival with whom he was held in an underground cell in Gaza.

“I promised him that I wouldn’t leave him there, that I would fight for him… I told him it’s a matter of days, just days,” he said.

Upon his release, Mr Sharabi and another released hostage were able to give Ohel’s family the first proof that he was alive, even passing his sister a birthday message. However, they have also revealed he is unable to see in one eye due to untreated shrapnel injuries.

Mr Sharabi has laid out how, in order to deal with his long captivity, he went into “survival mode” – a term several former hostages have used – observing: “Survival is made of little steps, little victories.”

He lost 30kg (66lb) and said that, as well as being beaten and humiliated, he felt “impossible” hunger during his captivity. He described how he and the three other hostages with him were given one meal a day and they would divide a single flatbread, or pitta, into quarters to share.

Omer Wenkert, who was also seized from the Nova festival, told Channel 12 how he was kept in a 1m-by-1m cell. The lowest point in his life – he said – was being woken up to get hit with a metal rod to his head on his birthday.

He related one crushing experience when he was desperately hungry and one of his captors told him to turn his back while food was laid out for him.

Then, he said: “There were pittas on the filthy floor on a filthy nylon cover, which was full of sand and fungi, and on top of it a block of cheese with a giant mould growing on it.”

On Fox News Digital, Tal Shoham, narrated how he and two other men – Guy Gilboa-Dalal and Evyatar David, who remain in captivity – were moved in an ambulance that Hamas used for discreetly transporting hostages to a tunnel, to be held with Mr Wenkert. Their toilet was a hole in the ground.

He said they were monitored by cameras, often beaten and randomly deprived of food and sleep.

The guards, he said, continued to dig underground passages even as war raged on. “Hamas never stopped digging tunnels,” Mr Shoham remarked. “Not for a single day.”

The situation was so bad both he and Mr David developed serious infections but were not seen by a doctor.

“My leg turned blue, yellow, and purple with internal bleeding,” he explained. “They gave us blood thinners, fearing we might develop clots from prolonged immobility. Eventually, they realised the issue was malnutrition and provided us with vitamin supplements for seven days. It tasted like dog food, but it dramatically improved our condition.”

Other hostages said they were kept in solitary confinement. Gadi Moses has said he resorted to pacing his cell and solving mental maths problems to deal with this “psychological abuse”.

He told Channel 12: “The depth of the fear, the depth of disconnection from the world, the depth of the unknown – it’s impossible to convey.”

“You start having terrible thoughts,” admitted Omer Shem Tov, who was taken hostage at the Nova festival and also kept in isolation, speaking to Israeli public broadcaster, Kan. “Every day feels like an eternity.”

While Mr Shem Tov praised the Israeli military in his interview, saying it was doing “holy work” in Gaza, he insisted the government had to make a new ceasefire deal and prioritise the hostages. He commented: “I don’t know if you understand it… but you are breaking them.”

Fears for the lives of those still held captive have been heightened since Hamas recently stated it would not move living hostages out of the large areas where the Israeli military has ordered evacuations.

The armed group has previously threatened to execute hostages if Israeli troops approach the locations where they are held. In August, Hamas killed six hostages in Rafah after Israeli forces moved in nearby.

Liri Albag, who was 18 and had finished her army training only two days before she was snatched from her base on the Gaza border, gave her first in-depth TV interview in March.

“The truth is that 7 October feels like one long nightmare, and I’ve been waiting for someone to wake me up, for someone to tell me I was dreaming. But that didn’t happen. Unfortunately, this has all been real,” she told Channel 12.

Like other hostages, she has recounted her terror when she was first taken to Gaza. “[We saw] the Gazan masses surrounding us, standing on the sides, clapping, whistling, dancing… [Palestinians] ran after us, happy, firing in the air. Children, women, old people.”

She said her experience led her to conclude that there are no “innocent bystanders” in Gaza.

Scenes from the territory broadcast on 7 October, combined with the testimony from hostages that has now emerged, have hardened Israeli views when it comes to the suffering of Palestinians.

In the devastating Gaza war triggered by the Hamas attacks, more than 50,846 people have been killed – most of them women, children and the elderly – according to figures from the Hamas-run health ministry, used by the UN.

“As long as the hostage issue is still on the table, the emotional ability of Israelis to empathise with the Palestinians is close to zero,” says Professor Tamar Hermann, an expert on public opinion at the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI).

Nevertheless, the latest surveys do indicate widespread support for a new ceasefire and hostage release deal.

When the IDI recently asked Israelis which of the state’s declared war goals – toppling Hamas or bringing home all the hostages – was more important, 68% said it was the latter, more than in polls last year.

Meeting at the White House on Monday, President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu said there were ongoing efforts to restart truce talks and free the hostages.

“We’re trying very hard to get the hostages out. We’re looking at another ceasefire, we’ll see what happens,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

“We’re working now on another deal that we hope will succeed,” Netanyahu said. “The hostages are in agony, and we want to get them all out.”

Despite his strong words, many of the former hostages question Netanyahu’s commitment.

For his political survival, the prime minister relies on far-right allies who back continued fighting in Gaza and military occupation of the strip.

Some of the freed hostages have openly accused the Israeli government of betrayal and abandonment and, in some cases, they have drawn vicious online threats for their comments.

No wonder, then, that many continue to pin their hopes on Trump.

Along with Keith Siegel and his wife Aviva, another recently released hostage, Yair Horn, followed Netanyahu to Washington this week. The group had their own set of meetings with high-ranking officials and again met the president.

Mr Horn wore a red hoodie showing his younger brother, Eitan, who is still held in Gaza. The brothers were abducted together from Nir Oz and a haunting video released by Hamas showed them on the eve of Yair’s release – hugging, with Eitan weeping.

A day after Trump’s Netanyahu meeting, Mr Horn stood with the US leader at a Republican event and stressed his gratitude to him.

“It’s really surreal to be here, you know,” he said. “I’m a simple man. I’m running the bar in the kibbutz in Nir Oz, where I lived. And now, I’m here with President Trump, who is running the world.”

Mr Horn asked “humbly” for “the last push” to bring home the remaining hostages, including his brother.

Sounding in despair, he also reflected on how Passover was approaching with the traditional Seder meal. The major Jewish holiday celebrates the exodus of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and so has special poignancy for the freed hostages and those still captive in Gaza, like Eitan.

“In a few days we mark Passover… it’s a family time,” Mr Horn told the audience, his voice cracking. “I hope my little brother can sit with us at the Seder.”

A Russian-American citizen has been released in a prisoner swap between Moscow and Washington.

Amateur ballerina Ksenia Karelina, a Los Angeles resident, had been in prison in Russia for over a year, after being arrested in the city of Yekaterinburg in early 2024.

She was found guilty of treason for donating money to a US-based charity providing humanitarian support to Ukraine and was sentenced to 12 years in a penal colony.

In exchange, the US reportedly freed Arthur Petrov, a dual German-Russian citizen arrested in Cyprus in 2023. He was accused of illegally exporting microelectronics to Russia for manufacturers working with the Russian military.

The prisoner swap took place in Abu Dhabi in the early hours of Thursday.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed Ms Karelina was “on a plane back home to the United States.”

He added she had been “wrongfully detained by Russia for over a year”.

“President Trump secured her release. [The President] will continue to work for the release of ALL Americans.”

CIA director John Ratcliffe was present at the exchange, the Wall Street Journal said.

It is the second prisoner swap between Russia and the US in less than two months.

In February, Russian national Alexander Vinnik – who was imprisoned in a US jail on money laundering charges – was freed in exchange for the release of American schoolteacher Marc Fogel.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says at least 155 Chinese citizens are fighting for Russia in the war.

His comments come after two Chinese fighters were captured earlier this week – marking Kyiv’s first official allegation that China was supplying Russia with manpower.

Speaking to journalists on Wednesday, Zelensky reiterated his claim that there are “many more” Chinese nationals engaged in the conflict, based on information gathered by his government.

Responding on Thursday, a Chinese government spokesman said they “advise relevant parties to correctly and soberly understand China’s role and not to make irresponsible remarks”.

“China is neither the creator nor a party to the Ukrainian crisis. We are a staunch supporter and active promoter of the peaceful resolution of the crisis,” said foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian.

He reiterated an earlier comment that appeared to suggest that Chinese soldiers fighting for Russia were doing so in their private capacity.

Mr Lin said China “has always required its citizens to stay away from armed conflict areas and avoid being involved in armed conflicts in any form, especially to avoid participating in military operations of any party”.

Beijing has previously denied many of its citizens are fighting for Russia, saying the claim has “no basis in facts”.

• Ukraine captures two Chinese nationals fighting for Russia
• War has changed Zelensky – but now is the time for him to transform again

Earlier this week, Zelensky said his forces had fought six Chinese soldiers in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region and took two prisoner. Russia declined to comment on this revelation.

On Wednesday Zelensky had told reporters that the “the Chinese issue is serious.”

“There are 155 people with surnames, with passport data – 155 Chinese citizens who are fighting against Ukrainians on the territory of Ukraine,” he said, according to remarks reported by Interfax.

He added that Russia was recruiting Chinese citizens on social media, and that “official Beijing knows about this”.

According to Zelensky, the alleged recruits receive training in Moscow before being sent out to the battlefield in Ukraine, as well as migration documents and payment.

He also released on X a video of what appeared to be an interrogation of the two captured Chinese soldiers.

Speaking in Mandarin Chinese, the soldiers described their background and how they were captured.

One of them said it was his “first time on duty and first time in combat. Before this I had never even fired a gun”. He added that he was captured with a Russian soldier.

The other mentions he was in a group that included two other Chinese soldiers before they were separated in the chaos. “Everyone dispersed, I don’t know if they’re dead or not,” he said.

He said he eventually surrendered along with Russian soldiers.

Zelensky said on X that: “Ukraine believes that such blatant involvement of Chinese citizens in hostilities on the territory of Ukraine during the war of aggression is a deliberate step towards the expansion of the war, and is yet another indication that Moscow simply needs to drag out the fighting.”

He has called on the US and the rest of the world for a response.

Washington has said the reports of Chinese fighting for Russia are “disturbing”.

Ukraine has in the past questioned China’s declared neutral stance. Zelensky previously alleged that Beijing supplies “elements that are part of Russia’s weaponry” and called for the country to maintain a “consistent” position.

China has been accused by the US of helping Russia make more munitions, armoured vehicles and missiles. It has also been scrutinised for allowing dual-use technology that can be used both commercially and militarily – such as computer chips and drones – to be exported to Russia.

While Beijing and Moscow are close political and economic allies, China has attempted to present itself as a neutral party in the conflict and has repeatedly denied supplying Russia with military equipment.

It defends its trade with Moscow by saying it is not selling lethal arms and “prudently handles the export of dual-use items in accordance with laws and regulations”.

The allegations about Chinese soldiers fighting for Russia follows Ukraine’s capture of two injured North Korean soldiers in Russia’s Kursk Oblast.

Andrew Tate pointed a gun in a woman’s face and said “you’re going to do as I say or there’ll be hell to pay”, according to one of four UK women suing the influencer and self-proclaimed misogynist.

The allegation is described in court documents, seen by the BBC, which also contain detailed accounts of rape, assault and coercive control.

One woman claims Tate threatened to kill her, another says he made clear he would kill anyone who spoke to her, and a third claims Tate convinced her he had killed other people.

Tate has denied the claims in a written defence submitted to the High Court, calling them a “pack of lies” and “gross fabrications”.

Separately, Tate continues to face serious legal challenges in three countries – a mixture of civil and criminal claims in the UK, US and Romania.

This civil case concerns incidents the four women allege took place in Luton and Hitchin between 2013 and 2015.

Two of the women worked for Tate’s webcam business in 2015, while the other two were in relationships with him in 2013 and 2014.

The BBC has previously spoken to two of the claimants about their alleged experiences with Tate as part of a Panorama documentary broadcast in September 2024.

However, this is the first time the full extent of the women’s allegations has been revealed.

Some of the allegations in the documents seen by the BBC include that Tate:

• Raped and strangled a woman who was working for his webcam business in 2015
• Assaulted another woman who was also working for his webcam business at the same time
• Strangled both of the above women so often that they developed red petechiae – spots from burst capillaries – in their eyes, a common side effect of asphyxia
• Told a third claimant “I’m just debating whether to rape you or not” before raping and strangling her
• Strangled a fourth claimant, whom we are calling Sienna, during sex until she lost consciousness, and then continued to have sex with her

Three of the women previously reported Tate to the police but in 2019, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decided not to bring criminal charges. They are now seeking damages “arising from the assaults, batteries, and infliction of intentional harm”, their civil claim states.

Tate denies all the allegations, and argues that the women cannot now take legal action against him because too much time has passed, and emails, texts, and other potential evidence would have been lost. A preliminary hearing for the case is due to take place on 15 April.

“Sienna”, the fourth woman involved in the civil case, was not part of the group that reported Tate to the police.

She told the BBC that when she slept with Tate, the sex was initially consensual.

“But then, during sex, he started to strangle me. I passed out, and he carried on having sex with me,” she said.

Tate denies strangling Sienna, and that she lost consciousness due to strangulation, adding that he “may have put a hand on her neck but there was no restriction of her breathing”.

In her claim submitted to the court, Sienna also describes an alleged incident at Tate’s flat in late 2014, where she saw a gun on his sofa. She says she “did not know if it was real or a replica”.

In his written defence, Tate says “there may have been a toy gun in the flat but the 4th Claimant [Sienna] never said anything about it”.

“I didn’t really mention it to him or anything,” Sienna told the BBC. “But I distinctly remember it being there and kind of being a bit freaked out by it, because it’s not really something you see in the UK.”

She added that she thought it would be “a bit strange for a fully grown man to have a toy gun”.

In the court documents another claimant, referred to as AA, alleges Tate threatened her with a gun in her face while swearing, calling himself “a boss” and a “G” and adding: “You’re going to do as I say or there’ll be hell to pay.” Tate denies this happened, writing in his defence that he only started calling himself “Top G” in recent years.

AA says Tate “threatened [her] daily” while she was working for him in 2015, and describes two alleged incidents in which he “grabbed her by her throat and pinned her up against the wall, so she was unable to move”.

Tate also denies AA’s claims that he threatened her and grabbed her by the neck.

Another claimant, BB, alleges Tate “made it very clear that she was ‘his’, and if anyone else spoke to her, he would kill them”.

BB’s written claim describes her being “forced to barricade herself inside the bathroom while the Defendant [Tate] threatened to ‘beat the shit out of’ her”.

Tate denies this allegation, and describes his relationship with BB as “loving and affectionate until shortly before she ceased to work for the business”.

All four women say they have developed long-term mental health problems as a result of their alleged experiences with Tate.

Lawyer Matt Jury of McCue Jury & Partners, who is representing the women, told the BBC his clients had “been denied justice by the police and CPS, while watching Andrew Tate’s influence grow”.

“They have been left with no other choice but to bring their case in the High Court to finally bring Tate to account,” he said.

The women’s claim against Tate is one of several serious legal challenges around the world that he is fighting, including some where he is co-accused with his brother Tristan Tate. They are currently facing a mix of criminal and civil legal action in three countries – the UK, the US and Romania.

In Romania, they are facing allegations including human trafficking, trafficking of minors and money laundering. Andrew Tate also faces allegations of rape.

They are also under criminal investigation in the US state of Florida. Andrew Tate has said that US authorities are “trying to find crimes on an innocent man”.

Andrew Tate’s ex-girlfriend Brianna Stern also filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles last month, accusing him of sexual assault, battery and gender violence.

Last year, the brothers were detained in Bucharest after Bedfordshire Police in the UK said it had obtained an arrest warrant in relation to allegations of rape and trafficking dating back to between 2012 and 2015.

The pair deny all accusations against them.

A travel ban imposed on the brothers in Romania was recently lifted, and they have since travelled to the US and Dubai – something Sienna said was “horrible to see”.

“Maybe men will look at him and think, ‘oh well if he can get away with that, then so can I’ – and it kind of makes it normalised,” she told the BBC.

Sienna added that she thought the UK should be “pushing a lot harder” for the extradition of the Tate brothers.

Neither of the brothers have been convicted of any crimes.

A controversial bill seeking to reinterpret New Zealand’s founding document, which established the rights of both Māori and non-Māori in the country, has been defeated at its second reading.

The Treaty Principles Bill was voted down 112 votes to 11, days after a government committee recommended that it should not proceed.

The proposed legislation sought to legally define the principles of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi – causing widespread outrage that saw more than 40,000 people taking part in a protest outside parliament last year.

The bill had already been widely expected to fail, with most major political parties committed to voting it down.

Members of the right-wing Act Party, which tabled it, were the only MPs to vote for it at the second reading on Thursday. Act’s leader David Seymour has promised to continue campaigning on the issue.

“I believe this Bill or something like it will pass one day because there are not good arguments against its contents,” he wrote on social media.

Tensions were high during a parliamentary debate on the bill in November. Labour MP Willie Jackson was told to leave after refusing to withdraw a comment he made calling Seymour a “liar”.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins said the proposed legislation would forever “be a stain on our country”, while Te Pāti Māori (The Māori Party) MP Hana Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke – who gained international attention for starting a haka in parliament at the bill’s first reading – said it had been “annihilated”.

“Instead of dividing and conquering, this bill has backfired and united communities across the motu [country] in solidarity for our founding agreement and what it represents,” Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson later said in a statement.

The second reading came after a select committee, which had been looking into the proposed legislation released its final report – revealing that more than 300,000 submissions had been made on it, the vast majority of which were opposed.

It is the largest response to proposed legislation that the New Zealand parliament has ever received.

While the principles of the Treaty have never been defined in law, its core values have, over time, been woven into different pieces of legislation in an effort to offer redress to Māori for the wrong done to them during colonisation.

Act’s proposed legislation had three main principles: that the New Zealand government has the power to govern, and parliament to make laws; that the Crown would respect the rights of Māori at the time the Treaty was signed; and that everyone is equal before the law and entitled to equal protection.

The party said the bill would not alter the Treaty itself but would “continue the process of defining the Treaty principles”. This, they believe, would help to create equality for all New Zealanders and improve social cohesion.

Among those backing it was Ruth Richardson, a former finance minister for the centre-right National Party, who told the select committee that the proposed legislation was “a bill of consequence whose time has come”.

She argued that while the Treaty itself could not be disputed, the idea of its principles was a “relatively modern matter”, and that these principles had so far been largely defined by the courts, rather than parliament.

“There is a new imperative in New Zealand on the cultural front, the necessity to address and correct Treaty overreach that has increasingly and evidently become wayward and wrong,” she said.

Opponents of the bill, meanwhile, believe it would be detrimental to Māori and create greater social divides.

Sharon Hawke, the daughter of the late Māori activist and MP Joe Hawke, spoke to the select committee on behalf of the Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei hapū [sub-tribe] – telling it that the legislation “strips the fabric of where we’ve been heading for in the last three decades at improving our people’s [Māori’s] ability to gain education, gain warm housing, gain good health”.

She added that the bill “polluted” the idea of all New Zealanders having a future together.

“We will continue to show our opposition to this,” she said.

Key issues identified by members of the public who made submissions to the select committee included that it was inconsistent with the values of the Treaty, and that it had promoted equality with equity – not taking into account social disparities, such as those created by the legacy of colonisation.

There were also concerns about the extent to which the bill complied with international law, and whether it would negatively impact New Zealand’s reputation internationally.

Submitters who supported the bill, meanwhile, referred to a current lack of clarity and certainty about the principles of the Treaty, and of the importance of equality for all.

They also said that it was important to hold a referendum to facilitate a national conversation around the Treaty – something David Seymour believes is still needed.

The Treaty Principles Bill passed its first reading in November, with support from National – the dominant party in New Zealand’s ruling coalition – who had promised to back it as part of a coalition agreement with Act, but not any further.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, who is also leader of the National Party, previously said there was nothing in the bill that he liked. He was not in parliament for its second reading, but remarked earlier in the day that it was time to move on from it.

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“The best salesman in history.” This was what Donald Trump once called Volodymyr Zelensky because of the amount of aid the US has given Ukraine.

Whether or not a fair comparison, Zelensky’s role in keeping his country in the spotlight and convincing allies to invest has certainly been crucial for Ukraine’s fight.

His transformation from prime-time comedian to wartime president has long been cast – it dates back to 2022 when he decided to remain in Kyiv as Russian troops closed in. That decision meant Ukraine would go on to defend itself to this day.

In the years since, I’ve stood across from him in person dozens of times, and Zelensky now casts a more authoritative, perhaps battle-hardened figure, moulded partly by his increased isolation on the international stage.

But with the unpredictability of Trump’s second term – not least following the pair’s Oval Office bust-up in February – Zelensky may now have to transform again.

Politically it is no longer a story of oppressor versus oppressed. Rather, it is muddied by the dual challenge of voicing an appetite for peace whilst protecting his country’s interests.

But is a man used to having so much authority at home and being so influential abroad really going to stage a second big transformation, shifting his focus to Trump-era diplomacy? Or will he decide the best way of standing up for Ukraine is to yield little?

Later today the “coalition of the willing”, a group of nations who have pledged to stand with Ukraine, will meet at Nato headquarters – notably without America.

Before Trump’s chapter two began, Ukraine’s leader had effectively lobbied for western support. He appealed for air defences, tanks, rockets and fighter jets, with nations such as Germany hesitating over fears of the war escalating, before yielding to his requests.

His message was rigid and he was successful in procuring support.

“Zelensky was very clever and calculated in the early days of the war,” says Ed Arnold from defence and security think tank, Royal United Services Institute (Rusi).

His decision go to the Munich security conference two weeks before the invasion, despite being advised that this would be a security risk, was pivotal, argues Mr Arnold.

“It personalised support to Ukraine within the minds of people who personally attended.”

Serhiy Leshchenko, an advisor to Zelensky’s office, explains: “We have to be visible to the world. If public opinion is on Ukraine’s side, there is a better chance to get help from the international community.”

Leshchenko points to Zelensky’s daily video addresses, which he has created since start of the invasion. “It’s unusual to be so open.”

Ukraine’s victory in the battle of Kyiv cemented Zelensky as a symbol of the country’s survival, and boosted his case for continued military aid from western allies.

Later in 2022, Zelensky was able to demonstrate the difference their supplies were making when swathes of Ukrainian territory, including the city of Kherson, were liberated. He had initial success with European allies.

“They are invested in Zelensky personally and Ukraine,” says Mr Arnold. “He’s gone through four UK prime ministers since the start of the war … and they’ve all signed new declarations with Ukraine, again through Zelensky.

“He’s been able to weather the changes in national politics within Europe throughout his tenure.”

But when further successes failed to materialise, Zelensky’s message did not change – and as time went on, this would be to his detriment.

After Ukraine’s failed counter-offensive in the summer of 2023, for example, the merits of supporting Kyiv were increasingly questioned by an influential minority of US Republicans and pleas were starting to be passed over in some quarters.

Maria Zolkina, head of regional security and conflict studies at the Democratic Initiatives Foundation, a Kyiv-based think tank, believes Zelensky is partly responsible.

“He and his close circle relied on the logic that they must always be demanding when speaking with their partners – pushing the argument that Ukraine simply needs something. That worked really well during 2022, but with the US and others this kind of messaging stopped working in 2023,” she argues.

“But his diplomacy really didn’t adjust quickly enough.”

On 27 September 2024, in a lobby in New York, things truly changed for Ukraine. Only the driving force was not approaching Russian armour but the political reincarnation of Ukraine’s biggest ally: the US.

On that day, just over a month before the US Presidential election, Zelensky had a last minute meeting with Trump in Trump Tower.

Tensions between the pair had heightened before this meeting: Zelensky had claimed a few days earlier that Trump didn’t “really know how to end the war”, after he asserted he could do it in “one day”.

After the Trump Tower meeting, the two men emerged looking awkward.

Despite announcing a “common view” of wanting to end the war, their body language suggested a lack of chemistry.

The pair would not meet again until five months later in the Oval Office, where their now famous encounter would be a diplomatic disaster for Kyiv.

“Trump should have liked him,” says Vadym Prystaiko, who was present when the pair first met after Zelensky’s election win in 2019. “Zelensky saw Trump as more or less as himself, as a media guy who moved into politics, who was anti-establishment,” he says.

Mr Prystaiko was Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, before he was sacked in 2023. Kyiv gave no official reason for the dismissal, but it came after Mr Prystaiko criticised Zelensky’s response to a row over gratitude for British military aid. He said there had been a “little bit of sarcasm” in his president’s response, which he believed was “unhealthy”.

“Zelensky has never been a diplomat,” Mr Prystaiko adds. “He has never been a usual political leader who kisses babies and shakes hands.”

“The relationship with Trump is like a rollercoaster,” says Volodymyr Fesenko, director at the Penta Center for Political Studies. “Sometimes there is constructive cooperation, and then, all of a sudden, some kind of crisis appears.”

Then there is their war of words. Trump has blamed Zelensky for starting the war, calling him a “dictator”, while Ukraine’s leader accused his US counterpart of “living in a Russian disinformation space”.

While Mr Fesenko believes Zelensky is continually changing tactics to find a working relationship with Washington, Ms Zolkina believes the issues go deeper.

“There is a triangle between the US administration, the Kremlin and Kyiv,” she claims. “Ukraine is considered to be a weaker part of this triangle. For Trump, Zelensky is not in the same league, and that’s the problem.”

When it came to the now infamous Oval Office meeting with Trump and his Vice President JD Vance, this was the first time I’d seen Zelensky seemingly run out of political rope as he was accused of “not showing enough gratitude” and “playing with World War Three”.

His defensive body language, the folding of his arms for example, also seemed new.

Zelensky has always appeared comfortable hosting or visiting other leaders. He is at ease on a stage and often injects timely humour — but this was different.

A mineral agreement, in which Zelensky had originally suggested trading a portion of Ukraine’s mineral resource wealth for continued military aid, was never signed, and has since evolved into a less favourable proposal for Kyiv.

The US would also briefly pause its military aid and intelligence sharing to ensure Ukraine danced to its tune.

But the official view from some is that the Oval Office meeting was not a calamity.

“Nobody took it as the end of something,” claims Ihor Brusylo, the deputy head of the Presidential Office, who travelled to the White House with Zelensky. “We discussed how to move forward. It was not a disaster.”

When the US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz told them the meeting was over, “we just shrugged our shoulders and decided to go back to the hotel,” he recalls.

“My presumption is that on a personal level, they [Trump and Zelensky] get on well,” he adds. “They understand each other better, and are frank and honest.”

Whatever the truth about their relationship behind closed doors, there have been signs of a willingness to bend from Zelensky since that meeting – European allies are said to have convinced him to subsequently take a more compliant tone, because of the inescapable truth that they, and Ukraine, still need the US to combat an aggressive Russia.

Yet others argue more bend still is needed.

“The war changes everyone, it has changed us all in some sense. But I don’t think fundamentally Zelensky has changed – for good or bad in some instances,” says Olga Onuch, professor of Comparative and Ukrainian Politics at the University of Manchester.

“It is very clear that certain actors have decided it’s difficult to negotiate with Zelensky. Why? Because he has red lines that he is sticking to.”

Mr Brusylo agrees. “It is very difficult to bend Zelensky,” he says. “It’s like watching a spring, the more you press, the bigger the pushback.”

And yet whenever Ukraine is attacked, politically or diplomatically, increased political unity follows. The Oval Office clash was no exception, as Zelensky’s popularity rating soared to around 70%.

“Zelensky is very powerful, and his authority is made up of himself and a certain circle of people,” argues Ms Zolkina.

Orysia Lutsevych, head of the Ukraine Forum at Chatham House says it’s interesting how Ukrainians rallied around Zelensky after the Oval Office, almost like they took it as a personal insult of Ukrainian statehood.

“People rally around him, what he represents and how he behaves”.

Mr Prystaiko argues if the Americans wanted him to be replaced “they’ve shot themselves in the foot as he might easily be re-elected”.

Some political experts, like Ms Zolkina, do not think this is a certainty. “I don’t think he understands that this boost is a direct reaction to what Trump is doing, not his personal position,” she says.

“He has pretty strong political ambitions for a second term, and is pretty politically egocentric, as all leaders are at his level.”

Prof Onuch does not think that pursuit of political power alone motivates Zelensky. “[He is] much more of a careful and considered and tactical political operator than people give him credit for”.

Still, imagining a Zelensky second term can be difficult, simply because of the sheer demands of the job. Even post-war challenges would be considerable.

For now, Mr Arnold suspects that an exhausted Zelensky would not want to stand again and suggests that he may want a way out from at least the frontline politics.

As for the near-term, Zelensky cannot afford another Oval Office. So, given that Trump is a keen player, will Ukraine’s leader ever join him for a round of golf?

“He is a quick learner,” says his Mr Brusylo. “When there is a need to play golf, I’m sure he will tackle this task.”

The corner shop Ramji Dharod has manned for over six decades is now on the brink of closure.

The store sits in a bylane in the central Indian city of Mumbai’s busy shopping precinct, and has served the community for 75 years.

Dharod began coming to the shop with his father when he was just 10. These days, he mostly sits idle, waiting for an occasional customer to walk in.

Behind him, cardboard boxes of unsold biscuit packets and snacks show a “stock clearance sale” sign posted on them.

“I wouldn’t get a minute to breathe a few years ago, but now I rarely get anyone coming,” says the septuagenarian wryly. “They are all shopping online. I’ve decided to retire and down the shutters.”

As 10-minute online deliveries by “quick commerce” apps like Zomato, BlinkIt and Zepto pervade urban India, hundreds of thousands of neighbourhood stores across cities have closed down.

A lobby group of consumer product distributors estimated that number to be 200,000 last October, while the municipal body of the southern city of Chennai estimated 20% of small grocers and 30% of larger departmental stores had shut down in the city in the past 5 years.

Sunil Kenia who runs a provision store right beside Dharod’s shop says he’s still in business only because his family owns the shop. Those on rent are no longer able to stay afloat, he says.

“It started going downhill after the Covid lockdowns. Business is at 50% of what we did before the pandemic,” Kenia told the BBC.

Most of his revenue now comes from wholesale customers – hawkers or those selling street-side snacks. The retail customer has all but “vanished”, he says, because of the convenience of mobile deliveries.

Mumbai-based graphic designer Monisha Sathe is among the millions of urban Indians who’ve stopped their weekly run to the market because of the ease of quick commerce.

“Lugging groceries back home was a big pain,” says Sathe. And occasionally, when she took out her car, navigating narrow market lanes and finding a parking slot would be a challenge.

Sathe says she misses the human interaction she had with the grocers and vegetable vendors and even the variety of fresh produce on sale – but for her, the balance still tilts in favour of online deliveries because of how much easier it has made her life.

A recent survey by consultancy PwC shows some 42% of urban consumers in India’s big cities think like Sathe, especially preferring quick delivery for their urgent needs. And these shifts in buying behaviour have led to three out of 10 retailers reporting a negative impact on their business, with a 52% drop in essential goods sales.

But to what extent is quick commerce really hollowing out the Indian high street?

There’s no doubt general trade – which includes grocery stores, corner shops and even big retail outlets – has come under threat, says Ankur Bisen, a partner at Technopak retail advisory. But at least for now “quick commerce is still a three-four city story”, he says. Nearly all of their sales come from these cities.

Lightning fast deliveries bucked the global trend and became successful in India largely due to a large concentration of people staying in urban clusters.

They are serviced through low-rent “dark stores” – or small shops dedicated to delivery and not open to the public – in densely populated areas, enabling economies of scale.

But the precarious nature of demand and fragmented demographics of smaller towns could make it expensive for quick commerce players to expand and make money beyond the metros, says Mr Bisen.

There’s little doubt though that these online deliveries will disrupt trade in the longer run.

Bain and Company expects quick commerce to grow at over 40% annually through to 2030, driven by expansion across “geographies”.

And this has made traditional retail nervous.

Trade organisations – like the Confederation of All India Traders, or the All India Consumer Products Distributors Federation which calls itself the voice of India’s 13m retailers – have made urgent and repeated pleas to the government against this breakneck expansion.

They allege that these companies are using billions of dollars in venture capital funds to engage in anti-competitive practices like “predatory pricing” or “deep discounting” which has further distorted the playing field for mom-and-pop shops.

The BBC spoke to several small retailers who shared these concerns. Mr Bisen too agreed there’s evidence of such practices in the clusters that quick commerce companies operate.

Swiggy, Zepto and Blinkit, who primarily control this market, did not agree to comment on the BBC’s queries on these allegations.

But a source within one of the quick commerce companies told the BBC the discounting was done by traders on the platform and not by them.

The source also said that contrary to the binary narrative of the “big guy versus small guy”, online deliveries were solving real-world challenges for people for whom going to the market was a “traumatic” experience.

“Think of women or senior citizens – they don’t want to be harassed or navigate potholes and traffic,” the source said. “Also consider the small brands that sell on our platform – they never get shelf space in physical shops where only the big names are displayed. We’ve democratised the market.”

Analysts say, the sheer diversity of India in terms of its stages of development, levels of income and infrastructure will mean that in the end all retail models – small corner shops, organised big retailers and quick commerce platforms – will cohabit in the country.

This is not a “winner takes all market”, says Mr Bisen, giving the example of e-commerce which came into India in 2010 and was meant to sound the death knell of local retailers.

Even after all these years, only 4% of all shopping is done online in India.

But the ripples caused by quick commerce should be a warning for physical retailers, say analysts, to improve their marketing and integrate technology to use both online and offline channels to give their consumers a better shopping experience.

Competing with click-of-a-button delivery means it can no longer be business as usual for the millions of corner shops who’ve existed for decades, with little or no innovation.

Máximo Peña had been coming to the Jet Set nightclub every single Monday for the past 30 years.

This week, excited to see a concert by the popular Dominican singer Rubby Pérez, he took his wife and his sister. Now all three are buried beneath the rubble of the collapsed discotheque, after the roof caved in part way through the performance, leaving at least 184 dead.

“I haven’t heard any news about any of them,” said Shailyn Peña, Máximo’s 17-year-old daughter as she sat on a wall outside the devastated venue.

“It was just another Monday night for them. In fact, my dad invited my mum to come too but at the last minute she decided not to go. It was a blessing in disguise.”

Behind her as she spoke to me on Wednesday afternoon, a team of rescue workers was meticulously going through the rubble inside the building, listening for the slightest sound of a survivor beneath them.

They had been joined by Israeli and Mexican search teams and were using sophisticated heat-seeking equipment to try to locate anyone still alive.

Shailyn told me her cousin was one of the rescue workers, sifting through the debris for her own uncle, which she said brought her peace of mind that a relative was inside doing everything in her power to try to track Máximo down.

But the uncertainty and the endless wait for information were becoming unbearable, Shailyn said.

“I feel the urge to just go in there and push aside all the rocks and pull him out. But as much as I want to, I really can’t. I just have to sit here and wait it out.”

Hours later, the government released a statement saying that “all reasonable chances of finding more survivors have been exhausted” and so the search and rescue mission would give way to the recovery of bodies.

The authorities have been doing what they can to keep the public informed, delivering grim updates on the number of dead, which has risen steadily with every passing hour.

At regular intervals, teams have been emerging from the site carrying bodies covered by blankets on stretchers.

Earlier on, some people were brought out alive, bolstering the hopes of the relatives.

But by Wednesday evening, officials said that given the conditions at the site observed by the more than 300 rescue workers, they would conclude the rescue phase of their operations “within hours”.

The president of the Dominican Republic, Luis Abinader, has declared three days of national mourning, a reflection of the scale of the tragedy unfolding at the site.

Among those confirmed to have lost their lives in the accident were some well-known national figures including Pérez himself, two much-loved former baseball players, Octavio Dotel and Tony Blanco, and a regional governor. And alongside them, scores of merengue music-lovers and Pérez fans also died in the collapse.

For now, the authorities’ focus remains on the recovery operation. However, eventually the questions will turn to the cause of the collapse and government investigators will have to provide meaningful answers to the families in due course.

One theory is already circulating outside the venue. Many are pointing the finger of blame at a fire at the nightclub around two years ago. Some fear the blaze structurally weakened the site or that any repairs carried out were insufficient or not up to code.

The owner of the Jet Set nightclub, Antonio Espaillat, delivered a video message via social media expressing his condolences and those of “all the Jet Set family”, to the victims’ relatives.

He also insisted that he and his team were co-operating “totally and transparently with the authorities” over the disaster.

Shailyn Peña has heard about the fire at the nightclub and is among those who thinks it played a part. However, for now she has bigger worries. Despite the family’s efforts to protect them, her younger stepsisters found out that their father and mother were trapped under the rubble from other children at school.

They are “terrified”, she added.

It is Shailyn’s birthday on Thursday, a day she would normally celebrate alongside her father, stepmother and aunt.

Instead, she must endure it in the worst possible circumstances, caught inside the worst such tragedy in her country’s modern history.

A saliva test may help “turn the tide” on prostate cancer, UK scientists claim.

It analyses men’s DNA to work out who was born with the greatest risk of developing the disease.

Targeting them for prostate biopsies and MRI scans discovered some aggressive cancers that would otherwise have gone unnoticed.

However, the test has not yet been proven to save lives and experts say it will be “years” before such tests could be used routinely.

Around 12,000 men in the UK die from prostate cancer every year.

Calls for the routine testing of healthy men – known as screening – have grown louder since Olympic cyclist Sir Chris Hoy announced he had terminal prostate cancer.

Screening has been rejected in the past because using the current test – which looks for levels of prostate specific antigen (PSA) in the blood – risks causing more harm than good.

This saliva test does not look for signs of prostate cancer inside the body.

Instead it looks for 130 mutations in men’s DNA, each of which can increase the risk of prostate cancers developing.

In the study, scientists tested men aged 55-69 and calculated their risk. Men in the top 10% of scores were invited for further investigations. This included a biopsy and an MRI scan.

The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed:

• Out of 745 men with a high score, 468 were prepared to have the extra tests
• 187 were found to have prostate cancer
• 103 were higher risk tumours that needed treatment, 74 of these would not have been discovered at this stage with current tests

“With this test, it could be possible to turn the tide on prostate cancer,” said Prof Ros Eeles, from the Institute of Cancer Research, London.

“We can identify men at risk of aggressive cancers who need further tests and spare the men who are at lower risk from unnecessary treatments,” she added

Dheeresh Turnbull, who is 71 and from Brighton, took part in the trial.

He discovered he was in the highest risk category despite having no family history of prostate cancer. Further examination showed he had cancer.

“I was completely shocked, I would never have been diagnosed at this stage if I hadn’t joined the trial.”

His younger brother was then invited to take part in the study and also discovered he had an aggressive tumour.

“It’s incredible to think that because of this study two lives have now been saved in my family,” Dheeresh said.

However, the test is not ready to be rolled out.

Prof Dusko Ilic, from King’s College London, said it was “promising” but improved cancer detection “only modestly” when used alongside current risk factors such as age, PSA levels and MRI scans.

And he said there was still “no direct evidence” of it improving survival or quality of life, which meant more studies were needed.

The research also focused people of European ancestry and work is still under way to adapt it for people from other backgrounds. Black men are thought to have double the risk of prostate cancer.

The research team also say there are questions around cost-effectiveness, potential harms and the best time to analyse the risk.

The saliva test will become part of the pivotal Transform trial which is trying to discover the best way of introducing prostate cancer screening in the UK.

Prof Michael Inouye, from the University of Cambridge, said he believes we will look back on this study “as a landmark” that made the case for using genetics to assess risk.

But he added: “This is a big step along the path to clinical implementation, but it is still a long road.”

He said it will “likely be years” before the NHS used such a test.

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Best-selling author Jillian Lauren has been shot by police and charged with attempted murder, after getting caught up in a search for hit-and-run suspects.

The shooting occurred amidst a chase through the streets of Los Angeles on Tuesday, as officers tried to find three suspects who were alleged to have fled the scene of a car accident.

Lauren became involved when one of the alleged suspects ended up on the street where she lives with her husband, Weezer bassist Scott Shriner.

The 51-year-old emerged from her house with a weapon and refused to drop it despite “numerous” demands, according to an LAPD press release. She “then pointed the handgun at the officers,” who shot her in the shoulder.

The shooting took place in the back yard of her home in the hip Eagle Rock neighbourhood in the northeast of Los Angeles.

According to local media reports, Lauren had opened fire at one of the alleged hit-and-run suspects after they tried to break into her property.

After being shot by police, the 51-year-old ran back into her house, where she stayed for approximately half an hour, before coming back outside with her babysitter and surrendering to police.

Both women were taken into custody, and Lauren was treated for non-life-threatening injuries at a local hospital.

A nine-millimetre handgun was recovered from her house, and she was later charged with attempted murder.

The California Highway Patrol arrested the suspected hit-and-run driver shortly afterwards, according to agency spokesperson Daniel Keene.

The suspect was found wearing nothing but his boxer shorts in the backyard of a home near Shriner’s residence.

News helicopters had previously filmed him removing his clothes and jumping into a swimming pool, as well as watering the property’s plants, in what appeared to be an attempt to blend into the neighbourhood.

His identity has not been released. The other two suspects are still at large.

Lauren, who also goes by the name Jillian Shriner, is the author of two bestselling memoirs, including 2010’s Some Girls: My Life in a Harem – which described her experiences in the harem of Prince Jefri Bolkiah of Brunei.

In 2023, she also published Behold the Monster: Facing America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer, based on interviews with the serial killer Samuel Little, who confessed to committing 93 murders between 1970 and 2005.

She married Scott Shriner in 2005, two years before he joined Weezer, the US band known for skewed alt-rock anthems such as Buddy Holly and Hash Pipe.

Earlier this week, the band were confirmed alongside Ed Sheeran as last-minute additions to the line-up of California’s Coachella music festival, which kicks off on Friday.

It is not known whether Lauren’s arrest will affect their plans to play the festival.

US President Donald Trump has placed 125% tariffs on goods imported from China, leading Beijing to respond with an 84% tax on American products.

Trump had also brought high tariffs on dozens of other countries but these have been suspended for 90 days.

He argues that tariffs will boost US manufacturing and protect jobs, but the world economy has been thrown into chaos and prices are expected to rise for consumers.

Tariffs are taxes charged on goods bought from other countries.

Typically, they are a percentage of a product’s value. The 125% tariff on Chinese goods means that a $10 product would attract a $12.50 tax on top – raising the total cost to $22.50.

The companies that bring the foreign goods into the country have to pay the tax to the government.

The money is collected when the imported goods clear US customs.

Firms can choose to pass on some or all of the increased cost to customers.

• Follow live: Global markets rebound after Trump reversal
• Trump steps back from cliff edge of global trade war

For decades, Trump has argued the US should use tariffs to boost its economy.

He says they will encourage US consumers to buy more American-made goods, increase the amount of tax raised and lead to huge levels of investment in the country.

Trump wants to reduce the gap between the value of goods the US buys from other countries and the value of those it sells to them. He argues that America has been taken advantage of by “cheaters” and “pillaged” by foreigners.

The US president has also made other demands alongside tariffs. The first announced during his current term targeted China, Mexico and Canada, after he said he wanted them to do more to stop migrants and illegal drugs reaching the US.

Trump has strongly defended his tariff policy but influential voices within his Republican Party have joined opposition Democrats and foreign leaders in attacking the measures.

• Trump steps back: Retreat or negotiating strategy?
• ‘Sometimes you have to take medicine’: Trump defends sweeping tariffs

Since Trump’s inauguration in January there has been a flurry of announcements on tariffs, with other countries scrambling to respond.

1 February: The president announces a 25% levy on Canadian and Mexican exports to the US – and an additional 10% on China

3 February: Mexico and Canada reach a deal to pause US tariffs for one month

10 February: Trump announces a 25% import tax on all steel and aluminium entering the US

4 March: The White House increases the tariff on Chinese imports to 20%

5 March: Trump temporarily exempts carmakers from the 25% tax imposed on Canada and Mexico

7 March: Trump expands the range of goods exempted from the Canada and Mexico tariffs

12 March: The 25% steel and aluminium tariffs take effect

26 March: The White House announces 25% duties on cars will apply from 2 April and on car parts at a later date but before 3 May

2 April: Trump says the US will impose “reciprocal tariffs” on certain countries, as well as a universal 10% levy on imports from all other countries, including the UK

5 April: The 10% tariffs take effect

9 April: Tariffs on roughly 60 countries – described by the US president as the “worst offenders” – are introduced. Trump then announces a 90-day pause for all countries, except China. The “baseline” 10% rate applies everywhere but China which faces 125% tariffs

10 April: China’s retaliatory 84% levy on US goods takes effect. The EU says it will pause its planned US tariffs for 90 days

The current exemption for goods in small parcels sent from China worth less than $800 (£624) ends on 2 May. These will have a duty rate of 90% or $75 per item – increasing to $150 per item after 1 June.

The “baseline” 10% rate does not apply to Canada and Mexico. There have been a number of exemptions and delays since Trump announced they would face tariffs of 25% on most goods and 10% on Canadian energy.

• BBC Verify: How were Donald Trump’s tariffs calculated?

The US currently runs a trade deficit with China. In 2024, the US imported far more from China ($440bn) than Beijing imported from America ($145bn).

In his first term as president, Trump imposed significant tariffs on China, which were retained and expanded by his successor Joe Biden.

Together those trade barriers helped to reduce the amount the US bought from China from 21% of America’s total imports in 2016 to 13% in 2024.

However, China still ships everything from iPhones to children’s toys to the US. Analysts have pointed out that some Chinese goods enter the US via other south-east Asian countries, which could mean they can avoid the 125% rate.

• Why Trump is hitting China on trade – and what might happen next
• What would a US-China trade war do to the world economy?

Many economists expect tariffs to push up prices across a range of imported goods, as firms pass on some or all of their increased costs.

The products affected could include everything from clothing to coffee and alcohol to electronics.

Some firms may also decide to import fewer foreign goods, which could make those which are available more expensive.

The price of goods manufactured in the US using imported components may also rise.

For example, car parts typically cross the US, Mexican and Canadian borders multiple times before a vehicle is completely assembled.

Car prices had already been expected to increase as a result of earlier tariffs, which remain in place.

The cost of a car made using parts from Mexico and Canada alone could rise by $4,000-$10,000 (£3,035 – £7,588) depending on the vehicle, according to analysts at the Anderson Economic Group.

Trump’s tariffs announcements have caused significant volatility on global stock markets.

Stock markets are where firms sell shares in their business. They reflect the best guess of what every company in the world is worth and what their future profits will be.

Many people are affected by stock market price falls – even if they don’t invest in shares directly – because of the knock-on effect on pensions, jobs and interest rates.

Share prices dropped sharply after the global tariffs were announce because investors thought they would increase costs and reduce profits. But after Trump announced the 90-day pause, US, Asian and European markets rebounded sharply.

• How does it affect me if share prices fall?
• Stocks, tariffs and pensions – your questions answered

The UK exported around £58bn of goods to the US in 2024, mainly cars, machinery and pharmaceuticals.

It was already due to be affected by the earlier tariffs targeting steel, aluminium and car imports.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said “clearly there will be an economic impact” from the 10% tariff. However, he said US-UK trade talks are ongoing, and that he will “fight for the best deal for Britain”.

The UK government has so far not announced any taxes on US imports. However, it is drawing up a list of US products it could hit with retaliatory tariffs.

Following the announcement of tariffs, car maker Jaguar Land Rover said it would “pause” all shipments to the US as it worked to “address the new trading terms”.

Economists have warned US tariffs could knock the UK’s economy off course and make it harder for the government to hit its borrowing rules.

• How PM might tackle impact of Trump tariffs
• How exposed is the UK to Trump’s tariff chaos?

For countries on Donald Trump’s so-called “worst offenders” list, there was a sigh of relief when tariffs were downgraded to 10%.

EU The European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Trump’s decision was an “important step towards stabilising the global economy” and said the EU would pause its own retaliatory tariffs for 90 days.

Poland‘s Prime Minister Donald Tusk urged all parties to “make the best” of the 90 day pause, stressing that maintaining strong relations with the US “is a common responsibility of Europeans and Americans”

Vietnam‘s Deputy PM Ho Duc Phoc said that the US and Vietnam expect to start “negotiations on a bilateral trade agreement” which “would include tariff agreements”

Germany‘s incoming Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the pause proves a united European approach to trade has a positive effect, adding: “Europeans are determined to defend ourselves”

Canada, which has been targeted by tariffs above 10%, introduced a 25% tariff on some vehicles from the US on 9 April.

• See the Trump tariffs list by country

Australia has swiftly turned down China’s offer to “join hands” against Donald Trump’s tariffs, as Washington escalates its trade war with Beijing.

The White House recently imposed an import tax of 10% on Australian goods, but for China – Australia’s biggest trading partner – raised tariffs to 125%.

China’s ambassador to Australia Xiao Qian argued joint resistance is “the only way” to stop the “hegemonic and bullying behaviour of the US”, appealing for Canberra’s cooperation in an opinion piece on Thursday.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, however, said Australians would “speak for ourselves”, while the country’s defence minister said the nation would not be “holding China’s hand”.

“It’s about pursuing Australia’s national interests, not about making common calls with China,” Richard Marles told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Hours earlier, Trump had dramatically changed course on his sweeping tariffs scheme, announcing a 90-day pause for countries hit with high US tariffs. In the meantime, a tariff of 10% would apply.

China was the exception though. Instead, the US imposed an extra bump on import fees, after Beijing announced it would impose 84% counter-tariffs on the US.

Canberra has expressed anger over the tariffs but has said it will not retaliate, instead seeking further negotiations with the White House.

In his opinion piece for Nine Newspapers, Mr Xiao said the US had “weaponised” trade issues and expressed concern that a “weak compromise” would enable Trump to “sabotage the international order” and drag the world economy into a “quagmire” and an “abyss”.

Australia and China have a “mutually beneficial and long-standing co-operation” and need to work together to “safeguard a fair and free trading environment”, he added.

“The international community… should firmly say no to unilateralism and protectionism.”

Albanese told reporters on Thursday that Australia’s trade relationship with China was an important one, but said Australia was focussed on looking for other export opportunities outside of the US.

“Eighty percent of trade does not involve the United States. There are opportunities for Australia and we intend to seize them,” he said.

Marles said Australia is also looking to lessen its reliance on China, to bolster “economic resilience”, adding that the country’s focus would be on diversifying trade, in particular with Indonesia, India, the UK and the UAE.

Australian Trade Minister Don Farrell has held meetings with Japan, Singapore, South Korea and India in recent days.

The trade war between the world’s two biggest economies shows no signs of slowing down – Beijing has vowed to “fight to the end” hours after US President Donald Trump threatened to nearly double the tariffs on China.

That could leave most Chinese imports facing a staggering 104% tax – a sharp escalation between the two sides.

Smartphones, computers, lithium-ion batteries, toys and video game consoles make up the bulk of Chinese exports to the US. But there are so many other things, from screws to boilers.

With a deadline looming in Washington as Trump threatens to introduce the additional tariffs from Wednesday, who will blink first?

“It would be a mistake to think that China will back off and remove tariffs unilaterally,” says Alfredo Montufar-Helu, a senior advisor to the China Center at The Conference Board think tank.

“Not only would it make China look weak, but it would also give leverage to the US to ask for more. We’ve now reached an impasse that will likely lead to long-term economic pain.”

• Live updates on this story

Global markets have slumped since last week when Trump’s tariffs, which target almost every country, began coming into effect. Asian shares, which saw their worst drop in decades on Monday after the Trump administration didn’t waver, recovered slightly on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, China has hit back with tit-for-tat levies – 34% – and Trump warned that he would retaliate with an additional 50% tariff if Beijing doesn’t back down.

Uncertainty is high, with more tariffs, some more than 40%, set to kick in on Wednesday. Many of these would hit Asian economies: tariffs on China would rise to 54%, and those on Vietnam and Cambodia, would soar to 46% and 49% respectively.

Experts are worried about the speed at which this is happening, leaving governments, businesses and investors little time to adjust or prepare for a remarkably different global economy.

China had responded to the first round of Trump tariffs with tit-for-tat levies on certain US imports, export controls on rare metals and an anti-monopoly investigation into US firms, including Google.

This time too it has announced retaliatory tariffs, but it also appears to be bracing for pain with stronger measures. It has allowed its currency, the yuan, to weaken, which makes Chinese exports more attractive. And state-linked enterprises have been buying up shares in what appears to be a move to stabilise the market.

The prospect of negotiations between the US and Japan seemed to buoy investors who were fighting to claw back some of the losses of recent days.

But the face-off between China and the US – the world’s biggest exporter and its most important market – remains a major concern.

“What we are seeing is a game of who can bear more pain. We’ve stopped talking about any sense of gain,” Mary Lovely, a US-China trade expert at the Peterson Institute in Washington DC, told the BBC’s Newshour programme.

Despite its slowing economy, China may “very well be willing to endure the pain to avoid capitulating to what they believe is US aggression”, she added.

Shaken by a prolonged property market crisis and rising unemployment, Chinese people are just not spending enough. Indebted local governments have also been struggling to increase investments or expand the social safety net.

“The tariffs exacerbate this problem,” said Andrew Collier, Senior Fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School.

If China’s exports take a hit, that hurts a crucial revenue stream. Exports have long been a key factor in China’s explosive growth. And they remain a significant driver, although the country is trying to diversify its economy with high-end tech manufacturing and greater domestic consumption.

It’s hard to say exactly when the tariffs “will bite but likely soon,” Mr Collier says, adding that “[President Xi] faces an increasingly difficult choice due to a slowing economy and dwindling resources”.

But it’s not just China that will be feeling the impact.

According to the US Trade Representative office, the US imported $438bn (£342bn) worth of goods from China in 2024, with US exports to China valued at $143bn, leaving a trade deficit of $295bn.

And it’s not clear how the US is going to find alternative supply for Chinese goods on such short notice.

Taxes on physical goods aside, both countries are “economically intertwined in a lot of ways – there’s a massive amount of investment both ways, a lot of digital trade and data flows”, says Deborah Elms, Head of Trade Policy at the Hinrich Foundation in Singapore.

“You can only tariff so much for so long. But there are other ways both countries can hit each other. So you might say it can’t possibly get worse, but there are many ways in which it can.”

The rest of the world is watching too, to see where Chinese exports shut out of the US market will go.

They will end up in other markets such as those in South East Asia, Ms Elms adds, and “these places [are dealing] with their own tariffs and having to think about where else can we sell our products?”

“So we are in a very different universe, one that is really murky.”

Unlike the trade war with China during Trump’s first term, which was about negotiating with Beijing, “it’s unclear what is motivating these tariffs and it’s very hard to predict where things might go from here,” says Roland Rajah, lead economist at the Lowy Institute.

China has a “wide toolkit” for retaliation, he adds, such as depreciating their currency further or clamping down on US firms.

“I think the question is how restrained will they be? There’s retaliation to save face and there’s pulling out the whole arsenal. It’s not clear if China wants to go down that path. It just might.”

Some experts believe the US and China may engage in private talks. Trump is yet to speak to Xi since returning to the White House, although Beijing has repeatedly signalled its willingness to talk.

But others are less hopeful.

“I think the US is overplaying its hand,” Ms Elms says. She is sceptical of Trump’s belief that the US market is so lucrative that China, or any country, will eventually bend.

“How will this end? No-one knows,” she says. “I’m really concerned about the speed and escalation. The future is much more challenging and the risks are just so high.”

US President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs targeting most of the world are now in effect – and outside China, no other region has been hit as hard as South East Asia.

Near the top of the list are Vietnam and Cambodia which have been hit by some of the highest tariffs: 46% and 49%. Further down are Thailand (36%), Indonesia (32%) and Malaysia (24%). The Philippines gets a tariff of 17%, and Singapore of 10%.

This is a huge blow for a region highly dependent on exports. Its widely admired economic development over the past three decades has largely been driven by its success in selling its products to the rest of the world, in particular to the US.

Exports to the US contribute around 30% of Vietnam’s GDP, and 25% of Cambodia’s.

That growth story is now imperilled by the punitive measures being imposed in Washington.

The longer-term impact of these tariffs, assuming they stay in place, will vary, but will certainly pose big challenges to the governments of Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia in particular.

Vietnam’s “bamboo diplomacy”, where it attempts to be friends with everyone and balance ties with both China and the US, will now be tested.

Under the leadership of the new Communist Party Secretary-General To Lam, Vietnam has embarked on an ambitious plan to build an upper-income, knowledge-and-tech-based economy by the year 2045. It has been aiming for annual growth rates in excess of 8%.

Exporting more to the US, already its biggest market, was central to that plan.

It was also the main reason why Vietnam agreed to elevate their relationship to that of a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in 2023.

The Communist Party, which tolerates little dissent and has no formal political opposition, depends on its economic pledges for its legitimacy. Already viewed by many economists as too ambitious, these will now be even harder to meet.

Thailand depends on US exports less than Vietnam – under 10% of GDP – but the Thai economy is in much worse shape, having underperformed for the past decade. The Thai government is trying to find ways to lift economic growth, most recently attempting but failing to legalise gambling, and these tariffs are another economic blow it cannot afford.

For Cambodia, the tariffs pose perhaps the greatest political threat in the region.

The government of Hun Manet has proved just as authoritarian as that of his father Hun Sen, whom he succeeded two years ago, but it is vulnerable.

Keeping the Hun family’s hold on power has required offering rival clans in Cambodia economic privileges like monopolies or land concessions, but this has helped create a glut of property developments, which are no longer selling, and a mass of grievances over land expropriations.

The garment sector, which employs 750,000 people, has been a crucial social safety valve, giving steady incomes to Cambodia’s poorest. Thousands of those jobs are now likely to be lost as a result of President Trump’s tariffs.

Unlike China, which has hit back with its own levies, the official message from governments in South East Asia is don’t panic, don’t retaliate, but negotiate.

Vietnam has dispatched deputy prime minister Ho Duc Phoc to Washington to plead his country’s case, and has offered to eliminate all tariffs on US imports. Thailand plans to send its finance minister to make a similar appeal, and has offered to reduce its tariffs and buy more American products, like food and aircraft.

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim is also heading to Washington, though with exports to the US making up only 11% of Malaysia’s total, his country is less affected than some of its neighbours.

However, the Trump administration appears to be in no mood to compromise.

Peter Navarro, President Trump’s senior counsellor on trade and manufacturing and one of the main thinkers behind the new policy, said in interviews on Monday that Vietnam’s offer of zero tariffs was meaningless, because it would not address the deficit in trade where Vietnam sells $15 worth of goods to the US for every $1 it buys.

He accused Vietnam of keeping multiple non-tariff barriers to US imports, and said that one-third of all Vietnamese exports to the US were actually Chinese products, trans-shipped through Vietnam.

The proportion of Vietnamese exports which are being made or trans-shipped there to avoid US tariffs on China is difficult to assess, but detailed trade studies put it at between 7% and 16%, not one-third.

Like Vietnam, the government of Cambodia has appealed to the US to postpone the tariffs while it attempts to negotiate.

The local American Chamber of Commerce has called for the 49% tariffs to be dropped, making the point that the Cambodian garment industry, the country’s biggest employer, will be badly affected, but that no tariff level, however high, will see clothing and footwear manufacturing return to the US.

Perhaps the most perverse tariff rate is the 44% applied to Myanmar, a country mired in a civil war, which has no capacity to buy more US goods.

US exports make up only a small proportion of Myanmar’s GDP, less than 1%.

But as in Cambodia, that sector, mainly garments, is one of the few that provides a steady income to poor families in Myanmar’s cities.

In a supreme irony, Trump has until now been a popular figure in this region.

He has been widely admired in Vietnam for his tough, transactional approach to foreign policy, and Cambodia’s former strongman Hun Sen, still the main power behind the scenes, has long sought a close personal relationship with the US president, proudly posting selfies with him at their first meeting in 2017.

Only last month Cambodia was praising Trump for shutting down the US media networks Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, which often carried the views of Cambodian dissidents.

Now Cambodia, like so many of its neighbours, finds itself in a long line of supplicants pleading with him to ease their tariff burden.

It sounds like something from a science fiction movie, but Stephen Eisele is confident that one day his company will open a data centre on the Moon.

“The way we see it is that by putting the data centre in space, you’re really offering unparalleled security,” says the president of Lonestar Data Holdings.

Last month, the Florida-based firm claimed to have successfully tested a tiny data centre the size of a hardback book that hitched a ride to the Moon on the Athena Lunar Lander from US space exploration firm Intuitive Machines. This, in turn, had been launched by a rocket from Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Data centres are the vast warehouses that house stacks of computers that store and process data used by websites, companies and governments.

Lonestar says that putting them on the Moon will offer customers secure, reliable data processing, while taking advantage of unlimited solar energy to power them.

And while space-based data centres may sound far-fetched, it’s an idea that’s really starting to take off.

Part of the reason is rocketing demand and the difficulty of finding suitable sites on Earth.

The ever-expanding use of artificial intelligence (AI) computing has seen a massive increase in the amount of data that needs to be stored and processed around the world.

As a result, the need for data centres has shot up too, with annual demand set to rise between 19% and 22% by 2030, according to global management consultants McKinsey.

New facilities are springing up all the time – but it’s getting hard to find places to put them. Data centres are large and sprawling, and use enormous amounts of power and water for cooling.

And increasingly local people don’t want them built nearby.

Putting data centres in space – either in orbit around Earth, or on the Moon – the theory goes, means they can’t do quite so much harm. There’s more-or-less unlimited energy available from the sun, for example, and no neighbours to complain about the environmental impacts.

Not only that, space-based data centres could specialise in services for spacecraft and other space facilities, with space-to-space data transfers quicker than from the ground.

Last summer, a European Commission-funded feasibility study into orbiting data centres published its results.

The Ascend report by carried out by Thales Alenia Space – a joint venture between French and Italian aerospace groups Thales and Leonardo – published its results.

It determined that deploying data centres in space “could transform the European digital landscape”, and be “more eco-friendly”.

Thales Alenia Space envisages building a constellation of 13 satellites measuring a combined 200m-by-80m, and with a total data processing power of around 10 megawatts (MW). That’s equivalent to a current medium-sized, ground-based data centre, with some 5,000 servers.

Based on technologies that already exist or are under development, the satellites would be assembled in orbit.

Damien Dumestier, Ascend project architect at Thales Alenia Space, says that for space-based data centres to be more environmentally friendly than existing ground-based ones it will be necessary to make the rocket launchers 10 times less emissive over their lifecycles. He says this looks possible.

“But in order to cover the new technology’s developments and the production capacity ramp-up to benefit from scale, we have to consider larger system capacity, around 200MW, meaning 200 of our envisaged large space infrastructures and 200 launches,” he says.

“The main question is when an adapted launcher will be ready. Depending on the investment and decisions to be taken, this could be done for 2030 or 2035, meaning commercial viability before 2037.”

However, despite this optimism from firms aiming to develop the technology, Dr Domenico Vicinanza, associate professor of intelligent systems and data science at Anglia Ruskin University in the UK, says there are numerous big hurdles before space-based data centres can be a viable proposition.

“Even with the contribution and advancements of companies like SpaceX, launching hardware into orbit remains extremely expensive,” he says. “Each kilogram sent into space costs thousands of dollars.

“Space-based data centres would require not only the data equipment but also the infrastructure to protect, power, and cool them. All of which add up in weight and complexity.”

Cooling the equipment will be a particular problem, because even though space is cold, conventional cooling systems don’t work will without gravity.

Meanwhile, space weather can damage electronics, while the ever-increasing quantity of space debris puts the physical hardware at risk.

Dr Vicinanza adds: “And fixing problems in orbit is far from straightforward. Even with robotics and automation, there are limits to what can be repaired remotely.

“A big hardware failure might necessitate a costly human mission, potentially making downtime stretch for weeks or months.”

Yet firms like Lonestar are supremely confident, and say that they are responding to demand. “We wouldn’t be doing this if the customers weren’t asking us to,” says Mr Scott.

Its next target is to put a small data centre in orbit around the moon in 2027. Meanwhile, other companies are hoping to get there a bit faster, such as Washington state-based Starcloud, which is due to launch a satellite-based data centre next month, and start commercial operations in mid-2026.

Lonestar’s Mr Eidele says that space-based facilities offer more security for governments and businesses because their data does not need to be routed through terrestrial networks. Instead the information can be beamed directly from space to a dedicated ground station.

“It’s like having the vaults at the back of the bank,” he says. “You don’t have to open it every day, but it’s there to provide an extra measure of security, and the distance from the Earth to the moon offers that – it’s that much harder to hack, that much harder to access.”

The distance to the Moon means that data takes about a second and a half to reach the ground – this doesn’t matter for some applications, like longer-term data storage and backups.

And meanwhile, says Lonestar founder and chief executive Chris Stott, space-based data centres can help organisations meet regulations about data sovereignty – the need to hold peoples’ data in the country of origin.

“Under space law, that box of electronics is literally under the law of the licensing or launching state – it is an actual embassy in space,” he says.

Lonestar already has customers lined up, including the state of Florida and the Isle of Man government.

Little more than 19 months after the bloodless coup that brought an end to more than five decades of rule by the Bongo family, the people of Gabon are about to head to the polls to choose a new head of state – bucking a trend that has seen military leaders elsewhere in Africa cling on to power.

The overwhelming favourite in the race on Saturday is the man who led that peaceful putsch and has dominated the political scene ever since, Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema.

Having abandoned his soldier’s fatigues and military status in favour of a politician’s suit, this highly articulate former commander of the elite Republican Guard faces seven other candidates.

Basking in popularity among a population relieved to be rid of dynastic rule – and assisted by electoral regulations that disqualified some key challengers – the 50-year-old appears almost certain to secure an outright majority in the first ballot.

His campaign slogan – using his initials “C’BON” – is a play on the French words “c’est bon”, meaning “it’s good”.

His chances of avoiding a second round run-off are bolstered by the fact that his main challenger – one of the rare senior political or civil society figures not to have rallied to his cause – is the old regime’s last prime minister, Alain-Claude Bilie-By-Nze, known by his initials ACBBN.

Victory will bring a seven-year mandate and the resources to implement development and modernising reform at a pace that the rulers of crisis-beset African countries could not even dream of.

With only 2.5 million people, Gabon is an established oil producer and the world’s second-largest exporter of manganese.

Its territory, which sits astride the equator, encompasses some of the most biodiverse tracts of the Congo Basin rainforest.

And other than a harsh post-election crackdown in the capital, Libreville, in 2016, the country has enjoyed a mostly calm recent history that contrasts with the conflicts and instability that have afflicted many regional neighbours.

Oligui Nguema and his Republican Guards met no resistance when they seized power on 30 August 2023, just hours after the electoral authorities had taken to the airwaves in the middle of the night to proclaim that the incumbent President, Ali Bongo Ondimba, had secured a third seven-year term with a crushing 64% of the vote.

It was hard to see this official result as credible. Ali Bongo, who succeeded his father Omar in 2009, had only squeaked a narrow and much disputed victory in the previous poll, in 2016.

When he suffered a stroke while visiting Saudi Arabia two years later and embarked on a painstaking gradual recovery there had been widespread popular sympathy.

But the mood shifted after he decided to stand for a third term, despite his visibly frail state of health – this fuelled widespread resentment at the supposed behind-the-throne influence and ambitions of his French-born wife Sylvia and his son Nourredin Bongo Valentin.

The military’s peaceful intervention to forestall a continuation of the regime, arresting Sylvia and Nourredin and confining Ali in enforced retirement in his private villa, triggered spontaneous celebrations among the many Gabonese who had grown weary of this apparently immovable dynasty.

And the coup was greeted with relief even by most of the administrative, political and civil society elite.

Oligui Nguema took shrewd advantage, reaching out to build a broad base of support for his transitional regime. He brought former government figures, opponents and prominent hitherto critical civil society voices into the power structure or institutions such as the appointed senate.

Political detainees were freed, though Ali Bongo’s wife and son remain in detention awaiting trial on corruption charges.

He did not resort to the sort of crackdowns on dissent or media freedom that have become a routine tool of Francophone Africa’s other military leaders, in Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso and Niger.

On the diplomatic front, in marked contrast to the assertively anti-Western posture adopted by the regimes in West Africa, Oligui Nguema despatched senior figures to cultivate international goodwill and reassure Gabon’s traditional partners of his determination to restore civilian constitutional government within a tightly limited timeframe.

Relations with France, the former colonial power and previously a close ally of the Bongo regime, are warm.

The two governments recently agreed to transform Camp de Gaulle, the longstanding French base in Gabon, into a new training centre that they will operate jointly.

Displaying a deft popular and political touch, Oligui Nguema has responded to public hunger for change with an acceleration of public works and delayed projects.

And at a time of rising popular support across Francophone Africa for a more visibly assertive defence of national interests, his government has acquired the Gabonese assets of several foreign oil companies, including the UK’s Tullow.

To ease constraints on government finances, he has borrowed on the regional money market, but has also shrewdly sought to reassure international partners.

Much of the $520m (£461m) raised through a Eurobond in February has been used to pay off old debt, and the government has also set aside funds to clear some arrears owed to the World Bank.

But if, and almost certainly when, he is elected as Gabon’s head of state on Saturday, Oligui Nguema will face significant challenges.

Such was the public’s hunger for change that, in many ways, the transition has been the easy part. There has been little public pressure constraining his freedom of manoeuvre.

There was broad consensus over incorporating a ban on dynastic succession in the new constitution.

When Oligui Nguema brushed off some parliamentarians’ concern about the concentration of executive power in the presidency by abolishing the post of prime minister, there was little fuss.

But this does mean that, going forward, the full weight of responsibility for meeting public expectations will fall on his shoulders alone.

Prominent political and civil society figures, such as veteran opponent Alexandre Barro-Chambrier and rainforest campaigner Marc Ona Essangui, have joined his transitional administration or political machine, the Rassemblement des Bâtisseurs (RDB), and could well occupy important roles post-election.

Nonetheless the focus will be on Oligui Nguema himself. And he will face complex challenges.

Gabon has long positioned itself as a leader in conserving the rainforest and its enormously diverse flora and fauna, attracting international praise for its astute use of climate finance tools – in 2023 it became the first sub-Saharan country to complete a debt-for-nature swap.

But this strategic approach has to be reconciled with the economic pressure to make full use of other natural resources, particularly minerals and oil, and with the needs of rural communities seeking to protect their hunting and farming rights.

Urban populations, particularly in Libreville – home to almost half the country’s population – need more jobs and better services, in a country whose social development record has been disappointing, given its relative affluence.

Trade unionist Jean Rémy Yama, excluded from the presidential race because he could not produce his father’s birth certificate, a nomination requirement, is one figure with a considerable following who could give voice to popular frustrations.

For Oligui Nguema, the hardest work is about to begin.

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Two couples who got married together in 1955 have put the foundation of their 70 years of marriage down to spending plenty of time apart.

Tommy Budge and Thelma Bruce had a joint ceremony with Tommy’s older sister Violet Budge and Leslie Flett in Kirkwall, Orkney.

The four have now marked the rare double platinum anniversary together, this time with their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren for company.

They described their earlier times together as days of leaving post-it notes for each other rather than phone calls or modern-day text messages, and joked that time spent apart had helped them stay together.

Thelma is now 87, Tommy is 89, Violet is 91, with Leslie now aged 94. Between them, they have seven children, eight grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.

The joint wedding on 9 April 1955 came about due to Tommy being called away for national service with the army.

Violet and Leslie already had a date set for their ceremony.

With Tommy’s time at home limited, they all decided they would combine their big day.

The ceremony was conducted by a family friend, who was the registrar at that time, in the local Balfour Hospital, where the registry office was situated.

Thelma describes it as having been a flying visit for Tommy.

“He came home on the Friday, we got married on the Saturday, and he went away again on the Monday,” she recalled.

Violet remembers their double wedding as a relatively simple process.

“Two of us stood up and got married and then we changed places, and the next two got married,” she said. “I think me and Les, went first.”

After the ceremony and photographs being taken, they all headed to the home of Leslie’s parents.

This was the moment Violet tried Champagne.

“I said it was the first time I had ever tasted Champagne and the last time,” she recalled.

“Oh I did not like it – it wasn’t my cup of tea at all,” she laughed.

It was then on to Violet and Tommy’s parents for a meal of chicken and potatoes for about 30 guests.

Both couples had to spend long periods apart at times because of work commitments.

This is something they joke was perhaps part of the reason for their long marriages.

Tommy travelled, as a lighthouse keeper, while for much of her working life Violet was on the night shift in local hospitals.

Violet said: “My secret was I worked at nights, I was home during the day, and I was out every night.

“And my man worked during the day, and he was home every night, that was the secret – to avoid each other.”

She added: “I used to write messages on post-it notes and stuck it on the mirror. He he would see it and he could read it and he could answer it and did the same thing for me. That was how we got on.”

Thelma said it had been similar for her and Tommy, who was in the army for three years before starting work as a lighthouse keeper.

“Seventy married, maybe 35 years together,” she said with a smile.

She continued: “Firstly he had around 18 months of training where I never saw him. Then he was two months away, two weeks home.

“It was only latterly that the unions got it month-on month-off.”

The quartet live in Orkney, just a few miles apart. They were delighted to receive a card from King Charles and Queen Camilla, having been sent similar god wishes by Queen Elizabeth to mark their 60th and 65th anniversaries.

Violet said: “The first card that we got, we thought, oh my God, a card from the Queen – unbelievable.

“Then the next one came around, another one from the Queen, and we thought, wonder if we will be here for (King) Charles when he gets to the throne.

“Postman came the other day and it arrived and I thought ‘oh lovely’.”

Coincidentally they share an anniversary with the King and Queen, who were married 20 years ago on 9 April.

Violet said: “It’s a day I thought we would never, ever reach.

“It is just beyond anybody’s expectations I think, especially to have all four of us here and able to take part. It’s just unbelievable.”

And what is Violet’s advice to other married couples?

“Take each day as it comes,” she said.

India’s Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal’s recent comments about the country’s start-up ecosystem have sparked a massive debate on social media and evoked strong reactions from some entrepreneurs.

At the second edition of Startup Mahakumbh, a government-led start-up conclave last week, Goyal seemed to take a hard look at India’s consumer start-ups as he urged entrepreneurs to explore more innovations in technology in order to help the country progress.

Poking fun at the rise of food delivery apps, artisanal brands and online betting apps in the country, he compared them with the innovations being made by the “other side”, which many took to mean China.

He said that while “they” were making leaps in machine learning, robotics and building “next-gen factories that can compete with the rest of the world”, India’s start-ups were still largely focussed on lifestyle products like gluten-free ice creams.

His comments sparked a flurry of reactions from India’s top innovators, with some arguing that he was only encouraging creators to be more ambitious and others calling it an unfair criticism of the start-up ecosystem, a major contributor to the country’s economy.

To be sure, Goyal also praised the pace at which new businesses were popping up in the country, hailing India as the third-largest start-up ecosystem in the world. He also urged Indian investors to do more to support Indian creators.

But he seemed to want to see more happen, and faster.

“We have to be willing to evolve and learn. [If] we want to be bigger and better, then we have to be bolder and we should not fight shy of the competition,” the minister said.

At one point, he asked the audience – brimming with entrepreneurs and investors – “Do we want to make ice creams or [semiconductor] chips?”

Aadit Palicha, co-founder of the quick-commerce app Zepto, was quick to call out the minister.

In a post on X, he argued that it was consumer internet companies like his that have led innovation in the technology space, in India and globally.

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He pointed out that Amazon – originally a consumer internet company – had scaled cloud computing while the big players in AI today, like Facebook and Google, were once consumer internet companies too.

He urged Indian investors to support consumer internet companies so that they can grow and use their profits for making more ambitious innovations.

Mohandas Pai, a prominent angel investor, told news channel Economic Times Now that there was a dearth of capital investment in deep-tech start-ups from the government and private players.

He explained that investors made a beeline for lifestyle-focused start-ups because they gave quick returns.

Deep-tech innovations take a long time to develop and require expensive infrastructure. “People are not willing to take long-term risks. We need long-term ‘patient’ money [for deep tech start-ups to thrive],” he said.

He also said that regulatory curbs on foreign investments in Indian start-ups were hurting innovation.

“Deep tech start-ups also struggle to find a market,” he added, citing the example of an Indian firm that recently pioneered a quick-charging battery for buses but found no takers for its product.

Many social media users also spoke about the challenges they faced when they tried to start their own tech businesses.

Some said they struggled to get loans, others highlighted high import taxes on certain foreign raw materials and equipment, while some others spoke about unnecessary red tape that made getting documents and approvals a nightmare.

But some entrepreneurs also defended the minister, saying that his comments were well-intentioned and a much-needed reality-check for the start-up ecosystem.

Vironika S, founder of edtech app Proxy Gyan, agreed that India’s future leadership of the global economy depended on breakthroughs in AI and semiconductors but added that there were realistic barriers to doing so and that the government could help by easing them.

Indian investor Kushal Bhagia said in a post on X that Goyal was right about ambition and a lack of deep tech start-ups in India. “We just don’t meet enough founders who are doing something truly deep tech or going after big ambitious problem statements,” he said.

He attributed this to India’s tech talent leaving the country to work in US firms and to a dearth of deep-tech founders for people to learn from and be inspired by.

The minister’s comments also got the media analysing different journeys of Indian and Chinese start-ups.

Journalist Abhijeet Kumar wrote in the Business Standard newspaper that in 2023, just 5% of Indian start-up funding went into deep-tech sectors, compared to 35% in China. He also pointed out how Beijing actively promoted high-tech innovation – in 2024, it had slashed $361bn in taxes and fees for high-tech firms, including $80.7bn in research and development deductions.

In an editorial published on Monday, the newspaper also noted that India’s start-ups are more consumption-driven, focused on using technology to solve local problems at scale rather than global ones by creating path-breaking foundational models.

It pointed out that India currently had 4,000 deep-tech start-ups and that this number was expected to jump to 10,000 by 2030 and quoted a Nasscom report which said that India’s deep tech-start-ups attracted $1.6bn in funding in 2024, marking a 78% year-on-year increase.

But there’s still a long way to go.

“As the deep-tech race intensifies globally, it is clear that India will have to do a lot to catch up with these countries,” the editorial said, adding that Goyal’s comments should “serve as a call to action” for start-ups and investors and also for the government.

“This can include setting up deep-tech innovation funds, building strong academia-start-up bridges and offering incentives for faster developments in hardware, AI, biotech and clean energy,” it said.

The ex-partner of a millionaire horse racing tipster who “tortured” women and filmed the abuse has warned someone could die if he is not stopped.

Kevin Booth was given a worldwide travel ban after a Scottish civil court heard that he attacked his victims in an underground chamber at his remote Highland home and in foreign hotel rooms.

Tammy Conner – who said she was beaten by Booth for four years from the age of 16 – has now decided to speak out in the hope that other women will come forward.

Another woman who worked for Booth at Lochdhu Lodge in Caithness told BBC Scotland News she had to sign a contract allowing him to “punish” her.

Tammy, who is now 44, said: “One of these days he is really going to hurt someone and they are going to end up dead or they are going to kill themselves.

“He shouldn’t be getting away with it any more.”

Booth, 65, described Tammy’s allegations as “laughable” and said he had never been arrested, charged or convicted of domestic violence or abuse.

However, the sheriff who heard the travel ban case described the footage Booth had filmed as “utterly harrowing” and said his conduct amounted to “trafficking and exploitation”.

Tammy was 16 when she spotted an advert in her local paper in 1997: “Models required for race meetings.”

Booth, who founded horse racing tips service Isiris, gave the teenager a job at his office in Keighley, West Yorkshire. She said he told her during the interview that she had “nice eyes”.

The work was a combination of office duties and attending race meetings at courses across England and as far north as Perth.

Booth, whose business was built on premium rate phone lines, had made a name for himself as a top tipster.

In 1997 he told the Sunday Times: “I was making more money betting than through my salary so I decided it was best to pack in teaching and bet.”

But his career change was also prompted by his 1994 conviction for caning children at the private school he ran with his then wife in Newbiggin-by-the-Sea in Northumberland.

His three-month jail term was suspended for two years but by this time he had become so successful that some course bookies refused to take his bets.

Tammy said she was one of a number of girls who were driven to the racing in a limo and plied with alcohol throughout the day.

“Then he’d suddenly try and kiss you or something. If you said no he’d say you had a punishment,” she said.

“With me he gave me three envelopes and told me to pick one.

“So I picked one and my punishment for not kissing him or something was 20 lashes with a cane.”

Tammy recalled being led to a sofa bed in Booth’s office. She noticed a video camera on his desk, which recorded the beating.

“Every time he hit me I had to say ‘please sir’ or ‘Thank you, sir’.

“And if I didn’t say ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ he would start again.”

Tammy said she was once beaten for kissing Booth’s friend at the racing.

She said: “It just went on like that. But I didn’t realise at the time he was doing it to the other girls as well.

“I thought it was just me.

“We were 16. We were kids. He effectively groomed us all.”

Tammy added: “Some of the times he hit me I was so sore. I was black and blue. I could hardly walk or sit down. It was awful.”

She said he would pay her extra for beatings and have her sign contracts saying she consented.

He also urged Tammy to sleep with him, and a year after she took the job she discovered she was pregnant.

Tammy said Booth was “happy” at the news and told her she no longer had to work in the office.

But another incident after the birth of their second child in 2000, which involved a riding crop, left her with marks on her back, bottom and legs.

She said: “After he had done that I said: ‘You are not doing that again. I’ve got kids now’.”

The beatings stopped – but Booth had other targets.

His world eventually imploded on Grand National day in April 2000 when West Yorkshire Police raided the family home.

Tammy was later told that a Brazilian au pair alleged Booth showed her a home video of him whipping a woman’s buttocks and warned she would be “severely punished” if she failed to obey him.

The following day the 27-year-old said she was indecently assaulted in his office.

The entrepreneur claimed the encounter was consensual but a jury at Bradford Crown Court took just 80 minutes to convict him. He was jailed for two years.

Tammy said that after his release they moved to Vermont in the US, before returning to live in Booth’s property in the Scottish Highlands.

Their new home was Lochdhu Lodge in Altnabreac, a small community in Caithness. It was built in 1895 as a hunting lodge in one of the most remote inhabited parts of Britain.

Accessible only by a private dirt track, the house has no neighbouring properties and offers complete privacy.

In 2010, Booth secured permission from Highland Council to build an underground chamber at the lodge.

The civil judgement said entry was via a trapdoor and a 60m-long curved concrete tunnel. It contains an empty coffin, life-sized Egyptian figures and a metal bench.

Tammy said that some years later she confronted Booth after finding a suitcase which contained sex toys and women’s underwear.

She said: “He told me that because I didn’t like doing that with him he would find other women that would, and he would pay them.”

Tammy and Booth split in 2016 but they maintained contact.

She said she was aware women were being beaten at the lodge and that she had encouraged them go to the police.

Tammy never reported Booth but in 2016 she was convicted of a breach of the peace against him. The court admonished her and released her without further punishment.

In early 2018 a European woman was taken on as a maid by Booth.

The woman, who we are calling Marta, told BBC Scotland News that she was summoned to Booth’s office within weeks of starting her job.

She said he then asked her to massage his “private parts”.

Marta refused but said she was then told: “If you are not willing to do this you will not get more pay. If you do this you will get more pay.”

She agreed to the request because she needed the money.

Marta says she was later presented with a new contract.

It stated that she could be “punished” if she did something wrong.

Marta’s first offence, in Booth’s eyes, was a chicken dinner that he didn’t like.

She said he smacked her “really hard” on the bottom and then used a brush to strike her.

“I could not sit for a couple of days,” Marta added.

She reported Booth to police in 2019 but the Crown Office dropped the case against him in 2021.

But following the recent civil action, Marta said she hoped that sharing her story would inspire others to come forward.

“I am speaking because I want to save other girls from that horrible man.”

The civil court case in February brought Booth’s behaviour into the full glare of publicity.

Police Scotland successfully raised the civil action under human trafficking and exploitation laws to ban him from travelling outside the UK.

The judgement said Booth communicated with economically vulnerable women on Skype and arranged to meet them in locations such as South Africa, Dubai, Sri Lanka and the Philippines.

He paid for them to travel to the UK, where they were subjected to violent “punishments”.

It added: “Some of these messages explicitly mentioned payment for submitting to beatings.”

The judgement also said Booth applied “financial pressure” on a woman to withdraw a rape allegation in Ireland.

Detectives recovered 341 home videos featuring women being beaten.

One 18-minute attack on a woman who was apparently unable to escape was described as appearing to be “nothing other than torture”.

The judgement also referred back to his time working as a teacher in Botswana in the 1980s, when he “caned many students, and enjoyed doing so”.

Booth is due to return to court next week for a sexual communication case.

He has denied the charges against him.

Tammy said she would be willing to speak to detectives about her experiences.

She said: “He just seems to get away with things because he is rich. He’s never going to stop it.”

Tammy urged women who have been beaten by Booth, many of whom may now be living overseas, to contact police.

She added: “He should be in prison.”

The Crown Office concluded in 2021 that there should be no further criminal proceedings in relation to Marta’s complaint but a spokesperson said it reserved the right to prosecute in the future.

They added: “We are working closely with Police Scotland on further investigations.”

Det Supt Steven Bertram said the trafficking and exploitation risk order was sought in a bid to prevent “any further offending”.

He added: “Trafficking and exploitation is a blight on our communities and has no place in society and we will use all resources open to us to tackle it.

“Time is no barrier to justice and we would always urge anyone with concerns or information to please come forward and speak to us.”

In response, Kevin Booth said Tammy’s accusations about his behaviour were “somewhat laughable”.

He said he had been the victim of domestic abuse at her hands and that she had “exercised coercive and controlling behaviour by restricting my activities”.

Booth said there had been no complaints, arrests, charges or convictions against him for domestic violence or abuse.

He said Marta’s allegations were “not correct” and that he had “evidence to that effect”.

Booth added: “When the actual evidence was put before the Crown Office they said that they were not going to prosecute.”

He also said that the civil court judgement was still subject to an appeal and, as a result, he could not comment on it at this stage.

The Trump administration has revoked visas of hundreds of international students and detained roughly a dozen others on college campuses across the US, often without any warning or recourse for appeals.

Videos of some of the arrests, showing plain-clothes officers handcuff and arrest students near their homes, have gone viral and sent shockwaves through the international student community.

Over 80 universities have reported revoked visas, according to a tracker by Inside Higher Ed, hitting students and faculty from coast-to-coast.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed last month that at least 300 visas have been revoked, adding that the department was targeting those who were involved in activities that “run counter” to US national interests.

Many of those targeted have participated in some form of pro-Palestinian activity. In other cases, cancellations appear to be connected to those with some sort of criminal record, or legal infractions like driving over the speed limit, immigration lawyers have said.

Immigration experts say visa-holding students have the same First Amendment right to free speech as US citizens, and historically it has been rare for students to be deported because of acts of political expression. But they are vulnerable to deportation because of the temporary nature of their visa.

Lawyers for some of the students who have filed lawsuits against the federal government say their visas were revoked suddenly, without any warning and without recourse for appeal or corrections.

Rubio has said that student visas are for studying and warned they would be revoked if foreigners were seen as engaging in “destabilizing” acts.

In a transcript released by the US State Department, Rubio said “it might be more” than 300 visas that have been revoked.

“I don’t know actually if it’s primarily student visas. It’s a combination of visas,” he told reporters.

Those affected have predominantly been involved in pro-Palestinian protests, he said, but have also included some who have prior criminal charges.

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A Turkish citizen and University of Minnesota student was detained in March after his visa was revoked for a prior drunk driving infraction, according to the BBC’s media partner CBS News.

Other reports show students have had their visas revoked after they were found to have prior speeding tickets.

Faculty members and rights advocates have expressed concern about students’ ability to share their opinions without risking their legal status.

“No president should be allowed to set an ideological litmus test and exclude or remove people from our country who they disagree with,” the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said in a statement.

The White House has defended its actions using a provision of a 1952 law that grants the secretary of state broad authority to expel foreigners believed to pose “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” for the US.

Inside Higher Ed tracker identifies more than 80 colleges and universities where international students and recent graduates have had their legal status changed by the State Department.

It lists major public universities with tens-of-thousands of students like Texas A&M University, University of Oregon, University of Florida and University of Colorado.

It also includes smaller private institutions like Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Yale University, Columbia University and Stanford University.

Federal authorities revoked visas of at least eight students at Arizona State University and at least six people at the University of California Berkeley, according to the Washington Post.

At least 57 visas have been revoked from across the entire University of California system, according to the Wall Street Journal, and seven at Ohio State University.

There are roughly 1.1 million international student visa-holders in the US.

Multiple students and faculty have been detained, including those on student visas and at least one permanent legal US resident.

Once in custody, they have been sent to detention centres across the US where they await deportation.

Video footage of some of the arrests shows plain-clothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers approaching confused and frightened students, before they are placed in the back of unmarked cars.

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Some of those detained have alleged they were arrested without explanation and say they have committed no crimes.

One of the most high profile cases involves Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia University graduate and legal permanent resident who was arrested in his university-owned home in March.

The other case to capture national attention involves Tufts University student and Turkish national Rumeysa Ozturk.

Footage of Ms Ozturk’s detainment shows her shaking in fear as she is encircled by six plain-clothes ICE agents wearing masks who stopped her on the street as she was headed to a Ramadan celebration.

Rasha Alawieh, a Brown University professor and kidney transplant specialist, was deported after arriving at Boston airport.

US officials said they found “photos and videos” on her cell phone that were “sympathetic” to Hezbollah.

At least two students who had their visas revoked have fled to Canada, including Momodou Taal and Ranjani Srinivasan.

Several students have sued the government to challenge their visa revocations and detainment amid a bid to delay or block their deportation.

They allege that they have been arrested and detained without cause or explanation, a possible violation of their civil rights.

One example includes Xiaotian Liu, a 26-year-old doctoral student from China who studies at Dartmouth College.

Mr Liu is suing the government along with the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire, alleging that his visa has been revoked “without any notice and sufficient explanation”.

Mr Liu has not committed any crimes or participated in any protests, according to the lawsuit.

For 20 years, Rj LaMendola found peace while paddling in the water on his surfboard.

But last month off the coast of Southern California, the ocean turned hostile after a sea lion lunged at him, bit him and dragged him off his board.

“It looked possessed,” Mr LaMendola wrote in a Facebook post, saying the animal involved in the encounter just north of Los Angeles was “feral, almost demonic”.

The surfer later learned the animal was suffering from domoic acid toxicosis- a neurological condition caused by a harmful algal bloom. It’s one of dozens of sickened animals that have been spotted across California beaches recently – many suffering from symptoms like seizures or intense lethargy. The toxin often leads to death.

This particular algae bloom has appeared four years in a row across California, raising concerns it might be turning into an annual event. The bloom of algae started earlier than normal this year and has spread roughly 370 miles of the iconic Southern California coastline.

When Mr LaMenolda made it to shore, his wetsuit ripped open, he was bleeding and went to the hospital. “It felt like I was being hunted,” he said.

South of where he was attacked, 15-year-old Phoebe Beltran was doing a swim test in Long Beach to become a lifeguard when a sea lion repeatedly bit her.

“I was just so scared, so shocked, but I still felt the immense pain on my arms, like, over and over again,” the teen told local US media.

The two back-to-back attacks have garnered global headlines and caused some anxiety among those who call California and its iconic beaches home. While attacks are rare, experts say the number of animals sickened by the toxic algae bloom appears to be increasing.

John Warner, CEO of the Marine Mammal Care Center in Los Angeles – which is treating sea life sickened by the bloom – told the BBC these animals aren’t “naturally aggressive or actually attack people” but the toxins impact their behaviour.

“These animals are reacting to the fact that they are sick,” he explained. “They’re disoriented, and most likely, most of them are having seizures, and so their senses are not all fully functional as they normally would and they’re acting out of fear.”

Domoic acid builds up in smaller fish like sardines and anchovies, which are eaten by marine predators such as dolphins, seals and sea lions in large quantities, causing them to get sick.

Exposure to the acid causes serious neurological issues in sea lions, including seizures, disorientation and a telltale head-tilting behaviour known as “stargazing.”

Some animals fall into a lethargic and comatose state, while others can turn aggressive.

“Their behaviour changes from what we’re used to, to something more unpredictable,” Mr Warner said. “But in this particular bloom, we’re seeing them really comatose and rather taken out by this toxin.”

The Marine Mammal Care Center is currently overwhelmed with the influx and severity of sick animals.

According to Mr Warner, the nonprofit has admitted at least 195 sea lions from Feb 20 to the end of March. During the same time frame last year, the centre saw only 50 of the animals.

If treated promptly, sea lions have a 50% to 65% chance of recovery, but Mr Warner says the centre is running out of space and money to treat the animals. Treatment includes anti-seizure medication and sedation, followed by twice-daily tube feeding and hydration.

On top of that, the recovery pace this year has been slower, he said.

While sick sea lions in 2023 typically began eating within a week, many this year are still lethargic five weeks into care.

Recovery comes in stages: from a comatose state to disorientation, then aggressive reawakening—when the animals are most dangerous due to lingering neurological effects.

Adult sea lions can weigh hundreds of pounds, and aggressive behaviors make housing them complicated. If their behaviour doesn’t normalize, it could signal permanent brain damage, and humane euthanasia becomes necessary.

“If they’re still aggressive or not foraging properly, it tells us their brains aren’t functioning the way they should,” Mr Warner said.

For now, beachgoers are urged to stay well away from stranded animals – at least 50 feet – and resist the temptation to intervene.

“These are still the same charismatic, really fun-to-watch expert cuddle puddlers that we see along the coast all the time,” Mr Warner said. “We need to remember they are wild animals. They can be unpredictable even in normal circumstances.”

LeBron James, one of the most iconic figures in modern sports, has made history once again – this time in the toy aisle.

Mattel has announced the release of a new Barbie in Mr James’ likeness, making him the first professional male athlete to be honoured as a Ken doll.

“We are excited to bring fans a new presentation of Ken,” said Krista Berger, Mattel’s senior vice president of Barbie. She said the doll celebrates “LeBron as a role model,” his ability as an icon to transcend culture and set a “positive example for the next generation.”

The doll features the Los Angeles Lakers basketball player in his pre-game fashion and reflects his height – it’s an inch taller than the standard Ken doll.

In reality, the athlete is 6ft 9in tall.

The new doll comes as the company is facing financial uncertainty amid President Donald Trump’s escalating trade war with China, where just under 40% of Mattel’s production is based.

Trump announced on Wednesday that tariffs on goods from China would increase to 125%. He accused Beijing of a “lack of respect” after it retaliated and said it would impose tariffs of 84% on US imports.

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In the same announcement, Trump announced a 90-day pause for countries hit by higher US tariffs and authorised a universal “lowered reciprocal tariff of 10%” as negotiations continued with roughly 60 countries.

Mattel has said it may have to increase prices and possibly implement changes to its supply chain. Consumer and business groups in the US have warned that the tariffs may disrupt supply chains and lead to higher prices.

The new Ken doll doesn’t show the athlete in his basketball uniform. Instead, he’s dressed in a varsity jacket adorned with “LJ” on the front.

It includes an Ohio patch and a crown patch on one sleeve and the number 23 – his basketball jersey number – on the other. On the back, “LeBron” is boldly printed along with the phrase, “Just a kid from Akron” – the Ohio city where he was born.

Under the jacket, the doll wears a shirt that reads “We Are Family,” a nod to the star’s foundation. The doll includes accessories like a basketball, headphones and sneakers.

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In a promotional video released by Mattel, Mr James reacted to see the doll for the first time. “Oh, he dope!” he says as he’s given the figurine. “That’s so cool!”

As he toyed with the doll’s accessories, he joked the LeBron Ken doll “might have to do a little lifting, legs are looking skinny”.

The move is a significant moment for the 65-year-old Barbie brand, which has made a push in recent years to diversify its dolls and reflect a broader range of careers, body types and backgrounds.

Though Barbie has previously honoured athletes like Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka, and Megan Rapinoe, Mr James is the first male sports figure – and the first male figure not from the entertainment industry – to join the lineup.

Even with four NBA titles, two Olympic gold medals, and a scoring record to his name, Mr James says his new title of “Kenbassador” hits differently—because it’s about more than basketball.

“It’s an opportunity to recognize the powerful impact of role models who instill confidence, inspire dreams, and show kids that they, too, can achieve greatness.”

King Charles and Queen Camilla have had a private meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican where he wished them a happy 20th wedding anniversary.

In a statement released by Buckingham Palace, the King and Queen said they were “delighted the Pope was well enough to host them – and to have had the opportunity to share their best wishes in person”.

The meeting took place on the third day of their state visit to Italy and ahead of a state banquet in Rome on Wednesday evening.

It is understood the meeting was only confirmed on Wednesday morning. It came after previous plans for the couple to meet the pontiff in a state visit to the Vatican were postponed because of the Pope’s ill health.

The meeting took place on Wednesday afternoon at the Vatican’s Casa Santa Marta, where Pope Francis has been convalescing since being released from Gemelli Hospital.

A photograph of the meeting, which lasted 20 minutes, was released by the Vatican on Thursday morning.

The Royal Family X account posted it along with the caption “Che occasione speciale”, which translates as “what a special occasion”.

“The King and Queen were deeply touched by the Pope’s kind remarks about their 20th wedding anniversary and honoured to be able to share their best wishes to him in person,” the statement added.

According to the Vatican, the Pope is showing signs of gradual improvement and he “reciprocated” the King’s “best wishes for a speedy recovery of his health”.

This was a reference to the Pope offering his own best wishes, after the King recently suffered side effects from his cancer treatment.

There was also an exchange of private gifts between Pope Francis and the royal visitors.

The King and Queen have been enjoying a warm welcome on their state visit to Italy, but it was a trip that originally had a significant focus on visiting the Vatican and planned events such as a service at the Sistine Chapel.

That had been no longer been possible after the serious health problems of Pope Francis – but with his health improving the King and Queen had the opportunity for a brief meeting.

After visiting the Pope, King Charles and Queen Camilla spent their wedding anniversary evening at a state banquet in Rome hosted by the President of Italy Sergio Mattarella.

The King joked to his Italian hosts at the Quirinale Palace about laying on such a spectacle for their anniversary.

“I must say it really is very good of you, Mr President, to lay on this small romantic, candle-lit dinner for two..,” the King told the banquet.

There were 150 guests at the dinner, including the singer Andrea Bocelli, chef Giorgio Locatelli, hotelier Rocco Forte and UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy.

Earlier in the day, at the Italian Parliament, Queen Camilla had worn the same outfit she had worn at her civil wedding ceremony in 2005.

The ivory silk dress designed by Anna Valentine had been “repurposed” to wear again for this anniversary day.

The King’s speech at the state banquet, at the Italian presidential palace, touched on a mix of comic and serious themes about the long relationship between the UK and Italy, back to the ancient Romans.

“I for one, have never asked that question, made famous by Monty Python, ‘What have the Romans ever done for us?’,” the King joked.

“We see their imprint on what they knew as Britannia every day – from London to Carmarthen, from York to Hadrian’s Wall.”

But he also warned that “we are living in a very precarious and fragile world” and there was a need to stand up for “values and the liberty we hold so dear”.

“In difficult times, friends stand together,” he told his audience, in a speech that once again referenced the conflict in Ukraine.

The menu for the state banquet, in the splendour of the medieval palace, included bottoni pasta with aubergine caponata, salt encrusted sea bass, fried artichokes and roast potatoes.

That was followed by a fior di latte ice cream cake with raspberries.

This was the King’s second speech of the day, as earlier he had become the first UK monarch to address both houses of the Italian Parliament.

The King received a standing ovation from Italy’s lawmakers, in their ornately decorated chamber in the Palazzo Montecitorio, with a rallying call to defend shared values and the need to reinforce the military partnership between the UK and Italy.

“We are both European countries,” he said, standing in front of the Italian and European Union flags.

He welcomed that the UK and Italy “stood by Ukraine in her hour of need”, but warned that images of wars were now reverberating across the continent.

“Our younger generations can see in the news every day on their smartphones and tablets that peace is never to be taken for granted,” said the King.

Such threats meant it was important that “Britain and Italy stand today united in defence of the democratic values we share”, he told Parliament.

Delivering some of the speech in Italian, he spoke of the long history between the UK and Italy, going back to the ancient Romans arriving on Britain’s “windswept shores”.

As head of the Commonwealth, he also spoke of the role of Canadian troops in helping to liberate Italy in the Second World War.

The speech went down well with the assembled Parliamentarians – with the applause so long at one point that an Italian official began to thank him, assuming that the King had finished.

The King began the day by meeting Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, receiving a ceremonial red-carpet welcome at the Villa Doria Pamphili, on the outskirts of Rome.

The Italian public has given a warm reception to the royal couple on their trip to Italy, including outside the Colosseum, when the King and Queen posed for photos near the ancient site of the Temple of Venus.

There were calls of “Carlo” – Italian for Charles – from crowds waiting to see the royal visitors and local media also seemed interested by their car, the claret coloured State Bentley.

The Royal Family’s official X account marked the wedding anniversary by posting a video which showed guards playing a version of Madness’s 1981 hit It Must Be Love.

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An adventurer who claimed to be the first woman to solo traverse Canada’s largest island has been criticised for her “privilege and ignorance”.

Camilla Hempleman-Adams, from Wiltshire, covered 150 miles (241km) on foot and by ski across Baffin Island, Nunavut, completing the journey on 27 March.

However, members of the native Inuit population said her claim was incorrect and came from a “dangerous colonial attitude”, with people there having travelled the same route for generations.

The daughter of adventurer Sir David Hempleman-Adams has since apologised, adding: “It was never my intention to misrepresent any historical achievements or cause distress to local communities.”

The solo trek across Baffin Island took Ms Hempleman-Adams from Qikiqtarjuaq to Pangnirtung, crossing through Auyuittuq National Park.

Ahead of departure, she wrote on her expedition website: “Parks Canada has confirmed that there are no historical records of a female solo attempt from Qikiqtarjuaq to Pangnirtung.”

But Gayle Uyagaqi Kabloona, who is Inuit and based in Ottawa, said this was because crossing the terrain is considered “a normal way of life” for them.

“The article hit people really hard in a very sensitive spot, because of our history and the difficulties we face every day in combatting Western colonialism,” she said.

“This woman is coming here from such a place of privilege and ignorance that it seems dangerous.

“It was almost like she was bringing back news of a new continent to Europe and saying ‘there’s nobody here!’ We were and still are.

“It’s such a clear example of how colonialism benefits from dispossessing indigenous people of their land and writing us out of history.”

In a statement, Ms Hempleman-Adams apologised for the offence caused by her expedition coverage.

“I have deep respect for the land, its people, and their history,” she said.

“I have travelled in this region multiple times and hold immense admiration for its nature, culture and traditions.

“I am truly saddened that the coverage of my journey may have caused concern or upset, and I remain committed to learning from this experience and engaging with the community with the utmost respect.”

Ms Kabloona said the matter had affected the community because many people who lived traditional nomadic lifestyles had now passed away – raising concerns that cultural practices will gradually be lost to time.

She is now in the process of mapping out the route her family has taken for generations while migrating south in spring, towards the caribou hunting grounds.

On one of these annual 186-mile (300km) journeys, Ms Kabloona’s grandmother went into labour and gave birth to her father in a tent along the way.

“Two days later, she got up and carried on walking,” Ms Kabloona said.

“She did that in every single one of her pregnancies, traversed our land, because that is our way of life and always has been.”

Ms Kabloona said she welcomed visitors to the region but disapproved of the “outdated” term “explorer”, as it carried with it connotations of imperialist expansion.

“If you want to come and enjoy the outdoors, please do so,” she said.

“The danger is going back with this colonial attitude and disseminating information like the Inuit don’t have history there.

“Saying you’re the ‘first person’ to do anything in an indigenous country is insulting.

“Show respect to the land and the people who have kept it pristine for your adventures.”

A Meta whistleblower told US senators on Wednesday that the company undermined national security in order to build a $18 billion business in China.

At a congressional hearing, Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former global public policy director at Facebook, said she watched as executives decided to provide the Chinese Communist Party‬ with access to the data of Meta users, including that of Americans.

Meta has disputed Ms Wynn-Williams’s statements.

“Sarah Wynn-Williams’ testimony is divorced from reality and riddled with false claims,” said Meta spokesman Ryan Daniels.

Mr Daniels said CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been public about the company’s interest in offering its services in China, but added. “[T]he fact is this: we do not operate our services in China today.”

Meta does, however, generate advertising revenue from advertisers based in China.

During her testimony before a Senate judiciary subcommittee, Ms Wynn-Williams also alleged the parent company of Facebook and Instagram worked “hand in glove” with Beijing to build censorship tools aimed at silencing critics of the Chinese Community Party.

Specifically, she said Meta capitulated to China’s demands that it delete the Facebook account of Guo Wengui, a Chinese dissident living in the US.

Meta maintains it unpublished Mr Guo’s page and suspended his profile because it violated the company’s Community Standards.

“One thing the Chinese Communist Party and Mark Zuckerberg share is that they want to silence their critics. I can say that from personal experience,” Ms Wynn-Williams said during her testimony.

In March, Ms Wynn-Williams released a memoir called “Careless People” about her experience at the company, which was then called Facebook.

Meta won an emergency ruling in the US that temporarily blocked her from promoting her book, which included several critical claims about her time at the company.

“[T]he false and defamatory book should never have been published,” Meta said at the time.

Wednesday’s hearing before members of the US Senate was led by Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri.

Sen Hawley opened the hearing by saying Meta had “stopped at absolutely nothing to prevent” Wednesday’s testimony by Ms Wynn-Williams, who joins Frances Haugen and Arturo Béjar as former employees who have spoken out against the social media giant.

“Why is it that Facebook is so desperate to prevent this witness from telling what she knows?” Hawley said.

At a fiery January 2024 congressional hearing at which Mr Zuckerberg also testified, Sen Hawley demanded that the CEO apologise to families who said their children had been harmed by social media.

Behind Mr Zuckerberg at the 2024 hearing sat a row of families who said their children had self-harmed or killed themselves as a result of social media content.

Mr Zuckerberg turned and told families in the audience that “no one should go through” what they had.

During Wednesday’s hearing, Sen Hawley said Meta had suggested Ms Wynn-Williams could face financial penalties for speaking out.

“They have threatened her with $50,000 in punitive damages every time she mentions Facebook in public, even if the statements that she is making are true,” Sen Hawley alleged. “Even as we sit here today, Facebook is attempting her total and complete financial ruin.”

On Wednesday, the company told the BBC the $50,000 in damages is for each material violation of the separation agreement that she signed when she departed the company in 2017.

Ms Wynn-Williams says Meta told her that creating exceptions to the non-disparagement agreement would “eat the rule,” which Meta later clarified to the BBC was the comment of an arbitrator, not the company.

The company added that she was not restricted from testifying before Congress.

But Meta declined to directly respond to a BBC inquiry about whether Ms Wynn-Williams may indeed face financial penalties initiated by the company or its lawyers for statements she made on Wednesday in front of Congress.

Ms Wynn-Williams told lawmakers that all of this had taken a personal toll on her.

“The last four weeks have been very difficult,” she told members of the Senate committee. “Even the choice to come and speak to Congress is incredibly difficult.”

At least 29 Palestinians, including children, have been killed in an Israeli air strike on a multi-storey residential building in the east of Gaza City, a local hospital says.

The Hamas-run Civil Defence agency said warplanes targeted the area near al-Hawashi mosque in the Shejaiya neighbourhood on Tuesday morning.

It initially reported that 23 people were killed but warned its first responders were searching for two dozen others under the rubble. In the evening, it announced 15 bodies had been recovered, without giving an updated death toll.

The Israeli military said it had struck a “senior Hamas terrorist” who was responsible for planning and executing attacks in the area.

Numerous steps were taken to mitigate harm to civilians, including the use of “precision weapons”, it added.

The military also accused Hamas of violating international law by deliberately using the civilian population as human shields.

Video from Shejaiya showed the dust-covered bodies of small children being carried away from the rubble by distraught relatives and rescue workers.

Ayub Salim, 26, told the AFP news agency the area around the residential building struck on Tuesday morning was “overcrowded with tents, displaced people and homes”.

He said it was hit by “multiple missiles” and that “shrapnel flew in all directions”.

“Dust and massive destruction filled the entire place, we couldn’t see anything, just the screams and panic of the people,” he added. “It is truly a horrific massacre.”

Hamas also said the Israeli military had “committed a bloody massacre”.

Thousands of Shejaiya residents fled last week after the Israeli military ordered the evacuation of much of the neighbourhood, saying it was operating with force to destroy “terrorist infrastructure”.

But residents said the area struck on Wednesday was not covered by the evacuation order, so many families had remained there.

“We were told this was a safe area for the displaced, yet they are targeting residential blocks with lethal missiles. What have the children done? Do they fire rockets at the Israeli army?” an elderly man in Shejaiya told BBC Arabic’s Gaza Lifeline programme.

Earlier on Tuesday, Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said at least 33 people had been killed in Israeli attacks over the previous 24 hours.

That brought the reported total of those killed since Israel resumed its air and ground campaign against Hamas on 18 March to 1,482.

The Israeli military meanwhile said its aircraft had struck more than 45 “terror targets” across Gaza over the past day, including weapons manufacturing sites and rocket launchers.

It also said ground forces were advancing into Shejaiya as well as the so-called “Morag Corridor” in southern Gaza.

The military corridor is being established by seizing territory between the city of Rafah, whose residents have been ordered to evacuate, and neighbouring Khan Younis.

During a visit to the area on Wednesday, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said: “We are now slicing through the strip, and we are increasing the pressure step by step, so that they [Hamas] will give us our hostages.” ​

“All of Rafah will be evacuated and turned into a security area. This is what we are doing now,” he added, according to the Jerusalem Post.

Another 390,000 people have been displaced over the past three weeks, with two-thirds of the territory now designated by the Israeli military as “no-go” zones or placed under evacuation orders, according to the UN.

The UN has also warned that supplies of food, medicine and fuel have dried up because Israel has prevented any deliveries of humanitarian aid for a month to put pressure on Hamas.

On Tuesday, Secretary General António Guterres condemned the Israeli blockade, saying it violated international law and had opened “the floodgates of horror”.

“Gaza is a killing field and civilians are in an endless death loop,” he added.

The Israeli foreign ministry rejected Guterres’ criticism, saying he had “not let the facts get in the way when spreading slander against Israel”.

“There is no shortage of humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip – over 25,000 aid trucks have entered the Gaza Strip in the 42 days of the ceasefire. Hamas used this aid to rebuild its war machine,” spokesman Oren Marmonstein said.

On Monday, the heads of six UN humanitarian agencies had described Israel’s assertion there was enough food for Gaza’s 2.1 million population as “far from reality on the ground”.

They called for the protection of civilians, the facilitation of aid deliveries, the release of the hostages held by Hamas, and the renewal of the ceasefire.

Mediators are continuing to try to resurrect the ceasefire, which started on 19 January and saw Hamas release 33 Israeli hostages – eight of them dead – and five Thai hostages in exchange for about 1,900 Palestinian prisoners and a surge in humanitarian aid entering Gaza.

Israel said it resumed its offensive due to Hamas’s refusal to accept a proposal for an extension of the ceasefire deal’s first phase and the release of more of the 59 hostages it is still holding, up to 24 of whom are believed to be alive.

Hamas accused Israel of violating the original agreement, according to which there would be a second phase where all the remaining living hostages would be handed over and the war brought to a permanent end.

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

More than 50,840 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s health ministry.

Broadcaster and former England striker Eni Aluko – who was targeted on social media by ex-footballer Joey Barton – has said she hopes a judgement that his posts were defamatory will make people think twice about what they say online.

Aluko said she should not have to be anxious that her race and gender would be attacked every time she was on TV.

Speaking after winning the first stage of a High Court libel claim against Barton, she said she was “past the point of asking nicely for people to understand the importance of language and how to treat women”.

The 38-year-old told BBC News: “I can’t feel anxious every time I get on TV that my race and my gender are going to be attacked.”

Referring to comments made by Aluko in 2020, which appeared to criticise people placed on the government’s furlough scheme, for which she apologised, Barton posted comments suggesting Aluko’s late father had been financially corrupt, and that her private education made her a “hypocrite”.

He also accused her of “playing the race card”.

High Court judge Mr Justice Lavender ruled Barton’s comments were mainly statements of opinion, but were defamatory by meaning or innuendo.

Aluko said: “Things need to change.

“There’s a double standard held for me, sometimes a triple standard held for me as a black woman, if I say anything.

“This is bigger than me. This was just not something I could accept and actually it’s part of a wider culture towards women in broadcasting.

“Opinions and free speech are a human right and I support but it can’t be weaponised and used as a route to hate speech”

“The only way to change is to hold people accountable.”

The former Lioness scored 33 international goals in 102 appearances before retiring in 2020 and moving onto a career in broadcasting.

She said she had faced threats of violence and had suffered abuse on social media after Barton twice posted on X about her in January 2024.

The ITV and BT Sport regular said she hoped the judge’s finding would lead to more people speaking out about bad behaviour and online abuse.

She added: “I love what I do. I love broadcasting. I love talking about football. I love being an example for other young black girls and women of colour that you can do it and can break into spaces that ordinarily have not always been taken up.”

Barton is yet to respond to the ruling and could appeal against it. The 42-year-old could also defend the statements if the case goes to trial.

In a separate criminal case, Barton has pleaded not guilty to allegedly posting offensive comments on social media about Aluko, as well as broadcasters Lucy Ward and Jeremy Vine.

Suddenly, Donald Trump’s trade war is in much sharper focus.

Rather than a fight on all fronts against the world, this now looks far more like a fight on familiar Trumpian territory: America v China.

The 90-day pause on the higher “retaliatory” tariffs levied on dozens of countries still leaves a universal across-the-board tariff of 10% in place.

But China – which ships everything from iPhones to children’s toys and accounts for around 14% of all US imports – has been singled out for much harsher treatment with an eye-watering rate of 125%.

Trump said the increase was due to Beijing’s readiness to retaliate with its own 84% levy on US goods, a move the president described as showing a “lack of respect”.

But for a politician who first fought his way to the White House on the back of an anti-China message, there is much more to this than simple retaliation.

For Trump, this is about the unfinished business of that first term in office.

“We didn’t have the time to do the right thing, which we’re doing now,” he told reporters.

The aim is nothing less than the upending of an established system of global trade centred on China as the factory of the world, as well as the once widely held view that underpinned it – the idea that more of this trade was, in and of itself, a good thing.

To understand just how central this is to the US president’s thinking, you need to go back to the time before anyone ever thought of him as a possible candidate for office, let alone a likely winner.

In 2012, when I first reported from Shanghai – China’s business capital – increased trade with the country was seen by almost everyone – global business leaders, Chinese officials, visiting foreign governments and trade delegations, foreign correspondents and learned economists – as a no brainer.

It was boosting global growth, providing an endless supply of cheap goods, enriching China’s army of new factory workers increasingly embedded in global supply chains, and providing lucrative opportunities to multinational corporations selling their wares to its newly minted middle classes.

Within a few of years of my arrival, China had surpassed the US to become the world’s biggest market for Rolls Royce, General Motors and Volkswagen.

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There was a deeper justification, too.

As China got richer, so the theory went, Chinese people would begin to demand political reform.

Their spending habits would also help China transition to a consumer society.

But the first of those aspirations never happened, with China’s ruling Communist Party only tightening its grip on power.

And the second one didn’t happen fast enough, with China not only still dependent on exports, but openly planning to become ever more dominant.

Its infamous policy blueprint – published in 2015 and entitled Made in China 2025 – set out a huge state-backed vision of becoming a global leader in a number of key manufacturing sectors, from aerospace to ship building to electric vehicles.

And so it was that same year, a political outsider launched his run for US president, making the case repeatedly on the campaign trail that China’s rise had hollowed out the American economy, driven Rust Belt decline and cost blue-collar workers their livelihoods and dignity.

Trump’s first-term trade war broke the mould and shattered the consensus. His successor, President Joe Biden, kept much of his tariffs on China in place.

And yet, even though they have undoubtedly caused China some pain, they have not done much to change the economic model.

China now produces 60% of the world’s electric cars – a large proportion of them made by its own homegrown brands – and 80% of the batteries that power them.

So, now Trump is back, with this tit-for-tat escalation on levies.

It would, arguably, be the biggest shock ever delivered to the established global trading system, were it not for all the other on-again off-again tariff measures the US president has rolled out in recent days.

What happens next depends on two key questions.

Firstly, whether China takes up that offer to negotiate.

And secondly, assuming it eventually does, whether China is willing to make the kind of major concessions that America is looking for, including a complete overhaul of its export driven economic model.

In answering them, the first thing to say is that we are in completely unchartered territory, so we should be wary of anyone who says they know how Beijing is likely to react.

But there are certainly reasons to be cautious.

China’s vision of its economic strength – one based on strong exports and a tightly protected domestic market – is now closely bound up with its idea of national rejuvenation and the supremacy of its one-party system.

Its tight control over the information sphere means it will be unlikely to drop its barriers to American technology companies, for example.

But there is a third question, and it is one for America to answer.

Does the US still believe in free trade? Donald Trump often suggests that tariffs are a good thing, not merely as a means to an end, but as an end in themselves.

He talks about the benefit of a protectionist barrier for America, in order to stimulate domestic investment, encourage American companies to bring those foreign supply chains back home, and raise tax revenues.

And if Beijing believes that is indeed the primary purpose of the tariffs, it may decide there is nothing to negotiate anyway.

Rather than championing the idea of economic co-operation, the world’s two biggest superpowers may find themselves locked in a fight for winner-takes-all economic supremacy.

If so, that really would mark a shattering of the old consensus, and a very different, possibly very dangerous, future.

Australia has swiftly turned down China’s offer to “join hands” against Donald Trump’s tariffs, as Washington escalates its trade war with Beijing.

The White House recently imposed an import tax of 10% on Australian goods, but for China – Australia’s biggest trading partner – raised tariffs to 125%.

China’s ambassador to Australia Xiao Qian argued joint resistance is “the only way” to stop the “hegemonic and bullying behaviour of the US”, appealing for Canberra’s cooperation in an opinion piece on Thursday.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, however, said Australians would “speak for ourselves”, while the country’s defence minister said the nation would not be “holding China’s hand”.

“It’s about pursuing Australia’s national interests, not about making common calls with China,” Richard Marles told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Hours earlier, Trump had dramatically changed course on his sweeping tariffs scheme, announcing a 90-day pause for countries hit with high US tariffs. In the meantime, a tariff of 10% would apply.

China was the exception though. Instead, the US imposed an extra bump on import fees, after Beijing announced it would impose 84% counter-tariffs on the US.

Canberra has expressed anger over the tariffs but has said it will not retaliate, instead seeking further negotiations with the White House.

In his opinion piece for Nine Newspapers, Mr Xiao said the US had “weaponised” trade issues and expressed concern that a “weak compromise” would enable Trump to “sabotage the international order” and drag the world economy into a “quagmire” and an “abyss”.

Australia and China have a “mutually beneficial and long-standing co-operation” and need to work together to “safeguard a fair and free trading environment”, he added.

“The international community… should firmly say no to unilateralism and protectionism.”

Albanese told reporters on Thursday that Australia’s trade relationship with China was an important one, but said Australia was focussed on looking for other export opportunities outside of the US.

“Eighty percent of trade does not involve the United States. There are opportunities for Australia and we intend to seize them,” he said.

Marles said Australia is also looking to lessen its reliance on China, to bolster “economic resilience”, adding that the country’s focus would be on diversifying trade, in particular with Indonesia, India, the UK and the UAE.

Australian Trade Minister Don Farrell has held meetings with Japan, Singapore, South Korea and India in recent days.

For days, Donald Trump and his White House team had insisted they were fully committed to their decision to impose sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs on dozens of countries. They even derided a report on Tuesday that said the president was considering a 90-day pause – news that triggered a brief stock market surge.

But now that pause on higher tariff rates, with a few notable exceptions, is a reality. The reordering of the global economic order is on hold, and Trump’s promise of a golden age of American manufacturing will have to wait.

The White House has said that going big on tariffs and then hitting the pause button, before entering negotiations with individual countries, was the plan all along.

“We’ve had more than 75 countries contact us, and I imagine, after today, there will be more,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters shortly after the announcement.

That framing from the White House is not surprising, of course. And it is difficult to ignore the investor panic, tumbling bond market and growing chorus of Republican criticism and public disapproval that preceded the announcement.

So was it a strategic retreat in the face of unexpected resistance, or yet another example of Trump’s “art of the deal” negotiating strategy at work?

It didn’t take long for Trump’s aides – many of the same people who said he would never back down – to fan out and celebrate the president’s move.

Trade adviser Peter Navarro said Trump’s tariff situation “unfolded exactly the way it should”.

“You clearly failed to see what President Trump is doing here,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt told a crowd of gathered reporters. “The entire world is calling the United States of America.”

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They were less clear about the details of Trump’s tariff suspension, announced via a post on his Truth Social website. Did the reprieve in higher tariffs apply to the EU? Were Mexico and Canada, which had avoided the original 10% baseline tariffs, somehow now included? Were tariffs targeting specific sectors affected?

Ultimately, the White House provided some clarity on these questions – but for hours US trading partners were left to scrutinise Trump’s Truth Social post and glean details from answers to questions shouted by reporters at press gaggles.

On Wednesday afternoon, Trump acknowledged that the markets had looked “pretty glum” and that “people were getting a little queasy” – a reflection that undercut some of the bravado he expressed over the past week and could hint at the real reason for his tariff change of course.

Earlier in the day, he was on Truth Social, urging people to “BE COOL!” and promising that “everything is going to work out”. And on Monday he lashed out at what he called “panicans” – a party based on “weak and stupid people” who weren’t patient with his efforts.

In the end, it was Trump who made an abrupt change of course.

He insisted, however, that his tariff announcement was one that had to be made, and that any economic disruptions reflected a sickness that had been allowed to fester in the American economy.

Democrats, meanwhile, painted a less rosy picture. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer accused Trump of “governing by chaos”.

“He is reeling, he is retreating, and that is a good thing,” he said.

In the end, the thought process behind Trump’s decision may not really matter.

The reality is that the US is now making nice – or at least nicer – with nations that had faced their retaliatory trade fire, even though Trump is still imposing a 10% across the board tariff that by itself would have been huge news just a few weeks ago.

It is enough of a step down for the stock market to bounce back, however, and Trump is now leaning into a trade war with China which he hit with 125% tariffs.

That will have global economic repercussions of its own, but it is more in line with recent American foreign policy – including that of Democratic President Joe Biden – as it seeks to constrain Chinese ambitions.

The big unknown, however, is whether Trump’s actions over the past week – setting allies scrambling and threatening the established global order – will have made such a strategy more difficult to pursue.

And in 90 days, when Trump’s pause expires, this week’s economic drama and uncertainty could begin all over again.

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

A controversial bill seeking to reinterpret New Zealand’s founding document, which established the rights of both Māori and non-Māori in the country, has been defeated at its second reading.

The Treaty Principles Bill was voted down 112 votes to 11, days after a government committee recommended that it should not proceed.

The proposed legislation sought to legally define the principles of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi – causing widespread outrage that saw more than 40,000 people taking part in a protest outside parliament last year.

The bill had already been widely expected to fail, with most major political parties committed to voting it down.

Members of the right-wing Act Party, which tabled it, were the only MPs to vote for it at the second reading on Thursday. Act’s leader David Seymour has promised to continue campaigning on the issue.

“I believe this Bill or something like it will pass one day because there are not good arguments against its contents,” he wrote on social media.

Tensions were high during a parliamentary debate on the bill in November. Labour MP Willie Jackson was told to leave after refusing to withdraw a comment he made calling Seymour a “liar”.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins said the proposed legislation would forever “be a stain on our country”, while Te Pāti Māori (The Māori Party) MP Hana Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke – who gained international attention for starting a haka in parliament at the bill’s first reading – said it had been “annihilated”.

“Instead of dividing and conquering, this bill has backfired and united communities across the motu [country] in solidarity for our founding agreement and what it represents,” Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson later said in a statement.

The second reading came after a select committee, which had been looking into the proposed legislation released its final report – revealing that more than 300,000 submissions had been made on it, the vast majority of which were opposed.

It is the largest response to proposed legislation that the New Zealand parliament has ever received.

While the principles of the Treaty have never been defined in law, its core values have, over time, been woven into different pieces of legislation in an effort to offer redress to Māori for the wrong done to them during colonisation.

Act’s proposed legislation had three main principles: that the New Zealand government has the power to govern, and parliament to make laws; that the Crown would respect the rights of Māori at the time the Treaty was signed; and that everyone is equal before the law and entitled to equal protection.

The party said the bill would not alter the Treaty itself but would “continue the process of defining the Treaty principles”. This, they believe, would help to create equality for all New Zealanders and improve social cohesion.

Among those backing it was Ruth Richardson, a former finance minister for the centre-right National Party, who told the select committee that the proposed legislation was “a bill of consequence whose time has come”.

She argued that while the Treaty itself could not be disputed, the idea of its principles was a “relatively modern matter”, and that these principles had so far been largely defined by the courts, rather than parliament.

“There is a new imperative in New Zealand on the cultural front, the necessity to address and correct Treaty overreach that has increasingly and evidently become wayward and wrong,” she said.

Opponents of the bill, meanwhile, believe it would be detrimental to Māori and create greater social divides.

Sharon Hawke, the daughter of the late Māori activist and MP Joe Hawke, spoke to the select committee on behalf of the Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei hapū [sub-tribe] – telling it that the legislation “strips the fabric of where we’ve been heading for in the last three decades at improving our people’s [Māori’s] ability to gain education, gain warm housing, gain good health”.

She added that the bill “polluted” the idea of all New Zealanders having a future together.

“We will continue to show our opposition to this,” she said.

Key issues identified by members of the public who made submissions to the select committee included that it was inconsistent with the values of the Treaty, and that it had promoted equality with equity – not taking into account social disparities, such as those created by the legacy of colonisation.

There were also concerns about the extent to which the bill complied with international law, and whether it would negatively impact New Zealand’s reputation internationally.

Submitters who supported the bill, meanwhile, referred to a current lack of clarity and certainty about the principles of the Treaty, and of the importance of equality for all.

They also said that it was important to hold a referendum to facilitate a national conversation around the Treaty – something David Seymour believes is still needed.

The Treaty Principles Bill passed its first reading in November, with support from National – the dominant party in New Zealand’s ruling coalition – who had promised to back it as part of a coalition agreement with Act, but not any further.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, who is also leader of the National Party, previously said there was nothing in the bill that he liked. He was not in parliament for its second reading, but remarked earlier in the day that it was time to move on from it.

Best-selling author Jillian Lauren has been shot by police and charged with attempted murder, after getting caught up in a search for hit-and-run suspects.

The shooting occurred amidst a chase through the streets of Los Angeles on Tuesday, as officers tried to find three suspects who were alleged to have fled the scene of a car accident.

Lauren became involved when one of the alleged suspects ended up on the street where she lives with her husband, Weezer bassist Scott Shriner.

The 51-year-old emerged from her house with a weapon and refused to drop it despite “numerous” demands, according to an LAPD press release. She “then pointed the handgun at the officers,” who shot her in the shoulder.

The shooting took place in the back yard of her home in the hip Eagle Rock neighbourhood in the northeast of Los Angeles.

According to local media reports, Lauren had opened fire at one of the alleged hit-and-run suspects after they tried to break into her property.

After being shot by police, the 51-year-old ran back into her house, where she stayed for approximately half an hour, before coming back outside with her babysitter and surrendering to police.

Both women were taken into custody, and Lauren was treated for non-life-threatening injuries at a local hospital.

A nine-millimetre handgun was recovered from her house, and she was later charged with attempted murder.

The California Highway Patrol arrested the suspected hit-and-run driver shortly afterwards, according to agency spokesperson Daniel Keene.

The suspect was found wearing nothing but his boxer shorts in the backyard of a home near Shriner’s residence.

News helicopters had previously filmed him removing his clothes and jumping into a swimming pool, as well as watering the property’s plants, in what appeared to be an attempt to blend into the neighbourhood.

His identity has not been released. The other two suspects are still at large.

Lauren, who also goes by the name Jillian Shriner, is the author of two bestselling memoirs, including 2010’s Some Girls: My Life in a Harem – which described her experiences in the harem of Prince Jefri Bolkiah of Brunei.

In 2023, she also published Behold the Monster: Facing America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer, based on interviews with the serial killer Samuel Little, who confessed to committing 93 murders between 1970 and 2005.

She married Scott Shriner in 2005, two years before he joined Weezer, the US band known for skewed alt-rock anthems such as Buddy Holly and Hash Pipe.

Earlier this week, the band were confirmed alongside Ed Sheeran as last-minute additions to the line-up of California’s Coachella music festival, which kicks off on Friday.

It is not known whether Lauren’s arrest will affect their plans to play the festival.

A Russian-American citizen has been released in a prisoner swap between Moscow and Washington.

Amateur ballerina Ksenia Karelina, a Los Angeles resident, had been in prison in Russia for over a year, after being arrested in the city of Yekaterinburg in early 2024.

She was found guilty of treason for donating money to a US-based charity providing humanitarian support to Ukraine and was sentenced to 12 years in a penal colony.

In exchange, the US reportedly freed Arthur Petrov, a dual German-Russian citizen arrested in Cyprus in 2023. He was accused of illegally exporting microelectronics to Russia for manufacturers working with the Russian military.

The prisoner swap took place in Abu Dhabi in the early hours of Thursday.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed Ms Karelina was “on a plane back home to the United States.”

He added she had been “wrongfully detained by Russia for over a year”.

“President Trump secured her release. [The President] will continue to work for the release of ALL Americans.”

CIA director John Ratcliffe was present at the exchange, the Wall Street Journal said.

It is the second prisoner swap between Russia and the US in less than two months.

In February, Russian national Alexander Vinnik – who was imprisoned in a US jail on money laundering charges – was freed in exchange for the release of American schoolteacher Marc Fogel.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says at least 155 Chinese citizens are fighting for Russia in the war.

His comments come after two Chinese fighters were captured earlier this week – marking Kyiv’s first official allegation that China was supplying Russia with manpower.

Speaking to journalists on Wednesday, Zelensky reiterated his claim that there are “many more” Chinese nationals engaged in the conflict, based on information gathered by his government.

Responding on Thursday, a Chinese government spokesman said they “advise relevant parties to correctly and soberly understand China’s role and not to make irresponsible remarks”.

“China is neither the creator nor a party to the Ukrainian crisis. We are a staunch supporter and active promoter of the peaceful resolution of the crisis,” said foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian.

He reiterated an earlier comment that appeared to suggest that Chinese soldiers fighting for Russia were doing so in their private capacity.

Mr Lin said China “has always required its citizens to stay away from armed conflict areas and avoid being involved in armed conflicts in any form, especially to avoid participating in military operations of any party”.

Beijing has previously denied many of its citizens are fighting for Russia, saying the claim has “no basis in facts”.

• Ukraine captures two Chinese nationals fighting for Russia
• War has changed Zelensky – but now is the time for him to transform again

Earlier this week, Zelensky said his forces had fought six Chinese soldiers in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region and took two prisoner. Russia declined to comment on this revelation.

On Wednesday Zelensky had told reporters that the “the Chinese issue is serious.”

“There are 155 people with surnames, with passport data – 155 Chinese citizens who are fighting against Ukrainians on the territory of Ukraine,” he said, according to remarks reported by Interfax.

He added that Russia was recruiting Chinese citizens on social media, and that “official Beijing knows about this”.

According to Zelensky, the alleged recruits receive training in Moscow before being sent out to the battlefield in Ukraine, as well as migration documents and payment.

He also released on X a video of what appeared to be an interrogation of the two captured Chinese soldiers.

Speaking in Mandarin Chinese, the soldiers described their background and how they were captured.

One of them said it was his “first time on duty and first time in combat. Before this I had never even fired a gun”. He added that he was captured with a Russian soldier.

The other mentions he was in a group that included two other Chinese soldiers before they were separated in the chaos. “Everyone dispersed, I don’t know if they’re dead or not,” he said.

He said he eventually surrendered along with Russian soldiers.

Zelensky said on X that: “Ukraine believes that such blatant involvement of Chinese citizens in hostilities on the territory of Ukraine during the war of aggression is a deliberate step towards the expansion of the war, and is yet another indication that Moscow simply needs to drag out the fighting.”

He has called on the US and the rest of the world for a response.

Washington has said the reports of Chinese fighting for Russia are “disturbing”.

Ukraine has in the past questioned China’s declared neutral stance. Zelensky previously alleged that Beijing supplies “elements that are part of Russia’s weaponry” and called for the country to maintain a “consistent” position.

China has been accused by the US of helping Russia make more munitions, armoured vehicles and missiles. It has also been scrutinised for allowing dual-use technology that can be used both commercially and militarily – such as computer chips and drones – to be exported to Russia.

While Beijing and Moscow are close political and economic allies, China has attempted to present itself as a neutral party in the conflict and has repeatedly denied supplying Russia with military equipment.

It defends its trade with Moscow by saying it is not selling lethal arms and “prudently handles the export of dual-use items in accordance with laws and regulations”.

The allegations about Chinese soldiers fighting for Russia follows Ukraine’s capture of two injured North Korean soldiers in Russia’s Kursk Oblast.

Listen to James read this article

“The best salesman in history.” This was what Donald Trump once called Volodymyr Zelensky because of the amount of aid the US has given Ukraine.

Whether or not a fair comparison, Zelensky’s role in keeping his country in the spotlight and convincing allies to invest has certainly been crucial for Ukraine’s fight.

His transformation from prime-time comedian to wartime president has long been cast – it dates back to 2022 when he decided to remain in Kyiv as Russian troops closed in. That decision meant Ukraine would go on to defend itself to this day.

In the years since, I’ve stood across from him in person dozens of times, and Zelensky now casts a more authoritative, perhaps battle-hardened figure, moulded partly by his increased isolation on the international stage.

But with the unpredictability of Trump’s second term – not least following the pair’s Oval Office bust-up in February – Zelensky may now have to transform again.

Politically it is no longer a story of oppressor versus oppressed. Rather, it is muddied by the dual challenge of voicing an appetite for peace whilst protecting his country’s interests.

But is a man used to having so much authority at home and being so influential abroad really going to stage a second big transformation, shifting his focus to Trump-era diplomacy? Or will he decide the best way of standing up for Ukraine is to yield little?

Later today the “coalition of the willing”, a group of nations who have pledged to stand with Ukraine, will meet at Nato headquarters – notably without America.

Before Trump’s chapter two began, Ukraine’s leader had effectively lobbied for western support. He appealed for air defences, tanks, rockets and fighter jets, with nations such as Germany hesitating over fears of the war escalating, before yielding to his requests.

His message was rigid and he was successful in procuring support.

“Zelensky was very clever and calculated in the early days of the war,” says Ed Arnold from defence and security think tank, Royal United Services Institute (Rusi).

His decision go to the Munich security conference two weeks before the invasion, despite being advised that this would be a security risk, was pivotal, argues Mr Arnold.

“It personalised support to Ukraine within the minds of people who personally attended.”

Serhiy Leshchenko, an advisor to Zelensky’s office, explains: “We have to be visible to the world. If public opinion is on Ukraine’s side, there is a better chance to get help from the international community.”

Leshchenko points to Zelensky’s daily video addresses, which he has created since start of the invasion. “It’s unusual to be so open.”

Ukraine’s victory in the battle of Kyiv cemented Zelensky as a symbol of the country’s survival, and boosted his case for continued military aid from western allies.

Later in 2022, Zelensky was able to demonstrate the difference their supplies were making when swathes of Ukrainian territory, including the city of Kherson, were liberated. He had initial success with European allies.

“They are invested in Zelensky personally and Ukraine,” says Mr Arnold. “He’s gone through four UK prime ministers since the start of the war … and they’ve all signed new declarations with Ukraine, again through Zelensky.

“He’s been able to weather the changes in national politics within Europe throughout his tenure.”

But when further successes failed to materialise, Zelensky’s message did not change – and as time went on, this would be to his detriment.

After Ukraine’s failed counter-offensive in the summer of 2023, for example, the merits of supporting Kyiv were increasingly questioned by an influential minority of US Republicans and pleas were starting to be passed over in some quarters.

Maria Zolkina, head of regional security and conflict studies at the Democratic Initiatives Foundation, a Kyiv-based think tank, believes Zelensky is partly responsible.

“He and his close circle relied on the logic that they must always be demanding when speaking with their partners – pushing the argument that Ukraine simply needs something. That worked really well during 2022, but with the US and others this kind of messaging stopped working in 2023,” she argues.

“But his diplomacy really didn’t adjust quickly enough.”

On 27 September 2024, in a lobby in New York, things truly changed for Ukraine. Only the driving force was not approaching Russian armour but the political reincarnation of Ukraine’s biggest ally: the US.

On that day, just over a month before the US Presidential election, Zelensky had a last minute meeting with Trump in Trump Tower.

Tensions between the pair had heightened before this meeting: Zelensky had claimed a few days earlier that Trump didn’t “really know how to end the war”, after he asserted he could do it in “one day”.

After the Trump Tower meeting, the two men emerged looking awkward.

Despite announcing a “common view” of wanting to end the war, their body language suggested a lack of chemistry.

The pair would not meet again until five months later in the Oval Office, where their now famous encounter would be a diplomatic disaster for Kyiv.

“Trump should have liked him,” says Vadym Prystaiko, who was present when the pair first met after Zelensky’s election win in 2019. “Zelensky saw Trump as more or less as himself, as a media guy who moved into politics, who was anti-establishment,” he says.

Mr Prystaiko was Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, before he was sacked in 2023. Kyiv gave no official reason for the dismissal, but it came after Mr Prystaiko criticised Zelensky’s response to a row over gratitude for British military aid. He said there had been a “little bit of sarcasm” in his president’s response, which he believed was “unhealthy”.

“Zelensky has never been a diplomat,” Mr Prystaiko adds. “He has never been a usual political leader who kisses babies and shakes hands.”

“The relationship with Trump is like a rollercoaster,” says Volodymyr Fesenko, director at the Penta Center for Political Studies. “Sometimes there is constructive cooperation, and then, all of a sudden, some kind of crisis appears.”

Then there is their war of words. Trump has blamed Zelensky for starting the war, calling him a “dictator”, while Ukraine’s leader accused his US counterpart of “living in a Russian disinformation space”.

While Mr Fesenko believes Zelensky is continually changing tactics to find a working relationship with Washington, Ms Zolkina believes the issues go deeper.

“There is a triangle between the US administration, the Kremlin and Kyiv,” she claims. “Ukraine is considered to be a weaker part of this triangle. For Trump, Zelensky is not in the same league, and that’s the problem.”

When it came to the now infamous Oval Office meeting with Trump and his Vice President JD Vance, this was the first time I’d seen Zelensky seemingly run out of political rope as he was accused of “not showing enough gratitude” and “playing with World War Three”.

His defensive body language, the folding of his arms for example, also seemed new.

Zelensky has always appeared comfortable hosting or visiting other leaders. He is at ease on a stage and often injects timely humour — but this was different.

A mineral agreement, in which Zelensky had originally suggested trading a portion of Ukraine’s mineral resource wealth for continued military aid, was never signed, and has since evolved into a less favourable proposal for Kyiv.

The US would also briefly pause its military aid and intelligence sharing to ensure Ukraine danced to its tune.

But the official view from some is that the Oval Office meeting was not a calamity.

“Nobody took it as the end of something,” claims Ihor Brusylo, the deputy head of the Presidential Office, who travelled to the White House with Zelensky. “We discussed how to move forward. It was not a disaster.”

When the US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz told them the meeting was over, “we just shrugged our shoulders and decided to go back to the hotel,” he recalls.

“My presumption is that on a personal level, they [Trump and Zelensky] get on well,” he adds. “They understand each other better, and are frank and honest.”

Whatever the truth about their relationship behind closed doors, there have been signs of a willingness to bend from Zelensky since that meeting – European allies are said to have convinced him to subsequently take a more compliant tone, because of the inescapable truth that they, and Ukraine, still need the US to combat an aggressive Russia.

Yet others argue more bend still is needed.

“The war changes everyone, it has changed us all in some sense. But I don’t think fundamentally Zelensky has changed – for good or bad in some instances,” says Olga Onuch, professor of Comparative and Ukrainian Politics at the University of Manchester.

“It is very clear that certain actors have decided it’s difficult to negotiate with Zelensky. Why? Because he has red lines that he is sticking to.”

Mr Brusylo agrees. “It is very difficult to bend Zelensky,” he says. “It’s like watching a spring, the more you press, the bigger the pushback.”

And yet whenever Ukraine is attacked, politically or diplomatically, increased political unity follows. The Oval Office clash was no exception, as Zelensky’s popularity rating soared to around 70%.

“Zelensky is very powerful, and his authority is made up of himself and a certain circle of people,” argues Ms Zolkina.

Orysia Lutsevych, head of the Ukraine Forum at Chatham House says it’s interesting how Ukrainians rallied around Zelensky after the Oval Office, almost like they took it as a personal insult of Ukrainian statehood.

“People rally around him, what he represents and how he behaves”.

Mr Prystaiko argues if the Americans wanted him to be replaced “they’ve shot themselves in the foot as he might easily be re-elected”.

Some political experts, like Ms Zolkina, do not think this is a certainty. “I don’t think he understands that this boost is a direct reaction to what Trump is doing, not his personal position,” she says.

“He has pretty strong political ambitions for a second term, and is pretty politically egocentric, as all leaders are at his level.”

Prof Onuch does not think that pursuit of political power alone motivates Zelensky. “[He is] much more of a careful and considered and tactical political operator than people give him credit for”.

Still, imagining a Zelensky second term can be difficult, simply because of the sheer demands of the job. Even post-war challenges would be considerable.

For now, Mr Arnold suspects that an exhausted Zelensky would not want to stand again and suggests that he may want a way out from at least the frontline politics.

As for the near-term, Zelensky cannot afford another Oval Office. So, given that Trump is a keen player, will Ukraine’s leader ever join him for a round of golf?

“He is a quick learner,” says his Mr Brusylo. “When there is a need to play golf, I’m sure he will tackle this task.”

Andrew Tate pointed a gun in a woman’s face and said “you’re going to do as I say or there’ll be hell to pay”, according to one of four UK women suing the influencer and self-proclaimed misogynist.

The allegation is described in court documents, seen by the BBC, which also contain detailed accounts of rape, assault and coercive control.

One woman claims Tate threatened to kill her, another says he made clear he would kill anyone who spoke to her, and a third claims Tate convinced her he had killed other people.

Tate has denied the claims in a written defence submitted to the High Court, calling them a “pack of lies” and “gross fabrications”.

Separately, Tate continues to face serious legal challenges in three countries – a mixture of civil and criminal claims in the UK, US and Romania.

This civil case concerns incidents the four women allege took place in Luton and Hitchin between 2013 and 2015.

Two of the women worked for Tate’s webcam business in 2015, while the other two were in relationships with him in 2013 and 2014.

The BBC has previously spoken to two of the claimants about their alleged experiences with Tate as part of a Panorama documentary broadcast in September 2024.

However, this is the first time the full extent of the women’s allegations has been revealed.

Some of the allegations in the documents seen by the BBC include that Tate:

• Raped and strangled a woman who was working for his webcam business in 2015
• Assaulted another woman who was also working for his webcam business at the same time
• Strangled both of the above women so often that they developed red petechiae – spots from burst capillaries – in their eyes, a common side effect of asphyxia
• Told a third claimant “I’m just debating whether to rape you or not” before raping and strangling her
• Strangled a fourth claimant, whom we are calling Sienna, during sex until she lost consciousness, and then continued to have sex with her

Three of the women previously reported Tate to the police but in 2019, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decided not to bring criminal charges. They are now seeking damages “arising from the assaults, batteries, and infliction of intentional harm”, their civil claim states.

Tate denies all the allegations, and argues that the women cannot now take legal action against him because too much time has passed, and emails, texts, and other potential evidence would have been lost. A preliminary hearing for the case is due to take place on 15 April.

“Sienna”, the fourth woman involved in the civil case, was not part of the group that reported Tate to the police.

She told the BBC that when she slept with Tate, the sex was initially consensual.

“But then, during sex, he started to strangle me. I passed out, and he carried on having sex with me,” she said.

Tate denies strangling Sienna, and that she lost consciousness due to strangulation, adding that he “may have put a hand on her neck but there was no restriction of her breathing”.

In her claim submitted to the court, Sienna also describes an alleged incident at Tate’s flat in late 2014, where she saw a gun on his sofa. She says she “did not know if it was real or a replica”.

In his written defence, Tate says “there may have been a toy gun in the flat but the 4th Claimant [Sienna] never said anything about it”.

“I didn’t really mention it to him or anything,” Sienna told the BBC. “But I distinctly remember it being there and kind of being a bit freaked out by it, because it’s not really something you see in the UK.”

She added that she thought it would be “a bit strange for a fully grown man to have a toy gun”.

In the court documents another claimant, referred to as AA, alleges Tate threatened her with a gun in her face while swearing, calling himself “a boss” and a “G” and adding: “You’re going to do as I say or there’ll be hell to pay.” Tate denies this happened, writing in his defence that he only started calling himself “Top G” in recent years.

AA says Tate “threatened [her] daily” while she was working for him in 2015, and describes two alleged incidents in which he “grabbed her by her throat and pinned her up against the wall, so she was unable to move”.

Tate also denies AA’s claims that he threatened her and grabbed her by the neck.

Another claimant, BB, alleges Tate “made it very clear that she was ‘his’, and if anyone else spoke to her, he would kill them”.

BB’s written claim describes her being “forced to barricade herself inside the bathroom while the Defendant [Tate] threatened to ‘beat the shit out of’ her”.

Tate denies this allegation, and describes his relationship with BB as “loving and affectionate until shortly before she ceased to work for the business”.

All four women say they have developed long-term mental health problems as a result of their alleged experiences with Tate.

Lawyer Matt Jury of McCue Jury & Partners, who is representing the women, told the BBC his clients had “been denied justice by the police and CPS, while watching Andrew Tate’s influence grow”.

“They have been left with no other choice but to bring their case in the High Court to finally bring Tate to account,” he said.

The women’s claim against Tate is one of several serious legal challenges around the world that he is fighting, including some where he is co-accused with his brother Tristan Tate. They are currently facing a mix of criminal and civil legal action in three countries – the UK, the US and Romania.

In Romania, they are facing allegations including human trafficking, trafficking of minors and money laundering. Andrew Tate also faces allegations of rape.

They are also under criminal investigation in the US state of Florida. Andrew Tate has said that US authorities are “trying to find crimes on an innocent man”.

Andrew Tate’s ex-girlfriend Brianna Stern also filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles last month, accusing him of sexual assault, battery and gender violence.

Last year, the brothers were detained in Bucharest after Bedfordshire Police in the UK said it had obtained an arrest warrant in relation to allegations of rape and trafficking dating back to between 2012 and 2015.

The pair deny all accusations against them.

A travel ban imposed on the brothers in Romania was recently lifted, and they have since travelled to the US and Dubai – something Sienna said was “horrible to see”.

“Maybe men will look at him and think, ‘oh well if he can get away with that, then so can I’ – and it kind of makes it normalised,” she told the BBC.

Sienna added that she thought the UK should be “pushing a lot harder” for the extradition of the Tate brothers.

Neither of the brothers have been convicted of any crimes.

President Donald Trump has announced a 90-day pause for countries hit by higher US tariffs but a trade war with China has escalated.

In a dramatic change of policy, just hours after levies against roughly 60 of America’s trading partners kicked in, Trump said he was authorising a universal “lowered reciprocal tariff of 10%” as negotiations continued.

At the same time he increased tariffs on goods from China to 125%, accusing Beijing of a “lack of respect” after it retaliated by saying it would impose tariffs of 84% on US imports.

This comes a week after Trump announced import taxes on all goods entering the US, in the biggest upheaval of international trade in decades.

His plan set a baseline tariff of 10% on all imports – which remains in place – but also higher rates on partners the White House described as the “worst offenders” for what the president considers to be unfair trade practices.

This included the 27-member European Union, Vietnam, South Africa and many more – all of which were due to be on the receiving end of US tariffs ranging from 11% to more than 100%.

Major market turmoil followed Trump’s announcement last week, with sell-offs sparking trillions in losses across the world, many Americans fearing price rises and some analysts predicting increased odds of recession.

On Wednesday, before Trump said he would suspend the higher tariffs on goods from countries other than China, the US government saw interest rates on its debt spike to 4.5% – the highest level since February.

• Trump tariffs spark US government debt sell-off

Hours later, when the change was announced, US shares rocketed with the S&P 500 soaring 7% in afternoon trading. It later closed the day’s trading up 9.5%, while the Dow Jones surged by 7.8%.

Announcing the latest iteration of his plan on Truth Social, Trump said he was authorising a 90-day pause on tariffs for the countries that had not retaliated against his levies.

The additional tariff on Beijing, he said, would be effective immediately. “At some point, hopefully in the near future, China will realise that the days of ripping off the U.S.A., and other Countries, is no longer sustainable or acceptable,” he wrote.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent insisted the change of policy had not been influenced by the global falls, but senior Democrat Chuck Schumer said the decision showed Trump was “reeling and retreating”.

Speaking outside the White House, Trump later said the amendments to his tariffs policy had “had to be done” because people were “getting yippy”.

“I did a 90-day pause for the people that didn’t retaliate because I told them ‘if you retaliate, we’re going to double it’ – and that’s what I did with China,” he said, adding that he thought, “It’s all going to work out amazing.”

He also said he thought Chinese President Xi Jinping was “going to want to get to a deal”.

In the UK, which was not affected by the changes as it was already on the list of countries receiving the baseline 10% tariff, a No 10 spokeswoman said a “trade war is in nobody’s interests”.

A source also said the developments in Washington showed “cool and calm can pay off”.

The ongoing stand-off between China and the US – the world’s two biggest economies – began when Trump announced new tariffs last week.

China was hit with an additional 34% tariff, on top of a 20% levy the president had put in place earlier this year. However, Beijing was quick to retaliate with a 34% tariff on US imports to China.

In response, Trump threatened an additional 50%, bringing the total to 104% on Tuesday, if Beijing did not back down. China did not change course and said it would “fight to the end” if the US “insists on provoking a tariff war or trade war”.

Just hours after the 104% tariffs from the US kicked in earlier, Beijing announced it would raise its own tariffs on American goods from 34% to 84% from Thursday.

China’s foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said on Wednesday the US “continues to impose tariffs on China in an abusive manner”.

He said China opposes such “bullying practices” and the US must show “an attitude of equality, mutual respect, and reciprocity” if it hopes to resolve issues through negotiation.

The deteriorating relationship between the two nations could see their goods trade fall as much as 80% – a $466bn (£363bn) drop, according to World Trade Organization forecasts.

“Our assessments, informed by the latest developments, highlight the substantial risks associated with further escalation,” Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, head of the WTO, said.

Away from China, Trump’s latest plans have not affected other recently-announced tariffs already in play.

These include the 25% import taxes on cars and car parts coming into the US, which came into effect on 2 April, and a further 25% tariff on all steel and aluminium imports.

Earlier on Wednesday, the European Union approved a first set of retaliatory tariffs against the US, due to take effect on 15 April. The bloc, on Trump’s “worst offender” trading partner list, had been due to receive customised tariffs of 20%.

But because the EU’s retaliatory tariffs had not yet gone into effect, the White House included it on the list of countries to be capped at 10%.

Meanwhile, the so-called baseline rate never applied to Canada and Mexico – key trading partners of the US – and a White House official has said neither is in line to receive the 10% baseline tariff now.