There were some heroic efforts overnight from Donald Trump and those around him to suggest the past seven days were something other than absolute chaos.

By this reading, Trump’s 4D game of chess has left China in check. Certainly the Chinese economy faces a massive hit from punitive tariffs in its biggest market. But even accounting for the President’s roll back, the US has still erected a massive protectionist tariff wall, not seen since the 1930s.

The world is left with a universal 10% tariff, irrespective of whether that country (for example the UK or Australia) actually sells less to the US than the US sells to it. There is now no difference between the EU, which clearly does have a massive trade deficit in goods and was preparing to retaliate, and the UK.

There is also an anxious wait to find out what comes next. One of the questions is whether President Trump pushes ahead with tariffs on medicines, the UK’s second biggest goods export.

Plus there is potential logistical chaos on the cards from a little-noticed multi-million dollar port tax for every cargo vessel docking in the US that was “made in China”. That is more than half of the global merchant fleet – and it is due next Friday.

Even with Trump’s stated 90 day pause on implementing higher tariffs, there remains too much uncertainty for companies to go through the rigmarole of rerouting global trade.

The central issue today, however, is that the world’s two great economic superpowers are now facing off against each other like rutting stags.

Tariffs at these sky-high rates are massively hitting business between two nations which together account for around 3% of the entire world’s trade. The main motorway of the global economy is effectively shut.

The visible tangible consequences of all this will become very real very quickly: Chinese factories will close, workers will stroll from plant to plant looking for work.

Beijing will need to organise a stimulus package to account for the loss of whole percentage points of GDP, the kind of thing that happens when a natural disaster flattens a major city. Painful, but manageable at a cost, though not forever.

Meanwhile the US will see consumer prices surge. President Trump might try to order these US companies not to raise prices, but the effect will come through soon enough.

In theory this will be in sharp contrast to what is happening in other countries in the world. Across the border in Canada, or in Europe, not only will there not be such China-sourced price rises, there could be price cuts.

Trade wars on this scale do not stay confined to the flow of goods. They tend to become currency wars.

What we saw last night was the trade turmoil spread to credit markets, especially the US bond market, having already hit share prices.

Indeed there was an invaluable reveal for the game theory of this conflict. The Trump administration revealed a key pressure point with its concern about the “yippy” – as Trump called it – bond market.

As trading in US government debt continued overnight in Asia, the effective interest rate on these bonds rose to 5%.

This sort of borrowing should not move in such an erratic fashion.

The last time this happened was in the “Dash for Cash”, the key moment of financial fragility at the very beginning of the pandemic. The world was focussed on life or death in March 2020, but this potential further crisis was alleviated only by emergency action.

Effectively, the President’s row back was a form of emergency policy change.

Was the Chinese government behind this rash of US government bond sales in Asia? Probably not. However, what happened on Wednesday highlighted a vulnerability for Trump.

China is the second biggest holder of US government debt in the world and if it chose to, dumping all that debt would be catastrophic for America. But doing so would be a form of mutually assured economic destruction – the losses for China would be huge.

More importantly, what the bond markets were telling Trump is that they are deeply sceptical about his tariff policy.

The US does have the Federal Reserve, which does have some power to tranquillise bond markets. But right now it does not look like its chairman Jerome Powell will ride to the rescue.

The bond market scepticism echoes the sentiment of the ascendant Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. He is now pushing for Trump to reach trade deals with their allies because the US needs them to take on China.

Given the US was previously calling these same close allies cheaters, looters and pillagers, there is no way this was the strategy all along.

This does matter. The US needs the EU, UK, the rest of the G7 on side in terms of China. China probably needs those countries just to stay neutral, and carry on soaking up its exports.

The rest of the world has seen Trump’s team struggle to explain tariffing penguin islands or poor African economies and the President himself recirculating the suggestion he was crashing stock markets on purpose. And they’ve witnessed the fact that the tariff rates were changed after they came into effect and also the absurd nature of the equation used to calculate them.

It’s in this context that Trump’s handling of the situation has handed leverage back to the rest of the world, because neither friend nor foe will know quite what they are negotiating with this America.

There is a calm, welcomed by all, but it could be rather brief.

Israeli troops fired more than 100 times during an attack in which they killed 15 emergency workers in Gaza, with some shots from as close as 12m (39ft) away, a forensic audio analysis of mobile phone footage commissioned by BBC Verify has found.

Two audio experts examined a 19-minute video authenticated by BBC Verify, showing the incident and the moments leading up to it near Rafah on 23 March.

The findings support a claim made by the Palestinian Red Crescent that the workers were “targeted from a very close range”. On 5 April an Israeli army official said aerial footage showed troops opening fire “from afar”.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) declined to comment on the analysis directly when approached by BBC Verify.

A spokesperson said it was investigating the attack and repeated claims that six of the people killed were linked to Hamas, without offering evidence. The Palestinian Red Crescent rejected the allegation, as did a ninth paramedic who survived and was detained by the IDF for 15 hours.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said the full video was recovered from the phone of a medic killed and buried in a shallow grave by the IDF.

Video filmed by medic Rifaat Radwan who was killed in the incident showed the convoy driving at night, using headlights and flashing emergency lights. At least one medic can be seen wearing a high-vis jacket.

Faced with this, the Israeli army changed its account, admitting that its initial statement that the convoy approached “suspiciously” with its lights off was inaccurate.

Experts told BBC Verify they used sound waveforms and spectrograms to measure the distance of the gunfire from the microphone of the mobile. Shortened time gaps indicate that the distance between the microphone and the gunfire decreased as the video progressed.

They concluded that the first shots were fired from around 40m to 43m away. But towards the end of the video, gunfire came from around 12m away.

At a briefing on 5 April, an IDF official told reporters that surveillance showed the troops were at some distance when they opened fire, adding: “It’s not from close. They opened fire from afar.”

One military expert told BBC Verify that any engagements under 50m to 100m would be considered as being within close range.

Robert Maher, an audio forensics expert at Montana State University, said towards the start of the footage one firearm is discharged about 43m away from the mobile phone.

Mr Maher and another expert, Steven Beck, independently corroborated one another’s view that in the final few moments of the audio, shots are fired as close at 12m away.

Mr Beck, a former FBI consultant who now runs Beck Audio Forensics, said: “The shooter(s) at these times is much closer, with distances of 12m to 18m. There is a strange pop sound that may be a tire hit by a bullet.”

He added: “The shockwaves indicate that the bullets are passing close to the recorder microphone – meaning they are being shot at.”

Chris Cobb-Smith, a former British Army officer with over 20 years experience in conducting investigations in conflicts zones, said that at 50m the Israeli troops would have “definitively been able to identify the convoy as humanitarian” and would have been able to “determine that the personnel were unarmed and not posing a threat”.

• Israel changes account of Gaza medic killings after video showed deadly attack
• Survivor challenges Israeli account of attack on Gaza paramedics

Voices can also be heard towards the end of the recording, shouting in Hebrew: “Get up,” and: “You (plural) go back”.

Over the period of more than five minutes, at times, multiple firearms were in use simultaneously, the audio experts determined.

Mr Maher said “the sounds are often overlapping in such a way that it is clear multiple firearms are in use at the same time”.

Because of the overlap of gunshots, Mr Maher said it’s difficult to identify individual shots. But both experts determined independently that there were more than 100 shots.

Our audio analysts could not comment on which weapons were being used but Mr Beck said there are “several bursts of fully automatic gunfire”.

A bullet travelling at supersonic speed first creates a sonic boom – often called a “crack”. The sound of the bullet being fired is what creates a second sound, often called a “pop”.

At close distances, the two sounds are almost indiscernible to the human ear.

But by looking closely at the waveform of the audio, the two sounds can be detected and the distance between them measured.

What Mr Maher describes as “crack-pop sequences” are visible in these waveforms.

Mr Maher said the further away the firearm is from the microphone, the longer the gap between the two sounds.

Mr Maher said: “The first few audible gunshots have a crack-pop timing of about 72ms. Assuming a bullet speed of 800 m/s and speed of sound 343 m/s, that time gap implies the firearm was about 43 meters away. If the bullet speed were actually faster, that would move the firearm estimate closer to the microphone.”

There are limitations to their estimates. For example, analysts told us they cannot be certain of the type of firearm used or of the miss distance, which is how far off the shot is from the intended target. They also must make an assumption about the average speed of the bullet.

BBC Verify will continue to investigate this incident.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

The US Supreme Court has ordered the Trump administration to facilitate the return of a Maryland man, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador’s notorious mega-jail.

The Trump administration had conceded that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was deported by accident, but appealed against a lower court’s order to return him to the US.

On Thursday, in a 9-0 ruling, the Supreme Court declined to block the lower court’s order.

The judge’s order “requires the Government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent”, the justices ruled.

Mr Garcia, now 29, entered the US illegally as a teenager from El Salvador. In 2019 he was arrested with three other men in Maryland and detained by federal immigration authorities.

But an immigration judge granted him protection from deportation on the grounds that he might be at risk of persecution from local gangs in his home country.

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

His wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, is a US citizen and has called for his release. He was reportedly working as a sheet metal worker when he was detained on 12 March.

On 4 April, Judge Paula Xinis of the Maryland district court had ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate and effectuate” the return of Mr Garcia.

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

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

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

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

On Monday, the Supreme Court put a temporary hold on the lower court’s order while they considered the matter.

Six people, including three children, were killed after a helicopter carrying a family of tourists crashed into the Hudson River in New York, authorities have said.

The family of five was from Spain and the sixth person was the pilot, New York City Mayor Eric Adams told reporters on Thursday. All were onboard the helicopter at the time of the crash.

“Our hearts go out to the families,” Adams said.

New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the identities of the victims will not be released until the families are notified. The cause of the crash is under investigation.

Video footage of the incident shows the helicopter falling out of the sky upside down and then splashing into the Hudson River.

Officials said the helicopter lost control soon after turning at the George Washington Bridge to move along the New Jersey shoreline.

The helicopter was operated by New York Helicopters and took off from the Downtown Skyport on the lower side of Manhattan at 14:59 local time (19:59 BST).

• What we know about the Hudson helicopter crash

The first calls of the crash came around 15:17 EDT (20:17 GMT) and rescue boats were launched immediately, New York Fire Commissioner Robert Tucker said.

“Swimmers were in the water shortly after the call,” he said.

Once on the scene, rescuers searched the water for victims or survivors and initiated “immediate life-saving measures” but the efforts were unsuccessful.

Four victims were pronounced dead on scene, while two others were pronounced dead at a nearby hospital, officials said.

The part of the river where the helicopter crashed is near Manhattan’s west side, an area known for its trendy shops and dining. It’s also near the main campus of New York University.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said the investigation into the crash of the Bell 206, a two-bladed helicopter, will be led by the National Transportation Safety Board.

The Coast Guard, which said it would work with local agencies to assist with the investigation, sent emergency assets to the scene.

The Bell 206 is commonly used by sightseeing companies, television new stations and police departments.

Eyewitnesses who saw the crash told CBS News, the BBC’s US news partner, that they saw parts of the helicopter fall from the sky.

“I looked outside my window. I saw a few people running towards the water, and some people were acting pretty normal. So I was like oh, it might not be anything. Then I started to hear all the sirens come outside,” Jersey City resident Jenn Lynk said.

Another Jersey City resident, Ipsitaa Banigrhi, told CBS the crash sounded like thunder.

“I saw, like, black particles flying,” she said. “Again, I thought maybe it’s just like, dust, or birds, and then we heard all the emergency vehicles and sirens go by, and I think that’s when it was like, OK, what’s happening.”

This is not the first deadly tourist helicopter crash in New York City. In 2018, another tourist helicopter crashed into the East River and all five passengers drowned. Only the pilot survived.

In 2009, a helicopter carrying Italian tourists collided with a private plane over the Hudson River, killing nine.

The government has announced a further £450m of military support to Kyiv, as the UK and Germany prepare to host a meeting of 50 nations in Brussels.

Defence officials are convening to “pile pressure” on Russian President Vladimir Putin and force him to end his invasion of Ukraine, UK Defence Secretary John Healey said.

“We must step up to deter Russian aggression by continuing to bolster Ukraine’s defences,” he added.

The package includes funding for hundreds of thousands of drones, anti-tanks mines and and repairs to military vehicles.

• Starmer accuses Putin of ‘playing games’ over Ukraine peace deal

About £350m will by provided by the UK, with extra funding from Norway via the UK-led International Fund for Ukraine.

The package includes £160m to provide repairs and maintenance to vehicles and equipment the UK has already provided to Ukraine.

A “close fight” military aid package, with funding for radar systems, anti-tank mines and hundreds of thousands of drones, worth more than £250m is also part of the package, the government said.

Healey said the work of the group “is vital to put Ukraine in the strongest possible position”.

“We cannot jeopardise peace by forgetting the war, which is why today’s major package will surge support to Ukraine’s frontline fight,” he said.

“2025 is the critical year for Ukraine.

“Our job as defence ministers is to put into the hands of the Ukrainian war fighters what they need.”

The fund follows a series of military pledges to Ukraine from the UK.

Last month, Sir Keir Starmer announced a £1.6bn missile deal for Ukraine, following a summit of European leaders in London, on top of a £2.2bn loan to provide more military aid backed by profits from frozen Russian assets.

The Lib Dems said the support package announced on Friday was “small change” and called for the government to seize Russian assets in Britain to give Ukraine more funding.

“While we welcome any increase in support for Ukraine, this package is small change compared to what’s needed to combat Putin’s barbaric war,” the party’s defence spokeswoman Helen Maguire said.

Healey and his German counterpart, defence minister Boris Pistorius, are co-chairing Friday’s meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group, which had traditionally been hosted by the US defence secretary until Donald Trump became president in January.

Since then, in a sign of the US stepping back from European security matters, Healey has taken over as chair.

The meeting follows a similar gathering of defence ministers from 30 countries in the Franco-British-led “coalition of the willing”, who met in Brussels to discuss installing a force in Ukraine to ensure enduring peace.

Healey said he did not envisage “a reassurance force” that will “separate the currently warring sides down the line of contact”, according to the AFP news agency, but added that bolstering Ukraine’s armies would be a key part of the plan.

India is the world’s fifth-largest and fastest-growing major economy.

Yet, a recent legacy of protectionism and inward-focused trade policies have held back its global competitiveness.

Its tariffs are high and the share of global exports remains under 2%. India’s vast domestic market has fuelled its growth – outpacing many others, economists argue, largely because the rest of the world is slowing. But in a turbulent, increasingly protectionist era, India’s instinct for self-reliance may oddly serve as a short-term shield.

As countries scramble to recalibrate in response to shifting US trade policies – like Donald Trump’s latest 90-day tariff pause after weeks of sabre-rattling – India’s relative detachment may have helped it weather shocks that have jolted more trade-dependent economies.

“India’s lower exposure to global goods trade could work in our favour. If export-driven economies slow down under tariff pressure, and we continue growing at 6%, we’ll start looking stronger by comparison – especially with our large domestic market to fall back on,” says Rajeswari Sengupta, an associate professor of economics at Mumbai-based Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research.

“Being trade-shy has turned into an advantage – but we can’t afford complacency. To seize new opportunities, India must stay nimble and open up more to trade gradually and strategically,” she adds.

It may not be easy, given India’s long and complicated relationship with trade barriers and tariffs.

In his book India’s Trade Policy: The 1990s and Beyond, Columbia University economist and noted trade expert Arvind Panagariya traces the complex and often inconsistent evolution of India’s approach to trade.

During the inter-war years, industries like textiles and iron and steel lobbied for – and received – high levels of protection. The chronic shortages of World War Two led to even stricter import controls, enforced through an elaborate licensing system.

While Asian peers such as Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore shifted to export-led strategies in the 1960s – and began posting impressive growth rates of 8–10% annually – India chose to double down on import substitution. As a result, imports as a share of GDP shrank from 10% in 1957–58 to just 4% by 1969–70.

By the mid-1960s, India had banned imports of consumer goods altogether. This not only removed the pressure on domestic producers to improve quality but also denied them access to world-class inputs and technology.

As a result, Indian products lost their competitiveness in global markets and exports stagnated. The resulting foreign exchange shortages led to even tighter import controls, creating a vicious cycle that stifled growth. Between 1951 and 1981, per capita income grew at a sluggish pace of just 1.5% a year.

The turning point came in 1991. Faced with a balance-of-payments crisis, India dismantled many import controls and let the rupee depreciate – a move that gave a much-needed boost to exporters and domestic producers competing with imports. Import licensing on consumer goods ended only in 2001, after the World Trade Organisation (WTO) ruled against it.

The impact was striking: between 2002–03 and 2011–12, India’s exports of goods and services surged six-fold, soaring from $75bn to over $400bn.

With trade liberalisation and other reforms, India’s per capita income grew more in the first 17 years of the 21st Century than it did throughout the entire 20th Century, notes Prof Panagariya.

But the pushback to trade didn’t end.

Trade liberalisation in India was reversed twice – in 1996–97 and again since 2018 – with extensive use of anti-dumping measures to block imports from the most competitive sources, according to Prof Panagariya.

“Many post-colonial states like India harbour a deep-rooted suspicion that international commerce and trade are simply new forms of colonisation. Unfortunately, this mindset still lingers among some policymakers – and that’s a shame,” says Vivek Dehejia, a professor of economics at Carleton University in Canada.

Many economists argue that a decade of protectionist policies has undercut Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Make in India initiative, which focused on capital and technology-intensive sectors while sidelining labour-intensive industries like textiles. As a result, the programme has struggled to deliver meaningful gains in manufacturing and exports.

“If foreigners cannot sell their goods to us, they will not have the revenues to pay for the goods they buy from us. If we cut back on their goods, they will have to cut back on ours,” Prof Panagariya wrote.

Such protectionism has also led to allegations of cronyism.

“Tariffs have created protectionism in several Indian industries, disincentivising investments in efficiency by cosy incumbents and allowing them to steadily garner market power by building up concentrated positions,” according to Viral Acharya, a professor of economics at New York University Stern School of Business.

With the US turning inward and China under pressure, countries belonging to the European Union are scrambling for reliable trade partners – and India could be one of them. To seize this moment, economists believe India must lower its tariffs, boost export competitiveness and signal its openness to global trade.

Sectors like garments, textiles and toys present a golden opportunity, especially for the medium and small-scale sectors. But after a decade of stagnation, the big question is: can they scale up – and will the government back them?

If Trump follows through on his tariff plans after the current pause, India could see a $7.76bn – or 6.4% – drop in exports to the US this year, according to an estimate by Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI), a Delhi-based think tank. (In 2024, India exported $89bn worth of goods to the American market.)

“The Trump tariffs are expected to deliver a mild blow to India’s merchandise exports to the US,” says Ajay Srivastava of GTRI.

He emphasises the need for India to broaden its trade base after securing a balanced deal with the US. This includes fast-tracking agreements with the EU, UK and Canada, while deepening ties with China, Russia, Japan, South Korea, and Asean.

At home, real impact hinges on reforms: simpler tariffs, a smoother goods and services tax (GST), better trade processes and fair implementation of quality controls. Without these, India risks missing the global moment.

The head of the British armed forces has visited China for the first time in a decade.

Admiral Sir Tony Radakin discussed “issues of common concern” with China’s military leaders in Beijing, its defence ministry said in a short statement.

“We agreed that in an unstable world we must play our part as responsible nations with global interests,” Sir Tony wrote on X, “and we reflected on the importance of military-to-military communications”.

The last time a Chief of the Defence Staff visited China was in 2015. Since becoming prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer has sought to strengthen ties with the country.

The admiral’s visit coincided with the escalation of an intense trade war between China and the US after President Trump’s announcement of higher tariffs.

Defence Secretary John Healey confirmed on Thursday that the trip had happened earlier this week.

“It’s always good to have military to military engagement and that is what he was establishing”, Healey told reporters in Brussels.

He said that the admiral’s visit followed in the footsteps of one made recently by Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who became only the second foreign secretary to visit China in six years when we went in October last year.

Healey said that in the discussions the admiral was “very firm in the arguments about peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific” region “and concerns about any use of military aggression or assertiveness to pursue political ends”.

Healey did not specifically mention Taiwan, where China has launched major military drills which have been seen as provocation towards the island and wider region.

Beijing sees Taiwan as a breakaway province that will, eventually, be part of the country, and has not ruled out the use of force to achieve this.

But many Taiwanese consider themselves to be part of a separate nation – although most are in favour of maintaining the status quo where Taiwan neither declares independence from China nor unites with it.

Sir Tony has now joined the defence secretary in Brussels for meetings with allies on Ukraine.

A general strike against public spending cuts in Argentina has severely disrupted transport.

All domestic flights have been cancelled, while trains and metro services have been suspended in Buenos Aires and other parts of the country.

Many shops remained closed in the capital but bus drivers continued to work. Airlines said international flights would go ahead as planned, with only a few delays.

It is the third general strike called by Argentina’s powerful unions since President Javier Milei took office at the end of 2023.

Since then, the president has introduced tough austerity measures to tackle hyperinflation. His plan has worked so far, with inflation down from more than 200% to about 60% a year. But the unions say the most vulnerable in society have been affected, including pensioners and low-paid workers.

Milei has slashed subsidies for transport, fuel and energy, fired tens of thousands of public servants and closed government departments.

Horacio Bianchi, a retired teacher living in Buenos Aires, told the Associated Press news agency people were suffering as they “don’t have enough money to eat”.

“These people [the government] came to solve the problems and they have absolutely worsened them for everyone,” he added.

On Wednesday, workers had joined a weekly protest staged by pensioners who have seen their pension funds slashed. In recent weeks, their protests have ended in violence as sympathetic groups, such as football fans, clashed with police.

The protest action comes as the Argentine government awaits whether it will be granted a new $20bn (£15.4bn) loan from the International Monetary Fund.

The country already owes the lender $44bn.

The US Treasury said Milei had “brought Argentina back from economic oblivion”.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will travel to Buenos Aires on Monday in support of the reforms.

The Duke of Sussex met war victims in Ukraine on Thursday when he visited a clinic which rehabilitates wounded military personnel and civilians, a spokesperson has said.

Prince Harry visited the Superhumans Center, in the western city of Lviv, where he spoke to patients and staff.

He was accompanied by a group from the Invictus Games Foundation, including four veterans who had been through similar rehabilitation.

Lviv has frequently been targeted with Russian missiles and the visit was not announced until after the prince was out of the country.

Prince Harry, who served for 10 years in the British Army, founded the Invictus Games in 2014 for wounded veterans to compete in sports events.

The visit to Superhumans was to observe the support and rehabilitation services being provided in a country actively experiencing war, a spokesperson said.

Prince Harry was invited by Olga Rudneva, a chief executive of the centre, at the Invictus Games Vancouver Whistler 2025.

During the visit, the prince met patients and medical professionals, in addition to Ukraine’s Minister of Veterans Affairs, Natalia Kalmykova.

Th clinic administers psychological help, reconstructive surgery and prosthetics to victims for free.

Rob Owen, chief executive of the Invictus Games Foundation, said Ukraine had been “a vital part” of the foundation since participating in the Invictus Games Toronto 2017.

“This visit to the Superhumans charity in Ukraine underscores the Invictus Games Foundation’s broader commitment to supporting recovery and rehabilitation for wounded injured and sick service personnel and veterans, even in the most challenging environments,” he said.

Held in Vancouver, the last edition of the games involved more than 500 competitors from 23 nations, while Birmingham will host the next games in 2027.

Prince Harry was in London this week for a Court of Appeal hearing over his security arrangements in the UK.

He is the second royal to visit Ukraine since Russia’s full scale invasion, after the Duchess of Edinburgh visited Kyiv last year.

His father the King welcomed Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to his Sandringham estate in Norfolk in March, just days after Zelensky’s unprecedented exchange with US president Donald Trump and his vice president JD Vance in the White House’s Oval Office.

The Prince of Wales, Harry’s brother, met Ukrainian refugees during a two-day visit to Estonia last month.

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.

A woman in Australia has unknowingly given birth to a stranger’s baby, after her fertility clinic accidentally implanted another woman’s embryos into her.

The mix-up at Monash IVF in Brisbane, Queensland has been blamed on human error, Australian media reports.

“On behalf of Monash IVF, I want to say how truly sorry I am for what has happened,” CEO Michael Knaap said, adding that everyone at the fertility clinic was “devastated” at the mistake.

Last year, the same clinic paid a A$56m (£26.8m) settlement to hundreds of patients whose embryos were destroyed despite them being viable.

According to a spokesperson for Monash IVF, staff became aware of the problem in February when the birth parents asked to transfer their remaining frozen embryos to another clinic.

Monash has confirmed that an embryo from another patient had been mistakenly thawed and transferred to the wrong person, resulting in the birth of a child.

The clinic has launched an investigation and Mr Knaap said the clinic was confident it was an isolated incident.

Monash said when the incident was discovered it activated its crisis management team and within a week the Brisbane clinic started meeting affected patients to apologise and offer them support, the firm said.

The company has also reported the incident to relevant regulators, including the

Reproductive Technology Accreditation Committee, and also voluntarily reported the incident to the new Queensland assisted reproductive technology regulator.

Last year, Monash IVF reached a A$56m (£26.8m) settlement in a landmark class action with 700 former patients for destroying embryos after inaccurate genetic testing.

The case found that about 35% of the embryos, which were actually normal and could have resulted in a viable pregnancy, were found to be abnormal by the faulty screening.

IVF – or in vitro fertilisation – involves the removal of eggs from a woman’s ovaries, which are then fertilised with sperm in a laboratory. When the fertilised eggs become embryos, they are inserted into the woman’s uterus.

It is an expensive process and not successful every time.

In 2021 there were 20,690 babies born as a result of IVF in Australia and New Zealand, according to a report by the University of New South Wales.

There has been a historic upheaval in American trade policy.

The announcement of Donald Trump’s so-called “reciprocal tariffs” on 2 April – what he called “liberation day” – sent a shockwave through the global trading system and financial markets.

And the President’s 90-day pause on some of these tariffs on 9 April set off a relief rally in stock markets.

But where has the rollercoaster of new US tariff announcements – and partial reversals – actually left the situation?

And what will it all mean for global trade?

The announced pause only applies to some of the new tariffs – taxes on imports – that Donald Trump announced on 2 April.

The new minimum 10% tariff rate, which came into effect on Saturday 5 April, is still in place for goods coming from all countries, including the UK.

There are exemptions for pharmaceuticals and microchips and some other items.

But that 10% tariff in itself is a major change in America’s trading relations with all other countries.

And for China, the rate will not fall at all but will be hiked further to 125%, plus another 20% linked to the drug fentanyl.

Nevertheless, the pause means the rates above 10% for 59 other territories will be suspended until July.

That includes 46% on Vietnam, 44% on Sri Lanka and 20% on the European Union.

That’s something of a relief for these nations, especially developing countries that rely heavily on manufactured goods exports to America.

Exports to the US are equivalent to 30% of Vietnam’s economy and there were fears a 46% tariff would have plunged the South East Asian nation into recession.

But Vietnam and others will still be paying the new 10% minimum tariff rate when previously many were facing substantially lower levies.

And countries such as Australia and South Korea, which had free trade deals with Washington – meaning zero tariffs on many exports to the US – will still see a major break in their trading relationships with America. They too will be subject to the 10% tariff.

The president has unilaterally torn up those free trade deals – as well as the one America had with Canada and Mexico, which Trump signed in his first term.

Numerous other tariffs Trump has announced since returning to the White House remain in place and are not affected by the pause.

That includes:

• 25% tariffs on all car imports to America, including from the UK
• 25% tariffs on steel and aluminium imports, including products made from these metals
• 25% tariffs on many imports from Mexico and Canada.

In big picture terms, economists warn the extent to which the pause actually changes the direction of overall US trade policy should not be exaggerated.

Bloomberg Economics has calculated the US’s average tariff on all its imports was set to go to 27% before yesterday’s pause, the highest in more than 100 years.

And after the pause they estimate it will rise to 24%, still the highest in a century.

The pause on some tariffs has made relatively little difference for two reasons.

First, because the 10% universal rate on all US imports still applies.

Second, because of the president’s simultaneous hike, alongside the pause, in the tariff rate imposed on all imports from China, from 104% to 125%.

The US imported $440bn (£340bn) of goods from China in 2024, according to official US data.

That still represented around 13% of all US goods imports.

Most economists think, even after the pause, this all represents a major shift in US trade policy, which will harm the global economy.

And the intensification of the US trade war with China on top of this is expected to do further damage.

China and the US between them were projected to account for around 43% of the global economy by the International Monetary Fund in 2025.

A slowdown in both economies as a result of the trade conflict will have a knock-on negative effect on most other countries.

And economists caution that the impact of the additional uncertainty created by Trump’s pause will in itself further undermine the world economy by holding back corporate investment.

Before the Trump pause, some hoped the UK could potentially benefit in some ways from the new round of Trump tariffs.

The UK’s relatively lower tariff of 10% could have incentivised some multinational companies to produce more in Britain – rather than in the EU, which was facing a 20% tariff – for export to the US.

With the EU now facing the same US tariff as the UK that incentive has gone, although the UK government hopes to ultimately negotiate a free trade deal with the US to eliminate the 10% tariff.

It’s also the case that the majority of the UK’s exports to the US are services, rather than goods, and services are not affected by the US tariffs.

Nevertheless, the UK is now in the same position as every almost every other country in the world with respect to US tariff barriers on goods.

The UK is still facing America’s 25% tariff on aluminium and steel exports – and also on products derived from those metals.

The UK exported $720m (£558m) of raw steel and aluminium to America in 2024 according to United Nations data.

And calculations by the Global Trade Alert research group suggest UK exports of metal products that are exposed to these new tariffs amounted to $2.9bn in 2024.

The UK is also subject to the new blanket US 25% import tariff on cars.

Data from the Office for National Statistics shows the UK exported $9bn of cars to the US in 2024, around a quarter of its total car exports.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

As a former champion runner, Richard McDonald can move quickly.

But the speed of the market falls, triggered by the sweeping global tariffs Donald Trump announced last week, still kept him on his toes.

Previously a trader for Credit Suisse, he now buys and sells stocks privately. At his laptop in London last week, he watched as the president unveiled a poster board outlining tariff rates, some as high as 50%, for imports from countries around the world.

He raced to understand which companies might be worst hit. Then he sold.

“There are billions being wiped off share prices every second, so it’s really ‘fastest finger first’,” he said. “My mind was sprinting.”

In 25 years of trading, he said he had rarely experienced anything like it.

Trillions were wiped off the value of financial markets around the world in the aftermath of Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement.

Leading share indexes in the US and UK saw some of the steepest declines since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, dropping more than 10% over three days.

Oil prices sank and so did the dollar.

By Wednesday, the worries had spread to the bond market, as investors started dumping US government debt, usually a safe haven for investors in times of uncertainty.

When Trump announced he was putting some of the most eye-watering tariffs on pause, shares stopped sliding and rallied.

But the market turmoil was far from over.

Trump left in place a tariff of 10% on imports from most countries and a tariff of 145% on goods from China, America’s third largest source of imports after the European Union and Mexico.

A day after the announcement, the S&P 500 dropped another 3.5%, the Dow slid 2.5% and the Nasdaq fell 4.3%.

At St Louis-based Argent Capital Management, the mood, said portfolio manager Jed Ellerbroek, was “still miserable”.

Some of his firm’s holdings, like health insurance giant United Healthcare, have done well over the last week, as investors look for companies likely to be able to weather the tariff storm.

But his third largest investment is Apple, which makes the majority of its iPhones and other products in China.

“Trump has induced a gigantic amount of uncertainty into the global economy and consumers and investors and business managers are reeling and unable to make long-term decisions,” Mr Ellerboek said.

“We are really on hold, because we only trade when we have high conviction levels,” he said.

“What do we do with Apple? I don’t know. I’m not going to change when I have no clue what the tariff rate is going to be next week,” he said.

Faced with so many uncertainties, some investors are simply quitting the market, said John Canavan, lead analyst at Oxford Economics.

“What you’re looking at, broadly speaking, is a market that is frustrated, uncertain and confused about where we’re going to be one day to the next,” he said. “In that environment you have a tendency to see some investors choosing the safety of cash.”

While Trump’s tariff rollback was a “relief”, he said it did not change the bigger picture: firms in the US that are bringing in parts or products are facing significantly higher import taxes than they were at the start of the year.

“The tariffs that remain are still high enough that they are likely to push up inflation and weigh significantly on the economy as we go forward,” he said.

“We’re just back trading again on the broader long-term outlook of the tariff implications, which is still negative.”

The world’s most popular gadgets – phones, laptops, tablets, smartwatches – could be about to get a lot more expensive in the US.

Many of them are made in China, which now faces a 145% tariff on its goods imported to the US, under President Donald Trump’s controversial trade policy.

The effect this may have on the iPhone and its maker Apple is under the spotlight – with some analysts saying if costs are passed onto consumers, iPhone prices in the US could rise by hundreds of dollars.

And if the tariffs impact the value of the dollar, it could become more expensive to import iPhones and other devices around the world – potentially leading to higher prices in UK shops.

Ben Wood of CCS Insight told the BBC that if tariffs remain in place, Apple may raise iPhone prices globally when the next iteration is launched.

“It is unlikely the company would want to have differentiated pricing globally,” he said – as the tech giant would want to avoid people buying the device cheaply in the UK and selling it on for profit in the US.

Though others say they believe it could result in cheaper prices if firms which normally send their goods to the US instead send them to countries which don’t have such steep tariffs, like the UK.

And there may be a significant change if the cost of tariffs is passed onto consumers globally – longer contracts to spread out the cost of the device.

While a phone contract may typically last two years, Mr Wood said some firms already offer four year deals, and he believed “we might see five-year contracts” in 2025.

“One could argue it is almost like having a mortgage for your smartphone,” he said.

The US is a major market for iPhones and Apple accounted for more than half of its smartphones sales last year, according to Counterpoint Research.

It says as much as 80% of Apple’s iPhones intended for US sale are made in China, with the remaining 20% made in India.

Along with fellow smartphone giants such as Samsung, Apple has been trying to diversify its supply chains to avoid over-reliance on China in recent years.

India and Vietnam emerged as frontrunners for additional manufacturing hubs.

As tariffs took effect, Apple reportedly looked to speed up and increase its production of India-produced devices in recent days.

Reuters reported on Thursday that Apple chartered cargo flights to ship more than 600 tons of iPhones from India to the US.

Amid Trump’s 90-day pause on tariffs, including those levied on India, the country may be set to benefit from an iPhone manufacturing boost.

The BBC has approached Apple for comment on the impact of tariffs on their operations and prices, but has not had any response yet.

Trump and his advisors have said the aim of its tariffs are to encourage more US manufacturing.

However, the tech industry relies on a global network of suppliers for product components and assembly.

This, and finding skilled workers to match the fast pace and low cost of production in Asia, means relocating supply chains is no simple feat.

Apple committed a $500bn (£385bn) investment in the US in February – which the Trump administration believes will result in more homegrown manufacturing.

But Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said shifting parts of its supply chain from cheaper manufacturing hubs in Asia to the US will take a lot of time, and money.

“The reality is it would take 3 years and $30 billion dollars in our estimation to move even 10% of its supply chain from Asia to the US with major disruption in the process,” he wrote on X on 3 April.

Apple have not revealed yet whether they plan to pass on the costs of the tariffs onto consumers in the US and increase prices.

Some analysts believe Apple is in a more fortunate position than others, having reaped more money from its products than it has spent on making them.

“As a company with lucrative margins on its devices, Apple can absorb some of the tariff-induced cost increases without significant financial impact, at least in the short term,” says Forrester principal analyst Dipanjan Chatterjee.

But he notes the company’s strong branding and popularity may allow it to pass some costs to consumers without too much backlash.

“The brand commands better loyalty than its competitors, and it is unlikely that a manageable price increase will send these customers fleeing into the arms of Android-based competitors.”

Some estimates suggest iPhone prices in the US could as much as triple if costs were passed to consumers.

Following Trump’s tariff increase on China to 125%, the cost for a China-made iPhone 16 Pro Max with 256GB storage would have surged from $1,199 to $1,999, according to estimates by investment banking firm UBS.

They estimate a less significant increase on the iPhone 16 Pro 128GB storage – which is made in India – by five percent from $999 to $1046.

While some analysts such as Dan Ives have suggested that the cost of a “Made in USA” iPhone could soar to as much as $3500.

There’s still plenty of uncertainty about what happens next, and how companies like Apple will respond to tariffs remains to be seen.

This hasn’t stopped some US customers reportedly rushing to Apple stores to buy its smartphones.

The BBC spoke to shoppers outside an Apple Store in New York who had bought products in fear of a potential price hike.

Anthony Cacioppo, a 53-year-old DJ and security technician, purchased the new iPhone.

“I really didn’t need a phone… but I’m not ready to pay double the price,” he said.

Bruce Conroy, a hair stylist, told the BBC that even if prices had risen considerably he “would have stuck with Apple products” – though potentially delayed his purchase of a new iPad.

“I bought it because the tariffs are coming, I want to buy before the prices go up and I expect they will,” said Julia Baumann, a personal finance editor, of her new MacBook.

We will likely have to wait until the autumn to see how much the next iPhone will cost.

But if it looks like costs incurred by tariffs will result in higher price tags, some may look to rival handsets or second-hand devices.

CCS Insight estimates that 5.5m second-hand smartphones will be sold in the UK in 2025, representing 29.7% of the total market.

The iPhone remains one of the most expensive smartphones on the market – and brands such as Google and Samsung offer phones with similar features at a lower cost.

The other option, and perhaps the most cost-effective, could be for people to skip upgrades to newer iPhone models and look to slightly older, cheaper versions.

“The path of least resistance would be to keep the smartphone they already have for longer,” said Mr Wood.

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 uncharted 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.

US President Donald Trump’s political allies reacted with relief after Wednesday’s U-turn on tariffs, insisting it was part of a wider plan.

Trump backed off imposing worldwide higher-rate tariffs, or taxes on imports. But he ratcheted up his trade war with China and kept a lower 10% tariff rate in place globally.

The White House said it was all a negotiating tactic to extract more favourable trade terms from other countries. Billionaire supporter Bill Ackman, who earlier questioned the president’s rationale, said it was “brilliantly executed”.

But one sceptical Republican senator said the baseline rate of 10%, still a century-high for American protectionism, was “bad”.

The New York Times has suggested that Trump ultimately was persuaded to act by investors selling off US government bonds, although his team gave a different version of events.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said dozens of countries during the recent period of market volatility contacted the US to renegotiate their trading relationships. “This was his strategy all along,” Bessent told reporters.

“President Trump created maximum negotiating leverage for himself,” Bessent added.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and House Speaker Mike Johnson, a fellow Republican, echoed that theme.

Trump said his import taxes would address unfairness in the global trading system, as well as bring jobs and factories back to American shores.

Markets around the world rallied after Trump’s U-turn – something his allies were also quick to highlight, along with the perceived growing isolation of China.

Offering his own endorsement in a post on X, Ackman cited Trump’s book The Art of the Deal, applauding the US president for his “textbook” deal-making.

Ackman previously urged that Trump pause additional tariffs, which he suggested could cause “a self-induced, economic nuclear winter”. The warning was a departure from Ackman’s pre-election support for Trump.

Some Republicans – including a group of US senators – struck a tone that was more relieved.

“I think jubilation is too strong a word, but… it was positive,” Senator John Cornyn told Politico.

Speaking to the same outlet, Senator Rand Paul continued his criticism of Trump’s tariffs. He highlighted the “baseline” rate for countries around the world.

“Ten per cent tariffs are bad, but they’re better than 60%,” he said, according to Politico.

House members interviewed anonymously by Axios went further. One said a lack of communication from Trump’s inner circle left them blindsided, and a second bemoaned that they found out through the media.

• Follow live reaction to Trump’s tariffs pause
• Retreat or negotiating strategy? Trump steps back from all-out trade war
• Why Trump is hitting China on trade – and what might happen next
• Will iPhones cost more because of Trump’s tariffs on China?
• What are tariffs and why is Trump using them?

It was a typical Friday lunchtime in Beirut’s southern suburb. Then, a single warning, posted in Arabic on X by a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), triggered panic and chaos in the densely populated area known as Dahieh.

“Urgent warning to those in the southern suburb of Beirut,” it read. The post included a map of a residential area, marking a building in red and two nearby schools. The IDF identified the building as a Hezbollah facility, and ordered the immediate evacuation of the schools.

An air strike was imminent.

What followed were scenes of sheer panic. Parents rushed towards the threatened area to collect their children from the schools, while residents fled in the opposite direction, visibly shaken and fearful.

“It was total chaos,” recalls Ahmad Alama, the director of St Georges School, one of those highlighted on the map. “We tried to contain the situation as much as we could, but it was crazy.”

The area was soon cleared, and Israeli forces destroyed the marked building, which they said was a warehouse storing Hezbollah drones.

The strike, carried out two weeks ago, was the first on Dahieh – an area with a strong Hezbollah presence – since a ceasefire ending the war between Israel and Hezbollah took effect last November.

It came hours after two rockets were launched from southern Lebanon towards northern Israel. Israel said it intercepted one rocket, while the other fell short of the border.

Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant and political group, denied involvement. Israel described the rocket fire as a ceasefire “violation”, while the office of Lebanon’s president, Joseph Aoun, condemned the Israeli strike as a “violation of the agreement”.

“We thought the war had ended with the ceasefire,” says Mr Alama, “But unfortunately, we’re still living it every day.”

• What is Hezbollah and why has it been fighting Israel in Lebanon?
• Hezbollah at crossroads after blows from war weaken group

Despite the ceasefire, Israel has continued near-daily strikes on people and targets it says are linked to Hezbollah, saying it is acting to stop Hezbollah from rearming. The strikes have mainly occurred in southern Lebanon, but the recent bombings in Dahieh have sparked particular alarm.

On 1 April, a second Israeli strike hit the area – this time without warning – killing a Hezbollah commander and three other people, according to the Lebanese health ministry.

Mr Alama has been running St Georges School for 30 years. It serves around 1,000 children of all ages, boys and girls. Although religion is part of the curriculum for older pupils, he describes the school as secular.

It is also well-known in the community for its association with the Lebanese pop star and talent show judge, Ragheb Alama – Ahmad Alama’s brother and the school’s owner.

The recently destroyed building lies just metres from the school. It isn’t the only nearby scene of devastation. Another building, opposite one of St Georges’ gates, remains a massive pile of rubble – brought down by Israeli air strikes before the ceasefire.

During the war, the schools were closed. They didn’t have to deal with situations such as the one they faced. Now reopened, they are braced for the possibility of more bombing.

The school has devised evacuation plans, designating emergency meeting points in the basement and routes for pupils and staff to follow in case of any danger.

There are also new communication plans with parents to prevent a repeat of the chaos of last month’s strike. Children are now routinely reminded of these procedures, with regular evacuation drills.

Students, staff, and parents alike are traumatised by what happened, Mr Alama says.

Initially, the school considered cutting back on extracurricular activities to make up for lost learning, but they changed their minds.

“We decided otherwise,” Mr Alama says. “Pupils shouldn’t pay the price for something they aren’t responsible for. We’ve actually ended up increasing these activities – these kids need to release some of the pressure on them.”

Nearly five months into the ceasefire, the return of Israeli air strikes to Beirut has intensified fears of a return to all-out war.

The ceasefire was meant to end more than 13 months of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which began when Hezbollah launched attacks on Israeli military positions the day after the Hamas attacks on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, saying it was acting in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

• The Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire deal

The conflict escalated in September 2024, when Israel launched a devastating air campaign across Lebanon and invaded the south of the country.

Dahieh, deserted during the war, is bustling again. Shops have reopened, hookah smokers are back at crowded cafes, and the suburb seems as busy as before, with its persistently paralysing traffic.

But amid these signs of normality, scenes of destruction serve as a reminder of the pounding this area endured just months ago.

Some 346 buildings in the area were destroyed and another were 145 partly damaged by Israeli air strikes, according to a municipal official. Israel said it targeted Hezbollah facilities and weapons caches.

In many neighbourhoods, the rubble is still being cleared. The roar of bulldozers and jackhammers drilling into piles of debris is almost constant.

Some of the mounds of debris have Hezbollah flags planted on top of them, while large and small portraits of Hassan Nasrallah, the former Hezbollah leader killed by Israel during the war, line the roads.

However, amid the customary signs of defiance, many are now expressing a deep concern not always voiced – at least in front of cameras – by residents of Dahieh.

“The destruction is terrifying. I see the destroyed buildings and I cry,” says Sawsan Hariri, the headteacher of Burj High School, also in Dahieh.

The school, which also sits opposite a flattened building, sustained damage from nearby strikes.

“It’s depressing. Walking on the street, driving your car – it’s all just depressing.”

Ms Hariri used to live on the top floor of the school building with her husband and daughter, but their home has been destroyed. They now rent a flat nearby.

Before the war, Burj High School had around 600 pupils. Now, it has barely 100.

Many parents are reluctant to send their children back amid the scenes of destruction and the constant buzz of machinery. Others were concerned about the health risks, with thick dust still filling the air.

After the ceasefire, owners of the private school made some basic repairs at their own expense.

Hezbollah, which is banned as a terrorist organisation in many countries but in Lebanon is a political and social movement as well as a paramilitary force, has given those who lost their homes $12,000 for a year’s rent and has offered to cover the costs of repairs to apartments. However, schools and other institutions have not received any aid.

The Lebanese government has pledged to set up a reconstruction fund, which the World Bank estimates will cost $11bn nationwide. But international donors are believed to be insisting on the disarmament of Hezbollah and political reform – conditions that appear a distant prospect.

Though the clearing of rubble is expected to be over by the end of the year, few expect large-scale rebuilding to follow anytime soon.

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.

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 well 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.

The US and Iran are due to hold the first talks in years on Saturday to try to reach a new deal over Iran’s controversial nuclear programme.

Donald Trump pulled the US out of a previous nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers in 2018, and reinstated economic sanctions, angering Iran.

Trump has warned of military action if the talks do not succeed.

Iran says its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes only.

It insists it is not trying to develop nuclear weapons, but many countries – as well as the global nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – are not convinced.

Suspicions about Iran’s intentions arose when the country was found to have secret nuclear facilities in 2002.

This broke an agreement called the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which Iran and almost all other countries have signed.

The NPT lets countries use non-military nuclear technology – such as for medicine, agriculture and energy – but does not permit the development of nuclear weapons.

• US to hold direct nuclear talks with Iran, Trump says
• Iran says it is ready for nuclear deal if US stops military threats
• Analysis: Can Trump convince Iran to ditch its nuclear programme?

Since the US pulled out of the existing nuclear deal – known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA – in 2018, Iran has breached key commitments, in retaliation for the decision to reinstate sanctions.

It has installed thousands of advanced centrifuges (purification machines) to enrich uranium, something which was banned by the JCPOA.

Nuclear weapons require uranium which has been enriched to 90% purity. Under the JCPOA, Iran was only allowed to possess up to 300kg (600lb) of uranium enriched to 3.67% – sufficient for civilian nuclear power and research purposes but not nuclear bombs.

But by March 2025, the IAEA said Iran had about 275kg of uranium which it had enriched to 60% purity. That is enough to theoretically make about half a dozen weapons, should Iran further enrich the uranium.

US officials have said they believe Iran could turn that uranium into enough weapons-grade material for one bomb in as little as a week. However, they have also said it would take Iran between a year to 18 months to build a nuclear weapon. Some experts say a “crude” device could be built in six months or less.

The UN, US and EU imposed extensive economic sanctions on Iran from 2010, over suspicions that its nuclear programme was being used to develop a bomb.

The sanctions stopped Iran from selling oil on international markets and froze $100bn (£77bn) of the country’s foreign assets. Its economy plunged into recession and the value of its currency fell to record lows, which in turn caused inflation to soar.

In 2015, Iran and six world powers – the US, China, France, Russia, Germany and the UK – agreed to the JCPOA after years of negotiations.

As well as limiting what Iran was permitted to do with its nuclear programme, it allowed the IAEA to access all of Iran’s nuclear facilities and to carry out inspections of suspect sites.

In return, the powers agreed to lift the sanctions.

The JCPOA was set to last up to 15 years, after which the restrictions would expire.

When Donald Trump took office in 2018, he removed the US – which had been a key pillar of the agreement.

He said it was a “bad deal” because it was not permanent and did not address Iran’s ballistic missile programme, amongst other things. Trump re-imposed US sanctions as part of a “maximum pressure” campaign to compel Iran to negotiate a new and expanded agreement.

Trump’s decision was influenced by America’s regional allies who were opposed to the deal, chiefly Israel.

Israel claimed that Iran was still pursuing a covert nuclear programme, and warned that Iran would use billions of dollars in sanctions relief to strengthen its military activities.

• Iran’s uranium enrichment ‘worrisome’ – nuclear watchdog
• High stakes as Iran nuclear issue reaches crunch moment
• Iran rejects nuclear talks as UAE delivers Trump’s letter

Trump’s announcement about talks with Iran appeared to take Israel by surprise. He had long said he would make a “better” deal than the JCPOA, though up till now Iran has rejected renegotiating the agreement.

Trump has previously warned that If Iran did not make a new deal “there will be bombing”.

His national security adviser Mike Waltz has said that Trump wants the “full dismantlement” of Iran’s nuclear programme, adding: “That’s enrichment, that is weaponisation, and that is its strategic missile programme.”

Although Trump said there would be “direct talks”, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the negotiations, in Oman, would be indirect. He said Iran is ready to engage with the US, but Trump must first agree there can be no “military option”.

After Trump’s announcement Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the only acceptable deal would involve Iran agreeing to eliminate its nuclear programme. He said that meant: “We go in, blow up the facilities, and dismantle all the equipment, under American supervision and execution.”

Israel’s biggest fear will be that Trump might accept a compromise short of Iran’s complete capitulation which he could present as a diplomatic win.

Israel, which has not signed the NPT, is assumed to have nuclear weapons, something it neither confirms nor denies. It believes a nuclear-armed Iran, which does not accept Israel’s right to exist, would pose a substantial threat.

Both the US and Israel have the military capabilities to bomb Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, but such an operation would be complex and risky, with an uncertain outcome.

Key nuclear sites are buried deep underground, meaning only the most powerful bunker-busting bombs could possibly reach them. While the US possesses these bombs, Israel is not known to.

Iran would almost certainly defend itself, which could include attacking US assets in the region, and firing missiles at Israel.

For an operation of this kind, the US would likely need to use its bases in the Gulf, as well as aircraft carriers.

But countries like Qatar, which hosts the biggest US airbase, might not agree to help it attack Iran, fearing retaliation.

This week saw the global markets ride a rollercoaster led by Donald Trump’s trade tariffs, Madonna bury the hatchet with Elton John, and new details revealed about how the Titanic sank.

But how much attention did you pay to what else has been going on in the world over the past seven days?

Quiz compiled by Ben Fell.

In the mood for more? Try last week’s quiz, or have a go at something from the archives.

The young cast of Alex Garland’s film Warfare had to bond pretty quickly, to play a US military unit whose lives depended on each other, during the Iraq war in 2006.

Familiarity was crucial, so before filming began, the cast were sent on a three-week military bootcamp.

They lived together, learning military jargon and gun safety and were pushed beyond their limits – all of which brought them closer together.

First off though, they agreed to shave each other’s heads to look the part, boosting trust and familiarity.

“We shaved our heads on day one, and got tattoos at the end of the process, so it bookended the experience,” Poulter tells the BBC.

The actor, who recently appeared in The Bear and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3, plays Captain Eric, who was part of a group of US soldiers and Iraqi scouts on a surveillance mission.

We see how it goes wrong, with devastating consequences.

Heartstopper star Connor plays newcomer Tommy, hitting home how young the soldiers were – he’s just turned 21, the same age Tommy was at the time.

The actor says the decision to get a shared tattoo with his castmates after filming wrapped was a “no-brainer”. The casts of The Avengers and The Lord of the Rings did the same thing after their final films.

Warfare’s actors decided their tattoo would say “Call On Me”, to reflect their brotherhood, while referencing Erik Prydz’s 2004 dance hit, which kicks the film off.

The cast features some other big names, including Reservation Dogs’ D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Shōgun’s Cosmo Jarvis, Stranger Things and the forthcoming Beatles biopic’s Joseph Quinn, and Riverdale’s Charles Melton.

“It was really formative for me,” Connor says about his time on the film. “I’ve made friends I really do believe I will know for a long time.

“We all wanted to commemorate it – we are so proud of the work we’ve done together.”

-The movie is based entirely on a real-life mission that took place during the Iraq war, and is built on the memories of the US soldiers who were there.

The group was embedded in the home of an ordinary Iraqi family, who we briefly see in the film, in Ramadi – an area controlled by Al-Qaeda forces.

The military’s goal had been to slip into and observe the area under the cover of darkness, to ensure the safe passage of ground forces there the next day.

What they didn’t know what that they were next door to an insurgent house, making them the target of an attack.

Shot in real-time, Warfare has no music or flashbacks, so there’s no let-up for the audience. You’re dropped into the thick of the action for the whole film.

The soldiers in command have to make split-second decisions amid the pain and chaos, with the Iraqi family caught in the crossfire.

Oscar nominee Garland, whose back catalogue includes the 28 Days film franchise and Ex Machina, got the idea for Warfare when he was making last year’s film Civil War.

He was working on the battle scenes with Hollywood stunt man and gunfight co-ordinator Ray Mendoza.

“During the edit process of Civil War, I was able to really focus on some of the work Ray had done, and how sophisticated and how nuanced it was,” Garland recalls.

They got chatting about Mendoza’s previous life as a US Navy Seal, and about the Ramadi operation, where he was its communications officer.

Mendoza said he’d always wanted to make a film about that mission.

The veteran had a very big reason for wanting to recreate what happened that day – to help replace the lost memories of his colleague Elliott Miller.

Miller, a former Navy Seal, was so badly injured in Ramadi that he suffered traumatic brain injury and memory loss, and had to have a leg amputated.

During the mission, Mendoza carried the unconscious soldier to the rescue tank that ultimately saved his life.

“Elliott doesn’t remember it, and when he woke up, he had a lot of questions,” Mendoza says.

“No matter how many maps we drew, or how many times we wrote it out – without that core memory, I think he’s had a hard time.

“It just raised more questions than answers. So I wanted to recreate this one.”

So Garland and Mendoza decided to make Warfare together, sharing writing and directing credits, and dedicating the film to Miller.

The crucial question is whether seeing the film helped Miller piece things together.

“It did, yeah – he was a sponge,” Mendoza says.

“We walked him through it – he had a lot of questions, he’s got kids that have questions.

“It’s now a film memory, but it’s as close as he’s gonna have – he’s super grateful.”

Miller was played by Jarvis, who calls him “a funny guy… he’s great – a living embodiment of perseverance”.

It was a “unique situation to be in when you’re entrusted with portraying somebody that’s sitting right across from you”, Jarvis said, about having the person he was playing actually on set.

“But because he didn’t remember [what happened], a lot of my references had to come from his colleagues.”

The soldiers’ casting has caused some excitement online, with some publications breathily calling the actors “all of the internet’s boyfriends” and “red hot rising stars”.

Garland arches an eyebrow at this, and Mendoza jumps in to talk about why those actors were chosen.

“I’ve said this to them, so I’m not trying to offend them, but we weren’t looking for the best actors. They’re all great actors. We were looking for the right actors,” he says.

“So what that means is their willingness to push their bodies past a comfort level that they’re maybe not used to. ‘You’re gonna be exhausted. You’re gonna be required to rely on other people. It’s not about you, it’s about the team’.

“And the ones that jump at that opportunity, you’re like, ‘Yep, that’s the attitude that we need’.”

Collating and cross-checking the soldiers’ memories was a big job, largely undertaken by Garland.

“I think there’s an inherent value in attempting to be honest and truthful about something as serious and significant as war,” he says.

He shot the film in a studio in a suburb north of London, on a former World War Two airfield, making it in real-time to recreate “a real incident of combat… as honestly, forensically and accurately as possible”.

Not surprisingly, while sharing credits with Garland, former US Navy Seal Mendoza ran the actors’ bootcamp.

He was played by Woon-A-Tai, who calls him “a brilliant instructor who instilled a lot of confidence in us”, while also making gun safety a top priority.

The actor was also fascinated by the narrative not being “dramatised or Hollywoodised”.

“To see these guys not obey orders – and do what they needed to save their platoon was interesting to me,” he says, talking about the soldiers’ evacuation process.

Mendoza thinks the film may also help veterans who are struggling to express what warfare can be like.

“Some of these things are harder to explain in words,” he says. “So art imagery is how I’m able to communicate that.”

Connor echoes this, saying: “A lot of these men are very much less inclined to talk about themselves in these situations, whether it be to be due to humility, or a difficulty in really articulating it.

“A lot of them just don’t really enjoy talking about their involvement.”

The film has been called “the most harrowing – and honest – depiction of modern combat ever made” by the Telegraph, while the New Yorker said it offers a “hyperrealist rebuke of the American war movie”.

The Guardian said the “film-makers’ message gets lost in the deafening blizzard of battle”, while Empire added: “It may well be cinema’s most effective, purest anti-war film: there is no sentimentality, no hand-wringing, but most significantly not a second of it makes war look cool, or attractive.”

Poulter says he admires the film-makers’ determination to make Warfare purely factual.

“Hopefully this film contributes to a better understanding of just how negative, and how the consequences of war are characterised by a lot of loss…

“I think this is as much an anti-war film as you can possibly hope to hope to see.”

The New York Police Department (NYPD) has said a helicopter crashed into the Hudson River and killed all six people onboard.

It is very much an active investigation, but here is what we know so far about the fatal crash:

New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch has given some details about the fatal helicopter ride.

She said the helicopter was operated by New York Helicopters and took off from the Downtown Skyport on the lower side of Manhattan at 14:59 local time (19:59 BST).

According to the popular real-time flight-tracking website Flightradar24, the helicopter was in the air for about 15 minutes.

It started its route heading towards the Statue of Liberty and pivoted north towards the George Washington Bridge.

Then, the helicopter circled back down the Hudson along the New Jersey side and plunged into the River Hudson near a pier in Hoboken, New Jersey, at 15:15 local time (20:15 BST).

The helicopter was upside-down when it hit the water, Tisch added.

Police boats assisted in the rescue efforts and Bruce Wall, who was nearby when the crash happened, described what he saw.

“It started falling apart in mid-air and then the tail came off and then just flipped over in mid-air and started falling to the ground,” he said.

In total there were six people onboard the helicopter when it went down – including one American pilot.

According to reports, a family of two adults and three children were taking the helicopter ride to see sights of New York.

Dive teams worked to recover the bodies and despite CPR efforts all six people have been pronounced dead.

Four victims were pronounced dead on scene, the other two victims were pronounced dead at an area hospital, officials have said.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has not released any names of the victims but has said the family were from Spain.

The cause of the crash is currently under investigation and early details are vague.

But, NYPD Commissioner Tisch has said the “aircraft lost control” and hit the water “just a few feet off the coast of a pier”.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has said the helicopter was a Bell 206.

Both the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) will investigate – with the NTSB leading the investigation.

Thursday’s incident was the deadliest helicopter crash in New York City since at least 2018, according to the New York Times.

In that incident, all five passengers drowned and only the pilot survived when a sightseeing helicopter that was flying with its doors off fell into the East River and flipped over.

A tattoo belonging to a man from Derbyshire has appeared in a US government document used to identify members of a notorious Venezuelan gang – despite the man having no connection to the group.

Pete Belton, 44, from Ilkeston says he was shocked to find his forearm featured in a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) document used to help identify alleged members of Tren de Aragua (TdA), a transnational criminal organisation.

“I’m just an average middle-aged man from Derbyshire,” he told BBC Verify.

Mr Belton said it was a “bit strange, bit funny at first” but is now worried the family trip he booked to Miami with his wife and daughter in August might end up “being a six month all-inclusive holiday to Guantanamo”.

The Trump administration has already deported hundreds of alleged gang members to a high-security jail El Salvador. Lawyers for some of those deportees say they have been been incorrectly identified as TdA members based on their tattoos.

Mr Belton’s tattoo – a clock face with the date and time of his daughter’s birth – was included in a set of nine images for “detecting and identifying” TdA members. Other tattoos featured stars, crowns and a Michael Jordan “jumpman” logo.

“Open source material has depicted TdA members with a combination of the below tattoos,” states the document which appeared in court filings.

But reverse image searches show that several of the pictures first appeared on tattoo websites with no obvious links to Venezuela or TdA.

One of them led BBC Verify to an Instagram post by a Nottingham-based tattoo artist who posted about Mr Belton’s tattoo nearly a decade ago.

The tattoo image in the DHS document is worse quality than the Instagram post, which was shared in 2016, but it is clearly the same arm and features the same clock face tattoo.

The same image of Mr Belton’s tattoo also appeared in a September 2024 report by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) about TdA activity.

BBC Verify contacted both the US DHS and the Texas DPS about the source of the images, but did not receive a response.

But in an email the DHS said it was confident in its law enforcement’s intelligence and that its “assessments go well beyond just gang affiliate tattoos and social media.”

It’s unclear exactly how Mr Belton’s tattoo ended up in the US documents, but he’s worried about being linked to the gang.

“In my head I’m thinking if I’m working in border force and I saw me walking through I’d think ‘hey up we’ve got one, he’s the one in the document’.”

He provided multiple images of the tattoo to prove that it’s his – and he says that he has no association to the Venezuelan group.

The US government hasn’t deported anyone based on their tattoos alone, according to comments from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official in a court filing last month.

However, court documents show immigration officials are employing a points-based system known as the “Alien Enemy Validation Guide” to determine if someone is linked to the Venezuelan gang.

It includes a scorecard, and according to the document, eight points across a number of categories could be grounds for arrest or deportation.

Half of these points can be given if a “subject has tattoos denoting membership or loyalty to TdA”.

The document says if all eight points come from the symbolism category, which includes tattoos, then further consultation should be taken before designating someone as a member of TdA.

Venezuelan investigative journalist Ronna Risquez, who wrote a book on TdA’s origins, said tattoos alone are not evidence of membership.

“TdA does not have tattoos that identifies the gang,” she said.

“To confirm whether a person is a member of TdA, authorities must conduct a police investigation to determine whether they have a criminal record. A tattoo, their clothing, or their nationality are not proof.”

However, there have been cases where lawyers have argued that people have been wrongfully identified based on their tattoos and were subsequently deported.

US media have reported on a man who’s lawyers say was deported because of a crown tattoo which was inspired by the Real Madrid football club logo.

Another case saw a makeup artist was sent to El Salvador after his a crown tattoo with the words “mum” and “dad” was used by US officials as evidence for gang membership, according to his attorneys.

Back in Derbyshire, Mr Belton says his family have considered cancelling their trip to the US due to the potential risks, but they are going to monitor how the story develops.

“Hopefully now they’d realise I’m not a Venezuelan gangster but I’ve seen crazier things happen in the news recently, so we’re just going to wait and see.”

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

Prada has agreed to buy its smaller rival Versace in a billion dollar deal to unite two of the biggest designer fashion labels.

The deal to unite the two Italian brands has an estimated value of $1.36bn (£1.06bn), the Prada Group said on Thursday.

“We aim to continue Versace’s legacy celebrating and re-interpreting its bold and timeless aesthetic,” said Prada chairman Patrizio Bertelli.

The Prada Group already owns several other designer labels including Miu Miu and luxury footwear brand Church’s.

Its acquisition of Versace will create a multi-billion dollar luxury fashion group, putting the brands in a position to compete with the likes of French luxury fashion conglomerates LVMH and Kering.

Negotiations to buy Versace between Prada and Capri began in February.

The price Prada agreed to pay for Versace is significantly lower than the $2.15bn that Capri Holdings spent when it bought Versace in 2018.

The deal, which includes the brand’s debt pile, comes as Versace has been operating at a loss amid a slowdown in demand for luxury fashion worldwide.

Capri also owns other fashions brands including Jimmy Choo and Michael Kors.

Mr Bertelli said that the Prada Group would provide Versace with “a strong platform”.

“Versace has huge potential. The journey will be long and will require disciplined execution and patience,” added Andrea Guerra, the chief executive of Prada.

In March, Donatella Versace stepped down from her creative director role at the luxury brand after nearly 30 years.

She had held the position since 1997 and took over after the murder of her brother Gianni.

The 69-year-old has a new role as the chief brand ambassador for Versace, while Dario Vitale, who is a former design and image director of Miu Miu, took over as chief creative officer.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected criticism of the Gaza war by some air force reservists, calling it “unforgivable”.

The Israeli military said it would dismiss serving reservists who had signed a letter calling for the return of Israeli hostages to be prioritised over fighting Hamas.

The letter also says the current fighting is politically motivated and will lead to the deaths of the hostages, Israeli soldiers and innocent civilians.

The military said it could not allow serving reservists to engage in political protests.

Israel resumed its air and ground campaign in Gaza last month, saying that military pressure would force Hamas to release the hostages it is still holding.

Israel’s military air power, which has been used extensively in Gaza over the past 18 months, relies heavily on reservist pilots.

Most of the 970 signatories of the letter published in Israeli newspapers on Thursday morning are retired. But it is reported that dozens are still active personnel.

The letter does not call for refusal to serve, but it demands “the return of all hostages even at the price of a cessation of hostilities”.

“Currently, the war serves mainly political and personal interests, not security interests,” it says.

“The continuation of the war does not contribute to any of its declared goals and will lead to the deaths of the hostages, Israeli soldiers and innocent civilians, and to the attrition of the IDF reserve forces.”

It adds: “As has been proven in the past, only a deal can bring back the hostages safely.”

An IDF spokesperson was quoted by Israeli media as saying that it was unacceptable to “use the Israeli Air Force brand” for a political protest.

“It is inconceivable for someone to do a shift at [the IAF] command centre and head out afterward and express mistrust in the task,” they added.

Netanyahu said the letter came from a “radical, marginal group”, accusing it of trying to fracture Israeli society from within.

“Refusal to serve is refusal to serve – even if it implied and in polite language,” he said.

“Expressions that weaken the IDF and strengthen our enemies in wartime are unforgivable.”

He also claimed that the signatories represent “neither the fighters nor the public”.

Defence Minister Israel Katz said the letter was an attempt “to undermine the legitimacy” of what he called “the just war”.

The latest opinion polls indicate widespread support among the Israeli public for a new ceasefire and hostage release deal.

When the Israel Democracy Institute (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.

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 others were taken hostage.

More than 50,880 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s health ministry.

A ceasefire deal that began in January and lasted two months 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 resumed its offensive on 18 March, blaming Hamas’s refusal to accept a proposal for an extension of the agreement’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 deal, 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.

Evangelical Christian and former talk show host Mike Huckabee has been confirmed as the new US ambassador to Israel.

The former Arkansas governor has long been a fervent supporter of Israel. He strongly backs Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories, which are considered illegal under international law – though Israel rejects this.

“This is a great day for the Israeli-American alliance,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, joining other members of his government in celebrating the outcome of Wednesday’s vote.

The Senate backed Huckabee by 53 to 46, largely along party lines, with only one Democrat, John Fetterman, supporting him.

Many Democrats have, however, been critical of his previous statements about the ongoing war in Gaza.

Democratic Senator Jerry Nadler last month said Huckabee was “woefully unfit” for the role.

Nadler also accused him of engaging in “brazen denial of the existence of the Palestinian people”, referencing a 2017 news conference where Huckabee said there was “no such thing as a Palestinian”.

Huckabee takes up his post at a time when there is little sign of any agreement on a fresh ceasefire in Gaza and the return of the remaining hostages.

He has also frequently expressed his support for annexing the occupied West Bank, with far-right politicians in Israel calling this year for Israeli sovereignty to be extended there.

But during his questioning by a Senate committee, he sought to play down some of his past statements, saying he would “carry out the president’s priorities”, not his, and denied backing the expulsion of Palestinians.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said Huckabee’s appointment would “strengthen the unbreakable bond between our nations”, following a phone call between the two.

Israel’s prime minister also shared his congratulations, describing Huckabee as a “dear friend” in a post on X.

Netanyahu has just returned from Washington where he stood next to US President Donald Trump as he told the world he was conducting direct talks with Iran – Israel’s principal regional adversary – and praised Turkey’s President Erdogan – whom Israel regards as a potential threat in the remaking of Syria.

Speaking on Wednesday, the Trump said Huckabee would “be fantastic” in his new role.

“He’s going to bring home the bacon,” he said from the Oval Office, “even though bacon isn’t too big in Israel. I had to clear that up.”

Oscar-winning actress and Avengers star Scarlett Johansson is featuring twice at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, both in front of and behind the camera.

She will appear in Wes Anderson’s new project, The Phoenician Scheme, alongside Benicio Del Toro and Tom Hanks and off-screen in her first directorial project.

Her new film, Eleanor the Great, has also been revealed as part of the line-up and follows an elderly woman as she copes with the death of her best friend.

Johansson’s starring role comes as organisers of the film festival have said that they are committed to showcasing more work from female filmmakers.

Speaking at a press conference, Cannes president Iris Knobloch said she was “honoured to amplify” the voices of women.

Johansson, 40, who is best known for starring as Black Widow in the Avengers films, has entered her film into the second prize category.

Competing for the main Palme d’Or prize this year are 20 films, of which six come from female directors.

This includes Kelly Reichardt, whose drama The Mastermind, starring Josh O’Connor and John Magaro, will be showing at the festival.

Those looking to replace Oscar-winning Sean Baker, who won the top prize at Cannes for Anora last year, also include Iranian director Jafar Panahi and his film A Simple Accident, plus horror newcomer Ari Aster with Eddington, which stars Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone.

Robert De Niro will also make an appearance at the festival to receive an honorary Palme d’Or, while Tom Cruise’s final instalment of Mission: Impossible will also be shown.

It’s also been a busy few weeks for Harris Dickinson, who was recently announced as one of the new stars of Sir Sam Mendes’ Beatles quadrilogy.

Dickinson, who will play John Lennon in the films, will also be making a directing debut at Cannes.

The 28-year-old will show his film Urchin, about a homeless man in London, at the French festival.

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.

Six people, including three children, were killed after a helicopter carrying a family of tourists crashed into the Hudson River in New York, authorities have said.

The family of five was from Spain and the sixth person was the pilot, New York City Mayor Eric Adams told reporters on Thursday. All were onboard the helicopter at the time of the crash.

“Our hearts go out to the families,” Adams said.

New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the identities of the victims will not be released until the families are notified. The cause of the crash is under investigation.

Video footage of the incident shows the helicopter falling out of the sky upside down and then splashing into the Hudson River.

Officials said the helicopter lost control soon after turning at the George Washington Bridge to move along the New Jersey shoreline.

The helicopter was operated by New York Helicopters and took off from the Downtown Skyport on the lower side of Manhattan at 14:59 local time (19:59 BST).

• What we know about the Hudson helicopter crash

The first calls of the crash came around 15:17 EDT (20:17 GMT) and rescue boats were launched immediately, New York Fire Commissioner Robert Tucker said.

“Swimmers were in the water shortly after the call,” he said.

Once on the scene, rescuers searched the water for victims or survivors and initiated “immediate life-saving measures” but the efforts were unsuccessful.

Four victims were pronounced dead on scene, while two others were pronounced dead at a nearby hospital, officials said.

The part of the river where the helicopter crashed is near Manhattan’s west side, an area known for its trendy shops and dining. It’s also near the main campus of New York University.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said the investigation into the crash of the Bell 206, a two-bladed helicopter, will be led by the National Transportation Safety Board.

The Coast Guard, which said it would work with local agencies to assist with the investigation, sent emergency assets to the scene.

The Bell 206 is commonly used by sightseeing companies, television new stations and police departments.

Eyewitnesses who saw the crash told CBS News, the BBC’s US news partner, that they saw parts of the helicopter fall from the sky.

“I looked outside my window. I saw a few people running towards the water, and some people were acting pretty normal. So I was like oh, it might not be anything. Then I started to hear all the sirens come outside,” Jersey City resident Jenn Lynk said.

Another Jersey City resident, Ipsitaa Banigrhi, told CBS the crash sounded like thunder.

“I saw, like, black particles flying,” she said. “Again, I thought maybe it’s just like, dust, or birds, and then we heard all the emergency vehicles and sirens go by, and I think that’s when it was like, OK, what’s happening.”

This is not the first deadly tourist helicopter crash in New York City. In 2018, another tourist helicopter crashed into the East River and all five passengers drowned. Only the pilot survived.

In 2009, a helicopter carrying Italian tourists collided with a private plane over the Hudson River, killing nine.

The US Supreme Court has ordered the Trump administration to facilitate the return of a Maryland man, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador’s notorious mega-jail.

The Trump administration had conceded that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was deported by accident, but appealed against a lower court’s order to return him to the US.

On Thursday, in a 9-0 ruling, the Supreme Court declined to block the lower court’s order.

The judge’s order “requires the Government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent”, the justices ruled.

Mr Garcia, now 29, entered the US illegally as a teenager from El Salvador. In 2019 he was arrested with three other men in Maryland and detained by federal immigration authorities.

But an immigration judge granted him protection from deportation on the grounds that he might be at risk of persecution from local gangs in his home country.

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

His wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, is a US citizen and has called for his release. He was reportedly working as a sheet metal worker when he was detained on 12 March.

On 4 April, Judge Paula Xinis of the Maryland district court had ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate and effectuate” the return of Mr Garcia.

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

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

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

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

On Monday, the Supreme Court put a temporary hold on the lower court’s order while they considered the matter.

Michelle Obama has spoken out against rumours that her marriage to Barack Obama might be in trouble.

The former first lady has not accompanied her husband to several high-profile events – including Donald Trump’s inauguration and the funeral of former President Jimmy Carter – fuelling speculation that they might be separating.

Without explicitly mentioning these occasions, Mrs Obama told the Work in Progress podcast hosted by actress Sophia Bush that she was now in a position to control her own calendar as a “grown woman”.

She said that people were not able to believe that she was “making a decision” for herself and instead “had to assume that my husband and I are divorcing”.

Mrs Obama shared that she felt some guilt for stepping back from certain duties.

“That’s the thing that we as women, I think we struggle with like disappointing people,” she said.

“I mean, so much so that this year people couldn’t even fathom that I was making a choice for myself that they had to assume that my husband and I are divorcing.

“This couldn’t be a grown woman just making a set of decisions for herself, right? But that’s what society does to us.”

Mrs Obama also said in the podcast: “I chose to do what was best for me. Not what I had to do. Not what I thought other people wanted me to do.”

While her absence from President Trump’s inauguration was seen as a break from tradition, she did give a high-profile speech at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) this past summer.

“Hope is making a comeback,” she told a Chicago crowd of thousands at the DNC, as she urged them to throw their weight behind then-presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

Despite carving out more time for herself, the former first lady said she still finds time to “give speeches, to be out there in the world, to work on projects. I still care about girls’ education”.

The Obamas celebrated their 32nd anniversary last year in October.

Mrs Obama has previously been open about the struggles she faced in her marriage due to Mr Obama’s political ambitions and time in the White House in her best-selling memoir, Becoming.

She wrote in the book that her husband’s aspirations resulted in loneliness and exhaustion.

Donald Trump has said there will “always be transition problems” and “difficulty” as markets fell again amid continued uncertainty over the US president’s global tariff war.

His statement on Thursday comes hours after the White House said that tariffs on China would reach 145% for some products due to a pre-existing 20% levy imposed on those producing the drug fentanyl.

Despite this, Trump said he was still hoping to secure a deal with China. “I think we’ll end up working something out that’s very good for both countries. I look forward to it,” he said.

Meanwhile, markets continued to face a turbulent time on Thursday, following Trump’s 10% tariff announcement for all countries except China.

Trump on Wednesday paused his threat to impose tariffs as high as 50% on “worst offender” countries, but pressed on with his trade war with China.

Beijing has shown no sign of backing down, this week increasing its retaliatory tariffs to 84% on American products.

The three major US stock markets managed to regain some initial ground early on Thursday. However by closing, the S&P 500 lost 3.6%, the Dow Jones 2.5% and the Nasdaq 4.31%. Warner Bros Discovery shares fell 14% on Thursday, while Amazon and Apple who were both down 7%.

• Will iPhones cost more because of Trump’s tariffs on China?
• Trump may have backtracked, but this is far from over
• What does Trump’s tariff pause mean for global trade?

In a televised cabinet meeting, Trump said there would “always be transition difficulty” but added that “it was the biggest day in history in markets”.

He said that investors were happy with how the US was running and that they were “trying to get the world to treat us fairly”.

He claimed that “everybody wants to come and make a deal” to reduce tariffs.

Echoing Trump’s statements in the meeting, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that many countries were coming to talk and that they’d come with “offers they never would have” if it was not for the president’s policies.

“We’re getting the respect we deserve now,” he added. “I think you’re going to see historic deals one after the other.”

Trump said the US would “love to be able to work a deal (with China)”, adding that he had “great respect for President Xi” and thought that they would “end up working something out that’s very good for both countries”.

However, he repeated his claims that China had “taken advantage” and “ripped off” the US “more than anybody” for a long time.

China announced that it would cut the number of American-made films shown in its cinemas, and claimed the tariff dispute has dampened audience appetite for Hollywood.

Beijing already restricts US releases to 34 a year, and Hollywood has become less important in China as homegrown films increase in popularity.

The European Union meanwhile said it would be pausing the countermeasures it had planned to impose on the US from 15 April also for 90 days.

Twenty-six EU member states – all bar Hungary – had voted to impose retaliatory tariffs on Wednesday if the US imposed its levy of 20%.

In a statement, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that the EU wanted “to give negotiations a chance”.

There were some heroic efforts overnight from Donald Trump and those around him to suggest the past seven days were something other than absolute chaos.

By this reading, Trump’s 4D game of chess has left China in check. Certainly the Chinese economy faces a massive hit from punitive tariffs in its biggest market. But even accounting for the President’s roll back, the US has still erected a massive protectionist tariff wall, not seen since the 1930s.

The world is left with a universal 10% tariff, irrespective of whether that country (for example the UK or Australia) actually sells less to the US than the US sells to it. There is now no difference between the EU, which clearly does have a massive trade deficit in goods and was preparing to retaliate, and the UK.

There is also an anxious wait to find out what comes next. One of the questions is whether President Trump pushes ahead with tariffs on medicines, the UK’s second biggest goods export.

Plus there is potential logistical chaos on the cards from a little-noticed multi-million dollar port tax for every cargo vessel docking in the US that was “made in China”. That is more than half of the global merchant fleet – and it is due next Friday.

Even with Trump’s stated 90 day pause on implementing higher tariffs, there remains too much uncertainty for companies to go through the rigmarole of rerouting global trade.

The central issue today, however, is that the world’s two great economic superpowers are now facing off against each other like rutting stags.

Tariffs at these sky-high rates are massively hitting business between two nations which together account for around 3% of the entire world’s trade. The main motorway of the global economy is effectively shut.

The visible tangible consequences of all this will become very real very quickly: Chinese factories will close, workers will stroll from plant to plant looking for work.

Beijing will need to organise a stimulus package to account for the loss of whole percentage points of GDP, the kind of thing that happens when a natural disaster flattens a major city. Painful, but manageable at a cost, though not forever.

Meanwhile the US will see consumer prices surge. President Trump might try to order these US companies not to raise prices, but the effect will come through soon enough.

In theory this will be in sharp contrast to what is happening in other countries in the world. Across the border in Canada, or in Europe, not only will there not be such China-sourced price rises, there could be price cuts.

Trade wars on this scale do not stay confined to the flow of goods. They tend to become currency wars.

What we saw last night was the trade turmoil spread to credit markets, especially the US bond market, having already hit share prices.

Indeed there was an invaluable reveal for the game theory of this conflict. The Trump administration revealed a key pressure point with its concern about the “yippy” – as Trump called it – bond market.

As trading in US government debt continued overnight in Asia, the effective interest rate on these bonds rose to 5%.

This sort of borrowing should not move in such an erratic fashion.

The last time this happened was in the “Dash for Cash”, the key moment of financial fragility at the very beginning of the pandemic. The world was focussed on life or death in March 2020, but this potential further crisis was alleviated only by emergency action.

Effectively, the President’s row back was a form of emergency policy change.

Was the Chinese government behind this rash of US government bond sales in Asia? Probably not. However, what happened on Wednesday highlighted a vulnerability for Trump.

China is the second biggest holder of US government debt in the world and if it chose to, dumping all that debt would be catastrophic for America. But doing so would be a form of mutually assured economic destruction – the losses for China would be huge.

More importantly, what the bond markets were telling Trump is that they are deeply sceptical about his tariff policy.

The US does have the Federal Reserve, which does have some power to tranquillise bond markets. But right now it does not look like its chairman Jerome Powell will ride to the rescue.

The bond market scepticism echoes the sentiment of the ascendant Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. He is now pushing for Trump to reach trade deals with their allies because the US needs them to take on China.

Given the US was previously calling these same close allies cheaters, looters and pillagers, there is no way this was the strategy all along.

This does matter. The US needs the EU, UK, the rest of the G7 on side in terms of China. China probably needs those countries just to stay neutral, and carry on soaking up its exports.

The rest of the world has seen Trump’s team struggle to explain tariffing penguin islands or poor African economies and the President himself recirculating the suggestion he was crashing stock markets on purpose. And they’ve witnessed the fact that the tariff rates were changed after they came into effect and also the absurd nature of the equation used to calculate them.

It’s in this context that Trump’s handling of the situation has handed leverage back to the rest of the world, because neither friend nor foe will know quite what they are negotiating with this America.

There is a calm, welcomed by all, but it could be rather brief.

Donald Trump is going to “make America’s showers great again” by easing rules restricting water flow, the White House says.

The US president is ordering the energy secretary to rescind a change introduced by Barack Obama that restricted multi-nozzle showers from discharging over 2.5 gallons of water per minute overall.

This served “a radical green agenda that made life worse for Americans”, the White House said, as Trump criticised the “ridiculous” amount of time he says it takes to wet his hair in the shower.

Consumer and conservation groups have previously argued that changing the rules is wasteful and unnecessary.

According to the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, which shared a factsheet in 2024, efficiency standards in the US set more than three decades ago “reduce water waste… save consumers money on their water and energy bills and help protect the environment”.

Under a 1992 energy law, showerheads in the US are not allowed to produce more than 2.5 gallons (9.5l) of water per minute.

Obama introduced a redefinition, as part of an Energy Conservation Program, that meant for showers with multiple nozzles, the restriction applied overall rather than to each nozzle.

At the end of Trump’s first term, in 2020, he moved to allow each nozzle to produce up to 2.5 gallons a minute.

But when Joe Biden succeeded him as president, he stopped that.

The current administration has dubbed their efforts a “war on water pressure”, saying Americans “pay for their own water and should be free to choose their showerheads without federal meddling”.

Trump now wants to return to the “straightforward meaning” of ‘showerhead’ from the 1992 law.

According to the White House fact sheet: “The Order frees Americans from excessive regulations that turned a basic household item into a bureaucratic nightmare.

“No longer will showerheads be weak and worthless.”

The order says the change will come into effect 30 days after the energy secretary publishes a notice rescinding the definition.

While signing the order in the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump said it was “ridiculous” he has to stand under the water for 15 minutes for his “beautiful” hair to get wet – echoing remarks he made during 2020.

At that time, he also complained about water not coming out of shower heads, saying his hair “has to be perfect”.

The Duke of Sussex met war victims in Ukraine on Thursday when he visited a clinic which rehabilitates wounded military personnel and civilians, a spokesperson has said.

Prince Harry visited the Superhumans Center, in the western city of Lviv, where he spoke to patients and staff.

He was accompanied by a group from the Invictus Games Foundation, including four veterans who had been through similar rehabilitation.

Lviv has frequently been targeted with Russian missiles and the visit was not announced until after the prince was out of the country.

Prince Harry, who served for 10 years in the British Army, founded the Invictus Games in 2014 for wounded veterans to compete in sports events.

The visit to Superhumans was to observe the support and rehabilitation services being provided in a country actively experiencing war, a spokesperson said.

Prince Harry was invited by Olga Rudneva, a chief executive of the centre, at the Invictus Games Vancouver Whistler 2025.

During the visit, the prince met patients and medical professionals, in addition to Ukraine’s Minister of Veterans Affairs, Natalia Kalmykova.

Th clinic administers psychological help, reconstructive surgery and prosthetics to victims for free.

Rob Owen, chief executive of the Invictus Games Foundation, said Ukraine had been “a vital part” of the foundation since participating in the Invictus Games Toronto 2017.

“This visit to the Superhumans charity in Ukraine underscores the Invictus Games Foundation’s broader commitment to supporting recovery and rehabilitation for wounded injured and sick service personnel and veterans, even in the most challenging environments,” he said.

Held in Vancouver, the last edition of the games involved more than 500 competitors from 23 nations, while Birmingham will host the next games in 2027.

Prince Harry was in London this week for a Court of Appeal hearing over his security arrangements in the UK.

He is the second royal to visit Ukraine since Russia’s full scale invasion, after the Duchess of Edinburgh visited Kyiv last year.

His father the King welcomed Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to his Sandringham estate in Norfolk in March, just days after Zelensky’s unprecedented exchange with US president Donald Trump and his vice president JD Vance in the White House’s Oval Office.

The Prince of Wales, Harry’s brother, met Ukrainian refugees during a two-day visit to Estonia last month.

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.

India is the world’s fifth-largest and fastest-growing major economy.

Yet, a recent legacy of protectionism and inward-focused trade policies have held back its global competitiveness.

Its tariffs are high and the share of global exports remains under 2%. India’s vast domestic market has fuelled its growth – outpacing many others, economists argue, largely because the rest of the world is slowing. But in a turbulent, increasingly protectionist era, India’s instinct for self-reliance may oddly serve as a short-term shield.

As countries scramble to recalibrate in response to shifting US trade policies – like Donald Trump’s latest 90-day tariff pause after weeks of sabre-rattling – India’s relative detachment may have helped it weather shocks that have jolted more trade-dependent economies.

“India’s lower exposure to global goods trade could work in our favour. If export-driven economies slow down under tariff pressure, and we continue growing at 6%, we’ll start looking stronger by comparison – especially with our large domestic market to fall back on,” says Rajeswari Sengupta, an associate professor of economics at Mumbai-based Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research.

“Being trade-shy has turned into an advantage – but we can’t afford complacency. To seize new opportunities, India must stay nimble and open up more to trade gradually and strategically,” she adds.

It may not be easy, given India’s long and complicated relationship with trade barriers and tariffs.

In his book India’s Trade Policy: The 1990s and Beyond, Columbia University economist and noted trade expert Arvind Panagariya traces the complex and often inconsistent evolution of India’s approach to trade.

During the inter-war years, industries like textiles and iron and steel lobbied for – and received – high levels of protection. The chronic shortages of World War Two led to even stricter import controls, enforced through an elaborate licensing system.

While Asian peers such as Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore shifted to export-led strategies in the 1960s – and began posting impressive growth rates of 8–10% annually – India chose to double down on import substitution. As a result, imports as a share of GDP shrank from 10% in 1957–58 to just 4% by 1969–70.

By the mid-1960s, India had banned imports of consumer goods altogether. This not only removed the pressure on domestic producers to improve quality but also denied them access to world-class inputs and technology.

As a result, Indian products lost their competitiveness in global markets and exports stagnated. The resulting foreign exchange shortages led to even tighter import controls, creating a vicious cycle that stifled growth. Between 1951 and 1981, per capita income grew at a sluggish pace of just 1.5% a year.

The turning point came in 1991. Faced with a balance-of-payments crisis, India dismantled many import controls and let the rupee depreciate – a move that gave a much-needed boost to exporters and domestic producers competing with imports. Import licensing on consumer goods ended only in 2001, after the World Trade Organisation (WTO) ruled against it.

The impact was striking: between 2002–03 and 2011–12, India’s exports of goods and services surged six-fold, soaring from $75bn to over $400bn.

With trade liberalisation and other reforms, India’s per capita income grew more in the first 17 years of the 21st Century than it did throughout the entire 20th Century, notes Prof Panagariya.

But the pushback to trade didn’t end.

Trade liberalisation in India was reversed twice – in 1996–97 and again since 2018 – with extensive use of anti-dumping measures to block imports from the most competitive sources, according to Prof Panagariya.

“Many post-colonial states like India harbour a deep-rooted suspicion that international commerce and trade are simply new forms of colonisation. Unfortunately, this mindset still lingers among some policymakers – and that’s a shame,” says Vivek Dehejia, a professor of economics at Carleton University in Canada.

Many economists argue that a decade of protectionist policies has undercut Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Make in India initiative, which focused on capital and technology-intensive sectors while sidelining labour-intensive industries like textiles. As a result, the programme has struggled to deliver meaningful gains in manufacturing and exports.

“If foreigners cannot sell their goods to us, they will not have the revenues to pay for the goods they buy from us. If we cut back on their goods, they will have to cut back on ours,” Prof Panagariya wrote.

Such protectionism has also led to allegations of cronyism.

“Tariffs have created protectionism in several Indian industries, disincentivising investments in efficiency by cosy incumbents and allowing them to steadily garner market power by building up concentrated positions,” according to Viral Acharya, a professor of economics at New York University Stern School of Business.

With the US turning inward and China under pressure, countries belonging to the European Union are scrambling for reliable trade partners – and India could be one of them. To seize this moment, economists believe India must lower its tariffs, boost export competitiveness and signal its openness to global trade.

Sectors like garments, textiles and toys present a golden opportunity, especially for the medium and small-scale sectors. But after a decade of stagnation, the big question is: can they scale up – and will the government back them?

If Trump follows through on his tariff plans after the current pause, India could see a $7.76bn – or 6.4% – drop in exports to the US this year, according to an estimate by Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI), a Delhi-based think tank. (In 2024, India exported $89bn worth of goods to the American market.)

“The Trump tariffs are expected to deliver a mild blow to India’s merchandise exports to the US,” says Ajay Srivastava of GTRI.

He emphasises the need for India to broaden its trade base after securing a balanced deal with the US. This includes fast-tracking agreements with the EU, UK and Canada, while deepening ties with China, Russia, Japan, South Korea, and Asean.

At home, real impact hinges on reforms: simpler tariffs, a smoother goods and services tax (GST), better trade processes and fair implementation of quality controls. Without these, India risks missing the global moment.

The head of the British armed forces has visited China for the first time in a decade.

Admiral Sir Tony Radakin discussed “issues of common concern” with China’s military leaders in Beijing, its defence ministry said in a short statement.

“We agreed that in an unstable world we must play our part as responsible nations with global interests,” Sir Tony wrote on X, “and we reflected on the importance of military-to-military communications”.

The last time a Chief of the Defence Staff visited China was in 2015. Since becoming prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer has sought to strengthen ties with the country.

The admiral’s visit coincided with the escalation of an intense trade war between China and the US after President Trump’s announcement of higher tariffs.

Defence Secretary John Healey confirmed on Thursday that the trip had happened earlier this week.

“It’s always good to have military to military engagement and that is what he was establishing”, Healey told reporters in Brussels.

He said that the admiral’s visit followed in the footsteps of one made recently by Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who became only the second foreign secretary to visit China in six years when we went in October last year.

Healey said that in the discussions the admiral was “very firm in the arguments about peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific” region “and concerns about any use of military aggression or assertiveness to pursue political ends”.

Healey did not specifically mention Taiwan, where China has launched major military drills which have been seen as provocation towards the island and wider region.

Beijing sees Taiwan as a breakaway province that will, eventually, be part of the country, and has not ruled out the use of force to achieve this.

But many Taiwanese consider themselves to be part of a separate nation – although most are in favour of maintaining the status quo where Taiwan neither declares independence from China nor unites with it.

Sir Tony has now joined the defence secretary in Brussels for meetings with allies on Ukraine.