US envoy Steve Witkoff met Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg on Friday, as Donald Trump urged the Russian president to “get moving” on a ceasefire in Ukraine.

The Kremlin said the meeting lasted for more than four hours and focused on “aspects of a Ukrainian settlement”. The talks, Witkoff’s third with Putin this year, were described by special envoy Kirill Dmitriev as “productive”.

Trump has expressed frustration with Putin over the state of talks. On Friday, he wrote on social media: “Russia has to get moving. Too many people ere [sic] DYING, thousands a week, in a terrible and senseless war.”

It comes as Trump’s Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg denied suggesting the country could be partitioned.

The Times said that, during an interview with the paper, Kellogg had proposed British and French troops could adopt zones of control in the west of Ukraine as part of a “reassurance force”.

Russia’s army, he reportedly suggested, could then remain in the occupied east. “You could almost make it look like what happened with Berlin after World War Two”, the paper quoted him as saying.

Kellogg later took to social media to say the article had “misrepresented” what he said. “I was speaking of a post-ceasefire resiliency force in support of Ukraine’s sovereignty,” he wrote on X, adding: “I was NOT referring to a partitioning of Ukraine.”

Neither the White House nor Kyiv reacted to the comments immediately. The BBC has asked the Times for its response.

Earlier on Friday, European nations agreed €21bn ($24bn; £18bn) in military aid for Kyiv.

At the event, Europe’s defence ministers said they saw no sign of an end to the war.

Ahead of the Putin-Witkoff talks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there was “no need to expect breakthroughs” as the “process of normalising relations is ongoing”.

Asked whether discussions could include setting up a date for Putin and Trump to meet, Peskov said: “Let’s see. It depends on what Witkoff has come with.”

Beforehand, Witkoff had a meeting with Dmitriev at the Grand Hotel Europe in St Petersburg, where a conference was held on stainless steel and the Russian market.

Dmitriev, the 49-year-old head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, visited Washington last week and was the most senior Russian official to go to the US since the country’s full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Meanwhile Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky accused the Kremlin of prolonging the war during a visit on Friday to the site of a 4 April Russian missile attack on his home town of Kryvyi Rih. The attack killed 19 people, including nine children.

He also alleged that hundreds of Chinese nationals were fighting with the Russian army. It comes after Ukraine said it had captured two Chinese nationals.

“We have information that at least several hundred Chinese nationals are fighting as part of Russia’s occupation forces,” Zelensky said.

“This means Russia is clearly trying to prolong the war even by using Chinese lives.”

Zelensky laid flowers in front of photos of Herman Tripolets, nine, and seven-year-olds Arina Samodina and Radyslav Yatsko.

He later reiterated a call for air defence systems “to protect lives and our cities”.

“We discussed this with President Trump – Ukraine is not just asking, we’re ready to purchase these additional systems,” he wrote on social media.

“Only powerful weapons can truly be relied upon to protect life when you have a neighbour like Russia.”

Trump has previously claimed he could end the Ukraine-Russia conflict “in 24 hours”. On Friday, he declared that it would not have happened at all if he’d been in the White House in 2022 when Russia launched its full-scale invasion.

“A war that should ld [sic] have never happened, and wouldn’t have happened, if I were President!!!,” he wrote.

In February US and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia for their first face-to-face talks since the invasion. Officials have also been meeting to discuss restoring full diplomatic relations.

Trump has also had a fractious relationship with Zelensky since his second term as US president began, culminating in an angry confrontation in the Oval Office in February.

The US attempted to broker a limited ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia in the Black Sea, only for it to stall when the Kremlin asked for sanctions imposed after it launched its full-scale invasion of its neighbour to be lifted.

Trump has since said he is “very angry” and “pissed off” with Putin over the lack of progress in agreeing a truce between Kyiv and Moscow.

Russia’s ambassador to the UK, Andrei Kelin, told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg that the US is not its ally.

He said America and Russia had not been able to go from “total distrust to alignment in two months” since Trump returned to the White House.

“We have too many disagreements,” he said. “But we are working on these disagreements step by step in different areas.”

Earlier this week, Washington and Moscow went ahead with a prisoner swap.

Ksenia Karelina, a Russian-American, was sentenced to 12 years in jail in Russia for donating $51 to a Ukrainian charity when the war began in February 2022.

The Los Angeles resident was freed on Thursday morning and exchanged for Arthur Petrov, a dual German-Russian citizen arrested in Cyprus in 2023.

He was accused of illegally exporting microelectronics to Russia for manufacturers working with the military.

While on holiday in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) last week, there was only one mission on my mind – getting my hands on the viral “Dubai chocolate” bar.

If you’re on TikTok, you will have seen the bar, which combines the flavours of chocolate, pistachio and tahini with filo pastry, and is inspired by the Arab dessert Knafeh.

The original, called Can’t Get Knafeh of It, by FIX Chocolatier, has been sold exclusively in the UAE since 2022. It become so popular on social media that it’s only on sale for two hours a day and often sells out within minutes.

But now imitations, known by the nickname “Dubai chocolate”, have hit UK supermarkets including Waitrose, Lidl and Morrisons, with some supermarkets limiting the number of bars customers are allowed to buy.

Yezen Alani, who co-owns FIX with his wife Sarah Hamouda, told the BBC the global attention Dubai chocolate was getting was “flattering and humbling”.

The FIX chocolate bar was first imagined by Hamouda in 2021, who craved the flavours while she was pregnant.

Alani and Hamouda started developing the bar a year later, running the business alongside their corporate jobs.

“Sarah and I were brought up in the UK and we moved to Dubai 10 years ago, so we’ve got Western and Arab roots.

“We wanted to create flavours that were inspired by that,” Alani says.

Part of the appeal of the chocolate is its exclusivity – you can only order it using a food delivery app, rather than walking into a shop or grabbing it at the supermarket.

It costs around £15 per bar and can only be bought during specific hours of the day to ensure the company can fulfil all their orders.

I also saw similar bars sold in many shops in the region, dubbed “Dubai chocolate” and adorned with pictures of pistachios and filo pastry.

Alani says the “copycat” bars are “very frustrating because people are trying knockoffs, which damages our brand”.

One of the reasons for the bar’s surge in popularity has been social media – with a viral video by TikTok user Maria Vehera from 2023 being cited as one of the main reasons for its rise to prominence.

It shows Vehera trying the Knafeh bar for the first time – along with several others made by the same chocolatier – and has been liked nearly seven million times.

The way the bar looks is made for social media – from the attractive orange and green spots on top of the smooth milk chocolate to the crunch sound it makes when you break off a piece.

Chocolate combined with pistachio isn’t new but the real standout element is the crunchy nature of the filling, with the filo pastry adding a texture and thickness to the bar.

Since the Can’t Get Knafeh of It bar is only available in one country, other brands have started to sell their versions in the UK, including Swiss chocolate manufacturer Lindt whose Dubai chocolate is being sold for £10 in supermarkets.

Since stocking the bar, Waitrose says they’ve had to introduce a two-bar limit for customers in order to regulate stock levels.

Another version has also been sold by Home Bargains, while supermarket Lidl has its own version for £4.99 and is also limiting purchase numbers.

One influencer documented how the has bar been kept behind tills for this reason.

Having tried the Lindt bar and a couple of other versions being sold in corner shops, there is quite a contrast.

The FIX chocolate is billed as a “dessert bar” and needs to be kept in the fridge, with a short expiry date like many dairy items.

This isn’t the case for the others, which have been designed to have a longer shelf life.

You can also see the difference in taste and texture – the original bar is almost double the width of the Lindt bar, which is more aligned to the size and shape of a standard chocolate bar.

When Alani and Hamouda first started out, they employed one person to fulfil around six to seven orders a day.

But since growing in popularity, primarily thanks to TikTok, their business now employs 50 people, who fulfil 500 orders a day.

One big talking point has been the price of the product, which is £15 per bar.

“It’s all handmade, every single design is done by hand,” Alani says.

“We use premium ingredients and the process is not like making other bars – you’ve got the baking, moulding the chocolate to the design and with the filling itself, even the pistachios are hand-picked and processed”.

Speaking to Arabian Business last year, Hamouda said: “My mother used to make Knafeh, and that’s something I wanted to capture my own way.

“Knafeh was the first flavour we perfected. The crunch, the pistachio, it had to be just right,” she added.

Despite the product’s success, Alani says “it’s been a tough journey” as the pair have been working together full time while also raising their two children.

“There’s been times where we’ve wanted to give up, but we said to ourselves ‘we’ll keep going as long as we can pay the rent’ and now we have no regrets as its worked out”.

Hundreds of flights have been cancelled and train lines were suspended as gales hit Beijing and northern China on Saturday.

By 11:30 local time (03:30 GMT) on Saturday, 838 flights had been cancelled at the capital’s two major airports, according to the Reuters news agency.

Wind gusts of up to 93mph (150 kph) – the strongest in the Chinese capital for more than half a century – are set to continue through the weekend, forcing the closure of attractions and historic sites.

Millions were urged to stay indoors on Friday, with some state media outlets warning that people weighing less than 50kg may be “easily blown away”.

Train services including the airport’s express subway line and some high-speed rail lines have been suspended. Parks were also shut, with some old trees reinforced or trimmed in preparation but almost 300 trees have already fallen over in the capital.

A number of vehicles were damaged but no injuries were reported – in Beijing most residents followed authorities’ advice to stay indoors after the city warned 22 million residents to avoid non-essential travel.

“Everyone in Beijing was really nervous about it. Today there are hardly any people out on the streets. However, it wasn’t as severe as I had imagined”, a local resident told the Reuters news agency.

While a businessman from the Zhejiang province had his flight home cancelled.

“Because of the severe winds, all flights scheduled for last night and today were cancelled. So I will probably rebook my flight in a couple of days. I’m now basically stranded in Beijing,” he said.

The strong winds are coming from a cold vortex system over Mongolia and are expected to last through the weekend.

Beijing issued its first orange alert for strong winds in a decade with the strongest winds expected on Saturday.

China measures wind speed with a scale that goes from level 1 to 17. A level 11 wind, according to the China Meteorological Administration, can cause “serious damage”, while a level 12 wind brings “extreme destruction”.

The winds this weekend are expected to range from level 11 to 13, with conditions expected to ease by Sunday.

Buying or renting a home has become unaffordable for the average Australian, driven by a perfect storm of astronomical house prices, relentless rental increases and a lack of social housing.

With less than a month until the federal election, housing remains among the top issues for voters, and the country’s two major parties – the Labor Party and the Liberal-National Coalition – have both pledged to tackle the crisis in a range of ways.

Australians are already struggling under cost-of-living pressures and bracing for the effects of Donald Trump’s global tariff war. And it remains to be seen whether either party will sway voters with their promise of restoring the Australian dream.

Simply put, Australia has not been building enough homes to meet the demands of its rapidly growing population, creating a scarcity that makes any available home more expensive to buy or rent.

Compounding the issue are Australia’s restrictive planning laws, which prevent homes being built where most people want to live, such as in major cities.

Red tape means that popular metropolitan areas like Melbourne and Sydney are far less dense than comparably sized cities around the world.

The steady decline of public housing and ballooning waitlists have made matters worse, tipping people into homelessness or overcrowded living conditions.

Climate change has also made many areas increasingly unliveable, with natural disasters such as bushfires and severe storms destroying large swathes of properties.

Meanwhile, decades of government policies have commercialised property ownership. So the ideal of owning a home, once seen as a right in Australia, has turned into an investment opportunity.

In short: it depends where you live.

Sydney is currently the second least affordable city in the world to buy a property, according to a 2023 Demographia International Housing Affordability survey.

The latest data from property analytics company CoreLogic shows the average Sydney home costs almost A$1.2m (£570,294, $742,026).

Across the nation’s capital cities, the combined average house price sits at just over A$900,000.

House prices in Australia overall have also jumped 39.1% in the last five years – and wages have failed to keep up.

It now takes the average prospective homeowner around 10 years to save the 20% deposit usually required to buy an average home, according to a 2024 State of the Housing System report.

The rental market has provided little relief, with rents increasing by 36.1% nationally since the onset of Covid – an equivalent rise of A$171 per week.

Sydney topped the charts with a median weekly rent of A$773, according to CoreLogic’s latest rental review. Perth came in second with average rents at A$695 per week, followed by Canberra at A$667 per week.

Immigration and foreign property purchases are often cited as causes for Australia’s housing crisis. But experts say that they are not significant contributors statistically.

Many people who move to Australia are temporary migrants, such as international students who live in dedicated student accommodation rather than entering the housing market, according to Michael Fotheringham, head of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute.

“The impact [of migrants] on the housing market is not as profound as some commentators have suggested,” Mr Fotheringham tells the BBC.

Foreign purchases of homes, meanwhile, is “a very small issue” with not much meaningful impact on housing strain, says Brendan Coates, from the Grattan Institute public policy think tank.

The latest data released by the Australian Taxation Office supports this, with homes purchased by foreign buyers in 2022-23 representing less than one percent of all sales.

“It’s already very difficult for foreigners to purchase homes under existing foreign investment rules. They are subject to a wide range of taxes, particularly in some states,” Mr Coates explains.

Labor and the Coalition have both promised to invest in building more homes – with Labor offering 1.2 million by 2029, and the Coalition vowing to unlock 500,000.

Labor announced a A$33bn housing investment plan in their latest budget, which pledges to help first-time homebuyers purchase properties with smaller deposits through shared-equity loans.

They have also promised to create more social housing and subsidies to help low-to-moderate-income earners own and rent more affordably.

Central to the Coalition’s housing affordability policy is cutting migration, reducing the number of international students and implementing a two-year ban on foreign investment in existing properties.

Additionally, they have promised a A$5bn boost to infrastructure to support local councils by paying for water, power and sewerage at housing development sites.

The Greens’ policies, meanwhile, have focused on alleviating pressures on renters by calling for national rent freezes and caps.

They have also said that in the event of a minority government, they will be pushing to reform tax incentives for investors.

In short, experts say that while both Labor and the Coalition’s policies are steps in the right direction, neither are sufficient to solve the housing problem.

“A combination of both parties’ platforms would be better than what we’re seeing from either side individually,” Mr Coates tells the BBC.

A 2025 State of the Land report by the Urban Development Institute of Australia says the federal government will fail to meet its target of 1.2 million new homes by 2029 – falling short by almost 400,000.

The Coalition’s focus on reducing immigration, meanwhile, will only make housing marginally cheaper while making Australia poorer in the long-term, according to Mr Coates.

The cuts to migration will mean fewer skilled migrants, he explains, and the loss of revenue from those migrants will result in higher taxes for Australians.

Decades of underinvestment in social housing also means demand in that area is massively outstripping supply – which at 4% of housing stock is significantly lower than many other countries, according to Mr Fotheringham.

There’s also concern about grants for first homebuyers, which drive prices up further.

While commending the fact that these issues are finally being treated seriously, Mr Fotheringham believes it will take years to drag Australia out of a housing crisis that has been building for decades.

“We’ve been sleepwalking into this as a nation for quite some time,” he says. “[Now] the nation is paying attention, the political class is paying attention.”

Talks between the the United States and Iran over Iran’s nuclear programme have begun in Muscat, the capital of Oman.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told Iranian state television his country wanted a “fair agreement”.

US President Donald Trump pulled the US out of a previous nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers in 2018, and has long said he would make a “better” deal. Until now Iran had rejected renegotiating the agreement.

The new talks are seen as an important first step to establish whether a deal can be done, with Saturday’s meetings expected to focus on establishing a framework for negotiations.

It is the highest level of talks since Trump’s first term in office, but it’s not clear if the two sides will sit in the same room.

Araghchi has repeatedly emphasised that indirect talks are best at this stage.

President Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, who is leading the US delegation, has only spoken of meeting face-to-face. But the most important issue is what kind of deal each side would accept. President Trump has only said that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.

Iran hopes a deal to limit, but not dismantle, its nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief.

“Our intention is to reach a fair and honourable agreement from an equal position, and if the other side also comes from the same position, then hopefully there will be a chance for an initial understanding that will lead to a path of negotiations,” Araghchi said.

He added that the team that came with him was made up of experts “knowledgeable in this particular field and who have a history of negotiating on this issue”.

US President Donald Trump last month sent a letter to Iran’s supreme leader via the United Arab Emirates, saying he wanted a deal to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and to avert possible military strikes by the US and Israel.

Trump disclosed the upcoming talks during a visit to the White House on Monday by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said on Tuesday that both leaders had agreed “Iran will not have nuclear weapons”.

Trump has warned the US would use military force if no deal was reached and Iran has repeatedly said it won’t negotiate under pressure.

• What is Iran’s nuclear programme and what does the US want?
• Iran says it is ready for nuclear deal if US stops military threats

The US president told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday that this weekend’s meeting in Oman would be “very big”, also warning that it would “be a very bad day for Iran” if the talks were not successful.

Iran insists its nuclear activities are entirely peaceful and it will never seek to develop or acquire nuclear weapons.

However, since Trump pulled out of the 2015 agreement – which expires later this year – Iran has increasingly breached restrictions imposed by the existing nuclear deal, in retaliation for crippling US sanctions reinstated seven years ago, and has stockpiled enough highly-enriched uranium to make several bombs.

Strolling in bright sunshine across the immaculately raked gravel of Paris’s Tuileries gardens, Barbara and Rick Wilson from Dallas, Oregon, were not exactly in disguise. But earlier that morning, on their very first trip to France, Rick, 74, had taken an unusual precaution.

Before leaving his hotel, he’d taken a small piece of black tape and covered up the Stars and Stripes flag on the corner of his baseball cap.

“We’re sick about it. It’s horrible. Just horrible,” said Rick, as he and his wife contemplated the sudden sense of shame and embarrassment they said they now felt, as Americans, following President Trump’s abrupt moves on global trading tariffs.

Barbara, 70, even had a Canadian lapel pin in her pocket – a gift from another tourist – which she thought might come in useful if further subterfuge proved necessary.

“I’m disappointed in our country. We are upset about the tariffs,” she explained.

A few yards away, towards the crowds gathering outside the Louvre Museum, another American couple was also trying to keep a lower profile than usual. Chris Epps, 56, an attorney from New York, had decided he would dress a little differently on today’s tour.

“No New York Yankees hat. I left it in the hotel. People might come up to us, treat us differently. But so far, so good,” he added.

As the world grapples with the implications of Donald Trump’s see-sawing quest to upend the global trading system, the impacts are being felt not just on stock markets and businesses and investment funds, but in subtler ways too, and not least here in France, a country that continues to attract vast numbers of tourists from North America, and which has a centuries-old, close, and sometimes testy relationship with the United States.

To be clear, there are no indications that Americans are any less welcome here than before. Our interviews with a random selection of tourists were also carried out shortly before President Trump reversed some of his tariffs.

Nonetheless, the shock and anger generated in Europe by events of the past week have added fuel to perceptions of a much larger transatlantic rift – of a shifting of the tectonic plates of international relations.

It is early days, of course. Americans are far from united about their government’s actions and much of the evidence for changing sentiments is anecdotal.

But there are already some discernible effects on travel, tourism, academia and other fields.

“It’s a big drop,” said Philippe Gloaguen, the founder of France’s most prestigious travel guides, Le Guide du Routard, sitting behind a cluttered desk in Paris and noting that orders for his books about the US had fallen by 25% so far this year.

Not that Gloaguen was complaining. Quite the opposite, in fact.

“I’m very proud of my customers. They are young, well-educated, and very democratic. This was the truth for Putin… and for China. We know when there’s a dictatorship going on in a country,” he said, arguing that his French readers were beginning to view America in a similar light.

“They don’t want to spend their money in the United States,” Gloaguen continued, framing his publication as a sort of global democratic weathervane.

He noted that the abrupt fall in US sales was balanced by a rise in sales of books about “Canada and other countries.”

Other evidence from the travel industry is beginning to back up the idea of a growing disenchantment with the United States. The forecasting company, Oxford Economics, is already predicting an 8.9% drop in the number of French people travelling to the US this year compared with 2024.

Another recent analysis – of French expatriates living in the US – found that a remarkable 78% of them are now “particularly pessimistic” about their future in the country, while 73% of people polled within France, in March, believed the US was no longer an “ally”.

Over a morning coffee in a Parisian café, Nicolas Conquer – an enthusiastic Trump supporter and dual French-American citizen who leads the Republicans Abroad Paris branch – acknowledged “some volatility” because of the tariffs but argued that a “media narrative” was creating a false impression of strained transatlantic relations.

“I’m still standing my ground… reminding people that France and the US have been the oldest allies,” Conquer said, adding that any negative reaction to Trump’s America First agenda was based on a “childish or immature” view of international relations.

“Everyone knows that we have to have strong sovereignty, strong patriotism, and that… as Trump supporters go for ‘America First’, we would expect that… European governments would also promote UK first, Germany first, France first,” said Conquer.

But concern about the Trump administration’s recent actions and rhetoric – not just in relation to tariffs but also regarding Ukraine and Greenland – is widespread across France and hard to miss. Politicians, newspapers and television talk shows have all been busy dissecting the changes, often in a tone of bitter disillusionment.

In practical terms, the result has sometimes been to offer support to perceived victims of the Trump administration, with French scientific institutions, backed by the French government, beginning to offer places to American researchers who’ve lost their jobs due to cuts in government funding.

Elsewhere there are indications of nervousness about simply travelling to the US. A prestigious social studies institute in Paris recently sent its students a warning, following reports of foreigners being questioned about their political beliefs and refused entry.

“We urge you to be extra vigilant when travelling abroad. It is important not to travel with your usual equipment but to use a shared computer containing only data necessary for your stay and no sensitive data. During border checks, some security services may require the unlocking of digital devices to view information, including private information,” wrote a professor at EHESS, in a group email seen by the BBC.

Relations between Paris and Washington have survived many previous shocks – as, for instance, American taunts about “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” following France’s decision not to participate in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, or the more recent spat over calls to return the Statue of Liberty.

But France’s friendship with the US has never been as unconditionally “special” as that claimed by, say, the British. The French may adore Hollywood cinema, country music and the allure of the American Dream, and celebrate ties that date back to America’s war of independence, but they have kept some distance too – shunning what’s known here as “Le Woke-isme” and, today more than ever, celebrating President De Gaulle’s determination to build an entirely French-owned nuclear deterrent separate from both Nato and the US.

“The American people remain our friend, but [Trump] is no longer our ally,” the former French President François Hollande announced recently.

“It’s definitely a relationship of ‘love’ and not always ‘like,'” said Kerry Halferty-Hardy, the President of the American Club of Paris, citing the ambivalent lyrics of the famous Serge Gainsbourg song, “Je t’aime – moi non plus.”

Looking out of her Paris apartment towards the Eiffel Tower, Halferty-Hardy argued that the shared values of liberty and the Enlightenment linking France and the US “are not easily dislodged and certainly not on the basis of one administration,” but she acknowledged that “no one can ignore what they’re seeing in the headlines.”

On an unusually crisp April day in a rural Texas town, dozens of Mennonite community members gathered alongside the nation’s top health official, Robert F Kennedy Jr, to mourn an eight-year-old.

Daisy Hildebrand is the second unvaccinated girl from the community to die from measles within two months.

Officials in Seminole town also joined the reception after her funeral to support the family, said South Plains Public Health Director Zach Holbrooks. This time, there was no talk of the vaccine that prevents measles deaths – unlike many of his long days since the outbreak began.

“The focus was on their healing,” Mr Holbrooks said. “You never want to see anybody pass away, especially a child that young, from any kind of illness, because there is a prevention for it – the MMR vaccine.”

Like other Seminole natives, Mr Holbrooks was not vaccinated against measles as a child. He got a shot in college, and another in February, when his hometown became the epicentre of one of the country’s worst measles outbreaks in a decade.

The US has seen more than 700 cases this year. The majority of infections – 541 as of Friday – occurred in western Texas, with 56 patients sent to the hospital. Cases in New Mexico, Oklahoma and Kansas also are linked to the outbreak. Two children, including Daisy, have died – the first recorded fatalities from measles in the US since 2015.

It’s not slowing down either, public health experts say. They try to reach vaccine-hesitant residents, but struggle with those who carry on with daily life as usual and with mixed messaging from federal officials, including Kennedy who has endorsed immunization conspiracy theories in the past.

“I wish there were more coming in to get the vaccine,” Mr Holbrooks said. “We can put messaging out, but it’s up to them to come see us.”

The western Texas town of Seminole – population 7,000 – is bordered by miles of rural farmland and oil fields.

Among billboards for restaurants, gun silencers and tractors, a digital sign hints at the crisis gripping the community: a warning about the dangers of measles, which can cause complications including pneumonia, brain swelling and death.

It has spread rapidly among Mennonites, a religious community living near Seminole. Mr Holbrooks estimates the population could be as many as 40,000 across several counties. In those areas, public school vaccination rates are as low as 82%.

Roughly 95% of a community must be vaccinated against the measles to achieve herd immunity, when enough of a group is immune to a disease that its spread is limited and the unvaccinated are protected.

Mr Holbrooks remembers when the Low German Mennonite group began immigrating to his hometown and nearby states in the 1970s. The religion has no specific doctrines against vaccinations, but they tend to avoid many modern aspects of life, including the health care system.

Their community is not alone. At least 118,000 kindergartners in Texas are exempt from one or more vaccines, mostly in rural areas, said Terri Burke, director of Texas vaccine advocacy group, the Immunization Partnership. Parents can get a waiver to exempt their child from school vaccine requirements for a variety of reasons, including religion.

Savannah Knelsen, an 18-year-old server at a Seminole barbecue restaurant, has not been vaccinated against measles – or anything else.

Many of her family members and friends – also unvaccinated – caught the measles in recent weeks. One relative developed a fever of 104.5 F (40.2 C), but still chose not to go to the hospital.

The recent deaths of two children have not convinced her to get vaccinated, she said, adding that she was healthy and wanted to let her body “fight off” infections. Experts agree the vaccine is the best way to prevent infections – including severe ones.

Ms Knelsen’s 19-year-old co-worker, Jessica Giesbrecht, along with her family, has been vaccinated against the measles.

“I’m worried for my baby niece,” Ms Giesbrecht said, adding she was too young to be vaccinated.

Still, the two said the outbreak doesn’t weigh heavily on daily life. Others in Seminole agree.

A cashier at a local pharmacy said no one has stopped by for measles vaccinations since the outbreak started. “People are just going about their lives,” she said.

On Sunday, Kennedy made his first trip to the region since the outbreak to attend the 8-year-old girl’s funeral.

The top US health official is an unlikely figure to spearhead the fight against measles – he has in the past endorsed conspiracy theories about immunizations, including debunked claims about links to autism. He downplayed the outbreak in western Texas at first, calling it “not unusual”.

Trump echoed these remarks last weekend, saying that only a “fairly small number of people” had been impacted, when he was asked by the BBC about the outbreak aboard Air Force One. It was “not something new”, he added.

On Wednesday, Kennedy gave his strongest statement yet in support of the measles vaccine, telling the BBC’s US partner CBS News, “The federal government’s position, my position, is that people should get the measles vaccine.”

The remarks were met with social media backlash from some anti-vaccine supporters. Kennedy added, however, that the government “should not be mandating” vaccines.

The influence of some of his earlier remarks lingers.

In one of several Mennonite-owned natural-health stores in Seminole, dozens of bottles of cod liver oil – a supplement that contains vitamin A – are on display. Alongside the vaccine, Kennedy has promoted vitamin A as an alternative measles treatment, a remedy doctors say should not be given without guidance from a physician and is no substitute for the vaccine.

The treatment has at times proven dangerous. Covenant Children’s Hospital in nearby Lubbock told the BBC it has treated several unvaccinated children with measles for vitamin A toxicity – some had used it a preventative measure.

The community needs federal officials to provide stronger messaging to help convince people to get vaccinated and slow the outbreak, said Gordon Mattimoe, director of the health department in nearby Andrews County.

“People look to their leaders to lead,” he said.

Jeff Hutt, a former spokesperson for the Make America Healthy Again political action committee and Kennedy’s former national field director, argued that the health secretary had to “cover the middle ground”, providing statements that are “politically adequate” while also providing sceptical stances on vaccines.

“In covering the middle ground, I’m not necessarily sure he was able to reassure folks that he had a handle on [measles], or that he was able to reassure folks that he was sticking to his guns,” Mr Hutt said.

The Trump administration’s health policies could have other consequences in Texas, officials say. Local health departments are at risk of losing critical resources because of attempts to cut $11.4b (£8.8b) in public health grants. The move was temporarily blocked by a judge last week.

Mr Mattimoe said that because of the potential cuts – around $250,000 in grant funding for his health department – he is not able to hire a new nurse to give immunizations.

In a statement to the BBC, the US Department of Health and Human Services said it deployed the “necessary” resources from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to respond to the outbreak.

“The CDC is in close, constant communication with local and state health officials on the ground to ensure they have what they need,” the official said.

The Texas Department of Health Services could lose as much as $550m in grant funding. It has provided staff, vaccines, testing and other support to local health departments, but likely will need extra funding, said spokesperson Chris Van Deusen told the BBC.

Mr Mattimoe contacted lawmakers and the state for help, but is not hopeful.

“I don’t think they have the funds,” he said.

In nearby Lubbock, Texas, just two days after the news of Daisy’s death, all was quiet at the health department’s vaccination clinic.

Other days have been busier, with as many as 20 people coming in for vaccines, said Katherine Wells, director of public health for the city, where hospitals receive children with severe measles cases from more rural counties.

Since the outbreak began in January, the city of Seminole has vaccinated 103 adults and 143 children against the measles, Mr Holbrooks said. The neighbouring three rural counties decided to close their underused vaccine clinics and send more staff to hard-hit Seminole.

“There’s always talk on, what else can we do, and are we doing enough?” Mr Holbrooks said. “We want to build trust, not tear it down.”

At times, local health officials have seen progress.

A Mennonite doctor in Andrews County gained community members’ trust and encouraged them to get vaccinated, said Mr Mattimoe.

“Those trusted messengers in those communities – I think that’s very important,” he said.

Ms Wells hopes vaccinations will start to pick up after the latest measles death and the city’s new guidance to vaccinate children as young as six months, instead of one year.

The bigger city saw an outbreak at a daycare among children too young to be fully vaccinated, a situation she believes will be helped by the earlier shots.

But, “there’s always going to be some people that we don’t reach”, Ms Wells said.

That means the virus is likely to circulate for a while in western Texas regions where people are unvaccinated, officials said.

“We’re just at the beginning of it,” Mr Mattimoe said. “It’s going to have to run through the community. Until they get that natural immunity, it’ll just keep running its course.”

When scrolling through social media, you may have recently seen friends and family appearing in miniature.

It’s part of a new trend where people use generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT and Copilot to re-package themselves – literally – as pocket-sized dolls and action figures.

It has taken off online, with brands and influencers dabbling in creating their mini-me.

But some are urging people to steer clear of the seemingly innocent trend, saying fear of missing out shouldn’t override concerns about AI’s energy and data use.

It may sound complicated, but the process is simple.

People upload a picture of themselves to a tool like ChatGPT, along with written prompts that explain how they want the final picture to look.

These instructions are really important.

They tell the AI tool everything it is meant to generate, from the items a person wants to appear with to the kind of packaging they should be in – which includes mimicking the box and font of popular toys like Barbie.

Many online will then personalise it further with their name, job and clothing choices.

Though it does not always work, and many have also shared some of the amusing mistakes the tools made, where the action dolls look nothing like them.

Like other generative AI tools, image generators are also prone to making things up, and may make assumptions about how someone should look.

And it’s not just regular people using it – the trend has been seized upon by a wealth of brands online including beauty company Mario Badescu and even Royal Mail.

Trends come and go – but by their very nature can make people feel compelled to take part to avoid missing out.

“Generative AI makes it easier and quicker for people to create and jump on trends,” says Jasmine Enberg, principal social media analyst at eMarketer.

She says the technology has made it quicker and easier to make online content, which may have the unexpected effect of quickening the pace at which other social media users get annoyed by it.

But she believes AI-driven trends will become a more regular appearance on our feeds “as the tech becomes a more regular part of our digital lives”.

While its light-hearted nature may have drawn people to it, the trend has drawn criticism from some concerned about its environmental impact.

Professor Gina Neff of Queen Mary University London tells the BBC that ChatGPT is “burning through energy”, and the data centres used to power it consume more electricity in a year than 117 countries.

“We have a joke in my house that every time we create one of these AI memes, it kills a tree,” says Lance Ulanoff, US editor of TechRadar, in an article about the trend.

“That’s hyperbole, of course, but it’s safe to say that AI content generation is not without costs, and perhaps we should be thinking about it and using it differently.”

• What is AI and how does it impact the environment?

People have also highlighted concerns that copyrighted data may have been used to create the technology which generates images without paying for it.

“ChatGPT Barbie represents a triple threat to our privacy, our culture and our planet,” says Ms Neff.

“While the personalisation might feel nice, these systems are putting brands and characters into a blender with no responsibility for the slop that emerges.”

And Jo Bromilow, director of social and influencer at PR and creative agency MSL UK, asks: “Is a cute, funny result really worth it?”

“If we’re going to really use AI properly, we have to set guardrails around how we use it conscientiously,” she says.

I started by finding a suggested prompt online – a list of instructions to enter into the AI tool in order for it to generate the image.

You have to upload your own selfie with your prompt and you also have to be very specific about what you want, including a list of which accessories you’d like included and what colour you want the box to be.

When it came to providing my job title, my first attempt was declined because I included BBC News and was told this violated content policy – I think because currently the BBC does not allow ChatGPT to use its output.

Once you do get an image you’re likely to want to tweak it further; my first attempt was too cartoon-like.

The following, more realistic version made me look considerably older than I am, then too child-like, and I gave up in the end trying to get it to use my actual eye-colour, which kept defaulting back to blue (mine are a blend of hazel and green).

It took a couple of minutes to generate each version and overall the process was slower than I would have liked, potentially because of its popularity.

It did start to feel like a lot of work for a passing trend, and it isn’t perfect – my doll is expanding out far beneath the supposed packaging.

But more importantly, somewhere in a data centre some hot computer servers were toiling away to make Action Figure Zoe.

They almost certainly could have been put to work on worthier causes.

A US judge has ruled the Trump administration can deport Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate detained last month over his role in pro-Palestinian protests.

Mr Khalil, a permanent legal US resident, has not been charged with a crime. In a letter written from the facility, he has said his “arrest was a direct consequence” of speaking out for Palestinian rights.

The government has cited a Cold War-era immigration law, declaring that his presence in the US was adverse to American foreign policy interests.

The immigration court’s ruling does not mean Mr Khalil would be immediately removed from the country. The judge gave his lawyers until 23 April to appeal against the order.

The activist has been held at a Louisiana detention centre since 8 March, when immigration officers told him he was being deported for taking part in protests against the war in Gaza.

• Who is Mahmoud Khalil, Palestinian student activist facing US deportation?

The 30-year-old was a prominent voice at Columbia University’s protests against the war in Gaza last year.

The Trump administration has cited a 1952 law that empowers the government to order someone deported if their presence in the country could pose unfavourable consequences for American foreign policy.

The judge said the Trump administration was allowed to move forward with its effort to deport Mr Khalil because the argument that he poses “adverse foreign policy consequences” for the US is “facially reasonable”.

Mr Khalil, who was otherwise silent, addressed the court after the ruling.

“I would like to quote what you said last time that there’s nothing that’s more important to this court than due process rights and fundamental fairness,” Mr Khalil said in court.

“Clearly what we witnessed today, neither of these principles were present today or in this whole process,” he said. “This is exactly why the Trump administration has sent me to this court, 1,000 miles away from my family.”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) described the decision as “pre-written”.

The rights group said the ruling came less than 48 hours after the US government “handed over the ‘evidence’ they have on Mr. Khalil – which included nothing more than a letter from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that made clear Mr Khalil had not committed a crime and was being targeted solely based on his speech”.

The government, particularly Rubio, has said its efforts to deport Mr Khalil were also to “protect Jewish students from harassment and violence in the United States” even if his activities were “otherwise lawful”.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem praised the judge’s ruling on Friday.

“It is a privilege to be granted a visa or green card to live and study in the United States of America,” she wrote on social media. “When you advocate for violence, glorify and support terrorists that relish the killing of Americans, and harass Jews, that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country. Good riddance.”

Mr Khalil’s legal team has repeatedly said evidence of antisemitism has not been presented.

His lawyer, Marc Van Der Hout, condemned the decision and said his team was going to fight for Mr Khalil’s “right to speak out against what’s happening in the US”.

The legal team also said they expected further hearings in the case.

“I actually had a long conversation with him after the hearing,” Johnny Sinodis, another member of Mr Khalil’s legal team, told the BBC later on Friday. “He’s feeling confident. He’s feeling supported.”

“Mahmoud is not against the United States, he is not antisemitic,” he said. “He has done nothing wrong.”

Mr Khalil has also filed a federal court lawsuit in New Jersey challenging his arrest as unconstitutional. His lawyers have said the outcome of that case could block his deportation if they win.

The Trump administration has separately alleged that the student committed immigration fraud by failing to disclose certain information on his green card application.

This includes working for the British embassy in Beirut and the United Nations agency for Palestinian migrants and refugees. But the government has not submitted any new evidence related to this.

In a statement, White House Assistant Press Secretary Taylor Rogers said the Trump administration is “committed to the enforcement of our immigration laws and will take swift action to remove aliens who pose serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States”.

Thousands of Afghans and Cameroonians will have their temporary deportation protections terminated, the US Department of Homeland Security has said.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem found the conditions in Afghanistan and Cameroon no longer merited US protections, according to a statement from DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin.

An estimated 14,600 Afghans previously eligible for temporary protected status (TPS) are now set to lose it in May, while some 7,900 Cameroonians will lose it in June.

It comes on the same day a US judge ruled that the Trump administration could deport a university graduate, detained last month over his role in pro-Palestinian protests.

TPS is granted to nationals of designated countries facing conditions, such as armed conflict or environmental disasters, which make it unsafe for them to return home.

The status typically lasts for up to 18 months, can be renewed by the incumbent Homeland Security secretary, and offers deportation protection and access to work permits.

According to McLaughlin, in September 2023 the then Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced that TPS for Afghans would be extended by 18 months until 20 May of this year.

But on 21 March, having consulted with US government agencies, Noem “determined that Afghanistan no longer continues to meet the statutory requirements for its TPS designation and so she terminated TPS for Afghanistan”, McLaughlin said.

She added that Noem’s decision was based on a United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) review of conditions in Afghanistan, where the Taliban retook control almost four years ago.

A similar decision terminating Cameroon’s designation for TPS was made on 7 April, McLaughlin said.

Last month, Trump’s administration said it would similarly revoke the temporary legal status of more than half a million migrants from Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua and Venezuela.

They were brought into the US under a Biden-era sponsorship process known as CHNV, which Trump suspended after taking office.

More than 120,700 Venezuelans, 110,900 Cubans and over 93,000 Nicaraguans were allowed into the US under the programme before it was closed.

Those being told to leave have been warned to do so ahead of their permits and deportation protections expiring later this month, on 24 April, according to a notice posted by the federal government.

But it is not just people granted TPS who have been affected by the US’s changing immigration rules.

Shukriah – not her real name – lives in Washington DC. She arrived in the US in January last year with her family. They had fled Afghanistan and endured a long journey to the US, across 11 countries, in a bid to claim asylum.

“The fear of deportation has deeply affected my mental and physical health. I can hardly sleep, my legs are in pain, and I cry constantly from fear and anxiety,” she told the BBC.

Shukriah, who is seven months pregnant, received an email – seen by the BBC – on 10 April from the Department of Homeland Security which read: “It is time for you to leave the United States.”

It added: “Unless it expires sooner, your parole will terminate seven days from the date of this notice.

“If you do not depart the United States immediately you will be subject to potential law enforcement actions.”

The Department of Homeland Security website has information for Afghan nationals about how to apply for extensions to stay in the US now that programmes which previously protected Afghans are being changed.

While Shukriah’s young children would all be eligible, because of their age, her and her husband’s path might be more complicated.

“My parole was granted under the humanitarian programme, and my asylum case is still pending,” Shukriah said.

“I don’t know what steps to take now, and I am very afraid of what will happen to me and my family.”

Immigration, specifically mass deportation, was a key focus of Trump’s election campaign – and has dominated policy since he took office.

Earlier this year, data obtained by Reuters showed that in his first month back in office, the US deported 37,660 people – less than the monthly average of 57,000 removals and returns in the last full year of the Biden administration.

The Trump administration has gone on to revoke the visas of hundreds of international students in a bid to clamp down on pro-Palestinian protests at university campuses across the US.

One such case saw a US immigration court rule on Friday that Trump’s administration could deport Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent legal US resident, who has been held at a Louisiana detention centre since 8 March.

In a letter written from the facility, he has said his “arrest was a direct consequence” of speaking out for Palestinian rights.

Noem, praising the decision on social media, said “it is a privilege to be granted a visa or green card to live and study” in the US, and that “when you advocate for violence, glorify and support terrorists that relish the killing of Americans, and harass Jews, that privilege should be revoked”.

“Good riddance,” she added.

Mr Khalil’s lawyer said his team was going to fight for his client’s “right to speak out against what’s happening in the US”.

There has been an explosion in central Athens, near the offices of Greek railway company Hellenic Train.

CCTV footage captured the moment the blast appeared to rip through a backpack, reportedly left outside the office block late on Friday.

Police said anonymous calls were made to Greek media outlets warning of the attack, which happened close to one of the capital’s busiest highways, Leoforos Andrea Siggrou. No fatalities or injuries have been reported.

Greece’s Transport Minister Christos Staikouras condemned it as a “criminal act”, which had “endangered the lives of people”.

Local news outlets Efsyn, a Greek daily newspaper, and website Zougla – both of which received a call – said the explosive device had apparently been placed in a padlocked backpack and placed on a scooter without licence plates.

A police bomb disposal squad arrived too late to safely detonate the device before it exploded, they said.

Staikouras, the minister of infrastructure and transport, said the attack was “an absolutely condemnable act”.

“This is a criminal act, which endangered the lives of people, employees and passers-by, in a central point of Athens and during peak traffic hour,” he said in a statement.

“Nothing justifies terrorism, no act of violence brings justice. The authorities and the judiciary now have the floor,” Staikouras added.

Hellenic Train confirmed no employees or passing citizens were injured and that the blast caused “limited material damage”.

“Our company unequivocally condemns all forms of violence and tensions that fuel a climate of toxicity that undermines all progress.”

Although the cause of the explosion is not yet known, it comes amid widespread public anger over a railway disaster that took place more than two years ago.

In February 2023 a freight train and a passenger train carrying 350 people, headed in opposite directions, were accidentally put on the same track. Fifty-seven people, most of them young students, died. Dozens more were injured.

Multiple protests have been held in Greece since, including earlier this year to mark the crash’s second anniversary.

Those demonstrations descended into violence, with hooded protesters seen throwing rocks and petrol bombs at police. Officers responded with tear gas and water cannons.

An inquiry concluded in February that the train crash was caused by human error, poor maintenance and inadequate staffing.

A date for a trial is yet to be announced.

The resentencing hearing of Menendez brothers can move forward despite opposition from the district attorney, a Los Angeles court has ruled.

The brothers’ attorneys are attempting to have them resentenced to a lesser term, which could potentially make them eligible for freedom.

Erik and Lyle were convicted of killing their parents in their Beverly Hills mansion in 1989, a notorious case that still divides Americans. They are currently serving life in prison without the possibility of parole in California.

Friday’s ruling means a pair of high-profile hearings next week to decide whether the convicted killers will be resentenced, will continue.

Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman has voiced fierce opposition to resentencing the pair, after his predecessor put the process in motion just before the November election.

The brothers’ effort is based on a California law that allows certain inmates who were aged under 26 at the time of their crimes to seek resentencing and potential parole eligibility – recognising that brain development continues into a person’s mid-20s.

If the brothers are resentenced to 50 years to life as they have requested, it would make them immediately eligible for parole.

Lyle and Erik Menendez appeared for hearing remotely via a video stream from a San Diego prison. Both were dressed in blue prison jumpsuits and appeared nervous at times – looking down, rocking in chairs and taking deep breaths – as prosecutors recounted graphic details of the killings.

The district attorney’s office argued that while prosecutors can recognise inmates have rehabilitated while behind bars, the act of resentencing someone should be used with care.

Deputy District Attorney Habib Balian criticised the former DA George Gascón, whose backing of the resentencing effort allowed it to move forward.

He said the decision by Gascón to announce his support for the brothers to be resentenced just before the November election, which Gascón lost to Hochman by a wide margin, was politically driven.

The DA’s office has argued the brothers have not fully taken responsibility and have continued to grasp at alleged lies in the case to shed blame.

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Mark Geragos, an attorney for the Menendez brothers, argued that the district attorney’s office was more concerned with re-litigating the previous trial and hadn’t examined what the pair had been doing the last 35 years in prison.

The pair had completed schooling while behind bars and worked to start rehabilitation programs for disabled and elderly inmates, along with incarcerated individuals suffering with trauma, he said.

The judge ruled that prosecutors failed to show why the resentencing effort should not continue and emphasised the importance of maintaining consistency even with shifts in leadership.

“There’s no new information,” the judge said. “None of this is really new. They’ve stuck with their story. It goes to whether they’ve been rehabilitated.”

The case was thrust back into the public eye last year as new evidence emerged and the release of a new Netflix drama, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.

The series introduced the case to a new generation and garnered attention from celebrities – including Kim Kardashian and Rosie O’Donnell – who called for the brothers to be released.

Legal experts say the outcome of the Menendez brothers’ resentencing hearing could take several forms, depending on how the judge rules.

The most straightforward path would be to deny resentencing altogether, leaving their current sentence—life without the possibility of parole—intact. This is the outcome Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman is pushing for, arguing the brothers have not fully accepted responsibility for their crimes and therefore don’t qualify for a reduced sentence.

Alternatively, the court could side with former DA George Gascón’s earlier recommendation and resentence the brothers to 50 years to life. This would make them immediately eligible for parole, as they’ve already served more than 30 years. But eligibility doesn’t guarantee release; they would still need to convince a parole board they are no longer a danger to society.

Another possibility is that the judge opts for a modified sentence that reduces their punishment but does not immediately open the door to parole. In that case, the brothers could face several more years behind bars before becoming eligible.

The resentencing bid is one of three routes the brothers have been chasing in recent months in hopes of being freed.

California Gov Gavin Newsom is still weighing another option: granting the brothers clemency.

Newsom said the brothers were scheduled to appear before the state’s parole board on 13 June to discuss the findings of a risk assessment he’d ordered, examining whether Erik and Lyle pose a danger to society.

Depending on the results, the governor could grant clemency, commuting their sentences to make them eligible for parole or even releasing them outright.

The third route the brothers have eyed – asking for a new trial – hit a roadblock when Hochman’s office announced they would oppose the request.

The price for a cup of coffee in the US is going up as tariffs put the squeeze on local café and bakery owners.

Some US businesses say the queues for a morning latte are already getting shorter as customers tighten their belts and imported beans become more expensive.

Americans spend $100bn (£76bn) a year on coffee, though that might be about to change.

Jorge Prudencio, who runs Bread Bite Bakery in Washington DC, says his Colombia-based coffee distributer just increased prices after the sweeping tariffs went into effect last week.

The vast majority of coffee in the US is imported.

In fact, the US is the world’s second-leading importer of coffee, with the majority coming from Brazil and Colombia, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

Since 5 April, coffee imports have been affected by the 10% US tariffs against most countries.

Speaking to the BBC, Mr Prudencio said his coffee suppliers have told him his next order will carry yet another price hike.

He added that his bakery will “definitely” be increasing prices for customers just to break even.

Asked if he is worried, Mr Prudencio said: “Of course.”

The manager of Au Lait café just down the street, Kamal Mortada, said he’s been seeing the effect of steadily increasing prices for a while now. Inflation spiked to a 40-year high under former US President Joe Biden.

Before the tariffs kicked in, ground coffee reached the highest ever recorded price in March 2025, and was over a dollar more expensive than the previous year, and $3 above March 2020 prices.

“We have less customers for coffee,” Mr Mortada said.

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“Most customers just get plain coffee,” instead of adding syrups and milks, he said.

The prices on the menu have gone up by 25% and people are now buying smaller coffees.

Mr Mortada has also changed his own habits as a consumer. Instead of his regular trip to Starbucks, he brews coffee at home.

He said he has seen the price of a cup of coffee go up by at least half a dollar, and is worried prices will rise again.

On the opposite coast in San Francisco, another local coffee shop owner is grappling with what the tariffs will mean for her business.

Jenny Ngo, who runs Telescope Coffee, said she was waiting to hear how much her roaster will hike prices.

The coffee she sells is sourced from Ethiopia and Guatemala, both facing the standard 10% tariff. She also imports her iced coffee cups from China – and said she noticed the prices on those jumped overnight.

“We unfortunately project to raise prices again in order to sustain our business,” she said.

Mr Prudencio remains confident that people will still come to his shop and buy coffee. He said it is something people need.

But recent inflation has also affected the price of eggs, crucial to his bakery side of the business.

He said they paid $42 per case when the bakery opened five months ago, but two weeks later it was more than $100 per case.

“Everybody is going through the same thing. We all pay the price.”

The price of eggs is a key symbol of the health of the US economy, often an arguing point for politicians.

President Donald Trump has argued he will get the cost of eggs down, blaming rising prices on the Biden administration, which culled millions of egg-laying chickens amid a bird flu outbreak.

But in March, egg prices reached a record high at $6.22 per dozen, according to the Consumer Price Index.

Joel Finkelstein runs Qualia Coffee Roasters, a small business in Washington DC where he mostly sells coffee beans online and at farmers’ markets.

The tariffs will represent just the latest in a series of price hikes, he told us.

He said he noticed the price of beans go up significantly after Trump took office and cut funding to USAID, which supported some coffee growers in South America. Now, he’s expecting it to go up again.

“We are going to see a decrease in sales,” Mr Finklestein said.

Buying or renting a home has become unaffordable for the average Australian, driven by a perfect storm of astronomical house prices, relentless rental increases and a lack of social housing.

With less than a month until the federal election, housing remains among the top issues for voters, and the country’s two major parties – the Labor Party and the Liberal-National Coalition – have both pledged to tackle the crisis in a range of ways.

Australians are already struggling under cost-of-living pressures and bracing for the effects of Donald Trump’s global tariff war. And it remains to be seen whether either party will sway voters with their promise of restoring the Australian dream.

Simply put, Australia has not been building enough homes to meet the demands of its rapidly growing population, creating a scarcity that makes any available home more expensive to buy or rent.

Compounding the issue are Australia’s restrictive planning laws, which prevent homes being built where most people want to live, such as in major cities.

Red tape means that popular metropolitan areas like Melbourne and Sydney are far less dense than comparably sized cities around the world.

The steady decline of public housing and ballooning waitlists have made matters worse, tipping people into homelessness or overcrowded living conditions.

Climate change has also made many areas increasingly unliveable, with natural disasters such as bushfires and severe storms destroying large swathes of properties.

Meanwhile, decades of government policies have commercialised property ownership. So the ideal of owning a home, once seen as a right in Australia, has turned into an investment opportunity.

In short: it depends where you live.

Sydney is currently the second least affordable city in the world to buy a property, according to a 2023 Demographia International Housing Affordability survey.

The latest data from property analytics company CoreLogic shows the average Sydney home costs almost A$1.2m (£570,294, $742,026).

Across the nation’s capital cities, the combined average house price sits at just over A$900,000.

House prices in Australia overall have also jumped 39.1% in the last five years – and wages have failed to keep up.

It now takes the average prospective homeowner around 10 years to save the 20% deposit usually required to buy an average home, according to a 2024 State of the Housing System report.

The rental market has provided little relief, with rents increasing by 36.1% nationally since the onset of Covid – an equivalent rise of A$171 per week.

Sydney topped the charts with a median weekly rent of A$773, according to CoreLogic’s latest rental review. Perth came in second with average rents at A$695 per week, followed by Canberra at A$667 per week.

Immigration and foreign property purchases are often cited as causes for Australia’s housing crisis. But experts say that they are not significant contributors statistically.

Many people who move to Australia are temporary migrants, such as international students who live in dedicated student accommodation rather than entering the housing market, according to Michael Fotheringham, head of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute.

“The impact [of migrants] on the housing market is not as profound as some commentators have suggested,” Mr Fotheringham tells the BBC.

Foreign purchases of homes, meanwhile, is “a very small issue” with not much meaningful impact on housing strain, says Brendan Coates, from the Grattan Institute public policy think tank.

The latest data released by the Australian Taxation Office supports this, with homes purchased by foreign buyers in 2022-23 representing less than one percent of all sales.

“It’s already very difficult for foreigners to purchase homes under existing foreign investment rules. They are subject to a wide range of taxes, particularly in some states,” Mr Coates explains.

Labor and the Coalition have both promised to invest in building more homes – with Labor offering 1.2 million by 2029, and the Coalition vowing to unlock 500,000.

Labor announced a A$33bn housing investment plan in their latest budget, which pledges to help first-time homebuyers purchase properties with smaller deposits through shared-equity loans.

They have also promised to create more social housing and subsidies to help low-to-moderate-income earners own and rent more affordably.

Central to the Coalition’s housing affordability policy is cutting migration, reducing the number of international students and implementing a two-year ban on foreign investment in existing properties.

Additionally, they have promised a A$5bn boost to infrastructure to support local councils by paying for water, power and sewerage at housing development sites.

The Greens’ policies, meanwhile, have focused on alleviating pressures on renters by calling for national rent freezes and caps.

They have also said that in the event of a minority government, they will be pushing to reform tax incentives for investors.

In short, experts say that while both Labor and the Coalition’s policies are steps in the right direction, neither are sufficient to solve the housing problem.

“A combination of both parties’ platforms would be better than what we’re seeing from either side individually,” Mr Coates tells the BBC.

A 2025 State of the Land report by the Urban Development Institute of Australia says the federal government will fail to meet its target of 1.2 million new homes by 2029 – falling short by almost 400,000.

The Coalition’s focus on reducing immigration, meanwhile, will only make housing marginally cheaper while making Australia poorer in the long-term, according to Mr Coates.

The cuts to migration will mean fewer skilled migrants, he explains, and the loss of revenue from those migrants will result in higher taxes for Australians.

Decades of underinvestment in social housing also means demand in that area is massively outstripping supply – which at 4% of housing stock is significantly lower than many other countries, according to Mr Fotheringham.

There’s also concern about grants for first homebuyers, which drive prices up further.

While commending the fact that these issues are finally being treated seriously, Mr Fotheringham believes it will take years to drag Australia out of a housing crisis that has been building for decades.

“We’ve been sleepwalking into this as a nation for quite some time,” he says. “[Now] the nation is paying attention, the political class is paying attention.”

US and Iranian officials have arrived in Oman’s capital Muscat 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.

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• 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.

When Omri Miran finally opens his WhatsApp account, he’s going to receive a torrent of messages.

Photos of his daughters. Late night musings from his wife, Lishay, as she lies in bed. Snapshots from an Israeli family life that’s gone on for 18 painful months without him.

Lishay started sending the messages three weeks after Hamas gunmen violently snatched Omri from their home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, on 7 October 2023.

She calls the chat Notes to Omri. She’s lost count of the number of messages she’s sent.

“My love, there are so many people you’ll need to meet when you come back,” she wrote at the end of October 2023.

“Amazing people who are helping me. Strangers who have become as close as can be.”

Three-and-a-half months later, she posted a message from the couple’s eldest daughter.

“Roni just said goodnight to you at the window like every night. She says you don’t hear her and she doesn’t see you… You’re really missing from her life and it’s getting harder for her to deal with your absence.”

Friday was Omri’s birthday. His second in captivity. As he turns 48, somewhere in the tunnels of Gaza, Lishay will be writing again, with tales of two daughters who were still babies when he last saw them.

Released hostages say Omri was seen alive last July. Lishay’s belief in her husband’s survival seems unshakeable, but this is the toughest time of the year. Not just Omri’s birthday, but also the eve of Pesach (Passover), when Jews celebrate the Biblical story of Exodus, in which Moses led their ancestors out of slavery in Egypt.

“You know, Pesach is the holiday of freedom,” Lishay says when we meet in a park near Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square.

“I don’t feel free. I don’t think anyone in Israel can feel free.”

In the square itself, Omri’s birthday was marked on Friday.

The posters calling for his release once listed the hostage’s age as 46. Then 47.

Danny, Omri’s father, crossed out both, and wrote 48.

Nearby, preparations were well under way for a symbolic Passover Seder, or ritual feast.

A long table was being set, with places for each of the remaining 59 hostages still in Gaza (of whom 24 are believed to be alive).

The square is full of symbols: a mock-up of a Gaza tunnel, tents to represent the Nova music festival where hundreds were killed.

Along with a merchandise stall to support the families and a “virtual reality hostage experience”, it’s all part of a collective effort to keep the plight of the missing in the public eye and maintain political pressure on the Israeli government.

Lishay and her daughters have yet to return to the house where family life was blown apart in a few traumatic hours, 18 months ago.

But Lishay says she goes back to Nahal Oz from time to time to commune with her husband.

The kibbutz is just 700m from the border with Gaza. It’s as close as she can get to Omri.

“I can feel him over there,” she says. “I can speak with him.”

After a ceasefire came into effect in mid-January, the border was quiet. Lishay allowed herself to hope, even though she knew Omri’s age meant that he would not be among the first to be freed.

But the ceasefire ended after just two months. Now the border area – which Israelis call “the Gaza pocket” – echoes once more to the sounds of war, reigniting the deepest fears of all hostage families.

“I was terrified,” she says of her most recent trip.

Lishay is careful not to condemn her government, as some hostage families have. But she says that when she realised the war had resumed, she was “really angry”.

When Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Hungary’s Viktor Orban last week, he posted that the two men had discussed “the Hungarian hostage”, a reference to Omri’s dual Israel-Hungarian citizenship.

For Lishay, it stung.

“I was really, really hard to see this,” she says. “Omri has a name. He’s not just a hostage.”

In a Passover message delivered on Friday, Netanyahu once again promised the families that hostages would return and Israel’s enemies would be defeated.

Recent days have seen talk of another ceasefire deal, but it doesn’t feel imminent.

“The last time that it happened,” Lishay says, referring to the first ceasefire deal in November 2023, “we waited more than a year for another agreement. So now we are going to wait one year more? They can’t survive over there.”

For now, it seems her WhatsApp messages to Omri are destined to remain unopened.

But that doesn’t stop her looking for the grey ticks to turn blue.

“I know someday it’ll happen.”

In response to why Beijing is not backing down to Donald Trump on tariffs, the answer is that it doesn’t have to.

China’s leaders would say that they are not inclined to cave in to a bully – something its government has repeatedly labelled the Trump administration as – but it also has a capacity to do this way beyond any other country on Earth.

Before the tariff war kicked in, China did have a massive volume of sales to the US but, to put it into context, this only amounted to 2% of its GDP.

That said, the Communist Party would clearly prefer not to be locked in a trade war with the US at a time when it has been struggling to fix its own considerable economic headaches, after years of a real estate crisis, overblown regional debt and persistent youth unemployment.

However, despite this, the government has told its people that it is in a strong position to resist the attacks from the US.

It also knows its own tariffs are clearly going to hurt US exporters as well.

Trump has been bragging to his supporters that it would be easy to force China into submission by simply hitting the country with tariffs, but this has proven to be misleading in the extreme.

Beijing is not going to surrender.

China’s leader Xi Jinping told the visiting Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Friday that his country and the European Union should “jointly resist the unilateral bullying practices” of the Trump administration.

Sanchez, in turn, said that China’s trade tensions with the US should not impede its cooperation with Europe.

Their meeting took place in the Chinese capital in the hours before Beijing again increased its tariffs on goods from the US – though it has said it will not respond to further US tariff increases.

Next week Xi will visit Malaysia, Vietnam and Cambodia. These are all countries which have been hit hard by Trump’s tariffs.

His ministers have been meeting counterparts from South Africa, Saudi Arabia and India, talking up greater trade co-operation.

In addition, China and the EU are reportedly in talks about potentially removing European tariffs on Chinese cars, to be replaced by a minimum price instead, to rein in a new round of dumping.

In short, wherever you look, you can see that China has options.

And analysts have said that these mutual tariff increases by the two superpowers are now becoming almost meaningless, as they’ve already passed the point of cutting out much of the trade between them.

So, the tit-for-tat tariff increases in both directions have become more like symbolism.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning has, over the past two days, posted images of Chairman Mao on social media, including a clip during the Korean War when he told the US that “no matter how long this war lasts we will never yield”.

Above this, she posted her own comments, saying: “We are Chinese. We are not afraid of provocations. We won’t back down.”

When the Chinese government wheels out Chairman Mao, you know they’re getting serious.

“Who was going to blink first?”

A source involved in the fraught negotiations since the election over the future of British Steel told me that as time passed, and literally, coal to keep the furnaces burning started to run out, that was the question – was the government going to offer even more to the Chinese owners of British Steel, Jingye, or act itself?

On Saturday, the government is changing the law to answer that question.

Unless something truly weird happens, Parliament will vote to give Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, the power to tell British Steel what to do – in practice, buying coal to keep the fires burning, to keep the once mighty steel industry alive.

• Follow latest updates as Parliament recalled over British Steel

Even on Thursday he was offering taxpayers’ cash to buy the raw materials to keep the furnaces alive as a sweetener for Jingye.

At one point in the talks, sources suggest they were asking for a billion-pound taxpayer bailout to keep the plant alive. But I’m told that price wouldn’t have been accompanied by any guarantee that jobs would be saved, or the plant protected for good.

Taking control on Saturday does not do that. The Chinese owners will remain the shareholders, for now. But Labour’s decision literally and metaphorically keeps the flames alive – the government hopes. And it commits taxpayers to start coughing up to save the steel industry – for how long, is a more complicated question.

So what then? Theoretically, Jingye could “get their act together and take the company back”, one insider suggests.

Talking to interested parties on Friday night, that seemed vanishingly unlikely.

The UK government has spent the last couple of weeks trying to tempt them to stay on board with huge inducements. That failed, so the chances of getting back involved seem pretty slim.

• Why is British Steel in trouble and who owns it?

There is the possibility that another company wants to swoop in and rescue the business.

Again, don’t hold your breath – the company has been losing money hand over fist, the blast furnaces are nearing the end of their useful life, and the cost of energy it gulps is enormous.

So in the current state, taking on the business as an offer? It’s not that pretty. Remember Jingye were the only bidder last time round – when a Conservative source says, “there were no other bidders – the alternative was closure or nationalisation, and the Conservatives were never going to nationalise”. So will Labour?

As of this weekend, that seems pretty likely. Remember the action in Parliament later does not mean nationalisation. But it’s a necessary first step if that is what’s going to happen.

You’ve probably heard ministers again and again say “all options are on the table” – that’s their get out of jail card where they don’t commit to anything in case their preferred option suddenly disappears. But as MPs gather to vote on the next steps, a journey towards nationalisation certainly feels like the direction.

Two different sources who have been part of the wider discussions tell me the prime minister has come to believe that taking British Steel back into public hands is what the government will have to do. There are practical and political reasons for why that might come to pass.

First, for the government to have a hope of achieving its aims – building infrastructure, spending more on defence at home, growing the economy and protecting jobs – it is logical to preserve a steel industry in this country.

That’s not just because ministers are loathe to see good jobs disappear. But because in government, the capacity to make steel is an important part of what the UK needs to be able to do. If the plant closes, the UK would become the only G7 country without primary steel making capability.

That wasn’t something the government was willing to tolerate. So if the private sector won’t do it – enter the state. Although, it wouldn’t be unfair to wonder why they have ended up making this decision at the last minute when the fuel for the furnaces is about to run out, given it was three weeks ago that the company sounded the alarm about possible closures.

Second, that requirement to act has become politically attractive because it fits into Sir Keir Starmer’s more and more familiar script, that the new world order has changed – governments need to be more active and agile in protecting their own interests.

It follows, if, as Treasury Minister Darren Jones, told us last week, globalisation is over, then the UK has to be able to make the materials and products like steel that it really needs itself.

One source remarks: “Dragging the Tories to Parliament over the weekend to back the Labour government’s plans to save British steel: I can finally see why people said government was worth it”.

It is politics after all.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has blamed the government’s “incompetence” for the last-minute recall, while Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said it was an opportunity to come up with “a serious plan” for domestic steel production.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said the government’s plan was just a “short-term sticking plaster” and both he and the Green Party have called for public ownership as the only option.

It is worth remembering the problems in the steel industry didn’t start with Donald Trump, or this government, or even Jingye. Steel was nationalised in 1967, then sold back into the private sector in 1988.

Frantic negotiations with government about jobs, bailouts, survival are familiar. But there is gathering momentum around nationalisation as the solution, in a way unthinkable not so long ago.

Hypothetical conversations started at the top of government a couple of months ago about the possibility, detailed work only in the last week or so. But there is a growing consensus – one source familiar with the situation even says, “nationalisation is inevitable and has been for some time”.

But – “the hurdles are huge” – a source tells me. The most obvious obstacle? Cold hard cash, way beyond the initial price tag for raw materials to keep Scunthorpe going for a few more weeks.

In the long term, the blast furnaces are near the end of their life, the plant needs investment, massive investment, to make it safe and to have a proper future. One industry source told me modern electric furnaces could have a price tag as as much as £3bn each, and Scunthorpe might need two.

Energy costs for new or existing furnaces are enormous. In Number 10 and Number 11 there is an acknowledgement that the costs of energy for industry can be crippling. That could be another area where government is keen to act.

The government hasn’t yet shared, or hasn’t yet worked out, what the potential cost of taking on the plant in the long term might be. A Treasury source says it will have to be within the current plans for spending. And you don’t need me to remind you again how tight Number 11 says money is, how tightly Chancellor Rachel Reeves wants to stick to her spending rules.

And yet – if a big ticket effective nationalisation is the political choice, and it runs to many billions? Let’s see.

MPs voting later won’t determine the entire future for British Steel. But it puts the government on a path to make real some of its rhetoric in recent weeks, as one figure put it – “neoliberalism is over. Ownership matters again – Labour needs to define Britain’s place in this new, new world order”.

But passing a law in a rush is one thing. Political excitement another. Sir Keir used to attract ire from the left of his own party for walking away from some of his previous beliefs in common ownership, nationalising vital industries. Embarking on an expensive and complicated adventure to preserve a struggling multi-billion pound industry was not meant to be part of the plan.

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Arsenal fans in Uganda partied well into the early hours this week, outside video halls and bars across the country, after their team’s stunning victory over Real Madrid.

The north London-based team won 3-0, at home, in the first leg of the Champions League quarter-final stage.

Such was the passion, the joy and the adulation shown to midfielder Declan Rice and his free kicks, you would be forgiven for thinking Arsenal was homegrown.

Whenever the club play, the East African nation knows about it. Alongside Manchester United, they are one of the English Premier League (EPL) teams with the biggest support in the country.

Church services, packed with fans decked in the Gunners’ red and white colours, have been held before big matches – with prayers offered up for a side that sometimes looks as though it needs divine assistance.

The passion for Arsenal and other English clubs has spawned an entire industry in Uganda, with shops and vendors selling jerseys and bigger companies targeting their advertising around the results, while for sports betting companies it is massive business.

“I have covered football across Africa for many years and I can tell you without a doubt that the soccer enthusiasm in Uganda is on another level,” veteran sports journalist Isaac Mumema told the BBC.

For Swale Suleiman, a Manchester United fan and mechanic I met at a garage in the capital, Kampala, the excitement lies in the fact that EPL matches are competitive, entertaining and sometimes unpredictable and even a “small team can cause an upset”.

Ugandan fan clubs have been set up for all the top English sides. WhatsApp groups keep the debates going beyond halls and bars.

But Arsenal fans seem to take it to another level – some have even been arrested for holding victory parades without police notice after winning big matches.

However, this type of fandom also has a much uglier side, with the love for the game sometimes turning to deadly violence as tempers flare between rival supporters.

“Our people naturally get attached to something wholeheartedly and Ugandans really love football,” Uganda Football Coaches Association (UFCA) chairman Stone Kyambadde told the BBC.

“This soccer fanaticism has even grown stronger with the young generation because they watch the English Premier League from anywhere,” he said.

They can keep abreast of scores on their phones, but it is mainly a communal event and even the most remote village will have a makeshift video hall where fans will pack in to watch matches.

But it was for a funeral that villagers near Lake Victoria gathered last December, to bury a 30-year-old carpenter who was shot dead while celebrating Arsenal’s victory over Manchester United.

Speaker after speaker lamented the loss of John Senyange, who had been a Gunner all his life.

He had been watching the match in a video hall in the town of Lukaya – and when spontaneous cheering erupted from Arsenal fans after the final whistle, it upset their rivals, including a security guard, who reportedly pulled the trigger.

Earlier in the season, about 300km (186 miles) away in the south-western area of Kabale, Manchester United fan Benjamin Ndyamuhaki was stabbed to death by an Arsenal supporter after the two argued over the results of the epic clash between Arsenal and Liverpool.

In 2023, there were four Premiership-related deaths in different parts of the country – two Arsenal fans were killed by Man Utd supporters, a fan died in mysterious circumstances after Man Utd were trounced 7-0 by Liverpool and another man died from stab wounds after trying to intervene in a fight after Arsenal lost to Man Utd.

Football violence in Uganda dates back to the 1980s when local games were characterised by stone-throwing and fistfights between rival fans.

“There has always been cases of violence whenever Express FC and SC Villa – the two main local teams in Uganda – have a major derby,” sports scientist Lumbuye Linika told me at a football pitch in Kampala.

But things have become much worse – a situation experts blame on fanaticism fuelled by gambling, with many men trying to earn their living by placing bets.

In a tragic case several years ago, police said a man killed himself with poison after losing money in a bet.

With the rise of online gambling, it just takes a second to place a bet via an app on your phone which brings the hope of winning big coupled with bragging rights.

Gaming companies have also taken advantage of the Ugandan obsession with the EPL, setting up viewing centres where fans can watch games and place their bets.

This is where the trouble often brews – with rival fans teasing each other when their bets fail.

“With limited job opportunities, many football fans are turning to betting as a way to earn quick money,” said Amos Kalwegira, who stopped to chat to me one Monday morning on a street in Kampala when I spotted him in a Man Utd shirt.

“This has become an intense emotional investment which often quickly turns into aggression when soccer results aren’t favourable.”

For Mr Linika this is all proving corrosive: “Football should make us happy and Western soccer is supposed to be a form of entertainment but here in Uganda we have turned it to be a way of earning a livelihood, spoiling the fun.”

But Collins Bongomin, a senior officer in one of Uganda’s betting companies, said the industry should not be blamed for football violence.

“People just lack sufficient knowledge on managing expectations and anger,” he told the BBC, noting industry efforts to encourage responsible gambling.

With more than 2,000 betting shops across the country, it is also proving lucrative for the government, which collected about $50m (£40m) in tax revenue from gambling last year, according to local media.

Some note that the lethal rivalry mainly involves Uganda’s Arsenal and Man Utd fans, suggesting this has something to do with age and background.

Mr Linika, a Liverpool supporter, said his team tended to attract an older crowd and those that were slightly better off – with Arsenal’s and Man Utd’s fanbase drawn from poorer areas.

“Currently we are on top of the Premier League table and you rarely hear about a Liverpool fan involved in violence,” he said.

Pamela Icumar, popularly known as Mama Liverpool because of her ardent devotion to the Reds, agreed that her fellow fans knew how to manage their emotions “even when we’re losing”.

But Arsenal fan Agnes Katende laughed this off when I met up with them both in Kampala – the two women are part of a dedicated female following of the EPL. Ms Icumar is even part of a female only fan club.

For Solomon Kutesa, secretary of the official Arsenal Supporters Club in Uganda, the country’s drinking culture is to blame for the football violence.

“Some of the fans watch the games while intoxicated and it becomes hard to manage them when their teams lose,” he told the BBC.

Some suggest getting fans back into local stadiums and out of bars could curb the hysteria – and help revitalise the Ugandan Premier League.

“The current generation only knows about the European soccer. If we invest more on the local league we could manage to disrupt a lot of attention given to foreign games,” said Mr Kyambadde, while acknowledging it suffered from a bad reputation and lack of star power.

Former footballer Tom Lwanga, who played for Uganda’s national team when the Cranes reached the finals of the 1978 Africa Cup of Nations, agreed.

“We became famous because we used to play when stadiums were full. We need to return to that era and manage the frenzy with European football,” he told me in the empty stands of Kampala’s Phillip Omondi Stadium as we watched a local match.

Others blame the lack of live television broadcasts for the decline of the Ugandan league.

Asuman Basalirwa, chair of the Ugandan Parliamentary Sports Club, who was also at the Omondi stadium, is among those trying to boost the local game.

“I’m among the few MPs who watch local football and we want to see more leaders, even the president, coming to the stadiums to support local teams,” he said.

But for Mr Kutesa, whose love of Arsenal dates back to the days of players like Nwankwo Kanu and Thierry Henry, the next few weeks are all-important.

“Our emotions right now are high. We are where we belong and this is definitely our season,” he said back in February.

While it appears their title bid is over, they are in a strong position to qualify for the Champions League semi-finals for the first time in 16 years, as long as they avoid a disaster in Wednesday’s second leg against Real Madrid.

• Online gambling: Are Ugandans hooked?
• A football fan explores the dark side of sports betting in Africa
• Real Madrid ‘need something crazy’ to win Arsenal tie
• Why Uganda’s iconic crested crane faces extinction

The US Supreme Court has ruled unanimously that the Trump administration must try to release a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to a mega-jail in El Salvador.

In a 9-0 ruling, the justices declined to block a lower court’s order to “facilitate” bringing back Kilmar Abrego Garcia, but they also said Judge Paula Xinis may have exceeded her authority.

On Friday Judge Xinis directed the Trump administration to provide her with daily updates on what steps they are taking to bring Mr Garcia back to the US.

The government has conceded Mr Garcia was deported due to an “administrative error”, though it also alleges he is a member of the MS-13 gang, which his lawyer denies.

Mr Garcia, a Salvadoran, is one of dozens of alleged gang member migrants placed by the US on military planes last month and flown to El Salvador’s notorious Cecot (Terrorism Confinement Centre) under an arrangement between the two countries.

Following the Supreme Court’s order, lawyers for the Trump administration went in front of Judge Xinis of the Maryland district court on Friday to explain how they will release Mr Garcia.

The judge had asked the government to explain by that morning how they planned to bring Mr Garcia back, but justice department attorneys filed a motion asking for the deadline to be extended until Tuesday evening.

In a two-page filing, government lawyers called her deadlines “impracticable”.

During an at-times tense hearing that lasted about half an hour, Judge Xinis repeatedly pressed the justice department for specifics on Mr Garcia’s whereabouts.

“I’m not asking for state secrets,” she said. “I’m asking a very simple question: where is he?”

Judge Xinis ultimately ruled that the government must provide her with daily updates on Mr Garcia’s location and status, what efforts it had previously taken to get him back to the US and what efforts it will undertake.

In court documents, Mr Garcia’s lawyers accused the government of trying to “delay, obfuscate and flout court orders, while a man’s life and safety is at risk”.

• Can the US return man deported to El Salvador?

In its emergency appeal to the Supreme Court last week, the Trump administration argued that Judge Xinis lacked the authority to issue the order to return Mr Garcia by Monday night, and that US officials could not compel El Salvador to return him.

US Solicitor General Dean John Sauer wrote in his emergency court filing: “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.”

The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, issued its decision in an unsigned order on Thursday.

The justices did not give the administration a deadline for when Mr Garcia should be freed.

They said Judge Xinis may have exceeded her authority when she required the Trump administration to “effectuate” Mr Garcia’s return.

“The district court should clarify its directive, with due regard for the deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs,” the Supreme Court order said.

On Friday, President Donald Trump told reporters that if the Supreme Court said “bring somebody back I would do that”.

“I respect the Supreme Court,” he said.

A justice department spokesperson told the BBC that the Supreme Court correctly recognised “it is the exclusive prerogative of the president to conduct foreign affairs”.

“By directly noting the deference owed to the executive branch, this ruling once again illustrates that activist judges do not have the jurisdiction to seize control of the president’s authority to conduct foreign policy.”

Mr Garcia, 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.

Democratic Senator Chis Van Hollen, who represents Mr Garcia, said the case marks a “troubling moment” for the US when it comes to the rule of law.

“It took them only 72 hours to illegally abduct Abrego Garcia and take him out of the country to El Salvador,” Van Hollen told BBC News. “They can get them back in 72 hours or less, and they need to do that. And they need to do it now.”

Mr Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, is a US citizen and has been calling for his release since his deportation.

“I will continue fighting until my husband is home,” she told the New York Times on Thursday.

An American pastor has been kidnapped by armed men after they stormed his church service in South Africa, local authorities say.

Josh Sullivan had been conducting a service at Fellowship Baptist Church in Motherwell, a township in Gqeberra in the Eastern Cape, on Thursday evening when “four armed and masked male suspects entered”, police spokesman Captain Andre Beetge told the BBC.

The men stole two phones before fleeing the church in the 45-year-old pastor’s silver Toyota Fortuner. Police later found the vehicle abandoned, but there was no trace of Mr Sullivan.

A spokesperson from the US State Department told the BBC that they were aware of the kidnapping of a US citizen in South Africa.

They said there was no “greater priority than the safety and security of US citizens abroad”.

Capt Beetge told the BBC the case had been handed to South Africa’s elite police unit, known as the Hawks, which investigates serious organised and commercial crimes and high-level corruption.

“The police is currently following all possible leads to locate the victim and apprehend the perpetrators,” said Hawks spokesman Lt Col Avele Fumba.

Jeremy Hall, the Sullivan family’s spokesman, told local newspaper TimesLive that he was at the church with his wife and their children when the incident took place.

“They knew his name,” he said.

Mr Sullivan’s mother, Tonya Morton Rinker, wrote on Facebook that she was heartbroken over the news.

She added: “Our congressman and American embassy are working on finding him.”

No ransom has been requested, according to the privately-owned News24.

Mr Sullivan describes himself as “a church planting missionary” on his personal website.

On it, he says he moved to South Africa with his wife and children in 2018 to establish a church for Xhosa-speaking people.

Over the past decade, there has been 264% increase in kidnappings in South Africa, according to police statistics.

Just a few days ago, a Chinese national was kidnapped in Gqberra.

The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has told the BBC that Gaza has become “hell on earth”, as Israel’s military assault there continues.

Mirjana Spoljaric’s comments come on the same day the UN human rights office warned that Israel’s tactics were threatening the viability of Palestinians continuing to live in Gaza at all.

The ICRC is the guardian of the Geneva Conventions – internationally agreed rules of conduct in war – and normally only speaks confidentially to warring parties when it thinks violations are taking place.

But Ms Spoljaric has now said publicly that what is happening in Gaza is an “extreme hollowing out” of international law.

Israeli bombardment has killed 1,542 people since it renewed the war on 18 March, the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has also issued evacuation orders that have forced nearly 400,000 people to move. Israel has also imposed a complete blockade on the entry of food, medical supplies and all other goods since 2 March.

Israel insists it always follows international law in Gaza, and has also argued that the particular nature of this conflict, with Hamas fighters hidden among the civilian population, mean collateral damage can sometimes happen.

Israeli ministers insist there is enough food in Gaza and say the bombardment and seizure of territory aims to pressure Hamas into releasing the hostages it is still holding, whom it kidnapped during the 7 October 2023 attack.

Under the fourth Geneva Convention, occupying powers, as Israel is in Gaza, must ensure civilians have food and medicine, and protect hospitals and health workers. The convention also prohibits the forcible transfer of entire populations from occupied territories.

“No state, no party to a conflict… can be exempt from the obligation not to commit war crimes, not to commit genocide, not to commit ethnic cleansing,” Ms Spoljaric said.

“These rules apply. They are universal.”

Civilians were bearing the brunt of a relentless pursuit of military objectives, she added, being displaced multiple times, and their homes reduced to rubble.

Of 36 recent airstrikes verified by the UN human rights office, all those killed were women and children.

Israel has strenuously denied accusations it is committing genocide or genocidal acts in Gaza.

Israel’s military said it was looking into an attack that killed members of one family in the city of Khan Younis and said it had struck 40 “terror targets” across the territory over the past day.

The ICRC’s comments are the latest in a chorus of concern coming from the UN and other agencies.

On Friday the UN human rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said the “cumulative impact” of the IDF’s conduct meant “the office is seriously concerned that Israel appears to be inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life increasingly incompatible with their continued existence as a group in Gaza”.

Israel was continuing to bomb tents in the al-Mawasi area it had told people to go to for their own safety, she added.

On Tuesday the UN secretary general warned that Israel’s blockade of Gaza was violating the Geneva Conventions and the territory was becoming a “killing field”. On Monday the heads of six UN aid agencies appealed to the world to act to save the people of Gaza, and to uphold basic international law.

The Geneva Conventions are founded on the following principles:

• Medical staff and hospitals in warzones must be protected and allowed to work freely
• Those wounded in battle and no longer fighting are entitled to medical treatment
• Prisoners of war must be treated humanely
• Warring parties are obliged to protect civilians (this includes a prohibition on the targeting of civilian infrastructure such as power and water supplies).

Twenty years ago, in what it called its war on terror, the US suggested that the Geneva Conventions might be outdated in modern warfare, but the ICRC insists they apply in all circumstances.

“It’s not transactional,” said Ms Spoljaric. “You have to comply with these rules no matter what the other side does.”

She appealed for a renewal of the ceasefire, pointing out that during previous pauses in fighting, the ICRC had successfully been able to take Israeli hostages out of Gaza and reunite them with their families.

But she also warned of a growing “dehumanisation” during war, in which the international community was turning away even though it was clear war crimes were being committed.

The Geneva Conventions protecting civilians were created after World War Two, she pointed out, to make sure such dehumanisation never happened again. Diluting or abandoning them sends a dangerous signal that “everything is allowed”.

The ICRC believes that sticking with the rules of war can help, eventually, to build a more sustainable peace. Once the fighting stops, the thinking goes, both soldiers and civilians will remember whether those on the other side obeyed international law, or whether they committed atrocities.

But Gaza, Ms Spoljaric believes “will haunt us. It will haunt us for a long time because you cannot undo the suffering… that will last for generations”.

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 50,912 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Countries have agreed a global deal to tackle shipping emissions, after nearly ten years of negotiations.

The agreement covers the vast majority of the world’s commercial shipping and means that starting in 2028, ship owners will have to use increasingly cleaner fuels or face fines.

The deal was nearly derailed after Saudi Arabia forced a last minute vote and the US pulled out of talks in London – but it eventually passed on Friday.

Small island states and environmental groups were angry that a blanket tax was not agreed to and called the deal “unfit for purpose”.

Shipping accounts for around 3% of global emissions. But unlike many other sectors it has struggled to reduce its carbon footprint over the last decade and is reliant on fossil fuels like diesel.

But the agreement means it is now the first industry in the world with internationally mandated targets to reduce emissions.

The agreement was passed at the UN’s International Maritime Organisation (IMO) meeting.

It will require owners of large international vessels to increase their use of less carbon intensive fuels or face a penalty of up to $380 per tonne of carbon dioxide emissions they emit from burning fuel.

Although the final agreement was passed, it had to be put to a vote – an unusual move for UN bodies that usually agree measures by consensus.

The vote was requested by Saudi Arabia, who did not support the agreement, and this position was shared by a dozen other oil-producing nations, including Russia.

Although they opposed the proposal, they will be bound to implement it because they are members of the IMO.

There have been moves to improve the efficiency of ships, but emissions have continued to increase in line with global trade – 90% of which is carried by ships.

The most effective measure would be to switch ships away from fossil fuels to green fuels, but that would be very expensive.

“There is no fuel as cheap as diesel that ships use today because when we take crude oil out of the ground, we take out all the nice bits, that’s the kerosene for aviation, diesel and petrol for cars,” said Faig Abbasov, programme director for maritime transport at think tank Transport and Environment.

“Whatever is left at the bottom, that’s what ships burn. So no fuel will be as cheap as this because not much energy goes into its production,” he said.

In comparison, the most environmentally friendly fuels like e-kerosene and ammonia are created from initially splitting water atoms to obtain hydrogen, which is a very energy-intensive and costly process.

Figures vary depending on the fuel type but the World Economic Forum estimates that these green fuels are 3-4 times more expensive to produce.

“There’s still a huge cost gap between the fossil fuels and the zero emission fuels and we need to close this gap. So you need carrots and sticks and in shipping the stick is not that big yet to use sustainable fuels,” said Refke Gunnewijk, program manager for sustainable transport at the Port of Rotterdam.

Some island states also abstained and said the deal was a watered down version of what they hoped for. An earlier proposal to apply a blanket carbon tax or levy – which would have been a world first – was dropped.

“Let us be clear about who has abandoned 1.5°C. Saudi Arabia, the US and fossil fuel allies pushed down the numbers to an untenable level and blocked progress at every turn,” said Ralph Regenvanu, minister of energy and climate change for Vanuatu.

Their disappointment was shared by environmental groups.

“This week, IMO member states squandered a golden opportunity for the global shipping sector to show the world how it can turn the tide on catastrophic climate heating, putting their own goals out of reach”, said Delaine McCullough, president of the Clean Shipping Coalition.

It is estimated that the agreement could achieve an 8% reduction in emissions for the sector by 2030, according to the maritime consultancy UMAS. This would be short of the IMO’s target agreed two years ago to cut emissions by 20% by the end of the decade.

But China and Brazil had previously raised concerns that a levy could result in a significant price increase for basic goods like food. Both countries backed the final deal.

Jesse Fahnestock, director of decarbonisation at the Global Maritime Forum, said that the deal was a compromise.

“It is a difficult set of decisions, but it is the first regulation of its kind and that is to be celebrated,” he said.

• Listen: How to clean up the shipping industry

Fahnestock added it was unclear if the penalties were enough to close the cost gap between the fuel types.

“You may have incentivised shipowners to prepare a bit for the future fuels but whether the signal is strong enough to get the billions of dollars of investment into the production facilities for these fuels – I don’t think these regulations will overcome that. I think more will need to be done,” he said.

Any money raised from the penalties will be put into a “Net Zero” fund, with money spent on scaling up greener fuels and supporting developing countries.

It is this “redistribution” that prompted the US delegation to pull out of the talks on Tuesday night. A letter was sent by the US to all countries at the IMO negotiations saying any levy would cause inflation and if it was passed then “reciprocal measures” would be taken.

Although the US move was at odds with its long-held position at the IMO, it was in keeping with President Trump’s push back on climate action seen over the last few months – such as withdrawing the US from the Paris Climate Agreement.

But industry and country delegates appeared unperturbed when speaking to the BBC on Wednesday and continued with negotiations.

The US only flags 178 cargo ships that represent 0.57% of worldwide commercial shipping tonnage. So if it took the decision not to implement the new proposals it is unlikely to make a significant difference to the funds raised.

Now the committee have agreed the measure, it is expected to be formally adopted in October.

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US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has pledged “a massive testing and research effort” to determine the cause of autism in five months.

Experts cautioned that finding the causes of autism spectrum disorder – a complex syndrome that has been studied for decades – will not be straightforward, and called the effort misguided and unrealistic.

Kennedy, who has promoted debunked theories suggesting autism is linked to vaccines, said during a cabinet meeting on Thursday that a US research effort will “involve hundreds of scientists from around the world.”

“By September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic and we’ll be able to eliminate those exposures,” Kennedy said.

Autism diagnoses have increased sharply since 2000, according to government figures, and by 2020 the rate among 8-year-olds reached 2.77%, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Scientists attribute at least part of the rise to increased awareness of autism and an expanding definition of the disorder. Researchers have also been investigating environmental factors.

The US National Institutes of Health (NIH), a government agency, spends more than $300m (£230m) per year researching autism.

The NIH lists some possible risk factors including prenatal exposure to pesticides or air pollution, premature birth or low birth weight, maternal health problems and parents conceiving at older ages.

Kennedy did not give details on the research project or how much funding will be devoted to autism research.

Since being sworn in two months ago, the former environmental lawyer has slashed the budget for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which includes the NIH, CDC and other government health organisations that oversee food and drug safety and conduct disease research.

• Fact-checking RFK Jr’s views on health policy

“We’re going to look at vaccines, but we’re going to look at everything,” Kennedy later said during an interview with Fox News about the scope of the undertaking. “Everything is on the table, our food system, our water, our air, different ways of parenting, all the kind of changes that may have triggered this epidemic.”

In a statement the Autism Society of America called Kennedy’s plan “harmful, misleading, and unrealistic”.

“It is neither a chronic illness nor a contagion,” the society said.

Christopher Banks, the society’s president, questioned whether the research efforts would be transparent and said claims that autism is solely caused by environmental factors were “misleading theories (which) perpetuate harmful stigma, jeopardize public health, and distract from the critical needs of the autism community.”

Kennedy has also alarmed some over his hiring of David Geier, who has been described by some as a conspiracy theorist, to research vaccines and autism, and on Thursday Democrats in the US House of Representatives wrote to HHS “to express our urgent concern” over the selection of “a biased and discredited individual”.

Geier is a leading vaccine sceptic who was fined by the state of Maryland for practicing medicine without a medical degree or licence and prescribing dangerous treatments to autistic children.

The discredited idea that childhood vaccines are linked to autism first gained mainstream attention after a paper published in 1998 in the medical journal The Lancet by British doctor Andrew Wakefield.

Wakefield was later found to have financial conflicts of interest and the UK’s General Medical Council found that he falsified his results. The research paper was retracted.

The Minecraft Movie’s director says he has been “laughing my brains out” at the trend for audience members shouting out, jumping up and down, and in some cases throwing popcorn in the air during screenings.

“It’s way too funny,” Jared Hess told the New York Times about fans’ exuberant reactions to the film, some of which have been widely shared.

The UK Cinema Association this week noted the “exceptional” crowd response to the movie and its characters, but some cinemas have warned that “anti-social behaviour” like loud screaming, clapping and shouting “will not be tolerated”.

“It’s been a total blast,” Hess said. “I’m just laughing my brains out every time someone sends me a new video.”

Based on one of the world’s best-selling video games, the film tells the story of four misfits pulled through a mysterious portal into the Overworld – the place where all players start in Minecraft.

Despite underwhelming critics’ reviews, the film, which boasts a star-studded cast including Jason Momoa, Jack Black and Jennifer Coolidge, exceeded expectations by making $300m (£233m) globally at the box office on its opening weekend.

In the film, Momoa’s character Garrett Garrison has to battle a baby zombie riding a chicken on the way to finding the orb that can take him back to the real world.

Hess and Black thought it would be funny if Black’s character Steve announced everything that happens to him intensely, hence the “!” meme taking off.

“Jack says it with such passion,” said Hess. “Everything that comes out of his mouth in the film is spoken with such authority and seriousness, like this is the most important thing anybody has ever heard in their life.

“I think people just love the craziness of it.”

With many young fans joining in, the UK Cinema Association’s chief executive Phil Clapp told the BBC this week that most of the behaviour had so far been good-natured.

He said it was “seemingly driven by the desire of young people to share their experiences on social media”.

But he did ask “those taking part to be mindful of the enjoyment of other cinema-goers”.

A cinema in Staffordshire banned under-18s from attending evening showings without an adult after rowdy behaviour at other screenings went viral on social media, while another picturehouse in Oxfordshire warned customers to behave.

Hess has been buoyed by the overall reaction, however, describing it as “a true party”.

“Just the fact that people are making memories at the movies – that’s what it’s all about,” he said. “That’s why we do it.

“I never could have anticipated this level of passion and fun and craziness that’s happening.”

Asked whether he approved of throwing popcorn, he replied: “No-one’s going to get hurt from popcorn.

“Look, when I go to the movies with my kids, it’s like a popcorn massacre that happens and they’re not throwing anything, but it ends up on the ground regardless.”

Some videos of fan reactions have even shown police being called to cinemas.

“It’s weird when you’re having too much fun and the cops get called,” Hess told Entertainment Weekly.

“It’s funny because I think it’s just literally cheering and throwing popcorn, which is so funny to me that cops are getting called for popcorn.

“Yeah, it’s hilarious. I’ve seen so many funny videos. It’s great, especially when people are climbing on their friends’ shoulders and standing up and cheering for those moments. It’s like this crazy anticipation.

“But, man, I’m just glad people are making memories with their friends and families.”

A former Russian government minister, once a governor in illegally annexed Crimea, has been sentenced to 40 months in prison for breaching UK sanctions.

Dmitrii Ovsiannikov was found guilty of deliberately avoiding sanctions by receiving more than £75,000 from his wife, Ekaterina Ovsiannikova, into a newly-opened account, and a new Mercedes Benz SUV from his brother, Alexei Owsjanikow.

Ovsiannikov, who has a British passport, was found guilty on Wednesday of six out of seven counts of circumventing sanctions.

The case is the first prosecution in the UK regarding a breach of sanctions under the Russia Sanctions Regulations, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said.

Two years after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, President Vladimir Putin appointed Ovsiannikov as acting governor of the “strategically significant” city of Sevastopol in Crimea, the jury heard.

In 2017, elections were held there for the position of governor and Ovsiannikov won. He resigned from the position in July 2019.

As a result of his senior job in illegally annexed Crimea, the EU and UK imposed financial sanctions on him.

In August 2022, Ovsiannikov travelled to Turkey from Russia and applied for a British passport.

Despite the fact that UK sanctions still applied, the jury heard that he was granted a passport in January 2023, which he was entitled to because his father was born in the UK.

Ovsiannikov challenged the EU sanctions and they were lifted just five days after he arrived in the UK.

After arriving in Britain on 1 February 2023, Ovsiannikov moved into his brother’s house in Clapham, where his wife and two younger children were already living and attending private school.

On 6 February, the former governor applied for a Halifax bank account and over the next two-and-a-half weeks his wife transferred £76,000 into his account – allowing him to put down a deposit on a Mercedes Benz GLC 300 SUV.

However, the bank later realised he was on the UK sanctions list and froze the account. His brother Alexei Owsjanikow bought the Mercedes instead, paying more than £54,000, the prosecution said.

The prosecution argued that when Ovsiannikov’s wife sent him the £76,000 and his brother bought the car they were also in breach of sanctions.

While in May 2024, Owsjanikow paid more than £40,000 in school fees for his brother’s two youngest children – which the prosecution argued was also in breach of sanctions.

Ovsiannikov’s wife, who was in the public gallery on Friday for the sentencing, was cleared of four counts of circumventing sanctions by assisting with payments totalling £76,000 to her husband in February 2023.

His brother, Owsjanikow, was cleared of breaching sanctions by buying the Mercedes-Benz, arranging car insurance for Ovsiannikov, and by making a Barclays bank account available to him.

However, the jury at Southwark Crown Court found Owsjanikow guilty on two counts of circumventing sanctions by paying school fees of £41,027 for his brother’s children. He was sentenced to 15 months in prison, suspended for 15 months.

The prosecution argued Ovsiannikov must have known he was subject to UK sanctions, because on 7 February 2023 he was applying for them to be lifted and had included his unique ID number and group ID number from his sanctions listing on the form.

He was sentenced at Southwark Crown Court to 40 months’ imprisonment for each count, to be served concurrently.

The total amount of time he will serve was reduced by the 217 days he spent on curfew, and he will spend up to half of his sentence in custody before he is released on licence.

Ovsiannikov, the former governor of Sevastopol, also served as the Russian Federation’s deputy minister for industry and trade before he was dismissed and expelled from the ruling United Russia party in 2020.

Under the asset freeze, Ovsiannikov was not allowed to spend money even on basic necessities. Others were not permitted to assist him to do so.

The jury failed to reach a verdict on the outstanding charge, that Ovsiannikov deliberately avoided sanctions by opening the new bank account.

Julian Capon, head of the CPS’s economic organised crime unit, said prosecutors will begin legal action to recover “illegally obtained cash and assets”.

He said Ovsiannikov “knew he had been on the UK sanctions list since 2017 but chose to ignore this”.

National Crime Agency chief Graeme Biggar said the Ovsiannikov investigation was one of 180 which have aimed to “reduce a criminal threat posed by Putin-linked elites and their enablers since the invasion of Ukraine”.

Strolling in bright sunshine across the immaculately raked gravel of Paris’s Tuileries gardens, Barbara and Rick Wilson from Dallas, Oregon, were not exactly in disguise. But earlier that morning, on their very first trip to France, Rick, 74, had taken an unusual precaution.

Before leaving his hotel, he’d taken a small piece of black tape and covered up the Stars and Stripes flag on the corner of his baseball cap.

“We’re sick about it. It’s horrible. Just horrible,” said Rick, as he and his wife contemplated the sudden sense of shame and embarrassment they said they now felt, as Americans, following President Trump’s abrupt moves on global trading tariffs.

Barbara, 70, even had a Canadian lapel pin in her pocket – a gift from another tourist – which she thought might come in useful if further subterfuge proved necessary.

“I’m disappointed in our country. We are upset about the tariffs,” she explained.

A few yards away, towards the crowds gathering outside the Louvre Museum, another American couple was also trying to keep a lower profile than usual. Chris Epps, 56, an attorney from New York, had decided he would dress a little differently on today’s tour.

“No New York Yankees hat. I left it in the hotel. People might come up to us, treat us differently. But so far, so good,” he added.

As the world grapples with the implications of Donald Trump’s see-sawing quest to upend the global trading system, the impacts are being felt not just on stock markets and businesses and investment funds, but in subtler ways too, and not least here in France, a country that continues to attract vast numbers of tourists from North America, and which has a centuries-old, close, and sometimes testy relationship with the United States.

To be clear, there are no indications that Americans are any less welcome here than before. Our interviews with a random selection of tourists were also carried out shortly before President Trump reversed some of his tariffs.

Nonetheless, the shock and anger generated in Europe by events of the past week have added fuel to perceptions of a much larger transatlantic rift – of a shifting of the tectonic plates of international relations.

It is early days, of course. Americans are far from united about their government’s actions and much of the evidence for changing sentiments is anecdotal.

But there are already some discernible effects on travel, tourism, academia and other fields.

“It’s a big drop,” said Philippe Gloaguen, the founder of France’s most prestigious travel guides, Le Guide du Routard, sitting behind a cluttered desk in Paris and noting that orders for his books about the US had fallen by 25% so far this year.

Not that Gloaguen was complaining. Quite the opposite, in fact.

“I’m very proud of my customers. They are young, well-educated, and very democratic. This was the truth for Putin… and for China. We know when there’s a dictatorship going on in a country,” he said, arguing that his French readers were beginning to view America in a similar light.

“They don’t want to spend their money in the United States,” Gloaguen continued, framing his publication as a sort of global democratic weathervane.

He noted that the abrupt fall in US sales was balanced by a rise in sales of books about “Canada and other countries.”

Other evidence from the travel industry is beginning to back up the idea of a growing disenchantment with the United States. The forecasting company, Oxford Economics, is already predicting an 8.9% drop in the number of French people travelling to the US this year compared with 2024.

Another recent analysis – of French expatriates living in the US – found that a remarkable 78% of them are now “particularly pessimistic” about their future in the country, while 73% of people polled within France, in March, believed the US was no longer an “ally”.

Over a morning coffee in a Parisian café, Nicolas Conquer – an enthusiastic Trump supporter and dual French-American citizen who leads the Republicans Abroad Paris branch – acknowledged “some volatility” because of the tariffs but argued that a “media narrative” was creating a false impression of strained transatlantic relations.

“I’m still standing my ground… reminding people that France and the US have been the oldest allies,” Conquer said, adding that any negative reaction to Trump’s America First agenda was based on a “childish or immature” view of international relations.

“Everyone knows that we have to have strong sovereignty, strong patriotism, and that… as Trump supporters go for ‘America First’, we would expect that… European governments would also promote UK first, Germany first, France first,” said Conquer.

But concern about the Trump administration’s recent actions and rhetoric – not just in relation to tariffs but also regarding Ukraine and Greenland – is widespread across France and hard to miss. Politicians, newspapers and television talk shows have all been busy dissecting the changes, often in a tone of bitter disillusionment.

In practical terms, the result has sometimes been to offer support to perceived victims of the Trump administration, with French scientific institutions, backed by the French government, beginning to offer places to American researchers who’ve lost their jobs due to cuts in government funding.

Elsewhere there are indications of nervousness about simply travelling to the US. A prestigious social studies institute in Paris recently sent its students a warning, following reports of foreigners being questioned about their political beliefs and refused entry.

“We urge you to be extra vigilant when travelling abroad. It is important not to travel with your usual equipment but to use a shared computer containing only data necessary for your stay and no sensitive data. During border checks, some security services may require the unlocking of digital devices to view information, including private information,” wrote a professor at EHESS, in a group email seen by the BBC.

Relations between Paris and Washington have survived many previous shocks – as, for instance, American taunts about “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” following France’s decision not to participate in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, or the more recent spat over calls to return the Statue of Liberty.

But France’s friendship with the US has never been as unconditionally “special” as that claimed by, say, the British. The French may adore Hollywood cinema, country music and the allure of the American Dream, and celebrate ties that date back to America’s war of independence, but they have kept some distance too – shunning what’s known here as “Le Woke-isme” and, today more than ever, celebrating President De Gaulle’s determination to build an entirely French-owned nuclear deterrent separate from both Nato and the US.

“The American people remain our friend, but [Trump] is no longer our ally,” the former French President François Hollande announced recently.

“It’s definitely a relationship of ‘love’ and not always ‘like,'” said Kerry Halferty-Hardy, the President of the American Club of Paris, citing the ambivalent lyrics of the famous Serge Gainsbourg song, “Je t’aime – moi non plus.”

Looking out of her Paris apartment towards the Eiffel Tower, Halferty-Hardy argued that the shared values of liberty and the Enlightenment linking France and the US “are not easily dislodged and certainly not on the basis of one administration,” but she acknowledged that “no one can ignore what they’re seeing in the headlines.”

When scrolling through social media, you may have recently seen friends and family appearing in miniature.

It’s part of a new trend where people use generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT and Copilot to re-package themselves – literally – as pocket-sized dolls and action figures.

It has taken off online, with brands and influencers dabbling in creating their mini-me.

But some are urging people to steer clear of the seemingly innocent trend, saying fear of missing out shouldn’t override concerns about AI’s energy and data use.

It may sound complicated, but the process is simple.

People upload a picture of themselves to a tool like ChatGPT, along with written prompts that explain how they want the final picture to look.

These instructions are really important.

They tell the AI tool everything it is meant to generate, from the items a person wants to appear with to the kind of packaging they should be in – which includes mimicking the box and font of popular toys like Barbie.

Many online will then personalise it further with their name, job and clothing choices.

Though it does not always work, and many have also shared some of the amusing mistakes the tools made, where the action dolls look nothing like them.

Like other generative AI tools, image generators are also prone to making things up, and may make assumptions about how someone should look.

And it’s not just regular people using it – the trend has been seized upon by a wealth of brands online including beauty company Mario Badescu and even Royal Mail.

Trends come and go – but by their very nature can make people feel compelled to take part to avoid missing out.

“Generative AI makes it easier and quicker for people to create and jump on trends,” says Jasmine Enberg, principal social media analyst at eMarketer.

She says the technology has made it quicker and easier to make online content, which may have the unexpected effect of quickening the pace at which other social media users get annoyed by it.

But she believes AI-driven trends will become a more regular appearance on our feeds “as the tech becomes a more regular part of our digital lives”.

While its light-hearted nature may have drawn people to it, the trend has drawn criticism from some concerned about its environmental impact.

Professor Gina Neff of Queen Mary University London tells the BBC that ChatGPT is “burning through energy”, and the data centres used to power it consume more electricity in a year than 117 countries.

“We have a joke in my house that every time we create one of these AI memes, it kills a tree,” says Lance Ulanoff, US editor of TechRadar, in an article about the trend.

“That’s hyperbole, of course, but it’s safe to say that AI content generation is not without costs, and perhaps we should be thinking about it and using it differently.”

• What is AI and how does it impact the environment?

People have also highlighted concerns that copyrighted data may have been used to create the technology which generates images without paying for it.

“ChatGPT Barbie represents a triple threat to our privacy, our culture and our planet,” says Ms Neff.

“While the personalisation might feel nice, these systems are putting brands and characters into a blender with no responsibility for the slop that emerges.”

And Jo Bromilow, director of social and influencer at PR and creative agency MSL UK, asks: “Is a cute, funny result really worth it?”

“If we’re going to really use AI properly, we have to set guardrails around how we use it conscientiously,” she says.

I started by finding a suggested prompt online – a list of instructions to enter into the AI tool in order for it to generate the image.

You have to upload your own selfie with your prompt and you also have to be very specific about what you want, including a list of which accessories you’d like included and what colour you want the box to be.

When it came to providing my job title, my first attempt was declined because I included BBC News and was told this violated content policy – I think because currently the BBC does not allow ChatGPT to use its output.

Once you do get an image you’re likely to want to tweak it further; my first attempt was too cartoon-like.

The following, more realistic version made me look considerably older than I am, then too child-like, and I gave up in the end trying to get it to use my actual eye-colour, which kept defaulting back to blue (mine are a blend of hazel and green).

It took a couple of minutes to generate each version and overall the process was slower than I would have liked, potentially because of its popularity.

It did start to feel like a lot of work for a passing trend, and it isn’t perfect – my doll is expanding out far beneath the supposed packaging.

But more importantly, somewhere in a data centre some hot computer servers were toiling away to make Action Figure Zoe.

They almost certainly could have been put to work on worthier causes.

A US judge has ruled the Trump administration can deport Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate detained last month over his role in pro-Palestinian protests.

Mr Khalil, a permanent legal US resident, has not been charged with a crime. In a letter written from the facility, he has said his “arrest was a direct consequence” of speaking out for Palestinian rights.

The government has cited a Cold War-era immigration law, declaring that his presence in the US was adverse to American foreign policy interests.

The immigration court’s ruling does not mean Mr Khalil would be immediately removed from the country. The judge gave his lawyers until 23 April to appeal against the order.

The activist has been held at a Louisiana detention centre since 8 March, when immigration officers told him he was being deported for taking part in protests against the war in Gaza.

• Who is Mahmoud Khalil, Palestinian student activist facing US deportation?

The 30-year-old was a prominent voice at Columbia University’s protests against the war in Gaza last year.

The Trump administration has cited a 1952 law that empowers the government to order someone deported if their presence in the country could pose unfavourable consequences for American foreign policy.

The judge said the Trump administration was allowed to move forward with its effort to deport Mr Khalil because the argument that he poses “adverse foreign policy consequences” for the US is “facially reasonable”.

Mr Khalil, who was otherwise silent, addressed the court after the ruling.

“I would like to quote what you said last time that there’s nothing that’s more important to this court than due process rights and fundamental fairness,” Mr Khalil said in court.

“Clearly what we witnessed today, neither of these principles were present today or in this whole process,” he said. “This is exactly why the Trump administration has sent me to this court, 1,000 miles away from my family.”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) described the decision as “pre-written”.

The rights group said the ruling came less than 48 hours after the US government “handed over the ‘evidence’ they have on Mr. Khalil – which included nothing more than a letter from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that made clear Mr Khalil had not committed a crime and was being targeted solely based on his speech”.

The government, particularly Rubio, has said its efforts to deport Mr Khalil were also to “protect Jewish students from harassment and violence in the United States” even if his activities were “otherwise lawful”.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem praised the judge’s ruling on Friday.

“It is a privilege to be granted a visa or green card to live and study in the United States of America,” she wrote on social media. “When you advocate for violence, glorify and support terrorists that relish the killing of Americans, and harass Jews, that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country. Good riddance.”

Mr Khalil’s legal team has repeatedly said evidence of antisemitism has not been presented.

His lawyer, Marc Van Der Hout, condemned the decision and said his team was going to fight for Mr Khalil’s “right to speak out against what’s happening in the US”.

The legal team also said they expected further hearings in the case.

“I actually had a long conversation with him after the hearing,” Johnny Sinodis, another member of Mr Khalil’s legal team, told the BBC later on Friday. “He’s feeling confident. He’s feeling supported.”

“Mahmoud is not against the United States, he is not antisemitic,” he said. “He has done nothing wrong.”

Mr Khalil has also filed a federal court lawsuit in New Jersey challenging his arrest as unconstitutional. His lawyers have said the outcome of that case could block his deportation if they win.

The Trump administration has separately alleged that the student committed immigration fraud by failing to disclose certain information on his green card application.

This includes working for the British embassy in Beirut and the United Nations agency for Palestinian migrants and refugees. But the government has not submitted any new evidence related to this.

In a statement, White House Assistant Press Secretary Taylor Rogers said the Trump administration is “committed to the enforcement of our immigration laws and will take swift action to remove aliens who pose serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States”.

US envoy Steve Witkoff met Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg on Friday, as Donald Trump urged the Russian president to “get moving” on a ceasefire in Ukraine.

The Kremlin said the meeting lasted for more than four hours and focused on “aspects of a Ukrainian settlement”. The talks, Witkoff’s third with Putin this year, were described by special envoy Kirill Dmitriev as “productive”.

Trump has expressed frustration with Putin over the state of talks. On Friday, he wrote on social media: “Russia has to get moving. Too many people ere [sic] DYING, thousands a week, in a terrible and senseless war.”

It comes as Trump’s Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg denied suggesting the country could be partitioned.

The Times said that, during an interview with the paper, Kellogg had proposed British and French troops could adopt zones of control in the west of Ukraine as part of a “reassurance force”.

Russia’s army, he reportedly suggested, could then remain in the occupied east. “You could almost make it look like what happened with Berlin after World War Two”, the paper quoted him as saying.

Kellogg later took to social media to say the article had “misrepresented” what he said. “I was speaking of a post-ceasefire resiliency force in support of Ukraine’s sovereignty,” he wrote on X, adding: “I was NOT referring to a partitioning of Ukraine.”

Neither the White House nor Kyiv reacted to the comments immediately. The BBC has asked the Times for its response.

Earlier on Friday, European nations agreed €21bn ($24bn; £18bn) in military aid for Kyiv.

At the event, Europe’s defence ministers said they saw no sign of an end to the war.

Ahead of the Putin-Witkoff talks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there was “no need to expect breakthroughs” as the “process of normalising relations is ongoing”.

Asked whether discussions could include setting up a date for Putin and Trump to meet, Peskov said: “Let’s see. It depends on what Witkoff has come with.”

Beforehand, Witkoff had a meeting with Dmitriev at the Grand Hotel Europe in St Petersburg, where a conference was held on stainless steel and the Russian market.

Dmitriev, the 49-year-old head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, visited Washington last week and was the most senior Russian official to go to the US since the country’s full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Meanwhile Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky accused the Kremlin of prolonging the war during a visit on Friday to the site of a 4 April Russian missile attack on his home town of Kryvyi Rih. The attack killed 19 people, including nine children.

He also alleged that hundreds of Chinese nationals were fighting with the Russian army. It comes after Ukraine said it had captured two Chinese nationals.

“We have information that at least several hundred Chinese nationals are fighting as part of Russia’s occupation forces,” Zelensky said.

“This means Russia is clearly trying to prolong the war even by using Chinese lives.”

Zelensky laid flowers in front of photos of Herman Tripolets, nine, and seven-year-olds Arina Samodina and Radyslav Yatsko.

He later reiterated a call for air defence systems “to protect lives and our cities”.

“We discussed this with President Trump – Ukraine is not just asking, we’re ready to purchase these additional systems,” he wrote on social media.

“Only powerful weapons can truly be relied upon to protect life when you have a neighbour like Russia.”

Trump has previously claimed he could end the Ukraine-Russia conflict “in 24 hours”. On Friday, he declared that it would not have happened at all if he’d been in the White House in 2022 when Russia launched its full-scale invasion.

“A war that should ld [sic] have never happened, and wouldn’t have happened, if I were President!!!,” he wrote.

In February US and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia for their first face-to-face talks since the invasion. Officials have also been meeting to discuss restoring full diplomatic relations.

Trump has also had a fractious relationship with Zelensky since his second term as US president began, culminating in an angry confrontation in the Oval Office in February.

The US attempted to broker a limited ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia in the Black Sea, only for it to stall when the Kremlin asked for sanctions imposed after it launched its full-scale invasion of its neighbour to be lifted.

Trump has since said he is “very angry” and “pissed off” with Putin over the lack of progress in agreeing a truce between Kyiv and Moscow.

Russia’s ambassador to the UK, Andrei Kelin, told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg that the US is not its ally.

He said America and Russia had not been able to go from “total distrust to alignment in two months” since Trump returned to the White House.

“We have too many disagreements,” he said. “But we are working on these disagreements step by step in different areas.”

Earlier this week, Washington and Moscow went ahead with a prisoner swap.

Ksenia Karelina, a Russian-American, was sentenced to 12 years in jail in Russia for donating $51 to a Ukrainian charity when the war began in February 2022.

The Los Angeles resident was freed on Thursday morning and exchanged for Arthur Petrov, a dual German-Russian citizen arrested in Cyprus in 2023.

He was accused of illegally exporting microelectronics to Russia for manufacturers working with the military.

The head of the US military base in Greenland has been fired after she reportedly sent an email distancing herself from Vice-President JD Vance’s criticism of Denmark.

The US military’s Space Operations Command said Col Susannah Meyers had been removed from her role at Pituffik Space Base due to a “loss of confidence in her ability to lead”.

Last month, Vance said Denmark had “not done a good job” for Greenlanders and had not spent enough on security while visiting the Danish territory.

The alleged email, released by a military news site, told staff Vance’s comments were “not reflective” of the base. A Pentagon spokesman cited the article, saying “undermining” US leadership was not tolerated.

Following Vance’s trip, on 31 March, Col Meyers is reported to have written: “I do not presume to understand current politics, but what I do know is the concerns of the US administration discussed by Vice-President Vance on Friday are not reflective of Pituffik Space Base.”

Military.com – which published the email – said the contents had been confirmed as accurate to them by the US Space Force.

Appearing to confirm this was the reason for her firing, chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell linked to the Military.com article in a post on X, writing: “Actions [that] undermine the chain of command or to subvert President [Donald] Trump’s agenda will not be tolerated at the Department of Defense.”

The Space Force’s statement announcing Col Meyers’ removal on Thursday said that Col Shawn Lee was replacing her.

It added: “Commanders are expected to adhere to the highest standards of conduct, especially as it relates to remaining nonpartisan in the performance of their duties.”

Col Meyers had assumed command of the Arctic station in July last year. Col Lee was previously a squadron commander at the Clear Space Force Station in Alaska.

During his whirlwind trip, Vance had also reiterated Trump’s desire to annex Greenland for security reasons.

Since the US delegation’s visit, both Greenland and Denmark have shown a united front, opposing a US annexation of the autonomous Danish territory.

Earlier this month, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s official visit saw her stand side-by-side with her Greenlandic counterpart Jens-Frederik Nielsen and his predecessor, Mute Egede.

Speaking to reporters, Frederiksen directly addressed Trump, telling him: “You can’t annex other countries.”

She added that Denmark was fortifying its military presence in the Arctic, and offered closer collaboration with the US in defending the region.

The US has long maintained a security interest in Greenland as a strategically important territory. It has had a military presence on the island since occupying it following the occupation of Denmark by Nazi Germany during World War Two.

“If Russia were to send missiles towards the US, the shortest route for nuclear weapons would be via the North Pole and Greenland,” Marc Jacobsen, an associate professor at the Royal Danish Defence College, previously told the BBC.

“That’s why the Pituffik Space Base is immensely important in defending the US.”

Greenland, the world’s largest island, has been under Danish control for around 300 years.

Polls show that the vast majority of Greenlanders want to gain independence from Denmark – but do not wish to become part of the US.

Greenland has had the right to call an independence referendum since 2009, though in recent years some political parties have begun pushing harder for one to take place.

In response to why Beijing is not backing down to Donald Trump on tariffs, the answer is that it doesn’t have to.

China’s leaders would say that they are not inclined to cave in to a bully – something its government has repeatedly labelled the Trump administration as – but it also has a capacity to do this way beyond any other country on Earth.

Before the tariff war kicked in, China did have a massive volume of sales to the US but, to put it into context, this only amounted to 2% of its GDP.

That said, the Communist Party would clearly prefer not to be locked in a trade war with the US at a time when it has been struggling to fix its own considerable economic headaches, after years of a real estate crisis, overblown regional debt and persistent youth unemployment.

However, despite this, the government has told its people that it is in a strong position to resist the attacks from the US.

It also knows its own tariffs are clearly going to hurt US exporters as well.

Trump has been bragging to his supporters that it would be easy to force China into submission by simply hitting the country with tariffs, but this has proven to be misleading in the extreme.

Beijing is not going to surrender.

China’s leader Xi Jinping told the visiting Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Friday that his country and the European Union should “jointly resist the unilateral bullying practices” of the Trump administration.

Sanchez, in turn, said that China’s trade tensions with the US should not impede its cooperation with Europe.

Their meeting took place in the Chinese capital in the hours before Beijing again increased its tariffs on goods from the US – though it has said it will not respond to further US tariff increases.

Next week Xi will visit Malaysia, Vietnam and Cambodia. These are all countries which have been hit hard by Trump’s tariffs.

His ministers have been meeting counterparts from South Africa, Saudi Arabia and India, talking up greater trade co-operation.

In addition, China and the EU are reportedly in talks about potentially removing European tariffs on Chinese cars, to be replaced by a minimum price instead, to rein in a new round of dumping.

In short, wherever you look, you can see that China has options.

And analysts have said that these mutual tariff increases by the two superpowers are now becoming almost meaningless, as they’ve already passed the point of cutting out much of the trade between them.

So, the tit-for-tat tariff increases in both directions have become more like symbolism.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning has, over the past two days, posted images of Chairman Mao on social media, including a clip during the Korean War when he told the US that “no matter how long this war lasts we will never yield”.

Above this, she posted her own comments, saying: “We are Chinese. We are not afraid of provocations. We won’t back down.”

When the Chinese government wheels out Chairman Mao, you know they’re getting serious.

Hundreds of flights have been cancelled and train lines were suspended as gales hit Beijing and northern China on Saturday.

By 11:30 local time (03:30 GMT) on Saturday, 838 flights had been cancelled at the capital’s two major airports, according to the Reuters news agency.

Wind gusts of up to 93mph (150 kph) – the strongest in the Chinese capital for more than half a century – are set to continue through the weekend, forcing the closure of attractions and historic sites.

Millions were urged to stay indoors on Friday, with some state media outlets warning that people weighing less than 50kg may be “easily blown away”.

Train services including the airport’s express subway line and some high-speed rail lines have been suspended. Parks were also shut, with some old trees reinforced or trimmed in preparation but almost 300 trees have already fallen over in the capital.

A number of vehicles were damaged but no injuries were reported – in Beijing most residents followed authorities’ advice to stay indoors after the city warned 22 million residents to avoid non-essential travel.

“Everyone in Beijing was really nervous about it. Today there are hardly any people out on the streets. However, it wasn’t as severe as I had imagined”, a local resident told the Reuters news agency.

While a businessman from the Zhejiang province had his flight home cancelled.

“Because of the severe winds, all flights scheduled for last night and today were cancelled. So I will probably rebook my flight in a couple of days. I’m now basically stranded in Beijing,” he said.

The strong winds are coming from a cold vortex system over Mongolia and are expected to last through the weekend.

Beijing issued its first orange alert for strong winds in a decade with the strongest winds expected on Saturday.

China measures wind speed with a scale that goes from level 1 to 17. A level 11 wind, according to the China Meteorological Administration, can cause “serious damage”, while a level 12 wind brings “extreme destruction”.

The winds this weekend are expected to range from level 11 to 13, with conditions expected to ease by Sunday.

On an unusually crisp April day in a rural Texas town, dozens of Mennonite community members gathered alongside the nation’s top health official, Robert F Kennedy Jr, to mourn an eight-year-old.

Daisy Hildebrand is the second unvaccinated girl from the community to die from measles within two months.

Officials in Seminole town also joined the reception after her funeral to support the family, said South Plains Public Health Director Zach Holbrooks. This time, there was no talk of the vaccine that prevents measles deaths – unlike many of his long days since the outbreak began.

“The focus was on their healing,” Mr Holbrooks said. “You never want to see anybody pass away, especially a child that young, from any kind of illness, because there is a prevention for it – the MMR vaccine.”

Like other Seminole natives, Mr Holbrooks was not vaccinated against measles as a child. He got a shot in college, and another in February, when his hometown became the epicentre of one of the country’s worst measles outbreaks in a decade.

The US has seen more than 700 cases this year. The majority of infections – 541 as of Friday – occurred in western Texas, with 56 patients sent to the hospital. Cases in New Mexico, Oklahoma and Kansas also are linked to the outbreak. Two children, including Daisy, have died – the first recorded fatalities from measles in the US since 2015.

It’s not slowing down either, public health experts say. They try to reach vaccine-hesitant residents, but struggle with those who carry on with daily life as usual and with mixed messaging from federal officials, including Kennedy who has endorsed immunization conspiracy theories in the past.

“I wish there were more coming in to get the vaccine,” Mr Holbrooks said. “We can put messaging out, but it’s up to them to come see us.”

The western Texas town of Seminole – population 7,000 – is bordered by miles of rural farmland and oil fields.

Among billboards for restaurants, gun silencers and tractors, a digital sign hints at the crisis gripping the community: a warning about the dangers of measles, which can cause complications including pneumonia, brain swelling and death.

It has spread rapidly among Mennonites, a religious community living near Seminole. Mr Holbrooks estimates the population could be as many as 40,000 across several counties. In those areas, public school vaccination rates are as low as 82%.

Roughly 95% of a community must be vaccinated against the measles to achieve herd immunity, when enough of a group is immune to a disease that its spread is limited and the unvaccinated are protected.

Mr Holbrooks remembers when the Low German Mennonite group began immigrating to his hometown and nearby states in the 1970s. The religion has no specific doctrines against vaccinations, but they tend to avoid many modern aspects of life, including the health care system.

Their community is not alone. At least 118,000 kindergartners in Texas are exempt from one or more vaccines, mostly in rural areas, said Terri Burke, director of Texas vaccine advocacy group, the Immunization Partnership. Parents can get a waiver to exempt their child from school vaccine requirements for a variety of reasons, including religion.

Savannah Knelsen, an 18-year-old server at a Seminole barbecue restaurant, has not been vaccinated against measles – or anything else.

Many of her family members and friends – also unvaccinated – caught the measles in recent weeks. One relative developed a fever of 104.5 F (40.2 C), but still chose not to go to the hospital.

The recent deaths of two children have not convinced her to get vaccinated, she said, adding that she was healthy and wanted to let her body “fight off” infections. Experts agree the vaccine is the best way to prevent infections – including severe ones.

Ms Knelsen’s 19-year-old co-worker, Jessica Giesbrecht, along with her family, has been vaccinated against the measles.

“I’m worried for my baby niece,” Ms Giesbrecht said, adding she was too young to be vaccinated.

Still, the two said the outbreak doesn’t weigh heavily on daily life. Others in Seminole agree.

A cashier at a local pharmacy said no one has stopped by for measles vaccinations since the outbreak started. “People are just going about their lives,” she said.

On Sunday, Kennedy made his first trip to the region since the outbreak to attend the 8-year-old girl’s funeral.

The top US health official is an unlikely figure to spearhead the fight against measles – he has in the past endorsed conspiracy theories about immunizations, including debunked claims about links to autism. He downplayed the outbreak in western Texas at first, calling it “not unusual”.

Trump echoed these remarks last weekend, saying that only a “fairly small number of people” had been impacted, when he was asked by the BBC about the outbreak aboard Air Force One. It was “not something new”, he added.

On Wednesday, Kennedy gave his strongest statement yet in support of the measles vaccine, telling the BBC’s US partner CBS News, “The federal government’s position, my position, is that people should get the measles vaccine.”

The remarks were met with social media backlash from some anti-vaccine supporters. Kennedy added, however, that the government “should not be mandating” vaccines.

The influence of some of his earlier remarks lingers.

In one of several Mennonite-owned natural-health stores in Seminole, dozens of bottles of cod liver oil – a supplement that contains vitamin A – are on display. Alongside the vaccine, Kennedy has promoted vitamin A as an alternative measles treatment, a remedy doctors say should not be given without guidance from a physician and is no substitute for the vaccine.

The treatment has at times proven dangerous. Covenant Children’s Hospital in nearby Lubbock told the BBC it has treated several unvaccinated children with measles for vitamin A toxicity – some had used it a preventative measure.

The community needs federal officials to provide stronger messaging to help convince people to get vaccinated and slow the outbreak, said Gordon Mattimoe, director of the health department in nearby Andrews County.

“People look to their leaders to lead,” he said.

Jeff Hutt, a former spokesperson for the Make America Healthy Again political action committee and Kennedy’s former national field director, argued that the health secretary had to “cover the middle ground”, providing statements that are “politically adequate” while also providing sceptical stances on vaccines.

“In covering the middle ground, I’m not necessarily sure he was able to reassure folks that he had a handle on [measles], or that he was able to reassure folks that he was sticking to his guns,” Mr Hutt said.

The Trump administration’s health policies could have other consequences in Texas, officials say. Local health departments are at risk of losing critical resources because of attempts to cut $11.4b (£8.8b) in public health grants. The move was temporarily blocked by a judge last week.

Mr Mattimoe said that because of the potential cuts – around $250,000 in grant funding for his health department – he is not able to hire a new nurse to give immunizations.

In a statement to the BBC, the US Department of Health and Human Services said it deployed the “necessary” resources from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to respond to the outbreak.

“The CDC is in close, constant communication with local and state health officials on the ground to ensure they have what they need,” the official said.

The Texas Department of Health Services could lose as much as $550m in grant funding. It has provided staff, vaccines, testing and other support to local health departments, but likely will need extra funding, said spokesperson Chris Van Deusen told the BBC.

Mr Mattimoe contacted lawmakers and the state for help, but is not hopeful.

“I don’t think they have the funds,” he said.

In nearby Lubbock, Texas, just two days after the news of Daisy’s death, all was quiet at the health department’s vaccination clinic.

Other days have been busier, with as many as 20 people coming in for vaccines, said Katherine Wells, director of public health for the city, where hospitals receive children with severe measles cases from more rural counties.

Since the outbreak began in January, the city of Seminole has vaccinated 103 adults and 143 children against the measles, Mr Holbrooks said. The neighbouring three rural counties decided to close their underused vaccine clinics and send more staff to hard-hit Seminole.

“There’s always talk on, what else can we do, and are we doing enough?” Mr Holbrooks said. “We want to build trust, not tear it down.”

At times, local health officials have seen progress.

A Mennonite doctor in Andrews County gained community members’ trust and encouraged them to get vaccinated, said Mr Mattimoe.

“Those trusted messengers in those communities – I think that’s very important,” he said.

Ms Wells hopes vaccinations will start to pick up after the latest measles death and the city’s new guidance to vaccinate children as young as six months, instead of one year.

The bigger city saw an outbreak at a daycare among children too young to be fully vaccinated, a situation she believes will be helped by the earlier shots.

But, “there’s always going to be some people that we don’t reach”, Ms Wells said.

That means the virus is likely to circulate for a while in western Texas regions where people are unvaccinated, officials said.

“We’re just at the beginning of it,” Mr Mattimoe said. “It’s going to have to run through the community. Until they get that natural immunity, it’ll just keep running its course.”

While on holiday in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) last week, there was only one mission on my mind – getting my hands on the viral “Dubai chocolate” bar.

If you’re on TikTok, you will have seen the bar, which combines the flavours of chocolate, pistachio and tahini with filo pastry, and is inspired by the Arab dessert Knafeh.

The original, called Can’t Get Knafeh of It, by FIX Chocolatier, has been sold exclusively in the UAE since 2022. It become so popular on social media that it’s only on sale for two hours a day and often sells out within minutes.

But now imitations, known by the nickname “Dubai chocolate”, have hit UK supermarkets including Waitrose, Lidl and Morrisons, with some supermarkets limiting the number of bars customers are allowed to buy.

Yezen Alani, who co-owns FIX with his wife Sarah Hamouda, told the BBC the global attention Dubai chocolate was getting was “flattering and humbling”.

The FIX chocolate bar was first imagined by Hamouda in 2021, who craved the flavours while she was pregnant.

Alani and Hamouda started developing the bar a year later, running the business alongside their corporate jobs.

“Sarah and I were brought up in the UK and we moved to Dubai 10 years ago, so we’ve got Western and Arab roots.

“We wanted to create flavours that were inspired by that,” Alani says.

Part of the appeal of the chocolate is its exclusivity – you can only order it using a food delivery app, rather than walking into a shop or grabbing it at the supermarket.

It costs around £15 per bar and can only be bought during specific hours of the day to ensure the company can fulfil all their orders.

I also saw similar bars sold in many shops in the region, dubbed “Dubai chocolate” and adorned with pictures of pistachios and filo pastry.

Alani says the “copycat” bars are “very frustrating because people are trying knockoffs, which damages our brand”.

One of the reasons for the bar’s surge in popularity has been social media – with a viral video by TikTok user Maria Vehera from 2023 being cited as one of the main reasons for its rise to prominence.

It shows Vehera trying the Knafeh bar for the first time – along with several others made by the same chocolatier – and has been liked nearly seven million times.

The way the bar looks is made for social media – from the attractive orange and green spots on top of the smooth milk chocolate to the crunch sound it makes when you break off a piece.

Chocolate combined with pistachio isn’t new but the real standout element is the crunchy nature of the filling, with the filo pastry adding a texture and thickness to the bar.

Since the Can’t Get Knafeh of It bar is only available in one country, other brands have started to sell their versions in the UK, including Swiss chocolate manufacturer Lindt whose Dubai chocolate is being sold for £10 in supermarkets.

Since stocking the bar, Waitrose says they’ve had to introduce a two-bar limit for customers in order to regulate stock levels.

Another version has also been sold by Home Bargains, while supermarket Lidl has its own version for £4.99 and is also limiting purchase numbers.

One influencer documented how the has bar been kept behind tills for this reason.

Having tried the Lindt bar and a couple of other versions being sold in corner shops, there is quite a contrast.

The FIX chocolate is billed as a “dessert bar” and needs to be kept in the fridge, with a short expiry date like many dairy items.

This isn’t the case for the others, which have been designed to have a longer shelf life.

You can also see the difference in taste and texture – the original bar is almost double the width of the Lindt bar, which is more aligned to the size and shape of a standard chocolate bar.

When Alani and Hamouda first started out, they employed one person to fulfil around six to seven orders a day.

But since growing in popularity, primarily thanks to TikTok, their business now employs 50 people, who fulfil 500 orders a day.

One big talking point has been the price of the product, which is £15 per bar.

“It’s all handmade, every single design is done by hand,” Alani says.

“We use premium ingredients and the process is not like making other bars – you’ve got the baking, moulding the chocolate to the design and with the filling itself, even the pistachios are hand-picked and processed”.

Speaking to Arabian Business last year, Hamouda said: “My mother used to make Knafeh, and that’s something I wanted to capture my own way.

“Knafeh was the first flavour we perfected. The crunch, the pistachio, it had to be just right,” she added.

Despite the product’s success, Alani says “it’s been a tough journey” as the pair have been working together full time while also raising their two children.

“There’s been times where we’ve wanted to give up, but we said to ourselves ‘we’ll keep going as long as we can pay the rent’ and now we have no regrets as its worked out”.

Buying or renting a home has become unaffordable for the average Australian, driven by a perfect storm of astronomical house prices, relentless rental increases and a lack of social housing.

With less than a month until the federal election, housing remains among the top issues for voters, and the country’s two major parties – the Labor Party and the Liberal-National Coalition – have both pledged to tackle the crisis in a range of ways.

Australians are already struggling under cost-of-living pressures and bracing for the effects of Donald Trump’s global tariff war. And it remains to be seen whether either party will sway voters with their promise of restoring the Australian dream.

Simply put, Australia has not been building enough homes to meet the demands of its rapidly growing population, creating a scarcity that makes any available home more expensive to buy or rent.

Compounding the issue are Australia’s restrictive planning laws, which prevent homes being built where most people want to live, such as in major cities.

Red tape means that popular metropolitan areas like Melbourne and Sydney are far less dense than comparably sized cities around the world.

The steady decline of public housing and ballooning waitlists have made matters worse, tipping people into homelessness or overcrowded living conditions.

Climate change has also made many areas increasingly unliveable, with natural disasters such as bushfires and severe storms destroying large swathes of properties.

Meanwhile, decades of government policies have commercialised property ownership. So the ideal of owning a home, once seen as a right in Australia, has turned into an investment opportunity.

In short: it depends where you live.

Sydney is currently the second least affordable city in the world to buy a property, according to a 2023 Demographia International Housing Affordability survey.

The latest data from property analytics company CoreLogic shows the average Sydney home costs almost A$1.2m (£570,294, $742,026).

Across the nation’s capital cities, the combined average house price sits at just over A$900,000.

House prices in Australia overall have also jumped 39.1% in the last five years – and wages have failed to keep up.

It now takes the average prospective homeowner around 10 years to save the 20% deposit usually required to buy an average home, according to a 2024 State of the Housing System report.

The rental market has provided little relief, with rents increasing by 36.1% nationally since the onset of Covid – an equivalent rise of A$171 per week.

Sydney topped the charts with a median weekly rent of A$773, according to CoreLogic’s latest rental review. Perth came in second with average rents at A$695 per week, followed by Canberra at A$667 per week.

Immigration and foreign property purchases are often cited as causes for Australia’s housing crisis. But experts say that they are not significant contributors statistically.

Many people who move to Australia are temporary migrants, such as international students who live in dedicated student accommodation rather than entering the housing market, according to Michael Fotheringham, head of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute.

“The impact [of migrants] on the housing market is not as profound as some commentators have suggested,” Mr Fotheringham tells the BBC.

Foreign purchases of homes, meanwhile, is “a very small issue” with not much meaningful impact on housing strain, says Brendan Coates, from the Grattan Institute public policy think tank.

The latest data released by the Australian Taxation Office supports this, with homes purchased by foreign buyers in 2022-23 representing less than one percent of all sales.

“It’s already very difficult for foreigners to purchase homes under existing foreign investment rules. They are subject to a wide range of taxes, particularly in some states,” Mr Coates explains.

Labor and the Coalition have both promised to invest in building more homes – with Labor offering 1.2 million by 2029, and the Coalition vowing to unlock 500,000.

Labor announced a A$33bn housing investment plan in their latest budget, which pledges to help first-time homebuyers purchase properties with smaller deposits through shared-equity loans.

They have also promised to create more social housing and subsidies to help low-to-moderate-income earners own and rent more affordably.

Central to the Coalition’s housing affordability policy is cutting migration, reducing the number of international students and implementing a two-year ban on foreign investment in existing properties.

Additionally, they have promised a A$5bn boost to infrastructure to support local councils by paying for water, power and sewerage at housing development sites.

The Greens’ policies, meanwhile, have focused on alleviating pressures on renters by calling for national rent freezes and caps.

They have also said that in the event of a minority government, they will be pushing to reform tax incentives for investors.

In short, experts say that while both Labor and the Coalition’s policies are steps in the right direction, neither are sufficient to solve the housing problem.

“A combination of both parties’ platforms would be better than what we’re seeing from either side individually,” Mr Coates tells the BBC.

A 2025 State of the Land report by the Urban Development Institute of Australia says the federal government will fail to meet its target of 1.2 million new homes by 2029 – falling short by almost 400,000.

The Coalition’s focus on reducing immigration, meanwhile, will only make housing marginally cheaper while making Australia poorer in the long-term, according to Mr Coates.

The cuts to migration will mean fewer skilled migrants, he explains, and the loss of revenue from those migrants will result in higher taxes for Australians.

Decades of underinvestment in social housing also means demand in that area is massively outstripping supply – which at 4% of housing stock is significantly lower than many other countries, according to Mr Fotheringham.

There’s also concern about grants for first homebuyers, which drive prices up further.

While commending the fact that these issues are finally being treated seriously, Mr Fotheringham believes it will take years to drag Australia out of a housing crisis that has been building for decades.

“We’ve been sleepwalking into this as a nation for quite some time,” he says. “[Now] the nation is paying attention, the political class is paying attention.”