Donald Trump says Chinese-made smartphones and other electronics will not be exempt from tariffs – adding they are simply moving into a different levy “bucket”.

European stock markets bounced up on Monday morning after Friday’s official announcement that some of these products would escape levies of up to 145%.

China has called on Donald Trump to “completely cancel” his tariffs regime, and “return to the right path of mutual respect”.

However US officials said on Sunday that products would be subject to a “semiconductor tariff” instead, with Trump expected to reveal more details later.

US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the new levy would be in addition to a host of global tariffs the US imposed earlier this month, then paused for 90 days.

“We need our medicines and we need semiconductors and our electronics to be built in America,” he added.

On Saturday, a US customs notice revealed smartphones, computers and some other electronic devices would be excluded from the 125% tariff on goods entering the country from China.

But Trump chimed in on social media, saying there was no exemption for these products and called such reports about this notice false. Instead, he said that “they are just moving to a different Tariff ‘bucket'”.

Trump added: “We are taking a look at Semiconductors and the WHOLE ELECTRONICS SUPPLY CHAIN in the upcoming National Security Tariff Investigations.”

He said he would provide an update on Monday about semiconductor duties.

Everyday devices such as smartphones and laptops rely on semiconductors, which are small and powerful pieces of tech that form the basic building blocks of modern computation.

• Trump’s iPhone olive branch is a significant trade war retreat
• Trump’s changing tariffs leave shoppers feeling paralysed

On Monday, Sony announced that it was increasing the price of its flagship games console, the PlayStation 5, by about 10% in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, citing a “challenging economic environment”, inflation and fluctuating exchange rates. It did not announce price rises in the United States.

The Chinese commerce ministry had called Trump’s exemptions a “small step” by the US, and said that Beijing was “evaluating the impact” of the move.

But the suggestion by Trump administration officials of plans for future levies may dampen hopes of a thaw in the two rivals’ protectionist posture.

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer was asked on Sunday whether there were any plans for Trump to speak with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.

“Right now we don’t have any plans on that,” he said during an appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation.

Trump imposed a tariff amounting to 54% on imports of products from China at the beginning of April, before escalating to the current 145% rate.

In its own tit-for-tat tariffs, China imposed levies of 34% on US goods, before increasing it to 84% and then 125%, which took effect on Saturday.

In announcing its latest tariffs, China’s commerce ministry said last week that it would “fight to the end” if the US “insists on provoking a tariff war or trade war”.

Late on Saturday, while travelling to Miami, Florida, Trump said he would give more details of the exemptions at the start of next week.

• What are tariffs and why is Trump using them?
• US coffee shops worried about bitter price hike after tariffs

The White House has argued that it is using tariffs as a negotiating tactic to extract more favourable trade terms from other countries.

Trump has said his policy will redress unfairness in the global trading system, as well as bring jobs and factories back to the US.

However, his interventions have seen massive fluctuations in the stock market and raised fears of a decrease in global trade that could have a knock-on effect on jobs and individual economies.

Relatives of a nine-year-old boy who was killed by an accidental gunshot in Australia have been charged over his death.

Paramedics treated the child for serious neck injuries at a farm in Windellama – near Goulburn in New South Wales (NSW) – on Sunday, following reports of a shooting. The boy died at the scene.

Local police have since arrested two people, including a 14-year-old, and charged them with unauthorised firearm offences.

An investigation into the incident is underway. It is not known what relation the family members had to the child.

“It’s rare to hear one shot here,” Ron Wenban, who lives near the farm with his partner, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

“To have a gunshot like that happen, that was a concern, neither of us wanted to go over there.”

Mr Wenban said the family were based in Sydney and had bought the property as a holiday home.

Both of the relatives who were arrested will appear before court in May, with the teen attending the NSW Children’s Court.

The man was charged with allowing an unauthorised person to possess a firearm, as well as not keeping a firearm safely, while the teenager was charged with unauthorised possession.

The teen has been granted bail.

A trial in the landmark antitrust case against social media giant Meta kicks off in Washington on Monday.

The US competition and consumer watchdog alleges that Meta, which already owned Facebook, bought Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 to eliminate competition, effectively giving itself a monopoly.

The FTC reviewed and approved those acquisitions but committed to monitor the outcomes. If the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) wins the case it could force Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to sell off both Instagram and WhatsApp.

Meta previously said it was sure it would win and experts have told the BBC it is likely to argue that Instagram users have had a better experience since it was taken over.

“The [FTC’s] argument is the acquisition of Instagram was a way of neutralizing this rising competitive threat to Facebook,” says Rebecca Haw Allensworth, a professor of antitrust at Vanderbilt Law School.

Ms Allensworth says Mr Zuckerberg’s own words, including those from his emails, may offer the most convincing evidence at trial.

“He said it’s better to buy than to compete. It’s hard to get more literal than that,” Ms Allensworth says.

Meta, on the other hand, is likely to argue that intent is not particularly relevant in an antitrust case.

“They’re going to say the real question is: are consumers better off as a result of this merger?,” she said. “They’ll put on a lot of evidence that Instagram became what it is today because it benefited from being owned by Facebook.”

Mr Zuckerberg and the company’s former chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg are both expected to testify at the trial, which could run for several weeks.

The case, FTC v Meta, was filed during US President Donald Trump’s first administration but risks becoming politicized during his second term.

Mr Zuckerberg has lobbied Trump in person to have the FTC drop the case, according to the Wall Street Journal.

When asked by the BBC to confirm that report, Meta sidestepped the question but said in a statement: “The FTC’s lawsuits against Meta defies reality.”

“More than 10 years after the FTC reviewed and cleared our acquisitions, the commission’s action in this case sends the message that no deal is ever truly final,” a Meta spokesperson told the BBC.

Relations between Mr Zuckerberg and Trump had been frosty partly because Trump was barred from Meta’s social media platforms after the US Capitol riot in January 2021.

Since then, the relationship has thawed somewhat.

Meta contributed $1m (£764,400) to Trump’s inaugural fund, and in January announced Ultimate Fighting Championship Fighter (UFC) boss Dana White, a close Trump ally, would join its board of directors.

The company also announced in January that it was doing away with independent fact-checkers.

President Trump’s move to fire two FTC commissioners in March also hangs over the case.

As Democrats, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya were in the minority on the five-seat commission.

Until Wednesday, just two seats of those seats were filled, both by Republicans. Another Republican was confirmed by the Senate on Thursday.

Slaughter and Bedoya – who are suing the Trump administration to be reinstated – say the move to push them out was meant to intimidate.

“The president sent a very clear signal not only to us but to Chairman Ferguson and Commissioner [Melissa] Holyoak that if they do something he doesn’t like, he could fire them too,” Slaughter told the BBC in a recent interview.

“So if they don’t want to do a favor for his political allies, they’re on the chopping block as well,” Slaughter said.

Slaughter and Bedoya both expressed alarm at recent reports about Zuckerberg’s lobbying efforts.

“My hope is that there is no political interference,” Mr Bedoya told the BBC.

The FTC did not respond to a request for comment from the BBC.

Ferguson, who was appointed as FTC chair by Trump, recently told The Verge he would “obey lawful orders” when asked what he would do if the president directed him to drop a lawsuit like the one against Meta.

Ferguson added that he would be very surprised if anything like that ever happened.

The FTC is considered a key antitrust watchdog. In recent years, it has returned hundreds of millions of dollars to victims of fraud, in addition to passing laws that ban junk fees and subscription traps.

But as the Meta trial begins, it’s among the many independent regulatory agencies that the administration seems keen to rein in.

Chair Ferguson is also recently quoted reaffirming his belief that independent regulatory bodies are “not good for democracy.”

FTC v Meta begins as another major antitrust case – USA v Google – enters what’s known as the remedies phase.

The Department of Justice won the first phase of that case last summer when Judge Amit Mehta found that Google holds a monopoly in online search, with a market share of around 90%.

Last month, the DOJ reiterated a demand made during the Biden administration that a court break up Google’s search monopoly.

The FTC’s case against Meta will be tougher to prove, says Laura Phillips-Sawyer, an associate professor of business law at the University of Georgia.

“I think they have a real uphill battle,” Ms Phillips-Sawyer said of the FTC.

“They have a long road before any consideration of divestiture of Instagram or WhatsApp is considered.”

That’s because compared to online search, there’s more competition in the personal network services space that Meta operates in, Ms Phillips-Sawyer said.

Meta in a statement said the evidence at trial “will show what every 17-year-old in the world knows: Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp compete with Chinese-owned TikTok, YouTube, X, iMessage and many others.”

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Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has invited Donald Trump to visit his country ahead of any deal with Russia to end the war.

“Please, before any kind of decisions, any kind of forms of negotiations, come to see people, civilians, warriors, hospitals, churches, children destroyed or dead,” Zelensky said in an interview for CBS’s 60 Minutes programme.

The interview was recorded before a Russian missile hit the city of Sumy, killing 34 people and injuring 117 others.

Russia said it only strikes military or military-related targets while Trump said he had been told it was a mistake, without specifying who told him.

Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting, Friedrich Merz, has accused Russia of a war crime.

The attack comes as the US, Ukraine’s strongest military ally, has been pursuing an end to the war – now in its fourth year – through negotiation under Trump.

Asked about the attack, the US president said it was “terrible” and that he had been “told they made a mistake”, but did not elaborate.

Earlier, Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, retired Lt-Gen Keith Kellogg, said the attack had crossed “any line of decency”.

However, it remains to be seen if Trump will accept Zelensky’s invitation.

Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, is the only senior member of Trump’s team to visit Kyiv, and that was to demand Zelensky sign a contract heavily weighted in Washington’s favour to trade Ukraine’s mineral wealth for continued military aid. Zelensky refused.

The Ukrainian president has highlighted Russia’s continued attacks on civilians while Trump attempts to improve relations with Moscow in search of a ceasefire.

US special envoy Steve Witkoff has already held three meetings with Vladimir Putin, and Kyiv is adamant Moscow will exploit this as it continues to erode Ukraine’s territory.

European leaders condemned the Sumy attack. Merz, who is expected to take over as Germany’s new chancellor next month, told the country’s public broadcaster ARD that the attack constituted a “serious war crime”.

“It was a perfidious act.. and it is a serious war crime, deliberate and intended,” the conservative politician said.

Germany’s outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz, meanwhile, said the attack showed “just what Russia’s supposed readiness for peace [was] worth”.

French President Emmanuel Macron accused Russia of “blatant disregard of human lives, international law, and the diplomatic efforts of President Trump”.

“Strong measures are needed to impose a ceasefire on Russia,” he said. “France is working tirelessly toward this goal, alongside its partners.”

Describing the attack as “barbaric”, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen added: “Russia was and remains the aggressor, in blatant violation of international law.

“Strong measures are urgently needed to enforce a ceasefire. Europe will continue to reach out to partners and maintain strong pressure on Russia until the bloodshed ends and a just and lasting peace is achieved, on Ukraine’s terms and conditions.”

British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer also gave a view, saying he was “appalled at Russia’s horrific attacks on civilians in Sumy”.

A spokesperson for UN Secretary-General António Guterres said he was “deeply alarmed and shocked” to learn of the missile attack.

“Attacks against civilians and civilian objects are prohibited under international humanitarian law, and that any such attacks, wherever they occur, must end immediately”, he added.

Guterres stressed the UN’s support for “meaningful efforts towards a just, lasting and comprehensive peace that fully upholds Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity”.

Sunday’s double missile strike was the deadliest attack on civilians in Ukraine this year.

Another Russian missile attack, earlier this month on 4 April, killed 20 people and injured 61 in the city of Kryvyi Rih.

On that occasion, Russia’s defence ministry said it had targeted a meeting of “unit commanders and Western instructors” in a restaurant. No evidence was provided.

It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of people – the vast majority of them soldiers – have been killed or injured on all sides since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022.

The UN estimates that nearly seven million Ukrainians are currently living as refugees.

The conflict goes back more than a decade, to 2014, when Ukraine’s pro-Russian president was overthrown. Russia then annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea and backed insurgents in bloody fighting in eastern Ukraine.

Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

A Palestinian paramedic who has been missing since an Israeli attack that killed 15 other emergency workers in southern Gaza three weeks ago is being detained by Israeli authorities, the International Committee of the Red Cross has said.

The ICRC confirmed in a statement that it had “received information” that Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) medic Assad al-Nassasra was being held “in an Israeli place of detention”.

The PRCS said Mr Nassasra was “forcibly abducted” by Israeli troops following the attack and called for his immediate release.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has not confirmed his detention. A spokesperson said it was aware of the claim about his whereabouts.

The bodies of eight PRCS medics, six Civil Defence first responders and a UN staff member were found buried in shallow graves on the outskirts of Rafah, a week after their convoy came under fire from Israeli troops there on 23 March.

One other PRCS medic survived and said he was released by Israeli forces after being detained for around 15 hours.

The PRCS has said the incident was a “full-fledged war crime”, accusing Israeli forces of “a series of deliberate attacks” on its staff and their ambulances as they answered a call to help casualties.

It has called for an independent international investigation into the incident and for those responsible to be held to account.

Last Monday, the IDF said a preliminary inquiry indicated troops “opened fire due to a perceived threat following a previous encounter in the area, and that six of the individuals killed in the incident were identified as Hamas terrorists”, without giving evidence.

The Palestinian Red Crescent rejected the allegation, as did the other surviving paramedic.

The IDF initially said its troops fired on “suspicious vehicles” driving in darkness with their headlights and emergency lights off.

But it later said that account was “mistaken” after a video found on the mobile phone of medic Rifaat Radwan, who was in the same ambulance as Assad al-Nassasra, showed the convoy was using its emergency lights.

At the end of the video, the ambulances are seen pulled over on the roadside. The sound of gunfire can be then heard just as Radwan gets out of his ambulance. It continues for more than five minutes and Radwan is heard saying his last prayers, before the voices of Israeli soldiers are heard approaching.

Audio analysis by BBC Verify of the footage found Israeli troops fired more than 100 times during the attack, with some shots taken from as close as 12m (39ft) away.

In a statement released on Sunday, the PRCS said: “We have been informed by the International Committee of the Red Cross that PRCS medic Assad al-Nassasra is being held by the Israeli occupation authorities.

“His fate had remained unknown since he was targeted along with other PRCS medics in Rafah.”

It added: “We call on the international community to pressure the occupation authorities to immediately release our colleague, medic Assad, who was forcibly abducted while carrying out his humanitarian duties.”

A spokeswoman for the PRCS told the New York Times Mr Nassasra had worked for the PRCS for 16 years, and was married with six children.

An ICRC spokeswoman said it had informed Mr Nassasra’s family and the PRCS after receiving information about his whereabouts.

It noted: “The ICRC has not been granted access to visit Assad al-Nassasra. The ICRC has not been able to visit any Palestinian detainees held in Israeli places of detention since 7 October 2023.”

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

More than 50,940 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Indian businessman Mehul Choksi has been arrested in Belgium following India’s request for his extradition.

Mr Choksi, who left India in 2018, was arrested on Saturday, his lawyer Vijay Aggarwal told the BBC on Monday.

The diamond merchant is wanted by India over allegations of involvement in a case of defrauding one of the country’s largest banks of nearly $1.8bn (£1.3bn).

Mr Choksi has not commented publicly on the case, but his lawyer said they would appeal against his detention and also oppose his extradition to India.

“These are the obvious grounds [on which we will argue the case], that he is not a flight risk and secondly, that he is extremely sick. He is undergoing cancer treatment,” Mr Agarwal said.

He added that they would “contest the extradition on grounds that there isn’t enough evidence against him and the extradition request is politically motivated and the trial in India may not be fair”.

The BBC has reached out to India’s foreign ministry and financial crimes agency – the Enforcement Directorate (ED) – for comment.

According to a Times of India report, Mr Choksi was arrested on the basis of two non-bailable warrants issued by an Indian court in 2018 and 2021 – although it’s not clear why the action came now.

Mr Choksi and his nephew, Nirav Modi, are wanted by Indian authorities in connection with a $1.8bn fraud case at Punjab National Bank (PNB).

Mr Modi, who’s also been living abroad since 2018, is lodged in a prison in London and is awaiting extradition to India.

• Indian bank hit by $1.8bn fraud case
• Nirav Modi: Who is India’s scandal-linked billionaire?

Both were high-profile diamond traders. Mr Modi’s jewellery was worn by several Hollywood celebrities such as Naomi Watts and Kate Winslet. One of the biggest Bollywood stars, Priyanka Chopra, was his company’s brand ambassador.

Mr Choksi, meanwhile, was the owner of Gitanjali Gems, an Indian jewellery retailer which once had about 4,000 stores across India.

The ED has accused Mr Choksi and Modi of colluding with some employees of PNB’s Brady House branch in Mumbai city to get fraudulent advances for payments to overseas suppliers of jewels.

These funds were then allegedly diverted and laundered.

Mr Choksi and Mr Modi have denied the allegations against them.

After leaving India, Mr Choksi reportedly travelled to the US and later to Antigua – where he has citizenship.

In 2021, he was reportedly arrested in Dominica and deported back to Antigua.

Hariprasad SV, a Bengaluru-based entrepreneur who had in 2016 alerted authorities about the alleged scam at PNB, said Mr Choksi’s arrest was “great news”.

“Apart from bringing him back, the most important thing is to get back all those billions of dollars he looted from India,” he told ANI news agency.

The White Lotus star Aimee Lou Wood has called a Saturday Night Live (SNL) sketch that impersonated her using exaggerated prosthetic teeth “mean and unfunny”.

The British actress said the US comedy programme “punched down” on her and suggested the sketch was misogynistic.

In a series of Instagram posts, Wood wrote that she was happy to be made fun of “when it’s clever and in good spirits” but that there “must be a cleverer, more nuanced, less cheap way”.

Wood, 31, said she had received “apologies from SNL” after sharing her criticism. The BBC has contacted broadcaster NBC for a response.

The actress’s role in the third series of The White Lotus, which follows a group of guests at a resort, prompted significant media attention surrounding what she calls her “big gap teeth”.

The SNL sketch, which aired this week, imagined US President Donald Trump and his top team spending time at the fictional hotel.

Wood’s character Chelsea was portrayed by cast member Sarah Sherman using a pronounced accent and fake teeth.

At one point, in a reference to the actress’s teeth, she asks: “Fluoride? What’s that?”

Wood, who burst onto screens in Netflix’s Sex Education, said she was “not thin skinned” and understood that SNL was about “caricature”.

“But the whole joke was about fluoride,” she wrote on Sunday.

“I have big gap teeth not bad teeth.”

“The rest of the skit was punching up,” Wood added, “and I/Chelsea was the only one punched down on”.

She said that she was not “hating on” Sarah Sherman, but “hating on the concept”.

Wood also shared a comment by an unnamed user describing the sketch as “sharp and funny” before taking “a screeching turn into 1970s misogyny”.

“This sums up my view,” the actress added.

She also criticised Sherman’s accent, writing: “I respect accuracy even if it’s mean.”

Wood, from Stockport, Greater Manchester, wrote that she had received “thousands of messages” agreeing with her since sharing her posts, and that she was glad she “said something”.

Speaking to GQ magazine last week, Wood said that the conversation surrounding her teeth made her “a bit sad because I’m not getting to talk about my work”.

“It makes me really happy that it’s symbolising rebellion and freedom, but there’s a limit,” she said.

Wood added: “I don’t know if it was a man would we be talking about it this much? It’s still going on about a woman’s appearance.”

Following her posts, Wood’s younger sister Emily offered her support for the actress on her own Instagram story.

Sharing a picture of the pair together, Emily Wood said her sister was “out here personifying the word powerhouse”.

“The admiration I have for this woman is nuts. Beyond comprehension,” she continued, adding that she felt “deep animalistic protectiveness” over her.

“The greatest big sister. My best human on the planet. Her authenticity and originality is incomparable. My god we are really madly blessed to experience life on earth at the same time as her.”

Two British tourists have drowned off the coast of a popular tourist town at the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef.

A boy, 17, and a man, 46, were swept out to sea on Sunday while swimming at a beach without lifeguards in Seventeen Seventy – a town in Queensland named for the year Captain James Cook arrived in Australia.

The pair were declared dead at the scene after being pulled from the water by a police rescue helicopter.

An Australian man is also in a life-threatening condition after being swept out to sea, and was airlifted to hospital with serious head injuries.

While police revealed that the deceased were from the UK, their names have not yet been released.

“Sunday’s mission was a difficult one,” CapRescue, the emergency rescue service that found the three men, shared on social media – adding that the deaths had occurred “despite the best efforts of all involved”.

Police say the injured Australian man was from Monto, a town about 150 kilometres inland from Seventeen Seventy.

“We’re not sure whether the third person jumped into the water trying to perform a rescue,” Surf Life Saving Queensland’s Darren Everard told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

There is only one beach patrolled by lifeguards within a 50-kilometre radius of Seventeen Seventy.

Police are treating the drownings as non-suspicious and will prepare a report for the coroner.

One-hundred-and-seven people drowned in Australia last year, with 25% of them born overseas, according to Royal Life Saving Australia.

Australia’s coastal fatalities mostly occur around creeks and headlands at high tide when “it’s chaos in the water”, Everard explained.

Speaking to ABC, he encouraged tourists to “seek local knowledge” and swim between the flags.

A Liberal Democrat MP barred from entering Hong Kong has told the BBC she believes it was to “shut me up and to silence me”.

Wera Hobhouse flew to Hong Kong with her husband on Thursday to visit her son and newborn grandson. However she was detained at the airport, questioned and deported.

The MP for Bath, one of more than 40 parliamentarians of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (Ipac) which criticises Beijing’s handling of human rights, said she was given no reason for being refused entry.

Speaking on the BBC’s Newscast show on Sunday, she said she wants “some answers”, and said she was not very “outspoken about China”.

Hobhouse told Newscast she and her husband had been looking forward to visiting their son, who has lived in Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China, since 2019.

While her husband “got processed quite quickly” and was allowed entry, she was taken aside for questioning, held for five hours and then put on a return flight.

Asked by presenter Laura Kuenssberg what the authorities said about why she was being detained, Hobhouse responded: “Nothing.”

She added: “They said not to worry at first, just a few questions to answer.”

In response to the suggestion it could be due to her involvement in Ipac, which scrutinises Beijing’s human rights record, Hobhouse said she was not very “outspoken about China”.

“I was only standing up for our values,” she said.

“It would be terrible if China uses this now to intimidate me, to stop me from speaking out for human rights and liberty and democracy.

“That is the last thing that should happen, but that is, of course probably the intention, to shut me up and to silence me.”

Hobhouse said she had experienced huge amount of solidarity from “very worried” MPs.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy has promised to “urgently” raise the issue with authorities in Hong Kong and Beijing and “demand an explanation”.

He added it would be “unacceptable for an MP to be denied entry for simply expressing their views as a parliamentarian”.

Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey has called for Lammy to summon the Chinese ambassador, adding the Chinese government cannot be allowed to “undermine our democracy by intimidating our parliamentarians.”

“I want some answers,” Hobhouse said, calling for Lammy to “reassure parliamentarians that this is not the way the Chinese communist parties can treat [them]”.

On Monday, Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesperson Calum Miller said “we’ve still had no answers from Beijing”.

He urged the government to reject China’s planning application for a new embassy in London. Housing Secretary Angela Rayner will decide whether to approve the plan, which has been opposed by the local council.

“China wants to take advantage of the UK’s openness while refusing entry to British MPs and placing bounties on the heads of democracy campaigners living in the UK,” Miller said.

It comes a week after two Labour MPs were denied entry to Israel while on a trip to visit the occupied West Bank.

“It is very chilling that authoritarian countries can treat us in this way,” said Hobhouse, adding the “diplomatic understanding” in which we allow politicians into each other’s countries seemed to be “collapsing”.

She has ruled out approaching the Chinese embassy for permission to enter Hong Kong, saying they will see their relatives elsewhere.

Asked about the timing of the incident in the week the UK government sought to take control of the Chinese-owned British Steel plant in Scunthorpe, Lincs, Hobhouse said she could only speculate.

She called for a “clear-eyed” approach to what China wants from Britain, saying “it’s not just fluffy, friendly relationships”.

“They want something from us. They use us and we must not be naïve about giving them access to too much, for example our critical national infrastructure.”

The Chinese Embassy has been approached for comment.

A private plane carrying six people crashed in an open field in upstate New York on Saturday, killing all on board, authorities say.

Among those on board were celebrated former Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) football player Karenna Groff, her parents and her brother, according to a family statement.

The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said the family had been travelling for a holiday celebration when the crash happened.

A video of the final seconds of the flight obtained by officials showed the aircraft intact before it crashed into the ground at a high rate of descent, the NTSB said.

A joint family statement identified the victims as Karenna Groff, her parents Dr Michael Groff and Dr Joy Saini, her brother Jared Groff and his partner Alexia Couyutas Duarte, and Karenna’s partner James Santoro.

“They were a wonderful family,” James’s father, John Santoro, told the Associated Press.

“The world lost a lot of very good people who were going to do a lot of good for the world if they had the opportunity. We’re all personally devastated.”

Karenna, a former athlete, was named Woman of the Year by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in 2022, her senior year.

She had graduated from MIT, where she met James, and was enrolled in medical school at the New York University (NYU), the family said.

Her parents were both prominent doctors, while her brother, Jared, worked as a paralegal and his partner, Alexia, was about to join Harvard Law School.

“Karenna demonstrated exceptional skill and unwavering passion towards the care of patients and the mission of our institution. We will remember her for her warmth, her grace, her kindness, her outstanding accomplishments, and the pure joy she brought to our community,” an NYU spokesperson said.

A New York Times article identified the plane’s pilot as Karenna’s father, Dr Groff, who was “experienced” according to a family statement. The report that he was flying the crashed plane has not been publicly confirmed by the family or the authorities.

Speaking at a press conference on Sunday, NTSB official Todd Inman said the twin-engine Mitsubishi MU-2B was “compressed, buckled and embedded in the terrain” of a muddy agricultural field near Craryville, New York.

The crash happened at about midday as the family were headed to Columbia County Airport.

Mr Inman added that air traffic control attempted to contact the pilot several times but received no response or distress call.

The pilot had been flying under instrument flight rules, rather than visual flight rules, he said, adding that it was too soon to determine if reduced visibility from weather conditions were a factor.

Mr Inman said the plane had an upgraded cockpit with newer technology, certified to Federal Aviation Administration standards.

An investigation is under way and a probable cause of the crash will be determined in the NTSB’s final report in 12 to 24 months’ time.

This comes just days after six people, including a family of Spanish tourists, died in a helicopter crash in New York.

• Listen to an audio version of this article on BBC Sounds

From the end of April, the 500-year-old Royal Mail will be controlled by a Czech billionaire who co-owns a football club and is a major investor in a British supermarket – so, why would he want this ailing institution?

“A pair of scissors, one empty teapot and some hot water, please.” The slightly baffled staff at Claridge’s scrambled to comply with Daniel Kretinsky’s breakfast order as he sanitised and moisturised his hands.

The upscale hotel has been serving tea to the global elite for decades but Mr Kretinsky brought along his own packet of Chinese green tea, which he snipped open (hence the scissors) and poured into the empty pot.

He was tall, perfectly groomed, steely-eyed but unfalteringly polite and thoughtful. If you told anyone in the dining room he was a billionaire, they would have no problem believing it.

Known as the Czech Sphinx for his enigmatic style, Mr Kretinsky, who is 49, is worth £6bn according to the Sunday Times Rich List. He lives in plush mansions in Paris and London, was originally a lawyer and made his fortune in European energy markets.

Our meeting was at Claridge’s in June 2024 – I was trying to convince him to give me an interview about his audacious attempt to buy a British institution that was once seen as a national treasure: Royal Mail.

His profile as a buyer was one that unions and ministers typically would be wary of because of his historic connections with Russia – his companies own a gas pipeline that has transported Russian gas to Europe.

But six months on, his bid to buy Royal Mail’s parent company was cleared by the UK government after he agreed “legally binding” undertakings.

It was agreed that the government would retain a so-called “golden share”, requiring it to approve any major changes to Royal Mail’s ownership, headquarters location and tax residency. The deal was also blessed by unions.

Earlier this month, the owner of Royal Mail said that the takeover could be completed by the end of April as the deal cleared the final regulatory hurdles standing in the way.

But step back and Royal Mail seems a strange target for a globally mobile oil and gas billionaire investor to set his sights on. It begs the question why would anyone, let alone a successful international entrepreneur, want to buy this faded relic?

Royal Mail was founded by Henry VIII more than 500 years ago and still carries the royal cipher on its vans. It is part of the fabric of British life and many people still have a fond relationship with their ‘postie’, who walks down their path bringing their letters and parcels to their door.

But in recent years Royal Mail’s crown has slipped. It is losing money and market share, has been fined for missing delivery targets and has made an enemy of its own workforce through a series of bitter strikes.

Royal Mail’s letter business is in steep decline too. It has gone from a peak of 20 billion letters sent in 2004 to under seven billion sent last year.

In December 2024, it was fined £10.5m by the regulator Ofcom for failing to meet delivery targets for first and second class mail.

While the boom in e-commerce has seen the volume of parcels rise, Royal Mail’s share of that more profitable business has been falling as new competitors like DPD, DHL, Amazon and Evri have eaten into its market share.

Royal Mail was split off from the Post Office in 2012 and privatised in 2013 at a value of £3.3bn. Its shares immediately rocketed by 38% on the first day of trading, leading to criticism – from the National Audit Office, among others – that it had been sold on the cheap.

At its peak in Covid-era May 2021, the company was worth more than £6bn but had slumped to just over £2bn when Mr Kretinsky launched his takeover bid last April.

He sealed the deal at £3.6bn – 63% higher than before he signalled his intent, but barely more than it was worth at privatisation over a decade ago.

“Royal Mail is a business that has historically found it difficult to grow revenues by more than costs,” says Alex Paterson, an analyst at Peel Hunt stockbrokers. “It has seen its parcels market share eroded by more dynamic competition that has been able to invest more in technology, and it has struggled with industrial relations to keep staff working towards a common goal.

“This is not a challenge to underestimate nor one that can be overcome quickly, but that requires considerable long-term investment in infrastructure, technology and staff.”

Part of the challenge, and one that puts Royal Mail at a disadvantage compared with its rivals, is that unlike them, Royal Mail has to meet a string of legal and regulatory obligations, says Hazel King, the editor of Parcel and Post Technology International.

Under what is called the universal service obligation (USO), Royal Mail is required by law to deliver letters six days a week and parcels five days a week to every address in the UK. So it cannot pick and choose which business it wants to do.

“Royal Mail must meet their universal service obligation while trying to compete with private firms who often cherry-pick the most profitable business,” says Ms King.

Mr Kretinsky says he has a plan. His success in the energy sector allowed him to buy a 27.5% stake in Royal Mail’s parent company, International Distribution Services (IDS). And his company – EP Group – intends to build a pan-European conglomerate built on three pillars: energy, retail and logistics.

He sees IDS as the cornerstone of the logistics pillar, with a plan to go toe-to-toe with the likes of Deutsche Post DHL, DPD and Amazon.

The USO has been under review by Ofcom, with Royal Mail hoping that the regulator will reduce the requirement to deliver second-class letters from six days a week to every other weekday. That single move could save Royal Mail £300m a year – putting it back on a break-even footing.

Mr Kretinsky told me during our interview that he would honour the USO “as long as I am alive”, but he is unsurprisingly very much in favour of changing its terms. He said he hopes that “rational minds prevail” when reforming a service that is unsustainable in its current form.

So far, the noises from Ofcom seem to be supportive. The regulator’s chief executive Dame Melanie Dawes told the BBC there were “real questions about what the service needs to be going into the future”.

Given letter numbers are falling, “we have to think about what is economical”, she said, adding Ofcom would be publishing plans for the regulation of Royal Mail “to make sure it is sustainable”.

While Royal Mail generally welcomed the proposed changes to the Universal Service Obligation, Royal Mail pushed back against proposed new delivery time and business customer requirements.

Royal Mail said last week that the level at which Ofcom is proposing to set the new delivery targets – 99.5% of First Class letters delivered within three days, and the same percentage of Second Class letters within five – is “over specified and will add significant cost to the delivery of the Universal Service”.

It also expressed concerns that proposals to add a new category of regulation to ensure timely delivery for business users like direct mail companies “goes against the wider government drive to reduce unnecessary regulation”.

But there are other factors that may have driven the sale. Some analysts have speculated that there is another jewel in the crown of IDS – and that Mr Kretinsky may really be after a different part of the business.

Along with Royal Mail, IDS also owns a European parcels business called GLS which it acquired in 1999 – long before Royal Mail was split off from the Post Office and privatised.

Last year GLS made a profit of £320m, compared to Royal Mail, which lost £348m as letter volumes continued to plunge and new competitors ate into its market share of the more profitable parcels business.

“GLS has been a profitable growth business, which has seen investment whereas Royal Mail has been a perpetual underperformer, as the board of parent company IDS has invested where it thinks it will see the best returns,” says Mr Paterson.

Mr Kretinsky rejects suggestions from some quarters that he wants to break up the group and has committed to keeping it together for at least five years. Even beyond that, he says the plan is to grow the company rather than shrink it, so a disposal of GLS would be “nonsensical”.

In fact, Mr Kretinsky says he hopes to bring the European parcel know-how at GLS to bear on Royal Mail’s operations.

What the unions are hoping, and Kretinsky is promising, is that Royal Mail will see greater investment and over time begin to look a bit more like GLS and its European counterparts such as Deutche Post DHL.

Given all the challenges Royal Mail faces, there’s an obvious question – why would a billionaire want to chance his arm on turning round something that others couldn’t, while up against powerful competitors?

Well, if you believe as Kretinsky does – and he is surely right – that getting parcels to people is a profitable and growing industry, then buying Royal Mail and GLS gives you a way to become a big European player in logistics quickly.

Add to that a powerful and historic brand, a database with every single UK address and a frontline workforce that most of its customers are fond of and pleased to see when they walk down the path – then, despite the challenges, it begins to make sense.

Mr Kretinsky is convinced future growth lies in out-of-home (OOH) delivery. The parcel lockers found in supermarket car parks and elsewhere, operated by the likes of Amazon, Evri and UPS, have grown quickly across Europe.

Earlier this month it was reported that Sainsbury’s would be the first supermarket to partner with Royal Mail and install parcel lockers at supermarkets. Some are already operating at several stores including ones in Clapham, Kidderminster and Chislehurst.

Royal Mail has also trialled a new postbox that can take small parcels. Customers procure a barcode from an app, then at the postbox they scan the barcode and drop the parcel into a drawer – this is all powered by solar panels on the box.

Emma Gilthorpe, Royal Mail chief executive, called it an “historic change” to give postboxes “a new lease of life”.

All of this boils down to the same thing: convenience. It means customers don’t have to wait at home for a delivery – the sender or parcel business emails or texts a code to unlock the locker. For the business it’s more efficient, allowing couriers to deliver lots of parcels to one place – meaning fewer miles on the road and less time.

“If they can grow the parcels business and claw back market share, there is every chance that they can add new jobs that could offset the reduction in jobs in the declining letters business,” says Mr Paterson.

“There is a significant long-term opportunity to run Royal Mail more successfully with regulatory changes to the USO and greater investment in technology and out-of-home deliveries.”

But Royal Mail still has a lot of catching up to do with its competitors. It currently has 1,500 lockers in the UK and aims to grow this figure to at least 20,000 over time. By contrast, Amazon already has 5,000 lockers across the UK and InPost has 7,500 across the UK.

That Mr Kretinsky has pulled off the takeover is no easy feat. Royal Mail is, after all, considered vital national infrastructure and as such the deal required review under national security laws.

Then there is the fact that his companies own a gas pipeline that has transported Russian gas to Europe – paid for and approved by EU member states. The small amount that was transported was reduced to zero at the end of 2024 when Ukraine refused to renew permission for any gas to flow across its borders.

Speaking in front of MPs in November, UK Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds referred to Mr Kretinsky as a “legitimate business figure” whose alleged links to Russia had already been reviewed and dismissed when he became the biggest shareholder in the company two years ago.

Getting the unions on board seemed even more of a challenge and the Communication Workers Union was wary of Mr Kretinsky. “The CWU believes Royal Mail should be in public hands,” Dave Ward, the CWU’s general secretary, told the BBC in June. “We know there are legitimate concerns about Royal Mail Group being owned by a foreign private equity investor.”

But during negotiations, union representatives secured a series of time-limited commitments from him, including guarantees that he will protect Royal Mail’s pension surplus, that there will be no compulsory redundancies for two years, no sell-off or break-up of any operational part of the existing company and no outsourcing of grades represented by the CWU.

Mr Kretinsky also agreed to restrictions on moving dividends out of Royal Mail Group and to respect agreements with and recognition of the CWU. He said he would keep the brand name and Royal Mail’s headquarters and tax residency in the UK for the next five years.

Union bosses told me that a life under Mr Kretinsky “couldn’t be any worse than what we have had for the last 10 years”.

So, as Mr Kretinsky looks certain to pull off the sale, what will customers notice?

The frequency of second-class deliveries may be reduced after the Ofcom review. We will see new Royal Mail lockers appearing in our neighbourhoods. And the price of first-class mail may go up: second-class stamps are regulated by Ofcom, while first-class ones are not.

The monarch’s head will still be on those stamps, but there is a new king of our mail system. And his name is Daniel Kretinsky.

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Fifty-seven years into his career, Neil Young has harvested millions of fans – but none of those followers is more devoted than his pet dogs.

“They love the music,” says the musician’s wife, actress Daryl Hannah.

“They go to every sound check and lay under the piano on the stage. Whenever Neil is playing, the dogs just migrate right to him and lay at his feet.”

It’s not just the dogs. During the 2020 lockdown, Young performed a livestream concert from the barn at his Colorado farm, surrounded by alpacas, ducks, chickens and even a horse.

“And every single one of the animals came over and laid down and watched him,” Hannah says. “It was so cool. I think they’re really drawn to the music.”

Hannah, known for appearing in films such as Blade Runner, Splash and Kill Bill, directed that livestream – and she’s stayed behind the camera to make a documentary about Young’s 2023 solo tour.

Filmed largely on her phone (“and it’s not even the most recent model”), it captures the star’s return to the stage, aged 75, after a four-year break, with his dogs in tow.

“He was very nervous about it,” she recalls.

“There’s always a point where he’s like, ‘I don’t know if I can do this… We’ll see’.”

“It’s funny, because he didn’t do any rehearsals before the tour. He likes things to be real and spontaneous. But as soon as he walked out on stage, he was fine.”

Playing without a band, the shows were loose and unpredictable. The setlist changed every night, and even recurring songs like Heart of Gold and Like A Hurricane would be played in different settings, on different instruments, without warning.

It’s a set-up that caused his director a few headaches.

“It was really hit or miss because every day he would go out to do sound check, and he would choose one of his three pianos and play something like Expecting To Fly,” says Hannah.

“So we’d set a camera on that piano but, when it came to show time, he wouldn’t go near it. There were quite a few shows where we literally got no footage.

“I was frustrated in the editing room, trust me.”

Despite those challenges, Hannah captured spellbinding, stripped back versions of rarely-played tracks like Vampire Blues, If You Got Love and Prime Of Life.

More revealing, however, was the footage she shot off the stage.

Large stretches of the film take place on a silver eagle tour bus, where Young rides shotgun beside his longtime driver, Jerry Don Burden.

Together, they shoot the breeze like Vladimir and Estragon – but rather than waiting for Godot, they’re waiting for the next arena car park.

The conversations are wonderfully mundane. There is ample discussion of scenery, snacks and setlists (“people think they want to hear the hits, because that’s all they’ve ever heard”, Young observes.)

It’s punctuated by stretches of companionable silence, where Young drums on his knees, or interacts with his son Ben, who was born with severe cerebral palsy.

Later, the musician emerges from the bathroom, stares into the camera and deadpans: “Now there’s no risk of having to pee in the middle of the show”.

Capturing that day-to-day normality was Hannah’s motivation from the start.

“So many performers put on a persona, and Neil just does not have that quality at all. Whatever he’s talking about with his bus driver, he continues talking about with the audience.

“People think of him as this intimidating, inscrutable person who’ll make an album the record company refuses to put out,” she continues, referring to the time Geffen Records sued Young for submitting two albums it considered “musically uncharacteristic”.

Hannah says people who judge him on that basis have got it wrong.

“He just has an absolute, uncanny commitment to his creative muse,” she argues.

“He’s not driven by financial interests, he’s not driven by self-aggrandisement, he’s not driven by anything other than that creative force, and it’s pretty incredible to witness.

“Having spent so much time with him, my perception is that he’s completely guileless. He has a lot of warmth and innocence, so I wanted to show that.”

Young recently made headlines for pulling out of the Glastonbury Festival, saying the BBC had asked him “to do a lot of things” he was “not interested in”.

He later backtracked, saying he’d received bad information, and will top the bill on the Pyramid Stage this June (Hannah jokes he’ll serenade Glastonbury’s livestock, in the style of his lockdown sessions).

But his European tour isn’t without peril. Writing on his website, Young has shared concerns that he could be barred from the US upon his return, following a rise in the number of people being detained and deported upon entering the country.

“If I talk about Donald J Trump, I may be one of those returning to America who is barred or put in jail to sleep on a cement floor with an aluminium blanket,” he wrote.

Young, who holds dual Canadian-American citizenship, has long been an outspoken critic of President Trump, calling him “a disgrace to my country” and suing him for using the song Rockin’ In the Free World on the campaign trail.

Hannah reveals her husband was harassed during the first Trump administration, as he went through the process of becoming a US citizen.

“They tried to every trick in the book to mess him up, and made him keep coming back to be re-interviewed and re-interviewed. It’s ridiculous [because] he’s been living in America and paying taxes here since he was in his 20s.”

Despite that, she doesn’t think Young will be prevented from entering the country.

“They’ve been detaining people who have green cards or visas – which is hideous and horrifying – but they have not, so far, been refusing to let American citizens back in the country, so I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

Hannah will accompany Young to Glastonbury, and says she’ll film his performance from the side of the stage (perhaps the BBC can use that footage, if all else fails).

The trip happens to fall on the 25th anniversary of her West End debut, in The Seven Year Itch. So, has she any desire to tread the boards again?

“Oh God, no,” she exclaims. “I really loving directing, because I don’t have to be the focus of things, and that’s a much more comfortable position for me.

“I mean, never say never, but that’s how I feel right now.”

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.

A Lawton has worked in Canada’s auto sector for more than a century.

Their children are “fifth generation Ford workers”, Kathryn Lawton said, and she and her husband both work for the carmaker in Windsor, the heart of Canada’s automobile sector, just a bridge away from the US state of Michigan.

So when US President Donald Trump suggested that Canada stole the American auto industry, Chad Lawton calls it “ludicrous”.

“These were never American jobs. These were Canadian jobs,” he told the BBC, on the day that Trump’s auto tariffs came into force.

“They’ve always been Canadian jobs, and they’re going to stay Canadian jobs because we didn’t take them from them. We created them, we sustained them.”

Kathryn agreed: “This is Ford City right here.”

Tucked away in southwestern Ontario, Windsor and the surrounding Essex county now finds itself on one of the front lines of Trump’s trade war as it faces a 25% tariff on foreign-made vehicles (though for Canada, that will be reduced by half for cars made with 50% US-made components or more) as well as blanket 25% US tariffs on steel and aluminium imports.

US tariffs on auto parts are expected next month.

The region of just over 422,000 grew alongside Detroit – nicknamed Motor City for its role as an auto manufacturing hub – turning the region into an important centre for North American automobile production.

Ford first established its presence in Windsor in 1896, while the first Stellantis (then Chrysler) factory arrived in 1928, with dozens of factories and suppliers springing up around the city and surrounding region in the ensuing decades.

Much of the manufacturing has since left the city, though it still boasts two Ford engine factories and a Stellantis assembly plant, which employ thousands.

• WATCH: Is the US heading for a recession?
• EXPLAINER: What are tariffs, and why is Trump using them?

Workers on both sides of the border have built iconic vehicles over the decades, most recently models like the Dodge Charger and the Ford F-150.

Some 24,000 people work directly in the automotive industry in Windsor-Essex, while an estimated 120,000 other jobs depend on the sector.

A drive through the neighbourhood around the Ford factory feels like a trip back in time, showcasing classic bungalows from the last century. Many have seen better days, though each boasts a verandah and small front yard. Large murals celebrating the city’s automotive history punctuate the scenery.

Windsor has weathered the challenges of the North American auto sector alongside Michigan, as the industry shares a deeply integrated supply chain.

Chad Lawton points to the 2008 financial crisis, when the Big Three American automakers – Ford, General Motors and Chrysler – faced staggering losses, and GM and Chrysler received billions in US bailouts to avoid bankruptcy.

That period was “bad, not just for next door, but also we went through a very, very rough time”, he said.

“This feels the same. The level of anxiety with the workers, the level of fear, the idea and the belief that this is just something that is so completely out of your control that you can’t wrap your head around what to do.”

John D’Agnolo, president of Unifor Local 200, which represents Ford workers in Windsor, said the situation “has created havoc”.

“I think we’re going to see a recession,” he said.

He continued: “People aren’t going to buy anything. I gotta tell my members not to buy anything. They gotta pay rent and food for their kids.”

What makes the tariffs such a hard pill to swallow for auto workers the BBC spoke to is that this situation has been brought about by the US, Canada’s closest economic and security ally.

“It seems like a stab in the back,” said Austin Welzel, 27, an assembly line worker at Stellantis. “It’s almost like our neighbors, our friends – they don’t want to work with us.”

Christina Grossi, who has worked at Ford for 25 years, said the prospect of losing her job, and what it will mean to her family, is “terrifying”.

But Ms Grossi also fears losing the meaning she gets from her work.

“You’ve been doing this job for so long and you really take pride in it, you’re proud of what you’re putting out to the public,” she said. “And now someone’s taking away the opportunity to do that.”

Laura Dawson, the executive director of Future Borders Coalition, said the tariffs could cause major upheavals throughout the sector due to its deep integration, with ripple effects felt across the continent if exports from Canada stop for more than a week.

She said the US tariffs structure is extremely complicated.

Cars crossing the border will need every component to be assessed for “qualifying content” – where it originates, the cost of labour to produce it, and – if it contains steel or aluminium – where that metal came from.

“Every part of an automobile is literally under a microscope for where it was produced and how,” she said.

The US tariffs have been a major factor in Canada’s general election, which is on 28 April, with Canada’s political parties rolling out suites of plans on the campaign trail to help the auto sector.

• A simple guide to Canada’s federal election
• Who’s who in Canada’s federal election
• LISTEN: World Questions programme – Canada

Liberal leader Mark Carney, the current prime minister, has pledged to create a C$2bn ($1.4bn; £1.1bn) fund to boost competitiveness and protect manufacturing jobs, alongside plans to build an “all-in-Canada” auto component parts network.

In his role as prime minister, he imposed last week a reported C$35bn in counter auto tariffs, in addition to previously announced reciprocal measures on the US.

Carney’s main rival, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, has vowed to remove sales tax on Canadian vehicles, and to create a fund for companies affected by the tariffs to help keep their employees.

Jagmeet Singh, whose left-wing New Democratic Party is fighting for a competitive seat in Windsor, has pledged to use every dollar from counter tariffs to help workers, and to stop manufacturers from moving equipment to the US.

Still, Windsor’s economy is dependent on automakers, and heavily relies on trade with the United States. If it falters, everything – from restaurants to charities – will feel the effects.

The Penalty Box is a sports bar just down the road from the Stellantis plant, and popular with the workers there.

“We’re one of the busiest restaurants. I don’t want to say it, but if you ask around about the Penalty Box, they’ll tell you,” its 70-year-old owner, Van Niforos, said. “We do close to 1,000 meals a day.”

With a white apron and a wide smile, he relates its 33-year history. But his demeanour darkens when asked about threats the auto sector faces.

“It’s a devastating situation. I don’t want to think about it,” he said.

“We employ 60 people and we’re open six days a week. [If something happens to the Stellantis plant], will we be able to keep 60 people working? Absolutely no.”

Chad Lawton, sitting in his office at the local union, takes a deep breath as he contemplates how precarious his life feels.

He doesn’t think Carney’s counter tariffs help the current situation, arguing they “just makes a really bad situation a little bit worse”.

He hopes there is room for trade negotiation, but said he will be the first to say that Canada “cannot just concede and roll over”.

“I’ve worked for a Ford Motor Company for almost 31 years, and I have never seen anything close to this,” he said.

“That includes Covid, because at least with Covid, we knew what we were dealing with. And there was some certainty there.”

“This is all over the map.”

Sony has raised the price of its PlayStation 5 consoles worldwide, citing “challenging” market conditions.

The price of the digital edition of the PS5 console in the UK has increased by £40 to £429.99.

Its cost for European customers has risen by approximately €50 to €499.99.

The company pointed to high inflation and “fluctuating exchange rates” in a blog post explaining its decision.

Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) executive Isabelle Tomatis said PS5 prices in Australia and New Zealand would also rise – including for physical versions that have a disc drive.

The company said the price of the physical edition of the console would not change in the UK.

But it has reduced the cost of its disc drives – which are required for those with digital consoles who want to play physical media – from £99.99 to £69.99 in the UK.

Piers Harding-Rolls, research director at Ampere Analysis, said the disc-free version of the PS5 had formed a larger share of Sony’s total sales over the last 18 months.

He said this new price adjustment had brought “the digital edition more into alignment with the standard version”.

While President Donald Trump has revealed a tariff exemption for some electronics, video game consoles are not thought to be among them.

Christopher Dring, who writes about the gaming industry in The Game Business newsletter, said while Sony did not directly mention tariffs in its decision, their “knock-on effect” could have an impact on pricing worldwide.

“The US is the biggest market for video game consoles, and rather than simply increase prices there, it’s possible the likes of PlayStation could increase pricing globally in an effort to protect, as best they can, the US market,” he told the BBC.

“Ultimately, the era when game consoles went down in price over time is certainly over.”

The price increase comes as Nintendo’s launch of its rival Switch 2 console was marred by the impact of US tariffs on markets worldwide.

It said it would suspend US pre-orders for the device so it could “assess the potential impact of tariffs and evolving market conditions”.

And Mr Harding-Rolls said he felt Sony may have been given “the green light to increase pricing” due to the Switch 2’s £395 price tag.

“At its current pricing, the digital version would be cheaper than the Switch 2, leaving Sony with some breathing space to increase its pricing, while remaining competitive across the console hardware market,” he said.

This is the second time Sony has increased the RRP for its latest console.

Its initial £360 price tag for the disc drive-free digital edition was seen as a low price at the time, as Sony sought to match its price to that of the Xbox Series X.

But it rose the price by £30 in 2022 – meaning with the latest price increase, the digital edition of the PS5 has increased by roughly £70 since it first went on sale.

Fifteen people including former Conservative MP Craig Williams have been charged with betting offences by the Gambling Commission.

The investigation was launched last year following bets placed on the timing of the 2024 general election.

The commission said the investigation focused on individuals “suspected of using confidential information – specifically advance knowledge of the proposed election date – to gain an unfair advantage in betting markets”.

Before the election was called, Williams was the MP for Montgomeryshire and an aide to then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

The group of those charged includes Russell George, a Member of the Senedd, who was suspended from the Welsh Conservative group after he was charged.

Others charged include Laura Saunders, the former Conservative parliamentary candidate in Bristol North West, and her partner Anthony Lee, a former director of campaigning for the Conservatives; Thomas James, the director of the Welsh Conservatives and Nick Mason, a former chief data officer for the party.

A Conservative spokesman said the party “believes that those working in politics must act with integrity”.

“Current members of staff who have been charged are being suspended with immediate effect,” he said.

“These incidents took place in May last year. Our party is now under new leadership and we are cooperating fully with the Gambling Commission to ensure that their investigation can conclude swiftly and transparently.”

Welsh Conservatives leader Darren Millar said the suspension of George was “a neutral act pending the outcome of the justice process”.

Bernard Gentry, chairman of the Welsh Conservatives’, told BBC Wales: “It’s disappointing that these individuals have been charged. But we need to wait for the result of the court case before passing judgement.”

Others on the list are:

• Simon Chatfield, 51, of Lower Bourne, Farnham
• Amy Hind, 34, of Loughton, Essex
• Anthony Hind, 36, Loughton, Essex,
• Former police officer Jeremy Hunt, 55, of Horne, Horley
• Charlotte Lang, 36, of Brixton, London
• Iain Makepeace, 47, of Newcastle Upon Tyne
• Paul Place, 53, of Hammersmith, London
• James Ward, 40, London
• Jacob Willmer, 39, of Richmond, London

Those charged are due to appear at Westminster Magistrates Court on 13 June.

On 22 May 2024, Rishi Sunak announced the general election would be held on 4 July – a decision that overturned expectations of an autumn poll.

In early June 2024, it was reported that Williams had placed a bet on the date of the general election.

Approached by the BBC, Williams said he had “clearly made a huge error of judgement that’s for sure and I apologise”.

He refused to comment on whether he knew about the election date when he placed the wager saying it would not be “appropriate” while the Gambling Commission was investigating.

Following the commission’s decision to launch an investigation, the Conservative Party pulled its support for Williams and Saunders.

Hundreds of flights have been cancelled and trains 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 news agency Reuters.

Wind gusts of up to 93mph (150kph) – 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 Reuters.

Meanwhile, a businessman from the Zhejiang province, near Shanghai, 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 from a cold vortex system over Mongolia and are expected to last through the weekend.

Winds bringing sand and dust from Mongolia are routine in spring, but climate change can make storms stronger and more severe.

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

China measures wind speed on a scale that goes from one 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.

Popstars sneaked into the audience at Coachella to watch each other perform this weekend – as Lady Gaga wowed festivalgoers with a dramatic main stage set.

Fans swarmed to catch the Poker Face singer perform songs from her new album Mayhem, delivering a visual spectacle by opening her set with what can only be described as a satanic ritual to her 2011 song Bloody Mary.

Spotted watching on were South Korean pop group Blackpink, whose member Lisa was also seen dancing to K-pop boy band Enhypen after performing herself.

Meanwhile, Beautiful Things singer Benson Boone surprised the crowd by bringing out Sir Brian May for a rendition of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody while executing a trademark front flip.

Actor Timothee Chalamet and partner Kylie Jenner were seen mingling with the crowd on the second day of the music festival, which is taking place at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California.

Blackpink’s Lisa, who recently starred in the third season of HBO’s The White Lotus, was supported during her set by co-star Patrick Schwarzenegger, who posted a clip of himself singing along to her hit Money.

Meanwhile, Justin and Hailey Bieber, singer Tate McRae and Austrailian rapper The Kid Laroi were spotted dancing at Yeat’s set on Friday night.

Headline acts this year include Megan Thee Stallion, rapper Post Malone and US punk-rock band Green Day at the 100,000-attendees-a-day event.

Fresh from her five wins at the 2025 Brit Awards in March, Charli XCX had fans reliving their “brat summer” on Saturday, performing such hits as Von Dutch and 360 to a bumper crowd.

The British singer also brought out a number of guests during her set, including Troye Sivan, Lorde and Billie Eilish, who appeared on the chart topping hit Guess.

Before the performances could even begin, however, there was chaos at the gates, with ticket holders queuing in heavy traffic to get into the festival.

This year Coachella replaced its first come first-served system for campers with a reservation-style programme, forcing attendees to wait up to 12 hours in their vehicles in scorching desert temperatures with limited facilities.

Most music festivals are never short of political activism and this year’s Coachella was no different.

Left-wing Senator Bernie Sanders took the stage before singer songwriter Clairo’s Saturday set to attack US President Donald Trump’s administration.

“This country faces some very difficult challenges,” he told the crowd. “The future of what happens to America is dependent upon your generation.”

Green Day also reworded lyrics from some of their hits during the band’s headline performance, referencing the war in Gaza and railing against what frontman Billy Joe Armstong has repeatedly called “the Maga agenda”.

Following their success at the Bafta awards for their self titled feature film, Irish rap group Kneecap took to the Sonora stage and had the crowd chanting about former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

The online livestream of the performance cut out at the exact moment the band made their political remarks.

Coachella has come under scrutiny in recent years, with one survey reporting in 2024 that 75% of 3,000 US respondents thought the festival was being overshadowed by influencers.

The festival also suffered a number of talent-related incidents last year.

Blur frontman Damon Albarn berrated the crowd in 2024, accusing them of being “lacklustre” in their singing.

“You’re never seeing us again so you might as well sing it,” he said. “Know what I’m saying?”

Grimes was also forced to apologise for “major technical difficulties” during her Coachella DJ set.

Fans watched the singer scream in frustration after a string of problems including songs playing at double speed.

The festival will continue on Sunday and resume next weekend.

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.

The federal government also recently sought to crack down on foreign homebuyers, by tripling fees.

However that 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.

In their respective campaign launches, both parties promote housing initiatives aimed at first homebuyers.

Labor has pledged to expand an existing shared-equity scheme to allow all first homebuyers to purchase homes with a 5% deposit, an ease on the 20% deposit typically needed.

Albanese also promised 100,000 of the new homes his government creates will only be available to first homebuyers, in addition to building more social housing and introducing subsidies to help low-to-moderate-income earners.

The Coalition, if elected, will allow first-time buyers to use up to $50,000 from their superannuation retirement savings to fund a house purchase. They will make mortgage payments partially tax free for up to five years for all first homebuyers with newly built properties.

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.”

Donald Trump says Chinese-made smartphones and other electronics will not be exempt from tariffs – adding they are simply moving into a different levy “bucket”.

European stock markets bounced up on Monday morning after Friday’s official announcement that some of these products would escape levies of up to 145%.

China has called on Donald Trump to “completely cancel” his tariffs regime, and “return to the right path of mutual respect”.

However US officials said on Sunday that products would be subject to a “semiconductor tariff” instead, with Trump expected to reveal more details later.

US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the new levy would be in addition to a host of global tariffs the US imposed earlier this month, then paused for 90 days.

“We need our medicines and we need semiconductors and our electronics to be built in America,” he added.

On Saturday, a US customs notice revealed smartphones, computers and some other electronic devices would be excluded from the 125% tariff on goods entering the country from China.

But Trump chimed in on social media, saying there was no exemption for these products and called such reports about this notice false. Instead, he said that “they are just moving to a different Tariff ‘bucket'”.

Trump added: “We are taking a look at Semiconductors and the WHOLE ELECTRONICS SUPPLY CHAIN in the upcoming National Security Tariff Investigations.”

He said he would provide an update on Monday about semiconductor duties.

Everyday devices such as smartphones and laptops rely on semiconductors, which are small and powerful pieces of tech that form the basic building blocks of modern computation.

• Trump’s iPhone olive branch is a significant trade war retreat
• Trump’s changing tariffs leave shoppers feeling paralysed

On Monday, Sony announced that it was increasing the price of its flagship games console, the PlayStation 5, by about 10% in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, citing a “challenging economic environment”, inflation and fluctuating exchange rates. It did not announce price rises in the United States.

The Chinese commerce ministry had called Trump’s exemptions a “small step” by the US, and said that Beijing was “evaluating the impact” of the move.

But the suggestion by Trump administration officials of plans for future levies may dampen hopes of a thaw in the two rivals’ protectionist posture.

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer was asked on Sunday whether there were any plans for Trump to speak with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.

“Right now we don’t have any plans on that,” he said during an appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation.

Trump imposed a tariff amounting to 54% on imports of products from China at the beginning of April, before escalating to the current 145% rate.

In its own tit-for-tat tariffs, China imposed levies of 34% on US goods, before increasing it to 84% and then 125%, which took effect on Saturday.

In announcing its latest tariffs, China’s commerce ministry said last week that it would “fight to the end” if the US “insists on provoking a tariff war or trade war”.

Late on Saturday, while travelling to Miami, Florida, Trump said he would give more details of the exemptions at the start of next week.

• What are tariffs and why is Trump using them?
• US coffee shops worried about bitter price hike after tariffs

The White House has argued that it is using tariffs as a negotiating tactic to extract more favourable trade terms from other countries.

Trump has said his policy will redress unfairness in the global trading system, as well as bring jobs and factories back to the US.

However, his interventions have seen massive fluctuations in the stock market and raised fears of a decrease in global trade that could have a knock-on effect on jobs and individual economies.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has invited Donald Trump to visit his country ahead of any deal with Russia to end the war.

“Please, before any kind of decisions, any kind of forms of negotiations, come to see people, civilians, warriors, hospitals, churches, children destroyed or dead,” Zelensky said in an interview for CBS’s 60 Minutes programme.

The interview was recorded before a Russian missile hit the city of Sumy, killing 34 people and injuring 117 others.

Russia said it only strikes military or military-related targets while Trump said he had been told it was a mistake, without specifying who told him.

Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting, Friedrich Merz, has accused Russia of a war crime.

The attack comes as the US, Ukraine’s strongest military ally, has been pursuing an end to the war – now in its fourth year – through negotiation under Trump.

Asked about the attack, the US president said it was “terrible” and that he had been “told they made a mistake”, but did not elaborate.

Earlier, Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, retired Lt-Gen Keith Kellogg, said the attack had crossed “any line of decency”.

However, it remains to be seen if Trump will accept Zelensky’s invitation.

Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, is the only senior member of Trump’s team to visit Kyiv, and that was to demand Zelensky sign a contract heavily weighted in Washington’s favour to trade Ukraine’s mineral wealth for continued military aid. Zelensky refused.

The Ukrainian president has highlighted Russia’s continued attacks on civilians while Trump attempts to improve relations with Moscow in search of a ceasefire.

US special envoy Steve Witkoff has already held three meetings with Vladimir Putin, and Kyiv is adamant Moscow will exploit this as it continues to erode Ukraine’s territory.

European leaders condemned the Sumy attack. Merz, who is expected to take over as Germany’s new chancellor next month, told the country’s public broadcaster ARD that the attack constituted a “serious war crime”.

“It was a perfidious act.. and it is a serious war crime, deliberate and intended,” the conservative politician said.

Germany’s outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz, meanwhile, said the attack showed “just what Russia’s supposed readiness for peace [was] worth”.

French President Emmanuel Macron accused Russia of “blatant disregard of human lives, international law, and the diplomatic efforts of President Trump”.

“Strong measures are needed to impose a ceasefire on Russia,” he said. “France is working tirelessly toward this goal, alongside its partners.”

Describing the attack as “barbaric”, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen added: “Russia was and remains the aggressor, in blatant violation of international law.

“Strong measures are urgently needed to enforce a ceasefire. Europe will continue to reach out to partners and maintain strong pressure on Russia until the bloodshed ends and a just and lasting peace is achieved, on Ukraine’s terms and conditions.”

British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer also gave a view, saying he was “appalled at Russia’s horrific attacks on civilians in Sumy”.

A spokesperson for UN Secretary-General António Guterres said he was “deeply alarmed and shocked” to learn of the missile attack.

“Attacks against civilians and civilian objects are prohibited under international humanitarian law, and that any such attacks, wherever they occur, must end immediately”, he added.

Guterres stressed the UN’s support for “meaningful efforts towards a just, lasting and comprehensive peace that fully upholds Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity”.

Sunday’s double missile strike was the deadliest attack on civilians in Ukraine this year.

Another Russian missile attack, earlier this month on 4 April, killed 20 people and injured 61 in the city of Kryvyi Rih.

On that occasion, Russia’s defence ministry said it had targeted a meeting of “unit commanders and Western instructors” in a restaurant. No evidence was provided.

It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of people – the vast majority of them soldiers – have been killed or injured on all sides since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022.

The UN estimates that nearly seven million Ukrainians are currently living as refugees.

The conflict goes back more than a decade, to 2014, when Ukraine’s pro-Russian president was overthrown. Russia then annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea and backed insurgents in bloody fighting in eastern Ukraine.

Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

Two British tourists have drowned off the coast of a popular tourist town at the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef.

A boy, 17, and a man, 46, were swept out to sea on Sunday while swimming at a beach without lifeguards in Seventeen Seventy – a town in Queensland named for the year Captain James Cook arrived in Australia.

The pair were declared dead at the scene after being pulled from the water by a police rescue helicopter.

An Australian man is also in a life-threatening condition after being swept out to sea, and was airlifted to hospital with serious head injuries.

While police revealed that the deceased were from the UK, their names have not yet been released.

“Sunday’s mission was a difficult one,” CapRescue, the emergency rescue service that found the three men, shared on social media – adding that the deaths had occurred “despite the best efforts of all involved”.

Police say the injured Australian man was from Monto, a town about 150 kilometres inland from Seventeen Seventy.

“We’re not sure whether the third person jumped into the water trying to perform a rescue,” Surf Life Saving Queensland’s Darren Everard told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

There is only one beach patrolled by lifeguards within a 50-kilometre radius of Seventeen Seventy.

Police are treating the drownings as non-suspicious and will prepare a report for the coroner.

One-hundred-and-seven people drowned in Australia last year, with 25% of them born overseas, according to Royal Life Saving Australia.

Australia’s coastal fatalities mostly occur around creeks and headlands at high tide when “it’s chaos in the water”, Everard explained.

Speaking to ABC, he encouraged tourists to “seek local knowledge” and swim between the flags.

The White Lotus star Aimee Lou Wood has called a Saturday Night Live (SNL) sketch that impersonated her using exaggerated prosthetic teeth “mean and unfunny”.

The British actress said the US comedy programme “punched down” on her and suggested the sketch was misogynistic.

In a series of Instagram posts, Wood wrote that she was happy to be made fun of “when it’s clever and in good spirits” but that there “must be a cleverer, more nuanced, less cheap way”.

Wood, 31, said she had received “apologies from SNL” after sharing her criticism. The BBC has contacted broadcaster NBC for a response.

The actress’s role in the third series of The White Lotus, which follows a group of guests at a resort, prompted significant media attention surrounding what she calls her “big gap teeth”.

The SNL sketch, which aired this week, imagined US President Donald Trump and his top team spending time at the fictional hotel.

Wood’s character Chelsea was portrayed by cast member Sarah Sherman using a pronounced accent and fake teeth.

At one point, in a reference to the actress’s teeth, she asks: “Fluoride? What’s that?”

Wood, who burst onto screens in Netflix’s Sex Education, said she was “not thin skinned” and understood that SNL was about “caricature”.

“But the whole joke was about fluoride,” she wrote on Sunday.

“I have big gap teeth not bad teeth.”

“The rest of the skit was punching up,” Wood added, “and I/Chelsea was the only one punched down on”.

She said that she was not “hating on” Sarah Sherman, but “hating on the concept”.

Wood also shared a comment by an unnamed user describing the sketch as “sharp and funny” before taking “a screeching turn into 1970s misogyny”.

“This sums up my view,” the actress added.

She also criticised Sherman’s accent, writing: “I respect accuracy even if it’s mean.”

Wood, from Stockport, Greater Manchester, wrote that she had received “thousands of messages” agreeing with her since sharing her posts, and that she was glad she “said something”.

Speaking to GQ magazine last week, Wood said that the conversation surrounding her teeth made her “a bit sad because I’m not getting to talk about my work”.

“It makes me really happy that it’s symbolising rebellion and freedom, but there’s a limit,” she said.

Wood added: “I don’t know if it was a man would we be talking about it this much? It’s still going on about a woman’s appearance.”

Following her posts, Wood’s younger sister Emily offered her support for the actress on her own Instagram story.

Sharing a picture of the pair together, Emily Wood said her sister was “out here personifying the word powerhouse”.

“The admiration I have for this woman is nuts. Beyond comprehension,” she continued, adding that she felt “deep animalistic protectiveness” over her.

“The greatest big sister. My best human on the planet. Her authenticity and originality is incomparable. My god we are really madly blessed to experience life on earth at the same time as her.”

A private plane carrying six people crashed in an open field in upstate New York on Saturday, killing all on board, authorities say.

Among those on board were celebrated former Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) football player Karenna Groff, her parents and her brother, according to a family statement.

The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said the family had been travelling for a holiday celebration when the crash happened.

A video of the final seconds of the flight obtained by officials showed the aircraft intact before it crashed into the ground at a high rate of descent, the NTSB said.

A joint family statement identified the victims as Karenna Groff, her parents Dr Michael Groff and Dr Joy Saini, her brother Jared Groff and his partner Alexia Couyutas Duarte, and Karenna’s partner James Santoro.

“They were a wonderful family,” James’s father, John Santoro, told the Associated Press.

“The world lost a lot of very good people who were going to do a lot of good for the world if they had the opportunity. We’re all personally devastated.”

Karenna, a former athlete, was named Woman of the Year by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in 2022, her senior year.

She had graduated from MIT, where she met James, and was enrolled in medical school at the New York University (NYU), the family said.

Her parents were both prominent doctors, while her brother, Jared, worked as a paralegal and his partner, Alexia, was about to join Harvard Law School.

“Karenna demonstrated exceptional skill and unwavering passion towards the care of patients and the mission of our institution. We will remember her for her warmth, her grace, her kindness, her outstanding accomplishments, and the pure joy she brought to our community,” an NYU spokesperson said.

A New York Times article identified the plane’s pilot as Karenna’s father, Dr Groff, who was “experienced” according to a family statement. The report that he was flying the crashed plane has not been publicly confirmed by the family or the authorities.

Speaking at a press conference on Sunday, NTSB official Todd Inman said the twin-engine Mitsubishi MU-2B was “compressed, buckled and embedded in the terrain” of a muddy agricultural field near Craryville, New York.

The crash happened at about midday as the family were headed to Columbia County Airport.

Mr Inman added that air traffic control attempted to contact the pilot several times but received no response or distress call.

The pilot had been flying under instrument flight rules, rather than visual flight rules, he said, adding that it was too soon to determine if reduced visibility from weather conditions were a factor.

Mr Inman said the plane had an upgraded cockpit with newer technology, certified to Federal Aviation Administration standards.

An investigation is under way and a probable cause of the crash will be determined in the NTSB’s final report in 12 to 24 months’ time.

This comes just days after six people, including a family of Spanish tourists, died in a helicopter crash in New York.

Relatives of a nine-year-old boy who was killed by an accidental gunshot in Australia have been charged over his death.

Paramedics treated the child for serious neck injuries at a farm in Windellama – near Goulburn in New South Wales (NSW) – on Sunday, following reports of a shooting. The boy died at the scene.

Local police have since arrested two people, including a 14-year-old, and charged them with unauthorised firearm offences.

An investigation into the incident is underway. It is not known what relation the family members had to the child.

“It’s rare to hear one shot here,” Ron Wenban, who lives near the farm with his partner, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

“To have a gunshot like that happen, that was a concern, neither of us wanted to go over there.”

Mr Wenban said the family were based in Sydney and had bought the property as a holiday home.

Both of the relatives who were arrested will appear before court in May, with the teen attending the NSW Children’s Court.

The man was charged with allowing an unauthorised person to possess a firearm, as well as not keeping a firearm safely, while the teenager was charged with unauthorised possession.

The teen has been granted bail.

Pop star Katy Perry and five other women are set to blast into space aboard Jeff Bezos’ space tourism rocket.

The singer will be joined by Bezos’s fiancée Lauren Sánchez and CBS presenter Gayle King.

The New Shepard rocket is due to lift off from its West Texas launch site and the launch window opens at 08:30 local time (14:30 BST). You’ll be able to follow the launch live here on the BBC website.

The flight will last around 11 minutes and take the crew more than 100km (62 miles) above Earth, crossing the internationally recognised boundary of space and giving the crew a few moments of weightlessness.

Also on board are former Nasa rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, and film producer Kerianne Flynn.

The spacecraft is fully autonomous, requiring no pilots, and the crew will not manually operate the vehicle.

The capsule will return to Earth with a parachute-assisted soft landing, while the rocket booster will land itself around two miles away from the launch site.

“If you had told me that I would be part of the first-ever all-female crew in space, I would have believed you. Nothing was beyond my imagination as a child. Although we didn’t grow up with much, I never stopped looking at the world with hopeful WONDER!” Mrs Perry said in a social media post.

Blue Origin says the last all-female spaceflight was over 60 years ago when Soviet Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to travel into space on a solo mission aboard the spacecraft Vostok 6.

Since then, there have been no other all-female spaceflights but women have made numerous significant contributions.

Katy Perry gave her followers a sneak peek of the capsule she’s training to launch aboard the New Shepard, all while in her spacesuit.

She revealed her call sign as “Feather” and showed where her fellow astronauts – the “Taking Up Space” crew – would be and expressed her excitement about singing in space.

Blue Origin is a private space company founded in 2000 by Bezos, the billionaire entrepreneur who also started Amazon.

Although Blue Origin has not released full ticket prices, a $150,000 (£114,575.85) deposit is required to reserve a seat—underlining the exclusivity of these early flights.

Alongside its suborbital tourism business, the company is also developing long-term space infrastructure, including reusable rockets and lunar landing systems.

The New Shepard rocket is designed to be fully reusable and its booster returns to the launch pad for vertical landings after each flight, reducing overall costs.

According to US law, astronauts must complete comprehensive training for their specific roles.

Blue Origin says its New Shepard passengers are trained over two days with a focus on physical fitness, emergency protocols, details about the safety measures and procedures for zero gravity.

Additionally, there are two support members referred to as Crew Member Seven: one provides continuous guidance to astronauts, while the other maintains communication from the control room during the mission.

The rise of space tourism has prompted criticism that it is too exclusive and environmentally damaging.

Supporters argue that private companies are accelerating innovation and making space more accessible.

Professor Brian Cox told the BBC in 2024: “Our civilisation needs to expand beyond our planet for so many reasons,” and believes that collaboration between NASA and commercial firms is a positive step.

Rocket engine exhaust contains gases and particles that can affect Earth’s climate and ozone layer.

On its web page under the title “Protecting our Planet” Blue Origin claims “During flight, the only byproduct of New Shepard’s engine combustion is water vapor with no carbon emissions.”

However, Eloise Marais, a professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Air Quality at University College London points out that anything that combusts at a higher temperature turns nitrogen in the atmosphere into nitrogen oxides, which are planet-warming greenhouse gases.

She also points out that water vapour too is a greenhouse gas and is a chemical that is not supposed to be in the upper layers of the atmosphere.

“It alters the chemistry of the stratosphere, depleting the ozone layer, and also forms clouds that affect climate,” she says.

Experts say that as more and more rockets are launched, the risks of harming the ozone layer increases.

The high cost of space tourism makes it inaccessible to most people, with these expensive missions out of reach for the majority.

Critics, including actress Olivia Munn, questioned the optics of this particular venture, remarking “there’s a lot of people who can’t even afford eggs,” during an appearance on Today with Jenna & Friends.

Astronaut Tim Peake has defended the value of human space travel, especially in relation to tackling global issues such as climate change.

At the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Peake voiced his disappointment that space exploration was increasingly seen as a pursuit for the wealthy, stating: “I personally am a fan of using space for science and for the benefit of everybody back on Earth, so in that respect, I feel disappointed that space is being tarred with that brush.”

A trial in the landmark antitrust case against social media giant Meta kicks off in Washington on Monday.

The US competition and consumer watchdog alleges that Meta, which already owned Facebook, bought Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 to eliminate competition, effectively giving itself a monopoly.

The FTC reviewed and approved those acquisitions but committed to monitor the outcomes. If the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) wins the case it could force Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to sell off both Instagram and WhatsApp.

Meta previously said it was sure it would win and experts have told the BBC it is likely to argue that Instagram users have had a better experience since it was taken over.

“The [FTC’s] argument is the acquisition of Instagram was a way of neutralizing this rising competitive threat to Facebook,” says Rebecca Haw Allensworth, a professor of antitrust at Vanderbilt Law School.

Ms Allensworth says Mr Zuckerberg’s own words, including those from his emails, may offer the most convincing evidence at trial.

“He said it’s better to buy than to compete. It’s hard to get more literal than that,” Ms Allensworth says.

Meta, on the other hand, is likely to argue that intent is not particularly relevant in an antitrust case.

“They’re going to say the real question is: are consumers better off as a result of this merger?,” she said. “They’ll put on a lot of evidence that Instagram became what it is today because it benefited from being owned by Facebook.”

Mr Zuckerberg and the company’s former chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg are both expected to testify at the trial, which could run for several weeks.

The case, FTC v Meta, was filed during US President Donald Trump’s first administration but risks becoming politicized during his second term.

Mr Zuckerberg has lobbied Trump in person to have the FTC drop the case, according to the Wall Street Journal.

When asked by the BBC to confirm that report, Meta sidestepped the question but said in a statement: “The FTC’s lawsuits against Meta defies reality.”

“More than 10 years after the FTC reviewed and cleared our acquisitions, the commission’s action in this case sends the message that no deal is ever truly final,” a Meta spokesperson told the BBC.

Relations between Mr Zuckerberg and Trump had been frosty partly because Trump was barred from Meta’s social media platforms after the US Capitol riot in January 2021.

Since then, the relationship has thawed somewhat.

Meta contributed $1m (£764,400) to Trump’s inaugural fund, and in January announced Ultimate Fighting Championship Fighter (UFC) boss Dana White, a close Trump ally, would join its board of directors.

The company also announced in January that it was doing away with independent fact-checkers.

President Trump’s move to fire two FTC commissioners in March also hangs over the case.

As Democrats, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya were in the minority on the five-seat commission.

Until Wednesday, just two seats of those seats were filled, both by Republicans. Another Republican was confirmed by the Senate on Thursday.

Slaughter and Bedoya – who are suing the Trump administration to be reinstated – say the move to push them out was meant to intimidate.

“The president sent a very clear signal not only to us but to Chairman Ferguson and Commissioner [Melissa] Holyoak that if they do something he doesn’t like, he could fire them too,” Slaughter told the BBC in a recent interview.

“So if they don’t want to do a favor for his political allies, they’re on the chopping block as well,” Slaughter said.

Slaughter and Bedoya both expressed alarm at recent reports about Zuckerberg’s lobbying efforts.

“My hope is that there is no political interference,” Mr Bedoya told the BBC.

The FTC did not respond to a request for comment from the BBC.

Ferguson, who was appointed as FTC chair by Trump, recently told The Verge he would “obey lawful orders” when asked what he would do if the president directed him to drop a lawsuit like the one against Meta.

Ferguson added that he would be very surprised if anything like that ever happened.

The FTC is considered a key antitrust watchdog. In recent years, it has returned hundreds of millions of dollars to victims of fraud, in addition to passing laws that ban junk fees and subscription traps.

But as the Meta trial begins, it’s among the many independent regulatory agencies that the administration seems keen to rein in.

Chair Ferguson is also recently quoted reaffirming his belief that independent regulatory bodies are “not good for democracy.”

FTC v Meta begins as another major antitrust case – USA v Google – enters what’s known as the remedies phase.

The Department of Justice won the first phase of that case last summer when Judge Amit Mehta found that Google holds a monopoly in online search, with a market share of around 90%.

Last month, the DOJ reiterated a demand made during the Biden administration that a court break up Google’s search monopoly.

The FTC’s case against Meta will be tougher to prove, says Laura Phillips-Sawyer, an associate professor of business law at the University of Georgia.

“I think they have a real uphill battle,” Ms Phillips-Sawyer said of the FTC.

“They have a long road before any consideration of divestiture of Instagram or WhatsApp is considered.”

That’s because compared to online search, there’s more competition in the personal network services space that Meta operates in, Ms Phillips-Sawyer said.

Meta in a statement said the evidence at trial “will show what every 17-year-old in the world knows: Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp compete with Chinese-owned TikTok, YouTube, X, iMessage and many others.”

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A Lawton has worked in Canada’s auto sector for more than a century.

Their children are “fifth generation Ford workers”, Kathryn Lawton said, and she and her husband both work for the carmaker in Windsor, the heart of Canada’s automobile sector, just a bridge away from the US state of Michigan.

So when US President Donald Trump suggested that Canada stole the American auto industry, Chad Lawton calls it “ludicrous”.

“These were never American jobs. These were Canadian jobs,” he told the BBC, on the day that Trump’s auto tariffs came into force.

“They’ve always been Canadian jobs, and they’re going to stay Canadian jobs because we didn’t take them from them. We created them, we sustained them.”

Kathryn agreed: “This is Ford City right here.”

Tucked away in southwestern Ontario, Windsor and the surrounding Essex county now finds itself on one of the front lines of Trump’s trade war as it faces a 25% tariff on foreign-made vehicles (though for Canada, that will be reduced by half for cars made with 50% US-made components or more) as well as blanket 25% US tariffs on steel and aluminium imports.

US tariffs on auto parts are expected next month.

The region of just over 422,000 grew alongside Detroit – nicknamed Motor City for its role as an auto manufacturing hub – turning the region into an important centre for North American automobile production.

Ford first established its presence in Windsor in 1896, while the first Stellantis (then Chrysler) factory arrived in 1928, with dozens of factories and suppliers springing up around the city and surrounding region in the ensuing decades.

Much of the manufacturing has since left the city, though it still boasts two Ford engine factories and a Stellantis assembly plant, which employ thousands.

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Workers on both sides of the border have built iconic vehicles over the decades, most recently models like the Dodge Charger and the Ford F-150.

Some 24,000 people work directly in the automotive industry in Windsor-Essex, while an estimated 120,000 other jobs depend on the sector.

A drive through the neighbourhood around the Ford factory feels like a trip back in time, showcasing classic bungalows from the last century. Many have seen better days, though each boasts a verandah and small front yard. Large murals celebrating the city’s automotive history punctuate the scenery.

Windsor has weathered the challenges of the North American auto sector alongside Michigan, as the industry shares a deeply integrated supply chain.

Chad Lawton points to the 2008 financial crisis, when the Big Three American automakers – Ford, General Motors and Chrysler – faced staggering losses, and GM and Chrysler received billions in US bailouts to avoid bankruptcy.

That period was “bad, not just for next door, but also we went through a very, very rough time”, he said.

“This feels the same. The level of anxiety with the workers, the level of fear, the idea and the belief that this is just something that is so completely out of your control that you can’t wrap your head around what to do.”

John D’Agnolo, president of Unifor Local 200, which represents Ford workers in Windsor, said the situation “has created havoc”.

“I think we’re going to see a recession,” he said.

He continued: “People aren’t going to buy anything. I gotta tell my members not to buy anything. They gotta pay rent and food for their kids.”

What makes the tariffs such a hard pill to swallow for auto workers the BBC spoke to is that this situation has been brought about by the US, Canada’s closest economic and security ally.

“It seems like a stab in the back,” said Austin Welzel, 27, an assembly line worker at Stellantis. “It’s almost like our neighbors, our friends – they don’t want to work with us.”

Christina Grossi, who has worked at Ford for 25 years, said the prospect of losing her job, and what it will mean to her family, is “terrifying”.

But Ms Grossi also fears losing the meaning she gets from her work.

“You’ve been doing this job for so long and you really take pride in it, you’re proud of what you’re putting out to the public,” she said. “And now someone’s taking away the opportunity to do that.”

Laura Dawson, the executive director of Future Borders Coalition, said the tariffs could cause major upheavals throughout the sector due to its deep integration, with ripple effects felt across the continent if exports from Canada stop for more than a week.

She said the US tariffs structure is extremely complicated.

Cars crossing the border will need every component to be assessed for “qualifying content” – where it originates, the cost of labour to produce it, and – if it contains steel or aluminium – where that metal came from.

“Every part of an automobile is literally under a microscope for where it was produced and how,” she said.

The US tariffs have been a major factor in Canada’s general election, which is on 28 April, with Canada’s political parties rolling out suites of plans on the campaign trail to help the auto sector.

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Liberal leader Mark Carney, the current prime minister, has pledged to create a C$2bn ($1.4bn; £1.1bn) fund to boost competitiveness and protect manufacturing jobs, alongside plans to build an “all-in-Canada” auto component parts network.

In his role as prime minister, he imposed last week a reported C$35bn in counter auto tariffs, in addition to previously announced reciprocal measures on the US.

Carney’s main rival, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, has vowed to remove sales tax on Canadian vehicles, and to create a fund for companies affected by the tariffs to help keep their employees.

Jagmeet Singh, whose left-wing New Democratic Party is fighting for a competitive seat in Windsor, has pledged to use every dollar from counter tariffs to help workers, and to stop manufacturers from moving equipment to the US.

Still, Windsor’s economy is dependent on automakers, and heavily relies on trade with the United States. If it falters, everything – from restaurants to charities – will feel the effects.

The Penalty Box is a sports bar just down the road from the Stellantis plant, and popular with the workers there.

“We’re one of the busiest restaurants. I don’t want to say it, but if you ask around about the Penalty Box, they’ll tell you,” its 70-year-old owner, Van Niforos, said. “We do close to 1,000 meals a day.”

With a white apron and a wide smile, he relates its 33-year history. But his demeanour darkens when asked about threats the auto sector faces.

“It’s a devastating situation. I don’t want to think about it,” he said.

“We employ 60 people and we’re open six days a week. [If something happens to the Stellantis plant], will we be able to keep 60 people working? Absolutely no.”

Chad Lawton, sitting in his office at the local union, takes a deep breath as he contemplates how precarious his life feels.

He doesn’t think Carney’s counter tariffs help the current situation, arguing they “just makes a really bad situation a little bit worse”.

He hopes there is room for trade negotiation, but said he will be the first to say that Canada “cannot just concede and roll over”.

“I’ve worked for a Ford Motor Company for almost 31 years, and I have never seen anything close to this,” he said.

“That includes Covid, because at least with Covid, we knew what we were dealing with. And there was some certainty there.”

“This is all over the map.”

Bangladeshi authorities have issued an arrest warrant for the British MP and former Labour minister Tulip Siddiq.

The country’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has been investigating allegations Siddiq illegally received land as part of its wider probe of the regime of her aunt, Sheikh Hasina, who was deposed as prime minister in August.

The Hampstead and Highgate MP, who quit as economic secretary to the Treasury in January, was named in the arrest warrant alongside more than 50 others.

Lawyers acting for Siddiq denied the charges, which they said were “politically motivated”.

The ACC had not presented any evidence or informed Siddiq about an arrest warrant, the lawyers added.

The UK lists Bangladesh as a 2B extradition country – meaning clear evidence must be presented before ministers and judges make a decision.

The ACC is examining claims Sheikh Hasina and her family embezzled up to £3.9bn from infrastructure spending in Bangladesh.

The investigation is based on a series of allegations made by Bobby Hajjaj, a political opponent of Hasina.

Court documents seen by the BBC show Hajjaj has accused Siddiq of helping to broker a deal with Russia in 2013 that overinflated the price of a new nuclear power plant in Bangladesh.

In a statement seen by the BBC, Siddiq’s lawyers Stephenson Harwood said: “The allegations are completely false and have been dealt with in writing by Siddiq’s lawyers.

“The ACC has not responded to Siddiq or put any allegations to her directly or through her lawyers.

“Siddiq knows nothing about a hearing in Dhaka relating to her and she has no knowledge of any arrest warrant that is said to have been issued.

“To be clear, there is no basis at all for any charges to be made against her, and there is absolutely no truth in any allegation that she received a plot of land in Dhaka through illegal means.

“She has never had a plot of land in Bangladesh, and she has never influenced any allocation of plots of land to her family members or anyone else.

“No evidence has been provided by the ACC to support this or any other allegation made against Siddiq, and it is clear to us that the charges are politically motivated.”

Before resigning, Siddiq had referred herself to the PM’s ethics adviser Sir Laurie Magnus when the corruption allegations first surfaced.

Sir Laurie said in his report that he had “not identified evidence of improprieties”.

But he added it was “regrettable” that Siddiq had not been more alert to the “potential reputational risks” of the ties to her aunt Sheikh Hasina, the deposed prime minister of Bangladesh and leader of Awami League party.

ACC chairman Mohammad Abdul Momen has previously told the BBC the allegations “are by no means ‘targeted and baseless'” and its investigation was “based on documentary evidence of corruption”.

“Tulip Siddiq must not shy away from the court proceedings in Bangladesh.

“I would welcome Siddiq come and defend her case and with the best possible legal support accompanying her,” he added.

He also rejected her lawyer’s claims that the ACC was interfering in UK politics, adding: “ACC briefing to the media is a regular phenomenon, it is delivered professionally and with all accuracy.”

A Conservative Party spokesman said: “If it is the case that Keir Starmer’s choice for anti-corruption minister is the subject of an international arrest warrant for corruption, she should immediately stand down as Labour MP.

“It is shocking that Keir Starmer believes ‘the door remains open’ for Ms Siddiq returning to a government position.”

The prime minister left open the possibility of Siddiq returning to government in the future in his letter accepting her resignation as a minister in January.