“Trump is a crazy man,” says Lionel Xu, who is surrounded by his company’s mosquito repellent kits – many were once best sellers in Walmart stores in the United States.

Now those products are sitting in boxes in a warehouse in China and will remain there unless President Donald Trump lifts his 145% tariffs on all Chinese goods bound for the US.

“This is so hard for us,” he adds.

Around half of all products made by his company Sorbo Technology are sold to the US.

It is a small company by Chinese standards and has around 400 workers in Zhejiang province. But they are not alone in feeling the pain of this economic war.

“We are worried. What if Trump doesn’t change his mind? That will be a dangerous thing for our factory,” says Mr Xu.

• What are tariffs and why is Trump using them?

Nearby, Amy is helping to sell ice cream makers at her booth for the Guangdong Sailing Trade Company. Her key buyers, including Walmart, are also in the US.

“We have stopped production already,” she says. “All the products are in the warehouse.”

It was the same story at nearly every booth in the sprawling Canton Fair in the trading hub of Guangzhou.

When the BBC speaks to Mr Xu, he is getting ready to take some Australian buyers to lunch. They have come looking for a bargain and hope to drive down the price.

“We will see,” he says about the tariffs. He believes Trump will back down.

“Maybe it will get better in one or two months. Maybe, maybe,” Mr Xu adds with his fingers crossed.

Last week, President Trump temporarily paused the vast majority of tariffs after global stock markets tumbled, and a sell-off in the US bond market.

But he kept the import levies targeted at Chinese goods being shipped to the US. Beijing responded by imposing its own 125% levies on American imports.

This has bewildered traders from more than 30,000 businesses who have come to the annual fair to show off their goods in several exhibition halls the size of 200 football pitches.

In the homeware section, firms displayed everything from washing machines to tumble dryers, electric toothbrushes to juicers and waffle makers. Buyers come from all over the world to see the products for themselves and make a deal.

But the cost of a food mixer or a vacuum cleaner from China with the added tariffs are now too high for most American firms to pass on the cost to their customers.

The world’s two largest economies have hit an impasse and Chinese goods meant for US households are piling up on factory floors.

The effects of this trade war will likely be felt in kitchens and living rooms across America, who will now have to buy these goods at higher prices.

China has maintained its defiant stance and has vowed to fight this trade war “until the end.”

It is a tone also used by some at the fair. Hy Vian, who was looking to buy some electric ovens for his firm, waved off the effects of tariffs.

“If they don’t want us to export – then let them wait. We already have a domestic market in China, we will give the best products to the Chinese first.”

China does have a large population of 1.4 billion people and in theory this is a strong domestic market.

Chinese policymakers have also been trying to stimulate more growth in a sluggish economy by encouraging consumers to spend.

But it is not working. Many of the country’s middle classes have invested their savings in buying the family home, only to watch their house prices slump in the last four years. Now they want to save money – not spend it.

While China may be better placed to weather the storm than other countries, the reality is that it is still an export driven economy. Last year, exports accounted for around half of the country’s economic growth.

China also remains the world’s factory – with Goldman Sachs estimating that around 10 to 20 million people in China may be working on US-bound exports alone.

Some of its workers are already feeling the pain.

Not far from the Canton Fair, there are warrens of workshops in Guangdong making clothes, shoes and bags. This is the manufacturing hub for companies such as Shein and Temu.

Each building houses several factories on several floors where workers will labour for 14 hours a day.

On a pavement near some shoe factories, a few workers were squatting down to chat and smoke.

“Things are not going well,” says one, who was unwilling to give his name. His friend urges him to stop talking. Discussing economic difficulties can be sensitive in China.

“We’ve had problems since the Covid pandemic, and now there’s this trade war. I used to be paid 300-400 yuan ($40-54) a day, and now I will be lucky if I get 100 yuan a day.”

The worker says it is difficult to find work these days. Others making shoes on the street also told us they only earned enough to live a basic life.

While some in China feel pride in their product, others feel the pain of increasing tariffs and wonder how this crisis will end.

China is facing the prospect of losing a trading partner which buys more than $400bn (£302bn) worth of goods each year, but the pain will also be felt on the other side, with economists warning that the US could be heading for a recession.

Adding to the uncertainty is President Trump, who is known for his brinkmanship. He has continued to push Beijing and China has refused to back down.

However, it has said it will not add any more to the current 125% tariff rate on US goods. They could retaliate in other ways – but it offers the two sides some breathing room from a week that sparked an economic war.

There is reportedly little contact between Washington and Beijing and neither side appears willing to head to the negotiating table any time soon.

In the meantime, some companies at the Canton Fair are using the event to try to find new markets.

Amy hopes her ice cream makers will head in a new direction.

“We hope to open the new European market. Maybe Saudi Arabia – and of course Russia,” she adds.

Others believe there is still money to be made in China. Among them is Mei Kunyan, 40, who says he is earning around 10,000 yuan a month at his shoe firm which sells to Chinese customers. Many major shoe manufacturers have moved to Vietnam where labour costs are cheaper.

Mr Mei has also realised something that businesses around him are now discovering: “The Americas are too tricky.”

Nests and some dead rodents were found in outbuildings of the house where Oscar-winning actor Gene Hackman and his wife Betsy Arakawa were found dead.

New Mexico Department of Public Health records seen by BBC News documented evidence of the animals in eight detached buildings at their home in Santa Fe.

US officials previously confirmed that Ms Arakawa, 65, died from a respiratory illness linked to hantavirus, which can be transmitted by infected rodents.

It is believed she died a week before her husband, 95, who was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Authorities found the deceased couple in their home in February.

An environmental assessment of the property took place on 5 March, a week after they were discovered, as part of the investigation into their deaths.

It found rodent faeces, a live rodent, dead rodent and a rodent nest in three garages, in addition to further rodent droppings in two small external houses and three sheds. Traps had also been set up.

There were sightings of rodents, a nest and faeces in two abandoned vehicles or farming machinery in the grounds of the property.

All eight detached outbuildings were within 50 yards (45 metres) of the main house where the couple lived, which itself was “clean with no signs of rodent activity,” New Mexico public health officials said in their eight-page report.

Authorities believe Ms Hackman died around 12 February and her husband on 18 February, with their bodies discovered on 26 February.

Medical investigators believe Ms Arakawa contracted hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS), a life-threatening lung condition with symptoms including fatigue, fever, muscle aches, dizziness and abdominal issues, which led to a sudden death.

Hantavirus refers to a strain of viruses carried by rodents, primarily transmitted to humans through inhalation of airborne particles from dried rodent droppings.

Infections typically occur when the virus becomes airborne from a rodent’s urine, droppings, or saliva, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

If respiratory symptoms develop during HPS, the mortality rate is approximately 38%, according to the CDC. The agency reported 864 cases of hantavirus in the US between 1993 and 2022, mostly in rural western states.

Mr Hackman’s cause of death was severe heart disease, with advanced Alzheimer’s disease listed as a contributing factor. Experts told the BBC his Alzheimer’s may have prevented him from realising his wife of more than 30 years was dead in the home where he was living.

China’s President Xi Jinping has called on Vietnam to oppose “unilateral bullying” to upkeep a global system of free trade – though he stopped short of naming the US.

It comes as Xi is on a so called “charm offensive” trip across South East Asia, which will also see him visit Malaysia and Cambodia.

Though the trip was long-planned, it has taken on heightened significance in the wake of a mounting trade war between the US and China. Vietnam was facing US tariffs of up to 46% before the Trump administration issued a 90-day pause last week.

US President Donald Trump called Xi’s meeting with Vietnamese leaders a ploy to figure out how to “screw the United States of America”.

According to state media outlet Xinhua, Xi told Vietnam’s Communist Party Secretary-General To Lam to “jointly oppose unilateral bullying”.

“We must strengthen strategic resolve… and uphold the stability of the global free trade system as well as industrial and supply chains,” he said.

Stephen Olson, a former US trade negotiator, said Xi’s comments were “a very shrewd tactical move”.

“While Trump seems determined to blow up the trade system, Xi is positioning China as the defender of rules-based trade, while painting the US as a reckless rogue nation,” he added.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval office on Monday, Trump said he does not “blame” China or Vietnam but alleged that they were focused on how to harm the US.

“That’s a lovely meeting. Meeting like, trying to figure out, how do we screw the United States of America?” said Trump.

The world’s two largest economies are locked in an escalating trade battle, with the Trump administration putting tariffs of 145% on most Chinese imports earlier this month. Beijing later responded with its own 125% tariffs on American products coming into China.

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 later 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'”.

Xi arrived in Hanoi on Monday, where he was welcomed by well wishers waving Chinese and Vietnamese flags.

He then met top Vietnamese officials including the country’s Secretary-General and Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh.

Earlier on Tuesday, Xi visited the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum to take part in a wreath laying ceremony at the resting place of the former Vietnamese founder and Communist leader.

Despite Xi’s visit, Vietnam will be careful to “manage the perception that it is colluding with China against the United States, as the US is too important a partner to put aside,” said Susannah Patton, Director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Lowy Institute think-tank.

“In many ways, China is an economic competitor as well as an economic partner for South East Asian economies,” she added.

Xi has now left Vietnam and will arrive in Malaysia later on Tuesday. He is expected to meet the country’s King, as well as its Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.

It comes as Malaysian mobile data service company U Mobile said it will roll out the country’s second 5G network by using infrastructure technology from China’s Huawei and ZTE.

Ms Patton expects Xi to continue portraying the US as “a partner which is unreliable [and] protectionist”.

Meanwhile, he is likely to “portray China in stark contrast as a partner that is there”, she added.

“Now is really a golden opportunity for China to score that narrative win. I think this is how Xi’s visit to Vietnam, Cambodia and Malaysia will be seen.”

President Donald Trump has called for Harvard University to lose a valuable tax break, hours after his administration announced it is freezing more than $2bn (£1.5bn) in federal funds for the elite institution.

The White House has demanded the oldest university in the US make changes to hiring, admissions and teaching practices which it says will help fight antisemitism on campus.

Since returning to office, Trump has pushed to reshape top universities by threatening to withhold federal funds that are mostly designated for research.

Harvard became the first major US university to reject his administration’s demands on Monday, accusing the White House of trying to “control” its community.

In a Tuesday morning post on social media, Trump threatened to go beyond withholding the federal funds and targeted Harvard tax-exempt status.

Universities, as well as many charities and religious groups, are exempt from paying federal income taxes. This valuable tax break, though, can be removed if the groups become involved in political activities or move away from their stated purposes.

“Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting “Sickness?” he wrote on Truth Social. “Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!”

Losing the exemption could cost Harvard millions of dollars each year.

The Ivy League institution also has a fund of assets, or endowment, valued at $53bn.

Later on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump wanted the university to apologise for what his administration says is continuing tolerance of antisemitism.

“[Trump] wants to see Harvard apologize, and Harvard should apologize,” Leavitt said.

The sweeping changes demanded by the White House would have transformed Harvard’s operations and ceded a large amount of control to the government.

Its letter to Harvard on Friday, obtained by the New York Times, said the university had failed to live up to the “intellectual and civil rights conditions” that justify federal investment.

The letter included 10 categories for proposed changes, including:

• reporting students to the federal government who are “hostile” to American values
• ensuring each academic department is “viewpoint diverse”
• hiring an external government-approved party to audit programmes and departments “that most fuel antisemitic harassment”
• checking faculty staff for plagiarism

President Trump has accused leading universities of failing to protect Jewish students when college campuses around the country saw protests against the war in Gaza and US support for Israel last year.

The letter orders the university to take disciplinary action for “violations” during protests.

In explaining its rejection of these demands, Harvard president Alan Garber said the university would not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights under the First Amendment protecting free speech.

“Although some of the demands outlined by the government are aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of the ‘intellectual conditions’ at Harvard,” he said.

• Columbia University agrees to Trump demand for mask ban
• Trump pulls $400m from Columbia University
• Why has Trump revoked hundreds of international student visas?

Shortly after his letter of resistance was sent, the education department said it was freezing $2.2bn in grants and $60m in contracts to Harvard immediately.

“Harvard’s statement today reinforces the troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges,” the Department of Education said in a statement.

The disruption of learning plaguing campuses is unacceptable and the harassment of Jewish students intolerable, the statement said.

A professor of history at Harvard, David Armitage, told the BBC that the school could afford to resist as the richest university in the US and no price was too high to pay for freedom.

“It’s a not unexpected act of entirely groundless and vengeful activity by the Trump administration which wants nothing more than to silence freedom of speech,” he said.

In March, the Trump administration said it was reviewing roughly $256m in federal contracts and grants at Harvard, and an additional $8.7bn in multi-year grant commitments.

Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, a Republican from New York, said on X: “It is time to totally cut off US taxpayer funding to this institution.”

Harvard professors filed a lawsuit in response, alleging the government was unlawfully attacking freedom of speech and academic freedom.

Harvard is one of a number of elite universities in the crosshairs of the new presidency.

Columbia University in New York City agreed to a number of demands last month after the White House pulled $400m in federal funding.

But on Monday Columbia struck a less compliant tone, releasing its own letter that said it was continuing “good faith talks” with the government as it seeks to win back its funding, but also said it would “reject any agreement that would require us to relinquish our independence”.

Polling by Gallup last summer suggested that confidence in higher education has been falling over time among Americans of all political backgrounds, partly driven by a growing belief that universities push a political agenda. The decline was particularly steep among Republicans.

Earlier on Monday, a lawyer for an organiser of pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University said her client had been arrested by immigration officials as he attended an interview as part of his application for US citizenship.

Mohsen Mahdawi, a green card holder who is due to graduate next month, was detained on Monday in Colchester, Vermont.

Others who took part in campus protests against the war, including Columbia University’s Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts University’s Rumeysa Ozturk, have been detained in recent weeks.

A hairdresser from St Petersburg has been given a jail term of five years and two months on a charge of spreading fake news about the Russian army.

Anna Alexandrova denied posting eight anti-war messages on social media, insisting the case was motivated by a squabble over land with a neighbour.

Her neighbour told the BBC that she had complained to prosecutors after Alexandrova had sent her daughter pictures of the war in Ukraine.

Discrediting the armed forces and intentionally spreading fake news about the military became a crime in Russia within weeks of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Ever since the war began, the Kremlin has intensified a crackdown on dissent, jailing hundreds of opponents and critics and silencing independent media.

In a separate case on Tuesday, four journalists were jailed in Moscow for five and a half years after being found guilty of working for an “extremist organisation”.

Antonina Favorskaya, Kostantin Gabov, Sergey Karelin and Artyom Kriger had all insisted they were only doing their jobs as journalists, but the court found they had produced work used by an anti-corruption group founded by Putin’s chief opponent Alexei Navalny.

Navalny was found dead in a penal colony in the Arctic Circle last year. Video captured by Favorskaya on a courtroom video link the day before Navalny’s controversial death was the last time he was ever seen alive.

Favorskaya worked for independent outlet SotaVision and was eventually arrested in March 2024 filming in a cemetery where he was buried.

Russia’s restrictive laws on dissent have ensnared people from all walks of life.

Denunciations have led to prison terms and Russians have informed on their colleagues and other people they know, in actions reminiscent of the Soviet era when a boy called Pavlik Morozov was lionised for betraying his own father.

Hairdresser Anna Alexandrova, a 47-year-old mother of two children, was first arrested in November 2023 for eight posts she shared via two anonymous accounts on Russian social network VKontakte.

When BBC Russia Editor Steve Rosenberg visited the court last September, Alexandrova’s lawyer told him that the case had started out as an ordinary domestic squabble over land.

“One side went to the police but got nowhere. That only changed when the charge of ‘fake news about the army’ appeared,” said Anastasia Pilipenko.

Steve Rosenberg: How snitching case evokes ghosts of Soviet past

It emerged that Anna Alexandrova had initially been on the same side as her neighbour in fighting local deforestation by developers in the village of Korpikyulya, south of St Petersburg.

But they eventually fell out in a row that became increasingly acrimonious.

Although Alexandrova denied sending images from the war to her neighbour, the court sent her to a penal colony and ordered her not to post any further material for the next three years.

Meanwhile, lawyers for a Moscow councillor who was given the first full jail term in July 2022 under the “fake news” law have filed a complaint against the offence with Russia’s constitutional court.

Alexei Gorinov was initially given seven years in jail after he was filmed criticising Russia’s invasion at a council meeting. He had objected to the idea of a children’s drawing contest being held when children were dying in Ukraine.

That initial sentence was extended by a further three years last year when he was accused of criticising the war in a prison hospital.

In a statement on Tuesday, lawyers Katerina Tertukhina and Olga Podoplelova said the 2022 article aimed at combating disinformation did not serve constitutionally legitimate aims.

“Under the guise of protecting public order, it is used to punish anti-war views, criticism of authorities, and the dissemination of information – including truthful information – if it contradicts the official narrative,” the lawyers argued.

Hamas is said to have rejected an Israeli proposal for a six-week ceasefire in Gaza which called for the armed group to give up its weapons.

A senior Palestinian official familiar with the talks said the plan gave no commitment to end the war or for an Israeli troop pull-out – key Hamas demands – in exchange for releasing half of the living hostages which it holds.

It comes as Israel continues its military offensive in Gaza.

A security guard was killed and nine other people were injured in an air strike on a field hospital in Khan Younis, the hospital said. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it struck the head of a Hamas cell.

A UN agency meanwhile warned that “the humanitarian situation in Gaza is now likely the worst it has been in the 18 months since the outbreak of hostilities”.

It is six weeks since Israel allowed any supplies to enter through crossings into the Palestinian territory – by far the longest such stoppage to date.

UN agencies strongly refute Israel’s claim that there is enough food in Gaza to last for a long time and suggest the blockade could breach international humanitarian law.

Israel’s prime minister said the block on supplies was aimed at pressuring Hamas to release hostages and to extend the ceasefire which expired on 1 March.

At the same time, the UN’s humanitarian affairs office stated: “Partners on the ground report a surge in attacks causing mass civilian casualties and the destruction of some of the remaining infrastructure that’s needed to keep people alive.”

Israel is said to have submitted its latest ceasefire proposal to regional mediators late last week, just days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met US President Donald Trump in Washington.

A Hamas delegation headed by chief negotiator Khalil al-Hayya then met Egyptian intelligence officials in Cairo.

The senior Palestinian official told the BBC: “The Israeli proposal relayed to the movement through Egypt explicitly called for the disarmament of Hamas without any Israeli commitment to end the war or withdraw from Gaza. Hamas therefore rejected the offer in its entirety.”

It is understood to be the first time that Israel has added Hamas disarmament as a condition for advancing a ceasefire – a red line for the group.

The Palestinian official accused Israel of stalling for time, seeking only to retrieve the hostages while prolonging the war.

It is believed that 59 hostages remain in Gaza, of whom 24 are alive.

On Tuesday afternoon, the spokesman for Hamas’s military wing said it had “lost contact” with a group of fighters holding Israeli-American hostage Edan Alexander following what he described as “a direct strike on their location”.

Abu Ubaida produced no evidence to support the claim and gave no indication of when contact had been lost. Israel has said it avoids hitting locations where it believes hostages are being held.

Hamas released a video of the 21-year-old soldier on Saturday, in which he appeared to be speaking under duress as he criticised the Israeli government.

Recently released hostages related how many were held with them in dire conditions underground. Some are in poor health with untreated injuries.

Hamas has said it is ready to return all of those held captive, in exchange for a complete end to hostilities and full Israeli pull-out from Gaza.

It previously offered five hostages in exchange for a truce extension but claims to have shown flexibility on the number of hostages to be released.

The BBC understands that Egypt has put forward a modified proposal to Hamas which it is now considering.

Israeli media had not been anticipating an imminent ceasefire breakthrough.

The newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth quoted an unnamed Israeli senior security official as saying: “We assess that there will be a deal within two-three weeks, but right now there are still gaps and the distance is great.”

“We want to get them to release 19 living hostages. Israel and the United States are co-ordinated, and the military pressure is having an impact,” the official went on.

“They have a shortage of gas, and the food and the fuel will run out in a few weeks. The big achievement of the residents’ return to the northern Gaza Strip has been erased. Pressure from the residents has begun. That’s rattled them.”

Israel resumed its bombardment of Gaza on 18 March and then restarted ground operations, saying it was targeting Hamas. The prime minister said future ceasefire talks would be held “under fire”.

Since Israel restarted its offensive in Gaza, at least 1,630 people have been killed – bringing the total killed in 18 months of war to 51,000, according to the latest figures from the Hamas-run health ministry.

Some 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage in the unprecedented Hamas-led 7 October attacks which triggered the war, Israel says.

On Tuesday morning, Israeli warplanes struck by the gate of the Kuwaiti Field Hospital in al-Mawasi, a crowded tented area for displaced people on the coast near Khan Younis in southern Gaza, hospital spokesman Saber Abu Arar told the BBC.

The man killed worked at the site, he said, and those injured were both hospital staff and patients. Three ambulances and some tents used as a reception area were damaged.

Graphic footage released by the field hospital on Facebook showed a man covered in blood being rushed away with attempts made to resuscitate him.

The IDF said in a statement that it “struck the head of a Hamas terrorist cell and a combat zone commander” outside the hospital, without giving any evidence.

It also said a “precise munition” was used to mitigate harm in the area.

The attack comes after the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, said he was “deeply alarmed” at Sunday’s strike on al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, his spokesman said.

Israel said it targeted a building at the site which Hamas was using as “a command-and-control centre” – something the group denied.

Doctors scrambled to evacuate the hospital, saying they were given just a 20-minute warning by the IDF. A 12-year-old boy being treated for head injuries is said to have died because his care was disrupted.

The hospital – which had been the best functioning in northern Gaza – is now out of service and cannot admit new patients.

“Under international humanitarian law, wounded and sick, medical personnel and medical facilities, including hospitals, must be respected and protected,” the spokesman for Guterres said.

He added that the attack dealt “a severe blow to an already devastated healthcare system in the strip”, adding that with aid blocked, there was strong concern that medical supplies were now running low as well as stocks of food and water.

The UN secretary general pointed out that under international humanitarian law, an occupying power had obligations to ensure relief for the civilian population.

Recent Israeli military evacuation orders have led to wide-scale displacement of Gaza’s 2.1 million population.

The UN says about 70% of the strip is currently under displacement orders or in “no-go” zones,” where the Israeli authorities require humanitarian teams to coordinate their movements.

In Israel, polls suggest that a majority of Israelis back a Gaza ceasefire deal and – when it comes to their countries’ stated war goals – prioritise bringing home the hostages over dismantling Hamas’ governing and military capabilities.

However, Netanyahu is backed by hard-line religious ultranationalist parties who have threatened to collapse the government if he ends the war.

Israel signed onto a ceasefire deal in January, leading to the release of 33 hostages – 25 of them alive – in exchange for some 1,800 Palestinian prisoners in the first six-week stage.

It then largely refused to begin talks on the planned second stage which was supposed to lead to a full withdrawal of Israeli forces and a complete end to fighting.

In the past week, Israeli military reservists and veterans have signed several open letters condemning the ongoing war and questioning its priorities.

There has also been criticism of the IDF’s chief of staff and air force commander for sacking air force reservists who signed an original statement.

This has coincided with rising frustration among reservists and their families over the cost of ongoing reserve duty along with the government’s failure to draft ultra-Orthodox Jews despite the IDF facing shortages of combat soldiers.

France’s Justice Minister said the government would not give in to “acts of intimidation” after a wave of attacks targeting prisons across the country.

On Monday night, vehicles were set alight outside several French prisons and one jail was hit by gunfire, in what Gérald Darmanin described as “terrorist attacks”.

Seven prisons have been targeted, in Toulon, Aix-En-Provence, Marseille, Valence and Nîmes in southern France, and in Villepinte and Nanterre, near Paris.

Darmanin suggested the attacks which began on Sunday were a response to the government’s crackdown on drug trafficking. France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office has launched an investigation.

On Tuesday, Darmanin visited Toulon’s La Farlede prison where gunmen opened fired on the prison gate with a Kalashnikov.

“I am delighted that the national anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office has taken action because this is extremely serious,” he told reporters. “These are terrorist attacks.”

He added that “significant means” were being employed to find the perpetrators and they would be given “extremely severe sentences”.

Darmanin indicated that the “acts of intimidation against prison workers” were related to government efforts to tackle drug crime.

“It might also be because we hit them where it hurts,” he said, “and for the first time in decades, France is taking extremely serious measures against drug trafficking.”

Earlier on Tuesday, Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said the government’s response must be “relentless”.

“Those who attack prisons and officers deserve to be locked up in those prisons and monitored by those officers,” he posted on X.

He added that he had instructed police to immediately strengthen security at prison facilities.

The prison guard union, FO Justice, expressed its “deepest concern and anger” following the “extremely serious” attacks overnight.

The union posted updates from the aftermath of several attacks on X, including images of burnt-out vehicles in prison car parks and bullet holes in the Toulon prison entrance gate.

It called for urgent government action to protect prison staff.

Another union, Ufap-Unsa Justice, said there were not enough officers to secure prison perimeters “24/7”.

Ufap said that staff vehicles were among those set on fire outside the jails in Villepinte, Aix-Luynes, Nanterre and Valence.

The union condemned the “cowardly and heinous attacks [that] aim to terrorise those who embody the authority of the state”.

In Nancy, a prison officer was reportedly threatened at their home, while in Marseille, an attempted arson attack targeted prison officers’ accommodation.

Monday night’s attacks come after seven vehicles were set on fire in a similar attack on France’s national school of prison administration on Sunday, according to FO Justice.

“It is worrying to note that some people no longer hesitate to directly attack the prison’s property, a symbol of state authority,” it said in a statement.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but the Parisien reports that the letters DDPF – meaning “French prisoners’ rights” – were found inscribed on damaged vehicles. The AFP news agency says anarchist slogans were found at some sites.

AFP quotes a source close to the case as saying the attacks appeared to be coordinated and “clearly linked” to the government’s strategy against drug trafficking.

Darmanin and Retailleau have vowed to tackle the scourge of drug trafficking and drug-related violence in France amid a rise in gang-related crime.

In February, the interior ministry announced a record number of cocaine seizures in the first 11 months of 2024 – 53.5 tonnes, a rise of 130% on the 23.2 tonnes seized in 2023. Retailleau said France had been hit by a “white tsunami”.

Darmanin has proposed a number of measures to tighten prison security, including establishing dedicated high-security prisons to isolate the drug lords who run their empires from behind bars.

A law is passing through the French parliament which creates a special prosecutor’s office to deal with drugs crime, with new powers for investigators.

For a few hours on a warm April day, jets paused and silence reclaimed the skies above the international airport in Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of the southern Indian state of Kerala.

The airport’s closure was not due to bad weather or a technical glitch, as one might assume, but to make way for a Hindu temple procession that marches right across its runway.

Devotees pull ornate wooden chariots bearing temple idols along a 2km (1.2 miles) stretch of the runway, a tradition so revered that it shuts down operations for a few hours at the airport, which usually handles 90 landings and take-offs daily. Elephants, a common part of Hindu religious events in India, also walk on the runway.

The event, which took place last Friday, is part of the annual Painkuni festival held by the famed Sree Padmanabha Swamy Temple, home to treasures worth billions of rupees.

The procession, taken out on the final day of the 10-day festival, begins at the temple and heads through the runway to the Shanghumugham beach, around 6km away.

When the procession arrives at the beach, priests give a ritual bath in the sea to the idols. The return journey follows the same route, crossing the runway again and reaching the temple.

The procession is led by the head of the former royal family of Travancore, which built the airport in 1932. It’s not clear when the festival and the procession started but the ritual has been followed since then, even when the management of the airport passed on to the government and then a private company.

The airport is currently managed by Adani Airport Holdings Ltd, owned by billionaire Gautam Adani’s Group.

The airport also shuts down operations for a few hours for a similar procession during the temple’s Alpashi Festival, usually in October or November every year.

The Thiruvananthapuram International Airport is one of the few airports in the world that closes down for a religious event. Others include Indonesia’s Ngurah Rai Airport during the Balinese Hindu new year and Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport on Yom Kippur, which is the holiest day in Judaism.

But these are public holidays when the airport shuts down entirely and it’s rare for a high-security runway to be used to actually facilitate a religious or cultural event.

Rahul Bhatkoti, chief airport officer, said the airport was proud to have the opportunity to preserve the legacy of the temple’s procession.

“This is likely the only airport in the world which facilitates such a historic event,” he told the BBC before the procession entered the airfield on Friday evening.

Since the airport has only one runway, both domestic and international terminals are closed during the procession.

Most of the international flights operating here are to and from the Middle East, where a large number of Indian workers, including many from Kerala, live and work.

Airport authorities said they informed airlines of the closure two months in advance and 10 flights were rescheduled on the day.

“The procession begins around 16:45 local time and takes approximately four hours to complete,” Mahesh Balachandran, the temple’s executive officer, told the BBC.

Attendance at the event is limited and strictly monitored.

Only senior royal family members, priests, officials and selected devotees are allowed to take part, and they must have special passes issued by the temple trust, along with security clearance from airport authorities.

“The procession passes through the airport with full ritualistic vigour twice a year during the Painkuni and Alpashi festivals,” Mr Balachandran said. “It proceeds peacefully, without any incidents. Everything is planned meticulously.”

The Central Industrial Security Force, the paramilitary which handles airport security, barricades the entire runway for safety and manages the crowds. Authorities also monitor the crowd through surveillance cameras and inspect the runway carefully after the procession, officials said.

The procession passing through the airport is a reminder of how “heritage and modernity co-exist here, every year”, Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor wrote on X after last week’s procession.

Donald Trump has again blamed Volodymyr Zelensky for starting the war with Russia – a day after a major Russian attack killed 35 people and injured 117 others in the Ukrainian city of Sumy.

The US president said Ukraine’s leader shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin for the “millions of people dead” in the conflict.

“You don’t start a war against someone 20 times your size and then hope that people give you some missiles,” he said at the White House on Monday.

His comments followed Russia’s strike on Sumy on Sunday – the deadliest attack on civilians this year. Moscow also hit the city’s outskirts on Monday night.

Nato’s secretary general Mark Rutte went to Ukraine on Tuesday in a show of solidarity with Kyiv following the missile strikes.

Joining Zelensky in Odesa, Rutte condemned the “terrible pattern” of attacks on civilians and said “Russia is the aggressor, Russia started this war, there’s no doubt”.

Trump on Monday had first described the Sumy attack as “terrible” but said he had been told Russia had “made a mistake”. He did not give further detail.

Moscow said it had targeted a meeting of Ukrainian soldiers, killing 60 of them, but did not provide any evidence.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian media reported that there had been a medal ceremony for military veterans in the city on the day of the attack. Zelensky sacked Sumy’s regional chief on Tuesday, for allegedly hosting the event, local media reported.

Trump on Monday also blamed his predecessor Joe Biden for the war’s casualties- which are estimated in the hundreds of thousands, not the millions he’s claimed.

“Millions of people dead because of three people,” Trump had said. “Let’s say Putin number one, let’s say Biden who had no idea what the hell he was doing, number two, and Zelensky.”

Questioning Zelensky’s competence, he said the Ukrainian leader was “always looking to purchase missiles”.

“When you start a war, you got to know you can win,” the US president said.

Trump has repeatedly blamed Zelensky and Biden for the war, despite Russia invading Ukraine first in 2014, five years before Zelensky won the presidency, and then launching a full-scale invasion in 2022.

Trump further argued on Monday that “Biden could have stopped it and Zelensky could have stopped it, and Putin should have never started it. Everybody is to blame”.

Tensions between Trump and Zelensky have been high since a heated confrontation at the White House in February, where the US leader chided Ukraine’s president for not starting peace talks with Russia earlier.

By contrast, Trump has taken action to drastically improve relations with Moscow.

Trump’s administration has sought to broker a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine and has held negotiations with Moscow that have cut out Kyiv.

Trump said he had a “great” phone call with Putin last month, and the Russian president sent him a portrait as a gift a week later.

In February, Washington voted with Moscow against a UN resolution that identified Russia as the “aggressor” in Russia’s war against Ukraine.

After talks between US and Russian officials failed to produce a ceasefire in Ukraine, Trump said he was “very angry” with Putin, though he added he had a “good relationship” with the Russian leader.

US envoy Steve Witkoff, who met Putin in St Petersburg for close to five hours on Friday, called his meeting “compelling”.

He said the Russian leader’s request had been to get “a permanent peace… beyond a ceasefire”.

The detailed discussions had included the future of five Ukrainian territories Russia is claiming to have annexed since it launched the full-scale invasion of its neighbour and “no Nato, Article 5” – referring to the Nato rule that says members will come to the defence of an ally that is under attack.

“I think we might be on the verge of something that would be very, very important for the world at large,” Witkoff told Fox News on Monday.

“There is a possibility to reshape the Russian-United States relationship through some very compelling commercial opportunities that I think give real stability to the region, too. Partnerships create stability,” Trump’s envoy said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was less effusive, describing the contacts as positive but with no clear outlines of an agreement.

In an interview recorded before Russia’s deadly attack on Sumy, Zelensky had urged Trump to visit Ukraine before striking a deal with Putin 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.

At least 35 people were killed when Russian forces fired two Iskander missiles into the heart of Sumy on Sunday.

The blasts took place minutes apart while many civilians were heading to church for Palm Sunday, a week before Easter.

A bus was destroyed in the attack and bodies were left strewn in the middle of a city street. Ukainian and US officials have asserted that cluster munitions may have been used.

No casualties were reproted from Moscow’s strike on the outskirts of Sumy on Monday night.

Ukraine’s military on Tuesday said it had struck a base belonging to the Russian rocket brigade that conducted Sunday’s missile attack on Sumy.

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

The Vatican has put Spanish architect Antoni Gaudí on the path to sainthood in recognition of his “heroic virtues”.

Gaudí – who has been dubbed by some as “God’s architect” – is the designer of one of Spain’s most famous religious sites and tourist attractions, the unfinished Sagrada Familia basilica in Barcelona.

On Monday, the Vatican issued a statement which said Pope Francis had authorised a decree declaring the Catalonia-born architect “venerable”.

That is an early step on the road to a candidate for sainthood being formally canonised by the Catholic Church.

It is the latest development in a decades-long campaign to have Gaudí, who was a devout Catholic, recognised as a saint.

The Archbishop of Barcelona, Cardinal Juan Jose Omella, called the news a “joy”.

“It is a recognition not only of his architectural work but something more important,” he said, according to AFP news agency.

The cardinal continued: “He is saying you… amid life’s difficulties, amid work, amid pain, amid suffering, are destined to be saints.”

The usual formal process for someone to be declared a saint would next involve beatification, one step short of full sainthood.

That is a category reserved for martyrs, those deemed to have lived a life of heroic values and candidates who the Church declares to have a saintly reputation.

In the case of Gaudí, who died in 1926 after being hit by a tram while walking to church, the Vatican would likely require proof of a miracle that could be attributed to him post-death in order to proceed with beatification.

Gaudí was born in 1852 and many of his best known works continue to attract visitors to Barcelona, where much of his legacy is situated.

The Sagrada Familia basilica has been under construction since 1883 and remains unfinished.

It has been placed on Unesco’s World Heritage list, along with some of Gaudi’s other works, and was consecrated by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010.

A civil case brought by four women against Andrew Tate is believed to be a legal first, a barrister for his accusers has said.

The women accuse Tate of rape, assault and coercive control between 2013 and 2015. One claims he threatened to kill her, another says he made clear he would kill anyone who spoke to her, and a third claims he convinced her he had killed others.

In written submissions, Anne Studd KC said she believed this was the first case of its kind in which it is argued that coercive control amounted to “intentional infliction of harm” – a legal concept similar to emotional distress.

Tate denies the claims, saying they are a “pack of lies” and “gross fabrications”.

The women are seeking damages “arising from the assaults, batteries, and infliction of intentional harm”, their civil claim states.

A case management hearing was held in London on Tuesday, which deals with preliminary matters and logistics.

The court heard that a trial could be held in early 2027, and that it could last three weeks.

Judge Richard Armstrong told the court the four women were “seeking damages likely to reach six figures”.

Proving the intentional infliction of harm would mean the claimants could be awarded additional damages.

Coercive control, Ms Studd said, was “a form of grooming and manipulation where the victim becomes less and less able to respond in what might be perceived as a normal way”.

She added that a victim “may not leave even if the door is open”.

Vanessa Marshall KC, acting for Tate, told the court that they “accept in this day and age that coercive and controlling behaviour does exist”, but that it was “really not the issue in this case”.

The case concerns incidents the four women allege took place in Luton and Hitchin.

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

Three of the women previously reported Tate to the police, but in 2019 the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decided not to bring criminal charges.

Tate denies all the allegations, and argues that the women cannot now take legal action against him because too much time has passed, and emails, texts, and other potential evidence would have been lost.

His solicitor Andrew Ford previously said in a statement that the women’s allegations “are vehemently denied and will be fully contested in court”.

“When the matter was referred to the CPS, they concluded there was insufficient prospect of conviction and chose not to charge Mr Tate with any offence,” Mr Ford added.

The women’s claim against Tate is one of several serious legal challenges around the world that he is fighting, including some where he is co-accused with his brother Tristan Tate.

They are currently facing a mix of criminal and civil legal action in three countries – the UK, the US and Romania.

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

A Romanian court ruled in March 2024 that the pair could be extradited to the UK once separate proceedings there had concluded.

The brothers deny all accusations against them.

A travel ban imposed on the brothers in Romania was recently lifted. They travelled to Miami in the US state of Florida from late February until late March.

The UK government faced criticism for not requesting the extradition of the brothers at the time, in connection to the criminal investigation in the UK.

An email from the Florida Attorney General’s Office, seen by BBC News and dated 7 March, says that “should the United Kingdom have an extradition order that needs to be acted upon, our state authorities will assist in executing and complying”.

“I hope this assists in service of process for the cases in the United Kingdom,” the email adds.

One of the claimants in the civil case, who we are calling Sienna, previously told the BBC that it was “horrible to see” Tate travelling internationally and she thought the UK should be “pushing a lot harder” for the brothers’ extradition.

In a statement, the Home Office said: “As a matter of long-standing policy and practice, the UK will neither confirm nor deny that an extradition request has been made or received. Given the ongoing Romanian investigation, it would be inappropriate to comment further.”

The BBC has been told by sources close to the matter that UK officials are concerned a separate extradition request to the US would be seen as subverting the Romanian legal process, potentially risking the existing agreement between the UK and Romania.

A spokesperson for Tate previously said he “categorically denies these unproven and untested allegations”.

“Mr Tate will defend himself vigorously and remains confident the truth will prevail,” they added in a statement.

Neither of the brothers have been convicted of any crimes.

At a workshop in Kabul where carpets are made, hundreds of women and girls work in a cramped space, the air thick and stifling.

Among them is 19-year-old Salehe Hassani. “We girls no longer have the chance to study,” she says with a faltering smile. “The circumstances have taken that from us, so we turned to the workshop.”

Since the Taliban seized power in 2021, girls over the age of 12 have been barred from getting an education, and women from many jobs.

In 2020, only 19% of women were part of the workforce – four times less than men. That number has dropped even further under Taliban rule.

The lack of opportunities, coupled with the dire economic situation the country faces, have pushed many into long, laborious days of carpet weaving – one of the few trades the Taliban government allows women to work in.

According to the UN, the livelihoods of about 1.2 to 1.5 million Afghans depend on the carpet weaving industry, with women making up nearly 90% of the workforce.

In an economy that the UN warned in a 2024 report had “basically collapsed” since the Taliban took power, the carpet export business is booming.

The Ministry of Industry and Commerce noted that in the first six months of 2024 alone, over 2.4 million kilograms of carpets – worth $8.7m (£6.6m) – were exported to countries such as Pakistan, India, Austria and the US.

But this has not necessarily meant better wages for the weavers. Some the BBC spoke to said they had seen none of the profit from a piece sold in Kazakhstan last year that fetched $18,000.

Within Afghanistan, carpets sell for far less – between $100-$150 per square metre. Needing money to help support their families and having few options for employment, workers are trapped in low-paid labour.

Carpet weavers say they earn about $27 for each square metre, which usually takes about a month to produce. That is less than a dollar a day despite the long, gruelling shifts that often stretch to 10 or 12 hours.

Nisar Ahmad Hassieni, head of the Elmak Baft company, who let the BBC go inside his workshops, said that he pays his employees between $39 and $42 per square metre. He said they are paid every two weeks, with an eight-hour workday.

The Taliban has repeatedly said that girls will be allowed to return to school once its concerns, such as aligning the curriculum with Islamic values, are resolved – but so far, no concrete steps have been taken to make that happen.

Mr Hassieni said that, following the rise of the Taliban government, his organisation made it its mission to support those left behind by the closures.

“We established three workshops for carpet weaving and wool spinning,” he says.

“About 50-60% of these rugs are exported to Pakistan, while the rest are sent to China, the USA, Turkey, France, and Russia to meet customer demand.”

Shakila, 22, makes carpets with her sisters in one of the rooms of the modest rental they also share with their elderly parents and three brothers. They live in the impoverished Dasht-e Barchi area, in the western outskirts of Kabul.

She once had dreams of becoming a lawyer, but now leads her family’s carpet-making operation.

“We couldn’t do anything else,” Shakila tells me. “There weren’t any other jobs”.

She explains how her father taught her to weave when she was 10 and he was recovering from a car accident.

What began as a necessary skill in times of hardship has now become the family’s lifeline.

Shakila’s sister, 18-year-old Samira, aspired to be a journalist. Mariam, 13, was forced to stop going to school before she could even begin to dream of a career.

Before the Taliban’s return, all three were students at Sayed al-Shuhada High School.

Their lives were forever altered after deadly bombings at the school in 2021 killed 90 people, mostly young girls, and left nearly 300 wounded.

The previous government blamed the Taliban for the attack, though the group denied any involvement.

Fearing another tragedy, their father made the decision to withdraw them from school.

Samira, who was at the school when the attacks happened, has been left traumatised, speaking with a stutter and struggling to express herself. Still, she says she would do anything to return to formal education.

“I really wanted to finish my studies,” she says. “Now that the Taliban are in power, the security situation has improved and there have been fewer suicide bombings.

“But the schools are still closed. That’s why we have to work.”

Despite the low pay and long hours of work these women face, the spirits of some are unbroken.

Back at one of the workshops, Salehe, determined and hopeful, confided that she had been studying English for the past three years.

“Even though schools and universities are closed, we refuse to stop our education,” she says.

One day, Salehe adds, she plans to become a leading doctor and build the best hospital in Afghanistan.

“She left no last words. She was dead when she was carried away,” says Hafiza quietly, as she describes how her mother was killed in a city under siege in Darfur, during Sudan’s civil war, which began exactly two years ago.

The 21-year-old recorded how her family’s life was turned upside down by her mother’s death, on one of several phones the BBC World Service managed to get to people trapped in the crossfire in el-Fasher.

Under constant bombardment, el-Fasher has been largely cut off from the outside world for a year, making it impossible for journalists to enter the city. For safety reasons, we are only using the first names of people who wanted to film their lives and share their stories on the BBC phones.

Hafiza describes how she suddenly found herself responsible for her five-year-old brother and two teenage sisters.

Their father had died before the start of the war, which has pitted the army against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and caused the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis.

The two rivals had been allies – coming to power together in a coup – but fell out over an internationally backed plan to move towards civilian rule.

Hafiza’s home is the last major city controlled by the military in Sudan’s western region of Darfur, and has been under siege by the RSF for the past 12 months.

In August 2024, a shell hit the market where her mother had gone to sell household goods.

“Grief is very difficult, I still can’t bring myself to visit her workplace,” says Hafiza in one of her first video messages after receiving her phone, shortly after her mother’s death.

“I spend my time crying alone at home.”

Both sides in the war have been accused of war crimes and deliberately targeting civilians – which they deny. The RSF has also previously denied accusations from the US and human rights groups that it has committed a genocide against non-Arab groups in other parts of Darfur after it seized control of those areas.

The RSF controls passage in and out the city and sometimes allows civilians to leave, so Hafiza managed to send her siblings to stay with family in a neutral area.

But she stayed to try to earn money to support them.

In her messages, she describes her days distributing blankets and water to displaced people living in shelters, helping at a community kitchen and supporting a breast cancer awareness group in return for a little money to help her survive.

Her nights are spent alone.

“I remember the places where my mother and siblings used to sit, I feel broken,” she adds.

In almost every video 32-year-old Mostafa sent us, the sound of shelling and gunfire can be heard in the background.

“We endure relentless artillery shelling, both day and night, by the RSF,” he says.

One day, after visiting family, he returned to find his house near the city centre had been hit by shells – the roof and walls were damaged – and looters had ransacked what was left.

“Everything was turned upside down. Most houses in our neighbourhood have been looted,” he says, blaming the RSF.

While Mostafa was volunteering at a shelter for displaced people, the area came under intense attack. He kept his camera rolling as he hid, flinching at each explosion.

“There is no safe place in el-Fasher,” he says. “Even refugee camps are being bombed with artillery shells.

“Death can strike anyone, anytime, without warning… by a bullet, shelling, hunger or thirst.”

In another message, he talks about the lack of clean water, describing how people drink from sources contaminated with sewage.

Both Mostafa and 26-year-old Manahel, who also received a BBC phone, volunteered at community kitchens funded by donations from Sudanese people living elsewhere.

The UN has warned of famine in the city, something that has already happened at the nearby Zamzam camp, which is home to more than 500,000 displaced people.

Many people cannot get to the market “and if they go, they find high prices”, explains Manahel.

“Every family is equal now – there is no rich or poor. People can’t afford the basic necessities like food.”

After cooking meals such as rice and stew, they deliver the food to people in shelters. For many, it is the only meal they will have for the day.

When the war started, Manahel had just finished university, where she studied Sharia and law.

As the fighting reached el-Fasher, she moved with her mother and six siblings to a safer area, further away from the front line.

“You lose your home, everything you own and find yourself in a new place with nothing,” she says.

But her father refused to leave their house. Some neighbours had entrusted him with their belongings, and he decided to stay to protect them – a decision that cost him his life.

She says he was killed by RSF artillery in September 2024.

Since the siege began a year ago, almost 2,000 people have been killed or injured in el-Fasher, according to the UN.

After sunset, people rarely leave their homes. The lack of electricity can make night-time frightening for many of el-Fasher’s one million residents.

People with solar power or batteries are scared to turn lights on because they “could be detected by drones”, explains Manahel.

There were times we could not reach her or the others for several days because they had no internet access.

But above all these worries, there is one particular fear that both Manahel and Hafiza share if the city falls to the RSF.

“As a girl, I might get raped,” Hafiza says in one of her messages.

She, Manahel and Mostafa are all from non-Arabic communities and their fear stems from what happened in other cities that the RSF has taken, most notably el-Geneina, 250 miles (400km) west of el-Fasher.

In 2023 it witnessed horrific massacres, along ethnic lines, which the US and others say amounted to genocide. RSF fighters and allied Arab militia allegedly targeted people from non-Arab ethnic groups, such as the Massalit – which the RSF has previously denied.

A Massalit woman I met in a refugee camp over the border in Chad described how she was gang-raped by RSF fighters and was unable to walk for nearly two weeks, while the UN has said girls as young as 14 were raped.

One man told me how he witnessed a massacre by RSF forces – he escaped after he was injured and left for dead.

The UN estimates that between 10,000 and 15,000 people were killed in el-Geneina alone in 2023. And now more than a quarter of a million people from the city – half its former population – are among those living in refugee camps in Chad.

We put these accusations to the RSF but it did not respond. However, in the past it has denied any involvement in ethnic cleansing in Darfur, saying the perpetrators had worn RSF clothing to shift the blame to them.

Few reporters have had access to el-Geneina since then, but after months of negotiation with the city’s civil authorities, a BBC team was allowed to visit in December 2024.

We were assigned minders from the governor’s office and were only allowed to see what they wanted to show us.

It was immediately clear that the RSF was in control. I saw their fighters patrolling the streets in armed vehicles and had a brief conversation with some of them, when they showed me their anti-vehicle rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launcher.

It did not take long to realise how differently they viewed the conflict. Their commander insisted there were no civilians like Hafiza, Mostafa and Manahel living in el-Fasher.

“The person who stays in a war zone is participating in the war, there are no civilians, they are all from the army,” he said.

He claimed el-Geneina was now peaceful and that most of its residents – “around 90%” – had come back. “Homes that were previously empty are now occupied again.”

But hundreds of thousands of the city’s residents are still living as refugees in Chad, and I saw many deserted and destroyed neighbourhoods as we drove around.

With the minders watching us, it was hard to get a true picture of life in el-Geneina. They took us to a bustling vegetable market, where I asked people about their lives.

Each time I asked someone a question, I noticed them glance at the minder over my shoulder before answering that everything was “fine”, apart from a few comments about high prices.

However, my minder would often whisper in my ear afterwards, saying people were exaggerating about the prices.

We ended our trip with an interview with Tijani Karshoum, the governor of West Darfur whose predecessor was killed in May 2023 after accusing the RSF of committing genocide.

It was his first interview since 2023, and he maintained he was a neutral civilian during the el-Geneina unrest and did not side with anyone.

“We have turned a new page with the slogan of peace, coexistence, moving beyond the bitterness of the past,” he said, adding that the UN’s casualty figures were “exaggerated”.

Also in the room was a man who we understood to be a representative of the RSF.

Karshoum’s answers to nearly all my questions were almost identical, whether I was asking about accusations of ethnic cleansing or about what happened to the former governor, Khamis Abakar.

Nearly two weeks after I spoke to Karshoum, the European Union imposed sanctions on him, saying he “holds responsibility in the fatal attack” on his predecessor and that he had “been involved in planning, directing or committing… serious human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law, including killings, rape and other serious forms of sexual and gender-based violence, and abduction”.

I followed up with him to get his response to these accusations, and he said: “Since I am a suspect in this matter, I believe any statement from me would lack credibility.”

But he stated that he “was never part of the tribal conflict and remained at home during the clashes” and added that he was not involved in any violations of humanitarian law.

“Accusations of killings, abductions, or rape must be addressed through an independent investigation” with which he would co-operate, Karshoum said.

“From the start of the conflict in Khartoum, we pushed for peace and proposed well-known initiatives to prevent violence in our socially fragile state,” he added.

Given the stark contrast between the narrative promoted by those in control of el-Geneina and the countless stories I heard from refugees across the border, it is hard to imagine people ever returning home.

The same goes for 12 million other Sudanese people who have fled their homes and are either refugees abroad or living in camps inside Sudan.

In the end, Hafiza, Mostafa and Manahel found life in el-Fasher unbearable and in November 2024 all three left the city to stay in nearby towns.

With the military regaining control of the capital, Khartoum, in March, Darfur remains the last major region where the paramilitaries are still largely in control – and that has turned el-Fasher into an even more intense battlefield.

“El-Fasher has become scary,” Manahel said as she packed her belongings.

“We are leaving without knowing our fate. Will we ever return to el-Fasher? When will this war end? We don’t know what will happen.”

The fate of the Scunthorpe steel works has shone a fresh spotlight on Chinese investment in the UK economy with critics raising questions over potential security risks.

The British Steel plant had been owned by China’s Jingye Steel.

But the UK government has now taken control of the Scunthorpe site, amid claims the Chinese owners were planning to permanently decommission its two blast furnaces and use its rolling mills to process imported Chinese-made metal instead.

BBC Verify looks at what we know about the extent of Chinese investment in the UK economy – and how much of a concern it should be.

Data from the Office for National Statistics suggests total Chinese investment in the UK in 2023 amounted to about £4.3bn – a small fraction of the total £2 trillion of overseas investment in the British economy in that year.

However, this is likely to be a considerable underrepresentation of the true scale of Chinese investment in the UK because the official data only includes the immediate investing country, not the ultimate source of the money – and because of a lack of transparency from Beijing when it comes to overseas ownership stakes.

Independent estimates from the American Enterprise Institute think tank, using corporate reports, suggest total public and private Chinese investment in the UK between 2005 and 2024 added up to $105bn, or £82bn.

This would have made Britain the third largest national destination of Chinese investment over this period, after only the US and Australia.

There is a wide range of Chinese investment in the UK, ranging from critical energy and transport infrastructure, to stakes in private companies and football clubs.

Significant Chinese investments in UK infrastructure include a 10% stake in London’s Heathrow airport by the China Investment Corporation, a sovereign wealth fund wholly owned by the Chinese state.

The Hong Kong-based industrialist Li Ka-shing’s investment group owns UK Power Networks, which operates electricity distribution infrastructure across London, the South East of England and the East of England.

The billionaire’s group also owns a 75% stake in Northumbrian Water Group, which provides water supply and sewerage in the north east of England.

There is also a large Chinese investment in the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station in Somerset.

China General Nuclear Power Group originally had a 33.5% stake, with the rest owned by the French company EDF.

But EDF reports that the Chinese company has stopped contributing additional financing to the joint project – which has been running over budget – and, as a result the Chinese stake at the end of last year had declined to 27.4%.

The same Chinese company has an even larger stake – 66.5% – in the proposed Bradwell B nuclear site in Essex, according to the project website. EDF owns the rest.

Chinese companies have backed significant investments in the battery sector too.

The Minety battery site in Wiltshire is one of the largest energy storage projects in Europe. It was funded and constructed by Huaneng, a Chinese state-owned company which also operates the facility.

“The biggest growth of investment in Europe by Chinese firms is in EV [electric vehicle] batteries and much of this is private firms rather than Chinese state-owned firms,” says Professor Giles Mohan of the Open University.

The Hangzhou-based Chinese car company, Geely Auto, owns the Coventry-headquartered London EV Company, which manufactures electric black taxis.

The drive to achieve climate targets in the UK and Europe has welcomed Chinese investment in other green energy sectors like wind farms.

Red Rock Renewables, which is owned by the Chinese state-controlled SDIC Power, has a 25% share in the Beatrice offshore wind farm in Scotland.

As for investment in consumer brands, Li Ka-shing’s group owns the Suffolk-headquartered pub chain and brewery Greene King.

Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club is owned by the Shanghai-based conglomerate Fosun.

While Jingye steel had total control of the Scunthorpe steel plant, it’s important to bear in mind that Chinese investors do not always have majority stakes in UK businesses, which would interfere with their ability to determine those companies’ operational decisions.

Some of these organisations such as airports and water utilities are also tightly regulated, potentially limiting the freedom of manoeuvre of their Chinese owners in controlling the assets.

Chinese investors are also estimated to have considerable holdings of UK land and buildings.

The Leadenhall Building, known as the “cheesegrater”, in the City of London was acquired by a Chinese property investor for £1.15bn in 2017.

The potential danger posed by Chinese investment in UK infrastructure has been extensively debated in recent years – and a particular flashpoint was the involvement of the Shenzhen-based Chinese technology company Huawei in building the UK’s 5G communications infrastructure.

Huawei was founded by Ren Zhengfei, a former Chinese army officer, in 1987.

The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre initially judged in 2019 that any risk posed by Huawei was manageable.

But the UK, nevertheless, required the Chinese company to begin pulling out of the UK’s telecoms infrastructure in 2020, after coming under pressure from the US government during Donald Trump’s first term as President.

The involvement of Huawei in UK networks was also opposed by a number of MPs.

Grace Theodoulou, policy fellow on China at the Council on Geostrategy, says there are two main potential threats to consider for Chinese investment in UK critical infrastructure.

“The first is the potential for espionage – for example, having Chinese-made audiovisual equipment installed in government buildings or devices.

“The second is the infrastructure can be controlled by the manufacturer and, as such, could be disrupted for geopolitical leverage,” she said.

Some analysts argue that Chinese law – which mandates all Chinese companies to align closely with Chinese Communist Party directives and to assist with national intelligence efforts – represents an inherent security risk in all Chinese investments in Western infrastructure.

“A likely scenario where it might be in China’s interests [to harm UK infrastructure] would be to impede Britain’s ability to impose sanctions against Beijing in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

“If China were to invade Taiwan, and should they have control over parts of our critical infrastructure, it would highly impact the potential to enforce sanctions or similar measures,” Ms Theodoulou said.

However, other analysts are sceptical over whether it would be in the financial interest of Chinese investors to sabotage UK infrastructure or firms, as such actions would collapse the value of their investments and likely lead to their appropriation by the UK government.

“This threat is asserted and not proven, and these companies are profit-driven so it is not in their interests to sabotage our infrastructure,” said Prof Giles Mohan.

And they argue that a distinction should be drawn between Chinese investments in vital infrastructure and investments into UK firms which own consumer brands where the potential for public harm is considerably lower.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

Actress Cate Blanchett has said she wants to quit acting to do other things, joining a long line of big Hollywood stars who gave up the red carpets for a different lifestyle.

The 55-year-old is seen as one of the most talented and bankable actresses in film, but she has indicated several times in recent years that she’s keen to break away from the big screen.

“My family roll their eyes every time I say it, but I mean it. I am serious about giving up acting,” she told the Radio Times in a new interview. “[There are] a lot of things I want to do with my life.”

Speaking about her experience of being a celebrity she added: “When you go on a talk show, or even here now, and then you see soundbites of things you’ve said, pulled out and italicised, they sound really loud. I’m not that person.

“I make more sense in motion – it’s been a long time to remotely get comfortable with the idea of being photographed.”

Her remarks echoed comments she made to BBC Radio 4’s This Natural Life last year, when she said she “absolutely loved” acting, but also said it would be “brilliant” to give it up and spoke about her passion for nature and conservation.

Blanchett is best known for appearing in films such as Tár, Notes on a Scandal and Elizabeth: The Golden Age, and won Oscars for her performances in Blue Jasmine and The Aviator.

She wouldn’t be the first successful actor to switch careers slightly later in life. Here are 10 other actors who retired from acting (including a few who came back):

The US actress was one of Hollywood’s biggest stars in the 90s and 00s, having made her debut at the age of 21 opposite Jim Carey in The Mask more than 30 years ago.

Initially finding fame for her goofy performances in romcoms such as My Best Friend’s wedding, and comedies including There’s Something About Mary, Diaz went on to prove her dramatic acting chops in movies like Being John Malkovich and Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York.

But she took a hiatus from Hollywood following her turn as Ms Hannigan in 2014’s remake of the musical Annie, confirming her “retirement” in 2018. “I was free to be [like] ‘I’m a mum, I’m a wife, I’m living my life’ – it was so lovely.”

She said the decade she spent in retirement from acting was “the best 10 years” of her life. But she was eventually persuaded to return to screens earlier this year for spy thriller Back in Action with actor Jamie Foxx.

The Oscar-winning star, considered one of his generation’s finest actors, apparently retired in 2017, but it wasn’t the first time he had stepped away from the spotlight.

Day-Lewis, who holds both British and Irish citizenship, has won an incredible three best actor Academy Awards for roles in My Left Foot, There Will Be Blood and Lincoln.

Known for leaving long stretches between roles, in the 1990s Day-Lewis went into what he called “semi-retirement” and became a shoemaker’s apprentice in Florence, Italy.

He was coaxed back to acting by Martin Scorsese and his offer of the role in Gangs of New York.

A statement issued through the star’s agent in 2017, when he was aged 60, said he “will no longer be working as an actor”.

Again, however, that proved not to be permanent. Day-Lewis is soon to star in Anemone, the debut feature film from his son Ronan Day-Lewis. Daniel and Ronan co-wrote the script which “explores the intricate relationships between fathers, sons and brothers, and the dynamics of familial bonds”.

Whether it’s a one-off due to the family connection or the start of a big return to film remains to be seen.

Nicholson is one of only three actors (including Day-Lewis, above) to have won three Academy Awards for acting. Two of Nicholson’s were for best actor (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and As Good As It Gets) and another for best supporting actor (Terms of Endearment).

The legendary star’s other famous roles include Easy Rider, The Shining, The Departed, A Few Good Men, Batman and The Departed.

Although he’s never formally announced he is quitting or retiring, he previously said his retreat from the spotlight was brought on by a desire to not “be out there anymore”.

His last film role was in 2010 romcom How Do You Know.

But just last week, that film’s director James L Brooks told Hollywood Reporter: “I wouldn’t be surprised to see Jack work again. I mean, it’s been a hunk of time but I don’t know. Maybe it could be the right thing. He’s reading scripts all the time, I think.”

Legendary Swedish screen siren Greta Garbo declared in 1941 at the ripe old age of 36 that she would be taking a “temporary” retirement.

It proved to be permanent. The Camille and Queen Christina star never appeared on film again.

Always the reluctant celebrity, the reclusive actress never played the Hollywood game, refusing interviews and avoiding film premieres and other public appearances.

The enigmatic star, whose famous line “I want to be alone” from Grand Hotel somewhat mirrored her desire in real life as well as on screen, only succeeded in increasing her mystique by stepping away from the spotlight.

However, she later clarified in an interview: “I never said: ‘I want to be alone.’ I only said, ‘I want to be let alone! There is all the difference’.”

One of the few silent movie stars to transition successfully to the “talkies”, Garbo moved away from Hollywood to New York, where she lived until her death in 1990 at the age of 84.

Synonymous with James Bond, the late Scottish star first found fame through modelling and body-building before landing a few small theatre and TV roles.

He made his film debut in No Road Back in 1957, but playing Secret Service agent 007 in Dr No a few years later gave him his big breakthrough. He went on to star in five further Bond movies including From Russia with Love and Goldfinger.

Connery appeared in numerous other films over his long career, including Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie, The Man Who Would Be King opposite Sir Michael Caine, The Untouchables (for which he won an Oscar) and The Hunt for Red October. But he would forever be wedded to 007.

In 2005, however, he said he was “fed up with the idiots” adding there was an “ever-widening gap between people who know how to make movies and the people who greenlight the movies.”

That declaration came a couple of years after he starred in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which many concluded was one of the main reasons for his retirement.

The poorly received comic book caper was to be his final screen appearance.

Kids of the 80s and 90s: You know. This guy was a huge star back in the day, the comedy backbone of popular films such as Ghostbusters, Honey I Shrunk The Kids and the musical Little Shop of Horrors (Suddenly, Seymour anyone?).

But then he just seemed to disappear off the face of the earth. So what happened?

He began to cut back on work after his wife died of cancer in 1991 to concentrate on raising his children, with his final big screen outing being the 1997 sequel Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves.

“I’m a single parent, and I just found that it was too difficult to manage raising my kids and doing the travelling involved in making movies,” he told USA Today in 2005.

“So I took a little bit of a break. And the little bit of a break turned into a longer break, and then I found that I really didn’t miss it.”

He did continue to do voiceover work, however, and Moranis was set to make a comeback in a Honey I Shrunk the Kids reboot, which sadly fell through.

We sadly lost this acting legend earlier this year, along with his second wife Betsy Arakawa, but the star hadn’t been seen on screen for years after retiring from the profession on the advice of his heart doctor – opting for a quiet life in New Mexico.

Hackman shot to fame in Bonnie and Clyde at the end of the 60s and was rarely out of work – in films like The French Connection, Mississippi Burning and Superman.

He chose to bow out from acting in the political satire Welcome to Mooseport in 2004.

Explaining his decision, he told Reuters that he didn’t want to risk going out on a sour note.

“The business for me is very stressful. The compromises that you have to make in films are just part of the beast,” he said, “and it had gotten to a point where I just didn’t feel like I wanted to do it any more.”

Fonda, from the famous family dynasty, is another star who quit at the height of her fame.

Starring in 80s and 90s hits such as Scandal (about the Profumo Affair), Cameron Crowe’s Singles, The Godfather Part III and Single White Female (everyone wanted to copy that elfin crop, not just Jennifer Jason Leigh). And then… nothing.

Fonda never formally retired, she just seemed to retreat. Her last big screen appearance was in The Whole Shebang in 2001.

When asked in 2023 by a reporter if she would return to acting at some point, she replied: “I don’t think so, it’s too nice being a civilian.” Fair enough!

Fonda’s aunt Jane also quit acting in 1990 for several years, explaining later in Vogue that “she wasn’t having fun anymore”.

But she later came out of retirement for the romcom movie Monster-in-Law.

“It was just a gut feeling of, Why the hell not? It’d been 15 years, and I wanted to act again.”

Another star we sadly lost in the last year, Shelley Duval was best known for her roles in film like The Shining, Annie Hall and Nashville.

Her step back from the spotlight wasn’t just her choice. Movie roles began to drop off in the 90s and then she decided to move back to Texas after her brother was diagnosed with cancer.

A year before her death, she told People magazine: “It’s the longest sabbatical I ever took but it was for really important reasons – to get in touch with my family again.”

Duvall did return to acting in horror movie, 2023’s The Forest Hills.

“Acting again – it’s so much fun. It enriches your life,” she told People.

“[Jessica Tandy] won an Oscar when she was 80. I can still win,” she joked. Sadly, she didn’t get the chance.

Who could forget 2024 award season’s most charming star, Oscar winner and Everything, Everywhere All At Once actor Ke Huy Quan?

He first found fame as a child actor in the 80s when he landed the role of Short Round in Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom, before taking another starring role in childhood adventure hit The Goonies.

A couple of TV roles followed but then the work largely dried up, and he settled for working behind the scenes as a stunt co-ordinator and assistant director.

“It’s always difficult to make the transition from a child actor to an adult actor,” he told the Telegraph. “But when you’re Asian, then it’s 100 times more difficult.”

He reluctantly gave up – only due to lack of opportunity – and it took years before he took a punt on inventive, off-the wall movie Everything, Everywhere, All At Once, where his role as Waymond Wang won him an Oscar and made him a Hollywood darling once again.

Angry Nigerians are turning to social media to describe how they have been locked out of their accounts on the digital financial platform, CBEX.

People have posted videos of themselves crying, saying that they could not withdraw their investments and worried that their money had gone.

Some furious customers ransacked a CBEX office in the south-west city of Ibadan, carting off chairs, air-conditioners and a solar panel. CBEX has not yet publicly commented.

The company had promised that investors would double their money every month. Nigeria is currently facing straitened economic times and many are desperate to find a way to boost their income.

One investor, identified as Ola, told BBC Pidgin that he feared he had lost 450,000 naira ($280; £210).

“I was ready to withdraw all my investment just last week but my friend told me to be patient and wait – and now it has crashed,” Ola said.

Many others have shared similar stories online, with one person talking about losing $16,000.

The problem was first noticed over the weekend, but the anger boiled over when Monday came and people were still not able to access their money.

Some investors who made complaints on the private messaging service Telegram received responses from CBEX.

They were told that the problem was the result of a hack and things will be resolved soon.

Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission (Sec), which regulates the investment secotr, has not yet responded to a BBC request for comment. But Sec has previously warned citizens about the risks surrounding unregulated digital platforms and potential Ponzi schemes

For some, the situation brings back painful memories from 2016 when another popular financial scheme, called MMM, froze its transactions, leaving many investors heartbroken.

Members were supposed to receive a 30% return on their investment in just 30 days. It launched in Nigeria in November 2015 and according to its founders, had up to three million members before it collapsed.

• Nigerian make-up artist jailed for throwing cash at his wedding
• ‘How I survived Nigeria attack that killed my 16 friends’
• Outcry over emir’s summons prompts U-turn from Nigerian police

Singapore will head to the polls on 3 May, in what will be the first electoral test for its new prime minister Lawrence Wong.

The election campaign, which lasts just nine days, is expected to be dominated by the rising cost of living, housing needs, jobs, and a growing demand for healthcare amid an ageing population.

Voters are widely expected to return the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) to power. The PAP has won every election since Singapore was granted self rule by the British in 1959.

The country’s last election in 2020 saw the opposition Workers’ Party secure 10 seats – the biggest victory for the opposition since Singapore gained independence in 1965.

This time, 97 seats are up for grabs.

Though the PAP won 83 out of 93 seats in 2020, it will no doubt be looking for a stronger win this year – the last election result was widely seen as a setback for the party.

According to a Reuters report citing data from pollster YouGov, 44% of 1,845 Singaporeans surveyed in March have decided who to vote for. Of that number, 63% say they would choose the ruling party and 15% would back the leading opposition Workers’ Party.

The election is also being seen as the first real test of Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, who took office last year – replacing the city state’s long-serving premier Lee Hsien Loong, who served as leader for 20 years.

Presenting his first budget as the country’s leader in February, Wong unveiled a series of tax rebates, handouts and sector-specific measures to cushion against cost-of-living pressures – in what some analysts call a “feel good” budget aimed at sweetening the ground before the election.

Since becoming an independent nation in 1965, Singapore has only had four prime ministers – all from the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP).

The first was Mr Lee’s father, Lee Kuan Yew, who is widely considered as the founder of modern Singapore and led the country for 25 years.

Singapore’s political landscape has been dominated by the PAP, though the party was rocked by a series of scandals in 2020 – including a senior minister’s arrest in a corruption probe as well as the resignation of two lawmakers over an extramarital affair.

Voting is compulsory for Singapore’s 2.75 million eligible citizens.

Singapore mirrors the UK’s first-past-the-post voting system, but there are key differences that make it harder for opposition parties.

MPs contest for constituencies that vary in size and the larger ones are not represented by an individual MP, but by a team of up to five MPs – called Group Representative Constituencies (GRCs).

The system was introduced in 1988 as a way to include more representation from Singapore’s minority groups in the predominantly Chinese city – so parties could “risk” running one or two minority candidates.

But until several years ago, opposition parties have not had the resources to recruit enough skilled and experienced people to genuinely contest these larger constituencies.

Candidates must also deposit S$13,500 ($9,700: £7,700) to contest and need to win more than one-eighth of total votes to get it back.

The electoral divisions of constituencies are also often changed to reflect population growth – opposition parties say this is not done transparently and amounts to gerrymandering, something the government has always denied.

Former President Barack Obama is applauding Harvard University’s decision to refuse the White House’s demands that it change its policies or lose federal money, in his first social media post to criticise the Trump administration since at least Inauguration Day.

President Donald Trump is freezing more than $2bn (£1.5bn) in federal funds for Harvard because it would not make changes to its hiring, admissions and teaching practices that his administration said were key to fighting antisemitism on campus.

Obama, a Harvard alum, described the freeze as “unlawful and ham-handed”.

He called on other institutions to follow Harvard’s lead in not conceding to Trump’s demands.

“Harvard has set an example for other higher-ed institutions – rejecting an unlawful and ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom, while taking concrete steps to make sure all students at Harvard can benefit from an environment of intellectual inquiry, rigorous debate and mutual respect,” Obama wrote on social media.

The former president, who graduated from Harvard Law School in 1991, has rarely criticised or rebuked government officials or government policies on social media since leaving the White House almost a decade ago. His posts during the election typically extolled Trump’s challenger, then-Vice-President Kamala Harris, and since Inauguration Day, he has mainly posted tributes, personal messages and thoughts on sports.

Obama is one of a handful of US political figures and university officials now speaking out against the Trump administration’s attempts to reshape the country’s top universities, through pressure to change what they teach and who they hire and threats to cut research funding.

Hundreds of faculty members at Yale University, published a letter expressing their support for Harvard’s decision to reject the Trump administration’s demands.

“We stand together at a crossroads,” the letter read. “American universities are facing extraordinary attacks that threaten the bedrock principles of a democratic society, including rights of free expression, association, and academic freedom. We write as one faculty, to ask you to stand with us now.”

Many US universities receive some type of federal funding which is mostly designated for scientific research in areas such as drug development.

Since Trump returned to office in January, elite institutions such as Stanford University have had to freeze hiring and cut budgets in the face of shrinking federal funds.

Some of the funding has been paused to press universities to take steps that the Trump administration says will fight antisemitism. Trump has accused them of failing to protect Jewish students during last year’s campus protests against the war in Gaza and US support for Israel.

Stanford President Jonathan Levin and Provost Jenny Martinez on Tuesday said in a statement praising Harvard that “universities need to address legitimate criticisms with humility and openness”.

“But the way to bring about constructive change is not by destroying the nation’s capacity for scientific research, or through the government taking command of a private institution,” they wrote.

• Columbia University agrees to Trump demand for mask ban
• Trump pulls $400m from Columbia University
• Why has Trump revoked hundreds of international student visas?

While Columbia University ceded to some of Trump’s demands earlier this month, Harvard became the first major US university to take the opposite approach.

“No government – regardless of which party is in power – should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, said in a statement on Monday.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) followed Harvard’s lead on Monday and also rejected the Trump administration’s demands.

Despite the criticism, Trump is standing fast. On Tuesday he took another strike against Harvard, threatening to revoke its tax-exempt status.

Universities, as well as many charities and religious groups, are exempted from paying federal income taxes. This valuable tax break, though, can be removed if the groups become involved in political activities or move away from their stated purposes.

The parents and wife of one of the people who died when the roof of a nightclub collapsed in the Dominican Republic last week have become the first to press charges against the club’s owners.

Police lieutenant Virgilio Rafael Cruz Aponte was one of the 231 people killed when the roof of the Jet Set music venue collapsed during a merengue music concert.

A lawyer for the Cruz Aponte family said they had brought manslaughter charges against the owner and managers of the Jet Set club. Other families have said that they also plan to file lawsuits.

Jet Set’s owner, Antonio Espaillat, has said in a video message that he is fully co-operating with the investigation into the causes of the collapse.

That investigation is expected to take several months, officials said.

A lawyer representing Mr Cruz Aponte’s family said they had also accused the local government of neglecting its duty to ensure the venue complied with all necessary safety guidelines.

On Monday, the interior ministry said that the number of dead had risen to 231 after five more people died of the injuries they had sustained.

Interior Minister Faride Raful said 189 people had been pulled alive from the rubble.

Hundreds were inside the building on Monday evening to attend one of the club’s regular dance music evenings, which on this particular occasion starred popular merengue singer Rubby Pérez.

Pérez and one of the saxophonists in his band, both of whom were on stage at the time of the collapse, died in the incident.

Pérez’s daughter Zulinka, who was a backing singer in her father’s band, managed to get out of the rubble alive.

According to the National Institute of Forensic Sciences, two French citizens, a Haitian, and an Italian national were among those killed.

The US State Department previously said that “several” US citizens had died.

The impact of the tragedy has been felt beyond the Dominican Republic, in places with large Dominican communities such as New York City.

New York Mayor Eric Adams travelled to Santo Domingo on Sunday and visited the site of the disaster.

“They are not merely my residents, I’ve considered them my family,” he said of the Dominican residents of New York.

“And what do family members do during times of mourning? They mourn with you,” he added.

Ghana has banned all foreigners from trading in its local gold market as part of efforts to boost national revenue and streamline the country’s mining sector.

It follows the enactment of a new law earlier this month that grants exclusive authority of gold mining to a new state body, the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod).

“All foreigners are hereby notified to exit the local gold trading market not later than 30th April, 2025,” said GoldBod spokesperson Prince Kwame Minkah in a statement.

Ghana is Africa’s largest gold producer and the sixth largest in the world, but it is struggling to address widespread illegal gold mining, locally called “galamsey”.

The mineral-rich West African country has been facing harsh economic times with a high cost of living. It is the world’s second largest cocoa producer but sees little of the profits from chocolate.

Fuelled by rising gold prices and youth unemployment, illegal gold mining has been growing in Ghana, despite military operations to shut down galamsey activities. It was a big campaign issue in the lead up to last December’s elections.

• Ghana’s illegal gold mining industry causes environmental disaster
• The deadly dig for Ghana’s gold – Galamsey

Chinese nationals have been active in Ghana’s informal mining and along with Ghanaian nationals, they have been repeatedly accused of ignoring environmental concerns.

Under the new law passed by parliament last month and assented to by President John Mahama on 2 April, GoldBod is the sole buyer, seller and exporter of all gold produced by the artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) sector.

However, foreigners are allowed to apply to buy or off-take gold directly from the GoldBod but can no longer operate within the local gold value chain.

The licenses of local dealers have also been revoked but given a grace period to allow a smooth transition before the directive takes effect next month.

During this period, gold transactions would only be carried out in Ghana cedis, the local currency, and priced based on the Bank of Ghana rates.

GoldBod warned that “it shall constitute a punishable offence for a person to purchase or deal in gold in the country without a licence issued by the new board.

The government has allocated $279m (£212) to the new body to purchase and export at least three tonnes of gold per week.

The move is meant to help boost foreign exchange inflows and stabilise the local currency, said Finance Minister Cassel Ato Forson.

But Kwaku Effah Asuahene, the chairman of the Chamber of Bullion Traders Ghana, fears that the government may not be able to raise enough revenue to purchase all the gold.

He told BBC that while they support the initiative, they would have preferred to be allowed to partner with foreign investors to purchase the gold and export it through GoldBod.

Although GoldBod has not been created to specifically deal with illegal mining, the new directive could also make it difficult for illegal miners to sell gold in the country.

Ghana has been dealing with severe environmental pollution caused by the activities of illegal miners, and over 60% of the country’s water bodies have been affected.

The ban is seen as the first concrete step by the new administration of President Mahama to tighten regulation and control of the gold sector and deliver on its anti-galamsey campaign promises.

“It sends a strong message to foreign actors – especially Chinese operatives – who have circumvented local laws for years,” Nana Asante Krobea, a mining governance consultant, told the AFP news agency.

He said if properly applied, the new law could bolster government revenue and “bring some order to the chaos in the gold sector”.

Ghana’s gold exports grew by 53.2% to $11.64bn last year – nearly $5bn of that was from legal small-scale miners.

Gold prices shot up to $3,200 per ounce last week due to trade tensions between the US and China, which has forced investors to seek refuge in the commodity because of uncertainties.

• Ghana wants more for its cashews, but it’s a tough nut to crack
• Reporter who sued MP and won $18m hopeful he will pocket the money
• Why some Ghanaians are fighting in insurgency-hit Burkina Faso
• Can Ghana’s new president meet the voters’ high expectations?

China’s President Xi Jinping has called on Vietnam to oppose “unilateral bullying” to upkeep a global system of free trade – though he stopped short of naming the US.

It comes as Xi is on a so called “charm offensive” trip across South East Asia, which will also see him visit Malaysia and Cambodia.

Though the trip was long-planned, it has taken on heightened significance in the wake of a mounting trade war between the US and China. Vietnam was facing US tariffs of up to 46% before the Trump administration issued a 90-day pause last week.

US President Donald Trump called Xi’s meeting with Vietnamese leaders a ploy to figure out how to “screw the United States of America”.

According to state media outlet Xinhua, Xi told Vietnam’s Communist Party Secretary-General To Lam to “jointly oppose unilateral bullying”.

“We must strengthen strategic resolve… and uphold the stability of the global free trade system as well as industrial and supply chains,” he said.

Stephen Olson, a former US trade negotiator, said Xi’s comments were “a very shrewd tactical move”.

“While Trump seems determined to blow up the trade system, Xi is positioning China as the defender of rules-based trade, while painting the US as a reckless rogue nation,” he added.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval office on Monday, Trump said he does not “blame” China or Vietnam but alleged that they were focused on how to harm the US.

“That’s a lovely meeting. Meeting like, trying to figure out, how do we screw the United States of America?” said Trump.

The world’s two largest economies are locked in an escalating trade battle, with the Trump administration putting tariffs of 145% on most Chinese imports earlier this month. Beijing later responded with its own 125% tariffs on American products coming into China.

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 later 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'”.

Xi arrived in Hanoi on Monday, where he was welcomed by well wishers waving Chinese and Vietnamese flags.

He then met top Vietnamese officials including the country’s Secretary-General and Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh.

Earlier on Tuesday, Xi visited the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum to take part in a wreath laying ceremony at the resting place of the former Vietnamese founder and Communist leader.

Despite Xi’s visit, Vietnam will be careful to “manage the perception that it is colluding with China against the United States, as the US is too important a partner to put aside,” said Susannah Patton, Director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Lowy Institute think-tank.

“In many ways, China is an economic competitor as well as an economic partner for South East Asian economies,” she added.

Xi has now left Vietnam and will arrive in Malaysia later on Tuesday. He is expected to meet the country’s King, as well as its Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.

It comes as Malaysian mobile data service company U Mobile said it will roll out the country’s second 5G network by using infrastructure technology from China’s Huawei and ZTE.

Ms Patton expects Xi to continue portraying the US as “a partner which is unreliable [and] protectionist”.

Meanwhile, he is likely to “portray China in stark contrast as a partner that is there”, she added.

“Now is really a golden opportunity for China to score that narrative win. I think this is how Xi’s visit to Vietnam, Cambodia and Malaysia will be seen.”

A high-level international conference is under way in London to find “a pathway to peace” in Sudan, in the words of one of the hosts, the UK’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy.

Sudan’s civil war began exactly two years ago causing what aid agencies call the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The UK is promising an extra £120m ($159m) worth of food and medical assistance.

Charities say 30 million people in Sudan are in desperate need, and people are starving as a result of the war.

“Many have given up on Sudan – that is wrong – it’s morally wrong when we see so many civilians beheaded, infants as young as one subjected to sexual violence, more people facing famine than anywhere else in the world… We simply cannot look away,” Lammy said opening the meeting on Tuesday.

Also in attendance is the head of UN’s refugee agency, Filippo Grandi, who earlier warned the world would face “catastrophic consequences” if it continued to turn its back on the people of Sudan.

More than 12 million have been forced from their homes in Sudan and tens of thousands killed, amid a genocide in Darfur and reports of rape being used as a weapon of war across the country.

• Sudan’s siege city – BBC smuggles in phones to reveal hunger and fear
• Sudan war: A simple guide to what is happening

In recent days, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) launched an intense ground and aerial assault on camps for displaced people close to the city of el-Fasher in an attempt to seize the last state capital in Darfur held by their rival, the Sudanese army.

A vast camp for displaced people called Zamzam, which has provided temporary shelter for an estimated 500,000, is now being systematically destroyed by fire from intentional arson by RSF forces, according to the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab, which has analysed satellite images taken of the camp.

“There’s a brazenness that characterises these acts,” Ravina Shamdasani, a UN Human Rights Office spokeswoman, told the BBC’s Newshour programme.

“We’ve heard accounts of men walking in and raping the women and saying to them: ‘We are your men now.’ We have accounts of RSF militants who’ve killed young men and then gone to the mothers of those young men and said: ‘We will protect you now’.”

“Can you imagine the panic and the anxiety [knowing] that now you’re in the hands of these people? There is a brazenness that is fuelled by impunity… when we talk about how to bring this conflict to an end, one of the key things is pushing for accountability.”

When the violence in el-Fasher got too much Nusra left home and fled to Zamzam last year, and five members of her family including one of her sons have died since then – most of them killed by fighters shelling the refugee camp.

“The RSF burned down the only field hospital” in Zamzam, she tells the BBC, and “killed more than three volunteers and nine staff members of Relief International”. She also says “the RSF shut down the only market inside the camp and blocked water tankers” trying to reach the residents.

The RSF has not commented on these latest allegations but recently said that it was not attacking civilians in Zamzam.

Meanwhile the aid group Doctors Without Border (MSF) says that over 20,000 people have fled to the town of Tawila in North Darfur in under two days.

“Some of them are dead upon arrival, others are lacking water, food. They didn’t drink a drop of water for two days, and children are dying of thirst. So water is the main need here,” MSF’s Marion Ramstein told the BBC.

Some survivors told the BBC they were robbed by armed gangs as they fled, and that they had to make the heart-breaking decision to leave injured people behind because they could not carry them.

“Looting gangs on the way took everything we owned and we have sick relatives with us. We left our mothers behind and we don’t know what’s happened to them,” one woman said.

Another said two of her children got sick and died on the days-long walk to Tawila, adding “some people also stopped us and took our phones and possessions… now we cannot move from the exhaustion and our legs are hurt from walking”.

Extra tents have been added outside Tawila’s only hospital which is “already overwhelmed”, says Ms Ramstein, and many more civilians are still arriving with gunshot wounds and other emergencies.

Tuesday’s ministerial conference is co-chaired by the UK, EU and African Union.

Officials say the aim is to unite international partners around a common position, to get more food and medicine into Sudan and to begin charting a way to end the hostilities.

Neither of Sudan’s main warring parties – the Sudanese Armed Forces nor RSF – has been invited.

They will be represented instead by regional allies, some of whom diplomats say are fuelling the conflict. Among them is the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which is accused of arming the RSF, something it denies.

In a statement issued on Tuesday about Sudan’s civil war, Abu Dhabi said “the UAE condemns these atrocities unequivocally and calls for accountability”.

The Kenyan government is attending Tuesday’s talks, despite accusations at home and abroad that they are backing the RSF. President William Ruto hosted RSF figures earlier this year in Nairobi, where they announced plans for a rival government in Sudan.

February’s RSF summit in Nairobi “was purely to dialogue among themselves”, Kenya’s Foreign Minister Musalia Mudavadi told the BBC’s Newsday programme. He insisted that events were misreported and “at no time has Kenya been party to a government in exile or a parallel government in any country… Kenya stands for one Sudan”.

“Kenya is a centre for mediation,” Mudavadi added saying that their approach was “not about taking sides” and they had previously hosted Sudan’s de facto leader Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan too.

The war – a power struggle between the army and the RSF – began on 15 April 2023, after the leaders of the army and RSF fell out over the political future of the country.

Speaking on Tuesday in London, the African Union (AU) envoy Bankole Adeoye said “there can be no military solution in Sudan, only an immediate, unconditional cessation of hostilities. This must be followed by an all-inclusive dialogue to end the war.

“Ordinary Sudanese people are bearing the brunt of this unnecessary war. The AU is calling on all belligerents to stop this war,” he added.

“The AU will not allow a Balkanization… or partition of Sudan.”

• BBC smuggles in phones to reveal hunger and fear in Sudan
• ‘A living hell’: Sudanese refugees face rape and abuse in Libya
• Sudan accuses UAE of ‘complicity in genocide’ at world court
• The gravedigger ‘too busy to sleep’

Rapper and musician Lil Nas X has revealed he is suffering from a sudden partial paralysis of the face.

Posting to Instagram from hospital, the star told his 10.4 million followers that he has “lost control” of the right-hand side of his face.

“This is me doing a full smile right now, by the way,” he said in a video, as he unsuccessfully tried to grin. “Bro, I can’t even laugh right.”

In a follow-up post, Lil Nas X reassured fans that he was “OK” and asked them to “stop being sad”.

“Shake ur ass for me instead!” he joked.

In a third post, he wrote: “I’mma look funny for a lil bit but that’s it.”

In the comments section, his fans and celebrity friends expressed their concern.

“Get well baby,” said actress Taraji P Henson. “Sending you love,” wrote Garbage singer Shirley Manson.

Comedian Wanda Sykes added: “Sometimes your body tells you to sit down somewhere. Rest up.”

The 26-year-old, whose real name is Montero Lamar Hill, appeared to be in good spirits, despite his condition.

In one video, he panned the camera from the left side of his face to the right, joking: “We normal over here, we get crazy over here!”

The star did not disclose the cause of his condition, but fans speculated it could be Bell’s Palsy, a nerve condition that causes paralysis to part of the face, or Ramsay Hunt Syndrome, in which a shingles outbreak affects the facial nerve near the ear, and cause hearing issues such as tinnitus.

Both conditions are usually temporary, and can be triggered by infections or stress.

Justin Bieber cancelled several dates on his 2022 world tour after contracting Ramsay Hunt Syndrome.

In a video, he showed fans that he was unable to blink his right eye and, although the symptoms persisted for some time, he recovered fully.

Musician and TV presenter Tulisa Contostavlos also has recurring instances of Bell’s Palsy, which developed after she suffered nerve damage in a horse riding accident.

Speaking in 2020, she said that an attack could last up to seven months if she didn’t take steroids within the first 72 hours.

Before his hospital visit, Lil Nas X had been promoting his eight-track EP Days Before Dreamboy, which previews the highly anticipated follow-up to his 2021 debut album, Montero.

Speaking to Atlanta radio station Hot 107.9 last month, he said the album had had a painful gestation.

“At the top of 2024… I feel like I was very lost and trying to cater to everybody except myself,” he said.

The Old Town Road rapper said he had started trying to cater to what he thought “the world wanted from me” – including the need “to be outrageous all the time”.

“But it’s like, no, sometimes I can just be on my chill [side],” he added.

Speaking at last month’s GLAAD Awards, the star added that he’d recently turned down the opportunity to collaborate with Taylor Swift.

“We were working on something,” he told E! News on the red carpet.

“She offered to let me try a verse on something, but I couldn’t catch a vibe for it, so it didn’t happen.”

“Trump is a crazy man,” says Lionel Xu, who is surrounded by his company’s mosquito repellent kits – many were once best sellers in Walmart stores in the United States.

Now those products are sitting in boxes in a warehouse in China and will remain there unless President Donald Trump lifts his 145% tariffs on all Chinese goods bound for the US.

“This is so hard for us,” he adds.

Around half of all products made by his company Sorbo Technology are sold to the US.

It is a small company by Chinese standards and has around 400 workers in Zhejiang province. But they are not alone in feeling the pain of this economic war.

“We are worried. What if Trump doesn’t change his mind? That will be a dangerous thing for our factory,” says Mr Xu.

• What are tariffs and why is Trump using them?

Nearby, Amy is helping to sell ice cream makers at her booth for the Guangdong Sailing Trade Company. Her key buyers, including Walmart, are also in the US.

“We have stopped production already,” she says. “All the products are in the warehouse.”

It was the same story at nearly every booth in the sprawling Canton Fair in the trading hub of Guangzhou.

When the BBC speaks to Mr Xu, he is getting ready to take some Australian buyers to lunch. They have come looking for a bargain and hope to drive down the price.

“We will see,” he says about the tariffs. He believes Trump will back down.

“Maybe it will get better in one or two months. Maybe, maybe,” Mr Xu adds with his fingers crossed.

Last week, President Trump temporarily paused the vast majority of tariffs after global stock markets tumbled, and a sell-off in the US bond market.

But he kept the import levies targeted at Chinese goods being shipped to the US. Beijing responded by imposing its own 125% levies on American imports.

This has bewildered traders from more than 30,000 businesses who have come to the annual fair to show off their goods in several exhibition halls the size of 200 football pitches.

In the homeware section, firms displayed everything from washing machines to tumble dryers, electric toothbrushes to juicers and waffle makers. Buyers come from all over the world to see the products for themselves and make a deal.

But the cost of a food mixer or a vacuum cleaner from China with the added tariffs are now too high for most American firms to pass on the cost to their customers.

The world’s two largest economies have hit an impasse and Chinese goods meant for US households are piling up on factory floors.

The effects of this trade war will likely be felt in kitchens and living rooms across America, who will now have to buy these goods at higher prices.

China has maintained its defiant stance and has vowed to fight this trade war “until the end.”

It is a tone also used by some at the fair. Hy Vian, who was looking to buy some electric ovens for his firm, waved off the effects of tariffs.

“If they don’t want us to export – then let them wait. We already have a domestic market in China, we will give the best products to the Chinese first.”

China does have a large population of 1.4 billion people and in theory this is a strong domestic market.

Chinese policymakers have also been trying to stimulate more growth in a sluggish economy by encouraging consumers to spend.

But it is not working. Many of the country’s middle classes have invested their savings in buying the family home, only to watch their house prices slump in the last four years. Now they want to save money – not spend it.

While China may be better placed to weather the storm than other countries, the reality is that it is still an export driven economy. Last year, exports accounted for around half of the country’s economic growth.

China also remains the world’s factory – with Goldman Sachs estimating that around 10 to 20 million people in China may be working on US-bound exports alone.

Some of its workers are already feeling the pain.

Not far from the Canton Fair, there are warrens of workshops in Guangdong making clothes, shoes and bags. This is the manufacturing hub for companies such as Shein and Temu.

Each building houses several factories on several floors where workers will labour for 14 hours a day.

On a pavement near some shoe factories, a few workers were squatting down to chat and smoke.

“Things are not going well,” says one, who was unwilling to give his name. His friend urges him to stop talking. Discussing economic difficulties can be sensitive in China.

“We’ve had problems since the Covid pandemic, and now there’s this trade war. I used to be paid 300-400 yuan ($40-54) a day, and now I will be lucky if I get 100 yuan a day.”

The worker says it is difficult to find work these days. Others making shoes on the street also told us they only earned enough to live a basic life.

While some in China feel pride in their product, others feel the pain of increasing tariffs and wonder how this crisis will end.

China is facing the prospect of losing a trading partner which buys more than $400bn (£302bn) worth of goods each year, but the pain will also be felt on the other side, with economists warning that the US could be heading for a recession.

Adding to the uncertainty is President Trump, who is known for his brinkmanship. He has continued to push Beijing and China has refused to back down.

However, it has said it will not add any more to the current 125% tariff rate on US goods. They could retaliate in other ways – but it offers the two sides some breathing room from a week that sparked an economic war.

There is reportedly little contact between Washington and Beijing and neither side appears willing to head to the negotiating table any time soon.

In the meantime, some companies at the Canton Fair are using the event to try to find new markets.

Amy hopes her ice cream makers will head in a new direction.

“We hope to open the new European market. Maybe Saudi Arabia – and of course Russia,” she adds.

Others believe there is still money to be made in China. Among them is Mei Kunyan, 40, who says he is earning around 10,000 yuan a month at his shoe firm which sells to Chinese customers. Many major shoe manufacturers have moved to Vietnam where labour costs are cheaper.

Mr Mei has also realised something that businesses around him are now discovering: “The Americas are too tricky.”

President Donald Trump has called for Harvard University to lose a valuable tax break, hours after his administration announced it is freezing more than $2bn (£1.5bn) in federal funds for the elite institution.

The White House has demanded the oldest university in the US make changes to hiring, admissions and teaching practices which it says will help fight antisemitism on campus.

Since returning to office, Trump has pushed to reshape top universities by threatening to withhold federal funds that are mostly designated for research.

Harvard became the first major US university to reject his administration’s demands on Monday, accusing the White House of trying to “control” its community.

In a Tuesday morning post on social media, Trump threatened to go beyond withholding the federal funds and targeted Harvard tax-exempt status.

Universities, as well as many charities and religious groups, are exempt from paying federal income taxes. This valuable tax break, though, can be removed if the groups become involved in political activities or move away from their stated purposes.

“Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting “Sickness?” he wrote on Truth Social. “Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!”

Losing the exemption could cost Harvard millions of dollars each year.

The Ivy League institution also has a fund of assets, or endowment, valued at $53bn.

Later on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump wanted the university to apologise for what his administration says is continuing tolerance of antisemitism.

“[Trump] wants to see Harvard apologize, and Harvard should apologize,” Leavitt said.

The sweeping changes demanded by the White House would have transformed Harvard’s operations and ceded a large amount of control to the government.

Its letter to Harvard on Friday, obtained by the New York Times, said the university had failed to live up to the “intellectual and civil rights conditions” that justify federal investment.

The letter included 10 categories for proposed changes, including:

• reporting students to the federal government who are “hostile” to American values
• ensuring each academic department is “viewpoint diverse”
• hiring an external government-approved party to audit programmes and departments “that most fuel antisemitic harassment”
• checking faculty staff for plagiarism

President Trump has accused leading universities of failing to protect Jewish students when college campuses around the country saw protests against the war in Gaza and US support for Israel last year.

The letter orders the university to take disciplinary action for “violations” during protests.

In explaining its rejection of these demands, Harvard president Alan Garber said the university would not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights under the First Amendment protecting free speech.

“Although some of the demands outlined by the government are aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of the ‘intellectual conditions’ at Harvard,” he said.

• Columbia University agrees to Trump demand for mask ban
• Trump pulls $400m from Columbia University
• Why has Trump revoked hundreds of international student visas?

Shortly after his letter of resistance was sent, the education department said it was freezing $2.2bn in grants and $60m in contracts to Harvard immediately.

“Harvard’s statement today reinforces the troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges,” the Department of Education said in a statement.

The disruption of learning plaguing campuses is unacceptable and the harassment of Jewish students intolerable, the statement said.

A professor of history at Harvard, David Armitage, told the BBC that the school could afford to resist as the richest university in the US and no price was too high to pay for freedom.

“It’s a not unexpected act of entirely groundless and vengeful activity by the Trump administration which wants nothing more than to silence freedom of speech,” he said.

In March, the Trump administration said it was reviewing roughly $256m in federal contracts and grants at Harvard, and an additional $8.7bn in multi-year grant commitments.

Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, a Republican from New York, said on X: “It is time to totally cut off US taxpayer funding to this institution.”

Harvard professors filed a lawsuit in response, alleging the government was unlawfully attacking freedom of speech and academic freedom.

Harvard is one of a number of elite universities in the crosshairs of the new presidency.

Columbia University in New York City agreed to a number of demands last month after the White House pulled $400m in federal funding.

But on Monday Columbia struck a less compliant tone, releasing its own letter that said it was continuing “good faith talks” with the government as it seeks to win back its funding, but also said it would “reject any agreement that would require us to relinquish our independence”.

Polling by Gallup last summer suggested that confidence in higher education has been falling over time among Americans of all political backgrounds, partly driven by a growing belief that universities push a political agenda. The decline was particularly steep among Republicans.

Earlier on Monday, a lawyer for an organiser of pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University said her client had been arrested by immigration officials as he attended an interview as part of his application for US citizenship.

Mohsen Mahdawi, a green card holder who is due to graduate next month, was detained on Monday in Colchester, Vermont.

Others who took part in campus protests against the war, including Columbia University’s Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts University’s Rumeysa Ozturk, have been detained in recent weeks.

Former President Barack Obama is applauding Harvard University’s decision to refuse the White House’s demands that it change its policies or lose federal money, in his first social media post to criticise the Trump administration since at least Inauguration Day.

President Donald Trump is freezing more than $2bn (£1.5bn) in federal funds for Harvard because it would not make changes to its hiring, admissions and teaching practices that his administration said were key to fighting antisemitism on campus.

Obama, a Harvard alum, described the freeze as “unlawful and ham-handed”.

He called on other institutions to follow Harvard’s lead in not conceding to Trump’s demands.

“Harvard has set an example for other higher-ed institutions – rejecting an unlawful and ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom, while taking concrete steps to make sure all students at Harvard can benefit from an environment of intellectual inquiry, rigorous debate and mutual respect,” Obama wrote on social media.

The former president, who graduated from Harvard Law School in 1991, has rarely criticised or rebuked government officials or government policies on social media since leaving the White House almost a decade ago. His posts during the election typically extolled Trump’s challenger, then-Vice-President Kamala Harris, and since Inauguration Day, he has mainly posted tributes, personal messages and thoughts on sports.

Obama is one of a handful of US political figures and university officials now speaking out against the Trump administration’s attempts to reshape the country’s top universities, through pressure to change what they teach and who they hire and threats to cut research funding.

Hundreds of faculty members at Yale University, published a letter expressing their support for Harvard’s decision to reject the Trump administration’s demands.

“We stand together at a crossroads,” the letter read. “American universities are facing extraordinary attacks that threaten the bedrock principles of a democratic society, including rights of free expression, association, and academic freedom. We write as one faculty, to ask you to stand with us now.”

Many US universities receive some type of federal funding which is mostly designated for scientific research in areas such as drug development.

Since Trump returned to office in January, elite institutions such as Stanford University have had to freeze hiring and cut budgets in the face of shrinking federal funds.

Some of the funding has been paused to press universities to take steps that the Trump administration says will fight antisemitism. Trump has accused them of failing to protect Jewish students during last year’s campus protests against the war in Gaza and US support for Israel.

Stanford President Jonathan Levin and Provost Jenny Martinez on Tuesday said in a statement praising Harvard that “universities need to address legitimate criticisms with humility and openness”.

“But the way to bring about constructive change is not by destroying the nation’s capacity for scientific research, or through the government taking command of a private institution,” they wrote.

• Columbia University agrees to Trump demand for mask ban
• Trump pulls $400m from Columbia University
• Why has Trump revoked hundreds of international student visas?

While Columbia University ceded to some of Trump’s demands earlier this month, Harvard became the first major US university to take the opposite approach.

“No government – regardless of which party is in power – should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, said in a statement on Monday.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) followed Harvard’s lead on Monday and also rejected the Trump administration’s demands.

Despite the criticism, Trump is standing fast. On Tuesday he took another strike against Harvard, threatening to revoke its tax-exempt status.

Universities, as well as many charities and religious groups, are exempted from paying federal income taxes. This valuable tax break, though, can be removed if the groups become involved in political activities or move away from their stated purposes.

Nests and some dead rodents were found in outbuildings of the house where Oscar-winning actor Gene Hackman and his wife Betsy Arakawa were found dead.

New Mexico Department of Public Health records seen by BBC News documented evidence of the animals in eight detached buildings at their home in Santa Fe.

US officials previously confirmed that Ms Arakawa, 65, died from a respiratory illness linked to hantavirus, which can be transmitted by infected rodents.

It is believed she died a week before her husband, 95, who was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Authorities found the deceased couple in their home in February.

An environmental assessment of the property took place on 5 March, a week after they were discovered, as part of the investigation into their deaths.

It found rodent faeces, a live rodent, dead rodent and a rodent nest in three garages, in addition to further rodent droppings in two small external houses and three sheds. Traps had also been set up.

There were sightings of rodents, a nest and faeces in two abandoned vehicles or farming machinery in the grounds of the property.

All eight detached outbuildings were within 50 yards (45 metres) of the main house where the couple lived, which itself was “clean with no signs of rodent activity,” New Mexico public health officials said in their eight-page report.

Authorities believe Ms Hackman died around 12 February and her husband on 18 February, with their bodies discovered on 26 February.

Medical investigators believe Ms Arakawa contracted hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS), a life-threatening lung condition with symptoms including fatigue, fever, muscle aches, dizziness and abdominal issues, which led to a sudden death.

Hantavirus refers to a strain of viruses carried by rodents, primarily transmitted to humans through inhalation of airborne particles from dried rodent droppings.

Infections typically occur when the virus becomes airborne from a rodent’s urine, droppings, or saliva, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

If respiratory symptoms develop during HPS, the mortality rate is approximately 38%, according to the CDC. The agency reported 864 cases of hantavirus in the US between 1993 and 2022, mostly in rural western states.

Mr Hackman’s cause of death was severe heart disease, with advanced Alzheimer’s disease listed as a contributing factor. Experts told the BBC his Alzheimer’s may have prevented him from realising his wife of more than 30 years was dead in the home where he was living.

Donald Trump has again blamed Volodymyr Zelensky for starting the war with Russia – a day after a major Russian attack killed 35 people and injured 117 others in the Ukrainian city of Sumy.

The US president said Ukraine’s leader shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin for the “millions of people dead” in the conflict.

“You don’t start a war against someone 20 times your size and then hope that people give you some missiles,” he said at the White House on Monday.

His comments followed Russia’s strike on Sumy on Sunday – the deadliest attack on civilians this year. Moscow also hit the city’s outskirts on Monday night.

Nato’s secretary general Mark Rutte went to Ukraine on Tuesday in a show of solidarity with Kyiv following the missile strikes.

Joining Zelensky in Odesa, Rutte condemned the “terrible pattern” of attacks on civilians and said “Russia is the aggressor, Russia started this war, there’s no doubt”.

Trump on Monday had first described the Sumy attack as “terrible” but said he had been told Russia had “made a mistake”. He did not give further detail.

Moscow said it had targeted a meeting of Ukrainian soldiers, killing 60 of them, but did not provide any evidence.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian media reported that there had been a medal ceremony for military veterans in the city on the day of the attack. Zelensky sacked Sumy’s regional chief on Tuesday, for allegedly hosting the event, local media reported.

Trump on Monday also blamed his predecessor Joe Biden for the war’s casualties- which are estimated in the hundreds of thousands, not the millions he’s claimed.

“Millions of people dead because of three people,” Trump had said. “Let’s say Putin number one, let’s say Biden who had no idea what the hell he was doing, number two, and Zelensky.”

Questioning Zelensky’s competence, he said the Ukrainian leader was “always looking to purchase missiles”.

“When you start a war, you got to know you can win,” the US president said.

Trump has repeatedly blamed Zelensky and Biden for the war, despite Russia invading Ukraine first in 2014, five years before Zelensky won the presidency, and then launching a full-scale invasion in 2022.

Trump further argued on Monday that “Biden could have stopped it and Zelensky could have stopped it, and Putin should have never started it. Everybody is to blame”.

Tensions between Trump and Zelensky have been high since a heated confrontation at the White House in February, where the US leader chided Ukraine’s president for not starting peace talks with Russia earlier.

By contrast, Trump has taken action to drastically improve relations with Moscow.

Trump’s administration has sought to broker a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine and has held negotiations with Moscow that have cut out Kyiv.

Trump said he had a “great” phone call with Putin last month, and the Russian president sent him a portrait as a gift a week later.

In February, Washington voted with Moscow against a UN resolution that identified Russia as the “aggressor” in Russia’s war against Ukraine.

After talks between US and Russian officials failed to produce a ceasefire in Ukraine, Trump said he was “very angry” with Putin, though he added he had a “good relationship” with the Russian leader.

US envoy Steve Witkoff, who met Putin in St Petersburg for close to five hours on Friday, called his meeting “compelling”.

He said the Russian leader’s request had been to get “a permanent peace… beyond a ceasefire”.

The detailed discussions had included the future of five Ukrainian territories Russia is claiming to have annexed since it launched the full-scale invasion of its neighbour and “no Nato, Article 5” – referring to the Nato rule that says members will come to the defence of an ally that is under attack.

“I think we might be on the verge of something that would be very, very important for the world at large,” Witkoff told Fox News on Monday.

“There is a possibility to reshape the Russian-United States relationship through some very compelling commercial opportunities that I think give real stability to the region, too. Partnerships create stability,” Trump’s envoy said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was less effusive, describing the contacts as positive but with no clear outlines of an agreement.

In an interview recorded before Russia’s deadly attack on Sumy, Zelensky had urged Trump to visit Ukraine before striking a deal with Putin 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.

At least 35 people were killed when Russian forces fired two Iskander missiles into the heart of Sumy on Sunday.

The blasts took place minutes apart while many civilians were heading to church for Palm Sunday, a week before Easter.

A bus was destroyed in the attack and bodies were left strewn in the middle of a city street. Ukainian and US officials have asserted that cluster munitions may have been used.

No casualties were reproted from Moscow’s strike on the outskirts of Sumy on Monday night.

Ukraine’s military on Tuesday said it had struck a base belonging to the Russian rocket brigade that conducted Sunday’s missile attack on Sumy.

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

Actress Cate Blanchett has said she wants to quit acting to do other things, joining a long line of big Hollywood stars who gave up the red carpets for a different lifestyle.

The 55-year-old is seen as one of the most talented and bankable actresses in film, but she has indicated several times in recent years that she’s keen to break away from the big screen.

“My family roll their eyes every time I say it, but I mean it. I am serious about giving up acting,” she told the Radio Times in a new interview. “[There are] a lot of things I want to do with my life.”

Speaking about her experience of being a celebrity she added: “When you go on a talk show, or even here now, and then you see soundbites of things you’ve said, pulled out and italicised, they sound really loud. I’m not that person.

“I make more sense in motion – it’s been a long time to remotely get comfortable with the idea of being photographed.”

Her remarks echoed comments she made to BBC Radio 4’s This Natural Life last year, when she said she “absolutely loved” acting, but also said it would be “brilliant” to give it up and spoke about her passion for nature and conservation.

Blanchett is best known for appearing in films such as Tár, Notes on a Scandal and Elizabeth: The Golden Age, and won Oscars for her performances in Blue Jasmine and The Aviator.

She wouldn’t be the first successful actor to switch careers slightly later in life. Here are 10 other actors who retired from acting (including a few who came back):

The US actress was one of Hollywood’s biggest stars in the 90s and 00s, having made her debut at the age of 21 opposite Jim Carey in The Mask more than 30 years ago.

Initially finding fame for her goofy performances in romcoms such as My Best Friend’s wedding, and comedies including There’s Something About Mary, Diaz went on to prove her dramatic acting chops in movies like Being John Malkovich and Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York.

But she took a hiatus from Hollywood following her turn as Ms Hannigan in 2014’s remake of the musical Annie, confirming her “retirement” in 2018. “I was free to be [like] ‘I’m a mum, I’m a wife, I’m living my life’ – it was so lovely.”

She said the decade she spent in retirement from acting was “the best 10 years” of her life. But she was eventually persuaded to return to screens earlier this year for spy thriller Back in Action with actor Jamie Foxx.

The Oscar-winning star, considered one of his generation’s finest actors, apparently retired in 2017, but it wasn’t the first time he had stepped away from the spotlight.

Day-Lewis, who holds both British and Irish citizenship, has won an incredible three best actor Academy Awards for roles in My Left Foot, There Will Be Blood and Lincoln.

Known for leaving long stretches between roles, in the 1990s Day-Lewis went into what he called “semi-retirement” and became a shoemaker’s apprentice in Florence, Italy.

He was coaxed back to acting by Martin Scorsese and his offer of the role in Gangs of New York.

A statement issued through the star’s agent in 2017, when he was aged 60, said he “will no longer be working as an actor”.

Again, however, that proved not to be permanent. Day-Lewis is soon to star in Anemone, the debut feature film from his son Ronan Day-Lewis. Daniel and Ronan co-wrote the script which “explores the intricate relationships between fathers, sons and brothers, and the dynamics of familial bonds”.

Whether it’s a one-off due to the family connection or the start of a big return to film remains to be seen.

Nicholson is one of only three actors (including Day-Lewis, above) to have won three Academy Awards for acting. Two of Nicholson’s were for best actor (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and As Good As It Gets) and another for best supporting actor (Terms of Endearment).

The legendary star’s other famous roles include Easy Rider, The Shining, The Departed, A Few Good Men, Batman and The Departed.

Although he’s never formally announced he is quitting or retiring, he previously said his retreat from the spotlight was brought on by a desire to not “be out there anymore”.

His last film role was in 2010 romcom How Do You Know.

But just last week, that film’s director James L Brooks told Hollywood Reporter: “I wouldn’t be surprised to see Jack work again. I mean, it’s been a hunk of time but I don’t know. Maybe it could be the right thing. He’s reading scripts all the time, I think.”

Legendary Swedish screen siren Greta Garbo declared in 1941 at the ripe old age of 36 that she would be taking a “temporary” retirement.

It proved to be permanent. The Camille and Queen Christina star never appeared on film again.

Always the reluctant celebrity, the reclusive actress never played the Hollywood game, refusing interviews and avoiding film premieres and other public appearances.

The enigmatic star, whose famous line “I want to be alone” from Grand Hotel somewhat mirrored her desire in real life as well as on screen, only succeeded in increasing her mystique by stepping away from the spotlight.

However, she later clarified in an interview: “I never said: ‘I want to be alone.’ I only said, ‘I want to be let alone! There is all the difference’.”

One of the few silent movie stars to transition successfully to the “talkies”, Garbo moved away from Hollywood to New York, where she lived until her death in 1990 at the age of 84.

Synonymous with James Bond, the late Scottish star first found fame through modelling and body-building before landing a few small theatre and TV roles.

He made his film debut in No Road Back in 1957, but playing Secret Service agent 007 in Dr No a few years later gave him his big breakthrough. He went on to star in five further Bond movies including From Russia with Love and Goldfinger.

Connery appeared in numerous other films over his long career, including Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie, The Man Who Would Be King opposite Sir Michael Caine, The Untouchables (for which he won an Oscar) and The Hunt for Red October. But he would forever be wedded to 007.

In 2005, however, he said he was “fed up with the idiots” adding there was an “ever-widening gap between people who know how to make movies and the people who greenlight the movies.”

That declaration came a couple of years after he starred in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which many concluded was one of the main reasons for his retirement.

The poorly received comic book caper was to be his final screen appearance.

Kids of the 80s and 90s: You know. This guy was a huge star back in the day, the comedy backbone of popular films such as Ghostbusters, Honey I Shrunk The Kids and the musical Little Shop of Horrors (Suddenly, Seymour anyone?).

But then he just seemed to disappear off the face of the earth. So what happened?

He began to cut back on work after his wife died of cancer in 1991 to concentrate on raising his children, with his final big screen outing being the 1997 sequel Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves.

“I’m a single parent, and I just found that it was too difficult to manage raising my kids and doing the travelling involved in making movies,” he told USA Today in 2005.

“So I took a little bit of a break. And the little bit of a break turned into a longer break, and then I found that I really didn’t miss it.”

He did continue to do voiceover work, however, and Moranis was set to make a comeback in a Honey I Shrunk the Kids reboot, which sadly fell through.

We sadly lost this acting legend earlier this year, along with his second wife Betsy Arakawa, but the star hadn’t been seen on screen for years after retiring from the profession on the advice of his heart doctor – opting for a quiet life in New Mexico.

Hackman shot to fame in Bonnie and Clyde at the end of the 60s and was rarely out of work – in films like The French Connection, Mississippi Burning and Superman.

He chose to bow out from acting in the political satire Welcome to Mooseport in 2004.

Explaining his decision, he told Reuters that he didn’t want to risk going out on a sour note.

“The business for me is very stressful. The compromises that you have to make in films are just part of the beast,” he said, “and it had gotten to a point where I just didn’t feel like I wanted to do it any more.”

Fonda, from the famous family dynasty, is another star who quit at the height of her fame.

Starring in 80s and 90s hits such as Scandal (about the Profumo Affair), Cameron Crowe’s Singles, The Godfather Part III and Single White Female (everyone wanted to copy that elfin crop, not just Jennifer Jason Leigh). And then… nothing.

Fonda never formally retired, she just seemed to retreat. Her last big screen appearance was in The Whole Shebang in 2001.

When asked in 2023 by a reporter if she would return to acting at some point, she replied: “I don’t think so, it’s too nice being a civilian.” Fair enough!

Fonda’s aunt Jane also quit acting in 1990 for several years, explaining later in Vogue that “she wasn’t having fun anymore”.

But she later came out of retirement for the romcom movie Monster-in-Law.

“It was just a gut feeling of, Why the hell not? It’d been 15 years, and I wanted to act again.”

Another star we sadly lost in the last year, Shelley Duval was best known for her roles in film like The Shining, Annie Hall and Nashville.

Her step back from the spotlight wasn’t just her choice. Movie roles began to drop off in the 90s and then she decided to move back to Texas after her brother was diagnosed with cancer.

A year before her death, she told People magazine: “It’s the longest sabbatical I ever took but it was for really important reasons – to get in touch with my family again.”

Duvall did return to acting in horror movie, 2023’s The Forest Hills.

“Acting again – it’s so much fun. It enriches your life,” she told People.

“[Jessica Tandy] won an Oscar when she was 80. I can still win,” she joked. Sadly, she didn’t get the chance.

Who could forget 2024 award season’s most charming star, Oscar winner and Everything, Everywhere All At Once actor Ke Huy Quan?

He first found fame as a child actor in the 80s when he landed the role of Short Round in Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom, before taking another starring role in childhood adventure hit The Goonies.

A couple of TV roles followed but then the work largely dried up, and he settled for working behind the scenes as a stunt co-ordinator and assistant director.

“It’s always difficult to make the transition from a child actor to an adult actor,” he told the Telegraph. “But when you’re Asian, then it’s 100 times more difficult.”

He reluctantly gave up – only due to lack of opportunity – and it took years before he took a punt on inventive, off-the wall movie Everything, Everywhere, All At Once, where his role as Waymond Wang won him an Oscar and made him a Hollywood darling once again.

A hairdresser from St Petersburg has been given a jail term of five years and two months on a charge of spreading fake news about the Russian army.

Anna Alexandrova denied posting eight anti-war messages on social media, insisting the case was motivated by a squabble over land with a neighbour.

Her neighbour told the BBC that she had complained to prosecutors after Alexandrova had sent her daughter pictures of the war in Ukraine.

Discrediting the armed forces and intentionally spreading fake news about the military became a crime in Russia within weeks of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Ever since the war began, the Kremlin has intensified a crackdown on dissent, jailing hundreds of opponents and critics and silencing independent media.

In a separate case on Tuesday, four journalists were jailed in Moscow for five and a half years after being found guilty of working for an “extremist organisation”.

Antonina Favorskaya, Kostantin Gabov, Sergey Karelin and Artyom Kriger had all insisted they were only doing their jobs as journalists, but the court found they had produced work used by an anti-corruption group founded by Putin’s chief opponent Alexei Navalny.

Navalny was found dead in a penal colony in the Arctic Circle last year. Video captured by Favorskaya on a courtroom video link the day before Navalny’s controversial death was the last time he was ever seen alive.

Favorskaya worked for independent outlet SotaVision and was eventually arrested in March 2024 filming in a cemetery where he was buried.

Russia’s restrictive laws on dissent have ensnared people from all walks of life.

Denunciations have led to prison terms and Russians have informed on their colleagues and other people they know, in actions reminiscent of the Soviet era when a boy called Pavlik Morozov was lionised for betraying his own father.

Hairdresser Anna Alexandrova, a 47-year-old mother of two children, was first arrested in November 2023 for eight posts she shared via two anonymous accounts on Russian social network VKontakte.

When BBC Russia Editor Steve Rosenberg visited the court last September, Alexandrova’s lawyer told him that the case had started out as an ordinary domestic squabble over land.

“One side went to the police but got nowhere. That only changed when the charge of ‘fake news about the army’ appeared,” said Anastasia Pilipenko.

Steve Rosenberg: How snitching case evokes ghosts of Soviet past

It emerged that Anna Alexandrova had initially been on the same side as her neighbour in fighting local deforestation by developers in the village of Korpikyulya, south of St Petersburg.

But they eventually fell out in a row that became increasingly acrimonious.

Although Alexandrova denied sending images from the war to her neighbour, the court sent her to a penal colony and ordered her not to post any further material for the next three years.

Meanwhile, lawyers for a Moscow councillor who was given the first full jail term in July 2022 under the “fake news” law have filed a complaint against the offence with Russia’s constitutional court.

Alexei Gorinov was initially given seven years in jail after he was filmed criticising Russia’s invasion at a council meeting. He had objected to the idea of a children’s drawing contest being held when children were dying in Ukraine.

That initial sentence was extended by a further three years last year when he was accused of criticising the war in a prison hospital.

In a statement on Tuesday, lawyers Katerina Tertukhina and Olga Podoplelova said the 2022 article aimed at combating disinformation did not serve constitutionally legitimate aims.

“Under the guise of protecting public order, it is used to punish anti-war views, criticism of authorities, and the dissemination of information – including truthful information – if it contradicts the official narrative,” the lawyers argued.

Machias Seal Island is a tiny dot on maps of North America. But the uninhabited, fogbound rock is significant for its location in an area known as the “Grey Zone” – the site of a rare international dispute between Canada and the United States.

The two neighbours and long-time allies have each long laid claim to the island and surrounding water, where the US state of Maine meets Canada’s New Brunswick province – and with that claim, the right to catch and sell the prized local lobsters.

John Drouin, a US lobsterman who has fished in the Grey Zone for 30 years, tells of the mad dash by Canadian and American fishermen to place lobster traps at the start of the summer catching season each year.

“People have literally lost parts of their bodies, have had concussions, [their] head smashed and everything,” he says.

The injuries have been caused when lobstermen have been caught up in each other’s lines. He says one friend lost his thumb after it became caught up in a Canadian line, what Mr Drouin calls his battle scar from the Grey Zone.

The 277 square miles of sea around Machias Seal Island has been under dispute since the late 1700s – and in 1984, an international court ruling gave both the US and Canada the right to fish in the waterway.

It has stood as a quirk – an isolated area of tension in what had been, until now, an otherwise close relationship between the two countries.

But that could all be about to change.

US President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, steep tariffs on Canadian imports and rhetoric about making the country the 51st state has sparked a series of fresh flashpoints, with the possibility that he may ultimately wish to subsume Canada into the US hanging over everything. Amid the biggest shift in the relationship between the two countries in decades, the question is, what does he really want from Canada?

Cutler, Maine, is the closest US town to the Grey Zone. It has a collection of scattered houses, one supply store and, for good reason, a lobster wholesaler.

Aside from a few big-city retirees and holiday-goers, Cutler owes its existence to the bountiful crustaceans that inhabit the offshore waters. And for the lobstermen of Cutler, the international limbo of the Grey Zone is their everyday reality, as they scatter their traps along the bottom of the Gulf of Maine to catch the prized lobsters and bring them to market.

During lobster season, the Grey Zone is packed with boats and buoys marking the location of their traps. When the waters get crowded and livelihoods are at stake, things can get ugly.

“Do we like it? Not in the least,” says Mr Drouin. He has caught lobsters in the Grey Zone for 30 years. “I will continue to complain about it until I can’t breathe anymore.”

Another Maine lobsterman, Nick Lemieux, said he and his sons have had nearly 200 traps stolen in recent years – and he blames their rivals to the north.

“This is our area, and it’s all we have to work with,” he said. “Things like that don’t sit very well with us.”

Americans accuse the Canadians of operating under a different, more accommodating set of rules that allow them to catch larger lobsters.

Canadians counter that the Americans have higher catch limits and are surreptitiously fishing in their territorial waters.

The union representing Canada’s border officials recently complained that Americans have responded to their enforcement efforts with threats of violence – and some of its officers have refused to work in the Grey Zone.

Canada regularly dispatches maintenance workers to Machias Seal Island to check on an automated lighthouse – evidence, they say, of their control. The Americans point to US Marines who occupied the island during World War One as their proof of sovereignty.

The dispute appears to be going nowhere, but during Trump’s first presidency, events in the Grey Zone did not appear to be intruding greatly on the overall warmth between the US and Canada.

When Trump hosted Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the White House in 2017, he spoke about the US-Canada relationship in glowing terms, remarking on the “special bonds” between the two nations that “share much more than a border”.

Yet his rhetoric has since changed sharply.

In recent months, Trump has repeatedly called Canada the “51st state” of the US – and the White House has expressed a willingness to open up new areas of dispute all along the US-Canada border.

In September, the president voiced designs on Canadian water in British Columbia in the west of the country, for instance, suggesting it could be piped to drought-parched California: “You have millions of gallons of water pouring down from the north… they have essentially a very large faucet”.

Approximately 1,500 miles further east, the Great Lakes could become another site of potential conflict, as US officials told their Canadian counterparts they are considering withdrawing from treaties over their coordinated environmental regulation.

And even further east, a library has become the unlikely setting for a flashpoint: built deliberately to straddle the Vermont-Quebec border as a symbol of cooperation between Canada and the US, the Haskell Free Library and Opera House used to be open to residents from both nations.

However in March, America changed the rules so that Canadians are required to pass through immigration control before they access the building, with the US Department of Homeland Security claiming it was in response to drug trafficking.

Natural resources are another source of dispute. Canada has vast supplies of rare earth metals, gold, oil, coal and lumber – the kind of natural wealth that Trump has long prized.

While Trump has disavowed any desire for Canada’s lumber, energy stockpiles or manufactured products, in February Trudeau reportedly told a closed-door meeting of Canadian business and labour leaders that he saw it differently.

“I suggest that not only does the Trump administration know how many critical minerals we have but that may even be why they keep talking about absorbing us and making us the 51st state. They’re very aware of our resources, of what we have, and they very much want to be able to benefit from those,” the CBC quoted Trudeau as saying.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings, a Canadian journalist and host of The Big Story podcast, believes Trump wants Canadian resources, and that the president’s annexation comments should be taken seriously.

“He likes the idea of being the guy to bring in a huge land mass,” says Mr Heath-Rawlings. “He probably wants the Arctic, which is obviously going to become much more valuable in the years to come.”

For Trump, even the US-Canadian border itself is suspect. “If you look at a map, they drew an artificial line right through it between Canada and the US,” he said in March. “Somebody did it a long time ago, and it makes no sense.”

Needless to say, Trump’s comments have rankled Canadian leaders, who warn of the president’s ultimate designs on their homeland.

In March, Trudeau accused the US president of planning “a total collapse of the Canadian economy because that will make it easier to annex us”.

The previous month, after Trump first announced new tariffs on Canada, Trudeau had said: “Trump has it in mind that one of the easiest ways of doing that [annexing Canada] is absorbing our country. And it is a real thing.”

If US territorial ambitions for Canada are, in fact, a “real thing”, it presents a simple, vexing question. Why? Why would the US, which has had the closest of diplomatic, military, economic and cultural ties with its northern neighbour for more than a century, put all of that at risk?

Some see a pattern in Trump’s designs on Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal – one that reflects a dramatic change in how the US sees itself in the world.

It has been most clearly articulated by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who said in January that the post-World War Two dominance of the US was more the exception than the norm.

“Eventually you were going to reach back to a point where you had a multi-polar world, multiple great powers in different parts of the planet,” he said. “We face that now with China and to some extent Russia, and … rogue states like Iran and North Korea.”

According to Michael Williams, professor of international affairs at the University of Ottawa, if the current Trump administration thinks that American world dominance is no longer possible or even desired, the US might pull back from far-flung conflicts and European commitments.

Instead, says Prof Williams, the US would prioritise its “territorial core”, creating a continental fortress of sorts, insulated on both sides by the vastness of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

“If this is your plan, you seek to control key geographic choke points,” he says. “You maximise access to natural resources, of which Canada has plenty, and you reshore industry whenever possible.”

Such a geopolitical outlook is hardly new. In the 1820s, US President James Monroe articulated a new global order in which America and Europe confined themselves to their own hemispheres.

But it does represent a remarkable shift in US foreign policy since the end of World War Two.

Prof Williams acknowledges that it’s difficult to figure out exactly what the US president is thinking – a view wholeheartedly endorsed by John Bolton, who served as Trump’s national security adviser for more than a year of his first presidential term.

“Trump has no philosophy,” he says. “He gets ideas, but does not follow a coherent pattern. There is no underlying strategy.”

The president is currently fixated on minerals and natural resources, he said, but Mr Bolton argues the best way to go about doing that is through the private sector, not by floating the idea of annexing an ally. Canada, for its part, has offered to work with US companies on joint mining partnerships.

Prof Williams and Mr Bolton agree that whatever the motivations behind Trump’s designs on Canada, the diplomatic damage that’s being done will be difficult to undo – and the possibility of unanticipated consequences is high.

“Trump likes to say in a lot of contexts that other people don’t have any cards,” says Prof Williams. “But the further you push people to the wall, the more you may find that they have cards that you didn’t know they had – and they might be willing to play them. And even if you have more cards, the consequences of doing so can easily spiral out of control in some really bad ways.”

Canadians have already been boycotting US products and cancelling winter trips south, which has had an impact on tourist communities in Florida.

“We’re not looking for a fight, but Canada’s ready for one,” says Mr Heath-Rawlings.

The idea that the trust between the US and Canada has been broken is one that’s been embraced by the country’s new prime minister, Mark Carney, as a general election looms.

“The old relationship we had with the United States based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation is over,” he said recently. “I reject any attempts to weaken Canada, to wear us down, to break us so that America can own us.”

Back in the 19th Century, territorial conflicts and flare-ups along the US-Canada border were a more frequent occurrence. Americans made multiple unsuccessful attempts to capture Canadian territory during the 1812 War.

In 1844, some Americans called for military force if the UK wouldn’t agree to its claims in the Pacific Northwest.

The 1859 “pig dispute” involved contested islands near Vancouver and the unfortunate shooting of a British hog that had intruded on an American’s garden.

All that seemed the stuff of dusty history books, where the Grey Zone was a diplomatic oddity – an exception to a peaceful norm in the modern world of developed and integrated democracies.

But that calm is now broken, and no one is sure where these stormy waters will lead either country.

Hamas is said to have rejected an Israeli proposal for a six-week ceasefire in Gaza which called for the armed group to give up its weapons.

A senior Palestinian official familiar with the talks said the plan gave no commitment to end the war or for an Israeli troop pull-out – key Hamas demands – in exchange for releasing half of the living hostages which it holds.

It comes as Israel continues its military offensive in Gaza.

A security guard was killed and nine other people were injured in an air strike on a field hospital in Khan Younis, the hospital said. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it struck the head of a Hamas cell.

A UN agency meanwhile warned that “the humanitarian situation in Gaza is now likely the worst it has been in the 18 months since the outbreak of hostilities”.

It is six weeks since Israel allowed any supplies to enter through crossings into the Palestinian territory – by far the longest such stoppage to date.

UN agencies strongly refute Israel’s claim that there is enough food in Gaza to last for a long time and suggest the blockade could breach international humanitarian law.

Israel’s prime minister said the block on supplies was aimed at pressuring Hamas to release hostages and to extend the ceasefire which expired on 1 March.

At the same time, the UN’s humanitarian affairs office stated: “Partners on the ground report a surge in attacks causing mass civilian casualties and the destruction of some of the remaining infrastructure that’s needed to keep people alive.”

Israel is said to have submitted its latest ceasefire proposal to regional mediators late last week, just days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met US President Donald Trump in Washington.

A Hamas delegation headed by chief negotiator Khalil al-Hayya then met Egyptian intelligence officials in Cairo.

The senior Palestinian official told the BBC: “The Israeli proposal relayed to the movement through Egypt explicitly called for the disarmament of Hamas without any Israeli commitment to end the war or withdraw from Gaza. Hamas therefore rejected the offer in its entirety.”

It is understood to be the first time that Israel has added Hamas disarmament as a condition for advancing a ceasefire – a red line for the group.

The Palestinian official accused Israel of stalling for time, seeking only to retrieve the hostages while prolonging the war.

It is believed that 59 hostages remain in Gaza, of whom 24 are alive.

On Tuesday afternoon, the spokesman for Hamas’s military wing said it had “lost contact” with a group of fighters holding Israeli-American hostage Edan Alexander following what he described as “a direct strike on their location”.

Abu Ubaida produced no evidence to support the claim and gave no indication of when contact had been lost. Israel has said it avoids hitting locations where it believes hostages are being held.

Hamas released a video of the 21-year-old soldier on Saturday, in which he appeared to be speaking under duress as he criticised the Israeli government.

Recently released hostages related how many were held with them in dire conditions underground. Some are in poor health with untreated injuries.

Hamas has said it is ready to return all of those held captive, in exchange for a complete end to hostilities and full Israeli pull-out from Gaza.

It previously offered five hostages in exchange for a truce extension but claims to have shown flexibility on the number of hostages to be released.

The BBC understands that Egypt has put forward a modified proposal to Hamas which it is now considering.

Israeli media had not been anticipating an imminent ceasefire breakthrough.

The newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth quoted an unnamed Israeli senior security official as saying: “We assess that there will be a deal within two-three weeks, but right now there are still gaps and the distance is great.”

“We want to get them to release 19 living hostages. Israel and the United States are co-ordinated, and the military pressure is having an impact,” the official went on.

“They have a shortage of gas, and the food and the fuel will run out in a few weeks. The big achievement of the residents’ return to the northern Gaza Strip has been erased. Pressure from the residents has begun. That’s rattled them.”

Israel resumed its bombardment of Gaza on 18 March and then restarted ground operations, saying it was targeting Hamas. The prime minister said future ceasefire talks would be held “under fire”.

Since Israel restarted its offensive in Gaza, at least 1,630 people have been killed – bringing the total killed in 18 months of war to 51,000, according to the latest figures from the Hamas-run health ministry.

Some 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage in the unprecedented Hamas-led 7 October attacks which triggered the war, Israel says.

On Tuesday morning, Israeli warplanes struck by the gate of the Kuwaiti Field Hospital in al-Mawasi, a crowded tented area for displaced people on the coast near Khan Younis in southern Gaza, hospital spokesman Saber Abu Arar told the BBC.

The man killed worked at the site, he said, and those injured were both hospital staff and patients. Three ambulances and some tents used as a reception area were damaged.

Graphic footage released by the field hospital on Facebook showed a man covered in blood being rushed away with attempts made to resuscitate him.

The IDF said in a statement that it “struck the head of a Hamas terrorist cell and a combat zone commander” outside the hospital, without giving any evidence.

It also said a “precise munition” was used to mitigate harm in the area.

The attack comes after the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, said he was “deeply alarmed” at Sunday’s strike on al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, his spokesman said.

Israel said it targeted a building at the site which Hamas was using as “a command-and-control centre” – something the group denied.

Doctors scrambled to evacuate the hospital, saying they were given just a 20-minute warning by the IDF. A 12-year-old boy being treated for head injuries is said to have died because his care was disrupted.

The hospital – which had been the best functioning in northern Gaza – is now out of service and cannot admit new patients.

“Under international humanitarian law, wounded and sick, medical personnel and medical facilities, including hospitals, must be respected and protected,” the spokesman for Guterres said.

He added that the attack dealt “a severe blow to an already devastated healthcare system in the strip”, adding that with aid blocked, there was strong concern that medical supplies were now running low as well as stocks of food and water.

The UN secretary general pointed out that under international humanitarian law, an occupying power had obligations to ensure relief for the civilian population.

Recent Israeli military evacuation orders have led to wide-scale displacement of Gaza’s 2.1 million population.

The UN says about 70% of the strip is currently under displacement orders or in “no-go” zones,” where the Israeli authorities require humanitarian teams to coordinate their movements.

In Israel, polls suggest that a majority of Israelis back a Gaza ceasefire deal and – when it comes to their countries’ stated war goals – prioritise bringing home the hostages over dismantling Hamas’ governing and military capabilities.

However, Netanyahu is backed by hard-line religious ultranationalist parties who have threatened to collapse the government if he ends the war.

Israel signed onto a ceasefire deal in January, leading to the release of 33 hostages – 25 of them alive – in exchange for some 1,800 Palestinian prisoners in the first six-week stage.

It then largely refused to begin talks on the planned second stage which was supposed to lead to a full withdrawal of Israeli forces and a complete end to fighting.

In the past week, Israeli military reservists and veterans have signed several open letters condemning the ongoing war and questioning its priorities.

There has also been criticism of the IDF’s chief of staff and air force commander for sacking air force reservists who signed an original statement.

This has coincided with rising frustration among reservists and their families over the cost of ongoing reserve duty along with the government’s failure to draft ultra-Orthodox Jews despite the IDF facing shortages of combat soldiers.

The cutting down of an ancient oak in north London was ordered on health and safety grounds by the pub chain that owns Toby Carvery after it was told the tree was dead.

The felled oak, estimated to be about 500 years old, was found by council workers at the edge of Whitewebbs Park in Enfield earlier in April. An emergency tree preservation order has now been imposed on what remains of the tree, which is near a Toby Carvery.

The tree, with a girth of 6m (20ft), was a nationally significant pedunculate oak listed on the Woodland Trust’s ancient tree inventory.

A spokesperson for Mitchells & Butlers said: “We took necessary measures to ensure any legal requirements were met.”

The pub chain spokesperson added: “This was an important action to protect our employees and guests as well as the wider general public, to whom we have a duty of care.”

Earlier, a Mitchells & Butlers source said the company had “done the decent thing” although they apologised to locals who loved the tree.

Enfield Council’s leader, Ergin Erbil, previously said they were treating the matter as criminal damage and had reported it to the police.

The Met Police confirmed it had received a report from the council, but it is understood the force believes there is no evidence of criminality.

The spokesperson for Mitchells & Butlers said: “The tree was cut back after we were advised that it caused a serious health and safety risk.

“Upon further inspection, our specialist arboriculture contractors made the assessment that the split and dead wood posed a serious health and safety risk and advised that the tree was unsafe and should be removed.

“We are grateful to our expert contractors for warning us of this hazard so swiftly, allowing us to act before anyone was harmed.”

Benny Hawksbee, a member of the Guardians of Whitewebbs group, said “the tree belonged to Enfield and to our national heritage – I am devastated.

“We have now placed a legal protection [Tree Preservation Order] on the tree and are looking at ways to help it grow back.”

Jon Stokes, director of trees, science and research at the Tree Council, said the felling of such a “magnificent” tree was shocking.

“Ancient oaks can live up to 1,000 years old and are as precious as our stately homes and castles,” he said.

“Our nation’s green heritage should be valued and protected and we will do everything we can to achieve this.”

The Woodland Trust’s head of campaigning Adam Cormack said: “This depressing sight is a reminder to all of us that not every ancient tree is in a safe place.

“It is very unusual to see the felling of an oak tree of this size and age. Legally protected status for heritage trees like the Whitewebbs Oak is long overdue.”

The trust’s Living Legends petition, which aims to secure such status for heritage trees, and which attracted more than 100,000 signatures, was handed in to Downing Street in November.

The issue of tree preservation was highlighted after the destruction of the Sycamore Gap tree in September 2023.

There was outrage when the tree, which stood in a dip next to Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland, was chopped down.

Daniel Graham, 39, and Adam Carruthers, 32, both from Cumbria, are accused of causing criminal damage put at more than £600,000.

The men, who deny the charge, will appear before a jury at a trial starting on 28 April at Newcastle Crown Court.