“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.

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,” Mr Xu adds with his fingers crossed. Maybe, maybe…”

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 those 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, Beijing 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 Americans are too tricky.”

Harvard University says it will not acquiesce to US President Donald Trump’s demands – federal funding or no.

“No government – regardless of which party is in power – should dictate what private universities can teach,” Harvard’s president Alan Garber said in a letter posted on the university’s website.

Not long after Harvard refused to agree to the White House’s sweeping list of demands – which included directions on how to govern, hire and teach – the Trump administration froze $2.2bn (£1.7bn) of federal funds to the institution.

Many students and alumni lauded the university’s decision to stand its ground, despite the consequences. Former President Barack Obama, an alumnus himself, called Trump’s move “ham-handed” and praised Harvard as “an example for other higher-ed institutions”.

But with billions in the balance, the battle for the higher ground may just be the opening salvo in a war of attrition between the federal government and higher education.

• Obama calls Trump’s freeze of Harvard funding ‘unlawful’

Trump’s attacks on Harvard are not isolated – the government’s antisemitism task force has identified at least 60 universities for review.

At issue, the government says, is last year’s pro-Palestinian campus protests, which wracked campuses across the country, and which the Trump administration says contributed to the harassment of Jewish students.

Last month, Columbia University agreed to many of the administration’s demands in the wake of the protests – after the government cut $400m in funding.

Harvard, too, made concessions. It agreed to engage with the administration’s task force to combat antisemitism. The school dismissed the leaders of its Center for Middle Eastern Studies and suspended its Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative over accusations of anti-Israel bias.

And in January, Harvard settled two lawsuits brought by Jewish students alleging antisemitism. It did not admit any wrongdoing, and said the settlement showed its commitment to supporting its Jewish students and staff.

But the university drew the line at the White House’s list of demands on Friday.

Harvard student Sa’maia Evans, who is an activist and member of the university’s African and African American Resistance Organization, said the university’s decision to take a stand was a long time coming.

“Harvard will only do that of which it is held accountable to,” she told the BBC. She pointed to campus protests in the past few weeks – and the widespread criticism of Columbia’s agreement with the Trump administration – as helping to put pressure on university officials.

“They know the public – they would experience public backlash” if they capitulated, Ms Evans said.

“It would be atypical (for) Harvard to do anything outside of what would be in its own interest.”

With a $53.2bn endowment – a figure that is larger than the GDP of some small countries – Harvard is uniquely able to weather the storm. But experts say it is still left in a crunch.

“Most policymakers think of endowments as a chequing account, a debit card where you can withdraw money and use it for any purpose,” said Steven Bloom, the spokesperson for American Council on Education. “But it’s not.”

While Harvard’s endowment is eye-popping, it says 70% of the money is earmarked for specific projects – which is typical for educational endowments, according to Mr Bloom.

Harvard has to spend the money the way the donors have directed, or it risks legal liability.

And Harvard’s expenses are huge – its 2024 operating budget was $6.4bn. About a third of that was funded by the endowment – with 16% coming from the federal government, often to help with things that are supposed to create good for the whole of the US, such as biomedical research.

Mr Bloom said the golden rule for endowment finance was that universities should not spend more than 5% of their total endowment each year. Making up for a $2bn loss means the school will need to boost its endowment by $40bn.

“You can’t find 40 billion dollars under a rock,” Mr Bloom said.

And that pain will only increase if Trump is able to make good on his threat to remove Harvard’s tax-exempt status. That status helps the school avoid paying taxes on its investments and properties. Harvard has campuses all over the Greater Boston area, and is estimated by Bloomberg to have saved $158m on its property tax bills in 2023.

• Trump threatens Harvard’s tax-exempt status after freezing $2bn funding

The realities of the situation have made some students sceptical about how long it can go on.

“There’s more the government can do if it wants to attack Harvard, and I’m not optimistic that it’s going to stop after cutting $2.2 billion,” Matthew Tobin, the academic representative on Harvard’s student council.

Mr Tobin said the idea that the Trump administration was making these demands to help Harvard is “malarkey”.

“Its a total bad-faith attack,” he told the BBC. “The funding cuts have to do with Trump attacking an institution that he views as liberal, and wanting to exercise more control over what people teach and how students learn and think.”

The UK Supreme Court is to deliver its verdict on how a woman should be defined in law.

The announcement marks the culmination of a long-running legal battle between the Scottish government and a women’s group.

The outcome could have far-reaching implications on how sex-based rights apply across Scotland, England and Wales.

The Scottish government argues transgender people with a gender recognition certificate (GRC) are entitled to sex-based protections, while For Women Scotland argues they only apply to people that are born female.

The ruling, to be announced at about 09:45, is expected to set out how the law should treat transgender people.

It could affect single-sex spaces and services, as well as equal pay claims, maternity policy and sports events.

The legal arguments have come at a time of heated debate on gender issues.

The Supreme Court is deciding on the proper interpretation of the 2010 Equality Act, which applies across Britain.

The law provides protection against discrimination on the basis of various characteristics, including “sex” and “gender reassignment”.

Judges in London are ruling on what that law means by “sex” – whether it means biological sex, or legal, “certificated” sex as defined by the 2004 Gender Recognition Act.

The Scottish government says the 2004 legislation is clear that obtaining a GRC amounts to a change of sex “for all purposes”.

Government lawyer Ruth Crawford KC told the court that “a person who has become the sex of their acquired gender is entitled to the protections of that sex”.

Aidan O’Neill KC, representing For Women Scotland, argues for a “common sense” meaning of the words man and woman, telling the court that sex is an “immutable biological state”.

The legal dispute began in 2018, when the Scottish Parliament passed a bill designed to ensure gender balance on public sector boards.

For Women Scotland complained that ministers had included transgender people as part of the quotas in that law.

After several cases in the Scottish courts, the issue has been sent to the Supreme Court in London for a final ruling.

For Women Scotland has warned that if the court sides with the government, it would have implications for the running of single-sex spaces and services, such as hospital wards, prisons, refuges and support groups.

Transgender people have warned the case could erode the protections they have against discrimination in their reassigned gender.

Amnesty International has said that since the Equality Act protects other minority groups, the case could be the “thin end of the wedge” which could undermine other rights.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission – the regulator in charge of enforcing the 2010 act – has called for legal reform as a result of the case.

The Scottish Parliament passed reforms in 2022 that would have made it easier for someone to change their legally recognised sex.

The move was blocked by the UK government, and has since been dropped by Holyrood ministers.

When investigators smashed through a hastily built wall, they uncovered a set of secret jail cells.

It turned out to be a freshly bricked-up doorway – an attempt to hide what lurked behind.

Inside, off a narrow hallway, were tiny rooms to the right and left. It was pitch-black.

The team may never have found this clandestine jail – a stone’s throw from Dhaka’s International Airport – without the recollections of Mir Ahmad Bin Quasem and others.

A critic of Bangladesh’s ousted leader, he was held there for eight years.

He was blindfolded for much of his time in the prison, so he leaned on the sounds he could recall – and he distinctly remembered the sound of planes landing.

That was what helped lead investigators to the military base near the airport. Behind the main building on the compound, they found the smaller, heavily guarded, windowless structure made of brick and concrete where detainees were kept.

It was hidden in plain sight.

Investigators have spoken to hundreds of victims like Quasem since mass protests ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government last August, and inmates in the jails were released. Many others are alleged to have been killed unlawfully.

The people running the secret prisons, including the one over the road from Dhaka airport, were largely from an elite counter-terrorism unit, the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), acting on orders directly from Hasina, investigators say.

“The officers concerned [said] all the enforced disappearance cases have been done with the approval, permission or order by the prime minister herself,” Tajul Islam, the chief prosecutor for the International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh, told the BBC.

Hasina’s party says the alleged crimes were carried out without its knowledge, that it bears no responsibility and that the military establishment operated alone – a charge the army rejects.

Seven months on, Quasem and others may have been released, but they remain terrified of their captors, who are serving security force members and are all still free.

Quasem says he never leaves home without wearing a hat and mask.

“I always have to watch my back when I’m travelling.”

He slowly walks up a flight of concrete steps to show the BBC where he was kept. Pushing through a heavy metal door, he bends his head low and goes through another narrow doorway into “his” room, the cell where he was held for eight years.

“It felt like being buried alive, being totally cut off from the outside world,” he tells the BBC. There were no windows and no doors to natural light. When he was inside, he couldn’t tell between day or night.

Quasem, a lawyer in his 40s, has done interviews before but this is the first time he has taken the media for a detailed look inside the tiny cell where he was held.

Viewed by torchlight, it is so small an average-sized person would have difficulty standing up straight. It smells musty. Some of the walls are broken and bits of brick and concrete lie strewn on the ground – a last-ditch attempt by perpetrators to destroy any evidence of their crimes.

“[This] is one detention centre. We have found that more than 500, 600, 700 cells are there all through the country. This shows that this was widespread and systematic,” says Islam, the prosecutor, who accompanied the BBC on the visit to the jail.

Quasem also clearly remembers the faint blue tiles from his cell, now lying in pieces on the floor, which led investigators to this particular room. In comparison to the cells on the ground floor, this one is much larger, at 10ft x 14ft (3m x 4.3m). There is a squatting toilet off to one side.

In painful detail, Quasem walks around the room, describing how he spent his time during his years in captivity. During the summers, it was unbearably hot. He would crouch on the floor and put his face as close to the base of the doorway as he could, to get some air.

“It felt worse than death,” he says.

Coming back to relive his punishment seems cruel. But Quasem believes it is important for the world to see what was done.

“The high officials, the top brass who aided and abetted, facilitated the fascist regime are still in their position,” he says.

“We need to get our story out, and do whatever we can to ensure justice for those who didn’t return, and to help those who are surviving to rehabilitate into life.”

Previous reports said he was kept inside a notorious detention facility – known as Aynaghor, or “House of Mirrors” – inside the main intelligence headquarters in Dhaka, but investigators now believe there were many such sites.

Quasem told the BBC he spent all his detention at the RAB base, apart from the first 16 days. Investigators now suspect the first site was a detective branch of police in Dhaka.

He believes he was disappeared because of his family’s politics. In 2016 he’d been representing his father, a senior member of the country’s largest Islamist party, the Jamaat-e-Islami, who was on trial and later hanged.

Five other men the BBC spoke to described being taken away, blindfolded and handcuffed, kept in dark concrete cells with no access to the outside world. In many cases they say they were beaten and tortured.

While the BBC cannot independently verify their stories, almost all say they are petrified that one day, they might bump into a captor on the street or on a bus.

“Now, whenever I get into a car or I’m alone at home, I feel scared thinking about where I was,” Atikur Rahman Rasel, 35, says. “I wonder how I survived, whether I was really supposed to survive.

He says his nose was broken and his hand is still painful. “They put handcuffs on me and beat me a lot.”

Rasel says he was approached by a group of men outside a mosque in Dhaka’s old city last July, as anti-government protests raged. They said they were from law enforcement and he had to go with them.

The next minute, he was taken into a grey car, handcuffed, hooded and blindfolded. Forty minutes later, he was pulled out of the car, taken into a building and put in a room.

“After about half an hour, people started coming in one by one and asking questions. Who are you? What do you do?” Then the beatings started, he says.

“Being inside that place was terrifying. I felt like I would never get out.”

Rasel now lives with his sister and her husband. Sitting on a dining chair in her flat in Dhaka, he describes his weeks in captivity in detail. He speaks with little emotion, seemingly detached from his experience.

He too believes his detention was politically motivated because he was a student leader with the rival Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), of which his father was a senior member. His brother, who lived abroad, would frequently write social media posts critical of Hasina.

Rasel says there was no way of knowing where he was held. But after watching interim leader Muhammad Yunus visiting three detention centres earlier this year, he thinks he was kept in Agargaon district in Dhaka.

It was an open secret that Hasina had no tolerance for political dissent. Criticising her could get you “disappeared” without a trace, former detainees, opponents and investigators say.

But the total number of people who went missing may never become clear.

A Bangladeshi NGO that has tracked enforced disappearances since 2009 has documented at least 709 people who were forcibly disappeared. Among them, 155 people remain missing. Since the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances was created in September, they have received more than 1,676 complaints from alleged victims and more people continue to come forward.

But that doesn’t represent the total number, which is believed to be much higher.

It is through speaking to people like Quasem that Tajul Islam is able to build a case against those responsible for the detention centres, including Sheikh Hasina.

Despite being held at different sites, the narrative of victims is eerily similar.

Mohammad Ali Arafat, spokesperson for Hasina’s Awami League party, denies any involvement. He says if people were forcibly disappeared, it was not done under the direction of Hasina – who remains in India, where she fled – or anyone in her cabinet.

“If any such detention did occur, it would have been a product of complex internal military dynamics,” said Arafat. “I see [no] political benefit for the Awami League or for the government to keep these people in secret detention.”

The military’s chief spokesman said it “has no knowledge of the things being implied”.

“The army categorically denies operating any such detention centres,” Lt Col Abdullah Ibn Zaid told the BBC.

Tajul Islam believes the people held in these prisons are evidence of Awami League involvement. “All the people who were detained here were from different political identities and they just raised their voice against the previous regime, the government of that time, and that is why they were brought here.”

To date they have issued 122 arrest warrants, but no one has yet been brought to justice.

Which is why victims like Iqbal Chowdhury, 71, believe their lives are still in danger. Chowdhury wants to leave Bangladesh. For years after he was released in 2019, he didn’t leave his house, not even to go to the market. Chowdhury was warned by his captors never to speak of his detention.

“If you ever reveal where you were or what happened, and if you are taken again, no one will ever find or see you again. You will be vanished from this world,” he says he was told.

Accused of writing propaganda against India and the Awami League, Chowdhury says that is why he was tortured.

“I was physically assaulted with an electric shock as well as being beaten. Now one of my fingers is heavily damaged by the electric shock. I lost my leg’s strength, lost physical strength.” He remembers the sound of others being physically tortured, grown men howling and crying in agony.

“I am still scared,” says Chowdhury.

Rahmatullah, 23, is also terrified. “They took away a year and a half of my life. Those times won’t ever be returned,” he says. “They made me sleep in a place where a human being should not even be.”

On 29 August 2023, he was taken from his home at midnight by RAB officers, some in uniform and others dressed in plain clothes. He was working as a cook in a neighbouring town while training to be an electrician.

After repeated interrogations, it became clear to Rahmatullah he was being forcibly detained for his anti-India and Islamic posts on social media. Using a pen and paper, he draws the layout of his cell, including the open drain he would use to relieve himself.

“Even thinking about that place in Dhaka makes me feel horrible. There was no space to lie down properly, so I had to sleep being curled up. I couldn’t stretch my legs while lying down.”

The BBC also interviewed two other former detainees – Michael Chakma and Masrur Anwar – to corroborate some of the details about the secret prisons and what is alleged to have gone on inside them.

Some of the victims live with physical scars from their detentions. All of them talk about the psychological torment that follows them everywhere they go.

Bangladesh is at a pivotal moment in its history as it tries to rebuild after years of autocratic rule. A crucial test of the country’s progress towards democracy will be its ability to hold a fair trial for the perpetrators of these crimes.

Islam believes it can, and must happen. “We must stop the recurrence of this type of offence for our future generations. And we have to do justice for the victims. They suffered a lot.”

Standing in what remains of his concrete cell, Quasem says a trial must take place as soon as possible so the country can close this chapter.

It’s not so simple for Rahmatullah.

“The fear has not gone away. The fear will remain until I die.”

The US has “dropped the ball” on chip manufacturing over the years, allowing China and other Asian hubs to steam ahead. So said Gina Raimondo, who at the time was the US Commerce Secretary, in an interview with me back in 2021.

Four years on, chips remain a battleground in the US-China race for tech supremacy, and US President Donald Trump now wants to turbocharge a highly complex and delicate manufacturing process that has taken other regions decades to perfect.

He says his tariff policy will liberate the US economy and bring jobs home, but it is also the case that some of the biggest companies have long struggled with a lack of skilled workers and poor-quality products in their American factories.

So what will Trump do differently? And, given that Taiwan and other parts of Asia have the secret sauce on creating high-precision chips, is it even possible for the US to produce them too, and at scale?

Semiconductors are central to powering everything from washing machines to iPhones, and military jets to electric vehicles. These tiny wafers of silicon, known as chips, were invented in the United States, but today, it is in Asia that the most advanced chips are being produced at phenomenal scale.

Making them is expensive and technologically complex. An iPhone for example may contain chips that were designed in the US, manufactured in Taiwan, Japan or South Korea, using raw materials like rare earths which are mostly mined in China. Next they may be sent to Vietnam for packaging, then to China for assembly and testing, before being shipped to the US.

It is a deeply integrated ecosystem, one that has evolved over the decades.

Trump has praised the chip industry but also threatened it with tariffs. He has told industry leader, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), it would have to pay a tax of 100% if it did not build factories in the US.

With such a complex ecosystem, and fierce competition, they need to be able to plan for higher costs and investment calls in the long term, well beyond Trump’s administration. The constant changes to policies aren’t helping. So far, some have shown a willingness to invest in the US.

The significant subsidies that China, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea have given to private companies developing chips are a big reason for their success.

That was largely the thinking behind the US Chips and Science Act, which became law in 2022 under President Joe Biden – an effort to re-shore the manufacture of chips and diversify supply chains – by allocating grants, tax credits, and subsidies to incentivise domestic manufacturing.

Some companies like the world’s largest chipmaker TSMC and the world’s largest smartphone maker Samsung have become major beneficiaries of the legislation, with TSMC receiving $6.6 billion in grants and loans for plants in Arizona, and Samsung receiving an estimated $6 billion for a facility in Taylor, Texas.

TSMC announced a further $100 billion investment into the US with Trump, on top of $65 billion pledged for three plants. Diversifying chip production works for TSMC too, with China repeatedly threatening to take control of the island.

But both TSMC and Samsung have faced challenges with their investments, including surging costs, difficulty recruiting skilled labour, construction delays and resistance from local unions.

“This isn’t just a factory where you make boxes,” says Marc Einstein, research director at market intelligence firm Counterpoint. “The factories that make chips are such high-tech sterile environments, they take years and years to build.”

And despite the US investment, TSMC has said that most of its manufacturing will remain in Taiwan, especially its most advanced computer chips.

Today, TSMC’s plants in Arizona produce high-quality chips. But Chris Miller, author of Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology, argues that “they’re a generation behind the cutting edge in Taiwan”.

“The question of scale depends on how much investment is made in the US versus Taiwan,” he says. “Today, Taiwan has far more capacity.”

The reality is, it took decades for Taiwan to build up that capacity, and despite the threat of China spending billions to steal Taiwan’s prowess in the industry, it continues to thrive.

TSMC was the pioneer of the “foundry model” where chip makers took US designs and manufactured chips for other companies.

Riding on a wave of Silicon Valley start-ups like Apple, Qualcomm and Intel, TSMC was able to compete with US and Japanese giants with the best engineers, highly skilled labour and knowledge sharing.

“Could the US make chips and create jobs?” asks Mr Einstein. “Sure, but are they going to get chips down to a nanometre? Probably not.”

One reason is Trump’s immigration policy, which can potentially limit the arrival of skilled talent from China and India.

“Even Elon Musk has had an immigration problem with Tesla engineers,” says Mr Einstein, referring to Musk’s support for the US’s H-1B visa programme that brings skilled workers to the US.

“That’s a bottleneck and there’s nothing they can do, unless they change their stance on immigration entirely. You can’t just magic PhDs out of nowhere.”

Even so, Trump has doubled down on tariffs, ordering a national security trade investigation into the semiconductor sector.

“It’s a wrench in the machine – a big wrench,” says Mr Einstein. “Japan for example was basing its economic revitalisation on semiconductors and tariffs were not in the business plan.”

The longer-term impact on the industry, according to Mr Miller, is likely to be a renewed focus on domestic manufacturing in many of the world’s key economies: China, Europe, the US.

Some companies could look for new markets. Chinese technology giant Huawei, for example, expanded into Europe and emerging markets including Thailand, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and many countries in Africa in the face of export controls and tariffs, although the margins in developing nations are small.

“China ultimately will want to win – it has to innovate and invest in R&D. Look at what it did with Deepseek,” says Mr Einstein, referring to the China-built AI chatbot.

“If they build better chips, everyone is going to go to them. Cost-effectiveness is something they can do now, and looking forward, it’s the ultra-high-tech fabrication.”

In the meantime, new manufacturing hubs may emerge. India has a lot of promise, according to experts who say there is more chance of it becoming integrated into the chip supply chain than the US – it’s geographically closer, labour is cheap and education is good.

India has signalled a willingness that it is open to chip manufacturing, but it faces a number of challenges, including land acquisition for factories, and water – chip production needs the highest quality water and a lot of it.

Chip companies are not completely at the mercy of tariffs. The sheer reliance and demand for chips from major US companies like Microsoft, Apple and Cisco could apply pressure on Trump to reverse any levies on the chip sector.

Some insiders believe intense lobbying by Apple CEO Tim Cook secured the exemptions to smartphone, laptop and electronic tariffs, and Trump reportedly lifted a ban on the chips Nvidia can sell to China as a result of lobbying.

Asked specifically about Apple products on Monday in the Oval Office, Trump said, “I’m a very flexible person,” adding that “there will be maybe things coming up, I speak to Tim Cook, I helped Tim Cook recently.”

Mr Einstein thinks it all comes down to Trump ultimately trying to make a deal – he and his administration know they can’t just build a bigger building when it comes to chips.

“I think what the Trump administration is trying to do is what it has done with TikTok’s owner Bytedance. He is saying I’m not going to let you operate in the US anymore unless you give Oracle or another US company a stake,” says Mr Einstein.

“I think they’re trying to fandangle something similar here – TSMC isn’t going anywhere, let’s just force them to do a deal with Intel and take a slice of the pie.”

But the blueprint of the Asia semiconductor ecosystem has a valuable lesson: no one country can operate a chip industry on its own, and if you want to make advanced semiconductors, efficiently and at scale – it will take time.

Trump is trying to create a chip industry through protectionism and isolation, when what allowed the chip industry to emerge throughout Asia is the opposite: collaboration in a globalised economy.

An American pastor who was kidnapped by armed men during a church service in South Africa last week has been rescued following a “high-intensity shoot-out” that left three people dead, authorities say.

Josh Sullivan was found unharmed in the township in Gqeberha in the Eastern Cape on Tuesday evening – the area where the 45-year-old was snatched from last Thursday.

There were no immediate details on the kidnappers who are suspected of having been familiar with the family’s movements.

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

• The expelled envoy at the heart of the latest US-South Africa row
• Is South Africa’s coalition government about to fall apart?
• Ghosts of apartheid haunt South Africa as compensation anger brews

Joe Biden has used his first speech since leaving office to criticise the Trump administration’s welfare policies.

The ex-US president told a conference in Chicago that the government had “taken a hatchet” to Social Security, a system which Donald Trump and Elon Musk – who is leading the White House’s cost-cutting efforts – have said is beset by fraud.

The administration is seeking to cut staff at the agency responsible for paying out $1.6 trillion (£1.2 trillion) in benefits a year.

Biden did not refer to Trump by name during his speech on Tuesday, but said: “In fewer than 100 days, this new administration has done so much damage and so much destruction. It’s kind of breathtaking.”

He described social security as a “sacred promise”, adding: “We know just how much social security matters to people’s lives.”

Biden – who was speaking at a disability rights event – did not address his departure from the White House or the 2024 presidential election during his remarks.

The Social Security Agency (SSA) provides a base income for people in the US who are retired or cannot work because of a disability. It covers about 67 million Americans, primarily older citizens.

Democratic politicians have repeatedly accused the administration of planning sweeping Social Security cuts.

Member’s of Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency have been making cuts to the agency since February, with the target of slashing 7,000 jobs.

Musk has described social security as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time”.

However, Trump has previously said that, while he intends to target fraudulent claims and payments to illegal immigrants, he will not make wholesale cuts to benefits.

On Tuesday, he signed an order preventing illegal immigrants and “other ineligible people” from obtaining Social Security.

Prior to Biden’s Chicago speech, Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters the president was “absolutely certain” about protecting benefits for “law-abiding tax-paying American citizens and seniors”.

“He will always protect that program,” she added.

In a post on X, the SSA – which is now controlled by a Trump appointee – said Biden had been “lying” during his Chicago speech.

Since leaving office, Biden has kept a relatively low profile. In February, he signed with Creative Artists Agency (CAA), a Los Angeles talent agency which previously represented him from 2017 to 2020.

Adverts from six companies selling liquid Brazilian butt lifts (BBLs) have been banned in the UK for trivialising the risks and exploiting women’s insecurities around body image.

All of them appeared on Facebook or Instagram and used time-limited deals to “irresponsibly pressurise” customers into booking, says the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

One ad, for example, tried to entice customers with an “exclusive opportunity” to get a “perfect peachy look”.

Liquid BBLs involve injecting filler into the buttocks to lift them and make them look bigger or rounded.

The ASA says because of the risks involved, cosmetic surgery should be portrayed as a decision that needs time and thought, rather than urgency to book quickly and grab a deal.

Clinics must be socially responsible and should not trivialise procedures or play on consumers’ insecurities, it says.

One ad said: “Get the curves and contours you’ve always wanted with our safe and effective body filler treatments. Feel confident every step of the way! Safe, proven, and beautifully natural results.”

Another claimed a 0% infection rate at its sterile clinic, with minimal pain.

The ASA says liquid BBLs would carry some level of risk to the patient, such as infections.

It adds: “Marketers must not suggest that happiness or wellbeing depends on conforming to a particular body shape or physical appearance.”

The advertising watchdog says it has been using AI to proactively search for online ads that might break the rules.

Three of the clinics – Beautyjenics, Bomb Doll Aesthetics and Ccskinlondondubai -did not respond to the ASA’s inquiries.

Rejuvenate Clinics said it has reviewed ASA guidance and will remove all references to time-limited offers and state in ads that the surgery is carried out by a medical professional with ultrasound, to minimise risks and enhance safety.

EME Aesthetics said all its clients are given a full consultation and are under no obligation to book any procedures, and it therefore considers that its ad had not pressured consumers or trivialised the risks of cosmetic procedures.

Dr Ducu said it will ensure it follows the ASA’s rules and guidance, that the time-limited Black Friday offer was intended to provide consumers with an opportunity to access the company’s services at a discounted rate, and it always encourages consumers to make informed decisions without pressure.

• Plastic surgeons say liquid BBLs can carry significant risks and require expert skill and training to perform
• The UK industry is not regulated though – beauty clinics offer them
• Large amounts of filler may be injected with possible serious side-effects, such as blood clots and sepsis
• The recent death of mum-of-five Alice Webb has highlighted safety concerns around BBLs

Pedestrian crossings in several areas of northern California have been hacked with fake greetings mocking the tech billionaires Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.

Officials in Silicon Valley are investigating and have disabled the audio feature on the crossings which usually plays instructions to “walk” or “wait”.

The surprise message were noticed over the weekend in Palo Alto, Redwood City and Menlo Park – which is home to Zuckerberg’s sprawling Meta campus.

One Musk impersonation offered to buy passing pedestrians a Tesla Cybertruck if they agreed to be his friend. Another from a false Zuckerberg said “real ones call me The Zuck”.

It is still unclear who created the messages or how they ended up being played from the crossings.

Officials in the affected areas, which are all just south of San Francisco, told the BBC engineers were investigating how the crossings were tampered with.

Pedro Quintana, a spokesman for the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), said about 10 pedestrian crossings within the Menlo Park and Palo Alto areas had been impacted.

All of those are now working on a timer system and the buttons which launched the fake messages have been deactivated, he said.

The messages appeared across Silicon Valley, where both tech billionaires have business.

One of the fake messages in Musk’s voice welcomes people to Palo Alto, which is home to Tesla operations.

“You know, they say money can’t buy happiness and… I guess that’s true. God knows I’ve tried,” the message says in one video shared multiple times on social media.

One from a fake Zuckerberg starts with him introducing himself before discussing inserting AI “into every facet of your conscious experience”.

Neither man has commented on the incident.

The city of Palo Alto separately told the BBC that at least 12 crossings in the downtown area had been tampered with.

Meghan Horrigan-Taylor, a spokeswoman for the city, said another city employee alerted officials to the issue on Saturday when they noticed the voice feature was not functioning properly. She added officials believe the tampering may have occurred on Friday.

“City staff have disabled the audible feature until further repairs can be made,” she said. “Other traffic signals in the city were checked and the impact is isolated.”

Local media also reported that several crossings in the Redwood City area were also hacked to sound like the two billionaires.

Microchip maker Nvidia said it would be hit with $5.5bn (£4.2bn) in costs after the US government tightened export rules to China.

The chip manufacturing giant, which has been at the heart of the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, will require licences to export its H20 AI chip to China, which has been one of its most popular.

The rules come amid an escalating trade war between the US and China, with both countries introducing steep trade tariffs on each other covering various goods.

Nvidia shares plunged almost 6% in after-hours trading.

Nvidia announced on Tuesday that the US government had told it last week that the H20 chip required a permit to be sold to China, including Hong Kong.

The tech giant said federal officials had advised them the licence requirement “will be in effect for the indefinite future”.

“The [government] indicated that the license requirement addresses the risk that the covered products may be used in, or diverted to, a supercomputer in China,” Nvidia said.

The company declined to comment further when contacted by the BBC.

Marc Einstein from the Counterpoint Research consultancy said the $5.5bn hit estimated by Nvidia was in line with his estimates.

“While this is certainly a lot of money, this is something Nvidia can bear,” he said.

“But as we have seen in the last few days and weeks, this may largely be a negotiating tactic. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some exemptions or changes made to tariff policy in the near future, given this not only impacts Nvidia but the entire US semiconductor ecosystem,” Mr Einstein added.

Chips remain a battleground in the US-China race for tech supremacy, and US President Donald Trump now wants to turbocharge a highly complex and delicate manufacturing process that has taken other regions decades to perfect.

Nvidia’s AI chips have been a key focus of US export controls. Founded in 1993, it was originally known for making the type of computer chips that process graphics, particularly for computer games.

Long before the AI revolution, it started adding features to its chips that it says help machine learning. It is now seen as a key company to watch to see how fast AI-powered tech is spreading across the business world.

The company’s value took a hit in January when it was reported that a rival Chinese AI app, DeepSeek, had been built at a fraction of the cost of other chatbots.

At the time, the US was considered to have been caught off guard by their rival’s technological achievement.

Nvidia said its $5.5bn charges would be associated with H20 products for inventory, purchase commitments and related reserves.

Rui Ma, founder of the Tech Buzz China podcast, said she expects the US and China AI semiconductor supply chains to be “fully decoupled” if restrictions stay in place.

She added: “It doesn’t make any sense for any Chinese customer to be dependent on US chips” especially since there is an oversupply of data centres in China.

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.

“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.

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,” Mr Xu adds with his fingers crossed. Maybe, maybe…”

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 those 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, Beijing 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 Americans are too tricky.”

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 and Batman.

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 Intelligence 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.

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“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.”

Machias Seal Island is a tiny dot on maps of North America. But the 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 fishery 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.

The Machias Seal Island lightstation has lightkeepers on site all year round but the Canadian Coast Guard sends additional technical support if there is an issue with the automated aid to navigation.

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.

Yellow diggers are shoring up mounds of earth, as construction workers prepare to lay the foundations for what’s set to become the largest start-up campus in Europe.

The project is an expansion of Maria 01, a co-working and event space for entrepreneurs and investors, as well as larger corporations that want to collaborate with tech start-ups.

Its existing facilities across the street already house around 240 start-ups. They are spread across six buildings that used to make up the city’s first hospital, founded in the 19th Century and notorious in Helsinki for treating patients with the plague.

Now, the current 20,000 sq m site is a hub for companies developing innovative health technologies, alongside AI, cybersecurity, gaming and defence tech start-ups.

“The whole place is really based on community,” says Maria 01’s CEO Sarita Runeberg. “We bring people together so they can network… and find different kinds of resources to grow their businesses.”

There are also office perks including a pool table, table football, running and ice bathing clubs, and in true Finnish-style, a sauna.

“We wouldn’t be a proper start-up hub if we didn’t have our own sauna here!” laughs Ms Runeberg.

While co-working spaces for tech companies are well established across the Nordics, Maria 01 is the largest of its kind in the region.

It is run as a not-for-profit organisation partly funded by the city of Helsinki, which has invested more than €6m ($6.7m; £5.2m) in the hub since its launch in 2016.

Ms Runeberg believes it will become the biggest start-up campus in Europe following the completion of three new buildings by 2028, adding a 50,000 sqm floor area.

Later this year it is launching an accelerator programme designed to support and guide high-growth start-ups.

The hub’s current and former members have already collectively raised over €1bn in funding.

This represents around 40% of all early stage funding raised annually by Finnish start-ups.

Ruben Byron is the Belgian co-founder of a start-up offering cloud services to AI developers.

He has already scaled his business from a handful of staff using the hub’s hot desks to a team of around 40 working from private offices in the former hospital, as well as remotely.

“That has been a great experience, that we’ve kind of been able [to] be nurtured here in a way,” he says.

Although not as mature – or well known globally – as other European start-up hubs like Sweden and the UK, Finland has been steadily making a name for itself in the tech scene over the last two decades.

The small Nordic nation, which has a population of around 5.6 million, has spawned 12 unicorn businesses – firms worth a billion dollars or more – including sleep and fitness tracking ring Oura, game developers Supercell, Rovio (the creators of the Angry Birds game), and food delivery platform Wolt.

Last year, Startup Blink, a global index mapping more than 100 countries ranked Finland’s start-up ecosystem the 7th best in western Europe, and 14th in the world.

The index cites factors including hubs like Maria 01, alongside high levels of state and university support, and Slush – a huge annual non-profit gathering for global start-ups and investors.

It also highlights Finland’s transparent and open business culture.

“There is an authenticity with the Finns,” says Jack Parker, a Helsinki-based founder originally from Newcastle upon Tyne, who runs a healthcare innovation start-up.

“Ego doesn’t really play a part. So if I reach out to somebody, it’s quite likely eight out of 10 times that they will respond.”

Finland’s right-wing coalition, which came into power in 2023, is on a mission to push the country even further up global indices, stating in its official government programme that it wants the Nordic nation to become a leader in fostering a dynamic start-up and growth company ecosystem.

“It’s not just about rankings,” says Marjo Ilmari, who runs the start-up services team at Business Finland, the government agency that promotes investment and innovation.

In 2024 Business Finland alone invested €112m in start-ups, an increase of 30% compared to the previous year.

“The real goal is to create an environment where our ground-breaking start-ups can emerge and really tackle global challenges.”

The agency hopes this will help drive growth in the Finnish economy, which went into recession in 2023 and is currently making a sluggish recovery, with the Bank of Finland forecasting an increase of less than 1% this year.

The country is also trying to attract more global talent by offering start-up permits for international founders who want to grow their businesses in Finland.

These entrepreneurs are eligible for a so-called soft-landing support package provided by Business Finland.

“They give you advice, support, sometimes grants to support the initiation phase,” explains Lalin Keyvan, a Turkish-born entrepreneur at Maria 01 who says the scheme was one of the main reasons why she relocated to Helsinki.

Business Finland’s marketing campaigns for would-be movers highlight social and lifestyle factors too: Finns tend to prioritise wellbeing, plus there’s free education and subsidised healthcare and childcare.

“You don’t really have to choose between building a high-growth company and enjoying life, because you can do both,” says Ms Ilmari.

But whether all this is enough for Finland to compete with Europe’s more established start-up hubs is up for debate.

Data suggests it still has a long way to go to catch up with neighbouring Sweden, long the Nordic darling of the European start-up scene.

It is home to more than 40 unicorn businesses including Spotify, payments platform Klarna and game developer King.

In Startup Blink’s ecosystem ranking Sweden ranks second in Europe after the UK, and top in the EU.

In the last decade it has attracted more than $29bn in funding compared to just over $8bn in Finland, according to the annual State of European Tech report by investment company Atomico.

“I love Finland’s bold approach,” says Charlotte Ekelund, deputy CEO of Sting, a non-profit organisation that helps develop start-ups in Stockholm. However she believes Finland is still years behind Sweden in terms of pulling in capital and developing its ecosystem.

“We observe some of the things that the Finnish ecosystem is doing now, Sting was part of driving 10 or 15 years ago here – co-working spaces, [and] new organisations in the ecosystem that can support in different ways.”

Mikael Pentikainen, CEO of the Federation of Finnish Enterprises, says the country’s government is currently losing support amongst entrepreneurs despite its pro-start-up and pro-business approach.

A recent survey for the organisation found 41% of small and medium-sized business owners are satisfied with the coalition’s actions, down from 54% in June.

One likely reason for the dip, says Mr Pentikainen, is a decision to raise VAT from 24% to 25.5% last September, the highest rate in western Europe. The government said this was a “difficult but necessary” move designed to stabilise public finances.

But Mr Pentikainen suggests it could make Finland’s start-up ecosystem less competitive for international founders.

The Finnish government has also recently toughened up citizenship requirements, meaning foreign entrepreneurs now need to stay at least eight years instead of five in order to obtain a passport, and will soon also be required to pass a test on Finnish society and culture if they want to settle long-term.

Back at Maria 01, Mr Parker, the health company founder, says he’s confident Finland’s start-up ecosystem will continue to expand and attract international talent. But he warns it might lose some of the aspects that have so far made it an attractive option for entrepreneurs.

“The advantage of the ecosystem right now is this kind of ‘small town, everybody knows each other’ [feeling]. Scaling that up, there is the risk of actually losing that element of it.”

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.

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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.

A federal judge has given the Trump administration two weeks to submit evidence on how it is trying to return a Maryland man who officials have conceded was wrongly deported last month to a mega-prison in El Salvador.

Judge Paula Xinis accused government officials of inaction in the case of Salvadoran national Kilmar Ábrego García, warning “there will be no tolerance for gamesmanship”.

She said she would decide if the government acted in good faith or was in contempt of court.

The Supreme Court has ordered the administration to “facilitate” the 29-year-old’s release, though El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said on a visit to the White House he did not “have the power” to return him.

The Trump administration maintains Mr Ábrego García has ties to the MS-13 gang, which has been designated a foreign terrorist designation. His legal team denies this and says he has never been charged with any crime.

On Tuesday, Judge Xinis told justice department lawyers at a Greenbelt, Maryland, court hearing: “To date, what the record shows is that nothing has been done. Nothing.”

“Cancel vacations, cancel other appointments,” she said, adding: “I expect all hands on deck.”

She said she would require four officials with the US homeland security department and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to answer questions under oath by 23 April.

Judge Xinis, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, last Friday requested daily updates from the government about steps they are taking to return Mr Ábrego García.

In court on Tuesday, justice department lawyer Drew Ensign said they would facilitate Mr Ábrego García’s return if he “presents himself at a port of entry”.

However, shortly before the hearing, the homeland security department indicated otherwise.

Joseph Mazzarra, acting general counsel of the agency, wrote in a court filing that if Mr Ábrego García did show up at a US port of entry, he would be detained.

He would either be removed to a third country, or the department would ask an immigration judge to strip him of legal protection from deportation granted six years ago, said the filing.

Before Tuesday’s hearing, Mr Ábrego García’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, called for her husband to be allowed back.

“I find myself pleading with the Trump administration and the Bukele administration to stop playing political games with the life of Kilmar,” she told a crowd of protesters.

A 2019 court order shielded Mr Ábrego García from deportation on the grounds that he might be at risk of persecution from gangs in his home country.

Last Friday a unanimous ruling by the Supreme Court noted the government’s acknowledgements that Mr Ábrego García had legal protection and “that the removal to El Salvador was therefore illegal”.

Earlier this month another government lawyer told Judge Xinis that Mr Ábrego García had been deported on 15 March because of an “administrative error”. The justice department then suspended that attorney.

At the White House on Monday, deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told reporters: “Nobody was mistakenly deported anywhere.”

“The only mistake that was made is a lawyer put an incorrect line in a legal filing that’s since been relieved,” he added.

A contempt of court ruling would escalate the Trump administration’s constitutional showdown with the judiciary, finding that it had disregarded an independent and equal branch of US government.

But the Trump administration says it is Judge Xinis who is overstepping her powers as a federal judge by meddling in the executive branch’s ability to conduct foreign policy.

While the US Supreme Court last Friday partially upheld Judge Xinis’s ruling in favour of Mr Ábrego García, the justices also questioned whether she exceeded her authority when she directed the government to ” effectuate” his return.

Mr Ábrego García is one of more than 200 Venezuelans and Salvadorans, labelled by Trump officials as gang members, who were deported to the El Salvador mega-prison on 15 March.

Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen announced that he would travel to El Salvador on Wednesday in the hope of visiting Mr Ábrego García to “check on his wellbeing” and ask the country’s government for his release.

Sudan’s paramilitaries have declared the formation of a rival government to the country’s armed forces, two years into a war that has become the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

The leader of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, said the group was “building the only realistic future for Sudan”.

The announcement came as London hosted an high-level conference to mark the second anniversary of the conflict, where the UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy called for “a pathway to peace”.

Fighting raged on, with the army saying it had bombed RSF positions outside the city of el-Fasher, forcing hundreds of thousands to flee the Zamzam refugee camp.

Hemedti said the RSF was building a “state of law” and not a state ruled by individuals.

“We do not seek domination, but unity. We believe that no tribe, region, or religion holds a monopoly over Sudanese identity,” his statement on Telegram read.

He added that his government would provide essential services such as education and healthcare to not only RSF-controlled areas, but the whole country.

More than 400 people have been killed in recent attacks by the RSF, according to the UN, citing “credible sources”.

Two years into the war, both the army and RSF have been accused of war crimes, including genocide and mass sexual violence.

Hemedti has been locked in a power struggle with Sudan’s army chief, Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, since 15 April 2023, creating a humanitarian crisis that has claimed more than 150,000 lives and displaced more than 12 million people.

The latest fighting in the capital of North Darfur, el-Fasher, has forced tens of thousands of civilians from the Zamzam refugee camp to walk 70km (43 miles) to the town of Tawila, according to medical charity MSF.

Many arrived severely dehydrated and some children are reported to have died of thirst.

Humanitarian agencies have reported famine-like conditions facing more than 700,000 people in temporary camps around el-Fasher, with security threats and roadblocks thwarting the delivery of critical aid.

During an international meeting on Tuesday, the UK promised an extra £120m ($159m) worth of food and medical assistance, urging the world not to turn its back on Sudan.

“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.

The conference also called for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, but the African Union has said it will not allow the country to be partitioned by the army and the RSF.

Hamas says it has “lost contact” with the group of fighters holding an Israeli-American hostage captive in Gaza following an Israeli strike on their location.

The 21-year-old soldier, Edan Alexander, has appeared in videos released by the group in recent days.

Israel had asked for him to be released on day one of a new 45-day ceasefire proposal put forward last week which has been rejected by Hamas.

Hamas on Tuesday did not indicate when contact had been lost and has not produced any evidence for their claim. Israel regularly asserts it avoids hitting locations where it believes hostages are being held.

“We announce that we have lost contact with the group holding soldier Edan Alexander following a direct strike on their location,” Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida said in a statement.

“We are still trying to reach them at this moment,” he added.

Of the 251 hostages taken during Hamas’s 2023 attack, 59 remain in the enclave, 24 of whom are believed to be alive.

Five of the hostages in Gaza are believed to be US citizens and Alexander was thought to be the only one still alive.

Hamas later on Tuesday also released a video addressed to the families of the remaining hostages, warning that they would return in coffins if Israel continued its military offensive in Gaza.

On Saturday, Hamas had released a video of Alexander alive in which he pleads for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump to negotiate his release.

Alexander was part of an Israeli proposal for a 45-day ceasefire that would involve “the release of half of the hostages in the first week of the agreement,” a Hamas official told AFP. The official said the proposal called for Alexander’s release on the first day as a “gesture of goodwill”.

A two-month ceasefire at the start of the year saw Hamas release 33 hostages in return for the release of 1,900 Palestinian prisoners and aid and goods entering the strip.

After negotiations for a second phase unravelled, Israel resumed its offensive on 18 March.

Born in Tel Aviv but raised in New Jersey, Alexander was serving in an elite infantry unit on the border with Gaza when he was captured by Hamas militants during the 7 October attack.

His father, Adi Alexander, had questioned Netanyahu’s actions in an interview on Monday with US outlet NewsNation, asking: “How do you plan to get hostages out without ending this war and without committing to the second phase of this deal?”

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

On Tuesday, the group rejected Israel’s proposal for a renewed ceasefire.

A 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.”

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.

The war was triggered by the Hamas attacks on 7 October 2023 in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage.

When investigators smashed through a hastily built wall, they uncovered a set of secret jail cells.

It turned out to be a freshly bricked-up doorway – an attempt to hide what lurked behind.

Inside, off a narrow hallway, were tiny rooms to the right and left. It was pitch-black.

The team may never have found this clandestine jail – a stone’s throw from Dhaka’s International Airport – without the recollections of Mir Ahmad Bin Quasem and others.

A critic of Bangladesh’s ousted leader, he was held there for eight years.

He was blindfolded for much of his time in the prison, so he leaned on the sounds he could recall – and he distinctly remembered the sound of planes landing.

That was what helped lead investigators to the military base near the airport. Behind the main building on the compound, they found the smaller, heavily guarded, windowless structure made of brick and concrete where detainees were kept.

It was hidden in plain sight.

Investigators have spoken to hundreds of victims like Quasem since mass protests ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government last August, and inmates in the jails were released. Many others are alleged to have been killed unlawfully.

The people running the secret prisons, including the one over the road from Dhaka airport, were largely from an elite counter-terrorism unit, the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), acting on orders directly from Hasina, investigators say.

“The officers concerned [said] all the enforced disappearance cases have been done with the approval, permission or order by the prime minister herself,” Tajul Islam, the chief prosecutor for the International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh, told the BBC.

Hasina’s party says the alleged crimes were carried out without its knowledge, that it bears no responsibility and that the military establishment operated alone – a charge the army rejects.

Seven months on, Quasem and others may have been released, but they remain terrified of their captors, who are serving security force members and are all still free.

Quasem says he never leaves home without wearing a hat and mask.

“I always have to watch my back when I’m travelling.”

He slowly walks up a flight of concrete steps to show the BBC where he was kept. Pushing through a heavy metal door, he bends his head low and goes through another narrow doorway into “his” room, the cell where he was held for eight years.

“It felt like being buried alive, being totally cut off from the outside world,” he tells the BBC. There were no windows and no doors to natural light. When he was inside, he couldn’t tell between day or night.

Quasem, a lawyer in his 40s, has done interviews before but this is the first time he has taken the media for a detailed look inside the tiny cell where he was held.

Viewed by torchlight, it is so small an average-sized person would have difficulty standing up straight. It smells musty. Some of the walls are broken and bits of brick and concrete lie strewn on the ground – a last-ditch attempt by perpetrators to destroy any evidence of their crimes.

“[This] is one detention centre. We have found that more than 500, 600, 700 cells are there all through the country. This shows that this was widespread and systematic,” says Islam, the prosecutor, who accompanied the BBC on the visit to the jail.

Quasem also clearly remembers the faint blue tiles from his cell, now lying in pieces on the floor, which led investigators to this particular room. In comparison to the cells on the ground floor, this one is much larger, at 10ft x 14ft (3m x 4.3m). There is a squatting toilet off to one side.

In painful detail, Quasem walks around the room, describing how he spent his time during his years in captivity. During the summers, it was unbearably hot. He would crouch on the floor and put his face as close to the base of the doorway as he could, to get some air.

“It felt worse than death,” he says.

Coming back to relive his punishment seems cruel. But Quasem believes it is important for the world to see what was done.

“The high officials, the top brass who aided and abetted, facilitated the fascist regime are still in their position,” he says.

“We need to get our story out, and do whatever we can to ensure justice for those who didn’t return, and to help those who are surviving to rehabilitate into life.”

Previous reports said he was kept inside a notorious detention facility – known as Aynaghor, or “House of Mirrors” – inside the main intelligence headquarters in Dhaka, but investigators now believe there were many such sites.

Quasem told the BBC he spent all his detention at the RAB base, apart from the first 16 days. Investigators now suspect the first site was a detective branch of police in Dhaka.

He believes he was disappeared because of his family’s politics. In 2016 he’d been representing his father, a senior member of the country’s largest Islamist party, the Jamaat-e-Islami, who was on trial and later hanged.

Five other men the BBC spoke to described being taken away, blindfolded and handcuffed, kept in dark concrete cells with no access to the outside world. In many cases they say they were beaten and tortured.

While the BBC cannot independently verify their stories, almost all say they are petrified that one day, they might bump into a captor on the street or on a bus.

“Now, whenever I get into a car or I’m alone at home, I feel scared thinking about where I was,” Atikur Rahman Rasel, 35, says. “I wonder how I survived, whether I was really supposed to survive.

He says his nose was broken and his hand is still painful. “They put handcuffs on me and beat me a lot.”

Rasel says he was approached by a group of men outside a mosque in Dhaka’s old city last July, as anti-government protests raged. They said they were from law enforcement and he had to go with them.

The next minute, he was taken into a grey car, handcuffed, hooded and blindfolded. Forty minutes later, he was pulled out of the car, taken into a building and put in a room.

“After about half an hour, people started coming in one by one and asking questions. Who are you? What do you do?” Then the beatings started, he says.

“Being inside that place was terrifying. I felt like I would never get out.”

Rasel now lives with his sister and her husband. Sitting on a dining chair in her flat in Dhaka, he describes his weeks in captivity in detail. He speaks with little emotion, seemingly detached from his experience.

He too believes his detention was politically motivated because he was a student leader with the rival Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), of which his father was a senior member. His brother, who lived abroad, would frequently write social media posts critical of Hasina.

Rasel says there was no way of knowing where he was held. But after watching interim leader Muhammad Yunus visiting three detention centres earlier this year, he thinks he was kept in Agargaon district in Dhaka.

It was an open secret that Hasina had no tolerance for political dissent. Criticising her could get you “disappeared” without a trace, former detainees, opponents and investigators say.

But the total number of people who went missing may never become clear.

A Bangladeshi NGO that has tracked enforced disappearances since 2009 has documented at least 709 people who were forcibly disappeared. Among them, 155 people remain missing. Since the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances was created in September, they have received more than 1,676 complaints from alleged victims and more people continue to come forward.

But that doesn’t represent the total number, which is believed to be much higher.

It is through speaking to people like Quasem that Tajul Islam is able to build a case against those responsible for the detention centres, including Sheikh Hasina.

Despite being held at different sites, the narrative of victims is eerily similar.

Mohammad Ali Arafat, spokesperson for Hasina’s Awami League party, denies any involvement. He says if people were forcibly disappeared, it was not done under the direction of Hasina – who remains in India, where she fled – or anyone in her cabinet.

“If any such detention did occur, it would have been a product of complex internal military dynamics,” said Arafat. “I see [no] political benefit for the Awami League or for the government to keep these people in secret detention.”

The military’s chief spokesman said it “has no knowledge of the things being implied”.

“The army categorically denies operating any such detention centres,” Lt Col Abdullah Ibn Zaid told the BBC.

Tajul Islam believes the people held in these prisons are evidence of Awami League involvement. “All the people who were detained here were from different political identities and they just raised their voice against the previous regime, the government of that time, and that is why they were brought here.”

To date they have issued 122 arrest warrants, but no one has yet been brought to justice.

Which is why victims like Iqbal Chowdhury, 71, believe their lives are still in danger. Chowdhury wants to leave Bangladesh. For years after he was released in 2019, he didn’t leave his house, not even to go to the market. Chowdhury was warned by his captors never to speak of his detention.

“If you ever reveal where you were or what happened, and if you are taken again, no one will ever find or see you again. You will be vanished from this world,” he says he was told.

Accused of writing propaganda against India and the Awami League, Chowdhury says that is why he was tortured.

“I was physically assaulted with an electric shock as well as being beaten. Now one of my fingers is heavily damaged by the electric shock. I lost my leg’s strength, lost physical strength.” He remembers the sound of others being physically tortured, grown men howling and crying in agony.

“I am still scared,” says Chowdhury.

Rahmatullah, 23, is also terrified. “They took away a year and a half of my life. Those times won’t ever be returned,” he says. “They made me sleep in a place where a human being should not even be.”

On 29 August 2023, he was taken from his home at midnight by RAB officers, some in uniform and others dressed in plain clothes. He was working as a cook in a neighbouring town while training to be an electrician.

After repeated interrogations, it became clear to Rahmatullah he was being forcibly detained for his anti-India and Islamic posts on social media. Using a pen and paper, he draws the layout of his cell, including the open drain he would use to relieve himself.

“Even thinking about that place in Dhaka makes me feel horrible. There was no space to lie down properly, so I had to sleep being curled up. I couldn’t stretch my legs while lying down.”

The BBC also interviewed two other former detainees – Michael Chakma and Masrur Anwar – to corroborate some of the details about the secret prisons and what is alleged to have gone on inside them.

Some of the victims live with physical scars from their detentions. All of them talk about the psychological torment that follows them everywhere they go.

Bangladesh is at a pivotal moment in its history as it tries to rebuild after years of autocratic rule. A crucial test of the country’s progress towards democracy will be its ability to hold a fair trial for the perpetrators of these crimes.

Islam believes it can, and must happen. “We must stop the recurrence of this type of offence for our future generations. And we have to do justice for the victims. They suffered a lot.”

Standing in what remains of his concrete cell, Quasem says a trial must take place as soon as possible so the country can close this chapter.

It’s not so simple for Rahmatullah.

“The fear has not gone away. The fear will remain until I die.”

The UK Supreme Court is to deliver its verdict on how a woman should be defined in law.

The announcement marks the culmination of a long-running legal battle between the Scottish government and a women’s group.

The outcome could have far-reaching implications on how sex-based rights apply across Scotland, England and Wales.

The Scottish government argues transgender people with a gender recognition certificate (GRC) are entitled to sex-based protections, while For Women Scotland argues they only apply to people that are born female.

The ruling, to be announced at about 09:45, is expected to set out how the law should treat transgender people.

It could affect single-sex spaces and services, as well as equal pay claims, maternity policy and sports events.

The legal arguments have come at a time of heated debate on gender issues.

The Supreme Court is deciding on the proper interpretation of the 2010 Equality Act, which applies across Britain.

The law provides protection against discrimination on the basis of various characteristics, including “sex” and “gender reassignment”.

Judges in London are ruling on what that law means by “sex” – whether it means biological sex, or legal, “certificated” sex as defined by the 2004 Gender Recognition Act.

The Scottish government says the 2004 legislation is clear that obtaining a GRC amounts to a change of sex “for all purposes”.

Government lawyer Ruth Crawford KC told the court that “a person who has become the sex of their acquired gender is entitled to the protections of that sex”.

Aidan O’Neill KC, representing For Women Scotland, argues for a “common sense” meaning of the words man and woman, telling the court that sex is an “immutable biological state”.

The legal dispute began in 2018, when the Scottish Parliament passed a bill designed to ensure gender balance on public sector boards.

For Women Scotland complained that ministers had included transgender people as part of the quotas in that law.

After several cases in the Scottish courts, the issue has been sent to the Supreme Court in London for a final ruling.

For Women Scotland has warned that if the court sides with the government, it would have implications for the running of single-sex spaces and services, such as hospital wards, prisons, refuges and support groups.

Transgender people have warned the case could erode the protections they have against discrimination in their reassigned gender.

Amnesty International has said that since the Equality Act protects other minority groups, the case could be the “thin end of the wedge” which could undermine other rights.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission – the regulator in charge of enforcing the 2010 act – has called for legal reform as a result of the case.

The Scottish Parliament passed reforms in 2022 that would have made it easier for someone to change their legally recognised sex.

The move was blocked by the UK government, and has since been dropped by Holyrood ministers.

The US has “dropped the ball” on chip manufacturing over the years, allowing China and other Asian hubs to steam ahead. So said Gina Raimondo, who at the time was the US Commerce Secretary, in an interview with me back in 2021.

Four years on, chips remain a battleground in the US-China race for tech supremacy, and US President Donald Trump now wants to turbocharge a highly complex and delicate manufacturing process that has taken other regions decades to perfect.

He says his tariff policy will liberate the US economy and bring jobs home, but it is also the case that some of the biggest companies have long struggled with a lack of skilled workers and poor-quality products in their American factories.

So what will Trump do differently? And, given that Taiwan and other parts of Asia have the secret sauce on creating high-precision chips, is it even possible for the US to produce them too, and at scale?

Semiconductors are central to powering everything from washing machines to iPhones, and military jets to electric vehicles. These tiny wafers of silicon, known as chips, were invented in the United States, but today, it is in Asia that the most advanced chips are being produced at phenomenal scale.

Making them is expensive and technologically complex. An iPhone for example may contain chips that were designed in the US, manufactured in Taiwan, Japan or South Korea, using raw materials like rare earths which are mostly mined in China. Next they may be sent to Vietnam for packaging, then to China for assembly and testing, before being shipped to the US.

It is a deeply integrated ecosystem, one that has evolved over the decades.

Trump has praised the chip industry but also threatened it with tariffs. He has told industry leader, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), it would have to pay a tax of 100% if it did not build factories in the US.

With such a complex ecosystem, and fierce competition, they need to be able to plan for higher costs and investment calls in the long term, well beyond Trump’s administration. The constant changes to policies aren’t helping. So far, some have shown a willingness to invest in the US.

The significant subsidies that China, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea have given to private companies developing chips are a big reason for their success.

That was largely the thinking behind the US Chips and Science Act, which became law in 2022 under President Joe Biden – an effort to re-shore the manufacture of chips and diversify supply chains – by allocating grants, tax credits, and subsidies to incentivise domestic manufacturing.

Some companies like the world’s largest chipmaker TSMC and the world’s largest smartphone maker Samsung have become major beneficiaries of the legislation, with TSMC receiving $6.6 billion in grants and loans for plants in Arizona, and Samsung receiving an estimated $6 billion for a facility in Taylor, Texas.

TSMC announced a further $100 billion investment into the US with Trump, on top of $65 billion pledged for three plants. Diversifying chip production works for TSMC too, with China repeatedly threatening to take control of the island.

But both TSMC and Samsung have faced challenges with their investments, including surging costs, difficulty recruiting skilled labour, construction delays and resistance from local unions.

“This isn’t just a factory where you make boxes,” says Marc Einstein, research director at market intelligence firm Counterpoint. “The factories that make chips are such high-tech sterile environments, they take years and years to build.”

And despite the US investment, TSMC has said that most of its manufacturing will remain in Taiwan, especially its most advanced computer chips.

Today, TSMC’s plants in Arizona produce high-quality chips. But Chris Miller, author of Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology, argues that “they’re a generation behind the cutting edge in Taiwan”.

“The question of scale depends on how much investment is made in the US versus Taiwan,” he says. “Today, Taiwan has far more capacity.”

The reality is, it took decades for Taiwan to build up that capacity, and despite the threat of China spending billions to steal Taiwan’s prowess in the industry, it continues to thrive.

TSMC was the pioneer of the “foundry model” where chip makers took US designs and manufactured chips for other companies.

Riding on a wave of Silicon Valley start-ups like Apple, Qualcomm and Intel, TSMC was able to compete with US and Japanese giants with the best engineers, highly skilled labour and knowledge sharing.

“Could the US make chips and create jobs?” asks Mr Einstein. “Sure, but are they going to get chips down to a nanometre? Probably not.”

One reason is Trump’s immigration policy, which can potentially limit the arrival of skilled talent from China and India.

“Even Elon Musk has had an immigration problem with Tesla engineers,” says Mr Einstein, referring to Musk’s support for the US’s H-1B visa programme that brings skilled workers to the US.

“That’s a bottleneck and there’s nothing they can do, unless they change their stance on immigration entirely. You can’t just magic PhDs out of nowhere.”

Even so, Trump has doubled down on tariffs, ordering a national security trade investigation into the semiconductor sector.

“It’s a wrench in the machine – a big wrench,” says Mr Einstein. “Japan for example was basing its economic revitalisation on semiconductors and tariffs were not in the business plan.”

The longer-term impact on the industry, according to Mr Miller, is likely to be a renewed focus on domestic manufacturing in many of the world’s key economies: China, Europe, the US.

Some companies could look for new markets. Chinese technology giant Huawei, for example, expanded into Europe and emerging markets including Thailand, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and many countries in Africa in the face of export controls and tariffs, although the margins in developing nations are small.

“China ultimately will want to win – it has to innovate and invest in R&D. Look at what it did with Deepseek,” says Mr Einstein, referring to the China-built AI chatbot.

“If they build better chips, everyone is going to go to them. Cost-effectiveness is something they can do now, and looking forward, it’s the ultra-high-tech fabrication.”

In the meantime, new manufacturing hubs may emerge. India has a lot of promise, according to experts who say there is more chance of it becoming integrated into the chip supply chain than the US – it’s geographically closer, labour is cheap and education is good.

India has signalled a willingness that it is open to chip manufacturing, but it faces a number of challenges, including land acquisition for factories, and water – chip production needs the highest quality water and a lot of it.

Chip companies are not completely at the mercy of tariffs. The sheer reliance and demand for chips from major US companies like Microsoft, Apple and Cisco could apply pressure on Trump to reverse any levies on the chip sector.

Some insiders believe intense lobbying by Apple CEO Tim Cook secured the exemptions to smartphone, laptop and electronic tariffs, and Trump reportedly lifted a ban on the chips Nvidia can sell to China as a result of lobbying.

Asked specifically about Apple products on Monday in the Oval Office, Trump said, “I’m a very flexible person,” adding that “there will be maybe things coming up, I speak to Tim Cook, I helped Tim Cook recently.”

Mr Einstein thinks it all comes down to Trump ultimately trying to make a deal – he and his administration know they can’t just build a bigger building when it comes to chips.

“I think what the Trump administration is trying to do is what it has done with TikTok’s owner Bytedance. He is saying I’m not going to let you operate in the US anymore unless you give Oracle or another US company a stake,” says Mr Einstein.

“I think they’re trying to fandangle something similar here – TSMC isn’t going anywhere, let’s just force them to do a deal with Intel and take a slice of the pie.”

But the blueprint of the Asia semiconductor ecosystem has a valuable lesson: no one country can operate a chip industry on its own, and if you want to make advanced semiconductors, efficiently and at scale – it will take time.

Trump is trying to create a chip industry through protectionism and isolation, when what allowed the chip industry to emerge throughout Asia is the opposite: collaboration in a globalised economy.

“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.

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,” Mr Xu adds with his fingers crossed. Maybe, maybe…”

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 those 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, Beijing 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 Americans are too tricky.”

A federal judge has given the Trump administration two weeks to submit evidence on how it is trying to return a Maryland man who officials have conceded was wrongly deported last month to a mega-prison in El Salvador.

Judge Paula Xinis accused government officials of inaction in the case of Salvadoran national Kilmar Ábrego García, warning “there will be no tolerance for gamesmanship”.

She said she would decide if the government acted in good faith or was in contempt of court.

The Supreme Court has ordered the administration to “facilitate” the 29-year-old’s release, though El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said on a visit to the White House he did not “have the power” to return him.

The Trump administration maintains Mr Ábrego García has ties to the MS-13 gang, which has been designated a foreign terrorist designation. His legal team denies this and says he has never been charged with any crime.

On Tuesday, Judge Xinis told justice department lawyers at a Greenbelt, Maryland, court hearing: “To date, what the record shows is that nothing has been done. Nothing.”

“Cancel vacations, cancel other appointments,” she said, adding: “I expect all hands on deck.”

She said she would require four officials with the US homeland security department and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to answer questions under oath by 23 April.

Judge Xinis, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, last Friday requested daily updates from the government about steps they are taking to return Mr Ábrego García.

In court on Tuesday, justice department lawyer Drew Ensign said they would facilitate Mr Ábrego García’s return if he “presents himself at a port of entry”.

However, shortly before the hearing, the homeland security department indicated otherwise.

Joseph Mazzarra, acting general counsel of the agency, wrote in a court filing that if Mr Ábrego García did show up at a US port of entry, he would be detained.

He would either be removed to a third country, or the department would ask an immigration judge to strip him of legal protection from deportation granted six years ago, said the filing.

Before Tuesday’s hearing, Mr Ábrego García’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, called for her husband to be allowed back.

“I find myself pleading with the Trump administration and the Bukele administration to stop playing political games with the life of Kilmar,” she told a crowd of protesters.

A 2019 court order shielded Mr Ábrego García from deportation on the grounds that he might be at risk of persecution from gangs in his home country.

Last Friday a unanimous ruling by the Supreme Court noted the government’s acknowledgements that Mr Ábrego García had legal protection and “that the removal to El Salvador was therefore illegal”.

Earlier this month another government lawyer told Judge Xinis that Mr Ábrego García had been deported on 15 March because of an “administrative error”. The justice department then suspended that attorney.

At the White House on Monday, deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told reporters: “Nobody was mistakenly deported anywhere.”

“The only mistake that was made is a lawyer put an incorrect line in a legal filing that’s since been relieved,” he added.

A contempt of court ruling would escalate the Trump administration’s constitutional showdown with the judiciary, finding that it had disregarded an independent and equal branch of US government.

But the Trump administration says it is Judge Xinis who is overstepping her powers as a federal judge by meddling in the executive branch’s ability to conduct foreign policy.

While the US Supreme Court last Friday partially upheld Judge Xinis’s ruling in favour of Mr Ábrego García, the justices also questioned whether she exceeded her authority when she directed the government to ” effectuate” his return.

Mr Ábrego García is one of more than 200 Venezuelans and Salvadorans, labelled by Trump officials as gang members, who were deported to the El Salvador mega-prison on 15 March.

Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen announced that he would travel to El Salvador on Wednesday in the hope of visiting Mr Ábrego García to “check on his wellbeing” and ask the country’s government for his release.

Adverts from six companies selling liquid Brazilian butt lifts (BBLs) have been banned in the UK for trivialising the risks and exploiting women’s insecurities around body image.

All of them appeared on Facebook or Instagram and used time-limited deals to “irresponsibly pressurise” customers into booking, says the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

One ad, for example, tried to entice customers with an “exclusive opportunity” to get a “perfect peachy look”.

Liquid BBLs involve injecting filler into the buttocks to lift them and make them look bigger or rounded.

The ASA says because of the risks involved, cosmetic surgery should be portrayed as a decision that needs time and thought, rather than urgency to book quickly and grab a deal.

Clinics must be socially responsible and should not trivialise procedures or play on consumers’ insecurities, it says.

One ad said: “Get the curves and contours you’ve always wanted with our safe and effective body filler treatments. Feel confident every step of the way! Safe, proven, and beautifully natural results.”

Another claimed a 0% infection rate at its sterile clinic, with minimal pain.

The ASA says liquid BBLs would carry some level of risk to the patient, such as infections.

It adds: “Marketers must not suggest that happiness or wellbeing depends on conforming to a particular body shape or physical appearance.”

The advertising watchdog says it has been using AI to proactively search for online ads that might break the rules.

Three of the clinics – Beautyjenics, Bomb Doll Aesthetics and Ccskinlondondubai -did not respond to the ASA’s inquiries.

Rejuvenate Clinics said it has reviewed ASA guidance and will remove all references to time-limited offers and state in ads that the surgery is carried out by a medical professional with ultrasound, to minimise risks and enhance safety.

EME Aesthetics said all its clients are given a full consultation and are under no obligation to book any procedures, and it therefore considers that its ad had not pressured consumers or trivialised the risks of cosmetic procedures.

Dr Ducu said it will ensure it follows the ASA’s rules and guidance, that the time-limited Black Friday offer was intended to provide consumers with an opportunity to access the company’s services at a discounted rate, and it always encourages consumers to make informed decisions without pressure.

• Plastic surgeons say liquid BBLs can carry significant risks and require expert skill and training to perform
• The UK industry is not regulated though – beauty clinics offer them
• Large amounts of filler may be injected with possible serious side-effects, such as blood clots and sepsis
• The recent death of mum-of-five Alice Webb has highlighted safety concerns around BBLs

Pedestrian crossings in several areas of northern California have been hacked with fake greetings mocking the tech billionaires Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.

Officials in Silicon Valley are investigating and have disabled the audio feature on the crossings which usually plays instructions to “walk” or “wait”.

The surprise message were noticed over the weekend in Palo Alto, Redwood City and Menlo Park – which is home to Zuckerberg’s sprawling Meta campus.

One Musk impersonation offered to buy passing pedestrians a Tesla Cybertruck if they agreed to be his friend. Another from a false Zuckerberg said “real ones call me The Zuck”.

It is still unclear who created the messages or how they ended up being played from the crossings.

Officials in the affected areas, which are all just south of San Francisco, told the BBC engineers were investigating how the crossings were tampered with.

Pedro Quintana, a spokesman for the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), said about 10 pedestrian crossings within the Menlo Park and Palo Alto areas had been impacted.

All of those are now working on a timer system and the buttons which launched the fake messages have been deactivated, he said.

The messages appeared across Silicon Valley, where both tech billionaires have business.

One of the fake messages in Musk’s voice welcomes people to Palo Alto, which is home to Tesla operations.

“You know, they say money can’t buy happiness and… I guess that’s true. God knows I’ve tried,” the message says in one video shared multiple times on social media.

One from a fake Zuckerberg starts with him introducing himself before discussing inserting AI “into every facet of your conscious experience”.

Neither man has commented on the incident.

The city of Palo Alto separately told the BBC that at least 12 crossings in the downtown area had been tampered with.

Meghan Horrigan-Taylor, a spokeswoman for the city, said another city employee alerted officials to the issue on Saturday when they noticed the voice feature was not functioning properly. She added officials believe the tampering may have occurred on Friday.

“City staff have disabled the audible feature until further repairs can be made,” she said. “Other traffic signals in the city were checked and the impact is isolated.”

Local media also reported that several crossings in the Redwood City area were also hacked to sound like the two billionaires.

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 and Batman.

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 Intelligence 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.

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.

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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.

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 apologise, and Harvard should apologise,” 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.

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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.