The UK Supreme Court has unanimously and unambiguously backed the argument that the definition of a woman in the Equality Act should be based on biological sex.

Reading out the ruling, Lord Hodge cautioned that it should not be taken as a triumph for one group in society over another.

But there were scenes of jubilation for women’s campaigners outside the Supreme Court.

Tearful hugs were exchanged and a bottle of champagne was cracked open.

The fact someone had thought to bring one along underlines that it was potentially on the cards, but For Women Scotland (FWS) still seemed shocked by the scale of their victory.

The Scottish government’s argument – that sex can be changed via the gender recognition process, and that someone with a gender recognition certificate should have the protections of that sex – were dismissed.

So what does it all mean?

The application of the law on the ground, in “real life”, was clearly foremost in the minds of the judges.

Take the example of single sex spaces and services – part of the motivation for FWS bringing this case.

The previous reading of the law was that everything from hospital wards and prison wings to support groups for victims of abuse can exclude everyone but women thanks to exceptions in the Equality Act.

The concern from campaigners was that if people could change their sex with a certificate, and then claim protection against discrimination as a woman, that could be more complicated.

That’s particularly the case on a practical level, given those providing these services aren’t actually meant to ask to see a gender recognition certificate.

Now, the court is clear that this exemption can continue – the rules underpinning women-only spaces can exclude people with gender recognition certificates, along with everyone else.

There are still conditions which need to be satisfied – services will have to show that excluding trans people is a limited and proportionate means to achieving a legitimate aim.

Blanket bans are generally discouraged. There is still a bar to clear to exclude anyone, and the test of proportionality has to be met in each case.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission – which oversees the application of the Equality Act – is to issue new guidance to help service providers

But FWS are clearly delighted with the underlying principle, and hope it will lead to clearer guidance for those providing services.

It’s important to note that trans people are still protected by the Equality Act.

The protected characteristic of gender reassignment is not affected by this ruling, and Lord Hodge stressed that there are other defences against direct and indirect discrimination and harassment.

He was clear that trans people are a “vulnerable and often harassed minority”, who “struggle against discrimination and prejudice as they seek to live their lives with dignity”.

But the court has held that it would be problematic to effectively divide trans people between two different protected characteristics, depending on whether they have a certificate.

Again, judges stressed that this is particularly the case when service providers can’t ask to see the certificate.

They say the law needs to be “clear and consistent” – and that including those with a GRC in with women would ultimately be “incoherent”.

The court carefully weighs the letter of the law, but it’s worth remembering that ultimately that law is drafted by politicians – and it can be changed at the stroke of a pen.

The issue may now move out of the legal arena and back into the political one.

There had been some pressure on the UK government to clarify the definitions of the Equality Act, which is Westminster legislation.

The court has handily done that for them, and UK ministers have welcomed the ruling.

There may be more political pressure on the Scottish government, given it has lost this case.

For a long time, ministers have batted away questions about this case – such as, do they really believe in the legal points their lawyers are making? – by saying they can’t comment on live litigation.

They will have to go into a little more detail now, but I imagine this is issue still just about the last thing they want to talk about.

There had been some speculation that a ruling like this could raise the prospect of ministers re-launching their attempts at gender reform at Holyrood.

But frankly there is not the political will in the John Swinney administration to ride into battle on this issue, as there was under his predecessor Nicola Sturgeon.

With a Holyrood election looming, there is no prospect of the first minister deciding to wade back into such a contentious debate.

But with For Women Scotland now hoping to use this ruling to hold his feet to fire when it comes to broader government policies and guidance, it is one he will need to address.

A university student and Palestinian activist arrested by US immigration authorities was worried that an American citizenship interview was a trap.

Mohsen Mahdawi, who has permanent US residency or “green card” status, was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) when he turned up to the appointment on Monday.

One day before his arrest he told CBS News that he believed the interview could be a setup.

“It’s the first feeling of like, I’ve been waiting for this for more than a year,” Mr Mahdawi said. “And the other feeling is like, wait a minute. Is this a honey trap?”

Mr Mahdawi, a philosophy student at Columbia University in New York City who was due to graduate next month, was taken into custody in Colchester, Vermont.

Mr Mahdawi’s lawyer, Luna Droubi, said he was arrested “in direct retaliation for his advocacy on behalf of Palestinians and because of his identity as a Palestinian.”

“His detention is an attempt to silence those who speak out against the atrocities in Gaza. It is also unconstitutional.”

A court filing says Mr Mahdawi was born in a refugee camp in the West Bank and moved to the US in 2014.

It describes him as a committed Buddhist who believes in “non-violence and empathy as a central tenet of his religion”.

Other campus activists, including Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk, have also been detained.

Shortly after Mr Mahdawi was arrested, a federal judge in Vermont ordered that he not be removed from the state. Mr Khalil and Ms Ozturk have been detained at an Ice facility in Louisiana.

The BBC has contacted Ice for comment.

Mr Mahdawi and Mr Khalil are co-founders of Columbia’s Palestinian Student Union and were active in campus protests following the Hamas attack in October 2023 and the subsequent Israeli retaliation.

Mr Mahdawi’s lawyers said he “took a step back” from the protest movement in March 2024.

In December, he did an interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes programme in which he accused Israel of genocide, a claim it denies.

Last month, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at least 300 foreign students’ visas had been revoked in an effort to tackle antisemitism on university campuses.

The campus protest leaders have denied allegations of antisemitism.

“I want people to know that my compassion extended beyond the Palestinian people. My compassion is also for the Jewish people and for the Israelis as well,” Mr Mahdawi told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, shortly before he was detained by Ice agents.

On Tuesday, President Trump also suggested that US citizens could be detained and sent to abroad, including to the Cecot prison in El Salvador.

Legal experts broadly agree that such a move would be illegal under the US constitution and existing US law.

Members of the World Health Organization (WHO) have agreed the text of a legally binding treaty designed to better tackle future pandemics.

The pact is meant to avoid the disorganisation and competition for resources seen during the Covid-19 outbreak.

Key elements include the rapid sharing of data about new diseases, to ensure scientists and pharmaceutical companies can work more quickly to develop treatments and vaccines.

For the first time, the WHO itself will also have an overview of global supply chains for masks, medical gowns and other personal protective equipment (PPE).

WHO director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described the deal as “a significant milestone in our shared journey towards a safer world”.

“[Member states] have also demonstrated that multilateralism is alive and well, and that in our divided world, nations can still work together to find common ground, and a shared response to shared threats,” he said.

The legally binding pact reached early on Wednesday came after three years of talks between member states.

It is only the second time in the WHO’s 75-year history that an international agreement of this type has been reached – the first being a tobacco control deal in 2003.

It still needs to be formally adopted by members when they meet for the World Health Assembly next month.

US negotiators were not part of the final discussions after President Donald Trump announced his decision to withdraw from the global health agency, and the US will not be bound by the pact when it leaves in 2026.

Under the terms agreed, countries will have to ensure that pandemic-related drugs are available across the world in a future outbreak.

Participating manufacturers will have to allocate 10% of their production of vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics to the WHO. Another 10% will then be supplied at “affordable prices”.

Countries also approved the transfer of health technologies to poorer nations as long as it was “mutually agreed”.

That should enable more local production of vaccines and medicines during a pandemic, but the clause had been extremely contentious.

Developing countries are still angry at the way wealthy nations bought up and hoarded vaccines during Covid-19, while countries with large pharmaceutical industries worry mandatory transfers might undermine research and development.

At the core of the agreement is a proposed Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing System (PABS), allowing the faster exchange of data between pharmaceutical companies.

That should enable those firms to start working on new drugs more quickly in any future outbreak.

China has unexpectedly appointed a new trade envoy, as officials said the US’s practice of “tariff barriers and trade bullying” is having a serious impact on the global economic order.

Li Chenggang, a former assistant commerce minister and WTO ambassador, is taking over from veteran trade negotiator Vice Commerce Minister Wang Shouwen.

The shift comes as Beijing refuses to back down in an escalating trade war with Washington triggered by US President Donald Trump’s hefty tariffs on Chinese goods.

China’s already sluggish economy is bracing for the impact on a key source of revenue – exports.

Beijing announced on Wednesday its GDP grew by 5.4% between January and March, compared with the same period a year earlier.

The figure has exceeded expectations but reflects the period before US tariffs jumped from 10% to 145%, and Chinese officials warned of more economic pain ahead.

While both Washington and Beijing have said they are open to negotiating, neither have made a move to do so yet.

When that happens, Li, 58, will play a key role. He previously served as a deputy permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva and has held several key jobs in the commerce ministry.

Speaking to Reuters, one expert said the change in jobs was “very abrupt and potentially disruptive” given the current trade tensions – adding that Wang also had experience negotiating with US since the first Trump administration.

“It might be that in the view of China’s top leadership, given how tensions have continued escalating, they need someone else to break the impasse… and finally start negotiating,” said Alfredo Montufar-Helu, a senior adviser to the Conference Board’s China Centre.

However, another analyst who spoke to Reuters suggested the move could just be a “routine promotion” that just happened to come at a particularly tense period in time.

Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, Sheng Laiyun, deputy commissioner of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) warned that US levies would put pressure on China’s foreign trade and economy, but added that China’s economy is resilient and should improve in the long term.

“We firmly oppose the US practice of tariff barriers and trade bullying,” said Sheng.

“It violates the economic laws and the principles of the World Trade Organization, has a serious impact on the world economic order, and drags down the recovery of the world economy.”

In an editorial by state news outlet China Daily earlier this week, the outlet described the US’s behaviour as “capricious and destructive”, adding that it should “stop whining about itself being a victim in global trade”.

“The US is not getting ripped off by anybody…rather… [it] has been taking a free ride on the globalisation train,” the editorial went on to say.

Beijing’s GDP figures for the first quarter have beaten analysts’ expectations – which hovered around 5.1%.

Growth in the world’s second-largest economy was underscored by strong retail sales and promising factory output.

But US tariffs on China soared only in recent weeks. Trump raised them to 145% early last week, and Beijing retaliated by raising levies on US goods to 125%.

So some of the expansion could be down to factories rushing out shipments to beat Trump’s tariffs – a concept called “front loading”.

Analysts say a surge in China’s exports in March will be sharply reversed in the months ahead as tariffs take full effect.

China’s property downturn is also still dragging on growth. Property investment fell by almost 10% in the first three months of 2025 compared to the same period last year.

New home prices also were unchanged compared to the previous month – a sign that there are still too many empty homes, and not enough people buying them.

Officials have said there is ample room for stimulus measures, and plenty of tools that they can use to bolster the economy and roll out more support measures.

But it will be especially important for China to boost domestic demand and spending this year as Washington’s tariffs hits Beijing’s crucial export sector.

India’s opposition Congress party has said it will organise nationwide protests on Wednesday after the country’s financial crimes agency charged senior leaders Sonia and Rahul Gandhi and others with money laundering.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) presented its findings in a Delhi court on Tuesday, accusing the Gandhis of forming a shell company to illegally acquire assets of the National Herald newspaper worth more than 20bn rupees ($233mn; £176mn).

Congress spokesperson Jairam Ramesh called the charges “politics of vendetta and intimidation” by the government.

The Gandhis who have previously denied any wrongdoing have not commented on the charges.

The investigation also names other members of the Congress party, including its overseas chief Sam Pitroda, according to news agency ANI.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) began investigating the case in 2021 after a private complaint filed by Subramanian Swamy, a member of the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Swamy alleged that the Gandhis used party funds to take over Associated Journals Limited (AJL), which published the National Herald newspaper, and illegally acquired properties worth millions through AJL. The newspaper ceased operations in 2008 but was later relaunched as a digital publication.

The Congress maintains that it bailed out the publisher due to its historical legacy and had lent more than 900m rupees to AJL over the years.

In 2010, AJL became debt-free by swapping its debt for equity and assigning the shares to a newly created company called Young Indian, which the party says is a “not-for-profit company” with no dividends paid to its shareholders and directors.

Sonia and Rahul Gandhi are among Young Indian’s directors and they each own 38% of the company. The remaining 24% is owned by Congress leaders, including Motilal Vora and Sam Pitroda.

Last week, the Enforcement Directorate said Young Indian had acquired AJL properties worth 20bn rupees for just 5m, significantly undervaluing their worth.

It also served several notices to seize assets worth 6.6bn rupees across several Indian cities – including Delhi and Mumbai – which are connected to Young Indian.

The case is scheduled to come up for hearing on 25 April.

In recent years, the opposition has repeatedly accused the Narendra Modi government of weaponising the Enforcement Directorate against its political opponents.

According to data compiled by Reuters in 2024, the agency has summoned, questioned or raided around 150 opposition politicians since Modi came to power in 2014.

Last year, the ED arrested former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal in connection with an alleged liquor scam just a month before key general elections. He spent five months in jail before being freed on bail.

The National Herald newspaper was founded in 1938 by Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister and Rahul Gandhi’s great-grandfather.

It ceased publication in 2008 after running into financial troubles but was later acquired by the Congress in 2010 and relaunched as a digital news outlet in 2016.

It was published by Associated Journals Limited (AJL), which was established in 1937 with 5,000 freedom fighters as shareholders. AJL also published Qaumi Awaz in Urdu and Navjeevan in Hindi.

The National Herald became known for its association with India’s freedom struggle and its nationalist stance.

Nehru often wrote strong-worded columns, which led to the British government banning the paper in 1942. It reopened three years later.

After India gained independence in 1947, Nehru resigned as chairman of the newspaper to become prime minister.

But the Congress continued to play a huge role in shaping the newspaper’s ideology.

In a message to the National Herald on its silver jubilee in 1963, Nehru spoke about the paper “generally favouring Congress policy” while maintaining “an independent outlook”.

Over the years, the National Herald grew to be a leading English daily, supported by the Congress party, until it shut down in 2008 after years of financial troubles.

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.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) has forecast that global trade will fall this year because of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

It added “severe downside risks”, including reciprocal tariffs and political uncertainty, could lead to an even sharper decline in global goods trade.

“The decline is expected to be particularly steep in North America,” the WTO said, forecasting trade to drop by more than a tenth in that region.

Ngozi Ikonjo Iweala, the WTO director general, called the “decoupling” of the US and China “a phenomenon that is really worrying to me”.

The WTO previously expected global goods trade to expand by 2.7% in 2025 but it now forecasts it will fall by 0.2%.

Chief economist Ralph Ossa said: “Tariffs are a policy lever with wide-ranging, and often unintended consequences.

“Our simulations show that trade policy uncertainty has a significant dampening effect on trade flows, reducing exports and weakening economic activity,” he added.

A baseline tariff of 10% on almost all foreign imports to the US kicked in on 5 April, although some countries and goods are exempt.

China has a much higher tariff, which now totals 145% on most goods.

The US stock market slid on opening on Wednesday with the big indexes falling amid the ongoing uncertainty.

Despite the prediction of plunging trade with the US, the WTO expects some regions will still see trade growth.

It said Asia and Europe were still projected to post modest growth in both exports and imports this year.

“The collective contribution to world trade growth of other regions would also remain positive,” the WTO report said.

For the first time, the report contains a forecast for services trade – which is when countries buy and sell services to each other instead of goods.

This is common in industries such as tourism or finance where nothing physical is shipped but a service is provided.

The WTO forecasts services trade to grow by 4% in 2025, which is around one percentage point less than expected.

Since Trump’s inauguration in January there has been a flurry of announcements on tariffs.

The US president says the import taxes will encourage US consumers to buy more American-made goods, increase the amount of tax raised, and lead to huge levels of investment in the country.

However, critics say bringing manufacturing back to the US is complicated and could take decades and that the economy will struggle in the meantime.

Trump has also backtracked on many of his announcements.

Just hours after steep levies against roughly 60 of America’s trading partners kicked in earlier this month, Trump announced a 90-day pause on those tariffs to all countries bar China, in the face of mounting opposition from politicians and the markets.

In March, the governor of the Bank of England has warned that Trump’s tariffs could mean less money in UK consumers’ pockets.

Every spring for the past six years, millions of people have tuned in to a round-the-clock livestream of moose on the move in northern Sweden.

“The Great Moose Migration” tracks the animals as they swim across the Angerman River and make their annual journey toward greener, summer pastures.

This year’s 24-hour programme from SVT Play, the streaming platform for Sweden’s national broadcaster, began on Tuesday – a week ahead of schedule because of the warmer weather this April.

The broadcast has become a “slow TV” phenomenon, cultivating a loyal fanbase since its inception in 2019.

Cait Borjesson, 60, who has been hooked to the annual livestream since she stumbled upon it during the Covid-19 pandemic, said her TV had been on for 16 straight hours since it began on Tuesday.

“It’s unbelievably relaxing,” she said. “There’s the natural sounds of the birds, the wind, the trees. It gives you a sense that you’re in nature even if you’re not”.

For Cait, watching the migration has become a yearly tradition, so much so that she books time off work to fully immerse herself in the three-week broadcast.

She said the stream was “like therapy” which had helped her anxiety and panic attacks.

And she is not alone. SVT’s livestream has a wide audience, including a Facebook group boasting more than 77,000 members who come together to share their memorable moments, emotional reactions to the broadcast and their shared fascination of the migration.

A major part of their journey captured by SVT is through the village of Kullberg in northern Sweden, next to the Angerman.

Goran Ericsson, dean of the faculty of forest sciences at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and science advisor for the broadcast, said the moose migrate back to the summer ranges after aggregating in spots with better temperatures in the winter.

“Historically, this migration has been going on since the ice age,” he said. “During spring and summer, moose are more evenly spread out in the landscape.”

He added that around 95% of the moose in northern Sweden migrate annually, adding that early migrations were not new with this year’s prompted by less snow on the ground.

“Early springs happen occasionally,” he said. “We’re still within the normal range of variation.”

More than 30 cameras are used to capture the moose as they move through the vast landscapes, he added.

The show drew in nearly a million people during its launch in 2019, before garnering nine million viewers in 2024.

Minh-Xuan Truong, a researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences who has surveyed viewers of the livestream, said in a fast-paced media environment, people enjoy experiencing nature through this “slow TV” style – a genre characterised by long, un-edited and real-time broadcasts.

“A lot of people say it’s like an open window to a forest,” he says. “When you ask them if they would prefer having music in the background, or commentary, they say they prefer just having the sound of the wind, the birds and trees.”

Sweden’s woodlands are home to about 300,000 moose. The animal is known in the Scandinavian country as “King of the Forest”.

The European Union has identified seven countries it considers safe countries of origin, as part of proposals to speed up asylum applications, especially from those countries involved.

Citizens from Kosovo, Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, India, Morocco and Tunisia would all have their claims fast-tracked within three months on the assumption that they were likely to fail.

Markus Lammert of the European Commission said it would be a “dynamic list” that could be expanded or reviewed, with countries suspended or removed if they were no longer seen as safe.

Ever since EU countries saw an influx of irregular migrants in 2015-16, they have sought to reform asylum rules.

A pact on migration and asylum was agreed last year, but the EU says as it does not come into force until June 2026 it wants to push through two key rules on speeding up processing.

EU leaders called on the Commission last year to come up with plans to accelerate migrant returns, as EU figures suggested under 20% of people ordered to leave were sent back to their countries of origin.

Under the plans, EU countries would be able to fast track people coming either from safe countries or countries from which a maximum of one in five applicants are given protection.

European countries that are candidates to join the EU will automatically be considered safe, although exceptions are possible, for example for countries at war such as Ukraine.

Among the countries pushing for reform was Italy, which has seen a big influx since 2015. Other countries including Germany have imposed border controls in a bid to limit irregular migration.

Although Italy is among several member states that already have designated safe countries, it is thought an agreed EU list would deter asylum seekers from targeting those with looser regulations.

Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt have all seen large numbers of irregular migrants leave their shores to cross the Mediterranean in recent years.

The list has been welcomed by Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government. Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi hailed it as a success for Rome that Bangladesh, Egypt and Tunisia were on the list, in the face of “purely ideological political opposition”.

Italian judges blocked Meloni’s bid to send Egyptian and Bangladeshi migrants to detention centres in Albania, because while the government in Rome deemed their countries as safe, the European Court of Justice said they could not be seen as safe if all their regions and minorities were not.

The new proposals will now need to be approved by both the European Parliament and EU member states, and some human rights groups have expressed concern about the plans.

EuroMed Rights – a network of human rights organisations – warned that it was misleading and dangerous to label the seven countries as safe, because they included “countries with documented rights abuses and limited protections for both their own citizens and migrants”.

“We do not cut back on fundamental and human rights,” said Commission spokesman Markus Lammert. “Under EU law member states have to carry out individual assessments of each asylum application in each individual case.”

Donald Trump’s administration is accusing New York Attorney General Letitia James of mortgage fraud, and has made a criminal referral to the the justice department seeking federal prosecution.

Officials with the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) allege James falsified bank and property records to receive better loan agreements, an administration official told the BBC.

James won a civil case against Trump in 2023 that accused him of overvaluing his properties in order to take out loans with favourable terms. He is currently appealing against the judgment.

No charges have been filed against James. Her office has accused the Trump administration of weaponizing the US government.

“Attorney General James is focused every single day on protecting New Yorkers, especially as this administration weaponizes the federal government against the rule of law and the Constitution. She will not be intimidated by bullies — no matter who they are,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

Throughout his court trials after leaving office in 2021, Trump repeatedly said he believed his political opponents were weaponizing the justice system against him.

No charges have been filed, the White House confirmed, adding that more details would follow if the justice department took action.

In a letter obtained by US media to US Attorney General Pam Bondi, FHFA Director William Pulte accused James of misrepresenting a building in New York as a four-unit structure instead of five to get a better loan deal.

Pulte also alleged that James claimed a property in Norfolk, Virginia, was her primary residence in 2023 – when she was the top state prosecutor – to secure a lower interest rate on a loan. Mortgages for primary residences typically come with better terms.

“Ms. James was the sitting Attorney General of New York and is required by law to have her primary residence in the state of New York — even though her mortgage applications list her intent to have the Norfolk, VA, property as her primary home,” the letter said.

In a post on Truth Social on Monday, Trump called James a “wacky crook”.

“Letitia James, a totally corrupt politician, should resign from her position as New York State Attorney General, immediately,” he wrote.

Trump’s family business was found liable in 2023 of falsifying records and financial statements in order to get better terms on loans and insurance deals.

In the case brought by James, a judge ruled that the Trump Organization was liable for overvaluing a penthouse at Trump Tower in New York by claiming that it was three times its actual size, among other allegations.

Trump was ordered to pay more than $350m (£264m) in damages in the civil fraud case, which is going through the appeals process. During the case, Trump frequently attacked James, calling her “biased and corrupt”.

Trump was criminally convicted for falsifying business records in a separate case. Last year, he was found guilty on 34 counts for fraudulently classifying reimbursements for a hush-money payment made to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels.

During his campaign, Trump promised to seek revenge against many of his perceived political enemies – including former President Joe Biden – and others who have opposed him.

He has revoked the security clearances – which allows people to access classified material – of several officials, including James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who brought the criminal hush-money case,

He has fired several prosecutors who worked for special counsel Jack Smith on two criminal probes against him. He has also taken actions against law firms with attorneys who were involved in investigations into allegations against him, including the firm that employed former special counsel Robert Mueller.

A German palliative care doctor has been charged with murdering 15 of his patients using a cocktail of lethal drugs.

Prosecutors in Berlin have accused the 40-year-old of setting fire to the homes of some of his suspected victims to cover his tracks.

He allegedly killed 12 women and three men between September 2021 and July 2024, though prosecutors have said they believe that total could rise.

The doctor, who has not been named due to strict privacy laws in Germany, has not admitted to the charges, prosecutors said.

He is accused of administering an anaesthetic and a muscle relaxant to his patients without their knowledge or consent.

The relaxant “paralysed the respiratory muscles, leading to respiratory arrest and death within minutes”, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

He worked in several German states, and the ages of those whose deaths are being treated as suspicious range from 25 to 94.

It is also alleged that the suspect set fire to the apartments of his alleged victims to cover up the killings on five different occasions.

The suspect is accused of killing two patients in a single day in July 2024 – a 75-year-old man at his home in central Berlin, and a 76-year-old woman in a neighbouring district “a few hours later”.

Prosecutors said the doctor tried to set fire to the woman’s house but failed, adding: “When he noticed this, he reportedly informed a relative of the woman, claiming that he was standing in front of her apartment and that no one had responded to his ringing.”

The doctor was initially suspected of having killed four people in his care when he was arrested in August 2024 but investigations have uncovered other suspicious deaths, with more exhumations on potential victims planned.

A “lifelong professional ban” and “preventative detention” is being sought for the 40-year-old suspect. He remains in custody.

A former Gambian soldier has been convicted on torture charges by a US court for his involvement in crimes committed while feared strongman Yahya Jammeh was in power in the West African country.

Michael Sang Correa was found guilty of being part of a conspiracy to commit torture against suspected opponents while serving under a military unit known as the “Junglers”.

“The torture inflicted by Michael Sang Correa and his co-conspirators is abhorrent,” the Justice Department said.

It follows a week-long trial in Denver, Colorado, under a rarely used law that prosecutes crimes committed outside the US.

Correa was first detained in the US in 2019 for overstaying his visa, three years after settling in Denver where he reportedly worked as a day labourer.

The 46-year-old was charged in 2020 with torture and conspiracy to commit the torture of at least six people in The Gambia under a seldom-used law that allows people to be tried by the US judicial system for torture allegedly committed abroad.

• Ex-BBC reporter: I was tortured in The Gambia
• The ‘peace-loving’ country grappling with a gruesome past

He is the first non-US citizen to be convicted on torture charges in a federal district court for crimes committed overseas, according to the Department of Justice. The law has only been used twice since it was enacted in 1994 but both of the previous cases were brought against US citizens.

The Department of Justice said Correa “tried to evade responsibility for his crimes in The Gambia by coming to the US and hiding his past”.

“But we found him, we investigated him,” said Matthew Galeotti, head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.

The evidence at trial showed that Correa and his fellow Junglers tortured five people accused of plotting a coup against Jammeh.

The victims, including high-profile members of Jammeh’s inner circle who fell out with him, told the jury how they were tortured by being electrocuted and smothered with plastic bags.

“Correa and his co-conspirators beat, stabbed, burned, and electrocuted the victims,” the Justice Department said.

Prosecutors on Tuesday said Correa “played an integral role in inflicting this torture on the victims”.

He faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for each of the five torture counts and the count of conspiracy to commit torture, the Justice Department said.

His lawyers had argued that Correa was a low-ranking soldier who only obeyed orders from his superiors.

But while the jury agreed that there was evidence that the Junglers lived in “constant fear,” prosecutors said at trial that some Junglers had refused to obey orders to torture victims.

“This conviction sends a clear message that perpetrators of human rights violations cannot escape accountability, regardless of where they commit their crimes,” said Sirra Ndow, chairperson of the Alliance of Victim-Led Organisations in The Gambia, (AVLO).

Jammeh, who seized power in 1994, foiled several attempts to overthrow him before he lost an election in 2016 to Adama Barrow in a surprise defeat.

His rule was characterised by allegations of human rights abuses and state repression, which he denied.

He went into exile in Equatorial Guinea after his defeat, though he remains an influential figure in The Gambia.

A Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC), held between 2019 and 2021, unearthed the crimes committed under Jammeh and recommended prosecution for those who were involved.

Last year, Jammeh’s former interior minister was sentenced to 20 years in jail by a Swiss court for crimes against humanity.

• Bombshell election deal leaves Gambia reeling
• Shot and left paralysed but ‘I’ll never get justice’
• The brave Gambian man who took on a tyrant and made history
• Beauty queen ‘raped by Gambia’s ex-President Jammeh’

“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.”

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 toppled Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed’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.”

Do you get enough sleep? As a new parent, I don’t think I do, and conversations about the subject dominate my life.

At the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich, scientists are conducting groundbreaking studies into the importance of sleep and its broader impact on health.

So when the chance to stay at their cutting-edge sleep laboratory came up, I was eager to take part.

Nearly 20% of people in the UK are not getting enough sleep, according to the charity Mental Health UK.

I’m about to find out if I’m one of them.

Scientists at the UEA’s Sleep and Brain Research Unit are looking at the role of sleep in ageing, its impact on balance control and whether there is a link between gut health and sleep quality.

Tonight they are going to use state-of-the-art technology to monitor my brain while I sleep.

I enter a room on the Norwich campus that looks more like one from a chain hotel rather than a high-tech laboratory.

As Dr Marcus Harrington, a lecturer in psychology, gets me ready for my night, he tells me he will be sleeping on a camp bed while monitoring me from the room next door.

He then pulls a tight-fitting cap over my head. It has about 20 sensors to monitor my sleep.

Initially, it feels uncomfortable, making me question whether I will be able to sleep with it on, but I quickly forget I am wearing it.

As I fall asleep just after 23:00, Dr Harrington can see the electrical activity inside my head from the room next door.

Despite the unfamiliar surroundings and the unconventional headwear, I sleep well. I feel like I have slept through the night.

My watch alarm wakes me at 07:00. Usually, I am woken even earlier by my 16-month-old daughter’s calls.

Dr Harrington shows me the data he gathered, pointing to a screen showing 30 seconds of my brain activity.

By looking at all those “snapshots”, he can get an insight into my sleep.

The data shows how long it took me to fall asleep, how long I spent in different sleep stages and how many times I woke up during the night.

“Your results suggest you are not getting as much sleep as you should be. That is demonstrated by how quickly you went into a deep sleep,” he says.

Having a daughter who doesn’t sleep through the night, this finding does not surprise me.

After we have finished looking at the data, Dr Harrington tells me about the benefits of having the sleep unit.

“We know that almost every mental health problem is associated with poor sleep,” he says.

Currently, scientists “don’t know exactly why poor sleep seems to increase vulnerability to things like depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder,” he says.

The lab’s findings will help scientists understand and treat mental health problems in the future, he adds.

The unit is run by Dr Alpar Lazar, who has been researching sleep for more than two decades.

“Poor sleep can have really negative effects on our physical and mental health,” he says.

Studies suggest sleep may “help to prevent certain conditions that target the brain” as people get older, he adds.

Here are his top five tips for a better night’s sleep:

Coffee and energy drinks might be a way that lots of people start their day, but they can cause issues when you sleep, he says.

While caffeine may help by “reducing sleep inertia”, even when these drinks are consumed in the morning, they can still affect you in the evening, he adds.

Dr Lazar says people should therefore minimise caffeinated beverages “especially in the second part of the day”.

A 2017 report by charity Age UK backs up his advice, suggesting people over 50 avoid caffeine after lunchtime to aid sleep.

While alcohol can make you feel sleepy due to its sedative effect, it will disrupt your sleep cycle and reduce the quality of your sleep, Dr Lazar says.

Alcohol suppresses a unique phase of sleep, where there is increased brain activity, he explains.

Known as REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, it typically occurs after deep sleep and recurs multiple times throughout the night.

“A large amount [of alcohol] is going to interfere with the sleep-wake balance system,” Dr Lazar says.

In 2013, researchers looked at how drinking alcohol could upset our normal sleep cycles.

They found that while a tipple before bedtime may get you off to sleep faster, it can disrupt your night.

Sleep is controlled through an internal process known as the circadian system that repeats roughly every 24 hours.

Light is one of its strongest timekeepers, Dr Lazar says.

When it is bright, our internal clock feels we should be awake.

Dr Lazar suggests we should avoid bright light during the evening hours, and use filters on phone screens during this time.

If you wake up in the night and need the toilet, use low lights and do not turn your main lights on, he advises.

If you are tempted to watch TV or check your emails in bed, don’t.

A recent study found people who spent more time looking at a screen in bed were more likely to report insomnia.

Don’t think of the bed as a “social area”, Dr Lazar says.

Teach the brain that it is for sleeping, so when you get into bed, your body knows it’s time to rest.

If you wake in the night, leave the bed and try to return when you feel ready to sleep.

Having a bad night’s sleep and then taking a nap may “perpetuate the problem”, Dr Lazar says.

If sleep problems become chronic, avoid naps unless necessary for essential tasks such as driving, he adds.

Avoiding naps helps “accumulate sufficient sleep drive” for the night, aiding in falling and staying asleep.

A week on from my night at the sleep unit, I have tried to implement some of the things I learned.

No longer will you get reply emails sent from my bed.

I am making sure my morning coffees remain in the morning, and I am trying to keep the lights off if I pop to the loo.

So far, these tips are starting to help me get a better night’s sleep.

While it is still early days, I am already starting to notice a difference.

The length of my sleep has not changed but it feels like the quality has improved, apart from the odd night when my daughter just refuses to go to sleep.

“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.”

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.

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.

The tussle between Starlink boss Elon Musk and South Africa over the company’s failure to launch in the country stems from the nation’s black empowerment laws, and could be one factor behind the diplomatic row between the US and Africa’s most industrialised nation.

To his more than 219 million followers on his social media platform X, Mr Musk made the racially charged claim that his satellite internet service provider was “not allowed to operate in South Africa simply because I’m not black“.

But the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) – a regulatory body in the telecommunications and broadcasting sectors – told the BBC that Starlink had never submitted an application for a licence.

As for the foreign ministry, it said the company was welcome to operate in the country “provided there’s compliance with local laws”.

To operate in South Africa, Starlink needs to obtain network and service licences, which both require 30% ownership by historically disadvantaged groups.

This mainly refers to South Africa’s majority black population, which was shut out of the economy during the racist system of apartheid.

White-minority rule ended in 1994 after Nelson Mandela and his African National Congress (ANC) came to power.

Since then, the ANC has made “black empowerment” a central pillar of its economic policy in an attempt to tackle the racial injustices of the past.

This has included adopting legislation requiring investors to give local black firms a 30% stake in their businesses in South Africa.

Mr Musk – who was born in South Africa in 1971 before moving to Canada in the late 1980s and then to the US, where he became the world’s richest man – appears to see this as the main stumbling block for Starlink to operate in the country.

Starlink, in a written submission to Icasa, said the black empowerment provisions in legislation excluded “many” foreign satellite operators from the South African market, according to local news site TechCentral.

But foreign ministry spokesperson Clayson Monyela challenged this view in March, saying on X that more than 600 US companies, including computing giant Microsoft, were operating in South Africa in compliance with its laws – and “thriving”.

Mr Musk’s Starlink has a potential ally in South Africa’s Communications Minister Solly Malatsi.

He comes from the Democratic Alliance (DA) – the second-biggest party in South Africa – which joined a coalition government after the ANC failed to get a parliamentary majority in last year’s election.

The DA is a fierce critic of the current black empowerment laws, claiming they have fuelled cronyism and corruption with investors forced to link up with ANC-connected companies to operate in South Africa or to win state contracts.

Last October, Malatsi hinted that he was looking for a way to circumvent the 30% black equity requirement, saying he intended to issue a “policy direction” to Icasa with the aim of clarifying “the position on the recognition of equity equivalent programmes”.

In simple terms, Malatsi seemed to be suggesting that Starlink would not a require black business partner in South Africa, though it would have to invest in social programmes aimed at benefiting black people – especially the poor.

But some six months later, Malatsi has failed to change the policy, with a spokesperson for his department telling the BBC that their legal team was still looking into the matter.

It seems the communications minister may be facing political resistance from ANC lawmakers in parliament.

Khusela Diko, the chairperson of the parliamentary communications committee to which Malatsi is accountable, warned him earlier this month that “transformation” in the tech sector was non-negotiable, appearing to oppose giving Mr Musk’s Starlink any special treatment.

Diko said that “the law is clear on compliance” and, crucially added, that “cutting corners and circumvention is not an option – least of all to appease business interests”.

Diko’s tough position comes as no surprise, as relations between the South African government and the US have hit rock bottom during US President Donald Tump’s second term.

Mr Musk, part of Trump’s inner circle, has railed on X against what he calls “racist ownership laws” in South Africa, while the US president has threatened to boycott the G20 summit of world leaders to be held in the country later this year.

“How could we be expected to go to South Africa for the very important G20 Meeting when Land Confiscation and Genocide is the primary topic of conversation? They are taking the land of white Farmers, and then killing them and their families,” Trump said on his social media platform Truth Social.

His claims of a genocide against white farmers have been widely dismissed as false, but they echo those of the tech billionaire.

Last month, Mr Musk accused “a major” political party in South Africa – a reference to the radical Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), which came fourth in last year’s election – of “actively promoting white genocide”.

“A month ago, the South African government passed a law legalizing taking property from white people at will with no payment,” Mr Musk said.

“Where is the outrage? Why is there no coverage by the legacy media?

South Africa did pass a law earlier this year allowing the government to seize property without compensation, but only in certain cases.

Nevertheless, Musk links these issues to his failure to get a licence for Starlink.

“Starlink can’t get a license to operate in South Africa simply because I’m not black.” he said back in March.

His hard-line stance comes despite meeting South Africa’s president in New York last year.

At the time, Mr Musk described the meeting as “great”, while President Cyril Ramaphosa said he had tried to persuade the billionaire to invest in South Africa.

“Meeting Elon Musk was a clear intention of mine… Some people call it bromance, so it’s a whole process of rekindling his affection and connection with South Africa,” Ramaphosa told South Africa’s public broadcaster, SABC.

But he added that nothing had yet been “bedded down”.

“As it happens with potential investors, you have to court them; you have to be talking to them, and you’ve got to be demonstrating to them that there is a conducive environment for them to invest. So, we will see how this turns out,” the president said.

“He is South African-born and South Africa is his home, and I would want to see him coming to South Africa for a visit, tour or whatever.”

But the “bromance” has long ended, with Mr Musk appearing to move closer to South Africa’s right wing.

Lesotho appears to have bowed to pressure from the Trump administration by announcing on Monday that it had given a 10-year licence to Starlink.

It comes after Trump imposed a 50% tariff on imports from Lesotho, threatening thousands of jobs in the country.

Trump subsequently paused that for 90 days, but a 10% tariff still came into effect on 5 April.

Some reports suggest the Lesotho Communications Authority (LCA) cleared regulatory hurdles to stave off the threat of a further tariff hike by granting Starlink a licence.

However, this was denied by Foreign Minister Lejone Mpotjoane.

“The licence application and the tariff negotiations should not be conflated,” he said.

The decision to grant the licence was condemned by civil society group Section Two, which raised concern that Starlink Lesotho was 100% foreign-owned and lacked local ownership, South Africa’s GroundUp news site reported.

“Such actions can only be described as a betrayal – a shameful sell-out by a government that appears increasingly willing to place foreign corporate interests above the democratic will and long-term developmental needs of the people of Lesotho,” Section Two’s co-ordinator Kananelo Boloetse was quoted as saying.

During public consultations over Starlink’s application, Vodacom Lesotho had also argued that Mr Musk’s company should establish local shareholding before receiving a licence, the Space in Africa website reported.

“These concerns highlight broader tensions surrounding Starlink’s operations across Africa, particularly the growing demand for local partnerships,” it added.

Starlink also appears to be seeking an exemption in Namibia from the requirement to bring in a local partner.

Namibia is a former colony of Germany, and was under the rule of South Africa’s white-minority regime until it gained independence in 1990.

It has more stringent requirements than its post-apartheid neighbour, with businesses operating in Namibia needing to be 51% locally owned.

The Communications Regulatory Authority of Namibia (Cran) told the BBC that Starlink had submitted an application for a telecommunications service licence in June 2024.

Cran said that while this process usually took between three to six months, a decision had not yet been taken because it “must first wait for the ownership exemption application to be finalised” by Namibia’s information and communication technology minister.

Starlink is now operating in more than 20 African countries, with Somalia, hit by an Islamist insurgency, giving it a 10-year licence on 13 April, two days before Lesotho’s decision to do so.

“We welcome Starlink’s entry to Somalia. This initiative aligns with our vision to deliver affordable and accessible internet services to all Somalis, regardless of where they live,” Technology Minister Mohamed Adam Moalim Ali said.

Starlink aims to provide high-speed internet services to remote or underserved areas, making it a potential game-changer for rural areas unable to access traditional forms of connectivity such as mobile broadband and fibre.

This is because Starlink, rather than relying on fibre optics or cables to transmit data, uses a network of satellites in low Earth orbit. Because they are closer to the ground, they have faster transmission speeds than traditional satellites.

Nigeria was the first African state to allow Starlink to operate, in 2023. The company has since grown into the second-biggest internet service provider in Africa’s most-populous country.

But Starlink still has no presence in South Africa – the continent’s most industrialised nation.

Enterprising locals had found a way to connect to the service by using regional roaming packages purchased in countries where the service was available.

Starlink put an end to this last year while Icasa also warned local companies that those found providing the service illegally could face a hefty fine.

Yet with an estimated 20% of South Africans not having access to the internet at all – many in rural areas – it could prove beneficial for both Starlink and the government to reach a compromise.

For Starlink it could prove a lucrative market, while satellite broadband may help the government achieve its goal of providing universal internet access by 2030.

On Monday, Ramaphosa appointed former deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas as his special envoy to the US, signalling his determination to mend relations with the Trump administration.

But Jonas’ appointment faced a backlash in right-wing circles, as in a 2020 speech he called Trump a “racist homophobe” and a “narcissistic right-winger”.

In an interview on the Money Show podcast, Jonas said that he made the comments when he was not in government and “people move on”.

He acknowledged that it would be a “long slog to rebuild understanding”, but added that South Africa’s relationship with the US was “fundamentally important” and he was determined to improve it.

Jonas’ comments are not surprising as the US is a major trading partner for South Africa. With Trump having threatened a 30% tariff on its goods, Ramaphosa cannot afford to see relations continuing to deteriorate and the economy taking further knocks.

• Is it checkmate for South Africa after Trump threats?
• What’s really driving Trump’s fury with South Africa?
• US cuts send South Africa’s HIV treatment ‘off a cliff’

A colossal squid has been filmed in its natural environment for the first time since the species was discovered 100 years ago.

The 30cm-long (11.8in) juvenile was caught on camera at a depth of 600m (1,968ft), near the South Sandwich Islands in the south Atlantic Ocean.

A team of scientists, led by a University of Essex academic, recorded the footage in March during a 35-day quest to find new marine life.

Experts believe colossal squid can grow up to 7m (23ft) in length and weigh up to 500kg (1,100lb) – making them the heaviest invertebrate on the planet.

The mollusc was discovered on the 100-year anniversary of it first being identified and named.

Crew onboard the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s Falkor (too) vessel used a remote-controlled vehicle to spot it.

Chief scientist Dr Michelle Taylor, from the university, said the team was initially unsure what the squid was but filmed it because it was “beautiful and unusual”.

The footage was then verified by Dr Kat Bolstad, who said previous squid encounters had mostly been as remains in whale and seabird stomachs.

“It’s exciting to see the first in situ footage of a juvenile colossal and humbling to think that they have no idea that humans exist,” she said.

Little is known about the colossal squid’s life cycle, but they eventually lose the transparent appearance of juveniles.

Another distinguishing feature of the species is the presence of hooks on the middle of their eight arms.

Dying adults have previously been filmed by people fishing, but have never been seen alive at depth.

The Natural History Museum has suggested it is hard to estimate the global population of colossal squids.

In 2022, the institution said the lack of observations meant that “even to this day, the enormous invertebrates still straddle the line between legend and reality”.

Scientists also revealed that, in January, they captured footage of a glacial glass squid for the first time ever.

“The first sighting of two different squids on back-to-back expeditions is remarkable and shows how little we have seen of the magnificent inhabitants of the southern ocean,” added Dr Jyotika Virmani, Schmidt Ocean Institute’s executive director.

“These unforgettable moments continue to remind us that the ocean is brimming with mysteries yet to be solved.”

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 the social security system, which Donald Trump and Elon Musk – who is leading the White House’s cost-cutting efforts – claim is beset by fraud.

The administration wants to cut staff at the agency responsible for spending $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 breath-taking.”

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.

Members 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 – about 10% of its total staff.

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

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

On Tuesday, he signed an order preventing illegal immigrants and “other ineligible people” from obtaining social security payments.

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

“He will always protect that programme,” 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, the Los Angeles talent agency that represented him between 2017 and 2020.

Barack Obama also criticised the Trump administration on Tuesday, saying on X that its decision to freeze more than $2bn (£1.5bn) in federal funds for Harvard University was “unlawful and ham-handed”.

Trump is freezing the fund because Harvard said it would not make changes to its hiring, admissions and teaching practices that he claims are key to fighting alleged antisemitism on campus.

Obama has rarely criticised or rebuked government officials or government policies on social media since leaving the White House almost a decade ago.

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

Peru’s former president, Ollanta Humala, has been found guilty of money laundering and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

A court in the capital, Lima, said he had accepted illegal funds from the Venezuelan president at the time, Hugo Chávez, and from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht to bankroll his election campaigns in 2006 and 2011.

Humala’s lawyer said he would appeal against the conviction.

His wife, Nadine Heredia, was also found guilty of money laundering and sentenced to 15 years in jail. However, she has been granted safe passage to Brazil after seeking asylum in the Brazilian embassy.

Humala’s lawyer said he would appeal against the conviction.

Unlike her husband, Heredia was not present in court when Judge Nayko Coronado passed sentence – she had entered the Brazilian embassy along with the couple’s son before an arrest warrant could be executed.

Brazil offered her asylum and the Peruvian government said it would honour the 1954 asylum convention to grant both Heredia and her son safe passage.

The former president, 62, was meanwhile taken to Barbadillo prison, where two other former leaders, Alejandro Toledo and Pedro Castillo, are already being held.

Humala was the first of four Peruvian presidents to be investigated in connection with the Odebrecht scandal.

Toledo, who governed from 2001 to 2006, was sentenced last year to more than 20 years in prison for taking $35m (£26m) in bribes from the company.

Alan García, president from 1985 to 1990 and 2006 to 2011, killed himself in 2019 as he faced imminent arrest over allegations he was bribed by Odebrecht. He had denied the accusations.

Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, in office from 2016 to 2018, faced impeachment proceedings after it emerged that Odebrecht had paid him millions of dollars in his previous government role.

The investigation is ongoing. Kuczynski has always maintained the payments were not illegal.

Prosecutors said that Humala and his wife, with whom he cofounded the Nationalist Party, had accepted $3m in illegal contributions from the firm, which they used to finance his 2011 presidential campaign.

They also accused of taking $200,000 from Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez to bankroll the 2006 campaign.

The couple have always maintained that they are the victims of political persecution.

Humala’s lawyer, Wilfredo Pedraza, also said that their 15-year sentence was “excessive”.

Prosecutors had asked for 20 years for the ex-president and 25 and a half years for Heredia.

Humala is a former army officer who fought against the Maoist Shining Path rebels. He first came to national prominence in 2000 when he led a short-lived military rebellion against then-president Alberto Fujimori.

In 2006, he ran for president on a platform inspired by the socialist revolution of Venezuela’s Chávez.

Alan García, Humala’s election rival, warned voters “not to let Peru turn into another Venezuela” and won the presidency.

In 2011, Humala ran on a more moderate platform emulating the policies of Brazil’s then-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to defeat right-wing rival Keiko Fujimori, the eldest daughter of Alberto Fujimori.

Violent social conflicts quickly dented his popularity, and he lost the support of many members of Congress.

His legal troubles started shortly after his term finished in 2016, when Odebrecht admitted to bribing Latin American government officials and political parties with hundreds of millions of dollars to win business.

Prosecutors accused Humala and his wife of receiving millions from Odebrecht, as well as the illegal funding from Chávez to finance the 2006 presidential campaign.

A year later, a judge ordered that the couple be placed in pre-trial detention. They were released after a year but the investigations against them continued, culminating in today’s verdict.

Betsy Arakawa, the wife of actor Gene Hackman, searched the internet for information about flu and Covid symptoms and breathing techniques in the days before she died, police records have revealed.

Arakawa asked Google questions including whether Covid could cause dizziness or nosebleeds, according to files released by the Santa Fe Sheriff and reported by the Associated Press and New York Times.

The 65-year-old pianist died of hantavirus, which can cause flu-like symptoms and develop into a life-threatening lung condition.

Authorities believe she died around 12 February, and her husband, 95, who had Alzheimer’s disease, died on 18 February. Their bodies were found on 26 February.

The Sheriff files include details of the police investigation along with photos of the couple’s cluttered house in New Mexico, and bodycam footage.

They show that on 10 February, Arakawa searched online for “can Covid cause dizziness?” and “Flu and nosebleeds”.

The following day, she emailed her massage therapist to cancel an appointment, saying her husband had woken up with “flu/cold-like symptoms” but had tested negative for Covid.

She also ordered oxygen canisters from Amazon for “respiratory support”.

Police have previously said Arakawa made multiple calls to a health clinic on 12 February for medical treatment, which she never received.

She was found to have contracted hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, a rare respiratory illness carried by rodents. Nests and some dead rodents were found in outbuildings of the couple’s house.

Authorities believe Hackman died on 18 February – the date of his last recorded pacemaker activity, which showed an abnormal rhythm of atrial fibrillation.

His cause of death was severe heart disease, with advanced Alzheimer’s disease listed as a contributing factor. Experts believe the Oscar-winning actor’s Alzheimer’s may have prevented him from realising his wife of more than 30 years was dead in the home where he was living.

Their bodies were discovered more than a week later by neighbourhood security.

One of the couple’s three dogs, which had been in a crate while recovering from surgery, died from starvation and dehydration.

The couple’s children had tried to block the release of the latest sheriff’s records by Santa Fe County, but news organisations challenged that under New Mexico’s freedom of information laws.

“The New Mexico Inspection of Public Records Act (IPRA) placed the County in a difficult position,” said County manager Gregory S Shaffer.

“On the one hand, we deeply understand the family’s need for privacy during this painful time.

“On the other, the County has a duty to follow the law and faced potential lawsuits, damages, and attorney’s fees under IPRA if we withheld the records.”

France has recalled its ambassador to Algeria and ordered 12 Algerian diplomats to leave Paris as a diplomatic row escalated.

Algeria earlier this week expelled 12 French officials after one of its consular staff was arrested over the kidnapping of a government critic living in Paris. President Emmanuel Macron’s office called the move “unjustified and incomprehensible”.

However, relations have been on the slide for months. Observers have described the crisis as unprecedented since Algeria secured independence from France in 1962.

There had been hopes that tensions would ease after France’s foreign minister held talks with Algeria’s President Abdelmadjid Tebboune in Algiers earlier this month.

The two countries have blamed each other for what Paris has called a “sudden deterioration in our bilateral relations”.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said “Algerian authorities have chosen escalation”.

But Algerian minister Sofiane Chaib said the latest “fabricated” spat was down to French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, when relations had been in a “phase of warming up”.

They soured last year when Macron announced France was recognising Moroccan sovereignty of Western Sahara and backed a plan for limited autonomy for the disputed territory.

Algeria backs the pro-independence Polisario Front in Western Sahara and is seen as its main ally.

French-Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal was then arrested at Algiers airport in November and jailed last month for five years.

Prosecutors said he had undermined national security for making remarks that questioned Algeria’s borders.

However, Retailleau became increasingly involved in the row when Algiers refused to accept around 60 Algerians that his ministry classed as “dangerous” and wanted removed.

A deadly February knife attack in the eastern city of Mulhouse would not have happened, Retailleau said, “if Algeria had respected the law and its obligations”.

Macron sought to clear the air with Algeria’s president late last month in what they described as a “long, frank and friendly exchange”.

Barrot followed that up with a visit to Algiers, saying “France wishes to turn the page on current tensions”.

But the high-profile contacts were unable to bring an end to the spiral of underlying problems.

The latest escalation came after an Algerian consular official was arrested with two other people last Friday over the April 2024 kidnapping of an exiled Algerian influencer called Amir DZ.

A high-profile critic of the Algerian government with more than a million followers on social media, Amir DZ was eventually released in a forest.

An incensed Algiers said the consular official’s arrest was aimed to “humiliate” Algeria and responded by ordering the expulsion of 12 French officials who it said were all under the supervision of France’s interior ministry.

Sofiane Chaib, Algeria’s secretary of state told national TV on Tuesday that Retailleau had “full responsibility for this new situation”. He condemned the rationale behind the arrest of the consular official as “grotesque”.

Retailleau said it was “unacceptable that France is a playground for Algerian intelligence”.

Paris responded late on Tuesday with the expulsion of 12 Algerian officials, and recalled its ambassador Stéphane Romatet for consultations.

Barrot meanwhile said the ambassador would be back in Paris within 48 hours, but said that his government would eventually have to resume dialogue with Algiers.

“If we want results for the French people, sooner or later we’ll have to have a frank, level-headed and challenging dialogue,” he said.

The UK government is in negotiations with France on a scheme to return illegal migrants who have crossed the Channel in small boats.

In return, the British government would accept legal migrants seeking family reunion in the UK.

The French interior ministry told the BBC this would be a pilot scheme based on “a one-for-one principle”, with the aim of discouraging smuggling networks.

The Conservatives said Labour’s decision to scrap the Rwanda deportation agreement last year had removed a deterrent to illegal immigration.

UK Transport Minister Lilian Greenwood said the government was talking to France about migration issues but did not comment on the possibility of a removals deal.

She told Sky News: “I can confirm that there are discussions ongoing with the French government about how we stop this appalling and dangerous trade in people that’s happening across the English Channel.”

The talks with France were first reported by the Financial Times.

“France’s interest is to discourage migrants and smuggling networks from attempting to reach the UK from France,” the country’s interior ministry told the BBC.

The ministry suggested the pilot scheme could pave the way for an agreement on migrant returns between European Union member states.

“It is based on a one-for-one principle: for each legal admission under family reunification, there would be a corresponding readmission of undocumented migrants who managed to cross [the Channel]”, a spokesperson for the ministry said.

Peter Walsh, senior researcher at the Migration Observatory, said the “deterrent effect of this measure is likely to depend on how many small boats arrivals are transferred” from the UK back to France.

“In the short term, it won’t reduce our responsibility for the number of asylum seekers we take in,” Mr Walsh told the BBC.

“The hope would be if we send sufficiently large numbers back to France, that would have a deterrent effect.”

In 2023, the previous Conservative government struck a deal to give France almost £500m over three years to go towards extra officers to help stop migrants crossing the Channel in small boats.

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said the Labour government’s plan “won’t work because it will only see small numbers of illegal immigrants returned to France”.

He added: “By definition, the vast majority crossing the Channel illegally will get to stay in the UK – so there is no deterrent.”

Philp said the Conservatives had a deterrent in the Rwanda scheme, which aimed to discourage small boats crossings by sending some people who arrived in the UK illegally to the east African country.

But the plan was stalled by legal challenges and Labour scrapped the scheme before any migrants were sent to Rwanda.

Reform UK MP Lee Anderson said: “Instead of negotiating trade-style agreements concerning migrants, the focus should be on securing and closing our borders.

“Such a strategy would be more effective, less costly, and far simpler.”

He added: “The priority must be reducing the number of illegal migrants in our country, not simply replacing them.”

A Liberal Democrat spokesperson said a migrant returns scheme “would be a positive step that we’d support”.

The spokesperson said: “We need to end these dangerous crossings. For far too long the Conservatives talked tough but failed to tackle the issue of small boats.”

The Green Party has been approached for comment.

In 2023, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said he would seek an EU-wide returns agreement.

But no such deal has come to fruition since Labour won the general election last year.

An EU-wide deal would be likely to face resistance from some European countries, such as Hungary, which has taken a hard line on migrants entering the country.

The UK government has so far focused on targeting people-smuggling gangs to bring down illegal migration, which is one of Labour’s biggest challenges.

Earlier this year the government announced a series of measures to tackle people smuggling, including a new criminal offence of endangering the lives of others at sea with a jail term of up to five years.

Ministers have insisted there is no single “silver bullet” for solving the problem of illegal migration and the latest scheme is only one of a number of options being considered.

The latest Home Office data show 705 migrants in 12 boats arrived in Dover on Tuesday – the highest daily figure so far this year.

It brings the total for 2025 to 8,888 people, a rise of 42% on the same period last year.

A Home Office spokesman said: “The prime minister and home secretary have been clear the UK and France must work closely together to prevent dangerous small boat crossings, particularly on vital law enforcement co-operation.

“We have already secured agreement from the French to deploy a new elite unit of officers at the coast, launch a specialist intelligence unit, increase police numbers and introduce new powers for the French authorities to intervene in shallow waters.

“We are intensifying our collaboration with France and other European countries who face the same challenges by exploring fresh and innovative measures to dismantle the business models of the criminal smuggling gangs.”

Harvard University says it will not acquiesce to US President Donald Trump’s demands – whether it continues to get federal funding or not.

“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.

“Everyone knows that Harvard has ‘lost its way,'” Donald Trump wrote on social media on Wednesday morning. “Harvard is a JOKE, teaches Hate and Stupidity, and should no longer receive Federal Funds.”

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”.

In response to Harvard’s decision to refuse the government’s demands, the education department accused the university of a “troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges – that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws”.

With billions in the balance, the battle for the higher ground in the case of Harvard 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.

Nor did the latest move come out of the blue. Trump and his Vice-President JD Vance have long railed against higher education institutions. In 2021, Vance gave a speech that described universities as the “enemy”.

Trump pitched a funding crackdown on universities in his presidential campaign, painting them as hostile to conservatives. Almost a year before the present conflict in Gaza began in October 2023, he introduced a free speech policy initiative that promised to “shatter the left-wing censorship regime” – in part targeting campuses.

Polling by Gallup last summer suggested that confidence in higher education had 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.

At issue now, Trump’s team says, is last year’s pro-Palestinian campus protests, which roiled colleges across the country. During the demonstrations and sit-ins, some Jewish students said they felt unsafe and faced harassment. Others joined the protests against Israel’s military action in Gaza and US support for it.

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.

In his latest comments on the university, early on Wednesday, Trump attacked the “radical left” Harvard leadership and said the institution could “no longer be considered even a decent place of learning”.

• 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 tussle between Starlink boss Elon Musk and South Africa over the company’s failure to launch in the country stems from the nation’s black empowerment laws, and could be one factor behind the diplomatic row between the US and Africa’s most industrialised nation.

To his more than 219 million followers on his social media platform X, Mr Musk made the racially charged claim that his satellite internet service provider was “not allowed to operate in South Africa simply because I’m not black“.

But the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) – a regulatory body in the telecommunications and broadcasting sectors – told the BBC that Starlink had never submitted an application for a licence.

As for the foreign ministry, it said the company was welcome to operate in the country “provided there’s compliance with local laws”.

To operate in South Africa, Starlink needs to obtain network and service licences, which both require 30% ownership by historically disadvantaged groups.

This mainly refers to South Africa’s majority black population, which was shut out of the economy during the racist system of apartheid.

White-minority rule ended in 1994 after Nelson Mandela and his African National Congress (ANC) came to power.

Since then, the ANC has made “black empowerment” a central pillar of its economic policy in an attempt to tackle the racial injustices of the past.

This has included adopting legislation requiring investors to give local black firms a 30% stake in their businesses in South Africa.

Mr Musk – who was born in South Africa in 1971 before moving to Canada in the late 1980s and then to the US, where he became the world’s richest man – appears to see this as the main stumbling block for Starlink to operate in the country.

Starlink, in a written submission to Icasa, said the black empowerment provisions in legislation excluded “many” foreign satellite operators from the South African market, according to local news site TechCentral.

But foreign ministry spokesperson Clayson Monyela challenged this view in March, saying on X that more than 600 US companies, including computing giant Microsoft, were operating in South Africa in compliance with its laws – and “thriving”.

Mr Musk’s Starlink has a potential ally in South Africa’s Communications Minister Solly Malatsi.

He comes from the Democratic Alliance (DA) – the second-biggest party in South Africa – which joined a coalition government after the ANC failed to get a parliamentary majority in last year’s election.

The DA is a fierce critic of the current black empowerment laws, claiming they have fuelled cronyism and corruption with investors forced to link up with ANC-connected companies to operate in South Africa or to win state contracts.

Last October, Malatsi hinted that he was looking for a way to circumvent the 30% black equity requirement, saying he intended to issue a “policy direction” to Icasa with the aim of clarifying “the position on the recognition of equity equivalent programmes”.

In simple terms, Malatsi seemed to be suggesting that Starlink would not a require black business partner in South Africa, though it would have to invest in social programmes aimed at benefiting black people – especially the poor.

But some six months later, Malatsi has failed to change the policy, with a spokesperson for his department telling the BBC that their legal team was still looking into the matter.

It seems the communications minister may be facing political resistance from ANC lawmakers in parliament.

Khusela Diko, the chairperson of the parliamentary communications committee to which Malatsi is accountable, warned him earlier this month that “transformation” in the tech sector was non-negotiable, appearing to oppose giving Mr Musk’s Starlink any special treatment.

Diko said that “the law is clear on compliance” and, crucially added, that “cutting corners and circumvention is not an option – least of all to appease business interests”.

Diko’s tough position comes as no surprise, as relations between the South African government and the US have hit rock bottom during US President Donald Tump’s second term.

Mr Musk, part of Trump’s inner circle, has railed on X against what he calls “racist ownership laws” in South Africa, while the US president has threatened to boycott the G20 summit of world leaders to be held in the country later this year.

“How could we be expected to go to South Africa for the very important G20 Meeting when Land Confiscation and Genocide is the primary topic of conversation? They are taking the land of white Farmers, and then killing them and their families,” Trump said on his social media platform Truth Social.

His claims of a genocide against white farmers have been widely dismissed as false, but they echo those of the tech billionaire.

Last month, Mr Musk accused “a major” political party in South Africa – a reference to the radical Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), which came fourth in last year’s election – of “actively promoting white genocide”.

“A month ago, the South African government passed a law legalizing taking property from white people at will with no payment,” Mr Musk said.

“Where is the outrage? Why is there no coverage by the legacy media?

South Africa did pass a law earlier this year allowing the government to seize property without compensation, but only in certain cases.

Nevertheless, Musk links these issues to his failure to get a licence for Starlink.

“Starlink can’t get a license to operate in South Africa simply because I’m not black.” he said back in March.

His hard-line stance comes despite meeting South Africa’s president in New York last year.

At the time, Mr Musk described the meeting as “great”, while President Cyril Ramaphosa said he had tried to persuade the billionaire to invest in South Africa.

“Meeting Elon Musk was a clear intention of mine… Some people call it bromance, so it’s a whole process of rekindling his affection and connection with South Africa,” Ramaphosa told South Africa’s public broadcaster, SABC.

But he added that nothing had yet been “bedded down”.

“As it happens with potential investors, you have to court them; you have to be talking to them, and you’ve got to be demonstrating to them that there is a conducive environment for them to invest. So, we will see how this turns out,” the president said.

“He is South African-born and South Africa is his home, and I would want to see him coming to South Africa for a visit, tour or whatever.”

But the “bromance” has long ended, with Mr Musk appearing to move closer to South Africa’s right wing.

Lesotho appears to have bowed to pressure from the Trump administration by announcing on Monday that it had given a 10-year licence to Starlink.

It comes after Trump imposed a 50% tariff on imports from Lesotho, threatening thousands of jobs in the country.

Trump subsequently paused that for 90 days, but a 10% tariff still came into effect on 5 April.

Some reports suggest the Lesotho Communications Authority (LCA) cleared regulatory hurdles to stave off the threat of a further tariff hike by granting Starlink a licence.

However, this was denied by Foreign Minister Lejone Mpotjoane.

“The licence application and the tariff negotiations should not be conflated,” he said.

The decision to grant the licence was condemned by civil society group Section Two, which raised concern that Starlink Lesotho was 100% foreign-owned and lacked local ownership, South Africa’s GroundUp news site reported.

“Such actions can only be described as a betrayal – a shameful sell-out by a government that appears increasingly willing to place foreign corporate interests above the democratic will and long-term developmental needs of the people of Lesotho,” Section Two’s co-ordinator Kananelo Boloetse was quoted as saying.

During public consultations over Starlink’s application, Vodacom Lesotho had also argued that Mr Musk’s company should establish local shareholding before receiving a licence, the Space in Africa website reported.

“These concerns highlight broader tensions surrounding Starlink’s operations across Africa, particularly the growing demand for local partnerships,” it added.

Starlink also appears to be seeking an exemption in Namibia from the requirement to bring in a local partner.

Namibia is a former colony of Germany, and was under the rule of South Africa’s white-minority regime until it gained independence in 1990.

It has more stringent requirements than its post-apartheid neighbour, with businesses operating in Namibia needing to be 51% locally owned.

The Communications Regulatory Authority of Namibia (Cran) told the BBC that Starlink had submitted an application for a telecommunications service licence in June 2024.

Cran said that while this process usually took between three to six months, a decision had not yet been taken because it “must first wait for the ownership exemption application to be finalised” by Namibia’s information and communication technology minister.

Starlink is now operating in more than 20 African countries, with Somalia, hit by an Islamist insurgency, giving it a 10-year licence on 13 April, two days before Lesotho’s decision to do so.

“We welcome Starlink’s entry to Somalia. This initiative aligns with our vision to deliver affordable and accessible internet services to all Somalis, regardless of where they live,” Technology Minister Mohamed Adam Moalim Ali said.

Starlink aims to provide high-speed internet services to remote or underserved areas, making it a potential game-changer for rural areas unable to access traditional forms of connectivity such as mobile broadband and fibre.

This is because Starlink, rather than relying on fibre optics or cables to transmit data, uses a network of satellites in low Earth orbit. Because they are closer to the ground, they have faster transmission speeds than traditional satellites.

Nigeria was the first African state to allow Starlink to operate, in 2023. The company has since grown into the second-biggest internet service provider in Africa’s most-populous country.

But Starlink still has no presence in South Africa – the continent’s most industrialised nation.

Enterprising locals had found a way to connect to the service by using regional roaming packages purchased in countries where the service was available.

Starlink put an end to this last year while Icasa also warned local companies that those found providing the service illegally could face a hefty fine.

Yet with an estimated 20% of South Africans not having access to the internet at all – many in rural areas – it could prove beneficial for both Starlink and the government to reach a compromise.

For Starlink it could prove a lucrative market, while satellite broadband may help the government achieve its goal of providing universal internet access by 2030.

On Monday, Ramaphosa appointed former deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas as his special envoy to the US, signalling his determination to mend relations with the Trump administration.

But Jonas’ appointment faced a backlash in right-wing circles, as in a 2020 speech he called Trump a “racist homophobe” and a “narcissistic right-winger”.

In an interview on the Money Show podcast, Jonas said that he made the comments when he was not in government and “people move on”.

He acknowledged that it would be a “long slog to rebuild understanding”, but added that South Africa’s relationship with the US was “fundamentally important” and he was determined to improve it.

Jonas’ comments are not surprising as the US is a major trading partner for South Africa. With Trump having threatened a 30% tariff on its goods, Ramaphosa cannot afford to see relations continuing to deteriorate and the economy taking further knocks.

• Is it checkmate for South Africa after Trump threats?
• What’s really driving Trump’s fury with South Africa?
• US cuts send South Africa’s HIV treatment ‘off a cliff’

A colossal squid has been filmed in its natural environment for the first time since the species was discovered 100 years ago.

The 30cm-long (11.8in) juvenile was caught on camera at a depth of 600m (1,968ft), near the South Sandwich Islands in the south Atlantic Ocean.

A team of scientists, led by a University of Essex academic, recorded the footage in March during a 35-day quest to find new marine life.

Experts believe colossal squid can grow up to 7m (23ft) in length and weigh up to 500kg (1,100lb) – making them the heaviest invertebrate on the planet.

The mollusc was discovered on the 100-year anniversary of it first being identified and named.

Crew onboard the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s Falkor (too) vessel used a remote-controlled vehicle to spot it.

Chief scientist Dr Michelle Taylor, from the university, said the team was initially unsure what the squid was but filmed it because it was “beautiful and unusual”.

The footage was then verified by Dr Kat Bolstad, who said previous squid encounters had mostly been as remains in whale and seabird stomachs.

“It’s exciting to see the first in situ footage of a juvenile colossal and humbling to think that they have no idea that humans exist,” she said.

Little is known about the colossal squid’s life cycle, but they eventually lose the transparent appearance of juveniles.

Another distinguishing feature of the species is the presence of hooks on the middle of their eight arms.

Dying adults have previously been filmed by people fishing, but have never been seen alive at depth.

The Natural History Museum has suggested it is hard to estimate the global population of colossal squids.

In 2022, the institution said the lack of observations meant that “even to this day, the enormous invertebrates still straddle the line between legend and reality”.

Scientists also revealed that, in January, they captured footage of a glacial glass squid for the first time ever.

“The first sighting of two different squids on back-to-back expeditions is remarkable and shows how little we have seen of the magnificent inhabitants of the southern ocean,” added Dr Jyotika Virmani, Schmidt Ocean Institute’s executive director.

“These unforgettable moments continue to remind us that the ocean is brimming with mysteries yet to be solved.”

The UK Supreme Court has unanimously and unambiguously backed the argument that the definition of a woman in the Equality Act should be based on biological sex.

Reading out the ruling, Lord Hodge cautioned that it should not be taken as a triumph for one group in society over another.

But there were scenes of jubilation for women’s campaigners outside the Supreme Court.

Tearful hugs were exchanged and a bottle of champagne was cracked open.

The fact someone had thought to bring one along underlines that it was potentially on the cards, but For Women Scotland (FWS) still seemed shocked by the scale of their victory.

The Scottish government’s argument – that sex can be changed via the gender recognition process, and that someone with a gender recognition certificate should have the protections of that sex – were dismissed.

So what does it all mean?

The application of the law on the ground, in “real life”, was clearly foremost in the minds of the judges.

Take the example of single sex spaces and services – part of the motivation for FWS bringing this case.

The previous reading of the law was that everything from hospital wards and prison wings to support groups for victims of abuse can exclude everyone but women thanks to exceptions in the Equality Act.

The concern from campaigners was that if people could change their sex with a certificate, and then claim protection against discrimination as a woman, that could be more complicated.

That’s particularly the case on a practical level, given those providing these services aren’t actually meant to ask to see a gender recognition certificate.

Now, the court is clear that this exemption can continue – the rules underpinning women-only spaces can exclude people with gender recognition certificates, along with everyone else.

There are still conditions which need to be satisfied – services will have to show that excluding trans people is a limited and proportionate means to achieving a legitimate aim.

Blanket bans are generally discouraged. There is still a bar to clear to exclude anyone, and the test of proportionality has to be met in each case.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission – which oversees the application of the Equality Act – is to issue new guidance to help service providers

But FWS are clearly delighted with the underlying principle, and hope it will lead to clearer guidance for those providing services.

It’s important to note that trans people are still protected by the Equality Act.

The protected characteristic of gender reassignment is not affected by this ruling, and Lord Hodge stressed that there are other defences against direct and indirect discrimination and harassment.

He was clear that trans people are a “vulnerable and often harassed minority”, who “struggle against discrimination and prejudice as they seek to live their lives with dignity”.

But the court has held that it would be problematic to effectively divide trans people between two different protected characteristics, depending on whether they have a certificate.

Again, judges stressed that this is particularly the case when service providers can’t ask to see the certificate.

They say the law needs to be “clear and consistent” – and that including those with a GRC in with women would ultimately be “incoherent”.

The court carefully weighs the letter of the law, but it’s worth remembering that ultimately that law is drafted by politicians – and it can be changed at the stroke of a pen.

The issue may now move out of the legal arena and back into the political one.

There had been some pressure on the UK government to clarify the definitions of the Equality Act, which is Westminster legislation.

The court has handily done that for them, and UK ministers have welcomed the ruling.

There may be more political pressure on the Scottish government, given it has lost this case.

For a long time, ministers have batted away questions about this case – such as, do they really believe in the legal points their lawyers are making? – by saying they can’t comment on live litigation.

They will have to go into a little more detail now, but I imagine this is issue still just about the last thing they want to talk about.

There had been some speculation that a ruling like this could raise the prospect of ministers re-launching their attempts at gender reform at Holyrood.

But frankly there is not the political will in the John Swinney administration to ride into battle on this issue, as there was under his predecessor Nicola Sturgeon.

With a Holyrood election looming, there is no prospect of the first minister deciding to wade back into such a contentious debate.

But with For Women Scotland now hoping to use this ruling to hold his feet to fire when it comes to broader government policies and guidance, it is one he will need to address.

A German palliative care doctor has been charged with murdering 15 of his patients using a cocktail of lethal drugs.

Prosecutors in Berlin have accused the 40-year-old of setting fire to the homes of some of his suspected victims to cover his tracks.

He allegedly killed 12 women and three men between September 2021 and July 2024, though prosecutors have said they believe that total could rise.

The doctor, who has not been named due to strict privacy laws in Germany, has not admitted to the charges, prosecutors said.

He is accused of administering an anaesthetic and a muscle relaxant to his patients without their knowledge or consent.

The relaxant “paralysed the respiratory muscles, leading to respiratory arrest and death within minutes”, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

He worked in several German states, and the ages of those whose deaths are being treated as suspicious range from 25 to 94.

It is also alleged that the suspect set fire to the apartments of his alleged victims to cover up the killings on five different occasions.

The suspect is accused of killing two patients in a single day in July 2024 – a 75-year-old man at his home in central Berlin, and a 76-year-old woman in a neighbouring district “a few hours later”.

Prosecutors said the doctor tried to set fire to the woman’s house but failed, adding: “When he noticed this, he reportedly informed a relative of the woman, claiming that he was standing in front of her apartment and that no one had responded to his ringing.”

The doctor was initially suspected of having killed four people in his care when he was arrested in August 2024 but investigations have uncovered other suspicious deaths, with more exhumations on potential victims planned.

A “lifelong professional ban” and “preventative detention” is being sought for the 40-year-old suspect. He remains in custody.

China has unexpectedly appointed a new trade envoy, as officials said the US’s practice of “tariff barriers and trade bullying” is having a serious impact on the global economic order.

Li Chenggang, a former assistant commerce minister and WTO ambassador, is taking over from veteran trade negotiator Vice Commerce Minister Wang Shouwen.

The shift comes as Beijing refuses to back down in an escalating trade war with Washington triggered by US President Donald Trump’s hefty tariffs on Chinese goods.

China’s already sluggish economy is bracing for the impact on a key source of revenue – exports.

Beijing announced on Wednesday its GDP grew by 5.4% between January and March, compared with the same period a year earlier.

The figure has exceeded expectations but reflects the period before US tariffs jumped from 10% to 145%, and Chinese officials warned of more economic pain ahead.

While both Washington and Beijing have said they are open to negotiating, neither have made a move to do so yet.

When that happens, Li, 58, will play a key role. He previously served as a deputy permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva and has held several key jobs in the commerce ministry.

Speaking to Reuters, one expert said the change in jobs was “very abrupt and potentially disruptive” given the current trade tensions – adding that Wang also had experience negotiating with US since the first Trump administration.

“It might be that in the view of China’s top leadership, given how tensions have continued escalating, they need someone else to break the impasse… and finally start negotiating,” said Alfredo Montufar-Helu, a senior adviser to the Conference Board’s China Centre.

However, another analyst who spoke to Reuters suggested the move could just be a “routine promotion” that just happened to come at a particularly tense period in time.

Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, Sheng Laiyun, deputy commissioner of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) warned that US levies would put pressure on China’s foreign trade and economy, but added that China’s economy is resilient and should improve in the long term.

“We firmly oppose the US practice of tariff barriers and trade bullying,” said Sheng.

“It violates the economic laws and the principles of the World Trade Organization, has a serious impact on the world economic order, and drags down the recovery of the world economy.”

In an editorial by state news outlet China Daily earlier this week, the outlet described the US’s behaviour as “capricious and destructive”, adding that it should “stop whining about itself being a victim in global trade”.

“The US is not getting ripped off by anybody…rather… [it] has been taking a free ride on the globalisation train,” the editorial went on to say.

Beijing’s GDP figures for the first quarter have beaten analysts’ expectations – which hovered around 5.1%.

Growth in the world’s second-largest economy was underscored by strong retail sales and promising factory output.

But US tariffs on China soared only in recent weeks. Trump raised them to 145% early last week, and Beijing retaliated by raising levies on US goods to 125%.

So some of the expansion could be down to factories rushing out shipments to beat Trump’s tariffs – a concept called “front loading”.

Analysts say a surge in China’s exports in March will be sharply reversed in the months ahead as tariffs take full effect.

China’s property downturn is also still dragging on growth. Property investment fell by almost 10% in the first three months of 2025 compared to the same period last year.

New home prices also were unchanged compared to the previous month – a sign that there are still too many empty homes, and not enough people buying them.

Officials have said there is ample room for stimulus measures, and plenty of tools that they can use to bolster the economy and roll out more support measures.

But it will be especially important for China to boost domestic demand and spending this year as Washington’s tariffs hits Beijing’s crucial export sector.

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 the social security system, which Donald Trump and Elon Musk – who is leading the White House’s cost-cutting efforts – claim is beset by fraud.

The administration wants to cut staff at the agency responsible for spending $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 breath-taking.”

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.

Members 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 – about 10% of its total staff.

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

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

On Tuesday, he signed an order preventing illegal immigrants and “other ineligible people” from obtaining social security payments.

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

“He will always protect that programme,” 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, the Los Angeles talent agency that represented him between 2017 and 2020.

Barack Obama also criticised the Trump administration on Tuesday, saying on X that its decision to freeze more than $2bn (£1.5bn) in federal funds for Harvard University was “unlawful and ham-handed”.

Trump is freezing the fund because Harvard said it would not make changes to its hiring, admissions and teaching practices that he claims are key to fighting alleged antisemitism on campus.

Obama has rarely criticised or rebuked government officials or government policies on social media since leaving the White House almost a decade ago.

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

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.

India’s opposition Congress party has said it will organise nationwide protests on Wednesday after the country’s financial crimes agency charged senior leaders Sonia and Rahul Gandhi and others with money laundering.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) presented its findings in a Delhi court on Tuesday, accusing the Gandhis of forming a shell company to illegally acquire assets of the National Herald newspaper worth more than 20bn rupees ($233mn; £176mn).

Congress spokesperson Jairam Ramesh called the charges “politics of vendetta and intimidation” by the government.

The Gandhis who have previously denied any wrongdoing have not commented on the charges.

The investigation also names other members of the Congress party, including its overseas chief Sam Pitroda, according to news agency ANI.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) began investigating the case in 2021 after a private complaint filed by Subramanian Swamy, a member of the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Swamy alleged that the Gandhis used party funds to take over Associated Journals Limited (AJL), which published the National Herald newspaper, and illegally acquired properties worth millions through AJL. The newspaper ceased operations in 2008 but was later relaunched as a digital publication.

The Congress maintains that it bailed out the publisher due to its historical legacy and had lent more than 900m rupees to AJL over the years.

In 2010, AJL became debt-free by swapping its debt for equity and assigning the shares to a newly created company called Young Indian, which the party says is a “not-for-profit company” with no dividends paid to its shareholders and directors.

Sonia and Rahul Gandhi are among Young Indian’s directors and they each own 38% of the company. The remaining 24% is owned by Congress leaders, including Motilal Vora and Sam Pitroda.

Last week, the Enforcement Directorate said Young Indian had acquired AJL properties worth 20bn rupees for just 5m, significantly undervaluing their worth.

It also served several notices to seize assets worth 6.6bn rupees across several Indian cities – including Delhi and Mumbai – which are connected to Young Indian.

The case is scheduled to come up for hearing on 25 April.

In recent years, the opposition has repeatedly accused the Narendra Modi government of weaponising the Enforcement Directorate against its political opponents.

According to data compiled by Reuters in 2024, the agency has summoned, questioned or raided around 150 opposition politicians since Modi came to power in 2014.

Last year, the ED arrested former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal in connection with an alleged liquor scam just a month before key general elections. He spent five months in jail before being freed on bail.

The National Herald newspaper was founded in 1938 by Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister and Rahul Gandhi’s great-grandfather.

It ceased publication in 2008 after running into financial troubles but was later acquired by the Congress in 2010 and relaunched as a digital news outlet in 2016.

It was published by Associated Journals Limited (AJL), which was established in 1937 with 5,000 freedom fighters as shareholders. AJL also published Qaumi Awaz in Urdu and Navjeevan in Hindi.

The National Herald became known for its association with India’s freedom struggle and its nationalist stance.

Nehru often wrote strong-worded columns, which led to the British government banning the paper in 1942. It reopened three years later.

After India gained independence in 1947, Nehru resigned as chairman of the newspaper to become prime minister.

But the Congress continued to play a huge role in shaping the newspaper’s ideology.

In a message to the National Herald on its silver jubilee in 1963, Nehru spoke about the paper “generally favouring Congress policy” while maintaining “an independent outlook”.

Over the years, the National Herald grew to be a leading English daily, supported by the Congress party, until it shut down in 2008 after years of financial troubles.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) has forecast that global trade will fall this year because of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

It added “severe downside risks”, including reciprocal tariffs and political uncertainty, could lead to an even sharper decline in global goods trade.

“The decline is expected to be particularly steep in North America,” the WTO said, forecasting trade to drop by more than a tenth in that region.

Ngozi Ikonjo Iweala, the WTO director general, called the “decoupling” of the US and China “a phenomenon that is really worrying to me”.

The WTO previously expected global goods trade to expand by 2.7% in 2025 but it now forecasts it will fall by 0.2%.

Chief economist Ralph Ossa said: “Tariffs are a policy lever with wide-ranging, and often unintended consequences.

“Our simulations show that trade policy uncertainty has a significant dampening effect on trade flows, reducing exports and weakening economic activity,” he added.

A baseline tariff of 10% on almost all foreign imports to the US kicked in on 5 April, although some countries and goods are exempt.

China has a much higher tariff, which now totals 145% on most goods.

The US stock market slid on opening on Wednesday with the big indexes falling amid the ongoing uncertainty.

Despite the prediction of plunging trade with the US, the WTO expects some regions will still see trade growth.

It said Asia and Europe were still projected to post modest growth in both exports and imports this year.

“The collective contribution to world trade growth of other regions would also remain positive,” the WTO report said.

For the first time, the report contains a forecast for services trade – which is when countries buy and sell services to each other instead of goods.

This is common in industries such as tourism or finance where nothing physical is shipped but a service is provided.

The WTO forecasts services trade to grow by 4% in 2025, which is around one percentage point less than expected.

Since Trump’s inauguration in January there has been a flurry of announcements on tariffs.

The US president says the import taxes will encourage US consumers to buy more American-made goods, increase the amount of tax raised, and lead to huge levels of investment in the country.

However, critics say bringing manufacturing back to the US is complicated and could take decades and that the economy will struggle in the meantime.

Trump has also backtracked on many of his announcements.

Just hours after steep levies against roughly 60 of America’s trading partners kicked in earlier this month, Trump announced a 90-day pause on those tariffs to all countries bar China, in the face of mounting opposition from politicians and the markets.

In March, the governor of the Bank of England has warned that Trump’s tariffs could mean less money in UK consumers’ pockets.