Judges at the UK Supreme Court have unanimously ruled that a woman is defined by biological sex under equalities law.

It marks the culmination of a long-running legal battle which could have major implications for how sex-based rights apply across Scotland, England and Wales.

The court sided with campaign group For Women Scotland, which brought a case against the Scottish government arguing that sex-based protections should only apply to people that are born female.

Judge Lord Hodge said the ruling should not be seen as a triumph of one side over the other, and stressed that the law still gives protection against discrimination to transgender people.

The Scottish government argued in court that transgender people with a gender recognition certificate (GRC) are entitled to the same sex-based protections as biological women.

The Supreme Court was asked to decide on the proper interpretation of the 2010 Equality Act, which applies across Britain.

Lord Hodge said the central question was how the words “woman” and “sex” are defined in the legislation.

He told the court: “The unanimous decision of this court is that the terms woman and sex in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex.

“But we counsel against reading this judgement as a triumph of one or more groups in our society at the expense of another, it is not.”

He added that the legislation gives transgender people “protection, not only against discrimination through the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, but also against direct discrimination, indirect discrimination and harassment in substance in their acquired gender”.

Campaigners who brought the case against the Scottish government hugged each other and punched the air as they left the courtroom, with several of them in tears.

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

Judges at the Supreme Court in London were asked to rule on what that law means by “sex” – whether it means biological sex, or legal, “certificated” sex as defined by the 2004 Gender Recognition Act.

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

For Women Scotland argued for a “common sense” interpretation of the words man and woman, telling the court that sex is an “immutable biological state”.

Speaking outside the Supreme Court following the ruling, For Women Scotland co-founder Susan Smith said: “Today the judges have said what we always believed to be the case, that women are protected by their biological sex.

“Sex is real and women can now feel safe that services and spaces designated for women are for women and we are enormously grateful to the Supreme Court for this ruling.”

First Minister John Swinney said the Scottish government accepted the judgement.

He posted on social media: “The ruling gives clarity between two relevant pieces of legislation passed at Westminster.

“We will now engage on the implications of the ruling.”

Swinney added: “Protecting the rights of all will underpin our actions.”

A Scottish government spokesperson insisted ministers had acted “in good faith” during the legal proceedings, and noted that the Equality and Human Rights Commission was updating its guidance in response to the judgement.

A UK government spokesman said the ruling would bring “clarity and confidence for women and service providers such as hospitals, refuges, and sports clubs”.

“Single-sex spaces are protected in law and will always be protected by this government,” the spokesman added.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch described the ruling as a “victory for all of the women who faced personal abuse or lost their jobs for stating the obvious”.

She added: “It’s important to be reminded the court strongly and clearly re-affirmed the Equality Act protects all trans people against discrimination, based on gender reassignment, and will continue to do so.”

Harry Potter author JK Rowling posted on social media: “It took three extraordinary, tenacious Scottish women with an army behind them to get this case heard by the Supreme Court and, in winning, they’ve protected the rights of women and girls across the UK.”

But Scottish Green MSP Maggie Chapman, a prominent campaigner for trans-rights, said: “This is a deeply concerning ruling for human rights and a huge blow to some of the most marginalised people in our society.

“It could remove important protections and will leave many trans people and their loved ones deeply anxious and worried about how their lives will be affected and about what will come next.”

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

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

Scottish Trans manager Vic Valentine said the organisation was “shocked” by the court ruling, arguing that it “reverses 20 years of understanding on how the law recognises trans men and women with gender recognition certificates”.

They added: “This judgement seems to suggest that there will be times where trans people can be excluded from both men’s and women’s spaces and services.

“It is hard to understand where we would then be expected to go – or how this decision is compatible with a society that is fair and equal for everybody.”

The case follows years of heated debate over transgender and women’s rights, including controversy over transgender rapist Isla Bryson initially being put in a women’s prison and an ongoing employment tribunal involving a female NHS Fife nurse who objected to a transgender doctor using a women’s changing room.

NHS Fife said it would “carefully consider” the court’s judgement.

The judges ruled that that interpreting sex as “certificated” rather than “biological” would “cut across the definitions of man and “woman and thus the protected characteristic of sex in an incoherent way”.

They said a “certified” definition of sex would weaken protections for lesbians, citing the example of lesbian-only spaces and associations as it would mean that a trans woman who was attracted to women would be classed as a lesbian.

The ruling found the biological interpretation of sex was also required for single-sex spaces to “function coherently”.

It cited changing rooms, hostels, medical services and single-sex higher education institutions.

The judges noted “similar confusion and impracticability” had arisen in relation to single-sex associations and charities, women’s sport, public sector equality and the armed forces.

The judges added: “The practical problems that arise under a certificated sex approach are clear indicators that this interpretation is not correct.”

Gender reassignment is a protected characteristic in law, making it is illegal to discriminate against someone on the basis that they are transgender.

However, single-sex spaces can exclude people with GRCs “if it is proportionate to do so”.

Dr Nick McKerrell, senior law lecturer at Glasgow Caledonian University, said the ruling means a transgender women with a GRC who was excluded from a single-sex space would be unable to argue she is being discriminated against as a woman.

He also said the ruling implied that workplaces would need to provide separate spaces for people on the basis of biological sex.

But the law lecturer said arguments over access to single-sex spaces would not be “settled” by this court case.

He told the BBC: “It doesn’t mean everything overnight is going to change in terms of stopping trans people from accessing services. It will depend on what providers think the new definition will mean for them.”

Dr McKerrell said the judgement does not immediately change anything for the rules on transgender participation in women’s sport, but that it might prompt a “reassessment” of rules.

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

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

The issue has been contested several times in the Scottish courts.

Holyrood ministers won the most recent case in Scotland, with judge Lady Haldane ruling in 2022 that the definition of sex was “not limited to biological or birth sex”.

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

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

What is a woman?

In recent years it is a question that has caused political punch-ups, party splits and despatch box spats.

A complex, emotionally-charged and fiercely contested argument around gender, trans rights and women’s sex-based rights has often left politicians at Westminster floundering to answer a seemingly straightforward question.

Today’s Supreme Court ruling may, just may, calm a political row that has produced all sorts of verbal contortions, particularly from Sir Keir Starmer.

Appearing on the BBC’s Question Time election debate in June last year, the Labour leader said he agreed with former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s comment that “biologically, a woman is with a vagina and a man is with a penis”.

But he was criticised by the Harry Potter author and former Labour donor JK Rowling, who accused the party under Sir Keir’s leadership of a “dismissive and often offensive” approach to women’s concerns.

The question of self-identification for transgender people has long been thorny for the Labour Party.

Its 2019 manifesto committed Labour to introducing self-identification.

In September 2021, the then-leader of the opposition slapped down one of his own MPs, Rosie Duffield, for saying that only women have a cervix.

Sir Keir told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show: “That shouldn’t be said. It’s not right.”

Duffield has since quit the Labour Party and now sits as an independent.

Speaking to LBC in March 2022, Sir Keir was repeatedly pressed on the issue, saying the “vast majority” of women “of course don’t have a penis” – adding that those who are born with a gender they don’t identify with should be treated with respect.

With the issue increasingly divisive in his own party, the Labour leader said to the Sunday Times a year later: “For 99.9% of women, it is completely biological… and, of course, they haven’t got a penis.”

By the summer of 2023, Labour’s position had shifted and the party ruled out introducing a self-ID system to allow people to change their legal sex without a medical diagnosis.

Sir Keir told BBC Radio 5 Live: “Firstly, a woman is an adult female, so let’s clear that one up.”

Often sounding completely exasperated by the question, the Labour leader said in one interview that “almost nobody is talking about trans issues”, querying why it had become a focus of fierce debate.

But it had, whether he liked it or not.

The Conservative Party repeatedly tried to ridicule Sir Keir’s position and carve out a clear political dividing line.

At the Tory conference in 2023, then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, said: “A man is a man, a woman is a woman, that’s just common sense.”

But his jibes against the Labour leader were not without controversy.

During Prime Minister’s Questions in February 2024, Sunak jokingly ridiculed Sir Keir for U-turning on how he defined a woman.

But the mother of murdered teenager Brianna Ghey – who was transgender – was in Parliament that day and Sunak faced calls to apologise.

By the time of last year’s general election, Sunak said voters faced a “crystal-clear choice” about the protection of single-sex spaces, promising to rewrite the Equality Act to make clear that sex as a protected characteristic means biological sex.

Today’s Supreme Court ruling has been welcomed by the Conservatives, with leader Kemi Badenoch calling it a “victory for all of the women who faced personal abuse or lost their jobs for stating the obvious”.

As Sunak’s women and equalities minister, Badenoch led the UK government’s efforts to block Scotland’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill.

She has previously criticised what she called “extreme gender ideology” and “trans ideology” and opposed gender-neutral toilets.

And in a sign that the Tories might finally be ready to give up one of their most cherished attack lines, Badenoch declared on social media: “The era of Keir Starmer telling us that some women have penises has come to an end. Hallelujah!”

A Labour source said Sir Keir had brought the party to a “common sense position” on the subject from an “activist” stance, and it was “one of the reasons” the electorate felt that they could back the party after the “disaster of 2019”.

Labour are not the only party to have tied themselves in knots on this issue.

It was particularly thorny for the SNP, whose former leader Nicola Sturgeon championed the expansion of trans rights, cheered on by some in her party and opposed loudly by others.

Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney, who has been keen to avoid the issue, will now face the challenge of ensuring his government adheres to the law as interpreted by the Supreme Court.

The Liberal Democrats have had their problems too.

Officially, the party is pro-trans rights. It has a powerful and influential LGBTQ+ section and campaigned at the last general election for legal recognition of non-binary identities.

In May 2023, leader Sir Ed Davey told LBC: “The vast majority of people will have the same gender as their biological sex, but a small number won’t.”

When asked by presenter Nick Ferrari “so, a woman can have a penis?”, he replied: “Well, quite clearly.”

He went on to suggest that trans people’s rights were adequately protected by the Equality Act, which “allow there to be single sex spaces”.

His comments were ridiculed by then Tory leader Sunak – and did not go down well with gender critical campaigners in his own party.

Liberal Voice for Women (LVW), which has fought a long campaign against a ban on having a stall at the annual Lib Dem conference, said their leader had made the party “look dishonest, unreliable and detached from reality”.

Earlier this year, party chiefs backed down and allowed LVW to hold events and have exhibition stands after the group threatened to sue for discrimination.

Reform UK is clear in its opposition to what it calls “transgender indoctrination” and is committed to scrapping the Equality Act.

Its 2024 general election “contract” states: “There are two sexes and two genders.”

The party adds: “It is a dangerous safeguarding issue to confuse children by suggesting otherwise… no gender questioning, social transitioning or pronoun swapping, inform parents of under-16s about their children’s life decisions. Schools must have single-sex facilities.”

On paper, the Green Party of England and Wales is equally clear, at the opposite end of the spectrum.

The party’s charter of Rights and Responsibilities states “trans men are men, trans women are women, and that non-binary identities exist and are valid”, and it campaigns to make it easier for trans people to change their legal status.

But within the party there are major splits over the issue.

Last year, the Greens were ordered by a court to pay nearly £100,000 to their former deputy leader Shahrar Ali after it found the party had discriminated against him when they fired him as a spokesman during a row over his gender critical beliefs.

Today’s court ruling takes the immediate pressure off the Labour government and other politicians who have struggled to answer the question “what is a woman?”

But with passions running high on both sides of the debate, it is unlikely to go away.

Israel’s defence minister has said troops will remain in so-called security zones they have established by seizing large areas of Gaza even after an end to the war.

Israel Katz said the zones would provide a “buffer” to protect Israeli communities “in any temporary or permanent situation”, and that “tens of per cent” of the Palestinian territory had been added since the Israeli offensive resumed three weeks ago.

Israel would continue its six-week blockade of humanitarian aid to pressure Hamas to release hostages, he said, despite the UN warning of “devastating” consequences.

On Wednesday Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) became the latest international organisation to sound alarm at the impact of Israel’s campaign, saying that Gaza had been “turned into a mass grave of Palestinians and those coming to their assistance”.

“We are witnessing in real time the destruction and forced displacement of the entire population in Gaza,” Amande Bazerolle, the charity’s emergency co-ordinator in Gaza, said.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry has said more than 1,650 people have been killed since the war resumed on 18 March.

Hospital officials said at least 24 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes across Gaza on Wednesday.

The majority of those reported killed were in Gaza City, in the north.

They included 10 members of the Hassouna family, mostly children and women. One of them was Fatema Hassouna – a young writer and photographer.

The BBC has asked the Israeli military for comment on the strike.

The UN says 69% of the territory is now under active Israeli military evacuation orders, within a “no-go” zone running along the borders with Israel and Egypt and the Wadi Gaza valley south of Gaza City, or both. Some 500,000 people have been newly displaced or uprooted once more, with no safe place to go, it estimates.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said it has killed “hundreds of terrorists” in strikes while troops have advanced into several areas in the north and the south. It has established a new corridor that cuts the southern city of Rafah off from neighbouring Khan Younis and has designated 30% of Gaza as an “operational security perimeter”.

On Wednesday, Israel Katz said Israel’s policy was to “first and foremost make every effort to bring about the release of all hostages” still being held there and to “build a bridge to defeat Hamas later on”.

“Unlike in the past, the IDF is not evacuating areas that have been cleared and seized,” he said.

“The IDF will remain in the security zones as a buffer between the enemy and [Israeli] communities in any temporary or permanent situation in Gaza – as in Lebanon and Syria.”

Hamas has insisted Israeli forces must withdraw from Gaza under any permanent ceasefire.

“Any truce lacking real guarantees for halting the war, achieving full withdrawal, lifting the blockade, and beginning reconstruction will be a political trap,” the group said on Wednesday, according to Reuters news agency.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum in Israel, which represents many hostages’ relatives, called Katz’s plan an “illusion”.

“They promised that the hostages come before everything. In practice, however, Israel is choosing to seize territory before the hostages,” it said.

“There is one obvious, practical, solution and it is to release all of the hostages in one stage with an agreement, even at the cost of ending the war.”

Israeli military reservists and veterans have recently signed several open letters calling for the return of the hostages to be prioritised over fighting Hamas.

• Members of British Jewish body condemn Israel’s Gaza offensive

Katz also made clear that Israel would maintain its blockade of Gaza – it has blocked the entry of all food, medicine and other supplies since 2 March.

“Israel’s policy is clear: no humanitarian aid will enter Gaza, and blocking this aid is one of the main pressure levers preventing Hamas from using it as a tool with the population,” he said.

UN agencies strongly reject the Israeli government claim that there is no shortage of aid in Gaza because 25,000 lorry loads of supplies entered during the ceasefire, and suggest the blockade could breach international humanitarian law.

The UN’s humanitarian partners say tents are no longer available for distribution and that there has been a rise in acute malnutrition, with the number of children who received supplementary feeding decreasing by more than two thirds in March.

In its statement, MSF said the humanitarian response was “severely struggling under the weight of insecurity and critical supply shortages, leaving people with few, if any, options for accessing care”.

MSF said two of its staff had been killed over the past two weeks and called the killing of 15 emergency workers by Israeli troops last month “yet another example of the complete disregard shown by Israeli forces for the protection of humanitarian and medical workers”.

It also said it was facing shortages in medications for pain management and chronic illnesses, antibiotics and critical surgical materials.

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

At least 51,025 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s health ministry.

Many of the 1.9 million displaced people returned to the home areas during the recent ceasefire, which began on 19 January.

That ceasefire saw Hamas release 33 Israeli hostages – eight of them dead – in exchange for about 1,900 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, a surge in humanitarian aid entering Gaza, and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from populated areas.

Israel blocked supplies to Gaza on 2 March and resumed its offensive two weeks later. It said Hamas had refused to accept a proposal to extend the ceasefire deal’s first phase and release of more of the 59 hostages it is still holding, up to 24 of whom are believed to be alive.

Hamas accused Israel of violating the original deal, according to which there would be a second phase where all the remaining living hostages would be handed over and the war brought to a permanent end.

A senior Palestinian official told the BBC on Tuesday that Hamas had rejected a new Israeli proposal for a six-week ceasefire in exchange for the release of half of the living Israeli hostages and disarmament of the armed group.

On Wednesday, sources close to the Israeli prime minister’s office told the Haaretz newspaper that Israel had not yet received an official reply from Hamas.

The allied armed group Palestinian Islamic Jihad meanwhile released a new video showing the Israeli-German hostage Rom Braslavski. In the video, in which he appears to be speaking under duress, the 21-year-old appealed to the US and Israeli governments to secure his release.

Germany’s ambassador to Israel, Steffen Seibert, said it was painful to see him “cruelly paraded in a video”.

“The terrorists must release him and all hostages now. And to everyone involved in the talks: no duty is more pressing than their return,” he added.

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.

A US judge has said he could hold the Trump administration in contempt of court for “wilful disregard” of an order to halt the departure of deportation flights carrying more than 200 people to El Salvador last month.

The administration had invoked a 227-year-old law meant to protect the US during wartime to carry out the mass deportation.

“The Court does not reach such conclusion lightly or hastily; indeed, it has given Defendants ample opportunity to rectify or explain their actions. None of their responses has been satisfactory,” federal judge James Boasberg wrote.

In a statement, the White House said it would contest the decision.

White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said: “We plan to seek immediate appellate relief”, referring to a process in which parties can request a higher court review and potentially change a decision made by a lower court.

“The President is 100% committed to ensuring that terrorists and criminal illegal migrants are no longer a threat to Americans and their communities across the country.”

Judge Boasberg’s decision to begin contempt proceedings escalates a clash between the White House and the judiciary over the president’s powers.

The administration could avoid a contempt finding, or “purge” itself of contempt, if they provide an explanation of their actions and come into compliance with the original order issued last month, Boasberg said on Wednesday.

That filing is due by 23 April, he said.

His ruling comes despite the Supreme Court’s later finding that Donald Trump could in fact use the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to conduct the deportations to El Salvador.

The Supreme Court’s ruling against Boasberg’s temporary restraining order “does not excuse the Government’s violation”, he said.

If the administration does not provide the requested information by the 23 April deadline, Boasberg will then seek to identify the individual people who ignored the order to stop the deportations.

He could then recommend prosecutions for those involved. Federal prosecutions come under the US justice department which ultimately reports to the Trump administration.

The March deportation flights saw more than 200 Venezuelans accused by the White House of being gang members deported to a jail in El Salvador.

During a 15 March hearing, Judge Boasberg imposed a temporary restraining order on the use of the wartime law and a 14-day halt to deportations covered by the proclamation.

After lawyers told him that the planes had already departed, he issued a verbal order for the flights to be turned around to the US.

The White House denied violating the court ruling.

US press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “The administration did not ‘refuse to comply’ with a court order.

“The order, which had no lawful basis, was issued after terrorist TdA [Tren de Aragua] aliens had already been removed from US territory.”

After two deportation flights continued to El Salvador despite his order that they be turned around, Judge Boasberg convened a hearing to discuss “possible defiance” of his ruling by the Trump administration.

In response, Trump took to TruthSocial to call Boasberg a “troublemaker and agitator” and call for his impeachment.

El Salvador has agreed to take in the deportees in exchange for $6m (£4.6m).

Earlier this week, Trump met with El Salvdador’s President, Nayib Bukele, at the White House, and expressed an interest in sending more deportation flights to El Salvador.

Every spring for the past six years, millions of people have tuned in to a round-the-clock livestream of elk 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. The animals are known as moose in North America, and elk in Europe.

Goran Ericsson, dean of the faculty of forest sciences at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and science advisor for the broadcast, said the elk 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 elk 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 elk 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 elk. The animal is known in the Scandinavian country as “King of the Forest”.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has filed a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s spate of tariffs that have upended global trade.

The suit, which marks the first time a state has sued over the levies, challenges an emergency power Trump cited giving him authority to enact them.

California is the world’s fifth largest economy – outpacing every US state and most countries – and is home to the largest shares of manufacturing and agricultural production in the US.

The White House, which has argued the tariffs are tackling imbalances in international trade, dismissed the lawsuit and said it would continue addressing “this national emergency that’s decimating America’s industries”.

“Instead of focusing on California’s rampant crime, homelessness, and unaffordability, Gavin Newsom is spending his time trying to block President Trump’s historic efforts to finally address the national emergency of our country’s persistent goods trade deficits,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said.

Newsom and the state’s Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the lawsuit at a news conference at an almond farm – one of the biggest crops California produces.

Nearly 82% of the world’s almonds come from the Golden State. It’s also the nation’s sole producer of artichokes, figs, olives, walnuts and raisins.

Newsom argued California has been “disproportionately affected” by the tariffs and that’s why the state, which has already filed 15 lawsuits against Trump since January, would lead the charge against the levies – which currently are 10% on most countries and 145% on China.

“That’s our state of mind,” the governor said. “That’s why we’re asserting ourselves on behalf of 40 million Americans.”

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The lawsuit challenges Trump evoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to enact the tariffs, arguing the act had never been used for such levies and such powers rest with the US Congress.

The lawsuit cites multiple times from rulings by the US Supreme Court against the Biden administration in its quest to forgive student debt, noting the high court called Biden’s manoeuvres a “transformative expansion” of presidential authority.

Newsom said if the Supreme Court is “consistent, then this lawsuit is a lock” for the state.

The act has never been used to issue tariffs by any president, congressional research shows.

While California is the first state to file legal action against the Trump administration over the levies, several other lawsuits filed by small businesses and a civil rights group have similarly challenged Trump’s authority on the matter.

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.

Critics argue that 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 except China, in the face of mounting opposition from politicians and the markets.

The Trump administration is suing the state of Maine for refusing to ban transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports.

The move is an escalation in the public battle between the state’s governor and Donald Trump that has included threats from the president to cut funding to Maine’s education department.

“The Department of Justice will not sit by when women are discriminated against in sports,” US Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Wednesday. “This is also about these young women’s personal safety.”

In response, Maine’s Governor Janet Mills said the issue has “never been about school sports of the protection of women and girls”.

She also accused the federal government of “imposing its will” on states.

The dispute centres around Title IX, an American civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in education programs.

In February, Trump signed an executive order mandating that the statute be interpreted as prohibiting the participation of transgender women and girls in female sports.

The federal government claims Maine’s education department is violating the law.

During a press conference, Pam Bondi said the administration wanted to strip titles from transgender athletes.

“We are also considering whether to retroactively pull all the funding that they [the education department] have received for not complying in the past,” Bondi said.

The suit comes days after the Trump administration attempted to cut off all of Maine’s federal funding for public schools and its school lunch program.

That move appeared to be in response to a public spat between the state’s governor and Trump during a meeting of US governors on 21 February.

During the meeting, Trump threatened the state’s funding if Mills did not comply with an executive order banning transgender women from female sports.

Mills responded: “We’ll see you in court.”

On Wednesday, she said the federal government had been “acting unlawfully”.

“For nearly two months, Maine has endured recriminations from the federal government that have targeted hungry school kids, hardworking fishermen, senior citizens, new parents, and countless Maine people,” Mill said in a statement.

“We have been subject to politically motivated investigations that opened and closed without discussion, leaving little doubt that their outcomes were predetermined.”

Mills has said there are two transgender athletes competing in Maine schools.

Less than 1% of people over 13-years-old in the US are transgender, according to a study by the UCLA Williams Institute.

The lawsuit is the latest in a series of actions taken by Trump to roll back policies around transgender people put in place by the Biden administration.

In February, Trump has signed an executive order that prevents transgender women from competing in female categories of sports.

Following that decision, the NCAA, the governing body for US college sports, banned transgender women from competing in women’s sports.

Also on Wednesday, in the UK, the Supreme Court ruled that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex. The court said transgender people still have legal protection from discrimination.

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.

“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.”

Rhian Mannings and Andrea Evans have been the best of friends for 13 years – but the circumstances that brought them together could not be more tragic.

Nurse Andrea was the last person to hold Rhian’s one-year-old son George after he died from pneumonia.

“Leaving a hospital without your child is the most unnatural thing as a parent you will ever have to do,” said Rhian.

“But leaving George in her arms made it just that little, little bit easier because you knew that somebody really did care.”

After George’s death, Rhian and her husband Paul returned home unable to make sense of their seismic loss.

Meanwhile Andrea continued her shift, caring for other patients.

Warning: This article contains references to suicide

Rhian and Andrea are sharing their story to shine a light on the hidden emotional toll the death of a child can have on professionals – everyone from doctors and nurses to police officers, firefighters and teachers.

George had been happily playing with his brother and sister before he fell ill very suddenly, just days after his first birthday in 2012.

He was rushed to Royal Glamorgan Hospital in Talbot Green, Rhondda Cynon Taf, and was cared for by a number of staff including Andrea.

As well as caring for George, Andrea was responsible for keeping his distraught parents informed about what was happening.

Now, 13 years on, Andrea’s memories from that evening have not faded.

“I remember seeing Rhian and Paul arrive and just being completely distraught,” said Andrea from Talbot Green.

“To me I wasn’t doing enough, I wasn’t saying enough, I wasn’t explaining enough. In my own head I was panicking about ways that I could make this better, even though it was never going to be a good situation,” she said.

The team spent a long time working on George until eventually Andrea received a nod from the consultant.

“It was sort of ‘get Rhi and Paul back here, we need to hold him because this is going to be his last moments’,” she said.

Andrea stayed with Rhian and Paul during George’s final moments and was with them when they spent time with him afterwards, as well as staying with George once they eventually left the hospital.

Andrea then continued the rest of her shift.

“You’re exhausted from those couple of hours… but the department is busy and other people keep coming and they are not aware of what’s happened and they need to be cared for in exactly the same way and so you haven’t got time, you haven’t got time to sit and dwell,” said Andrea.

George’s death had impacted her.

“This particular situation was a bit too close for comfort really,” she said.

Like Rhian, Andrea was also a mother-of-three.

She had a six-month-old baby at home and two other children a similar age to Rhian’s older children.

“It definitely hit home… you just want to get home at that point and hold your own children,” she said.

Meanwhile Rhian and her husband Paul were in agony, facing what felt like insurmountable grief.

They had returned home that evening with their other two children asleep and oblivious to what had happened.

George’s birthday cards were still up.

In the days that followed, Rhian was aghast that the only bereavement support they had been offered was a leaflet with a list of phone numbers.

“You have these amazing staff in the hospital doing everything they possibly can but when you leave there’s nothing there to pick you up or look after you or answer your questions,” said Rhian, from Miskin, Rhondda Cynon Taf.

Paul was struggling to cope and began blaming himself for George’s death.

“He felt we should have taken him in the car rather than wait for the ambulance,” said Rhian.

“He felt that as a dad he’d potentially failed our family which is really heart-breaking.”

They spoke about Andrea often.

“Paul and I called her our angel,” she said.

Five days after George’s death, Rhian faced the unthinkable when her husband Paul took his own life.

He had gone for a drive to clear his head but failed to return.

Just as Rhian was thinking of calling the police, two officers appeared at her door to tell her he was dead.

“I truly believe that we were failed and that’s what led to Paul’s death,” said Rhian.

“No-one knocked on our door and offered us any support from any kind of agency or professional body and that’s really hard to live with.”

Andrea learnt about Paul’s death after arriving at work for a night shift.

“It was devastating because I then went onto think that I should have done something better,” she said.

“What if I’d said something different, could I have helped him more?”

Remarkably, while grieving her husband and child, Rhian found herself thinking about Andrea.

“I wanted to check she was okay,” said Rhian.

“But also now I didn’t have Paul anymore there was only really one other person who was there that whole evening with me, and that was her.”

Rhian decided to leave a rose bush and a letter on Andrea’s doorstep.

Andrea responded and the pair met up for a coffee.

“I think it was perhaps a little bit awkward in the beginning,” admitted Andrea.

She said she did not know what Rhian expected from the meeting and was concerned about saying the wrong thing.

“I don’t know what I expected,” admitted Rhian.

“But you were the last person to hold my little boy… you met Paul.”

Andrea was touched and surprised that Rhian was concerned for her.

After that initial meeting the pair – who only live a few miles apart – began bumping into one another.

A friendship slowly began to form.

They don’t often speak about the night George died, but Rhian has been able to reassure Andrea that she could not have done more to support Paul.

“If I hadn’t have told you that, you’d still potentially be living with that,” said Rhian.

Andrea agreed: “Yes, I’d still be carrying that.”

Rhian went on to establish her own charity called 2Wish, which covers Wales and the border counties of England, and offers support to anyone who has experienced the sudden and unexpected death of a child or young adult.

Professionals like Andrea are able to self-refer and receive a range of support including debriefing sessions, counselling and complementary therapies.

The Welsh government also funds a service called Canopi, which offers mental health support for social care and NHS staff in Wales.

Over the years, Rhian has roped Andrea into many fundraising challenges for her charity.

Now Andrea is hoping to encourage other professionals to consider seeking support.

The You Can’t Pour from an Empty Cup campaign is now in its fourth year and the number of referrals has grown year on year.

“During my years in A&E you learn to compartmentalise and try to leave work in work – that does build over the years and your boxes start to overflow a little bit which is when it gets stressful and complicated, and if you don’t deal with them soon enough I think it becomes a problem,” said Andrea.

She said it was a “very good thing” to take time to reflect properly on the difficult situations that arise at work.

Rhian said from the trauma of their first meeting a “really lovely, honest relationship” had grown.

“Our children are friendly, we’ve just got back from holiday together, we’ve been away many times together, our husbands are happy and get on really well,” she said.

She also goes to Andrea for fashion advice.

“We’re honest friends, if I need advice on what to wear she’s the one I go to because she’ll tell me straight,” she laughed.

Andrea said it had been nice to see their children grow up together.

“We often say it would have been nice to have the six of them and we do talk about George a lot,” she said.

Rhian will always be grateful to Andrea.

“I’ll never ever be able to thank her for what she did that night,” she said.

“And I know Paul would too.”

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.

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.”

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.”

US economic growth will be hit and prices will rise for consumers as a result of new tariffs on goods entering the country, the head of America’s central bank has warned.

Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, said the import taxes recently announced by President Donald Trump were larger than the bank had expected, going beyond the higher end of its estimates.

His comments followed a period of turmoil on global stock markets as investors reacted to trade tariffs coming into force and the escalating trade war between the US and China.

Powell said surveys of households and businesses reported a “sharp decline” in their sentiment over the economic outlook, largely due to tariff concerns.

Since returning to office, Trump has stoked a trade war by introducing a 10% tax on goods being imported to the US from the vast majority of countries.

He has escalated tariffs further with China by putting a 145% tax on Chinese goods, though there are some exemptions for smartphones. China has hit back with tariffs of 125% on US products. The White House said on Wednesday that when the new tariffs are added on to existing ones the levies on some Chinese goods could reach 245%.

“The level of the tariff increases announced so far is significantly larger than anticipated,” Powell said in his starkest warning on the effects of the new tariffs regime.

“The same is likely to be true of the economic effects, which will include higher inflation and slower growth.”

The US president has said tariffs will boost US manufacturing and jobs, but stock markets have been spooked.

Powell said on Wednesday that impact of the Trump administration’s changes to trade as well as immigration, fiscal policy and regulation on the US economy remained “highly uncertain”.

• US tariffs will make global trade shrink, says WTO

All three main US stock markets suffered sharp falls on Wednesday. The Dow Jones fell 1.73%, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq ended the day down 2.24% and 3.07% respectively.

But perhaps more concerning to the Trump administration than stocks and shares plunging in value was the rise in the number of investors dumping US government debt last week.

The rise in the effective interest rate the US government had to pay on its bonds is reported to have contributed to the president’s decision to pause some higher tariffs.

Governments sell bonds – essentially IOUs – to borrow money from financial markets and in return they pay interest.

The US does not normally see high interest rates on its debt, as its bonds are viewed as a safe investment, but rates spiked sharply last week in a sign investors were losing confidence in the world’s biggest economy. They have settled this week, but remain elevated.

Powell said on Wednesday that despite the uncertainty and ructions in the markets, the “US economy is still in a solid position”.

For now, he said, the Fed could keep its benchmark interest rate steady “to wait for greater clarity before considering any adjustments”.

The Fed’s benchmark interest rate is currently set in a range between 4.25% and 4.5%, where it has been since December following a series of rate cuts late last year.

The central bank has been attacked by Trump for holding rates unchanged. The president’s campaign promises included calls for lower interest rates in order to bring relief to borrowers.

If tariffs push up inflation, as many economists expect, the Fed could decide to hold or even raise rates. Traders on Wednesday kept their bets it will continue to cut rates this year.

But the Fed also has a mandate to maintain maximum employment as well as stable prices.

Should it be caught between rising inflation and a rising unemployment rate, Powell said “we would consider how far the economy is from each goal” and then look at “the potentially different time horizons” for getting prices under control and bringing the unemployment rate down.

“As that great Chicagoan Ferris Bueller once noted, “life moves pretty fast”, he added.

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

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

There were no immediate details on the kidnappers, who had made a ransom demand.

There has been a dramatic increase in kidnappings for ransom in South Africa over the past decade.

Mr Sullivan’s kidnappers had made a ransom demand, prompting the intervention of South Africa’s elite police unit, known as the Hawks.

In a statement released on Wednesday morning, the Hawks said that Sullivan had been rescued following “verified intelligence wherein a coordinated team… moved swiftly to the identified location”.

Hawks spokesperson Avele Fumba said that as the officers approached the house, the suspects attempted to flee inside a vehicle, while opening fire.

“The officers responded with tactical precision, leading to a high-intensity shootout in which three unidentified suspects were fatally wounded,” Mr Fumba said.

• South Africa kidnapping: ‘I survived but part of me died that day’

Mr Sullivan’s family and friends had made impassioned pleas for his safe return since his abduction.

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

“They knew his name,” he said at the time.

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

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

• The expelled envoy at the heart of the latest US-South Africa row
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• Even in his final seconds of life, first gay imam pushed boundaries

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’

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 Okonjo-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.

Also on Wednesday, the UN trade and development body, UNCTAD, released its own report which forecasts global growth to slow to 2.3% in 2025 due to escalating trade tensions and uncertainty.

It said the projection was below “the 2.5% threshold widely viewed as signalling a global recession”.

• Tariffs will hit US economy and raise prices, says Fed boss

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.

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.

Judges at the UK Supreme Court have unanimously ruled that a woman is defined by biological sex under equalities law.

It marks the culmination of a long-running legal battle which could have major implications for how sex-based rights apply across Scotland, England and Wales.

The court sided with campaign group For Women Scotland, which brought a case against the Scottish government arguing that sex-based protections should only apply to people that are born female.

Judge Lord Hodge said the ruling should not be seen as a triumph of one side over the other, and stressed that the law still gives protection against discrimination to transgender people.

The Scottish government argued in court that transgender people with a gender recognition certificate (GRC) are entitled to the same sex-based protections as biological women.

The Supreme Court was asked to decide on the proper interpretation of the 2010 Equality Act, which applies across Britain.

Lord Hodge said the central question was how the words “woman” and “sex” are defined in the legislation.

He told the court: “The unanimous decision of this court is that the terms woman and sex in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex.

“But we counsel against reading this judgement as a triumph of one or more groups in our society at the expense of another, it is not.”

He added that the legislation gives transgender people “protection, not only against discrimination through the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, but also against direct discrimination, indirect discrimination and harassment in substance in their acquired gender”.

Campaigners who brought the case against the Scottish government hugged each other and punched the air as they left the courtroom, with several of them in tears.

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

Judges at the Supreme Court in London were asked to rule on what that law means by “sex” – whether it means biological sex, or legal, “certificated” sex as defined by the 2004 Gender Recognition Act.

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

For Women Scotland argued for a “common sense” interpretation of the words man and woman, telling the court that sex is an “immutable biological state”.

Speaking outside the Supreme Court following the ruling, For Women Scotland co-founder Susan Smith said: “Today the judges have said what we always believed to be the case, that women are protected by their biological sex.

“Sex is real and women can now feel safe that services and spaces designated for women are for women and we are enormously grateful to the Supreme Court for this ruling.”

First Minister John Swinney said the Scottish government accepted the judgement.

He posted on social media: “The ruling gives clarity between two relevant pieces of legislation passed at Westminster.

“We will now engage on the implications of the ruling.”

Swinney added: “Protecting the rights of all will underpin our actions.”

A Scottish government spokesperson insisted ministers had acted “in good faith” during the legal proceedings, and noted that the Equality and Human Rights Commission was updating its guidance in response to the judgement.

A UK government spokesman said the ruling would bring “clarity and confidence for women and service providers such as hospitals, refuges, and sports clubs”.

“Single-sex spaces are protected in law and will always be protected by this government,” the spokesman added.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch described the ruling as a “victory for all of the women who faced personal abuse or lost their jobs for stating the obvious”.

She added: “It’s important to be reminded the court strongly and clearly re-affirmed the Equality Act protects all trans people against discrimination, based on gender reassignment, and will continue to do so.”

Harry Potter author JK Rowling posted on social media: “It took three extraordinary, tenacious Scottish women with an army behind them to get this case heard by the Supreme Court and, in winning, they’ve protected the rights of women and girls across the UK.”

But Scottish Green MSP Maggie Chapman, a prominent campaigner for trans-rights, said: “This is a deeply concerning ruling for human rights and a huge blow to some of the most marginalised people in our society.

“It could remove important protections and will leave many trans people and their loved ones deeply anxious and worried about how their lives will be affected and about what will come next.”

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

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

Scottish Trans manager Vic Valentine said the organisation was “shocked” by the court ruling, arguing that it “reverses 20 years of understanding on how the law recognises trans men and women with gender recognition certificates”.

They added: “This judgement seems to suggest that there will be times where trans people can be excluded from both men’s and women’s spaces and services.

“It is hard to understand where we would then be expected to go – or how this decision is compatible with a society that is fair and equal for everybody.”

The case follows years of heated debate over transgender and women’s rights, including controversy over transgender rapist Isla Bryson initially being put in a women’s prison and an ongoing employment tribunal involving a female NHS Fife nurse who objected to a transgender doctor using a women’s changing room.

NHS Fife said it would “carefully consider” the court’s judgement.

The judges ruled that that interpreting sex as “certificated” rather than “biological” would “cut across the definitions of man and “woman and thus the protected characteristic of sex in an incoherent way”.

They said a “certified” definition of sex would weaken protections for lesbians, citing the example of lesbian-only spaces and associations as it would mean that a trans woman who was attracted to women would be classed as a lesbian.

The ruling found the biological interpretation of sex was also required for single-sex spaces to “function coherently”.

It cited changing rooms, hostels, medical services and single-sex higher education institutions.

The judges noted “similar confusion and impracticability” had arisen in relation to single-sex associations and charities, women’s sport, public sector equality and the armed forces.

The judges added: “The practical problems that arise under a certificated sex approach are clear indicators that this interpretation is not correct.”

Gender reassignment is a protected characteristic in law, making it is illegal to discriminate against someone on the basis that they are transgender.

However, single-sex spaces can exclude people with GRCs “if it is proportionate to do so”.

Dr Nick McKerrell, senior law lecturer at Glasgow Caledonian University, said the ruling means a transgender women with a GRC who was excluded from a single-sex space would be unable to argue she is being discriminated against as a woman.

He also said the ruling implied that workplaces would need to provide separate spaces for people on the basis of biological sex.

But the law lecturer said arguments over access to single-sex spaces would not be “settled” by this court case.

He told the BBC: “It doesn’t mean everything overnight is going to change in terms of stopping trans people from accessing services. It will depend on what providers think the new definition will mean for them.”

Dr McKerrell said the judgement does not immediately change anything for the rules on transgender participation in women’s sport, but that it might prompt a “reassessment” of rules.

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

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

The issue has been contested several times in the Scottish courts.

Holyrood ministers won the most recent case in Scotland, with judge Lady Haldane ruling in 2022 that the definition of sex was “not limited to biological or birth sex”.

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

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

A US judge has said he could hold the Trump administration in contempt of court for “wilful disregard” of an order to halt the departure of deportation flights carrying more than 200 people to El Salvador last month.

The administration had invoked a 227-year-old law meant to protect the US during wartime to carry out the mass deportation.

“The Court does not reach such conclusion lightly or hastily; indeed, it has given Defendants ample opportunity to rectify or explain their actions. None of their responses has been satisfactory,” federal judge James Boasberg wrote.

In a statement, the White House said it would contest the decision.

White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said: “We plan to seek immediate appellate relief”, referring to a process in which parties can request a higher court review and potentially change a decision made by a lower court.

“The President is 100% committed to ensuring that terrorists and criminal illegal migrants are no longer a threat to Americans and their communities across the country.”

Judge Boasberg’s decision to begin contempt proceedings escalates a clash between the White House and the judiciary over the president’s powers.

The administration could avoid a contempt finding, or “purge” itself of contempt, if they provide an explanation of their actions and come into compliance with the original order issued last month, Boasberg said on Wednesday.

That filing is due by 23 April, he said.

His ruling comes despite the Supreme Court’s later finding that Donald Trump could in fact use the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to conduct the deportations to El Salvador.

The Supreme Court’s ruling against Boasberg’s temporary restraining order “does not excuse the Government’s violation”, he said.

If the administration does not provide the requested information by the 23 April deadline, Boasberg will then seek to identify the individual people who ignored the order to stop the deportations.

He could then recommend prosecutions for those involved. Federal prosecutions come under the US justice department which ultimately reports to the Trump administration.

The March deportation flights saw more than 200 Venezuelans accused by the White House of being gang members deported to a jail in El Salvador.

During a 15 March hearing, Judge Boasberg imposed a temporary restraining order on the use of the wartime law and a 14-day halt to deportations covered by the proclamation.

After lawyers told him that the planes had already departed, he issued a verbal order for the flights to be turned around to the US.

The White House denied violating the court ruling.

US press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “The administration did not ‘refuse to comply’ with a court order.

“The order, which had no lawful basis, was issued after terrorist TdA [Tren de Aragua] aliens had already been removed from US territory.”

After two deportation flights continued to El Salvador despite his order that they be turned around, Judge Boasberg convened a hearing to discuss “possible defiance” of his ruling by the Trump administration.

In response, Trump took to TruthSocial to call Boasberg a “troublemaker and agitator” and call for his impeachment.

El Salvador has agreed to take in the deportees in exchange for $6m (£4.6m).

Earlier this week, Trump met with El Salvdador’s President, Nayib Bukele, at the White House, and expressed an interest in sending more deportation flights to El Salvador.

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 Trump administration is suing the state of Maine for refusing to ban transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports.

The move is an escalation in the public battle between the state’s governor and Donald Trump that has included threats from the president to cut funding to Maine’s education department.

“The Department of Justice will not sit by when women are discriminated against in sports,” US Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Wednesday. “This is also about these young women’s personal safety.”

In response, Maine’s Governor Janet Mills said the issue has “never been about school sports of the protection of women and girls”.

She also accused the federal government of “imposing its will” on states.

The dispute centres around Title IX, an American civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in education programs.

In February, Trump signed an executive order mandating that the statute be interpreted as prohibiting the participation of transgender women and girls in female sports.

The federal government claims Maine’s education department is violating the law.

During a press conference, Pam Bondi said the administration wanted to strip titles from transgender athletes.

“We are also considering whether to retroactively pull all the funding that they [the education department] have received for not complying in the past,” Bondi said.

The suit comes days after the Trump administration attempted to cut off all of Maine’s federal funding for public schools and its school lunch program.

That move appeared to be in response to a public spat between the state’s governor and Trump during a meeting of US governors on 21 February.

During the meeting, Trump threatened the state’s funding if Mills did not comply with an executive order banning transgender women from female sports.

Mills responded: “We’ll see you in court.”

On Wednesday, she said the federal government had been “acting unlawfully”.

“For nearly two months, Maine has endured recriminations from the federal government that have targeted hungry school kids, hardworking fishermen, senior citizens, new parents, and countless Maine people,” Mill said in a statement.

“We have been subject to politically motivated investigations that opened and closed without discussion, leaving little doubt that their outcomes were predetermined.”

Mills has said there are two transgender athletes competing in Maine schools.

Less than 1% of people over 13-years-old in the US are transgender, according to a study by the UCLA Williams Institute.

The lawsuit is the latest in a series of actions taken by Trump to roll back policies around transgender people put in place by the Biden administration.

In February, Trump has signed an executive order that prevents transgender women from competing in female categories of sports.

Following that decision, the NCAA, the governing body for US college sports, banned transgender women from competing in women’s sports.

Also on Wednesday, in the UK, the Supreme Court ruled that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex. The court said transgender people still have legal protection from discrimination.

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.

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California Governor Gavin Newsom has filed a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s spate of tariffs that have upended global trade.

The suit, which marks the first time a state has sued over the levies, challenges an emergency power Trump cited giving him authority to enact them.

California is the world’s fifth largest economy – outpacing every US state and most countries – and is home to the largest shares of manufacturing and agricultural production in the US.

The White House, which has argued the tariffs are tackling imbalances in international trade, dismissed the lawsuit and said it would continue addressing “this national emergency that’s decimating America’s industries”.

“Instead of focusing on California’s rampant crime, homelessness, and unaffordability, Gavin Newsom is spending his time trying to block President Trump’s historic efforts to finally address the national emergency of our country’s persistent goods trade deficits,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said.

Newsom and the state’s Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the lawsuit at a news conference at an almond farm – one of the biggest crops California produces.

Nearly 82% of the world’s almonds come from the Golden State. It’s also the nation’s sole producer of artichokes, figs, olives, walnuts and raisins.

Newsom argued California has been “disproportionately affected” by the tariffs and that’s why the state, which has already filed 15 lawsuits against Trump since January, would lead the charge against the levies – which currently are 10% on most countries and 145% on China.

“That’s our state of mind,” the governor said. “That’s why we’re asserting ourselves on behalf of 40 million Americans.”

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The lawsuit challenges Trump evoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to enact the tariffs, arguing the act had never been used for such levies and such powers rest with the US Congress.

The lawsuit cites multiple times from rulings by the US Supreme Court against the Biden administration in its quest to forgive student debt, noting the high court called Biden’s manoeuvres a “transformative expansion” of presidential authority.

Newsom said if the Supreme Court is “consistent, then this lawsuit is a lock” for the state.

The act has never been used to issue tariffs by any president, congressional research shows.

While California is the first state to file legal action against the Trump administration over the levies, several other lawsuits filed by small businesses and a civil rights group have similarly challenged Trump’s authority on the matter.

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.

Critics argue that 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 except China, in the face of mounting opposition from politicians and the markets.

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.

The UK government has brought in a temporary ban on holidaymakers bringing in cheese and meat products from the EU in a bid to prevent the spread of foot-and-mouth disease.

Travellers have not been allowed to bring back items such as cured meat and cheese, including in sandwiches, since Saturday due to the growing outbreak on the continent.

The restrictions apply regardless of whether the goods are packed or packaged, or bought from duty free.

It follows an earlier ban of similar products from Germany, Hungary, Slovakia and Austria after rising cases of the cattle disease in those countries.

The restrictions apply to people arriving in Great Britain, not Northern Ireland, Jersey, Guernsey, or the Isle of Man.

Products will be seized and destroyed if people try to bring them in, and in “serious cases” people could be fined up to £5,000.

The list of restricted products includes:

• pork

• beef

• lamb

• mutton

• goat

• venison

• other products made from these meats, for example sausages

• milk and dairy products like butter, cheese and yoghurt

People can bring up to 2kg per person of powdered infant milk, infant food, or special food needed for medical reasons.

Foot and mouth disease is a highly infectious virus which causes blisters inside an animal’s mouth and under their hooves, and can cause lameness and problems feeding.

There are currently no cases of foot-and-mouth disease in the UK.

The last outbreak in the UK was in 2001. Although there were only 2,000 confirmed cases, more than six million sheep, cattle and pigs were slaughtered.

This is because each of those cases meant a farm having all of its livestock killed and burned.

Tom Bradshaw, the president of the National Farmers Union, said the government had been “quick” to bring in the initial ban, and that the NFU was “glad” the government was now extending it.

He said that “stricter border controls are essential” to contain the disease.

Mr Bradshaw called for “a comprehensive cross-government biosecurity plan with the necessary investment behind it, and which would place these restrictions on a permanent legislative footing”.

The Guild of Fine Food, which represents independent food and drink retailers, said the ban on “holiday treats” had been “hurried”, but added it brought UK government policy for holidaymakers more in line with restrictions already placed on small businesses.

“The food and drink industry absolutely supports the fact that we must protect our farmers and that biosecurity is paramount,” said John Farrand, managing director of the Guild of Fine Food.

However, he said that “bureaucracy” brought in after Brexit had added “significant constraints” for small food and drink importers and exporters.

Every spring for the past six years, millions of people have tuned in to a round-the-clock livestream of elk 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. The animals are known as moose in North America, and elk in Europe.

Goran Ericsson, dean of the faculty of forest sciences at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and science advisor for the broadcast, said the elk 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 elk 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 elk 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 elk. The animal is known in the Scandinavian country as “King of the Forest”.

What is a woman?

In recent years it is a question that has caused political punch-ups, party splits and despatch box spats.

A complex, emotionally-charged and fiercely contested argument around gender, trans rights and women’s sex-based rights has often left politicians at Westminster floundering to answer a seemingly straightforward question.

Today’s Supreme Court ruling may, just may, calm a political row that has produced all sorts of verbal contortions, particularly from Sir Keir Starmer.

Appearing on the BBC’s Question Time election debate in June last year, the Labour leader said he agreed with former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s comment that “biologically, a woman is with a vagina and a man is with a penis”.

But he was criticised by the Harry Potter author and former Labour donor JK Rowling, who accused the party under Sir Keir’s leadership of a “dismissive and often offensive” approach to women’s concerns.

The question of self-identification for transgender people has long been thorny for the Labour Party.

Its 2019 manifesto committed Labour to introducing self-identification.

In September 2021, the then-leader of the opposition slapped down one of his own MPs, Rosie Duffield, for saying that only women have a cervix.

Sir Keir told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show: “That shouldn’t be said. It’s not right.”

Duffield has since quit the Labour Party and now sits as an independent.

Speaking to LBC in March 2022, Sir Keir was repeatedly pressed on the issue, saying the “vast majority” of women “of course don’t have a penis” – adding that those who are born with a gender they don’t identify with should be treated with respect.

With the issue increasingly divisive in his own party, the Labour leader said to the Sunday Times a year later: “For 99.9% of women, it is completely biological… and, of course, they haven’t got a penis.”

By the summer of 2023, Labour’s position had shifted and the party ruled out introducing a self-ID system to allow people to change their legal sex without a medical diagnosis.

Sir Keir told BBC Radio 5 Live: “Firstly, a woman is an adult female, so let’s clear that one up.”

Often sounding completely exasperated by the question, the Labour leader said in one interview that “almost nobody is talking about trans issues”, querying why it had become a focus of fierce debate.

But it had, whether he liked it or not.

The Conservative Party repeatedly tried to ridicule Sir Keir’s position and carve out a clear political dividing line.

At the Tory conference in 2023, then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, said: “A man is a man, a woman is a woman, that’s just common sense.”

But his jibes against the Labour leader were not without controversy.

During Prime Minister’s Questions in February 2024, Sunak jokingly ridiculed Sir Keir for U-turning on how he defined a woman.

But the mother of murdered teenager Brianna Ghey – who was transgender – was in Parliament that day and Sunak faced calls to apologise.

By the time of last year’s general election, Sunak said voters faced a “crystal-clear choice” about the protection of single-sex spaces, promising to rewrite the Equality Act to make clear that sex as a protected characteristic means biological sex.

Today’s Supreme Court ruling has been welcomed by the Conservatives, with leader Kemi Badenoch calling it a “victory for all of the women who faced personal abuse or lost their jobs for stating the obvious”.

As Sunak’s women and equalities minister, Badenoch led the UK government’s efforts to block Scotland’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill.

She has previously criticised what she called “extreme gender ideology” and “trans ideology” and opposed gender-neutral toilets.

And in a sign that the Tories might finally be ready to give up one of their most cherished attack lines, Badenoch declared on social media: “The era of Keir Starmer telling us that some women have penises has come to an end. Hallelujah!”

A Labour source said Sir Keir had brought the party to a “common sense position” on the subject from an “activist” stance, and it was “one of the reasons” the electorate felt that they could back the party after the “disaster of 2019”.

Labour are not the only party to have tied themselves in knots on this issue.

It was particularly thorny for the SNP, whose former leader Nicola Sturgeon championed the expansion of trans rights, cheered on by some in her party and opposed loudly by others.

Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney, who has been keen to avoid the issue, will now face the challenge of ensuring his government adheres to the law as interpreted by the Supreme Court.

The Liberal Democrats have had their problems too.

Officially, the party is pro-trans rights. It has a powerful and influential LGBTQ+ section and campaigned at the last general election for legal recognition of non-binary identities.

In May 2023, leader Sir Ed Davey told LBC: “The vast majority of people will have the same gender as their biological sex, but a small number won’t.”

When asked by presenter Nick Ferrari “so, a woman can have a penis?”, he replied: “Well, quite clearly.”

He went on to suggest that trans people’s rights were adequately protected by the Equality Act, which “allow there to be single sex spaces”.

His comments were ridiculed by then Tory leader Sunak – and did not go down well with gender critical campaigners in his own party.

Liberal Voice for Women (LVW), which has fought a long campaign against a ban on having a stall at the annual Lib Dem conference, said their leader had made the party “look dishonest, unreliable and detached from reality”.

Earlier this year, party chiefs backed down and allowed LVW to hold events and have exhibition stands after the group threatened to sue for discrimination.

Reform UK is clear in its opposition to what it calls “transgender indoctrination” and is committed to scrapping the Equality Act.

Its 2024 general election “contract” states: “There are two sexes and two genders.”

The party adds: “It is a dangerous safeguarding issue to confuse children by suggesting otherwise… no gender questioning, social transitioning or pronoun swapping, inform parents of under-16s about their children’s life decisions. Schools must have single-sex facilities.”

On paper, the Green Party of England and Wales is equally clear, at the opposite end of the spectrum.

The party’s charter of Rights and Responsibilities states “trans men are men, trans women are women, and that non-binary identities exist and are valid”, and it campaigns to make it easier for trans people to change their legal status.

But within the party there are major splits over the issue.

Last year, the Greens were ordered by a court to pay nearly £100,000 to their former deputy leader Shahrar Ali after it found the party had discriminated against him when they fired him as a spokesman during a row over his gender critical beliefs.

Today’s court ruling takes the immediate pressure off the Labour government and other politicians who have struggled to answer the question “what is a woman?”

But with passions running high on both sides of the debate, it is unlikely to go away.