The US and Ukraine have signed a deal that will give Washington access to some of the war-torn country’s natural resources.

Months in the making, it sets up an investment fund that Ukraine hopes will cement US assistance as the country struggles to repel Russia three years after the invasion.

The BBC has seen a draft of the deal but not the final text. Based on that and the public statements from both sides, here are seven key takeaways.

Trump has previously demanded that Ukraine pay back the $350bn (£264bn) of aid that he claims has been provided by the US during the war – a condition that Zelensky rejected.

But Washington appears to have made a concession. Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said the agreement did not dictate that his country pay back any supposed “debt”.

• Follow reaction to deal as it happens
• What minerals does Ukraine have?

Trump has styled the agreement as a win for his side as well, saying his country will get back “much more in theory” than the billions that were provided to Ukraine by his predecessor Joe Biden.

The language used by the US in announcing the deal is notably harsher towards Russia than is usually the case from the Trump administration.

A statement by the US Treasury Department refers to “Russia’s full scale invasion” and adds that “no state or person who financed or supplied the Russian war machine will be allowed to benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine”.

This will hearten Kyiv, which has demanded more pressure be placed on Russia in talks between Moscow and Washington discussing a possible ceasefire.

Despite the fact that much of the talk around the deal relates to Ukraine’s mineral wealth, the agreement also includes provisions for new oil and gas projects, and related infrastructure.

In all cases, the resources stay in Ukrainian ownership, even though the US will get joint access.

This has been seen as a softening of the Ukrainian position, since it was not in earlier drafts of the deal.

Ukraine has long aspired to join the European Union and accession talks formally began last June.

There were some concerns in Kyiv that the resources deal could hinder Ukraine’s ability to join the EU, if it gave preferential treatment to US investors, as Kyiv and Brussels already have a strategic partnership on raw materials.

But the deal’s text says that the US acknowledges Ukraine’s intention to join the EU and the need for this agreement not to conflict with that.

It also says that if Ukraine needs to revisit the terms of the deal because of “additional obligations” as part of joining the EU, then the US agrees to negotiate in good faith.

Additionally, Kyiv says the US will support additional transfers of investment and technology in Ukraine, including from the EU and elsewhere.

The US has framed the deal as an essential one to sign if Ukraine is to continue to receive its military assistance.

Ukrainian First Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko – who flew to Washington DC to sign the deal – said it envisaged the US contributing new assistance in the future, such as air defence systems.

• How much has US given to Ukraine?

This, too, would mark a change in strategy for Trump – who has sought to wind down military support for Ukraine since returning to the White House.

One outstanding question is what the accord will ultimately mean for the state of the war. The Kremlin has not yet responded to the agreement.

It appears there are no concrete security guarantees from the US, which is something Ukraine and Europe have long been pushing the White House to provide.

Trump has long been reluctant to give the same military commitment that Biden had given.

Instead, his interest in staying the course with US support for Ukraine is more implicit, due to the economic commitments set out in this deal.

That means there would still be a fragility about the commitment of Ukraine’s most important ally.

One intriguing point highlighted by Ukraine’s government is that for the first decade of the reconstruction investment fund, profits will be “fully reinvested in Ukraine’s economy”, either in new projects or reconstruction.

This could be potentially significant if there is no financial benefit for the US for 10 years.

However, this provision does not appear to be in the agreement signed in Washington, although it might later be part of an additional “technical” deal.

After that initial 10-year period, Kyiv says profits may be distributed between the partners.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News late on Wednesday that the deal was a signal to the American people that “we have a chance to participate, get some of the funding and the weapons, compensation for those and be partners with the success of the Ukraine people”.

In the Hunter Valley, long, brown trains chug through lush pastures, carrying stacks of black rock – the lifeblood of the region, though not for much longer.

This has long been Australia’s coal country. But the area, a three-hour drive from Sydney, is now begrudgingly on the frontline of the country’s transition to clean energy.

“This town was built around a coal mine,” says Hugh Collins from Muswellbrook, “so it’ll be a big shift. I don’t know what will happen.”

Nowhere captures this dilemma quite like the soon-to-be demolished smokestacks of Liddell power station, which tower over the rolling hillside nearby. Liddell, one of Australia’s oldest coal plants, was closed two years ago. Across the highway is sister-power station Bayswater, scheduled for retirement by 2033.

Liddell’s owners want to redevelop both stations into a renewable energy hub – in line with the Labor government’s plans for a grid powered almost completely by solar and wind energy.

The opposition Liberal-National coalition, though, has proposed converting Liddell into one of seven nuclear power plants across the country.

Currently banned, nuclear is the controversial centrepiece of the Coalition’s clean energy plan.

Nuclear has historically been deeply unpopular among Australians scared of having radioactive plants in their metaphorical backyards. But with the Coalition plugging it as a cheap and reliable option to complement renewables, interest is growing.

Ahead of the election on 3 May, each party has insisted that their visions are the best way to both fulfil Australia’s commitment to net zero emissions by 2050 and tame rising power bills.

But there are fears this renewed debate over Australia’s energy future takes the country back to the past.

Brutal arguments over climate change had plagued Australian politics for years – but the incoming Labor government last election declared that era was over.

Now experts worry the so-called “climate wars” are back, and this could potentially delay the urgent emissions reduction the globe has been begging the country to take for years.

“I don’t think peace will be declared no matter what happens with the election,” says Tony Wood from the Grattan Institute think tank.

It is hard to overstate just how central coal has been to the Hunter region.

In 1799, Newcastle, the area’s biggest city, farewelled Australia’s first commodity export – a shipment of coal. Today it is home to the world’s largest coal port, with A$38.6bn-worth ($26.8bn; £18.9bn) passing through in 2023.

The livelihoods of about 52,000 people here rely on coal mines, power stations or supporting industries.

Made up of a handful of parliamentary seats, the region has traditionally been a Labor stronghold. But in recent years electorates like Hunter and Paterson have been faltering, and the Coalition is banking on its vision of a nuclear-powered future to win over these largely blue-collar constituents.

It says it can have the first nuclear plant up and running by 2037 and that nuclear plants will provide a similar number and range of jobs as the coal-fired power stations they’re going to supersede.

“I think in the Hunter, and elsewhere to be honest, people realise that if there is not a replacement industry for coal, then these jobs go,” opposition leader Peter Dutton said on the campaign trail.

While nuclear power has been part of the energy mix in many countries around the globe for decades, this is uncharted territory for Australia.

The country’s only nuclear reactor, at Lucas Heights in Sydney, is used for medical research.

Nuclear has been banned at a federal level since the late 1990s. If the Coalition wins the election, it could convince parliament to overturn that, but persuading states to scrap their own bans on nuclear may not be so simple.

Leaders in four of the five states where nuclear plants are proposed have outright ruled out doing so.

Critics also say the Coalition’s claims on timeframe and its $300bn price tag are unrealistic given the need to train workers, develop regulations and build the infrastructure. 

Some have accused it of simply trying to prolong the use of fossil fuels – the ageing coal plants will have to run for longer to plug the energy gap.

From Mr Collins’ perspective, that wouldn’t be so bad. “Being in the coal industry, I would like coal to go as long as possible,” he says.

But he understands the need to “embrace” cleaner sources of energy. Though a variety of sources “all have their place”, he is particularly interested in nuclear.

“There [may have been] a lot of scary notions around nuclear power… but technology has come a long way,” he says, referring to deadly disasters like Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011.

But others in Muswellbrook are adamant the need for employment in the region does not outweigh the “risks” of nuclear.

“Liddell’s closure meant a few jobs were lost but I don’t think that really affected the community… I think [nuclear] is dangerous,” says 25-year-old Chloe.

Another cafe owner simply says “it’s not going to happen”.

“We don’t have the technology to build it. We can’t afford it,” he says. “We’re always going to have to burn coal, I believe.”

The topic clearly evokes strong feelings. Many people here are more than happy to share their opinions with the BBC, but are hesitant to be named or photographed. “Our community group is ruthless,” one woman explains.

But elsewhere in the Hunter region, it is Labor’s renewables plan that is stirring heated conversation.

Renewables currently supply 46% of Australia’s electricity and Labor wants to raise the proportion to 82% by 2030. As weather is unpredictable, this plan must be backed up by batteries and gas, it argues.

“Australia needs to be ambitious. We must be optimistic… We can be a renewable energy superpower for the world,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said last month, adding that this vision will create jobs in “every part of the country”.

Ben Abbott is one of those unconvinced by these plans.

“We are not experts in energy. But where we will put our hat into the ring is when it concerns where we live. We know what’s at stake,” said Mr Abbott, who is president of No Offshore Turbines Port Stephens.

The government has earmarked a 1,854 sq km (716 sq miles) area between Newcastle and Port Stephens – a popular spot for whale watching and game fishing – as Australia’s second offshore wind zone.

Mr Abbott’s group is concerned that the construction and operation of wind turbines will disturb marine life – though scientists say more research is needed – and adversely affect tourism.

He also accused Labor of running a “scare campaign” against nuclear.

Some in the party have savaged the opposition’s nuclear pitch by flooding social media with, among other things, memes featuring beloved cartoon koala Blinky Bill with three eyes.

“I’d like to learn more about it from an impartial point of view, not as a political issue,” Mr Abbott says.

On the other hand, some have also accused the Coalition of capitalising on fear around wind farms. Billboards along the highway to Port Stephens profess that only their local candidate will “stop Labor’s offshore wind farms”.

There is also concern that local anti-renewables movements are being driven or backed by people who outright reject climate change, as a tactic to delay the country’s turn away from fossil fuels. According to Guardian Australia, that includes the Saltbush Club, a group of the country’s most prominent and powerful climate change deniers.

Mr Abbott says the Port Stephens campaign is not one of these. “None of us are against renewables,” he says, noting that he agrees with the commitment to net zero.

The conversations taking place in the Hunter region are playing out on a national level too.

Polls indicate the country is still split on the best path forward, with support for nuclear hovering around 40%, with the rest fluctuating between undecided or opposed.

For every argument from each side of the debate, there’s a point to counter it on the other.

Both parties have been flouting the jobs created for communities hosting their energy infrastructure, but have been using cost-of-living relief to appeal to the nation more broadly.

However the price tag on each of these plans depends on who you ask.

Labor has for years said a grid dominated by renewables would cost A$122bn, and has dangled energy bill rebates and discounts on solar home batteries as part of its pitch.

But the Coalition says they believe it will cost at least five times more, and that their plan is half the price. They too have promised lower power bills with nuclear.

Australia’s national science agency, though, says they estimate electricity generated from nuclear reactors will cost twice as much as renewable energy, even after accounting for their longer lifespans.

Environmental economics professor Frank Jotzo argues that the Coalition’s promises can only be put to test a long time in the future. “Given that Australia runs on three-year terms of government, they will not be under pressure to deliver,” he says.

Grattan Institute’s Mr Wood believes the Coalition is wielding nuclear energy as a political weapon, noting that Australia has for at least the last decade seen bipartisan support for renewables.

“They needed a point of difference. And nuclear met the objective,” he says.

Both note the Coalition has already signalled it could abandon Australia’s 2030 emissions reduction target if it wins government – while Labor says it is on track to meet it.

“A Coalition government, majority or minority, would have very big challenges introducing the nuclear proposal. I suspect we would see an escalation in the climate war,” Mr Wood said.

But nuclear advocates are frustrated nuclear power isn’t even an option here.

While Australia has abundant solar and wind resources, these are intermittent, says nuclear engineer Jasmin Diab. Nuclear is more reliable and facilities last twice as long – so she argues an “ideal energy mix” would be heavy on renewables with a “backbone built on nuclear”.

“Labor’s position prevents Australia from making use of what’s going to be an important source of energy in the future,” said nuclear law expert Helen Cook. She points to countries across the world already benefiting from nuclear energy, such as the US and Canada, and several others at least studying it, including Indonesia.

But Justin Page, from the Hunter Jobs Alliance, argues the Hunter doesn’t have time to opt for the Coalition’s “fundamentally flawed” plan.

The region is well on the way in its transition to renewables, he says, with proposed wind projects, for example, expected to create some 3,000 jobs.

“To go nuclear will mean starting off the ground… Such a transition will take too long and be too costly,” he says. “It will be ridiculous to change courses now.”

Many Hunter residents say they just want certainty.

“The best plan will be for the two parties to get together and come up with a credible, realistic and deliverable plan… rather than using such a serious issue for electioneering,” one Newcastle resident tells us.

Israel’s war in Gaza grinds on, but opposition is growing.

In recent weeks, thousands of Israeli reservists – from all branches of the military – have signed letters demanding that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government stop the fighting and concentrate instead on reaching a deal to bring back the remaining 59 hostages being held by Hamas.

Eighteen months ago, few Israelis doubted the war’s logic: to defeat Hamas and return the hostages.

For many, the January ceasefire and subsequent return of more than 30 hostages raised hopes that the war might soon end.

But after Israel broke the ceasefire and returned to war in mid-March, those hopes were dashed.

“We came to the conclusion that Israel is going to a very bad place,” Danny Yatom, a former head of the spy agency Mossad told me.

“We understand that what mainly bothers Netanyahu is his own interests. And in the list of priorities, his interests and the interests of having the government stable are the first ones, and not the hostages.”

Many of those signing recent letters are, like Yatom, long time critics of the prime minister. Some were involved in the anti-government protests that preceded the outbreak of war on 7 October 2023 following Hamas’s attack on Israel.

But Yatom says that’s not why he decided to speak out.

“I signed my name and I am participating in the demonstrations not because of any political reason, but because of a national reason,” he said.

“I am highly concerned that my country is going to lose its way.”

The first open letter to be published, in early April, was signed by 1,000 air force reservists and retirees.

“The continuation of the war does not contribute to any of its declared goals,” they wrote, “and will lead to the death of the hostages”.

The signatories urged Israelis to follow their lead before time ran out on the estimated 24 hostages still thought to be alive in Gaza.

“Every day that passes is further risking their lives. Every moment of hesitation is a crying shame.”

In the weeks since, similar letters have appeared from almost every branch of the military, including elite fighting and intelligence units, along with a number of decorated commanders.

More than 12,000 signatures all.

After 7 October, hundreds of thousands of Israeli reservists answered the call, eager to serve.

But now, more and more are refusing, with reports suggesting that reserve attendance has dropped to as little as 50-60%.

For a military that depends heavily on reservists to fight its wars, it’s a looming crisis on a scale not seen since Israel’s first Lebanon war in 1982.

In a leafy Jerusalem park, I met “Yoav” (not his real name), an infantry reservist who asked not to be identified.

Yoav served in Gaza last summer but said he wouldn’t do it again.

“I had the feeling that I needed to go to help my brothers and sisters,” he told me.

“I believed I was doing something good. Complicated but good. But now, I don’t see it in the same way anymore.”

The government’s determination to keep fighting Hamas, while hostages risk death in the tunnels of Gaza, Yoav said, was misplaced.

“We are very strong and we can beat Hamas, but it’s not about beating Hamas,” he said. “It’s about losing our country.”

During his time in Gaza, Yoav told me, he tried to be “the best moral soldier that a man can be”.

But the longer the war goes on, critics say, the harder it is for Israel to claim, as government officials often do, that its military is the most moral army in the world.

In a recent column in the left of centre newspaper Haaretz, the retired general Amiram Levin said it was time for soldiers – starting with senior commanders – to think about disobeying orders.

“The risk of being dragged into war crimes and suffering a fatal blow to the Israel Defense Forces and our social ethos,” he wrote, “make it impossible to stand idly by”.

Some of Israel’s critics, including those who have brought cases before the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice, argue that such lines have already been crossed.

Netanyahu has lashed out at the protesters, dismissing their concerns as “propaganda lies”, spread by “a small handful of fringe elements – loud, anarchist and disconnected pensioners, most of whom haven’t served in years”.

But polls suggest the protest letters reflect a growing public conviction: that the release of the remaining hostages should come before everything.

In Tel Aviv, where noisy anti-war demonstrations have been held for well over a year, images of the hostages are held aloft, while other protestors sit on the road, cradling pictures of Palestinian children killed during the war.

Amid the row generated by the letters, such emotive displays appear to have rattled the authorities.

On 20 April, the police briefly told protesters that “pictures of children or babies from Gaza” would not be permitted, along with posters displaying the words “genocide” or “ethnic cleansing”.

Following expressions of outrage from the organisers, the police quickly backed down.

Meanwhile, the prime minister continues to speak of his determination to defeat Hamas.

Military pressure, Netanyahu continues to insist, is the only way to bring the hostages home.

“We don’t care about sales to the United States,” says Hu Tianqiang as one of his toy fighter jets flies past our heads.

It’s hard to hear him above the buzzing toy planes and miniature drones, an almost rhythmic backdrop to the cacophony of toys that surround him, all clamouring for the attention of buyers.

Hu’s stall, Zhongxiang Toys, sits inside the world’s biggest wholesale market in the small Chinese city of Yiwu.

It’s a huge showroom of more than 75,000 shops where buyers come seeking just about everything, from twinkling Christmas lights and kitchenware to umbrellas and massage guns. It can take most of the day just to get around one department given each of them has an airport hangar’s worth of goods on show.

Yiwu is in the province of Zhejiang, along China’s eastern coast. The manufacturing and export hub, home to more than 30 ports, accounted for 17% of all Chinese sales to the US last year.

That puts Yiwu, and this region, at the frontline of the US-China trade war.

Mr Hu, too, is on the frontline. He sits among rows of snazzy toy jets, squeaking dogs, fluffy stuffed animals, barbies and motorcycle-riding spidermen – a sliver of the $34bn (£25bn) worth of toys China exported in 2024.

About $10bn of it went to the US. But now, these Chinese exports to America face up to 245% tariffs. And US President Donald Trump has made it clear that he blames Beijing in particular for cornering too much of the global market.

But things have changed here since Trump’s first trade war against China, which kicked off in 2018. It taught Yiwu a lesson, summed up by Mr Hu: “Other countries have money too!”

That defiance has become a familiar theme in the world’s second-biggest economy, which is bracing itself for another turbulent Trump presidency.

Beijing, which has been repeatedly telling the world that the US was bullying countries into trade negotiations, has not backed down yet from the trade war.

The propaganda online has ratcheted up, applauding Chinese innovation and diplomacy in contrast to the uncertainty unleashed by Trump. On the country’s highly controlled social media, there are plenty of posts echoing the leadership’s promise that China will keep fighting.

And in factories and markets, businessmen and exporters now say they have other alternatives, beyond Trump’s America. Mr Hu, for instance, says around 20%-30% of his business came from US buyers. But not anymore.

“We don’t care about that 20-30%,” Mr Hu says. “We now sell mostly to South America and the Middle East. We are not lacking money, we are rich.”

When we ask about Trump, his colleague Chen Lang jumps in, rolling his eyes: “He’s cracking international jokes like no other. One day, one joke. Adding tariffs for him is like cracking a joke.”

Nearby, one of the thousands of buyers that flock to this market every day is negotiating a price to buy more than 100 robots that turn into cars in a series of beeps and buzzes. After tapping various numbers into a calculator, the final price is written in chalk on the floor.

The buyer, we are told, is from Dubai. The BBC met many others from across Africa and South America.

Lin Xiupeng says he has noticed the shift away from American buyers in his last 10 years in the toy business.

“A few days ago, the shop next to us had an order from a US client. It’s worth more than one million yuan. But because of tariffs, the shop owner decided to cancel it,” he says, offering us cups of tea.

“They must need China,” he says, adding that the country supplies most of America’s toys.

“I think there are a lot of businesses in the US protesting these days.”

Mr Lin is correct. Some toy shop owners in the US have written to the White House describing the tariffs as “disastrous” for their business.

“The tariffs are taking a hatchet to small businesses across America,” Jonathan Cathey, who owns a toy company in Los Angeles, told the BBC over the phone.

He invested his last $500 in his company, Loyal Subjects, in 2009, which he ran from his two-bedroom bungalow in West Hollywood. He says it’s now a multi-million-dollar business, but the tariffs could derail his plans.

“The entire toy industry could go under. We are looking at the total implosion of the supply chain. It’s going to get really ugly,” he warns.

He says swapping suppliers is a huge task: “You need a lot of resources on the ground to produce a toy and many of these Chinese businesses have spent 40 years perfecting their craft.”

China has been a big part of Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office, with his administration going head-to-head with Beijing.

“He seems to be launching a crusade against the whole world,” says former Senior Colonel Zhou Bo, who served in the People’s Liberation Army. “But of course he’s trying to bash China the hardest.”

Trump accused China of operating the Panama Canal, which is run by a Hong Kong-based firm, and vowed to take it back. He has been on the hunt for ways to mine rare earth minerals, which China effectively has a monopoly over, making this a key part of any deal with Ukraine. His threats to take Greenland are also likely aimed at curbing China’s ambitions in the Arctic.

And, of course, he initiated another trade war, which takes special aim at China’s neighbours, such as Vietnam and Cambodia, that have been crucial to its evolving supply chain.

In the last week, he suggested the levies on Chinese goods could be halved and spoke of “a fair deal with China” that his administration was “actively” negotiating.

But China’s Commerce Ministry rebuffed this as “groundless with no factual basis”. The headlines in state media haven’t spared him either: “Trump is probably the worst president in American history,” read one on state TV.

It seems the US president is waiting for his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to pick up the phone.

“We in China say – we have to let the bullet fly for a moment,” Col Zhou says. “That means in the fog of war, we do not know what will come next. I believe this kind of tit-for-tat would last for maybe one or two months – hopefully not more than three months.”

It cannot go on, he adds, because that would not be good.

It’s certainly not good for China. Trump’s tariffs are not even the biggest challenge facing the country, which is also grappling with domestic economic pain, from low consumption to a housing crisis that has dented people’s savings and confidence in the future.

The terrible timing aside, the tariffs are biting Chinese businesses.

Goldman Sachs has forecast that China’s economy will grow by 4.5% this year, short of the government’s target: 5%.

The BBC reported from the trading hub of Guangzhou in mid-April that US-China trade was grinding to a halt, with exports to American households piling up on factory floors. That is borne out by this month’s economic data, which show that activity in factories has sharply slowed.

When the BBC rang suppliers to see if shipments to the US had resumed, what emerged was a messy picture. One supplier said he had half-a-million pieces of clothing waiting to ship to Walmart, and a few others echoed his uncertainty. But two exporters we spoke to said some shipments from US retailers had indeed restarted.

The range and complexity of the trade between the two economies, which includes cargo cranes, umbrellas and everything in between, means that it’s often down to different businesses and supply chains as to how they deal with the tariffs.

Whatever the business, there is no doubt the American consumer will feel the absence, or potentially higher prices, of Chinese goods.

The US still relies heavily on Chinese manufacturing to meet its own domestic demand – think phones, computers, semiconductors, furniture, clothes and, of course, toys. Electronics and machinery alone account for more than 50% of US imports.

Walmart and Target reportedly told Mr Trump in a meeting last week that shoppers are likely to see empty shelves and higher prices from next month. They also warned that supply shocks could carry on until Christmas.

Some 90% of all Christmas decorations hung around American homes come from Yiwu in China, where sellers, surrounded by signs wishing the world “Feliz Navidad” told us they’re now trying to focus on sales to South America.

And that effort is very evident in Yiwu.

In the early morning, before the shutters even open, the cavernous lobby of the wholesale market echoes with voices reciting key phrases.

“Shukran,” says the teacher in Arabic. The students repeat it several times to perfect the pronunciation before learning that it means “thank you”. “Aafwan” comes the reply, or “you’re welcome”.

These are free lessons offered by a local government association. Most of the students are women, dressed in their best to also impress their customers.

“These women are the backbone of trade across China,” says one stall holder, who is originally from Iran and is giving private lessons to an eager student.

“They’re doing these lessons to stay ahead of one another, to stay in competition.”

Most of the traders can already speak a few words of English. Now they say they need to greet their new buyers in Spanish and Arabic – a small but crucial sign of China’s shifting trade relationships.

Oscar, a Colombian who would only give us his first name, was wandering the halls of the market with bags filled with fluffy bunnies and bears.

He says the US-China trade war offers “many opportunities” for traders from other parts of the world.

“Doing business with China is very important,” he insists. “[Doing business with] the US these days, less so.”

The TikTok video begins with Singapore’s health minister Ong Ye Kung smiling at the camera while sitting on a park bench.

“So no-one told you life was gonna be this way,” the instantly recognisable theme song to the sitcom Friends plays, as he’s suddenly joined by the other four members of his team running in the upcoming general election.

Cut to a snappy montage of them fist-bumping each other and mingling with residents at community events, as the song’s chorus delivers their political message: “I’ll be there for you”.

It’s one of the many social media videos posted by Singapore’s long-ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) as the country gears up for the general election on Saturday.

One of the longest-serving political parties in the world, the PAP has governed Singapore since 1959 and is widely associated with stability.

But even as it continues to win elections with comfortable majorities, the PAP has also faced declining popularity over the last two decades.

In recent years the party has embarked on a mission to revamp its straitlaced, no-nonsense image, particularly to attract younger voters who have typically been more sympathetic to the opposition.

This campaign season, PAP ministers better known for stilted pre-written speeches have also been filming skits with social media influencers and sitting down for long conversations on podcasts. The party has even launched a special edition of the viral Labubu doll dressed in their white uniform.

Leading the PAP in his first election since he took office as prime minister, Lawrence Wong boasts a significant online portfolio.

On his social media accounts he has been showing off his guitar skills and discussing the national budget at a cat cafe. His recent visit to Vietnam was recapped on TikTok over a techno rave soundtrack.

Other ministers in his cabinet have also ramped up their efforts: in an online video series with a local actor, culture minister Edwin Tong played barista and served coffees; meanwhile health minister Ong spent a day as an trainee at a local radio station.

Numerous Singaporean influencers have put out content featuring PAP faces, in what appears to be a concerted party effort to connect with a younger audience. Last June, local influencers and celebrities attended a PAP event that publicised their alignment with the party.

Valerie Tan Su Min, a content creator who makes satirical videos about politics but does not work with political parties, told the BBC that efforts such as collaborations with influencers could seal the deal for some young voters.

“If they had not done their own research or realised the gravity of their vote, it’s very possible that they might see one or two videos and be like, ‘OK that’s who I vote for,'” she said.

There’s little doubt that the PAP, which has long held an overwhelming parliamentary majority, will continue to govern after this election.

It has enjoyed strong support from Singaporeans, particularly from older generations that have personally seen the country flourish under PAP rule.

But while elections have been free from fraud and irregularities, critics also say the party maintains an unfair advantage through gerrymandering and a tightly controlled media.

Still, in the last three elections, the party has experienced two of its worst-ever showings at the polls – a little over 60% of the popular vote.

With an ageing support base, the key to the PAP’s future victories is young people.

“Candidates from different political parties have taken to social media like never before,” says Carol Soon, associate professor in communications and new media at the National University of Singapore, adding that the medium is “increasingly assuming a ‘broadcasting’ nature”.

Opposition parties have also jumped on the bandwagon, taking part in TikTok video trends and launching online talkshows.

Some have turned awkward moments of their campaigns into social media gold. One of the most popular memes this election, “look left look right“, stems from a song by an opposition candidate lamenting his dismal job prospects. After it went viral, he released a follow-up song about the lack of affordable housing.

Social media has always been particularly important to opposition parties in Singapore, where the PAP government exerts significant control over mainstream media. It’s also a medium that has become especially popular after a quarantine election in 2020 limited in-person campaigning.

But the opposition’s efforts have been dwarfed by the PAP’s, thanks to its deep pockets.

“Resources still matter when it comes to digital campaigning,” says Netina Tan, associate professor of political science at McMaster University, who noted that the “resource-rich” PAP can afford to “amp up their digital campaign…and put out fancy Insta videos”.

Rae Fung, a 28-year-old speaking coach, said she was paying extra attention to local podcasts featuring politicians as guests.

“It’s very hard to lie about your expertise on a podcast. Because it goes really deep and usually it’s not too edited,” she said. “It helps me understand their thought process and who they are as a person.”

“Most of the candidates I’ve seen, they’re doing enough on social media to reach us,” she said. But “how they show up and who they are as a person is a lot more important than their social media game.”

For young Singaporeans like Ms Fung, their votes will ultimately go to the party that makes the most convincing pitch to solve their problems.

The rising cost of living in Singapore – which consistently ranks as one of the most expensive places in the world to live in – has been one of the biggest concerns for young people. Many still worry that owning a home will becoming increasingly unaffordable in the future.

There has also been growing uncertainty about job prospects and the economy. Singapore’s authorities and economists have warned of the fallout and a possible technical recession from the US-China trade war and US President Donald Trump’s global tariffs.

The PAP government has tried to address these worries. Besides providing subsidised housing for first-time buyers, it has increased the supply of public flats and issued subsidies and cash vouchers to help with childcare and daily expenses. Opposition parties argue they can do more.

At a recent PAP election rally, one 37-year-old attendee who declined to be named said that while he was “not very confident” that the PAP would be able to lead the country out of the global economic uncertainty, his “confidence level is even lower” for the opposition.

Meanwhile at an opposition rally, 28-year-old Ariel, who only gave her first name, told the BBC that many of her peers have not been able to get jobs after graduation. She did not think the government had addressed their worries.

Voting in more of opposition candidates would be the way “for Singaporeans to voice out our pain and concerns”, she insisted.

In Singapore media campaigns may be important for drumming up political participation during elections, said Dr Soon, but social media engagement does not translate directly into support at the ballot box.

“At the end of the day,” she said, it’s about “whom people think would deliver” – be it providing more jobs, lowering costs of living, or being alternative voices in parliament.

The estranged husband of a woman who served a poisonous mushroom lunch to her family says it was “very rare” for her to hold social gatherings at home.

Simon Patterson was invited to the fatal meal prepared by Erin Patterson – but decided not to attend the day before.

Mr Patterson is the first witness in the trial of Ms Patterson – who is charged with the murder of three relatives and the attempted murder of another, with the case centring on a beef wellington lunch at her house in July 2023.

Ms Patterson, 50, has pleaded not guilty and her defence team says she “panicked” after unintentionally serving poison to family members she loved.

Three people died in hospital in the days after the meal, including Ms Patterson’s former in-laws, Don Patterson, 70, and Gail Patterson, 70, as well as Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66. Local pastor Ian Wilkinson survived after weeks of treatment in hospital.

The jury has been shown text messages exchanged between Simon and Erin Patterson the day before the deadly mushroom lunch.

Mr Patterson said in court Thursday he felt “too uncomfortable” about attending the lunch.

Erin Patterson responded: “That’s really disappointing. I’ve spent many hours this week preparing lunch for tomorrow… It’s important to me that you’re all there tomorrow and that I can have the conversations that I need to have.”

The prosecution alleges Ms Patterson invited the group to lunch “on the pretence she’d been diagnosed with cancer”.

The court in Morwell, regional Victoria, heard that between the couple’s marriage in 2007 and separation in 2015, there were a number of periods of separation and reconciliation – including Erin Patterson leaving her husband and their baby son in the middle of a road trip across Australia in 2009.

Mr Patterson had to drive from Townsville to Perth – a distance of about 5,000 km (3,100 miles) – alone with the child, he told the court.

The couple met in 2002, while both working at Monash City Council, where Mr Patterson was a civil engineer.

Asked about his wife, Mr Patterson said: “Erin is very intelligent.

“Some of the things that attracted me to her in the first place is definitely her intelligence. She’s quite witty and can be quite funny.”

Asked about how his wife got on with his parents, Don and Gail Patterson, Mr Patterson said: “She especially got on with dad. They shared a love of knowledge and learning in the world.”

With his voice faltering, Mr Patterson added: “I think she loved his gentle nature.”

He said Ms Patterson held a university degree in business and accounting, and was also qualified as an air traffic controller having worked at Melbourne’s Tullemarine airport.

Mr Patterson is due in court again on Friday to take more questions from prosecutors.

Mr Patterson painted a picture of a relationship peppered with periods of separation – the first within the first two years of marriage – at one point becoming emotional and asking for tissues.

After the final separation there was a lot of communication by text message he said, including “banter” and talk about politics, he said.

But there was a change in the relationship in 2022 when Ms Patterson was “upset” when her husband listed himself as separated on his tax return.

The “chatty nature” of their relationship “pretty much stopped” after this, Mr Patterson said – with communication now only about the “practical management” of their family life.

Wearing a navy suit, white shirt and purple tie, he told the court that Ms Patterson received a “substantial inheritance” from her grandmother which Mr Patterson estimated at A$2m ($1.3m; £964,000) – though it was not paid in a lump sum and was “dribbled out” by the executors of the estate.

The jury has heard that there is no dispute that the lunch of beef wellington, mashed potatoes and green beans contained death cap mushrooms and caused the guests’ illnesses.

Whether Ms Patterson intended to kill or cause very serious injury is the main issue in the case, the judge has told the jury.

The court heard the couple had married in 2007 and had two children together – though separated permanently in 2015 .

They had remained “amicable” including sharing family holidays, though there was a falling out over child support payments in 2022, the jury was told.

During the prosecution’s opening statement on Wednesday, lead barrister Nanette Rogers said the jury would hear evidence that Ms Patterson had travelled to a location, near her home in Leongatha, where death cap mushroom sightings had been logged on a naturalist website.

And in the days after the lunch, she took a number of steps to “conceal” what she had done, the prosecution alleged.

There’d be evidence that she lied to investigators about the source of the mushrooms in the dish – saying some had come from an Asian grocery in Melbourne and she had never foraged wild ones. And she made a trip to a local dump to dispose of a food dehydrator prosecutors say she used to prepare the toxic meal.

Ms Patterson’s barrister has said she did not deliberately serve poisoned food to her guests.

“The defence case is that she panicked because she was overwhelmed by the fact that these four people had become so ill because of the food she had served them.”

The court heard how Mr Patterson spoke to his father the morning after the lunch and discovered both his parents had been up since midnight with vomiting and diahorrea and that they had called an ambulance.

And after trying to call his aunt and uncle, Heather and Ian Wilkinson, he went to their home when they did not answer.

“Ian answered the door. He looked grey and spooked,” Mr Patterson recalled. “Yeah, he was struggling.

“I said ‘How are you?’ He said ‘Not good’.”

Mr Patterson then saw Heather Wilkinson sitting on the couch, he told the court.

“She looked pretty crook. She had a container as a spew bucket, ” he said.

After Mr Wilkinson left the room, Heather spoke to him, he confirmed, under questioning from prosecutor Dr Rogers.

“We didn’t have much conversation, but she was puzzled and she said ‘I noticed Erin served herself her food on a coloured plate which was different to the rest’.”

“I acknowledged I’d heard her, but did not progress it as a conversation,” he added.

Because he had been told an ambulance would have taken an hour to arrive, Mr Patterson drove the couple to hospital in the Wilkinsons’ car when Heather Wilkinson raised the subject once more.

“She mentioned the coloured plate again, She asked me ‘Is Erin short of crockery? Is that why she would have this different coloured plate that she served herself with?” Mr Patterson said.

“I can’t remember the exact phrase but it was something like that.

And what did you reply, the prosecutor asked?

“I said yes, Erin doesn’t have that many plates and that may be the reason.”

Mr Patterson became emotional again, describing going to see his parents at Korumburra hospital where they were in the same room but separate beds.

“Dad was substantially worse than mum. He was really struggling,” he said fighting back tears..

“He was lying on his side. He was hunched quite noticeably, with a really discoloured face, struggling to speak.

“Speaking was an effort, taking the energy to speak was an effort and his voice was strained in a way that he wasn’t right inside. He was in pain.”

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Pakistan’s army chief, General Asim Munir, is not known for seeking the spotlight.

Yet in recent weeks, it has found him – not only in Pakistan, but across the border in India and in diplomatic capitals far beyond.

His remarks on Kashmir – made just days before a militant attack in Indian-administered Kashmir which killed 26 people – have reignited a debate over Pakistan’s military stance and its role in rising regional tensions.

Kashmir, which India and Pakistan claim in full but administer only in part, has been a flashpoint between the countries since they were partitioned in 1947.

Though not directly linked to the violence, Gen Munir’s words have been dissected and interpreted as a shift towards a more confrontational tone, both from him and the institution he leads.

He is viewed as the most powerful man in Pakistan, where the military has long been blamed for interfering in politics, installing and removing governments. As tensions with India rise again, he is being watched as the central figure in a volatile nuclear-armed rivalry.

So who is Gen Munir? And what drives him?

Gen Munir, who is in his late 50s, is the son of a school principal and religious scholar. He joined the army through the Officers Training School in Mangla in 1986, earning the prestigious Sword of Honour given to the best-performing cadet. He was then commissioned into the 23 Frontier Force Regiment.

Over nearly four decades, Gen Munir has commanded troops along Pakistan’s sensitive northern borders near Kashmir, led its intelligence services and served in Saudi Arabia to bolster defence ties.

He holds a masters degree in public policy and strategic security management from the National Defence University in Islamabad and is also an alumnus of military institutions in Japan and Malaysia.

I first saw Gen Munir in Islamabad in 2023, at a packed hotel hall filled with ministers, diplomats, generals and journalists. Dressed in civilian clothes, he moved with calm authority, scanning the room as he approached the podium.

He opened his speech with a recitation from the Quran, reflecting his rare status as a hafiz – someone who has memorised Islam’s holy book in its entirety – among Pakistan’s military elite.

In person, Gen Munir seemed soft-spoken and polite. On stage, he was stern, with the sharp gaze of a former spymaster. A man trained to watch, listen and wait. Now, his words are echoing beyond Pakistan.

Gen Munir became Pakistan’s chief of army staff in November 2022, stepping into the role amid a perfect storm of political upheaval, an economic crisis and public disillusionment with the military’s role in governance.

His appointment followed months of speculation, largely because of his fallout with the then-prime minister Imran Khan.

Gen Munir had served just eight months as the chief of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency before being removed by Khan in what many believe was a deeply personal and political move – though both sides deny this. That moment remains a turning point in their relationship.

Today, Khan is serving a sentence in jail and Gen Munir is the most powerful man in the country.

Gen Munir is regarded by many commentators as differing in temperament and approach from his immediate predecessor, Qamar Javed Bajwa.

Gen Bajwa was more public-facing, supported backchannel diplomacy with India and handled a major escalation of tensions between the countries in 2019 with caution.

Under what came to be known as the “Bajwa Doctrine”, he increasingly emphasised regional stability and geo-economics alongside traditional security priorities.

After a suicide bomb attack on troops in Indian-administered Kashmir at Pulwama in 2019, Gen Bajwa oversaw Pakistan’s military response to Indian air raids but refrained from escalation, returning Indian pilot Abhinandan Varthaman and helping avert a full-blown war.

“Bajwa was clear,” says Abdul Basit, senior fellow at Singapore’s S Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

“He had diplomatic channels open and was managing multiple fronts like Kashmir, Afghanistan and the US withdrawal from Afghanistan with pragmatism,” he said, adding that Gen Munir “is under immediate, intense pressure to act”.

“He has come in with unfinished business to stabilise the country’s security situation internally… The problems he faces (rising terrorism, political instability, an economic crisis, regional tensions) are urgent and worsening. He cannot afford long, drawn-out strategies like his predecessor Bajwa could. He needs quicker, firmer responses – both at home and abroad.”

The dispute over Kashmir is an issue that no Pakistani military leader can appear weak on, observers say.

“Kashmir is Pakistan’s national security interest – every child in Pakistani schools is taught this,” political and defence analyst Amir Zia told the BBC, adding: “It’s a basic understanding here that we cannot give India any leverage.”

Last week’s attack was the deadliest on civilians in Indian-administered Kashmir in two decades and led to India accusing Pakistan of supporting the attackers, charges Islamabad denies. There are fears India will respond with military action.

Since he took over, Gen Munir has mostly not spoken in public, but one pivotal speech has gained widespread attention.

On 17 April, he told a meeting of expatriates in Islamabad “we are different from Hindus” in every possible way.

He doubled down on Kashmir, calling it Pakistan’s “jugular vein”, and vowed Pakistan would “never abandon Kashmiris in their heroic struggle against Indian occupation“.

The speech might have remained one of many ideological statements made by Pakistani leaders over the years except for what happened next.

Just five days later, on 22 April, militants opened fire on tourists in Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir.

“This was not standard rhetoric,” says Joshua T White, a South Asia expert at Johns Hopkins University.

“While the substance aligns with Pakistan’s ideological narrative, the tone – especially its direct invocation of Hindu-Muslim differences – made it particularly inflammatory.”

“Coming just before the Pahalgam attack, it has badly complicated any effort by Pakistan to claim restraint or pursue backchannel diplomacy,” he adds.

Mr Basit agrees the optics were damaging: “He [Munir] may have been caught up in the moment. He said things that, in a private setting, may not have raised eyebrows but on that public platform, as army chief, they came across as overtly confrontational.”

“Some saw it as a power move,” says Mr Basit.

“It felt like his arrival moment. A declaration that he’s now firmly in control, that Pakistan’s direction is once again in the army’s hands,” he adds.

Gen Munir made another speech earlier in the year, which some think may signal he is adopting a harder line than his predecessor. Speaking in Muzaffarabad on Kashmir Solidarity Day on 5 February, he declared: “Pakistan has already fought three wars for Kashmir, and if 10 more wars are required, Pakistan will fight them.”

But given the timing, it’s his latest speech that has fuelled speculation after the Pahalgam attack, with Indian officials hinting at a link. Though no evidence has been presented so far, the rhetoric has deepened mistrust.

At home, Gen Munir’s actions are being seen by many as those of a leader who is calculated, uncompromising and determined to reassert military authority.

After the 9 May 2023 riots sparked by Khan’s arrest, Gen Munir launched an unprecedented crackdown on his supporters.

Civilians were tried under military laws, a top general was forced into early retirement, and former ISI chief Lt Gen Faiz Hameed (retired), once close to Khan, was arrested.

Critics called it a purge of Khan loyalists; supporters saw it as restoring discipline to Pakistan’s powerful military whose authority – and that of Bajwa and Munir – had been challenged. The two men were being heavily criticised in public.

Gen Munir is just over two years into his five-year term, but the contours of his legacy are already taking shape.

Whether the simmering crisis with India escalates into a larger military stand-off or is tackled through diplomacy, the future of Pakistan’s relationship with its neighbour may well hinge on which direction Gen Munir steers it in.

Mr Basit warns the next few weeks “will determine how things unfold”.

“How Gen Munir navigates this crisis will define him as a soldier, as a power broker, and what kind of regional actor Pakistan wants to be. And right now, that choice sits largely with him.”

The world’s oldest person, Brazilian nun Sister Inah Canabarro Lucas, has died at the age of 116.

Born on 8 June 1908 in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, Inah Canabarro Lucas became a Catholic nun in her early 20s.

Her family said she always celebrated her birthday with a cake in the shape of the stadium of her beloved Sport Club Internacional – Porto Alegre’s football team.

Sister Inah, who was blessed by Pope Francis in 2018, put her longevity down to her faith, saying that “he [God] is the secret to life”. The title of the oldest living person will now pass to 115-year-old Ethel Caterham from Surrey in England.

Sister Inah’s nephew said the 116-year-old had not had any illness but her body “had gradually stopped” working. She died in the city of Porto Alegre at a home belonging to the Teresian Sisters, the religious community she was part of.

A keen football fan, she had celebrated her 116th birthday wearing the scarf of her favourite team.

She also owned several Internacional shirts and even had a collection of pillows adorned with the team’s logo, according to media reports.

Sport Club Internacional posted a message of condolence on X, saying it had learned “with enormous sadness of her passing” and celebrated her life, which it said was based on kindness, faith and love of the football club.

Sister Rita Fernandes Barbosa, a co-ordinator at the religious home where Sister Inah lived, told RBS TV that the 116-year-old had enjoyed good health for most of her life.

Sister Rita said the nun had not had any surgeries until she underwent a cataract operation aged 106.

Her family said that she could not hear or see very well towards the end of her life but that she enjoyed sticking to a routine.

“She liked to get up, eat, and pray and sleep at the same time each day,” her relatives told Brazilian TV.

A fellow Teresian nun said that Sister Inah “never complained”.

“She is very grateful, and good-humoured,” Sister Terezinha Aragon told Brazilian TV in January, when Sister Inah became the world’s oldest person after the death of the previous holder of the title, Japanese woman Tomiko Itooka at the age of 116.

Born on 8 June 1908, Sister Inah had a religious vocation from early on in her life, joining a religious boarding school at the age of 16.

She lived in the Uruguayan capital, Montevideo, for some time before taking her vows but returned to Brazil in 1930, where she taught Portuguese and maths at a school in Rio.

Sister Rita put the 116-year-old’s longevity down to discipline.

“Discipline in her work and in her life, she always worked a lot and was always very sociable and welcoming.”

The US has urged India and Pakistan to work together to “de-escalate tensions” after a deadly militant attack in Indian-administered Kashmir last week killed 26 civilians.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio held separate talks with India’s foreign minister and Pakistan’s prime minister on Wednesday and called on them to “maintain peace and security in South Asia”.

India accuses Pakistan of supporting militants behind the 22 April attack at a scenic meadow near the resort town of Pahalgam. Islamabad rejects the allegations.

On Wednesday India also announced the closure of its airspace for all Pakistani aircraft, in the latest of a series of tit-for-tat measures taken by both sides.

The “perpetrators, backers and planners” of the Pahalgam attack “must be brought to justice”, Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar wrote on X after speaking to his US counterpart by telephone, as Rubio expressed his sorrow and reaffirmed Washington’s support in India’s fight against terrorism.

Meanwhile, the top US diplomat expressed the need to “condemn the terror attack” in his talks with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

He urged Islamabad to co-operate “in investigating this unconscionable attack”.

During the call, Sharif rejected “Indian attempts to link Pakistan to the incident”, a statement issued by his office read. The Pakistani prime minister also urged the US to “impress upon India to dial down the rhetoric and act responsibly”.

The phone calls come after Pakistan’s information minister warned that they had “credible intelligence” suggesting India might launch military action against the country in the next 24-36 hours. Delhi has not publicly commented on these claims.

There has been speculation over whether India will respond with military strikes against Pakistan, as it did after deadly militant attacks in 2019 and 2016. Islamabad has warned of retaliation in case of military action from India’s side.

Amid mounting tensions Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has held back-to-back meetings with senior state and defence officials in Delhi this week.

On Wednesday, India’s cabinet committee on security, led by Modi, met for the second time since the attack.

This came a day after the prime minister, in his meeting with India’s top defence officials, gave the armed forces a free hand to decide on the “timing, targets and mode” in their response to the Pahalgam attack, according to Indian news outlets citing unnamed sources.

Troops from both sides have traded intermittent small-arms fire across the border for the past few days.

On Tuesday India “strongly objected” to multiple ceasefire violations by Pakistan during a weekly call between senior army officials of both countries, Indian news outlets reported.

A day later, India announced that it would not allow any Pakistani aircraft – commercial or military – to fly over its airspace, responding to a similar move by Pakistan.

Last week, India suspended most visas given to Pakistani nationals and asked them to leave the country within days, the deadline for which has since passed. It also suspended a key water-sharing agreement with Pakistan.

Islamabad further retaliated with similar visa cancellations and by suspending a 1972 peace treaty with Delhi.

Since the measures were announced, 786 Pakistani citizens have left India and 1,465 Indians have returned from Pakistan, media reports say.

Meanwhile, the Instagram accounts of a number of Pakistani film actors and celebrities have been blocked in India.

Searches for some celebrity accounts now come up as unavailable.

“This is because we complied with a legal request to restrict this content,” an Instagram notification reads.

India has not officially commented on why the accounts were taken offline. More than a dozen Pakistani news channels were also banned in India earlier this week for spreading what was described as provocative content, media reports say.

Kashmir, which India and Pakistan claim in full but administer only in part, has been a flashpoint between the two nuclear-armed countries since they were partitioned in 1947.

Indian-administered Kashmir has seen an armed insurgency against Indian rule since 1989, with militants targeting security forces and civilians alike.

India has not officially named any organisation it suspects carried out the attack, but it was initially reported that a group called the Resistance Front was behind the attack. The group, however, denied involvement in a statement issued days later. It is reportedly affiliated with Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based militant group, which India classifies as terrorist.

Indian police have named three of four suspected attackers. They said two were Pakistani nationals and one a local man from Indian-administered Kashmir. There is no information on the fourth man.

Many survivors said the gunmen specifically targeted Hindu men.

The attack, the deadliest attack on civilians in two decades in the disputed territory, has sparked widespread anger across India.

Modi has vowed to exact revenge against the perpetrators.

“India will identify, track and punish” the people behind the attack in a way “beyond their imagination”, Modi said in a fiery speech days after the killings last week.

Tesla has denied reports that it has contacted recruitment firms to launch a search for a replacement for Elon Musk as chief executive.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that the electric car firm’s board began looking for a successor to Mr Musk last month.

It said this was because of frustration around Mr Musk’s focus on his job in US President Donald Trump’s administration and Tesla’s sinking share price.

However, in statement on Thursday, Tesla said the report was “absolutely false” while Mr Musk wrote on his social media platform X that the paper was “a discredit to journalism”.

Tesla chair Robyn Denholm wrote on X: “There was a media report erroneously claiming that the Tesla Board had contacted recruitment firms to initiate a CEO search at the company.”

“This is absolutely false (and this was communicated to the media before the report was published).”

She added: “The CEO of Tesla is Elon Musk and the board is highly confident in his ability to continue executing on the exciting growth plan ahead.”

The denial comes after the Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources, wrote that Mr Musk was told by the board he needed to spend more time on Tesla and that he needed to say so publicly.

The paper said Mr Musk did not push back against the suggestion.

Last week, Mr Musk said on a conference call about earnings “I’ll be allocating far more of my time to Tesla” and pledged to “significantly” cut back his government role.

Writing on X on Thursday, Mr Musk was heavily critical of the Wall Street Journal’s reporting.

“It is an EXTREMELY BAD BREACH OF ETHICS that the WSJ would publish a DELIBERATELY FALSE ARTICLE and fail to include an unequivocal denial beforehand by the Tesla board of directors,” he said.

He later reposted a comment from an X user that called the paper “trash”.

Mr Musk’s leadership of Trump’s newly created advisory body – the Department for Government Efficiency (Doge) – has attracted a lot of criticism.

Investors in the company

Some customers of Tesla say they no longer feel loyal to the brand because of Mr Musk’s controversial political views and actions while in charge of Doge.

Some have pledged to boycott the firm while others have staged protests against it because of Mr Musk – in some cases causing criminal damage to dealerships.

Meanwhile, investors and analysts have said Mr Musk’s reputation and his juggling of high-level roles is part of the reason why Tesla struggling financially.

In March, Trump – with Mr Musk by his side – told reporters at the White House gardens anyone using violence against Tesla would “go through hell”.

He then pledged to buy a red Model-S, one of a number of Teslas lined up on the White House drive that day, to support the electric car firm.

Temporary government employees, such as Mr Musk, are normally limited to working 130 days a year which, if counted from the day of Trump’s inauguration, will end in late May.

But it is unclear when Mr Musk, who contributed more than a quarter of a billion dollars to Trump’s re-election, will step down completely.

Trump said last month he would keep Mr Musk “as long as I could keep him”.

On Wednesday, Mr Musk, who also runs space firm SpaceX, made light of the idea he was doing too many jobs.

In a video posted on X in a White House cabinet meeting, he was wearing two baseball caps.

“They say I wear a lot of hats,” Mr Musk said in the video. “That’s true. Even my hat has a hat.”

Bloomberg reported that Mr Musk also said on Wednesday that Doge should examine the spending of the US central bank, the Federal Reserve, particularly the cost of renovating its headquarters.

Mr Musk has made similar comments before, raising the idea that the Fed should be audited. However, such a move would pose questions about the bank’s independence.

A Kenyan member of parliament has been shot dead in the streets of the capital Nairobi by gunmen on a motorcycle in a suspected assassination.

Police said the attackers had been trailing Charles Ong’ondo Were’s vehicle before one of them got off the motorbike and shot him at close range.

“The nature of this crime appears to be both targeted and predetermined,” police spokesperson Muchiri Nyaga said in a statement.

The opposition MP had two months ago complained about threats to his life, local media reported.

After the shooting on late Wednesday, his driver and bodyguard, both unhurt, managed to rush the injured MP to Nairobi Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

• ‘They aimed to kill’ – BBC identifies security forces who shot Kenya anti-tax protesters

The attack happened along Ngong Road near a busy roundabout often manned by traffic police officers and well secured with security cameras.

Shortly after the shooting, senior police commanders and detectives visited the scene and investigations are underway, police said.

President William Ruto has ordered police to conduct a thorough investigation into the attack, adding that: “Those responsible must be held to account.”

Fellow legislators who visited the scene on Wednesday night expressed shock and outrage at the killing and called for swift investigations and justice.

Parliament Speaker Moses Wetang’ula described the MP as a “fearless and distinguished” legislator, calling his shooting “devastating”.

The motive for his killing is still not clear but the soft-spoken legislator had publicly claimed some “hired goons” were plotting to assassinate him, attributing the plot to local politics.

In February, he expressed concern over growing violence and unrest during public events in the Kasipul constituency in western Kenya which he represented.

“When you hear I have been killed, Kasipul will not be the same again. But I know they won’t kill me because I have the Bible in my phone and another one under my pillow,” Were said at the time.

On Thursday, homicide detectives visited the scene with Interior Minister Kipchumba Murkomen saying that “investigations have advanced”.

Were was serving his second term in parliament as a member of the Orange Democratic Movement, led by veteran politician Raila Odinga.

In his statement, Odinga condemned the killing, saying the legislator was “mercilessly and in cold blood, gunned down by an assassin”.

“We have lost a gallant son of the soil!” Odinga added.

Odinga lost to President Ruto in the 2022 election and rejected the results due to alleged irregularities.

The former prime minister has since struck a political deal with Ruto which saw some opposition members join cabinet in what is referred as the “broad-based government” – which Were supported.

• Tributes to man killed in Nairobi motorcade crash
• Why police baby killers are still not on trial seven years on
• WATCH: Inside the world of Kenya’s ‘killer cop’
• Batons, tear gas, live fire – Kenyans face police brutality

President Trump used a rally in Michigan to mark what he claimed had been “the most successful first 100 days of any administration in the history of our country, according to many, many people”.

He highlighted his efforts to tackle illegal immigration, to bring back jobs to the US and end what he called “the inflation nightmare”.

BBC Verify has looked into some of the main claims from his speech.

Trump said “gasoline prices are down by a lot” since he took office.

On 29 April, the average price for a gallon of “regular” gas – or petrol – across the US was $3.16 (£2.36), according to data from the American Automobile Association (AAA).

That is slightly up from the $3.125 (£2.33) recorded by the AAA on the day Trump entered the White House.

In his speech, he added that gas prices had “just hit $1.98 in a lot of states”.

This is a claim he has made several times but we cannot find evidence of prices this low.

As of 29 April, no state had an average gas price lower than $2.67 (£1.99), according to the AAA.

The US president also spoke about the cost of eggs – a concern for many US consumers due to an ongoing bird flu outbreak – and said: “Since I took office, the cost of eggs is down 87%.”

This claim is false.

The average national price for consumers of a dozen large Grade A eggs when Trump entered office in January was about $4.95 (£3.70).

This rose to a record high of around $6.23 (£4.65) per dozen in March – according to the latest available figures.

The White House has pointed to wholesale egg prices as evidence of improvement.

Wholesale prices have gone down since Trump took office – but by about 52% – from $6.55 (£4.89) for a dozen large white eggs in January to $3.15 (£2.34) in the past week, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

Trump spoke at length about his efforts to tackle illegal immigration – a key campaign issue in last year’s election.

He said: “For two months in a row, we have set all time records for the lowest number of illegal border crossings ever recorded.”

This claim is backed up by the latest monthly figures on “encounters” of illegal migrants recorded by officials at the US-Mexico border.

In March, there were 7,181 encounters of migrants there and in February there were 8,346.

These are the the lowest numbers since these monthly records began in 2000.

By comparison, there were about 140,000 encounters at this border in each of those months last year under President Biden.

His term saw record numbers of border crossings which then fell towards the end of his presidency.

The Migration Policy Institute think tank has studied monthly averages of annual figures available before 2000 and says this year’s illegal border crossings are the lowest since the late 1960s, rather than the lowest for “all time”.

President Trump praised Elon Musk’s work at the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) saying: “They’ve saved over $150bn on waste, fraud and abuse”.

Doge, an advisory body, publishes a running total of its estimated savings on its website – it was $160bn the last time the site was updated on 20 April.

However, less than 40% of this figure is broken down into individual savings – which include cancelling government contracts, grants and leases.

Analysis by BBC Verify found only about half of these itemised savings had a link to a document or other form of evidence.

Doge says it is working to upload all receipts in a “digestible and transparent manner”.

Federal contract experts we spoke to also raised questions about Doge’s biggest claimed savings and said some had been overstated.

Trump said: “In three months we have created 350,000 jobs.”

This claim is backed up by official figures.

During Trump’s first two full months in office up until March (the latest available data) 345,000 jobs have been added, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

However, over the same period last year 468,000 jobs were added under President Biden.

Trump also said: “For the first time in recent memory, job gains for native-born Americans now exceed job gains for foreign workers.”

It is true that during President Trump’s first two full months in office more jobs have been created for native-born workers than foreign-born workers.

This also happened between February and April last year under President Biden.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

US President Donald Trump has celebrated the 100th day of his second term in office with a campaign-style speech, touting his achievements and targeting political foes.

Hailing what he called a “revolution of common sense”, he told a crowd of supporters in Michigan that he was using his presidency to deliver “profound change”.

The Republican mocked his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, and aimed fresh criticism at the US Federal Reserve’s chairman, while dismissing polls that show his own popularity slipping.

Trump has delivered a dramatic fall in the number of migrants crossing illegally into the US, but the economy is a potential political vulnerability as he wages a global trade war.

“We’ve just gotten started, you haven’t seen anything yet,” Trump told the crowd on Tuesday in a suburb of Detroit.

Speaking at the hub of America’s automative industry, Trump said car firms were “lining up” to open new manufacturing plants in the Midwestern state.

Earlier in the day he softened a key element of his economic plan – tariffs on the import of foreign cars and car parts – after US car-makers warned of the danger of rising prices.

At his rally, Trump also said opinion polls indicating his popularity had fallen were “fake”.

According to Gallup, Trump is the only post-World War Two president to have less than half the public’s support after 100 days in office, with an approval rating of 44%.

But the majority of Republican voters still firmly back the president. And the rival Democratic Party is also struggling in polling.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) said Trump’s first 100 days were a “colossal failure”.

“Trump is to blame for the fact that life is more expensive, it’s harder to retire, and a ‘Trump recession’ is at our doorstep,” the DNC said.

• Trump’s first 100 days – in numbers
• Trump’s breakneck start is fraught with political risk
• ‘Kicking butt’ or ‘going too fast’? Trump voters reflect on 100 days

Trump conducted his own informal poll in Tuesday’s remarks, asking the crowd for their favourite Biden nicknames. He also mocked his Democratic predecessor’s mental agility and even how he appears in a swim suit, while continuing to insist he was the real victor of the 2020 election, which he lost.

Other targets of his ire included Jerome Powell, head of the US central bank, who the president said was not doing a good job.

Trump touted progress on immigration – encounters at the southern border have plummeted to just over 7,000, down from 140,000 in March of last year.

The White House also said almost 65,700 immigrants had been deported in his term so far, although that is a slower pace than in the last fiscal year when US authorities deported more than 270,000.

Part of the way through his speech Trump screened a video of deportees being expelled from the US and sent to a mega-prison in El Salvador.

His immigration crackdown has faced a flurry of legal challenges, as has his effort to end the automatic granting of citizenship to anyone born on US soil.

During Tuesday’s speech he insisted egg prices had declined 87%, a claim contradicted by the latest government price figures.

Inflation, energy prices and mortgage rates have fallen since Trump took office, although unemployment has risen slightly, consumer sentiment has sagged and the stock market was plunged into turmoil by the tariffs.

Before the speech, Joe DeMonaco, who owns a carpentry business in Michigan, said Trump’s patchwork of on-again, off-again import taxes were starting to increase prices, which he will have to pass on to his customers.

“I was hoping. . . he would approach things a little bit differently seeing that he’s a little seasoned coming into a second term,” Mr DeMonaco told the BBC. “But we’re just treading water and seeing if things get better from here.”

But it’s clear that Trump’s most steadfast supporters stand by him.

“I’m just thrilled,” Teresa Breckinridge, owner of the Silver Skillet Diner in Atlanta, Georgia, told the BBC.

“He’s handling things wherever he can, multiple times a day, and he’s reporting back to the people. . . I think the tariffs will end up definitely being in our favour.”

US President Donald Trump has taken action to ease the impact of new tariffs on the car making industry, which had sparked warnings about higher prices and the potential for significant hits to sales and production.

The change will allow companies with US factories to reduce the amount they pay in import taxes on foreign parts, using a formula tied to how many cars they sell and the price.

The provision is intended to provide relief to businesses for two years as they rework their supply chains, the White House said.

Officials also moved to shield car firms from facing mounting tariffs on the same items.

They said businesses that have to pay tariffs on cars and parts would not be charged other duties the administration has imposed on steel, aluminium and goods from Canada and Mexico.

The changes came as Trump visited Michigan on Tuesday for a rally to mark his first 100 days in office.

The state is home to the so-called Detroit Three carmakers – Ford, General Motors (GM) and Stellantis – and a network of more than 1,000 major suppliers to the industry.

Those firms and the wider industry have been plunged into uncertainty since Trump announced new 25% tariffs on cars and car parts in March, saying he wanted to expand domestic car manufacturing – an industry the White House sees as key to national security.

Trump’s tariff announcement drove a spike in sales, as consumers rushed to get ahead of the tariffs. But it has also left businesses scrambling to respond.

Ahead of the latest announcement, General Motors and other carmakers said they welcomed the plans to soften the impact of the measures.

“We’re grateful to President Trump for his support of the US automotive industry and the millions of Americans who depend on us,” GM chief executive Mary Barra said in an emailed statement.

“We appreciate the productive conversations with the President and his Administration and look forward to continuing to work together.”

General Motors, which reported its quarterly performance to investors on Tuesday, also said on Tuesday that it needed to rework its forecast for the year and pulled its prior guidance.

In an unusual move, it also postponed the call with analysts that had been set to discuss the results.

Tariffs on foreign-made cars – which accounted for nearly half of US sales last year – went into effect last month.

The duties on parts were expected to come into force on 3 May.

Under the modified plan, carmakers will be able to claim an “offset” for what they pay in tariffs on car parts, worth up to 3.75% of the suggested retail price of all the cars they assemble in the US.

That share would fall to 2.5% in the second year.

The White House said the rules were designed so that a car with 85% of its parts made in the US – or in Canada or Mexico under the terms of an existing free trade deal – would not face any tariffs, a threshold that rises to 90% in the second year.

The adjustment is a recognition of the global nature of the industry’s current supply networks, where even cars that promote themselves as American-made often source a significant share of their parts from abroad.

In remarks to reporters ahead of the signing, Trump downplayed the easing, saying they applied to a “very, very small part of the car” and while noting he did not want to penalise companies with factories in the US.

“We just wanted to help them during this little transition, short-term,” he said.

Last week, a coalition of US motor industry groups called on the president to not impose the measures on parts.

A letter to his administration from groups representing companies including GM, Toyota and Volkswagen said the levies would “lead to higher auto prices for consumers, lower sales at dealerships and will make servicing and repairing vehicles both more expensive”.

Ford said it appreciated Trump’s decision, which it said would “help mitigate the impact of tariffs on automakers, suppliers and consumers”.

“We will continue to work closely with the administration in support of the president’s vision for a healthy and growing auto industry in America,” a statement added.

The car maker said policies that encouraged exports and ensured affordable supply chains to promote more domestic growth were “essential”.

“It will be important for the major vehicle importers to match Ford’s commitment to building in America,” the company said, adding that if they did, the US would see a “windfall of new assembly and supplier factories and hundreds of thousands of new jobs”.

Stellantis chairman John Elkann echoed the sentiments of his rival carmakers in response to the tariff reliefs.

“We look forward to our continued collaboration with the US administration to strengthen a competitive American auto industry and stimulate exports,” he added.

BBC’s North America team asked for your questions to mark US President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office.

Here is a selection of those answered by our staff writers and correspondents.

They have aimed to explain the context and facts behind several of the biggest topics in the Trump administration, including the economy and how Trump would handle a war.

A UK-based reader asks how the UK economy might be impacted by tariffs.

The decisions made thousands of miles away will affect the UK economy. Most directly affected are those exporters selling into America, contending with that 10% extra charge (or even more in some cases) being applied to their goods: Do they try to compensate for that by cutting costs elsewhere – or risk a blow to sales?

And complex supply chains mean that disruption to other economies could be felt here. Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey last week referred to a “growth shock” – many economists have cut their forecasts. No one yet is clear on how this trade war will play out, the uncertainty itself is damaging.

But the impact on inflation could work the other way. Countries such as China may be tempted to divert goods here instead, given the barriers they face in America. And the drop in oil and other commodity prices, amid market turmoil, could also bode well for keeping bills down.

So many economists reckon that with a weaker growth and inflation outlook, interest rates could fall faster than previously thought. A cut of 0.25 percentage points is widely expected next week, another could follow in June.

Another reader asks how Trump’s immigration policy is likely to affect Canadian-American relations, especially for dual citizens or people with mixed-status families.

If the first 100 days are anything to go by, relations between Canada and the US are almost certainly going to continue to be tense – both as a result of tariffs and Trump’s repeated, and near constant calls for Canada to become part of the US.

We had a taste of that just this week, when – as Canadians headed to the polls in their general election – Trump took to Truth Social to call on Canadians to elect him, seemingly referring to himself as a candidate, to reap the benefits of being the “cherished” 51st state.

“America can no longer subsidise Canada with the hundreds of billions a year that we have been spending in the past,” he said. “It makes no sense unless Canada is a state”.

How that impacts dual citizens or mixed-status families is a bit harder to answer.

But we’re seen a newfound sense of nationalism among many Canadians in response to Trump’s rhetoric and policies, and some Americans in Canada have even reportedly given up their citizenship.

While cross-border ties are very unlikely to ground to a standstill, many Canadian citizens – even those with US families – are likely to be more cautious when crossing the border, particularly after high-profile cases of Canadians being detained at the border.

In one case, an actress named Jasmine Moody was detained by ICE for about two weeks, later writing about her experience in a viral article in the Guardian.

A reader asks what Trump’s first 100 days tell us about how he’d handle a major international crisis, like another pandemic or a war.

It’s hard to say how exactly Trump would handle a major international crisis, but we have had glimpses that may provide a few clues.

Trump’s first crisis came just over a week into his administration on 29 January, when a US Army helicopter collided with a passenger aircraft over the Potomac river in Washington DC, killing 67 people.

Later that morning, I sat in the White House briefing room as Trump – with no evidence – alleged that the diversity, equity and inclusion policies at the Federal Aviation Administration may have led to the crash.

This suggests that in the event of a crisis, Trump is later to “fire from the hip”, sometimes speaking before all the facts are established. Many will remember Trump’s initial dismissal of the Covid-19 pandemic in his first administration, sometimes downplaying it as something that would soon “disappear”.

More so than other presidents, Trump also leans heavily on the power of the executive branch, making decisions from the Oval Office that have real-world implications, sometimes bypassing any discussion on Capitol Hill.

Those close to Trump are quick to say that he listens intently to his advisors, often letting discussions play out amongst them before his eyes. This is, for example, largely what happened with the tariffs issue.

Ultimately, however, he is the one who decides the government’s course of action, even if he lets his inner circle – which is perhaps more loyal and disciplined than in the last administration – carry out the details.

Arafin in Bangladesh wants to know how developing countries can navigate this evolving trade landscape and mitigate the risks.

There is just no way poorer countries could ever eliminate their trade surplus with the United States.

The world envisioned by Donald Trump – where citizens of developing countries buy as many American products as are sold the other way – is simply not possible.

The average Bangladeshi citizen, for example, is 32 times poorer than the average American.

In this case, the best Bangladeshi officials could do is promise Washington they will reduce some non-tariff barriers that are in place that make it hard for American companies to do business there.

For example, they could scrap quotas on imports, cut red tape or tackle corruption more effectively.

These small concessions – along with the assumption that American consumers won’t put up with rocketing prices – may lead to a softening or removal of Trump’s tariffs.

After all, if countries with large and cheap workforces can’t sell Americans affordable goods, then who will?

One other thing that developing countries will want to consider closely is the role of China in all of this.

If you’re a worker in a clothing factory in Bangladesh, a 37% US tax might seem a crippling blow to your livelihood – but it’s still better than the 125% tariff that Chinese manufacturers are facing.

As a Malaysian rubber glove manufacturer told me recently: “We’re not exactly jumping with joy, but this may well benefit us”.

Limiting dealings with China has been suggested as a way for developing countries to get a better trade deal with the White House. But that isn’t very realistic.

Beijing is by far and away the number one investor in the developing world. If you live in Africa, Asia or South America – it’s probably China building your railways, factories and power plants, not the United States.

The American consumer market is still the richest in the world and developing countries will want to fight tooth and nail to maintain access to it – but equally there is no way they can side with the US over China.

Chris in County Durham, UK, asks if Donald Trump is making millions of dollars on the US stock market by initiating a slump in share values, buying heavy, then reversing his policies to watch his share prices rocket up.

Critics are accusing President Trump of manipulating the stock market. White House officials have denied the allegations, with Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt calling it part of Trump’s “art of the deal”.

Here’s what we know so far:

On 9 April, Trump posted on Truth Social, in all caps: “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY! DJT.” Shortly after, he announced he was pausing the toughest tariffs for 90 days. In between, options traders placed big bets on a market rebound, which ended up being spot on.

This led to accusations of market manipulation and insider trading, with Democrats like Senator Adam Schiff calling for an investigation.

However, these cases are hard to prove – and even harder when you’re talking about the president. Legal experts say it would be a “high” bar to prove Trump did something illegal in this case. Plus he posted the information publicly.

Claims of insider trading might have some merit under the STOCK Act, which restricts public officials from profiting off non-public information. Although the White House could argue that the President can’t “gain” information about policy changes if he “created” them.

So, it’s still up in the air – but probably not something he needs to lose sleep over.

Jean-Claude asks if there any way within the US Constitution by which Congress could stop Trump’s tariffs and take away his freedom to issue Executive Orders at will.

Donald Trump has been pushing the boundaries of presidential authority with both his tariff declarations and more than 130 executive orders.

To do so, he has been asserting that Congress has given him the power to take these actions. To answer your question simply, then – any power that Congress gives, Congress can take back.

Traditionally, executive orders are a presidential interpretation of how laws should be implemented. Congress could step in and tell the White House that those interpretations are wrong.

Trump has been citing a 1977 law that grants him power to enact tariffs in cases of national emergency. Congress could amend that law or pass legislation that says no such emergency exists. There has already been a bipartisan proposal in the Senate to do exactly that.

The challenge for Trump’s opponents is finding a majority in the two chambers of Congress, both narrowly controlled by Republicans, to do so. The House of Representatives, in particular, is full of Republicans who are marching in lockstep with the president. The House recently adopted a provision that would make it much harder to rescind Trump’s proposed tariffs on Canada and Mexico, for instance.

Even if Congress was able to reach agreement on curtailing presidential power, Trump could decide to exercise his veto to block it from becoming law – something he’s already threated to do with the Senate tariff bill. And if he did that, it would take two-thirds of both chambers to override the president.

So Congress does have the ability to stop Trump, but perhaps not the interest or will to do so – at least not unless and until next year’s midterm elections shift the balance of power in the legislature toward the Democrats.

Rachel in Canada wonders if we can comment on what the real threat of annexation is for Canada with Trump in office. Should we be worried?

A lot depends on what the US president means when he talks about making Canada the 51st state.

It’s unlikely that both the US and Canada would agree to it through formal means – the bar is high.

It would need to be approved by both chambers in the US Congress, including at least 60 votes in support in the Senate, which has 100 seats.

It would also likely require amending the Canadian constitution, which would likely require unanimous provincial consent – no easy task – as well as Parliament’s approval.

It’s also highly unlikely that the US would invade Canada militarily.

Trump has spoken about forcing the issue through economic pressure – with Canada sending roughly 75% of its good south of the border, he does have some leverage.

Canada has already been hit with tariffs from the US, including the blanket tariffs on goods, though there is currently an exception for products covered by the USMCA trade deal. Those US tariffs are already being felt in some sectors.

However, Trump also appears willing to come to the negotiating table. He has said he is ready to start talks with Canada’s prime minister after the federal election.

Kevin in Stockport has two questions for James Lansdale, BBC News diplomatic correspondent: Not long ago President Trump said that if Russia didn’t agree to take serious steps towards ending the war he would apply massive sanctions. Russia has shown no desire to reach a peace settlement. So why is Trump not going to apply these threatened sanctions before considering ending the peace initiative?

Donald Trump is becoming increasingly frustrated at the refusal of Vladimir Putin to agree an immediate unconditional ceasefire. Recently, after his talks with President Zelensky at the Vatican, Mr Trump questioned whether Mr Putin really wanted peace and wondered if the Russian leader was leading him on. He also once again threatened “banking” or “secondary” sanctions.

The latter refers to sanctions on countries that are still trading with Moscow, especially those countries – like China and India – that are fuelling the Russian war machine by buying cheap Russian energy. But imposing those sanctions would be a big step with serious economic and geostrategic consequences. So for now, Mr Trump appears to want to threaten these sanctions rather than impose them.

What is the hold that Putin has over Trump?

Analysts say that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin developed a genuinely warm personal relationship during his first term in the White House. They say Mr Trump sees in Mr Putin an equal on the world stage whom he respects.

The US president also made clear he wants a rapprochement between the US and Russia, one that will reset the relationship and boost trade. Strategists say the White House is also currying favour with the Kremlin because it wants to divide Moscow from Beijing, with many US policymakers seeing China as the greater threat. As to whether Mr Putin has some kind of “hold” over Mr Trump, there have been many allegations about the close business links the President had over the years with Russian figures who helped his investments.

There were also many claims of secret Kompromat about the President held in Kremlin archives. The FBI investigated. But there was always more speculation than hard fact. So Mr Trump’s relationship with Mr Putin remains something of a mystery.

Ray in the UK asks: As a convicted felon, Donald Trump isn’t allowed in the UK, so how can he address Parliament?

It is a bit more complicated than that.

Government guidance – which you can read here – spells out where it is mandatory that someone is refused entry and where it is discretionary.

In reality, the elected leader of an ally, in particular an ally as important as the United States, is always likely to be invited, because a government is likely to conclude that this is in the UK’s national interest.

That is the conclusion of Sir Keir Starmer – and hence the state visit being offered to President Trump.

The opportunity, or not, to address Parliament is a separate question and something some are arguing should be blocked.

One reader, Ray, asks our BBC Security correspondent Frank Gardner: Is Trump going to give Europe the time to step in, if he decides to ditch Ukraine?

The transatlantic alliance – the strategic partnership between Europe and North America based on shared values – is now under more strain than at any time since the Suez Crisis of 1956.

Within his first 100 days President Trump has completely upended the policy of the previous US administrations. For most of the time since taking office, he has appeared to favour relations with Moscow over those with Kyiv. He has also gone against the wishes of most of Europe by vowing to end Russia’s isolation and talked of lifting sanctions.

Whereas the prevailing attitude in Europe towards Ukraine is to keep supporting its war effort ‘for as long as it takes’, Trump has been in a hurry to end the war and normalise relations with President Putin.

Trump’s oft-repeated intent to ‘get’ Greenland and make it a part of the US has appalled Denmark, of which it is a self-governing part and it has rattled Scandinavian governments. Denmark lost 257 soldiers killed and wounded in the US-led campaign in Afghanistan. It had the highest per capita death toll of all America’s allies in that war.

Trump has, however, galvanised Europe into finally doing more for its own defence.

After the US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told NATO in February that Europe should no longer take US strategic protection for granted, budgets are being revised and Germany has now lifted its longstanding restrictions on defence spending.

Shahida’s face crumpled with grief every time she thought about the choice in front of her: Stay for love or go back to her siblings?

Shahida Adrees, now 61, moved to India from Pakistan in 2002, when she married her maternal cousin Adrees Khan, a resident of Punjab state (marriage between cousins is practised in some communities in South Asia).

The couple lived a peaceful, predictable life – Khan working as a driver and Shahida looking after their home and child.

Every few years, Shahida, who is staying in India on a long-term visa, would obtain a travel permit and make a trip to Pakistan to meet her family.

But that sense of routine was shattered last week when India suspended almost all visas for Pakistani citizens as part of its response to the brutal attack in Indian-administered Kashmir that killed 26 people. Pakistan, which denies any involvement, has hit back with tit-for-tat measures and also cancelled most visas for Indians.

When Shahida heard the news, she knew what it meant; she could either go back to her siblings and other family members in Pakistan now, or stay and risk never seeing them again.

She chose to stay. Earlier this week, she cancelled her plans of going to Pakistan to see an ailing aunt. “If I had gone, I wouldn’t have been let back into India. But now that I am here, I don’t know if I’ll ever see my brothers and sisters again,” she says.

Shahida’s family is among hundreds in India and Pakistan who, with members on both sides of the borders, now face the risk of separation.

Despite neighbours India and Pakistan sharing a hostile relationship, love stories and marriages between its citizens are not uncommon. That’s because of the deeply intertwined cultural history of the countries which were partitioned along religious lines in 1947, forcing millions to leave their homes and migrate to the other side.

The border between the nations runs not just through the ground, but also through families – many Indians have relatives and their hometowns in Pakistan, and vice versa.

Some, like Shahida’s family, have tried to stay in touch with their roots through marriages with relatives across the border. In recent years, many couples have also met online, often overcoming insurmountable odds to stay together.

Many of them apply for long-term visas that need to be renewed periodically while others apply for citizenship of the respective countries – but the process can take years.

This week, as the visa restrictions took effect, heart-breaking visuals of people – young and old couples, desperate sons and daughters, and elderly parents – pleading with authorities for help were splashed across television screens and on social media.

The BBC has contacted the Indian foreign ministry for comment.

“I came here with my mother. Now they are asking us to leave without her. How can I do that?” mumbled a tearful Mohammed Ayat, 17.

A Pakistani national, Ayat came to India last month to meet his maternal relatives. His mother is an Indian citizen who was living in Pakistan on a visa that is pending renewal.

But even as her children returned to Pakistan, she had to stay in India as she wasn’t sure whether she would be allowed into the country.

“They can punish them [the militants], but what is our fault?” Ayat told ANI news agency.

The exact number of people leaving both countries due to the latest tensions is not clear – but is estimated to run into hundreds.

Sitting in a bus that was taking her to the Attari-Wagah border, Parveen (who uses only one name), told reporters that she had lived in India for 41 years.

“I have no mother, brothers or sisters in Pakistan. I have nowhere to go there. I am completely helpless,” she said.

Families say the abruptness of the visa suspensions and the resulting chaos have left them feeling uncertain.

The restrictions imposed by Delhi exempt those like Shahida, who have been living in India on a long-term visa which needs to be renewed every few years. Valid for up to five years, these visas are given to women of Pakistani and Bangladeshi nationalities who are married to Indian citizens.

Under Indian rules, all long-term visa holders are allowed to visit their home country after obtaining a second permit, called the No Objection to Return to India (NORI) visa.

But in the days following the attack, there have been reports of NORI visa holders also being stopped from crossing the border into India, as officials waited for clarity.

Shahida says that in her case, Indian authorities have assured her that NORI visa-holders would be exempted from the restrictions.

But she is not willing to take the risk of leaving India.

She wondered if things would’ve been better if she had got an Indian citizenship.

“I did apply for it in 2009, but the file never moved. I never received a response,” she said.

For Tahira Ahmed, even becoming an Indian citizen has not been enough to allay her anxieties. A Pakistani by birth, Ms Ahmed moved to Punjab state in 2003 after marrying Maqbool Ahmed, an Indian . In 2016, Tahira was granted Indian citizenship, 13 years after her marriage.

But she is still fearful about the prospect of being separated from her family and sent to Pakistan.

“Whenever tensions escalate between the two countries, our lives get caught up in the middle,” she said. “My own wedding was postponed for two years in 2001 when the border was closed after an attack on India’s parliament.”

While they wait for answers, some couples are desperate.

Earlier this week, BBC Punjabi met Maria Masih, a Pakistani citizen who moved to India in 2024 to marry her lover Sonu.

The two met through social media and knew each other for many years before they decided to get married. According to Sonu, the couple applied for a long-term visa for Maria immediately after their wedding. But their application is still under process. Maria is now seven months pregnant.

“I want to live here. I don’t want to go back. Please give me a visa and let me stay,” a forlorn Maria told reporters earlier this week.

The couple has since reportedly been absconding and an investigation is under way.

Miles away, Ms Ahmed wonders if one can really blame them or anyone for trying to escape.

“What is their fault anyway? They came here for love,” she said.

Listen to Laura read this article

If you say the name Donald Trump in the halls of wholesale markets and trade fairs in China, you’ll hear a faint chuckle.

The US president and his 145% tariffs have not instilled fear in many Chinese traders.

Instead, they have inspired an army of online Chinese nationalists to create mocking memes in a series of viral videos and reels – some of which include an AI-generated President Trump, Vice-President JD Vance and tech mogul Elon Musk toiling on footwear and iPhone assembly lines.

China is not behaving like a nation facing the prospect of economic pain and President Xi Jinping has made it clear that Beijing will not back down.

“For more than 70 years, China has always relied on self-reliance and hard work for development… it has never relied on anyone’s gifts and is unafraid of any unreasonable suppression,” he said this month.

His confidence may come in part because China is far less dependent than it was 10 years ago on exports to the US. But the truth is Trump’s brinkmanship and tariff hikes are pushing on pressure points that already exist within China’s own struggling economy. With a housing crisis, increasing job insecurity and an ageing population, Chinese people are simply not spending as much as their government would like.

Xi came to power in 2012 with a dream of a rejuvenated China. That is now being severely tested – and not just by US tariffs. Now, the question is whether or not Trump’s tariffs will dampen Xi’s economic dreams, or can he turn the obstacles that exist into opportunities?

With a population of 1.4 billion, China has, in theory, a huge domestic market. But there’s a problem. They don’t appear willing to spend money while the country’s economic outlook is uncertain.

This has not been prompted by the trade war – but by the collapse of the housing market. Many Chinese families invested their life savings in their homes, only to watch prices plummet in the last five years.

Housing developers continued to build even as the property market crumbled. It’s thought that China’s entire population would not fill all the empty apartments across the country.

The former deputy head of China’s statistics bureau, He Keng, admitted two years ago that the most “extreme estimate” is that there are now enough vacant homes for 3 billion people.

Travel round Chinese provinces and you see they are littered with empty projects – lines of towering concrete shells that have been labelled “ghost cities”. Others have been fitted out, the gardens have been landscaped, curtains frame the windows, and they appear filled with the promise of a new home. But only at night, when you see no lights, can you tell that the apartments are empty. There just aren’t enough buyers to match this level of construction.

The government acted five years ago to restrict the amount of money developers could borrow. But the damage to house prices and, in turn, consumer confidence in China, has been done and analysts have projected a 2.5% decline in home prices this year, according to a Reuters poll in February.

And it’s not just house prices that worry middle-class Chinese families.

They are concerned about whether the government can offer them a pension – over the next decade, about 300 million people, who are currently aged 50 to 60, are set to leave the Chinese workforce. According to a 2019 estimate by the state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the government pension fund could run out of money by 2035.

There are also fears about whether their sons, daughters and grandchildren can get a job as millions of college graduates are struggling to find work. More than one in five people between the ages of 16 and 24 in urban areas are jobless in China, according to official data published in August 2023. The government has not released youth unemployment figures since then.

The problem is that China cannot simply flip a switch and move from selling goods to the US to selling them to local buyers.

“Given the downward pressure on the economy, it is unlikely domestic spending can be significantly expanded in the short term,” says Prof Nie Huihua at Renmin University.

“Replacing exports with internal demand will take time.”

According to Prof Zhao Minghao, deputy director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University, “China does not have high expectations for talks with the Trump administration… The real battleground is in the adjustment of China’s domestic policies, such as boosting domestic demand.”

To revive a slowing economy, the government has announced billions in childcare subsidies, increased wages and better paid leave. It has also introduced a $41bn programme offering discounts on items such as consumer electronics and electric vehicles (EVs) to encourage more people to spend. But Prof Zhang Jun, the Dean of Economics at Fudan University, believes this is not “sustainable”.

“We need a long-term mechanism,” he says. “We need to start increasing residents’ disposable income.”

This is urgent for Xi. The dream of prosperity he sold when he took power 13 years ago has not become reality.

Xi is also aware that China has a disheartened younger generation worried about their future. That could spell bigger trouble for the Communist Party: protests or unrest.

A report by Freedom House’s China Dissent Monitor claims that protests driven by financial grievances saw a steep increase in the last few months.

All protests are quickly subdued and censored on social media, so it is unlikely to pose a real threat to Xi for now.

“Only when the country does well and the nation does well can every person do well,” Xi said in 2012.

This promise was made when China’s economic rise looked unstoppable. It now looks uncertain.

Where the country has made huge strides over the past decade is in areas such as consumer electronics, batteries, EVs and artificial intelligence as part of a pivot to advanced manufacturing.

It has rivalled US tech dominance with the chatbot DeepSeek and BYD, which beat Tesla last year to become the world’s largest EV maker.

Yet Trump’s tariffs threaten to throw a spanner in the works.

The restrictions on the sale of key chips to China, including the most recent move tightening exports from US chip giant Nvidia, for instance, are aimed at curbing Xi’s ambitions for tech supremacy.

Despite that, Xi knows that Chinese manufacturers are at a decades-long advantage, so that US manufacturers are struggling to find the same scale of infrastructure and skilled labour elsewhere.

President Xi is also trying to use this crisis as a catalyst for further change and to find more new markets for China.

“In the short term, some Chinese exporters will be greatly impacted,” says Prof Zhang. “But Chinese companies will take the initiative to adjust the destination of exports to overcome difficulties. Exporters are waiting and looking for new customers.”

Donald Trump’s first term in office was China’s cue to look elsewhere for buyers. It has expanded its ties across South East Asia, Latin America and Africa – and a Belt and Road trade and infrastructure initiative shored up ties with the so-called Global South.

China is reaping the rewards from that diversification. More than 145 countries do more trade with China than they do with the US, according to the Lowy Institute.

In 2001, only 30 countries chose Beijing as their lead trade partner over Washington.

As Trump targets both friend and foe, some believe Xi can further upend the current US-led world order and portray his country as a stable, alternative global trade partner and leader.

The Chinese leader chose South East Asia for his first trip abroad after the tariff announcement, sensing his neighbours would be getting jittery about Trump’s tariffs.

Around a quarter of Chinese exports are now manufactured or shipped through a second country including Vietnam and Cambodia.

Recent US actions may also present a chance for Xi to positively shape China’s role in the world.

“Trump’s coercive tariff policy is an opportunity for Chinese diplomacy,” says Prof Zhang.

China will have to tread carefully. Some countries will be nervous that products being manufactured for the US could end up flooding into their markets.

Trump’s tariffs in 2016 sent a glut of cheap Chinese imports, originally intended for the US, into South East Asia, hurting many local manufacturers.

According to Prof Huihua, “about 20% of China’s exports go to the US – if these exports were to flood any regional market or country, it could lead to dumping and vicious competition, thereby triggering new trade frictions”.

There are barriers to Xi presenting himself as the arbiter of free trade in the world.

China has subjected other nations to trade restrictions in recent years.

In 2020, after the Australian government called for a global inquiry into the origins and early handling of the Covid pandemic, which Beijing argued was a political manoeuvre against them, China placed tariffs on Australian wine and barley and imposed biosecurity measures on some beef and timber and bans on coal, cotton and lobster. Some Australian exports of certain goods to China fell to nearly zero.

Australia’s Defence Minister Richard Marles said earlier this month that his nation will not be “holding China’s hand” as Washington escalated its trade war with Beijing.

China’s past actions may impede Xi’s current global outreach and many countries may be unwilling to choose between Beijing and Washington.

Even with all the various difficulties, Xi is betting that Beijing will be able to withstand any economic pain longer than Washington in this great power competition.

And it does appear that Trump has blinked first, last week hinting at a potential U-turn on tariffs, saying that the taxes he has so far imposed on Chinese imports would “come down substantially, but it won’t be zero”.

Meanwhile, Chinese social media is back in action.

“Trump has chickened out,” was one of the top trending search topics on the Chinese social media platform Weibo after the US president softened his approach to tariffs.

Even if or when talks do happen, China is playing a longer game.

The last trade war forced it to diversify its export market away from the US towards other markets – especially in the Global South.

This trade war has China looking in the mirror to see its own flaws – and whether it can fix them will be up to policies made in Beijing, not Washington.

Singer Lorde says collaborating with Charli XCX gave her more confidence to explore her vulnerabilities with her new music.

The singer-songwriter from New Zealand is gearing up to release her fourth album, Virgin, this summer, and the first single, What Was That, shot straight into the UK top 10.

Lorde tells BBC Radio 1’s Jack Saunders it’s taken a lot of work to get the album to this point: “I never thought it would come out,” she says.

“I wrote this from the perspective of, ‘well I could never say that’,” the singer, real name Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O’Connor, says.

“It was just sort of an exercise in saying everything I needed to say about a whole lot of different stuff and I put off dealing with that.

“I was like, that’s for future Ella to deal with.”

Then came a message from Charli XCX, inviting her to collaborate on her track girl, so confusing from her acclaimed album Brat.

In the remix, Lorde opens up about struggling with an eating disorder and comparing herself to the singer-songwriter from Essex.

“Brat coming out really gave me a kick,” says Lorde.

“Meeting her in that place of rugged vulnerability and people responding really well to that, I was kind of like, ‘OK cool – this is a good thing to be doing’.

“I really suffer from this thing of not feeling my own power… and the remix just started me up and I was like, ‘no no, people are listening and they care and your words carry real weight’.”

Aside from its multiple awards, Brat also became a cultural phenomenon when it was released.

It featured in the US presidential election campaign and the Collins Dictionary, which crowned it word of the year.

Lorde performed the remix during Charli’s Coachella set in California last month, with Charli even suggesting “Lorde summer 2025” could follow 2024’s Brat summer.

Lorde says Brat also inspired her to refine what she wanted to say with her first new music in four years.

“It forced me to further define what I was doing because Charli had so masterfully defined everything about Brat,” she says.

“And it’s so amazing when a peer throws the gauntlet down like that. We’ve gotta pick it up and I’ve spoken to a lot of peers who all had the same feeling.”

Lorde’s lead single, What Was That, was officially released last week after being teased on TikTok, debuting in the UK Top 10.

Lorde says it gives a flavour of her upcoming album, where she’s tried to reconnect with her younger self.

“I really went into it like, ‘just make something for you, just make something you think is cool’,” she says.

“It’s not unlike how I was making music as a 15-year-old, just trying to impress myself.

“What Was That was the first song from this album that I wrote and was like, ‘OK, I know where to go with this’,” she says, describing the track as “Lorde canon” and “recognisably me”.

“It’s funny to be 12 years into your career and for people to have an understanding of your tropes and what you do.”

The singer says she “wanted to lock people back in” to her sound after her last album, 2021’s Solar Power, which she says was “a very different flavour for me”.

“It’s about going to the core of who I am in the purest way possible, stripping away anything unnecessary.”

Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays – or listen back here.

Washington and Kyiv have signed a long-awaited deal involving Ukraine’s natural resources, after months of contentious negotiations.

Details are still emerging about the agreement, but both sides have confirmed that it sets up an investment fund to search for minerals, and set outs how revenues would be split.

In a statement, the US said the agreement “signals to Russia” that the Trump administration is “committed to a peace process centred on a free, sovereign, and prosperous” Ukraine.

It comes just over two months after a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Zelensky at the White House turned into a public shouting match sparking fear that the US might withdraw its support for Ukraine.

• Seven key takeaways from the US-Ukraine agreement

Ukraine’s Economy Minister Yulia Svyrydenko flew to Washington on Wednesday after an apparent breakthrough in negotiations to sign the deal with US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

After joining Bessent at a signing ceremony, Svyrydenko listed its provisions on social media.

Posting on X, she said the deal establishes a reconstruction investment fund to help attract Western investment in Ukrainian projects in minerals, oil and gas.

She says the resources will remain the property of Ukraine, and Kyiv will choose where to do the extracting.

The partnership will be equal, on a 50/50 basis, she says, adding that the agreement includes no debt obligation to the US.

The US will play a role in helping to attract investment and technology to the projects in Ukraine.

As part of the deal, the US will contribute new assistance to Kyiv, which may include, for example, air defence systems.

She says the fund’s income and contributions will not be taxed by either country.

Svyrydenko says the deal must still be ratified by Ukrainian lawmakers.

The agreement recognises the contributions that Ukraine has made to global security, she writes, thanking everyone who worked on brokering it.

It is unclear if the deal includes an explicit security guarantee from the US, something Zelensky has pushed hard for throughout negotiations.

A US Treasury Department statement said: “No state or person who financed or supplied the Russian war machine will be allowed to benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine.”

Trump, for his part, said the deal represents payback for the money the US has spent on the war so far.

“Biden handed them $350bn,” Trump said in a phone call in to a town hall on the NewsNation network. He went on to add: “We made a deal where we get much more in theory than the $350bn.”

• BBC Verify: How much has the US given to Ukraine?

Trump has made the claim that the US has spent around $350 billion (£263 billion) on Ukraine aid on numerous occasions. But a BBC Verify analysis found the actual amount is much lower.

Asked if the US’s presence in Ukraine might inhibit Russia’s movement in the region, he said “it could”.

Kyiv estimates that about 5% of the world’s “critical raw materials” are in Ukraine.

This includes some 19 million tonnes of proven reserves of graphite, which the Ukrainian Geological Survey state agency says makes the nation “one of the top five leading countries” for the supply of the mineral. Graphite is used to make batteries for electric vehicles.

Ukraine also has significant deposits of titanium and lithium. It says it has substantial amounts of the world’s rare earth metals – a group of 17 elements that are used to produce weapons, wind turbines, electronics and other products vital in the modern world – but these claims are disputed.

Also, some of the country’s mineral deposits have been seized by Russia. According to Svyrydenko, resources worth $350bn (£277bn) remain in occupied territories today.

There are warnings too that a deal allowing the US access to Ukraine’s vast mineral wealth cannot happen unless the country addresses its problem with unexploded mines.

A quarter of Ukraine’s land mass is estimated to be contaminated with landmines, mainly concentrated in the war-torn east of the country.

Another issue is it will be some time before anyone sees any material benefits from the deal.

“These resources aren’t in a port or warehouse; they must be developed,” Tymofiy Mylovanov, a former minister and head of Kyiv school of economics, told the BBC.

• What minerals does Ukraine have?

Russia has yet to comment on the deal but earlier this year, Vladimir Putin told state TV he was ready to “offer” resources to American partners in joint projects, including mining in Russia’s “new territories” – a reference to parts of eastern Ukraine occupied by Russia since its full-scale invasion three years ago.

Putin said a potential US-Ukraine deal on rare minerals was not a concern and that Russia “undoubtedly have, I want to emphasise, significantly more resources of this kind than Ukraine”.

“As for the new territories, it’s the same. We are ready to attract foreign partners to the so-called new, to our historical territories, which have returned to the Russian Federation,” he added.

The TikTok video begins with Singapore’s health minister Ong Ye Kung smiling at the camera while sitting on a park bench.

“So no-one told you life was gonna be this way,” the instantly recognisable theme song to the sitcom Friends plays, as he’s suddenly joined by the other four members of his team running in the upcoming general election.

Cut to a snappy montage of them fist-bumping each other and mingling with residents at community events, as the song’s chorus delivers their political message: “I’ll be there for you”.

It’s one of the many social media videos posted by Singapore’s long-ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) as the country gears up for the general election on Saturday.

One of the longest-serving political parties in the world, the PAP has governed Singapore since 1959 and is widely associated with stability.

But even as it continues to win elections with comfortable majorities, the PAP has also faced declining popularity over the last two decades.

In recent years the party has embarked on a mission to revamp its straitlaced, no-nonsense image, particularly to attract younger voters who have typically been more sympathetic to the opposition.

This campaign season, PAP ministers better known for stilted pre-written speeches have also been filming skits with social media influencers and sitting down for long conversations on podcasts. The party has even launched a special edition of the viral Labubu doll dressed in their white uniform.

Leading the PAP in his first election since he took office as prime minister, Lawrence Wong boasts a significant online portfolio.

On his social media accounts he has been showing off his guitar skills and discussing the national budget at a cat cafe. His recent visit to Vietnam was recapped on TikTok over a techno rave soundtrack.

Other ministers in his cabinet have also ramped up their efforts: in an online video series with a local actor, culture minister Edwin Tong played barista and served coffees; meanwhile health minister Ong spent a day as an trainee at a local radio station.

Numerous Singaporean influencers have put out content featuring PAP faces, in what appears to be a concerted party effort to connect with a younger audience. Last June, local influencers and celebrities attended a PAP event that publicised their alignment with the party.

Valerie Tan Su Min, a content creator who makes satirical videos about politics but does not work with political parties, told the BBC that efforts such as collaborations with influencers could seal the deal for some young voters.

“If they had not done their own research or realised the gravity of their vote, it’s very possible that they might see one or two videos and be like, ‘OK that’s who I vote for,'” she said.

There’s little doubt that the PAP, which has long held an overwhelming parliamentary majority, will continue to govern after this election.

It has enjoyed strong support from Singaporeans, particularly from older generations that have personally seen the country flourish under PAP rule.

But while elections have been free from fraud and irregularities, critics also say the party maintains an unfair advantage through gerrymandering and a tightly controlled media.

Still, in the last three elections, the party has experienced two of its worst-ever showings at the polls – a little over 60% of the popular vote.

With an ageing support base, the key to the PAP’s future victories is young people.

“Candidates from different political parties have taken to social media like never before,” says Carol Soon, associate professor in communications and new media at the National University of Singapore, adding that the medium is “increasingly assuming a ‘broadcasting’ nature”.

Opposition parties have also jumped on the bandwagon, taking part in TikTok video trends and launching online talkshows.

Some have turned awkward moments of their campaigns into social media gold. One of the most popular memes this election, “look left look right“, stems from a song by an opposition candidate lamenting his dismal job prospects. After it went viral, he released a follow-up song about the lack of affordable housing.

Social media has always been particularly important to opposition parties in Singapore, where the PAP government exerts significant control over mainstream media. It’s also a medium that has become especially popular after a quarantine election in 2020 limited in-person campaigning.

But the opposition’s efforts have been dwarfed by the PAP’s, thanks to its deep pockets.

“Resources still matter when it comes to digital campaigning,” says Netina Tan, associate professor of political science at McMaster University, who noted that the “resource-rich” PAP can afford to “amp up their digital campaign…and put out fancy Insta videos”.

Rae Fung, a 28-year-old speaking coach, said she was paying extra attention to local podcasts featuring politicians as guests.

“It’s very hard to lie about your expertise on a podcast. Because it goes really deep and usually it’s not too edited,” she said. “It helps me understand their thought process and who they are as a person.”

“Most of the candidates I’ve seen, they’re doing enough on social media to reach us,” she said. But “how they show up and who they are as a person is a lot more important than their social media game.”

For young Singaporeans like Ms Fung, their votes will ultimately go to the party that makes the most convincing pitch to solve their problems.

The rising cost of living in Singapore – which consistently ranks as one of the most expensive places in the world to live in – has been one of the biggest concerns for young people. Many still worry that owning a home will becoming increasingly unaffordable in the future.

There has also been growing uncertainty about job prospects and the economy. Singapore’s authorities and economists have warned of the fallout and a possible technical recession from the US-China trade war and US President Donald Trump’s global tariffs.

The PAP government has tried to address these worries. Besides providing subsidised housing for first-time buyers, it has increased the supply of public flats and issued subsidies and cash vouchers to help with childcare and daily expenses. Opposition parties argue they can do more.

At a recent PAP election rally, one 37-year-old attendee who declined to be named said that while he was “not very confident” that the PAP would be able to lead the country out of the global economic uncertainty, his “confidence level is even lower” for the opposition.

Meanwhile at an opposition rally, 28-year-old Ariel, who only gave her first name, told the BBC that many of her peers have not been able to get jobs after graduation. She did not think the government had addressed their worries.

Voting in more of opposition candidates would be the way “for Singaporeans to voice out our pain and concerns”, she insisted.

In Singapore media campaigns may be important for drumming up political participation during elections, said Dr Soon, but social media engagement does not translate directly into support at the ballot box.

“At the end of the day,” she said, it’s about “whom people think would deliver” – be it providing more jobs, lowering costs of living, or being alternative voices in parliament.

A former biology teacher-turned-environmentalist is on a crusade in Uganda to save the once-flourishing trees from which shea butter is made – the cosmetic known as “women’s gold”.

Mustafa Gerima wants local communities to stop chopping down the trees to make charcoal – which they say is more profitable than the oil, also used in cooking, that is extracted from its fruit.

He gave up teaching to dedicate himself to the trees when he returned home six years ago and was shocked to find the Mount Kei Central Forest Reserve, once lush with wild shea trees, had been turned into a near-barren expanse dotted with stumps.

Now nicknamed “Bwana Shea” or Mr Shea, he walks from village to village in the north-west of the country rallying people to protect what he sees as a vanishing treasure.

Local people, he said, had lost interest in the trees and began chopping them down as farmers were experiencing failed harvests.

“Thirty years ago, the shea nut tree had a pattern of its production. It flowered in December then by the time it reached April, it would be ready,” Mr Gerima told the BBC.

“But now because of climate change there is this prolonged drought. Hence it affects the production of shea nuts.”

The growing popularity of charcoal from the shea nut tree has made the situation worse. It is said to burn for longer than other charcoal.

“Our community is affected by poverty. So they look at the tree as a cheap alternative source of income,” Mr Gerima said.

Uganda is losing an estimated 100,000 hectares (250,000 acres) of forest cover each year, and a significant portion of that includes shea nut trees, according to the country’s environment ministry.

Shea trees grow in the wild from West to East Africa – a vast strip known as the “shea belt”. But the shea tree population has dramatically plummeted in recent year, it says.

This loss, combined with the poor harvests, has had a direct impact on people like Mariam Chandiru, a local shea butter producer for many years in the northern town of Koboko.

“We would get good money to take our children to school and take care of our families. But now my business is collapsing, it is a huge setback,” she told the BBC.

“I used to sell up to five jerry cans of shea oil a week, right now I can only fill two jerry cans at most.”

It has traditionally been women who have gathered the nuts of the shea tree to produce Nilotica shea butter, prized globally for its cosmetic and culinary uses.

Professor John Bosco Okullo, a leading agroforestry expert from Uganda’s Makerere University who has been studying shea nut trees for more than two decades, also blames years of widespread insecurity for the problems.

“In the 1990s, communities used to own and protect the shea trees,” the academic, who is part of a European Union project aiming to conserve and utilise the tree, told the BBC.

This was before much of the north of the country was ravaged by a rebel group called the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), led by Joseph Kony, whose fighters were notorious for abducting children – forcing the boys to become fighters and keeping the girls as sex slaves.

The rebels have largely been wiped out, but nearly 20 years of conflict drove people to leave their villages and find safety in camps.

Other communities were affected by dangerous cattle raids – also leading to the displacement of thousands of people in the early 2000s.

“After cattle raiding and civil unrest by the Lord’s Resistance Army displaced people, the sense of ownership was lost,” said Prof Okullo

“When people returned, they adapted to short-term gains like charcoal burning.”

Prof Okullo agrees with Mr Gerima that climate change has further exacerbated the situation.

“The productivity has gone down. The trees are not flowering and fruiting the way they used to. Rain fluctuation has disrupted the shea tree’s natural cycles,” he said.

Rapid urban expansion is another threat.

“Most of these places which used to have shea trees now have new districts, new hospitals, schools,” Prof Okullo said.

“You find the shea trees are being cut for development. We need affirmative planting. Otherwise, if we are waiting for natural regeneration, it is going to be difficult.”

Despite what seems like a gloomy outlook, Prof Okullo takes heart from campaigners such as Mr Gerima.

The former teacher’s most widely known initiative involved a 19-day, 644km (400-mile) walk in 2020.

He trekked from Uganda’s capital, Kampala, to the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) headquarters in Nairobi, capital of neighbouring Kenya.

“Right now, there are a lot of NGOs mobilising communities,” Prof Okullo said.

“People are planting new trees and protecting those regenerating from stumps.

“Some are even using grafting techniques to shorten the juvenile phase – it used to take 15 to 20 years before fruiting, now some trees are fruiting much earlier.”

To meet rising demand and support sustainable supply chains, the professor and his colleagues are embracing technology.

“We are teaming up with our colleagues in computer science and physics to use Artificial Intelligence so that we can map the mature shea trees and try to project the yield,” he said.

The Ugandan government has also recognised the vulnerability of the shea nut tree. In 2023, it made the cutting down of trees for charcoal illegal.

But enforcement has been patchy.

“There was a presidential order to stop cutting shea trees, but it’s been difficult to implement,” Prof Okullo said.

“The demand for charcoal is highest in urban areas. Those who cut the trees aren’t the ones using the charcoal. We need to provide alternative energy sources for cities to reduce the demand.”

For Mr Gerima, it remains a personal issue.

“Seeing people cut the tree has always caused me a lot of pain in my heart,” he said.

He continues his long walks to raise awareness, speaking to local councils, organising planting drives.

“This must not be one man’s issue – it must bring in a concerted effort, a collective responsibility.”

His next steps include launching a grassroots tree-monitoring initiative and partnering with schools to integrate conservation into the local curriculum.

He says his mission is not just to save a tree but to preserve a way of life.

“We need to think about our future generations. If they come and only find stumps, what will they think of us?”

• Why Uganda’s iconic crested crane faces extinction
• Working to save Uganda’s mountain gorillas
• Why Uganda might have the world’s most passionate Arsenal fans

Meta warned on Wednesday that European users could face a “materially worse” experience following a key regulatory decision by the European Commission.

Meta recently introduced a “consent or pay” model which leaves users to choose between paying for a monthly subscription or letting Meta combine data it has collected on Facebook and Instagram.

Last week, the European Commision – the EU’s executive – announced it had decided that the model does not comply with the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and fined Meta €200m (£171m).

“Based on feedback from the EC in connection with the DMA, we expect we will need to make some modifications to our model,” Meta said in its quarterly earnings statement.

Meta said it expected those modifications “could result in a materially worse user experience for European users and a significant impact” to its European business and revenue.

The company said those impacts could kick in as soon as the third quarter of this year, and may be in effect while it appeals the decision.

They would not apply to users in the UK, where Meta has not implemented its ad-free subscription model.

It is currently in discussions with the UK’s data watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office, about a similar model for UK users and what it might look like.

Eric Seufert, analyst at Mobile Dev Memo, said Meta may be trying to strategically turn European users into “vocal cheerleaders” for its products amid a regulatory clampdown.

“What they ultimately want to do is turn public opinion against this regulatory regime which will demonstrably degrade the product offerings that are available to EU residents,” Seufert told the BBC in a phone interview after the announcement.

Meta, formerly known as Facebook, includes the social media network in addition to the photo sharing app Instagram and the messaging service WhatsApp.

The Commission has said that Meta’s consent-or-pay model does not allow users to freely consent to how their data is used.

The body is currently assessing another option Meta introduced last year, which the company says uses less personal data to display advertisements.

Meta was given 60 days to comply with the DMA’s recent decision, or risk further fines.

Apple was also issued a €500m (£428m) fine over its App Store practices last week.

Meta’s announcement comes as it released quarterly earnings that beat Wall Street expectations.

The results showed Meta continues to bring in significant advertising revenue.

The company touted its AI tools on Wednesday.

“We’re making good progress on AI glasses and Meta AI, which now has almost 1 billion monthly actives,” Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement.

“Our community continues to grow and our business is performing very well,” he said.

Matt Britzman, senior equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown said the results showed that Meta has gone “full throttle on investments in AI”.

Britzman also noted the 6% jump in daily active users.

“There had been some concerns that we might see a slowdown in new users this year, but this was a very strong start and a signal to investors that Meta’s family of apps has a grip on users that’s hard to displace,” Britzman said.

The EC fine comes amid what Meta called “an active regulatory landscape” in its earnings report.

The company is currently defending itself at trial in a case brought by the US Federal Trade Commission which alleges that Meta runs a social media monopoly.

The FTC, the top antitrust watchdog in the US, says Meta cemented its monopoly by purchasing Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014.

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The authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo are seeking to lift former President Joseph Kabila’s immunity from prosecution after accusing him of backing rebels in the east.

There was a “substantial body of documents, testimony and material facts” linking Kabila to the M23 armed group, Justice Minister Constant Mutamba said on Wednesday.

The M23 currently controls parts of the mineral-rich east of the country after making significant advances earlier this year.

Kabila, 53, has not commented on the accusations but has in the past denied any connection with the insurgents.

He led DR Congo for 18 years, after succeeding his father Laurent, who was shot dead in 2001. Joseph Kabila was just 29 at the time.

After stepping down, he was given the title of “senator for life”, which gives him legal immunity.

In order to pursue a legal case, DR Congo’s military prosecutor has asked the senate to overturn this.

Kabila has been living outside the country, in South Africa, for the past two years. But at the beginning of last month he said he would be returning to help find a solution to the conflict in the east.

A few weeks later, there were reports that the former president had come back and was in Goma, one of the cities captured by the M23.

But these were denied by his political party, the People’s Party for Reconstruction and Democracy (PPRD).

Last month, the authorities banned the PPRD because of its “ambiguous attitude” to the occupation of Congolese territory by the M23.

DR Congo and Rwanda, which denies accusations it backs the M23, may be edging towards a peace deal to end the fighting, which has seen hundreds of thousands of civilians forced from their homes in recent months.

The two countries signed a preliminary agreement in Washington last week and said they would have a draft agreement by Friday.

The Metropolitan Police’s counter-terror officers will investigate online videos showing rap trio Kneecap calling for the death of British MPs and shouting “up Hamas, up Hezbollah”.

A video emerged of the west Belfast trio at a November 2023 gig appearing to show one person from the band saying: “The only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP.”

Both Hamas and Hezbollah are banned in the UK and it is a crime to express support for them.

Some gigs featuring the band have since been cancelled in the controversy.

On Thursday, the Met Police said: “On April 22, we were made aware of an online video believed to be from a music event in London in November 2024.

“Following this, we were made aware of a further video, believed to be from another music event in London in November 2023.

“Both videos were referred to the Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit for assessment by specialist officers, who have determined there are grounds for further investigation into potential offences linked to both videos.

“The investigation is now being carried out by officers from the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command and inquiries remain ongoing at this time.”

In a statement earlier this week, Kneecap said they rejected “any suggestion that we would seek to incite violence against any MP or individual. Ever.”

They stated that “an extract of footage, deliberately taken out of all context, is now being exploited and weaponised, as if it were a call to action”.

Referring to two MPs who have been murdered in the UK in recent years, the trio added: “To the Amess and Cox families, we send our heartfelt apologies, we never intended to cause you hurt.”

Kneecap have faced criticism and commercial consequences after displaying messages about the war in Gaza during their set at US music festival Coachella earlier this month.

They were dropped by their sponsor and booking agent Independent Artist Group (IAG) and former X Factor judge Sharon Osbourne called for Kneecap’s US work visas to be revoked.

Following this, footage emerged from a previous gig, which is now under investigation by counter-terrorism officers.

A number of artists have signed a joint statement in support of Kneecap.

Fontaines DC, Annie Mac, Bicep, Massive Attack, Pulp, Paul Weller and Christy Moore are among the artists who signed the open letter by Kneecap’s record label, Heavenly Recordings.

The statement said there had been a “clear, concerted attempt to censor and ultimately deplatform” the band.

It accused “senior political figures” in Westminster and the UK media of being “openly engaged in a campaign to remove Kneecap from the public eye”.

“As artists, we feel the need to register our opposition to any political repression of artistic freedom,” the statement added.

“In a democracy, no political figures or political parties should have the right to dictate who does and does not play at music festivals or gigs that will be enjoyed by thousands of people.”

Kneecap are an Irish-speaking rap trio who have courted controversy with their provocative lyrics and merchandise.

The group was formed in 2017 by three friends who go by the stage names of Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap and DJ Próvaí.

Their rise to fame inspired a semi-fictionalised film starring Oscar-nominated actor Michael Fassbender.

The film won a British Academy of Film Award (Bafta) in February 2025.

President Donald Trump has asked for more time on the US economy as it contracted for the first time in three years, stoking recession fears.

He said the figure was misleading because companies had stockpiled imports ahead of his imposition of tariffs.

Trump, however, said $8tn (£6tn) of inward investment had been promised, which he argued would restore American manufacturing prowess.

The US economy contracted at an annual rate of 0.3%, the US commerce department said, a sharp downturn after growth of 2.4% in the previous quarter. It comes as Trump marks 100 days in office, with opinion polls indicating public discontent over his economic stewardship.

Speaking on Wednesday afternoon at a White House event attended by business leaders, Trump blamed his Democratic predecessor, President Joe Biden, for the disappointing gross domestic product data.

“This is Biden’s economy because we took over on January 20th,” Trump said. “I think you have to give us a little bit of time to get moving.”

It comes in the aftermath of the Republican president’s import taxes, which have disrupted global trade and markets.

• ‘We don’t care’: A defiant China looks beyond Trump’s America
• Why the IMF is worried about the economy – three things to know

Trump’s finger pointing at Biden drew scorn from Democrats.

Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, minority leader of the US House of Representatives, said: “This is not Joe Biden’s economy, Donald, it is your economy.

“It is the Trump economy, it is a failed economy and the American people know it.”

At Wednesday’s White House event, Trump touted planned investments in technology, healthcare and infrastructure.

He introduced CEOs of major companies, including Hyundai’s Jose Munoz, Toyota’s Ted Ogawa, and Johnson & Johnson’s Joaquin Duato.

Trump also urged Congress to pass his tax bill, which includes trillions of dollars in tax and spending cuts, but faces opposition from Democrats and some Republicans.

At a television appearance earlier in the day with cabinet members, Trump played down fears of shortages of items such as toys, as trade between the US and China falls sharply.

“Well, maybe the children will have to have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know?” he said. “And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.”

Trump has enacted 10% levies on imports to the US from nearly all countries, after announcing a 90-day pause on higher tariffs. The amount paid by these countries could change after the period expires in July.

Another 25% tariff has been imposed on Mexico and Canada. The levies on China, however, have led to an all-out trade war with the world’s second largest economy.

Trump imposed import taxes of up to 145% on Chinese goods coming into the US and China hit back with a 125% tax on American products.

His administration said when the new tariffs were added on to existing ones, the levies on some Chinese goods could reach 245%.

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

One of the world’s most endangered amphibians – the strange, perpetually smiling Mexican axolotl – has thrived after being released in artificial wetlands, scientists have discovered.

In a study that provides hope for the long-term future of a creature that was pushed to the brink of extinction, scientists released 18 captive-bred axolotls in restored and artificial wetland close to Mexico City.

The researchers fitted the animals with radio trackers and found that they “survived and foraged successfully at both sites” – even gaining weight.

Lead researcher Dr Alejandra Ramos from the Autonomous University of Baja California said this was an “amazing result”.

The findings are published in the journal PLoS One and they suggest, the researchers say, that the axoltol can be brought back to its native habitat.

The waters of Xochimilco – shaped by traditional farming practices and flushed with spring water from the mountains – used to teem with these amphibians.

But as Mexico City grew, urbanisation, pollution and other pressures pushed axolotls to the brink of extinction, with some estimates suggesting that there were as few as 50 left in the wild.

“If we lose this species, we lose part of our Mexican identity,” said co-lead researcher Dr Luis Zambrano from the National University of Mexico.

It is no exaggeration to call the axoltol an icon. Aztec legend has it that the creature is a god in salamander form – the Aztec god of fire and lightning, Xolotl, disguised as a salamander.

“If we can restore this [wetland] habitat and restore the axolotl’s population in a city of more than 20 million people,” Dr Zambrano continued, “I feel that we have hope for humanity.”

To lay the foundations for releasing the animals, the researchers worked with local farmers and a team of volunteers to create wetland “refuges” for the axolotls. They installed natural filtering systems to clean the water,

The scientists released their captive-bred animals at two sites – one in Xochimilco and one at a disused quarry that, over decades, has turned into what they called an “artificial wetland”.

Every animal was tagged with a radio tracking device.

“The amazing news is that they all survived,” Dr Ramos told BBC News. “And not only that, but the ones that we recaptured had gained weight – so they’re hunting.”

The monitoring also revealed intriguing insights into axolotl behaviour. “We found that some spend most of their time with one other individual – like they make these little friendships,” Dr Ramos explained.

Somewhat ironically, these charismatic salamanders are found in the world’s laboratories and pet aquariums in their hundreds of thousands. The species is biologically fascinating – it has the remarkable ability to regrow any part of its body that is damaged or lost. So there is research underway to understand whether that ability could be harnessed medically.

But in the murky wetlands of Mexico City, there is still a great deal of work to do to clean up and restore the habitat, and to give the wild axolotl a chance to recover.

“Many animals are losing their habitat around the world,” said Dr Ramos. “And restoration projects are not easy, but they can be done – they just need a lot of people.

“You don’t need to be a scientist to get involved – everybody in the world can help out.”

Hollywood star Robert De Niro has said he his showing “love and support” for his daughter Airyn, after she came out as being transgender.

In a recent interview with LGBTQ+ publication Them, Airyn De Niro spoke about “stepping into this new identity”.

Airyn’s famous father told Variety in a statement: “I loved and supported Aaron as my son, and now I love and support Airyn as my daughter.

“I don’t know what the big deal is,” he added. “I love all my children.”

The Goodfellas actor’s daughter, 29, noted how she began to transition last year because, as a transgender woman, “there’s a difference between being visible and being seen.

“I’ve been visible. I don’t think I’ve been seen yet.”

Airyn, daughter of De Niro and Toukie Smith, also said the actress Laverne Cox had been an inspiration and that she now hoped to help expand trans visibility and to honour her black queer ancestors.

“Trans women being honest and open, especially [in] public spaces like social media and getting to see them in their success… I’m like, you know what? Maybe it’s not too late for me.”

And with regard to the experience of being one of seven De Niro children, she went on say that “no parent is perfect, but I am grateful that both my parents agreed to keep me out of the limelight.

“They have told me they wanted me to have as much of a normal childhood as possible.”

The rights of transgender women in the UK have been challenged in recent weeks, after judges at the Supreme Court unanimously ruled a woman is defined by biological sex under equalities law.

Now the UK’s only ever judge to publicly say they are transgender is planning to take the government to the European Court of Human Rights over the ruling which she said violated her human rights.

The US and Ukraine have signed a deal that will give Washington access to some of the war-torn country’s natural resources.

Months in the making, it sets up an investment fund that Ukraine hopes will cement US assistance as the country struggles to repel Russia three years after the invasion.

The BBC has seen a draft of the deal but not the final text. Based on that and the public statements from both sides, here are seven key takeaways.

Trump has previously demanded that Ukraine pay back the $350bn (£264bn) of aid that he claims has been provided by the US during the war – a condition that Zelensky rejected.

But Washington appears to have made a concession. Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said the agreement did not dictate that his country pay back any supposed “debt”.

• Follow reaction to deal as it happens
• What minerals does Ukraine have?

Trump has styled the agreement as a win for his side as well, saying his country will get back “much more in theory” than the billions that were provided to Ukraine by his predecessor Joe Biden.

The language used by the US in announcing the deal is notably harsher towards Russia than is usually the case from the Trump administration.

A statement by the US Treasury Department refers to “Russia’s full scale invasion” and adds that “no state or person who financed or supplied the Russian war machine will be allowed to benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine”.

This will hearten Kyiv, which has demanded more pressure be placed on Russia in talks between Moscow and Washington discussing a possible ceasefire.

Despite the fact that much of the talk around the deal relates to Ukraine’s mineral wealth, the agreement also includes provisions for new oil and gas projects, and related infrastructure.

In all cases, the resources stay in Ukrainian ownership, even though the US will get joint access.

This has been seen as a softening of the Ukrainian position, since it was not in earlier drafts of the deal.

Ukraine has long aspired to join the European Union and accession talks formally began last June.

There were some concerns in Kyiv that the resources deal could hinder Ukraine’s ability to join the EU, if it gave preferential treatment to US investors, as Kyiv and Brussels already have a strategic partnership on raw materials.

But the deal’s text says that the US acknowledges Ukraine’s intention to join the EU and the need for this agreement not to conflict with that.

It also says that if Ukraine needs to revisit the terms of the deal because of “additional obligations” as part of joining the EU, then the US agrees to negotiate in good faith.

Additionally, Kyiv says the US will support additional transfers of investment and technology in Ukraine, including from the EU and elsewhere.

The US has framed the deal as an essential one to sign if Ukraine is to continue to receive its military assistance.

Ukrainian First Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko – who flew to Washington DC to sign the deal – said it envisaged the US contributing new assistance in the future, such as air defence systems.

• How much has US given to Ukraine?

This, too, would mark a change in strategy for Trump – who has sought to wind down military support for Ukraine since returning to the White House.

One outstanding question is what the accord will ultimately mean for the state of the war. The Kremlin has not yet responded to the agreement.

It appears there are no concrete security guarantees from the US, which is something Ukraine and Europe have long been pushing the White House to provide.

Trump has long been reluctant to give the same military commitment that Biden had given.

Instead, his interest in staying the course with US support for Ukraine is more implicit, due to the economic commitments set out in this deal.

That means there would still be a fragility about the commitment of Ukraine’s most important ally.

One intriguing point highlighted by Ukraine’s government is that for the first decade of the reconstruction investment fund, profits will be “fully reinvested in Ukraine’s economy”, either in new projects or reconstruction.

This could be potentially significant if there is no financial benefit for the US for 10 years.

However, this provision does not appear to be in the agreement signed in Washington, although it might later be part of an additional “technical” deal.

After that initial 10-year period, Kyiv says profits may be distributed between the partners.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News late on Wednesday that the deal was a signal to the American people that “we have a chance to participate, get some of the funding and the weapons, compensation for those and be partners with the success of the Ukraine people”.

“We don’t care about sales to the United States,” says Hu Tianqiang as one of his toy fighter jets flies past our heads.

It’s hard to hear him above the buzzing toy planes and miniature drones, an almost rhythmic backdrop to the cacophony of toys that surround him, all clamouring for the attention of buyers.

Hu’s stall, Zhongxiang Toys, sits inside the world’s biggest wholesale market in the small Chinese city of Yiwu.

It’s a huge showroom of more than 75,000 shops where buyers come seeking just about everything, from twinkling Christmas lights and kitchenware to umbrellas and massage guns. It can take most of the day just to get around one department given each of them has an airport hangar’s worth of goods on show.

Yiwu is in the province of Zhejiang, along China’s eastern coast. The manufacturing and export hub, home to more than 30 ports, accounted for 17% of all Chinese sales to the US last year.

That puts Yiwu, and this region, at the frontline of the US-China trade war.

Mr Hu, too, is on the frontline. He sits among rows of snazzy toy jets, squeaking dogs, fluffy stuffed animals, barbies and motorcycle-riding spidermen – a sliver of the $34bn (£25bn) worth of toys China exported in 2024.

About $10bn of it went to the US. But now, these Chinese exports to America face up to 245% tariffs. And US President Donald Trump has made it clear that he blames Beijing in particular for cornering too much of the global market.

But things have changed here since Trump’s first trade war against China, which kicked off in 2018. It taught Yiwu a lesson, summed up by Mr Hu: “Other countries have money too!”

That defiance has become a familiar theme in the world’s second-biggest economy, which is bracing itself for another turbulent Trump presidency.

Beijing, which has been repeatedly telling the world that the US was bullying countries into trade negotiations, has not backed down yet from the trade war.

The propaganda online has ratcheted up, applauding Chinese innovation and diplomacy in contrast to the uncertainty unleashed by Trump. On the country’s highly controlled social media, there are plenty of posts echoing the leadership’s promise that China will keep fighting.

And in factories and markets, businessmen and exporters now say they have other alternatives, beyond Trump’s America. Mr Hu, for instance, says around 20%-30% of his business came from US buyers. But not anymore.

“We don’t care about that 20-30%,” Mr Hu says. “We now sell mostly to South America and the Middle East. We are not lacking money, we are rich.”

When we ask about Trump, his colleague Chen Lang jumps in, rolling his eyes: “He’s cracking international jokes like no other. One day, one joke. Adding tariffs for him is like cracking a joke.”

Nearby, one of the thousands of buyers that flock to this market every day is negotiating a price to buy more than 100 robots that turn into cars in a series of beeps and buzzes. After tapping various numbers into a calculator, the final price is written in chalk on the floor.

The buyer, we are told, is from Dubai. The BBC met many others from across Africa and South America.

Lin Xiupeng says he has noticed the shift away from American buyers in his last 10 years in the toy business.

“A few days ago, the shop next to us had an order from a US client. It’s worth more than one million yuan. But because of tariffs, the shop owner decided to cancel it,” he says, offering us cups of tea.

“They must need China,” he says, adding that the country supplies most of America’s toys.

“I think there are a lot of businesses in the US protesting these days.”

Mr Lin is correct. Some toy shop owners in the US have written to the White House describing the tariffs as “disastrous” for their business.

“The tariffs are taking a hatchet to small businesses across America,” Jonathan Cathey, who owns a toy company in Los Angeles, told the BBC over the phone.

He invested his last $500 in his company, Loyal Subjects, in 2009, which he ran from his two-bedroom bungalow in West Hollywood. He says it’s now a multi-million-dollar business, but the tariffs could derail his plans.

“The entire toy industry could go under. We are looking at the total implosion of the supply chain. It’s going to get really ugly,” he warns.

He says swapping suppliers is a huge task: “You need a lot of resources on the ground to produce a toy and many of these Chinese businesses have spent 40 years perfecting their craft.”

China has been a big part of Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office, with his administration going head-to-head with Beijing.

“He seems to be launching a crusade against the whole world,” says former Senior Colonel Zhou Bo, who served in the People’s Liberation Army. “But of course he’s trying to bash China the hardest.”

Trump accused China of operating the Panama Canal, which is run by a Hong Kong-based firm, and vowed to take it back. He has been on the hunt for ways to mine rare earth minerals, which China effectively has a monopoly over, making this a key part of any deal with Ukraine. His threats to take Greenland are also likely aimed at curbing China’s ambitions in the Arctic.

And, of course, he initiated another trade war, which takes special aim at China’s neighbours, such as Vietnam and Cambodia, that have been crucial to its evolving supply chain.

In the last week, he suggested the levies on Chinese goods could be halved and spoke of “a fair deal with China” that his administration was “actively” negotiating.

But China’s Commerce Ministry rebuffed this as “groundless with no factual basis”. The headlines in state media haven’t spared him either: “Trump is probably the worst president in American history,” read one on state TV.

It seems the US president is waiting for his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to pick up the phone.

“We in China say – we have to let the bullet fly for a moment,” Col Zhou says. “That means in the fog of war, we do not know what will come next. I believe this kind of tit-for-tat would last for maybe one or two months – hopefully not more than three months.”

It cannot go on, he adds, because that would not be good.

It’s certainly not good for China. Trump’s tariffs are not even the biggest challenge facing the country, which is also grappling with domestic economic pain, from low consumption to a housing crisis that has dented people’s savings and confidence in the future.

The terrible timing aside, the tariffs are biting Chinese businesses.

Goldman Sachs has forecast that China’s economy will grow by 4.5% this year, short of the government’s target: 5%.

The BBC reported from the trading hub of Guangzhou in mid-April that US-China trade was grinding to a halt, with exports to American households piling up on factory floors. That is borne out by this month’s economic data, which show that activity in factories has sharply slowed.

When the BBC rang suppliers to see if shipments to the US had resumed, what emerged was a messy picture. One supplier said he had half-a-million pieces of clothing waiting to ship to Walmart, and a few others echoed his uncertainty. But two exporters we spoke to said some shipments from US retailers had indeed restarted.

The range and complexity of the trade between the two economies, which includes cargo cranes, umbrellas and everything in between, means that it’s often down to different businesses and supply chains as to how they deal with the tariffs.

Whatever the business, there is no doubt the American consumer will feel the absence, or potentially higher prices, of Chinese goods.

The US still relies heavily on Chinese manufacturing to meet its own domestic demand – think phones, computers, semiconductors, furniture, clothes and, of course, toys. Electronics and machinery alone account for more than 50% of US imports.

Walmart and Target reportedly told Mr Trump in a meeting last week that shoppers are likely to see empty shelves and higher prices from next month. They also warned that supply shocks could carry on until Christmas.

Some 90% of all Christmas decorations hung around American homes come from Yiwu in China, where sellers, surrounded by signs wishing the world “Feliz Navidad” told us they’re now trying to focus on sales to South America.

And that effort is very evident in Yiwu.

In the early morning, before the shutters even open, the cavernous lobby of the wholesale market echoes with voices reciting key phrases.

“Shukran,” says the teacher in Arabic. The students repeat it several times to perfect the pronunciation before learning that it means “thank you”. “Aafwan” comes the reply, or “you’re welcome”.

These are free lessons offered by a local government association. Most of the students are women, dressed in their best to also impress their customers.

“These women are the backbone of trade across China,” says one stall holder, who is originally from Iran and is giving private lessons to an eager student.

“They’re doing these lessons to stay ahead of one another, to stay in competition.”

Most of the traders can already speak a few words of English. Now they say they need to greet their new buyers in Spanish and Arabic – a small but crucial sign of China’s shifting trade relationships.

Oscar, a Colombian who would only give us his first name, was wandering the halls of the market with bags filled with fluffy bunnies and bears.

He says the US-China trade war offers “many opportunities” for traders from other parts of the world.

“Doing business with China is very important,” he insists. “[Doing business with] the US these days, less so.”

Pakistan’s army chief, General Asim Munir, is not known for seeking the spotlight.

Yet in recent weeks, it has found him – not only in Pakistan, but across the border in India and in diplomatic capitals far beyond.

His remarks on Kashmir – made just days before a militant attack in Indian-administered Kashmir which killed 26 people – have reignited a debate over Pakistan’s military stance and its role in rising regional tensions.

Kashmir, which India and Pakistan claim in full but administer only in part, has been a flashpoint between the countries since they were partitioned in 1947.

Though not directly linked to the violence, Gen Munir’s words have been dissected and interpreted as a shift towards a more confrontational tone, both from him and the institution he leads.

He is viewed as the most powerful man in Pakistan, where the military has long been blamed for interfering in politics, installing and removing governments. As tensions with India rise again, he is being watched as the central figure in a volatile nuclear-armed rivalry.

So who is Gen Munir? And what drives him?

Gen Munir, who is in his late 50s, is the son of a school principal and religious scholar. He joined the army through the Officers Training School in Mangla in 1986, earning the prestigious Sword of Honour given to the best-performing cadet. He was then commissioned into the 23 Frontier Force Regiment.

Over nearly four decades, Gen Munir has commanded troops along Pakistan’s sensitive northern borders near Kashmir, led its intelligence services and served in Saudi Arabia to bolster defence ties.

He holds a masters degree in public policy and strategic security management from the National Defence University in Islamabad and is also an alumnus of military institutions in Japan and Malaysia.

I first saw Gen Munir in Islamabad in 2023, at a packed hotel hall filled with ministers, diplomats, generals and journalists. Dressed in civilian clothes, he moved with calm authority, scanning the room as he approached the podium.

He opened his speech with a recitation from the Quran, reflecting his rare status as a hafiz – someone who has memorised Islam’s holy book in its entirety – among Pakistan’s military elite.

In person, Gen Munir seemed soft-spoken and polite. On stage, he was stern, with the sharp gaze of a former spymaster. A man trained to watch, listen and wait. Now, his words are echoing beyond Pakistan.

Gen Munir became Pakistan’s chief of army staff in November 2022, stepping into the role amid a perfect storm of political upheaval, an economic crisis and public disillusionment with the military’s role in governance.

His appointment followed months of speculation, largely because of his fallout with the then-prime minister Imran Khan.

Gen Munir had served just eight months as the chief of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency before being removed by Khan in what many believe was a deeply personal and political move – though both sides deny this. That moment remains a turning point in their relationship.

Today, Khan is serving a sentence in jail and Gen Munir is the most powerful man in the country.

Gen Munir is regarded by many commentators as differing in temperament and approach from his immediate predecessor, Qamar Javed Bajwa.

Gen Bajwa was more public-facing, supported backchannel diplomacy with India and handled a major escalation of tensions between the countries in 2019 with caution.

Under what came to be known as the “Bajwa Doctrine”, he increasingly emphasised regional stability and geo-economics alongside traditional security priorities.

After a suicide bomb attack on troops in Indian-administered Kashmir at Pulwama in 2019, Gen Bajwa oversaw Pakistan’s military response to Indian air raids but refrained from escalation, returning Indian pilot Abhinandan Varthaman and helping avert a full-blown war.

“Bajwa was clear,” says Abdul Basit, senior fellow at Singapore’s S Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

“He had diplomatic channels open and was managing multiple fronts like Kashmir, Afghanistan and the US withdrawal from Afghanistan with pragmatism,” he said, adding that Gen Munir “is under immediate, intense pressure to act”.

“He has come in with unfinished business to stabilise the country’s security situation internally… The problems he faces (rising terrorism, political instability, an economic crisis, regional tensions) are urgent and worsening. He cannot afford long, drawn-out strategies like his predecessor Bajwa could. He needs quicker, firmer responses – both at home and abroad.”

The dispute over Kashmir is an issue that no Pakistani military leader can appear weak on, observers say.

“Kashmir is Pakistan’s national security interest – every child in Pakistani schools is taught this,” political and defence analyst Amir Zia told the BBC, adding: “It’s a basic understanding here that we cannot give India any leverage.”

Last week’s attack was the deadliest on civilians in Indian-administered Kashmir in two decades and led to India accusing Pakistan of supporting the attackers, charges Islamabad denies. There are fears India will respond with military action.

Since he took over, Gen Munir has mostly not spoken in public, but one pivotal speech has gained widespread attention.

On 17 April, he told a meeting of expatriates in Islamabad “we are different from Hindus” in every possible way.

He doubled down on Kashmir, calling it Pakistan’s “jugular vein”, and vowed Pakistan would “never abandon Kashmiris in their heroic struggle against Indian occupation“.

The speech might have remained one of many ideological statements made by Pakistani leaders over the years except for what happened next.

Just five days later, on 22 April, militants opened fire on tourists in Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir.

“This was not standard rhetoric,” says Joshua T White, a South Asia expert at Johns Hopkins University.

“While the substance aligns with Pakistan’s ideological narrative, the tone – especially its direct invocation of Hindu-Muslim differences – made it particularly inflammatory.”

“Coming just before the Pahalgam attack, it has badly complicated any effort by Pakistan to claim restraint or pursue backchannel diplomacy,” he adds.

Mr Basit agrees the optics were damaging: “He [Munir] may have been caught up in the moment. He said things that, in a private setting, may not have raised eyebrows but on that public platform, as army chief, they came across as overtly confrontational.”

“Some saw it as a power move,” says Mr Basit.

“It felt like his arrival moment. A declaration that he’s now firmly in control, that Pakistan’s direction is once again in the army’s hands,” he adds.

Gen Munir made another speech earlier in the year, which some think may signal he is adopting a harder line than his predecessor. Speaking in Muzaffarabad on Kashmir Solidarity Day on 5 February, he declared: “Pakistan has already fought three wars for Kashmir, and if 10 more wars are required, Pakistan will fight them.”

But given the timing, it’s his latest speech that has fuelled speculation after the Pahalgam attack, with Indian officials hinting at a link. Though no evidence has been presented so far, the rhetoric has deepened mistrust.

At home, Gen Munir’s actions are being seen by many as those of a leader who is calculated, uncompromising and determined to reassert military authority.

After the 9 May 2023 riots sparked by Khan’s arrest, Gen Munir launched an unprecedented crackdown on his supporters.

Civilians were tried under military laws, a top general was forced into early retirement, and former ISI chief Lt Gen Faiz Hameed (retired), once close to Khan, was arrested.

Critics called it a purge of Khan loyalists; supporters saw it as restoring discipline to Pakistan’s powerful military whose authority – and that of Bajwa and Munir – had been challenged. The two men were being heavily criticised in public.

Gen Munir is just over two years into his five-year term, but the contours of his legacy are already taking shape.

Whether the simmering crisis with India escalates into a larger military stand-off or is tackled through diplomacy, the future of Pakistan’s relationship with its neighbour may well hinge on which direction Gen Munir steers it in.

Mr Basit warns the next few weeks “will determine how things unfold”.

“How Gen Munir navigates this crisis will define him as a soldier, as a power broker, and what kind of regional actor Pakistan wants to be. And right now, that choice sits largely with him.”

Hollywood star Robert De Niro has said he his showing “love and support” for his daughter Airyn, after she came out as being transgender.

In a recent interview with LGBTQ+ publication Them, Airyn De Niro spoke about “stepping into this new identity”.

Airyn’s famous father told Variety in a statement: “I loved and supported Aaron as my son, and now I love and support Airyn as my daughter.

“I don’t know what the big deal is,” he added. “I love all my children.”

The Goodfellas actor’s daughter, 29, noted how she began to transition last year because, as a transgender woman, “there’s a difference between being visible and being seen.

“I’ve been visible. I don’t think I’ve been seen yet.”

Airyn, daughter of De Niro and Toukie Smith, also said the actress Laverne Cox had been an inspiration and that she now hoped to help expand trans visibility and to honour her black queer ancestors.

“Trans women being honest and open, especially [in] public spaces like social media and getting to see them in their success… I’m like, you know what? Maybe it’s not too late for me.”

And with regard to the experience of being one of seven De Niro children, she went on say that “no parent is perfect, but I am grateful that both my parents agreed to keep me out of the limelight.

“They have told me they wanted me to have as much of a normal childhood as possible.”

The rights of transgender women in the UK have been challenged in recent weeks, after judges at the Supreme Court unanimously ruled a woman is defined by biological sex under equalities law.

Now the UK’s only ever judge to publicly say they are transgender is planning to take the government to the European Court of Human Rights over the ruling which she said violated her human rights.

The estranged husband of a woman who served a poisonous mushroom lunch to her family says it was “very rare” for her to hold social gatherings at home.

Simon Patterson was invited to the fatal meal prepared by Erin Patterson – but decided not to attend the day before.

Mr Patterson is the first witness in the trial of Ms Patterson – who is charged with the murder of three relatives and the attempted murder of another, with the case centring on a beef wellington lunch at her house in July 2023.

Ms Patterson, 50, has pleaded not guilty and her defence team says she “panicked” after unintentionally serving poison to family members she loved.

Three people died in hospital in the days after the meal, including Ms Patterson’s former in-laws, Don Patterson, 70, and Gail Patterson, 70, as well as Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66. Local pastor Ian Wilkinson survived after weeks of treatment in hospital.

The jury has been shown text messages exchanged between Simon and Erin Patterson the day before the deadly mushroom lunch.

Mr Patterson said in court Thursday he felt “too uncomfortable” about attending the lunch.

Erin Patterson responded: “That’s really disappointing. I’ve spent many hours this week preparing lunch for tomorrow… It’s important to me that you’re all there tomorrow and that I can have the conversations that I need to have.”

The prosecution alleges Ms Patterson invited the group to lunch “on the pretence she’d been diagnosed with cancer”.

The court in Morwell, regional Victoria, heard that between the couple’s marriage in 2007 and separation in 2015, there were a number of periods of separation and reconciliation – including Erin Patterson leaving her husband and their baby son in the middle of a road trip across Australia in 2009.

Mr Patterson had to drive from Townsville to Perth – a distance of about 5,000 km (3,100 miles) – alone with the child, he told the court.

The couple met in 2002, while both working at Monash City Council, where Mr Patterson was a civil engineer.

Asked about his wife, Mr Patterson said: “Erin is very intelligent.

“Some of the things that attracted me to her in the first place is definitely her intelligence. She’s quite witty and can be quite funny.”

Asked about how his wife got on with his parents, Don and Gail Patterson, Mr Patterson said: “She especially got on with dad. They shared a love of knowledge and learning in the world.”

With his voice faltering, Mr Patterson added: “I think she loved his gentle nature.”

He said Ms Patterson held a university degree in business and accounting, and was also qualified as an air traffic controller having worked at Melbourne’s Tullemarine airport.

Mr Patterson is due in court again on Friday to take more questions from prosecutors.

Mr Patterson painted a picture of a relationship peppered with periods of separation – the first within the first two years of marriage – at one point becoming emotional and asking for tissues.

After the final separation there was a lot of communication by text message he said, including “banter” and talk about politics, he said.

But there was a change in the relationship in 2022 when Ms Patterson was “upset” when her husband listed himself as separated on his tax return.

The “chatty nature” of their relationship “pretty much stopped” after this, Mr Patterson said – with communication now only about the “practical management” of their family life.

Wearing a navy suit, white shirt and purple tie, he told the court that Ms Patterson received a “substantial inheritance” from her grandmother which Mr Patterson estimated at A$2m ($1.3m; £964,000) – though it was not paid in a lump sum and was “dribbled out” by the executors of the estate.

The jury has heard that there is no dispute that the lunch of beef wellington, mashed potatoes and green beans contained death cap mushrooms and caused the guests’ illnesses.

Whether Ms Patterson intended to kill or cause very serious injury is the main issue in the case, the judge has told the jury.

The court heard the couple had married in 2007 and had two children together – though separated permanently in 2015 .

They had remained “amicable” including sharing family holidays, though there was a falling out over child support payments in 2022, the jury was told.

During the prosecution’s opening statement on Wednesday, lead barrister Nanette Rogers said the jury would hear evidence that Ms Patterson had travelled to a location, near her home in Leongatha, where death cap mushroom sightings had been logged on a naturalist website.

And in the days after the lunch, she took a number of steps to “conceal” what she had done, the prosecution alleged.

There’d be evidence that she lied to investigators about the source of the mushrooms in the dish – saying some had come from an Asian grocery in Melbourne and she had never foraged wild ones. And she made a trip to a local dump to dispose of a food dehydrator prosecutors say she used to prepare the toxic meal.

Ms Patterson’s barrister has said she did not deliberately serve poisoned food to her guests.

“The defence case is that she panicked because she was overwhelmed by the fact that these four people had become so ill because of the food she had served them.”

The court heard how Mr Patterson spoke to his father the morning after the lunch and discovered both his parents had been up since midnight with vomiting and diahorrea and that they had called an ambulance.

And after trying to call his aunt and uncle, Heather and Ian Wilkinson, he went to their home when they did not answer.

“Ian answered the door. He looked grey and spooked,” Mr Patterson recalled. “Yeah, he was struggling.

“I said ‘How are you?’ He said ‘Not good’.”

Mr Patterson then saw Heather Wilkinson sitting on the couch, he told the court.

“She looked pretty crook. She had a container as a spew bucket, ” he said.

After Mr Wilkinson left the room, Heather spoke to him, he confirmed, under questioning from prosecutor Dr Rogers.

“We didn’t have much conversation, but she was puzzled and she said ‘I noticed Erin served herself her food on a coloured plate which was different to the rest’.”

“I acknowledged I’d heard her, but did not progress it as a conversation,” he added.

Because he had been told an ambulance would have taken an hour to arrive, Mr Patterson drove the couple to hospital in the Wilkinsons’ car when Heather Wilkinson raised the subject once more.

“She mentioned the coloured plate again, She asked me ‘Is Erin short of crockery? Is that why she would have this different coloured plate that she served herself with?” Mr Patterson said.

“I can’t remember the exact phrase but it was something like that.

And what did you reply, the prosecutor asked?

“I said yes, Erin doesn’t have that many plates and that may be the reason.”

Mr Patterson became emotional again, describing going to see his parents at Korumburra hospital where they were in the same room but separate beds.

“Dad was substantially worse than mum. He was really struggling,” he said fighting back tears..

“He was lying on his side. He was hunched quite noticeably, with a really discoloured face, struggling to speak.

“Speaking was an effort, taking the energy to speak was an effort and his voice was strained in a way that he wasn’t right inside. He was in pain.”

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The US has urged India and Pakistan to work together to “de-escalate tensions” after a deadly militant attack in Indian-administered Kashmir last week killed 26 civilians.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio held separate talks with India’s foreign minister and Pakistan’s prime minister on Wednesday and called on them to “maintain peace and security in South Asia”.

India accuses Pakistan of supporting militants behind the 22 April attack at a scenic meadow near the resort town of Pahalgam. Islamabad rejects the allegations.

On Wednesday India also announced the closure of its airspace for all Pakistani aircraft, in the latest of a series of tit-for-tat measures taken by both sides.

The “perpetrators, backers and planners” of the Pahalgam attack “must be brought to justice”, Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar wrote on X after speaking to his US counterpart by telephone, as Rubio expressed his sorrow and reaffirmed Washington’s support in India’s fight against terrorism.

Meanwhile, the top US diplomat expressed the need to “condemn the terror attack” in his talks with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

He urged Islamabad to co-operate “in investigating this unconscionable attack”.

During the call, Sharif rejected “Indian attempts to link Pakistan to the incident”, a statement issued by his office read. The Pakistani prime minister also urged the US to “impress upon India to dial down the rhetoric and act responsibly”.

The phone calls come after Pakistan’s information minister warned that they had “credible intelligence” suggesting India might launch military action against the country in the next 24-36 hours. Delhi has not publicly commented on these claims.

There has been speculation over whether India will respond with military strikes against Pakistan, as it did after deadly militant attacks in 2019 and 2016. Islamabad has warned of retaliation in case of military action from India’s side.

Amid mounting tensions Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has held back-to-back meetings with senior state and defence officials in Delhi this week.

On Wednesday, India’s cabinet committee on security, led by Modi, met for the second time since the attack.

This came a day after the prime minister, in his meeting with India’s top defence officials, gave the armed forces a free hand to decide on the “timing, targets and mode” in their response to the Pahalgam attack, according to Indian news outlets citing unnamed sources.

Troops from both sides have traded intermittent small-arms fire across the border for the past few days.

On Tuesday India “strongly objected” to multiple ceasefire violations by Pakistan during a weekly call between senior army officials of both countries, Indian news outlets reported.

A day later, India announced that it would not allow any Pakistani aircraft – commercial or military – to fly over its airspace, responding to a similar move by Pakistan.

Last week, India suspended most visas given to Pakistani nationals and asked them to leave the country within days, the deadline for which has since passed. It also suspended a key water-sharing agreement with Pakistan.

Islamabad further retaliated with similar visa cancellations and by suspending a 1972 peace treaty with Delhi.

Since the measures were announced, 786 Pakistani citizens have left India and 1,465 Indians have returned from Pakistan, media reports say.

Meanwhile, the Instagram accounts of a number of Pakistani film actors and celebrities have been blocked in India.

Searches for some celebrity accounts now come up as unavailable.

“This is because we complied with a legal request to restrict this content,” an Instagram notification reads.

India has not officially commented on why the accounts were taken offline. More than a dozen Pakistani news channels were also banned in India earlier this week for spreading what was described as provocative content, media reports say.

Kashmir, which India and Pakistan claim in full but administer only in part, has been a flashpoint between the two nuclear-armed countries since they were partitioned in 1947.

Indian-administered Kashmir has seen an armed insurgency against Indian rule since 1989, with militants targeting security forces and civilians alike.

India has not officially named any organisation it suspects carried out the attack, but it was initially reported that a group called the Resistance Front was behind the attack. The group, however, denied involvement in a statement issued days later. It is reportedly affiliated with Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based militant group, which India classifies as terrorist.

Indian police have named three of four suspected attackers. They said two were Pakistani nationals and one a local man from Indian-administered Kashmir. There is no information on the fourth man.

Many survivors said the gunmen specifically targeted Hindu men.

The attack, the deadliest attack on civilians in two decades in the disputed territory, has sparked widespread anger across India.

Modi has vowed to exact revenge against the perpetrators.

“India will identify, track and punish” the people behind the attack in a way “beyond their imagination”, Modi said in a fiery speech days after the killings last week.

One of Japan’s busiest bullet train lines came to a halt after a snake tangled itself in a power line, causing a power outage.

Tokaido Shinkansen trains running between Tokyo and Osaka were suspended from around 17:25 local time on Wednesday.

Services resumed at around 19:00 local time, operator Central Japan Railway Company said, according to local media.

Japan is currently in one of its busiest holiday seasons, Golden Week, which consists of four national holidays in seven days, and will see trains, airports and holiday hotspots hit their peak.

Osaka is also hosting the World Expo this year, which will see millions of foreign and domestic visitors flock to the city until it ends in October.

The snake entanglement occurred between Gifu-Hashima and Maibara stations, which suspended Tokyo-bound trains between Shin-Osaka and Nagoya, and the Osaka-bound trains between Shin-Osaka and Tokyo, according to Japanese news agency Kyodo News.

While authorities worked to get power restored, passengers reportedly gathered around staff at one station while large queues formed at ticket machines.

One frequent shinkansen traveller, who was returning to Tokyo, said it was the first time he had experienced this.

“I use the shinkansen several times a month, but this is the first time I have experienced suspensions due to a power outage,” Satoshi Tagawa, 46, told Kyodo News.

But 26-year-old Kazutoshi Tachi, said he was “fed up with the troubles” to services.

“I want them to run on time,” he added.

This is not the first time a snake has brought the shinkansen service to a halt.

In April 2024, there was a 17-minute hold-up while authorities removed a 16 inch (40.6cm) snake from the train between Nagoya and Tokyo, according to CBS News, BBC News’s US partner.

Tesla has denied reports that it has contacted recruitment firms to launch a search for a replacement for Elon Musk as chief executive.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that the electric car firm’s board began looking for a successor to Mr Musk last month.

It said this was because of frustration around Mr Musk’s focus on his job in US President Donald Trump’s administration and Tesla’s sinking share price.

However, in statement on Thursday, Tesla said the report was “absolutely false” while Mr Musk wrote on his social media platform X that the paper was “a discredit to journalism”.

Tesla chair Robyn Denholm wrote on X: “There was a media report erroneously claiming that the Tesla Board had contacted recruitment firms to initiate a CEO search at the company.”

“This is absolutely false (and this was communicated to the media before the report was published).”

She added: “The CEO of Tesla is Elon Musk and the board is highly confident in his ability to continue executing on the exciting growth plan ahead.”

The denial comes after the Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources, wrote that Mr Musk was told by the board he needed to spend more time on Tesla and that he needed to say so publicly.

The paper said Mr Musk did not push back against the suggestion.

Last week, Mr Musk said on a conference call about earnings “I’ll be allocating far more of my time to Tesla” and pledged to “significantly” cut back his government role.

Writing on X on Thursday, Mr Musk was heavily critical of the Wall Street Journal’s reporting.

“It is an EXTREMELY BAD BREACH OF ETHICS that the WSJ would publish a DELIBERATELY FALSE ARTICLE and fail to include an unequivocal denial beforehand by the Tesla board of directors,” he said.

He later reposted a comment from an X user that called the paper “trash”.

Mr Musk’s leadership of Trump’s newly created advisory body – the Department for Government Efficiency (Doge) – has attracted a lot of criticism.

Investors in the company

Some customers of Tesla say they no longer feel loyal to the brand because of Mr Musk’s controversial political views and actions while in charge of Doge.

Some have pledged to boycott the firm while others have staged protests against it because of Mr Musk – in some cases causing criminal damage to dealerships.

Meanwhile, investors and analysts have said Mr Musk’s reputation and his juggling of high-level roles is part of the reason why Tesla struggling financially.

In March, Trump – with Mr Musk by his side – told reporters at the White House gardens anyone using violence against Tesla would “go through hell”.

He then pledged to buy a red Model-S, one of a number of Teslas lined up on the White House drive that day, to support the electric car firm.

Temporary government employees, such as Mr Musk, are normally limited to working 130 days a year which, if counted from the day of Trump’s inauguration, will end in late May.

But it is unclear when Mr Musk, who contributed more than a quarter of a billion dollars to Trump’s re-election, will step down completely.

Trump said last month he would keep Mr Musk “as long as I could keep him”.

On Wednesday, Mr Musk, who also runs space firm SpaceX, made light of the idea he was doing too many jobs.

In a video posted on X in a White House cabinet meeting, he was wearing two baseball caps.

“They say I wear a lot of hats,” Mr Musk said in the video. “That’s true. Even my hat has a hat.”

Bloomberg reported that Mr Musk also said on Wednesday that Doge should examine the spending of the US central bank, the Federal Reserve, particularly the cost of renovating its headquarters.

Mr Musk has made similar comments before, raising the idea that the Fed should be audited. However, such a move would pose questions about the bank’s independence.

Israel’s war in Gaza grinds on, but opposition is growing.

In recent weeks, thousands of Israeli reservists – from all branches of the military – have signed letters demanding that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government stop the fighting and concentrate instead on reaching a deal to bring back the remaining 59 hostages being held by Hamas.

Eighteen months ago, few Israelis doubted the war’s logic: to defeat Hamas and return the hostages.

For many, the January ceasefire and subsequent return of more than 30 hostages raised hopes that the war might soon end.

But after Israel broke the ceasefire and returned to war in mid-March, those hopes were dashed.

“We came to the conclusion that Israel is going to a very bad place,” Danny Yatom, a former head of the spy agency Mossad told me.

“We understand that what mainly bothers Netanyahu is his own interests. And in the list of priorities, his interests and the interests of having the government stable are the first ones, and not the hostages.”

Many of those signing recent letters are, like Yatom, long time critics of the prime minister. Some were involved in the anti-government protests that preceded the outbreak of war on 7 October 2023 following Hamas’s attack on Israel.

But Yatom says that’s not why he decided to speak out.

“I signed my name and I am participating in the demonstrations not because of any political reason, but because of a national reason,” he said.

“I am highly concerned that my country is going to lose its way.”

The first open letter to be published, in early April, was signed by 1,000 air force reservists and retirees.

“The continuation of the war does not contribute to any of its declared goals,” they wrote, “and will lead to the death of the hostages”.

The signatories urged Israelis to follow their lead before time ran out on the estimated 24 hostages still thought to be alive in Gaza.

“Every day that passes is further risking their lives. Every moment of hesitation is a crying shame.”

In the weeks since, similar letters have appeared from almost every branch of the military, including elite fighting and intelligence units, along with a number of decorated commanders.

More than 12,000 signatures all.

After 7 October, hundreds of thousands of Israeli reservists answered the call, eager to serve.

But now, more and more are refusing, with reports suggesting that reserve attendance has dropped to as little as 50-60%.

For a military that depends heavily on reservists to fight its wars, it’s a looming crisis on a scale not seen since Israel’s first Lebanon war in 1982.

In a leafy Jerusalem park, I met “Yoav” (not his real name), an infantry reservist who asked not to be identified.

Yoav served in Gaza last summer but said he wouldn’t do it again.

“I had the feeling that I needed to go to help my brothers and sisters,” he told me.

“I believed I was doing something good. Complicated but good. But now, I don’t see it in the same way anymore.”

The government’s determination to keep fighting Hamas, while hostages risk death in the tunnels of Gaza, Yoav said, was misplaced.

“We are very strong and we can beat Hamas, but it’s not about beating Hamas,” he said. “It’s about losing our country.”

During his time in Gaza, Yoav told me, he tried to be “the best moral soldier that a man can be”.

But the longer the war goes on, critics say, the harder it is for Israel to claim, as government officials often do, that its military is the most moral army in the world.

In a recent column in the left of centre newspaper Haaretz, the retired general Amiram Levin said it was time for soldiers – starting with senior commanders – to think about disobeying orders.

“The risk of being dragged into war crimes and suffering a fatal blow to the Israel Defense Forces and our social ethos,” he wrote, “make it impossible to stand idly by”.

Some of Israel’s critics, including those who have brought cases before the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice, argue that such lines have already been crossed.

Netanyahu has lashed out at the protesters, dismissing their concerns as “propaganda lies”, spread by “a small handful of fringe elements – loud, anarchist and disconnected pensioners, most of whom haven’t served in years”.

But polls suggest the protest letters reflect a growing public conviction: that the release of the remaining hostages should come before everything.

In Tel Aviv, where noisy anti-war demonstrations have been held for well over a year, images of the hostages are held aloft, while other protestors sit on the road, cradling pictures of Palestinian children killed during the war.

Amid the row generated by the letters, such emotive displays appear to have rattled the authorities.

On 20 April, the police briefly told protesters that “pictures of children or babies from Gaza” would not be permitted, along with posters displaying the words “genocide” or “ethnic cleansing”.

Following expressions of outrage from the organisers, the police quickly backed down.

Meanwhile, the prime minister continues to speak of his determination to defeat Hamas.

Military pressure, Netanyahu continues to insist, is the only way to bring the hostages home.

President Donald Trump has asked for more time on the US economy as it contracted for the first time in three years, stoking recession fears.

He said the figure was misleading because companies had stockpiled imports ahead of his imposition of tariffs.

Trump, however, said $8tn (£6tn) of inward investment had been promised, which he argued would restore American manufacturing prowess.

The US economy contracted at an annual rate of 0.3%, the US commerce department said, a sharp downturn after growth of 2.4% in the previous quarter. It comes as Trump marks 100 days in office, with opinion polls indicating public discontent over his economic stewardship.

Speaking on Wednesday afternoon at a White House event attended by business leaders, Trump blamed his Democratic predecessor, President Joe Biden, for the disappointing gross domestic product data.

“This is Biden’s economy because we took over on January 20th,” Trump said. “I think you have to give us a little bit of time to get moving.”

It comes in the aftermath of the Republican president’s import taxes, which have disrupted global trade and markets.

• ‘We don’t care’: A defiant China looks beyond Trump’s America
• Why the IMF is worried about the economy – three things to know

Trump’s finger pointing at Biden drew scorn from Democrats.

Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, minority leader of the US House of Representatives, said: “This is not Joe Biden’s economy, Donald, it is your economy.

“It is the Trump economy, it is a failed economy and the American people know it.”

At Wednesday’s White House event, Trump touted planned investments in technology, healthcare and infrastructure.

He introduced CEOs of major companies, including Hyundai’s Jose Munoz, Toyota’s Ted Ogawa, and Johnson & Johnson’s Joaquin Duato.

Trump also urged Congress to pass his tax bill, which includes trillions of dollars in tax and spending cuts, but faces opposition from Democrats and some Republicans.

At a television appearance earlier in the day with cabinet members, Trump played down fears of shortages of items such as toys, as trade between the US and China falls sharply.

“Well, maybe the children will have to have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know?” he said. “And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.”

Trump has enacted 10% levies on imports to the US from nearly all countries, after announcing a 90-day pause on higher tariffs. The amount paid by these countries could change after the period expires in July.

Another 25% tariff has been imposed on Mexico and Canada. The levies on China, however, have led to an all-out trade war with the world’s second largest economy.

Trump imposed import taxes of up to 145% on Chinese goods coming into the US and China hit back with a 125% tax on American products.

His administration said when the new tariffs were added on to existing ones, the levies on some Chinese goods could reach 245%.

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