A senior Hamas official has told the BBC the Palestinian armed group will reject the latest US proposal for a new Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal.

The White House said on Thursday that Israel had “signed off” on US envoy Steve Witkoff’s plan and that it was waiting for a formal response from Hamas.

Israeli media cited Israeli officials as saying it would see Hamas hand over 10 living hostages and the bodies of 18 dead hostages in two phases in exchange for a 60-day ceasefire and the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

The Hamas official said the proposal did not satisfy core demands, including an end to the war, and that it would respond in due course.

The Israeli government has not commented, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told hostages’ families on Thursday that he accepted Witkoff’s plan.

Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza and resumed its military offensive against Hamas on 18 March following the collapse of a two-month ceasefire brokered by the US, Qatar and Egypt.

It said it wanted to put pressure on Hamas to release the 58 hostages it is still holding, at least 20 of whom are believed to be alive.

On 19 May, the Israeli military launched an expanded offensive that Netanyahu said would see troops “take control of all areas” of Gaza. The next day, he said Israel would also ease the blockade and allow a “basic” amount of food into Gaza to prevent a famine.

Almost 4,000 people have been killed in Gaza over the past 10 weeks, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

The UN says another 600,000 people have been displaced again by Israeli ground operations and evacuation orders, and a report by the UN-backed IPC warns that about 500,000 people face catastrophic levels of hunger in the coming months.

At a news conference in Washington DC on Thursday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked whether she could confirm a report by Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya TV that Israel and Hamas had agreed a new ceasefire deal.

“I can confirm that Special Envoy Witkoff and the president submitted a ceasefire proposal to Hamas that Israel backed and supported. Israel signed off on this proposal before it was sent to Hamas,” she said.

“I can also confirm that those discussions are continuing, and we hope that a ceasefire in Gaza will take place so we can return all of the hostages home,” she added.

However, a senior Hamas official later said the deal contradicted previous discussions between the group’s negotiators and Witkoff.

The official told the BBC that the offer did not include guarantees the temporary truce would lead to a permanent ceasefire, nor a return to the humanitarian protocol that allowed hundreds of trucks of aid into Gaza daily during the last ceasefire.

Nevertheless, he said Hamas remained in contact with the mediators and would submit its written response in due course.

Earlier, Israel’s Channel 12 TV reported the Netanyahu told hostages’ families at a meeting: “We agree to accept the latest Witkoff plan that was conveyed to us tonight. Hamas has not yet responded. We do not believe Hamas will release the last hostage, and we will not leave the Strip until all the hostages are in our hands.”

His office later issued a statement accusing one of the channel’s reporters of trying to “smuggle” a recording device into the room where the meeting took place. But it did not deny that he had agreed to the US proposal.

Netanyahu has previously said that Israel will end the war only when all the hostages are released, Hamas is either destroyed or disarmed, and its leaders have been sent into exile.

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

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response Hamas’ cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

Another four people, two of them dead, were already being held captive in Gaza before the conflict.

So far, Israel has secured the return of 197 hostages, 148 of them alive, mostly through two temporary ceasefire deals with Hamas.

At least 54,249 people have been killed in Gaza during the war, including 3,986 since Israel resumed its offensive, according to the territory’s health ministry.

On Thursday, at least 54 people were killed by Israeli strikes across Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Civil Defence agency. They included 23 people who died when a home in the central Bureij area was hit, it said.

The Israeli military said it had struck “dozens of terror targets” over the past day.

Russia has continued to make billions from fossil fuel exports to the West, data shows, helping to finance its full-scale invasion of Ukraine – now in its fourth year.

Since the start of that invasion in February 2022, Russia has made more than three times as much money by exporting hydrocarbons than Ukraine has received in aid allocated by its allies.

Data analysed by the BBC show that Ukraine’s Western allies have paid Russia more for its hydrocarbons than they have given Ukraine in aid.

Campaigners say governments in Europe and North America need to do more to stop Russian oil and gas from fuelling the war with Ukraine.

Proceeds made from selling oil and gas are key to keeping Russia’s war machine going.

Oil and gas account for almost a third of Russia’s state revenue and more than 60% of its exports.

In the wake of the February 2022 invasion, Ukraine’s allies imposed sanctions on Russian hydrocarbons. The US and UK banned Russian oil and gas, while the EU banned Russian seaborne crude imports, but not gas.

Despite this, by 29 May, Russia had made more than €883bn ($973bn; £740bn) in revenue from fossil fuel exports since the start of the full-scale invasion, including €228bn from the sanctioning countries, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).

The lion’s share of that amount, €209bn, came from EU member states.

EU states continued importing pipeline gas directly from Russia until Ukraine cut the transit in January 2025, and Russian crude oil is still piped to Hungary and Slovakia.

Russian gas is still piped to Europe in increasing quantities via Turkey: CREA’s data shows that its volume rose by 26.77% in January and February 2025 over the same period in 2024.

Hungary and Slovakia are also still receiving Russian pipeline gas via Turkey.

Despite the West’s efforts, in 2024 Russian revenues from fossil fuels fell by a mere 5% compared with 2023, along with a similar 6% drop in the volumes of exports, according to CREA. Last year also saw a 6% increase in Russian revenues from crude oil exports, and a 9% year-on-year increase in revenues from pipeline gas.

Russian estimates say gas exports to Europe rose by up to 20% in 2024, with liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports reaching record levels. Currently, half of Russia’s LNG exports go the EU, CREA says.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, says the alliance has not imposed “the strongest sanctions” on Russian oil and gas because some member states fear an escalation in the conflict and because buying them is “cheaper in the short term”.

LNG imports have not been included in the latest, 17th package of sanctions on Russia approved by the EU, but it has adopted a road map towards ending all Russian gas imports by the end of 2027.

Data shows that money made by Russia from selling fossil fuels has consistently surpassed the amount of aid Ukraine receives from its allies.

The thirst for fuel can get in the way of the West’s efforts to limit Russia’s ability to fund its war.

Mai Rosner, a senior campaigner from the pressure group Global Witness, says many Western policymakers fear that cutting imports of Russian fuels will lead to higher energy prices.

“There’s no real desire in many governments to actually limit Russia’s ability to produce and sell oil. There is way too much fear about what that would mean for global energy markets. There’s a line drawn under where energy markets would be too undermined or too thrown off kilter,” she told the BBC.

In addition to direct sales, some of the oil exported by Russia ends up in the West after being processed into fuel products in third countries via what is known as “the refining loophole”. Sometimes it gets diluted with crude from other countries, too.

CREA says it has identified three “laundromat refineries” in Turkey and three in India processing Russian crude and selling the resulting fuel on to sanctioning countries. It says they have used €6.1bn worth of Russian crude to make products for sanctioning countries.

India’s petroleum ministry criticised CREA’s report as “a deceptive effort to tarnish India’s image”.

“[These countries] know that sanctioning countries are willing to accept this. This is a loophole. It’s entirely legal. Everyone’s aware of it, but nobody is doing much to actually tackle it in a big way,” says Vaibhav Raghunandan, an analyst at CREA.

Campaigners and experts argue that Western governments have the tools and means available to stem the flow of oil and gas revenue into the Kremlin’s coffers.

According to former Russian deputy energy minister Vladimir Milov, who is now a diehard opponent of Vladimir Putin, sanctions imposed on trade in Russian hydrocarbons should be better enforced – particularly the oil price cap adopted by the G7 group of nations, which Mr Milov says “is not working“.

He is fearful, though, that the US government shake-up launched by President Donald Trump will hamper agencies such as the US Treasury or the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which are key for sanctions enforcement.

Another avenue is continued pressure on Russia’s “shadow fleet” of tankers involved in dodging the sanctions.

“That is a complex surgery operation. You need to periodically release batches of new sanctioned vessels, shell companies, traders, insurers etc. every several weeks,” Mr Milov says. According to him, this is an area where Western governments have been much more effective, particularly with the introduction of new sanctions by Joe Biden’s outgoing administration in January 2025.

Mai says that banning Russian LNG exports to Europe and closing the refining loophole in Western jurisdictions would be “important steps in finishing the decoupling of the West from Russian hydrocarbons”.

According to Mr Raghunandan from CREA, it would be relatively easy for the EU to give up Russian LNG imports.

“Fifty percent of their LNG exports are directed towards the European Union, and only 5% of the EU’s total [LNG] gas consumption in 2024 was from Russia. So if the EU decides to completely cut off Russian gas, it’s going to hurt Russia way more then it’s going to hurt consumers in the European Union,” he told the BBC.

Experts interviewed by the BBC have dismissed Donald Trump’s idea that the war with Ukraine will end if Opec brings oil prices down.

“People in Moscow are laughing at this idea, because the party which will suffer the most… is the American shale oil industry, the least cost-competitive oil industry in the world,” Mr Milov told the BBC.

Mr Raghunandan says that Russia’s cost of producing crude is also lower than in Opec countries like Saudi Arabia, so they would be hurt by lower oil prices before Russia.

“There is no way that Saudi Arabia is going to agree to that. This has been tried before. This has led to conflict between Saudi Arabia and the US,” he says.

Ms Rosner says there are both moral and practical issues with the West buying Russian hydrocarbons while supporting Ukraine.

“We now have a situation in which we are funding the aggressor in a war that we’re condemning and also funding the resistance to the war,” she says. “This dependence on fossil fuels means that we are really at the whims of energy markets, global energy producers and hostile dictators.”

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US President Donald Trump can keep collecting import taxes for now, an appeals court has said, a day after a trade ruling found the bulk of his global tariffs to be illegal.

A federal appeals court granted a bid from the White House to temporarily suspend the lower court’s order, which ruled that Trump had overstepped his power by imposing the duties.

Wednesday’s judgement from the US Court of International Trade drew the ire of Trump officials, who called it an example of judicial overreach.

Small businesses and a group of states had challenged the measures, which are at the heart of Trump’s agenda and have shaken up the world economic order.

In its appeal, the Trump administration said the decision issued by the trade court a day earlier had improperly second-guessed the president and threatened to unravel months of hard-fought trade negotiations.

“The political branches, not courts, make foreign policy and chart economic policy,” it said in the filing.

Shortly before Thursday’s tariff reprieve from the appeals court, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told a press briefing: “America cannot function if President Trump, or any other president, for that matter, has their sensitive diplomatic or trade negotiations railroaded by activist judges.”

Trump blasted the lower court ruling on Thursday in a social media post, writing: “Hopefully, the Supreme Court will reverse this horrible, Country threatening decision, QUICKLY and DECISIVELY.”

Wednesday’s decision by the little-known trade court in New York would void tariffs imposed by Trump in February on goods from China, Mexico and Canada, which he justified as a move intended to address a fentanyl smuggling.

The lower court’s decision would also dismiss a blanket 10% import tax that Trump unveiled last month on goods from countries around the world, together with higher so-called reciprocal tariffs on trade partners, including the EU and China.

The 1977 law Trump invoked to impose many of the tariffs, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, did not allow for such sweeping levies without input from Congress, the lower court said.

But its ruling did not affect Trump’s tariffs on cars, steel and aluminium, which were implemented under another law.

The White House has suspended or revised many of its duties while trade negotiations grind on.

But the appeals court decision allow the tariffs to be used for now while the case is litigated. The next hearing is on 5 June.

On Thursday, another federal court overseeing a separate tariffs case reached a similar conclusion to the trade court.

Judge Rudolph Contreras found the duties went beyond the president’s authority, but his ruling only applied to a toy company in the case.

Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro told reporters on Thursday: “You can assume that even if we lose [in court], we will do it [tariffs] another way.”

No court has struck down tariffs on cars, steel and aluminium that Trump imposed citing national-security concerns under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.

He could expand import taxes under that law to other sectors such as semiconductors and lumber.

The president could also invoke Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which he invoked for his first-term tariffs on China.

A separate 1930 trade law, Section 338 of the Trade Act, which has not been used for decades, allows the president to impose tariffs of up to 50% on imports from countries that “discriminate” against the US.

But the White House seems more focused for now on challenging the court rulings. The matter is widely expected to end up at the Supreme Court.

• What tariffs has Trump announced and why?
• Simon Jack: Tariff ruling doesn’t really change US-UK deal
• Where does court ruling leave Trump’s tariff agenda?

Lawyer Ilya Somin, who helped work on the case brought by businesses before the trade court, said he was “guardedly optimistic” the ruling would ultimately be upheld on appeal.

He noted that the trade court order came from justices appointed by both Democratic and Republican presidents, including one by Trump himself.

“It’s not normal for the president of the United States to make such an enormous power grab and start the biggest trade war since the Great Depression,” he said.

But Terry Haines, founder of the Pangaea Policy, which advises firms on Washington policies, said he thought “the president is probably going to be given the benefit of the doubt” by the courts.

Business owners, while expressing hope, said they did not yet feel like the situation was resolved.

“I was incredibly happy and relieved but I’m also still very cautious,” said Kara Dyer, the owner of Boston-based Story Time Toys, which makes toys in China and imports them to the US for sale.

“It’s just been so chaotic and so impossible to plan as a business,” she said.

“I want this to work its way through our court system so we have a little bit more certainty about what tariffs will be in the future.”

Dmitry Grozoubinski, a former trade negotiator who represented Australia at the World Trade Organization, said the court battle had weakened Trump’s ability to use the duties for leverage over other countries.

“It will be a lot harder for him to raise tariffs in the future,” he said.

“This was ultimately a negotiation in which President Trump was threatening other countries with a big stick and that stick just got considerably more ephemeral.”

Xiao Chen turned up at the US Consulate in Shanghai on Thursday morning, hours after Washington announced that it would “aggressively” revoke the visas of Chinese students.

The 22-year-old had a visa appointment: she was headed to Michigan in the autumn to study communications.

After a “pleasant” conversation, she was told her application had been rejected. She was not given a reason.

“I feel like a drifting duckweed tossed in wind and storm,” she said, using a common Chinese expression used to describe feeling both uncertain and helpless.

She had been hopeful because she already had the acceptance letter. And she thought she had narrowly escaped the bombshells in recent days.

First, Donald Trump’s administration moved to end Harvard University’s ability to enrol international students, a move that has since been blocked in court. And then it said it had stopped visa appointments for all foreign students.

But now, Chen is ready for plan B. “If I can’t get the visa eventually, I’ll probably take a gap year. Then I’ll wait to see if things will get better next year.”

A valid visa may still not be enough, she adds, because students with visas could be “stopped at the airport and deported”.

“It’s bad for every Chinese student. The only difference is how bad.”

It has been a bleak week for international students in the US – and perhaps even harder for the 280,000 or so Chinese students who would have noticed that their country has been singled out.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused Harvard of “co-ordinating with the Chinese Communist Party”.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the move against Chinese students in the US would include “those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields”.

That could hit a wide swathe of them given membership of the Communist Party is common among officials, entrepreneurs, business people and even artists and celebrities in China.

Beijing has called it a “politically motivated and discriminatory action”, and its foreign ministry has lodged a formal protest.

There was a time when China sent the highest number of foreign students to American campuses. But those numbers slipped as the relationship between the two countries soured.

A more powerful and increasingly assertive Beijing is now clashing with Washington for supremacy in just about everything, from trade to tech.

Trump’s first term had already spelled trouble for Chinese students. He signed an order in 2020 barring Chinese students and researchers with ties to Beijing’s military from obtaining US visas.

That order remained in place during President Joe Biden’s term. Washington never clarified what constitutes “ties” to the military, so many students had their visas revoked or were turned away at US borders, sometimes without a proper explanation.

One of them, who did not wish to be named, said his visa was cancelled by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) when he landed in Boston in August 2023.

He had been accepted into a post-doctoral program at Harvard University. He was going to study regenerative medicine with a focus on breast cancer, and had done his master’s degree from a military-affiliated research institution in China.

He said he was not a member of the Communist Party and his research had nothing to do with the military.

“They asked me what the relationship was between my research and China’s defence affairs,” he told the BBC then. “I said, how could breast cancer have anything to do with national defence? If you know, please tell me.”

He believes he never stood a chance because the officials had already made up their minds. He recalled one of them asking: “Did Xi Jinping buy your suitcase for you?”

What was surprising, or even shocking then, slowly turned normal as more and more Chinese students struggled to secure visas or admissions to study science and technology in US universities.

Mr Cao, a psychology major whose research involves neuroscience, has spent the past school year applying for PhD programs in the US.

He had graduated from top-tier universities – credentials that could send him to an Ivy League school. But of the more than 10 universities he applied to, only one extended an offer.

Trump’s cuts to biomedical research didn’t help, but the mistrust surrounding Chinese researchers was also a factor. Allegations and rumours of espionage, especially in sensitive subjects, have loomed over Chinese nationals at US universities in recent years, even derailing some careers.

“One of the professors even told me, ‘We rarely give offers to Chinese students these days, so I cannot give you an interview,” Mr Cao told the BBC in February.

“I feel like I am just a grain of sand under the wheel of time. There is nothing I can do.”

For those who did graduate from US colleges, returning home to China has not been easy either.

They used to be lauded as a bridge to the rest of the world. Now, they find that their once-coveted degrees don’t draw the same reaction.

Chen Jian, who did not want to use his real name, said he quickly realised that his undergraduate degree from a US college had become an obstacle.

When he first came back in 2020, he interned at a state-owned bank and asked a supervisor if there was a chance to stay on.

The supervisor didn’t say it outright, but Chen got the message: “Employees should have local degrees. People like me (with overseas degrees) won’t even get a response.”

He later realised that “there really weren’t any colleagues with overseas undergraduate background in the department”.

He went back to the US and did his master’s at Johns Hopkins University, and now works at Chinese tech giant Baidu.

But despite the degree from a prestigious American university, Mr Chen does not feel he has an edge because of the stiff competition from graduates in China.

What also has not helped is the suspicion around foreign graduates. Beijing has ramped up warnings of foreign spies, telling civilians to be on the lookout for suspicious figures.

In April, prominent Chinese businesswoman Dong Mingzhu told shareholders in a closed-door meeting that her company, home appliance maker Gree Electric, will “never” recruit Chinese people educated overseas “because among them are spies”.

“I don’t know who is and who isn’t,” Ms Dong said, in comments that were leaked and went viral online.

Days later, the CIA released promotional videos encouraging Chinese officials dissatisfied with the government to become spies and provide classified information. “Your destiny is in your own hands,” the video said.

The suspicion of foreigners as the US and China pull further away from each other is a surprising turn for many Chinese people who remember growing up in a very different country.

Zhang Ni, who also did not want to use her real name, says she was “very shocked” by Ms Dong’s remarks.

The 24-year-old is a recent journalism graduate from Columbia University in New York. She says she “doesn’t care about working at Gree”, but what surprised her was the shift in attitudes.

That so many Chinese companies “don’t like anything that might be associated with the international” is a huge contrast from what Ms Zhang grew up with – a childhood “filled with [conversations centred on] the Olympics and World Expo”.

“Whenever we saw foreigners, my mom would push me to go talk to them to practice my English,” she says.

That willingness to exchange ideas and learn from the outside world appears to be waning in China, according to many.

And America, once a place that drew so many young Chinese people, is no longer that welcoming.

Looking back, Ms Zhang can’t help but recall a joke her friend made at a farewell dinner before she left for the US.

Then a flippant comment, it now sums up the fear in both Washington and Beijing: “Don’t become a spy.”

There is a state of chaos, a breakdown of security, and looting in north Gaza’s main city, where Palestinians are desperately searching for food and where aid is difficult to access.

The Hamas-run interior ministry said seven of its police officers deployed to a market in Gaza City on Thursday were killed by an Israeli air strike as they attempted to restore order and confront what it called “looters”.

The Israeli military has not commented on the incident, but it did say it had struck “dozens of terror targets” throughout Gaza over the past day.

Local medics and rescuers said at least 44 people were killed across the territory on Thursday, including 23 at the central Bureij refugee camp.

It comes a day after the UN’s World Food programme (WFP) said at least two people were shot dead as what it described as “hordes of hungry people” broke into its warehouse in the central town of Deir al-Balah in search of food after 11 weeks of a total Israeli blockade. It was not clear who opened fire.

Almost 50 people were also reportedly shot and injured when thousands overran a new aid distribution centre run by the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) in the southern city of Rafah on Tuesday, according to a senior UN official in Gaza. The Israeli military said troops fired warning shots into the air but not at the crowds.

On Thursday, interior ministry police officers armed with Kalashnikov-style rifles and handguns went to a market near Gaza City’s central al-Saraya junction, which houses a number of small stalls selling canned food and vegetables.

Videos circulating on social media, too graphic to share, show bodies, blood, and scattered remains lying on the ground following what the ministry said was an Israeli attack.

“Israeli occupation aircraft targeted a number of police officers… while they were performing their duty in confronting a group of looters earlier today, leading to the martyrdom of several officers and civilians in yet another massacre,” a statement said.

The BBC requested comment from the Israeli military. It did not address the incident directly in its reply, saying that it was not provided with the “relevant coordinates and the specific time”. It added that the IDF “follows international law and takes precautions to mitigate civilian harm”.

There has been increased lawlessness in Gaza since Israel began targeting the Gaza interior ministry’s police officers last year, citing their role in Hamas governance.

After the territory’s police chief and his deputy were killed in a strike in January, the ministry insisted the force was a “civilian protection agency”. The Israeli military accused the force of “violating human rights and suppressing dissent”.

There were reports of a breakdown of order elsewhere in Gaza on Thursday, as desperate people searched for food and other supplies.

One witness who had gone to a GHF aid distribution centre near Rafah told the BBC that thousands of people had gathered in the area from dawn, and that they ended up breaking through the site’s gate to try to obtain supplies.

At 08:00 local time, the witness said, the Israeli military issued a warning via a quadcopter drone instructing people to head to the distribution centre, and that they began moving in an orderly way towards the area.

“For exactly 10 minutes, things were organised but then the crowd broke through the gate and rushed into the courtyard.”

“People grabbed boxes and sacks of flour and left, all under the surveillance of the Israeli quadcopter,” they added.

Footage from near the GHF site shows thousands of Palestinians walking near the centre on Thursday morning. Some are in horse-drawn carts, while others wheel bicycles covered with goods.

Young men, for the most part, can be seen carrying sacks of flour on their heads and backs. One exhausted woman appears to struggle to walk among the crowd.

Abu Fawzi Faroukh, a 60-year-old Palestinian man who was at the site on Thursday morning, told AFP news agency that aid supplies were more difficult for the elderly and vulnerable to obtain.

“The young men are the ones who have received aid first, yesterday and today, because they are young and can carry loads. But the old people and women cannot enter due to the crowding.”

“We have been humiliated, the Palestinian people are humiliated,” he added.

People described similar scenes at the newly opened GHF distribution site in central Gaza, with a number telling the BBC they had come away empty-handed.

Umm Mohammed Abu Hajar said she had heard there was aid being distributed in the area, so took her ID and went to see what she could get.

“I found all the people hungry,” she said. “So, I couldn’t get anything. I left like this… empty-handed.”

She said more organisation was needed in order to distribute aid “fairly”, adding that currently, “some people eat and some people don’t”.

Another man, Hani Abed, who was at the same distribution centre, said he’d failed to get any aid for him and his 10 family members.

“I came empty-handed and I left empty-handed,” he said. “I will take dirt for my children to eat.”

The GHF said approximately 17,280 food boxes, containing the equivalent of 997,920 meals, were handed out to Gazans at its three operational distribution sites on Thursday.

“Operations will continue scaling, with plans to build additional sites across Gaza, including in the northern region, in the weeks ahead,” it added.

It also rejected the reports of Palestinians being shot at while trying to obtain aid at its centres. “No shots have ever been fired,” it said.

The GHF’s new aid system bypasses the UN and requires Palestinians to collect food parcels from distribution sites protected by US security contractors in areas controlled by the Israeli military in southern and central Gaza.

The UN has refused to co-operate with the system, saying it is unethical and unworkable.

The head of the UN’s humanitarian office in Gaza, Jonathan Whittall, said on Wednesday that GHF could not possibly meet the needs of the 2.1 million population and was “essentially engineering scarcity”.

The US and Israeli governments have said the new system is preventing aid from being stolen by Hamas, which the armed group denies doing.

Israel imposed a total blockade on humanitarian aid and commercial supplies to Gaza on 2 March and resumed its military offensive two weeks later, ending a two-month ceasefire with Hamas.

It said the steps put pressure on the armed group to release the 58 hostages still held in Gaza, at least 20 of whom are believed to be alive.

On 19 May, the Israeli military launched an expanded offensive that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said would “take control of all areas” of Gaza. The following day, he said Israel would also temporarily ease the blockade and allow a “basic” amount of food in.

The families of the remaining hostages have urged Netanyahu to agree a new ceasefire with Hamas to secure their release.

On Thursday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the Israeli government “supported” a new ceasefire proposal that was sent to Hamas by US special envoy Steve Witkoff.

“Israel signed off on this proposal before it was sent to Hamas,” she said.

However, a senior Hamas official later told the BBC that the group rejected the proposal because it contradicted the discussions that it had with Witkoff.

The official said it did not include guarantees that the temporary ceasefire would lead to a permanent end to the fighting or that Israeli troops would withdraw to the positions they held before 2 March.

Israeli and US media cited Israeli officials as saying Witkoff’s proposal included releasing 10 living hostages and the remains of dead hostages in two phases in exchange for a 60-day ceasefire and the release of a number of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response Hamas’ cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

At least 54,249 people have been killed in Gaza since then, including 3,986 since Israel resumed its offensive, according to the territory’s health ministry.

More than a thousand Indians have “come back or [been] deported” from the United States since January, India’s foreign ministry has said.

Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said that around 62% of them came on commercial flights, without providing more details.

This comes in the wake of President Donald Trump’s campaign against undocumented migrants to the US. Trump had earlier said that India “will do what’s right” on the deportation of illegal migrants.

In February, the US had deported more than hundred Indians on a US military flight, with reports saying some of them were brought back shackled.

“We have close cooperation between India and the United States on migration issues,” Mr Jaiswal said during the ministry’s weekly briefing, adding that India verifies nationalities before “we take them back”.

In total, the US is said to have identified about 18,000 Indian nationals it believes entered the country illegally.

Earlier this month, the US Embassy in India issued a warning that overstaying in the US could lead to deportation or a permanent ban on entry in the country, even for those who entered legally.

Mr Jaiswal also spoke about the Trump administration’s updated policy on student visas which is likely to impact Indian students planning to enrol in US universities.

The US had announced on Thursday that it had halted the scheduling of new visa interviews for foreign students as it considered expanding the screening of their social media activities.

“While we note that issuance of a visa is a sovereign function, we hope that the application of Indian students will be considered on merit, and they will be able to join their academic programs on time,” Mr Jaiswal said.

Mr Jaiswal also said that 330,000 Indians students had gone to the US for studies in 2023-24 – which makes India the largest source of international students in the country.

On Thursday, expanding its new visa policy, the US further announced that it was working to “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields”.

Andrew and Tristan Tate will return to the UK to face 21 criminal charges once proceedings against them in Romania have concluded, their lawyers have said.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said on Wednesday that it had authorised charges including rape, actual bodily harm and human trafficking against the brothers in 2024, before an extradition warrant was issued to bring them back from Romania.

Authorities in Romania are investigating the two British-Americans in a separate case, in relation to a number of charges which they deny.

In a statement on Thursday, lawyers for the Tates said that “once those proceedings are concluded in their entirety then they will return to face UK allegations”.

Previously, the brothers’ legal representatives said that UK allegations dated back to between 2012 and 2015.

At the time of an arrest warrant obtained by Bedfordshire Police in March 2024, the Tates said they “categorically reject all charges” and were “very innocent men”.

A Romanian court has already ruled that the brothers could be extradited to the UK following the end of any trial there, for which there is no clear timescale currently, and the CPS said “domestic criminal matters in Romania must be settled first”.

The CPS said Andrew Tate, a 38-year-old influencer and former kickboxer, faces 10 charges connected to three alleged victims, including rape, actual bodily harm, human trafficking and controlling prostitution for gain.

Tristan Tate, 36, faces 11 charges connected to one alleged victim, including rape, actual bodily harm and human trafficking.

The CPS’s charging decision came after it received a file of evidence from Bedfordshire Police.

Responding to the allegations on the Tates’ behalf, their solicitors said there had been a “vast amount of misinformation in the media regarding the allegations faced by our clients” and that they were being subject to “a trial by media”.

A statement added: “Regardless of your views, it must be the case that everyone that is tried in England and Wales has the expectation of a fair trial.”

They added that “UK prosecutors refuse to give even the most basic information to allow our clients to understand the allegations they face”.

The BBC has been told the CPS believes it is fully complying with its role in accordance with disclosure obligations.

In recent years, Andrew, a self-described misogynist, has built a massive online presence, including more than 10 million followers on X, sharing his lifestyle of fast cars, private jets, and yachts.

The pair were both born in the US but moved to Luton in the UK with their mother after their parents divorced.

Since first being arrested in Romania by the Romanian authorities in December 2022, with Andrew accused of rape and human trafficking and Tristan suspected of human trafficking, the pair have largely been under travel restrictions in the country.

They then faced further allegations in Romania in August 2024 including sex with a minor and trafficking underage persons, all of which they deny.

Earlier this year they unexpectedly had their travel ban lifted and visited Florida in the US, before returning to Romania less than a month later in March 2025.

British authorities faced criticism for allegedly not requesting an extradition to the UK while they were in Florida, after authorities there said they would have approved it, but the BBC understands that this was to avoid subverting the UK-Romania arrangement.

Given the complexity of the proceedings in Romania, their return to the UK is unlikely to be soon.

Banksy’s latest piece of grafitti art has been revealed to the world – but where it was painted remains a mystery for now.

Images posted on the elusive artist‘s Instagram depict a lighthouse stencilled on a drab, beige wall, along with the words: “I want to be what you saw in me”.

A false shadow appears to have been drawn on the pavement from a nearby bollard, giving the illusion that the lighthouse is itself a silhouette of the mundane street furniture.

But unlike a lighthouse, the post gives little away as to the artwork’s location. A second, wider shot showing two people walking their dogs offers little more.

Geoguessers on social media have speculated that the street art may lurk in Marseille, in the south of France, while others debate how to interpret the work’s meaning.

Another image of the art circulating online shows a blurred person riding a scooter in front of the piece, with a graffiti tag seemingly reading “Yaze” further along the wall.

The tag matches that used by a Canadian graffiti artist Marco The Polo, whose Instagram account features photos of his own work but who has called Banksy an inspiration.

Banksy has kept his true identity a secret throughout his career, and it is only through the Instagram account that works are identified as genuine.

Often imbuing his works with a political message, his previous pieces have alluded to immigration, the war in Ukraine and homelessness, among other things.

The meaning of some of his works, though, is less clear – such as his motivation behind the series of animals painted in various locations across London last summer.

Prior to the lighthouse, in December, Banksy posted another piece, depicting a Madonna and child with a fixture in the wall appearing like a bullet wound in her chest.

A former assistant of rap mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs has told a New York court that he repeatedly sexually assaulted her while she was employed by him for eight years.

The witness – who testified anonymously under the pseudonym “Mia” – also tearfully said she lived in fear of violent rages from Mr Combs as she worked by his side.

The hip-hop mogul watched from the defence table with arms folded in his lap as she testified about her fears of retribution for reporting his alleged abuse.

Mr Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to federal charges of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution.

Warning: This story contains details some readers may find distressing

“I couldn’t tell him no about a sandwich,” she said. “I couldn’t tell him no about anything.”

Mr Combs’ legal team has not yet had the chance to question Mia, or respond to her claims.

She is the second witness in the New York trial to allege that Mr Combs sexually abused her, along with Mr Combs’ ex-girlfriend, Casandra Ventura.

Mia testified that she started working for Mr Combs as a personal assistant in 2009 when she was in her mid-20s, joining what she described as a “chaotic” and “toxic” work environment.

“The highs were really high and the lows were really, really low,” she told the court on Thursday.

The job required her being “always within eyesight” of Mr Combs, she testified, and “anticipating his needs, whims and moods”.

She said she was often required to stay at his homes, where she could not lock the door or leave without the rapper’s permission.

During her time working for Mr Combs, he was frequently violent towards her, Mia testified.

On one occasion, she said he threw a spaghetti bowl at her, which narrowly missed her head, Mia told the court.

Another time, she said Mr Combs forcefully threw his computer at Mia’s head when she told him the wifi nearby was still being fixed, she testified.

She also testified about another situation when she witnessed Mr Combs being violent with his ex-girlfriend, Ms Ventura, who had became close friends with Mia during her time working for the rapper.

Mia once went on holiday with the couple in the Turks and Caicos, she told the court. One late night on the trip, she said Ms Ventura ran into her room screaming that Mr Combs was “going to kill me”, she testified. They ran away and hid on the beach, she said.

Also on that holiday, Mia testified that she and Ms Ventura had used a paddle board to go into the water to escape Mr Combs, who was pacing back and forth on the beach. Before they knew it, the sky turned dark, portending a storm.

“I was trying to weigh if it was scarier to face mother nature, or go back to Puff [Mr Combs],” Mia testified.

Mia was also there one night in 2013 when she said that Mr Combs was banging on Ms Ventura’s door in Los Angeles.

She testified that he attacked her and cut open her eyebrow when throwing her on to the bed frame. Mia told the court that she tried to jump on Mr Combs’ back, but he threw her against the wall.

“He’s actually going to kill her,” Mia said she remembered thinking to herself.

Mia told the court that despite witnessing Mr Combs’s abuse toward Ms Ventura, she did not report him because she “believed that Puff’s authority was above the police”.

She testified about multiple instances where she alleged Mr Combs sexually assaulted her, including one time when she said she woke up to him trying to rape her.

Mia told the court that the assaults began early in her career working for Mr Combs, including one night on his 40th birthday at the Plaza Hotel in New York City.

She said he gave her two vodka shots that hit her “very hard” and kissed her and put his hand up her dress.

Another night, between the years of 2009-10, while Mia was sleeping in a bunk bed at Mr Combs’ Los Angeles home, she said she woke up to the “weight” of Mr Combs on top of her. She was confused, she said, and Mr Combs began to rape her.

“I just froze,” she said. “It was very quick but it felt like forever.”

Mia told the court that Mr Combs sexually assaulted her “sporadically” throughout her time working for the rapper.

But she told the court she didn’t always remember the details, only a “dark feeling in my stomach”.

Pressed by a prosecutor on why she did not say “no” when Mr Combs assaulted her or go to the police, Mia told the court she feared what he would do.

“I knew his power,” she said. “I knew his control over me and I didn’t want to lose everything I worked so hard for.”

She told the court that another assistant had been fired for reporting Mr Combs’ violence toward Ms Ventura.

Mr Combs also threatened to tell Ms Ventura, Mia’s close friend, about the sexual encounters between them, she testified.

After the alleged assaults, Mia told the court that she tried her best to pretend the “most shameful thing” of her life never happened.

Asked by prosecutors why she was telling her story in court, she replied: “I had to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

Mia will continue to testify on Friday and Mr Combs’ defence team will be able to question her on the stand.

Poles will vote for a new president on Sunday in a tight election that will have major consequences for the future of the country’s pro-EU government.

Opinion polls say Warsaw’s liberal mayor Rafal Trzaskowski and national conservative historian Karol Nawrocki are running neck and neck.

Poland’s president is a largely ceremonial role, but it does come with significant negative power.

The president has the right to veto legislation, and the coalition government lacks a big enough parliamentary majority to overturn it.

Karol Nawrocki is a staunch opponent of Donald Tusk’s coalition, and he is expected to use the veto as much if not more frequently than the incumbent conservative President Andrzej Duda, who cannot run for a third consecutive term.

Tusk has been unable to deliver many of his campaign promises since taking office 18 months ago due to Duda’s veto and divisions within his coalition which includes conservatives, centrists and leftists.

Tusk promised Polish women legal abortion up to the 12th week of pregnancy and voters he would repair the rule of law in the judiciary.

Many critics say Poland’s top courts were politicised under the previous Law and Justice-led (PiS) government that lost power in late 2023.

On both issues, Tusk has made little headway.

After narrowly winning the election’s first round on 18 May, Rafal Trzaskowski pledged to co-operate with the government to accomplish both.

Whichever candidate mobilises their voters in Sunday’s second round run-off will be key to who becomes the next president.

Another significant factor is who can attract the votes of two far-right candidates who placed third and fourth in the first round.

The anti-establishment candidates received three times as many votes as they did in the last presidential election in 2020.

While those voters support Nawrocki’s socially conservative views, some libertarians disagree with his support for generous state benefits for the less well-off.

Both candidates led large, rival patriotic marches in Warsaw last Sunday to show who had the biggest support.

Almost all the participants at Nawrocki’s rally carried the red-and-white Polish flag. No-one had the blue EU flag. One banner read “Enough of Tusk’s [demolition] of democracy”.

Magdalena and her sister Marta said Nawrocki’s patriotism was important. “We care first for our family, then the nation and after that the world,” Magdalena told me.

“A lot of politicians say, ‘Oh, we can’t do that because what will the Germans think about us?’ Sorry, I don’t care what they think,” she said.

Karol Nawrocki, 42, is head of the Institute of National Remembrance, a state body that investigates crimes dating back to the communist era and World War Two. He was relatively unknown nationally before he was picked by PiS to run.

According to the CBOS polling company, voters view him as someone who supports traditional Catholic values and stands up for average Poles, including small farmers who consider themselves threatened by the EU’s Green Deal limiting the use of chemicals and greenhouse gases.

His typical voter is seen as aged over 40, conservative and family-oriented and living in the countryside or small towns and cities.

Previously he was director of the Museum of the Second World War in Gdansk where he changed the exhibition to emphasise Polish heroism and suffering during the conflict.

A keen amateur footballer and boxer, he likes to publish images of himself working out on social media.

His strongman image has been pushed by Polish and foreign politicians alike. Ex-PM Mateusz Morawiecki posting a mock-up of Nawrocki as a Polish Captain America on social media.

Supporter Magdalena said he wasn’t particularly charismatic, but Poland needed “a strong man who will be stable when he’s pushed by the world”.

Earlier this week, US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem flew to a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Poland to endorse him as a “strong leader” like President Donald Trump.

“I just had the opportunity to meet with Karol and listen, he needs to be the next president of Poland,” she said five days ahead of the vote.

Noem said his rival Trzaskowski was “an absolute train wreck of a leader”.

Nawrocki’s campaign has been bedevilled by revelations from his relatively unknown past, although so far the allegations appear not to have damaged his support.

He does not deny taking part in football hooligan brawls, and has called them “noble fights”. But in that he is not alone, as several years ago Donald Tusk spoke of taking part in similar fights as a young man.

However he has strongly denied a series of other allegations – that he had links with gangsters and neo-Nazis; that he took advantage of an ill senior citizen to acquire his council flat at a huge discount; and that he helped arrange prostitutes for guests at the luxury Grand Hotel in the seaside resort of Sopot when he worked there as a security guard.

Nawrocki has said he will donate the flat to charity and threatened to sue the news website that published the prostitute story because it was a “pack of lies”.

Many of his supporters think the the stories were made up by the mainstream media, which they see as largely pro-Trzaskowski.

Shaking off the revelations, Nawrocki posted a video on social media set to an old Chumbawamba song, with the chorus, “I get knocked down, but I get up again”.

Trzaskowski’s supporters have been more inclined to believe the allegations, with one man in Warsaw holding a banner reading: “No to the gangster”.

The son of a famous jazz pianist, the 53-year-old mayor of Warsaw is deputy leader of Donald Tusk’s centrist Civic Platform party.

He also speaks multiple languages and once served as Europe minister.

He was joined in last Sunday’s march in Warsaw by another liberal mayor who won the Romanian presidency earlier this month. Nicusur Dan told supporters they shared the same values of a united and strong European Union.

According to CBOS, Trzaskowski’s typical voter is in his 30s, fairly well-off and lives in a city. Voters see him as having left-liberal views supporting LGBT and migrants’ rights.

While his opponents see Trzaskowski as part of Poland’s privileged elite, supporter Malgorzata, a statistician, told me he was “an intelligent, professional European. That’s enough to be a president of Poland”.

Against a backdrop of war in neighbouring Ukraine and the Tusk government’s tough stance against illegal migration, Trzaskowski has portrayed himself, artificially according to some voters, as a man who believes in a strong nation state and patriotism.

Another supporter, Bartosz, said he wanted Poland to remain safely anchored in Europe.

“We know history. In 1939, we counted on Britain and France, but nobody came. If we are partners with Europe politically and economically, then it’s in their interests to support us,” he said.

China does not want to go to war with anyone, especially the US.

But Beijing does have aspirations to be the number one economic power in the world.

And that means flexing its muscles to rid the seas around East and South East Asia of their US military presence, so it can dominate the shipping lanes so vital for global trade.

By building up its nuclear and conventional arsenals, China aims to show the US that times have changed and that it’s too dangerous a power to challenge.

The US has long had the upper hand in the Asia-Pacific – with tens of thousands of troops based in Japan and South Korea, alongside several military bases.

Trump’s administration has clearly focused its energy on countering China – by initiating a trade war and seeking to strengthen alliances with Asian nations.

The Shangri-La Dialogue has historically been the setting for top-level encounters between the US and China – an arena for the superpowers to set out their vision for security in the region.

And it’s opening again in Singapore on Friday. Here’s what we can expect from the three-day event:

The growing struggle for dominance between the US and China is undoubtedly the biggest issue in Asia-Pacific security.

Gone are the days when China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was characterised by outdated weaponry and rigid Maoist doctrine. Today it is a formidable force deploying state-of-the-art hypersonic missiles and fifth-generation warplanes like the J20.

Its navy has the largest number of warships in the world, outstripping the United States.

While China lags far behind the US and Russia in its number of nuclear warheads, it is rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal, with missiles that can travel up to 15,000km, putting the continental US easily within range.

The US Navy’s formidable 7th Fleet, based in Yokosuka, just south of Tokyo, can no longer claim to have guaranteed naval supremacy in the region.

China’s array of Dong Feng missiles and swarms of explosive drones would make any approach to its shores extremely hazardous for US warships.

Ultimately, Beijing is believed to be working to “push” the US military out of the western Pacific.

Taiwan is a liberal, self-governing, pro-Western island democracy that China’s President Xi Jinping has vowed to “take back” by force if necessary.

It has an economic importance well beyond its geographic small size. It manufactures more than 90% of the world’s high-end microchips, the all-important semi-conductors that power so much of our tech.

Recent opinion polls have made clear that a majority of Taiwanese people do not want to be ruled by Beijing, but Xi has made this a key policy aim.

The US has done much to help Taiwan bolster its defences but the key question of whether Washington would go to war with China over Taiwan has always been shrouded in something called “strategic ambiguity”, i.e. keeping Beijing guessing.

On more than one occasion President Biden indicated the US would respond militarily in the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan. But the return of Donald Trump to the Oval Office has brought back a degree of uncertainty.

There are also major concerns in the region over China’s attempts to turn the entire South China Sea into what some have called a “Chinese lake”.

The PLA Navy has established military bases on reefs, many artificially dredged, across the strategically important South China Sea, an area through which an estimated $3 trillion’s worth of maritime trade passes annually.

Today China deploys a vast, industrial fishing fleet across the South China Sea, backed by its fleet of coastguard ships and warships. These vessels clash frequently with Filipino fishermen, fishing close to their own country’s shores.

China frequently challenges planes and ships transiting the South China Sea, warning them they are entering Chinese territory without permission, when the rest of the world considers this to be international waters.

Donald Trump, when asked during his first presidency if North Korea could ever develop nuclear missiles that could reach the continental United States, vowed “it’s never going to happen”. But it has.

In what amounts to a serious CIA intelligence failure, Pyongyang has demonstrated that it now possesses both the nuclear know-how and the means to deliver those warheads across the Pacific Ocean.

Successive US presidencies have failed to curb North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and this isolated, economically backward yet militarily powerful nation is thought to have at least 20 nuclear warheads.

It also has an enormous, well-armed army, some of which its autocratic leader Kim Jong Un has sent to help Russia fight Ukraine.

Defence analysts are still dissecting the recent, brief but alarming conflict between these two nuclear-armed neighbours. India’s military far outnumbers Pakistan’s and yet the latter was allegedly able to land an embarrassing blow against India’s air force, when Pakistan’s Chinese-made J10-C jets went up against India’s advanced, French-made Rafales.

Pakistan reportedly shot down at least one of the Indian warplanes, using Chinese-made PL-15 air-to-air missiles. The reports were denied in India’s media.

China’s assistance to Pakistan in the conflict has reportedly been critical to Islamabad, including repositioning its satellites to provide it with real-time intelligence.

Both India and Pakistan are expected to make high-level addresses at the Shangri-La Dialogue this weekend while the US and others will be looking for ways to prevent a repeat of their clash over Kashmir.

All of this is happening in a dramatically changed US context.

Donald Trump’s sudden imposition of trade tariffs, while eventually modified, has caused many in the region to rethink their reliance on Washington. Would an ally that is prepared to inflict so much economic pain on its friends really come to their aid if they were attacked?

China has been quick to capitalise on the confusion. It reached out to neighbours such as Vietnam – a country it went to war with in 1979 – to point out the People’s Republic represented stability and continuity in an unstable world.

Under the previous US administration, Washington signed up to a multi-billion dollar trilateral partnership between the US, UK and Australia under the acronym of Aukus.

It aims to not only build Canberra’s next generation of submarines but to guarantee freedom of navigation across the South China Sea using intelligence and naval force deployed by the three nations.

President Trump, when asked in February about his commitment to the Aukus pact, appeared not to recognise the term, asking in reply: “What does that mean?”

But early this Saturday morning the US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth will be addressing the Shangri-La Dialogue, potentially offering some clarity on Aukus as well as how the US plans to work with, and quite possibly against, China’s interests across the Asia-Pacific region.

Since returning to power, US President Donald Trump has wielded tariffs – or the threat of them – as his economic weapon of choice.

He has slapped import duties against allies and adversaries alike, and raised their rates to staggeringly high levels, only to change his mind and abruptly pause or reduce the charges.

Markets and global leaders have scrambled trying to guess his next moves, while major retailers have warned of rising prices for American consumers and potentially empty shelves in shops.

The president has claimed this power to impose tariffs unilaterally. He says that as president he is responding to a national economic emergency – and he cannot wait for Congress to pass legislation.

In effect, this meant firing off a threatening missive to a country playing hardball was as easy as posting on Truth Social (just ask the European Union, which he called “very difficult to deal with” in negotiations last week).

However, late on Wednesday, the US Court of International Trade ruled that he had exceeded the authority of the emergency powers he was using. The court gave the White House 10 days to remove almost all tariffs, which it says have been imposed illegally.

The White House appealed, and a federal appeals court has stayed the trade court’s ruling, which means that those tariffs will stay in place – for now.

The administration argued in its appeal that a ruling against Trump “would kneecap the president on the world stage, cripple his ability to negotiate trade deals, imperil the government’s ability to respond to these and future national emergencies”.

On Thursday night, Trump was back on Truth Social, rebuking the lower court judges who had ruled against him, calling their decision “wrong” and “horrible”.

• Trump tariffs can stay in place for now, appeals court rules
• What tariffs has Trump announced and why?
• Simon Jack: Tariff ruling doesn’t really change US-UK deal
• Where does court ruling leave Trump’s tariff agenda?

Until now, the power to make or break the economy has rested on his shoulders, as the tariff rates levelled against other countries keep going up and down – seemingly according to Trump’s mood.

He raised the tariffs on imported Chinese goods all the way up to 145% before dropping them down to 30%. A few weeks later he used a social media post to threaten the EU with 50% tariffs, before backing down a couple of days later.

Wall Street analysts have even reportedly now coined the phrase “Taco trade”, referring to their belief that Trump Always Chickens Out from imposing steep import taxes. He looked furious when asked about the acronym in the Oval Office on Wednesday.

“That’s a nasty question” he said, arguing that it was only by making these threats that he got the EU to the negotiating table.

Trump’s ambassador to the EU during his first term, Gordon Sondland, told the BBC this erratic approach was by design.

“What Trump is doing is exactly what he would do as a business person. He would immediately find a point of leverage to get someone’s attention today. Not next month, not next year… he wants to have these conversations now,” he said earlier this week, before the latest legal twists.

“How do you get someone as intransigent and as slow moving as the EU to do something now? You slap a 50% tariff on them and all of a sudden the phone start ringing.”

If Trump’s tariffs plan continues to meet resistance in the courts, one option at his disposal is asking Congress to legislate the taxes instead. But that would eliminate one of his biggest tools – the element of surprise.

For decades, Trump has been convinced that trade tariffs are the answer to many of America’s economic problems. He has appeared to welcome the prospect of global trade war sparked by his tariff agenda, insisting that it is by raising the price of imported goods and reviving the US manufacturing sector that he will “Make America Great Again”.

Trump touts the money – billions of dollars, not trillions, as he says – that tariffs have already brought in to US government coffers.

The president argues they will help to revive American manufacturing by persuading firms to move their factories to the US to avoid import duties.

However, University of Michigan economics professor Justin Wolfers described Trump’s methods as “madness”.

“If you believe in tariffs, what you want is for businesses to understand that the tariffs are going to… be permanent so that they can make investments around that and that’s what would lead the factories to come to the United States,” he told the BBC.

He said that whatever happens with this court challenge, Trump has already transformed the global economic order.

Prof Wolfers said while Trump “chickens out from the very worst mistakes” – citing his original ‘Liberation Day’ levies and the threat of 50% tariffs on the EU – he doesn’t backflip on everything.

The president wants to keep 10% reciprocal tariffs on most countries and 25% tariffs on cars, steel and aluminium.

“Yes, he backs off the madness, but even the stuff he left in meant that we had the highest tariff rate yesterday than we’d had since 1934,” Prof Wolfers said.

All signs point to this being a fight that the Republican president won’t give up easily.

“You can assume that even if we lose, we will do it another way,” Trump’s trade advisor Peter Navarro said after Thursday’s appeals court ruling.

While the litigation plays out, America’s trade partners will be left guessing about Trump’s next move, which is exactly how he likes it.

Before the events of 3 December 2024, Lee Jae–myung’s path to South Korea’s presidency was littered with obstacles.

Ongoing legal cases, investigations for corruption and allegations of abusing power all looked set to derail the former opposition leader’s second presidential bid.

Then a constitutional crisis changed everything.

On that night, former president Yoon Suk Yeol’s abortive attempt to invoke martial law set in motion a series of events that appears to have cleared the path for Lee.

Now, as the Democratic Party candidate, he is the frontrunner to win South Korea’s election on 3 June.

It’s a dramatic reversal of fortunes for the 61-year-old, who at the time of Yoon’s martial law declaration stood convicted of making false statements during his last presidential campaign in 2022.

Those charges still cast a long shadow over Lee, and could yet threaten his years-long pursuit of the top job. But they are also just the latest in a string of controversies that have dogged him throughout his political career.

A rags-to-riches origin story combined with a bullish political style has made Lee into a divisive figure in South Korea.

“Lee Jae-myung’s life has been full of ups and downs, and he often takes actions that stir controversy,” Dr Lee Jun-han, professor of political science and international studies at Incheon National University, tells the BBC.

These actions typically include attempts at progressive reform – such as a pledge, made during his 2022 presidential campaign, to implement universal basic income scheme – which challenge the existing power structure and status quo in South Korea.

“Because of this, some people strongly support him, while others distrust or dislike him,” Dr Lee says. “He is a highly controversial and unconventional figure – very much an outsider who has made a name for himself in a way that doesn’t fit traditional Democratic Party norms.”

In a recent memoir, Lee described his childhood as “miserable”. Born in 1963 in a mountain village in Andong, Gyeongbuk Province, he was the fifth of five sons and two daughters, and – due to his family’s difficult circumstances – skipped middle school to illegally enter the workforce.

As a young factory worker, Lee suffered an industrial accident where his fingers got caught in a factory power belt, and at the age of 13 suffered a permanent injury to his arm after his wrist was crushed by a press machine.

Lee later applied for and was allowed to sit entrance exams for high school and university, passing in 1978 and 1980 respectively. He went on to study law with a full scholarship, and passed the Bar Examination in 1986.

In 1992, he married his wife Kim Hye-kyung, with whom he has two children.

He worked as a human rights lawyer for almost two decades before entering politics in 2005, joining the social-liberal Uri Party, a predecessor of the Democratic Party of Korea and the ruling party at the time.

While his poor upbringing has drawn scorn from members of South Korea’s upper class, Lee’s success in building his political career from the ground up has earned him support from working-class voters and those who feel disenfranchised by the political elite.

He was elected mayor of Seongnam in 2010, rolling out a series of free welfare policies during his tenure, and in 2018 became governor of the broader Gyeonggi Province.

Lee would go on to receive acclaim for his response to the Covid-19 pandemic, during which he clashed with the central government due to his insistence on providing universal relief grants for all residents of the province.

It was also during this time that Lee became the Democratic Party’s final presidential candidate for the first time in October 2021 – losing by 0.76 percentage points. Less than a year later, in August 2022, he was elected as the party’s leader.

From that point on, Dr Lee says, Lee dialled back on the controversial, fire-and-brimstone approach for which he had become notorious – opting instead to play it safe and keep a low profile.

“After [Lee’s] term as a governor, his reformist image faded somewhat as he focused more on his presidential ambitions,” he says. “Still, on certain issues – like addressing past wrongs [during the Japanese colonial era], welfare and corruption – he has built a loyal and passionate support base by taking a firm and uncompromising stance.”

This uncompromising attitude has its detractors, with many members and supporters of the ruling People Power Party (PPP) viewing Lee as aggressive and abrasive in his approach.

Lee’s political career has also been marred by a series of scandals – including a drink driving incident in 2004, disputes with relatives in the late 2010s and allegations of an extramarital affair that emerged in 2018.

While in other parts of the world voters have shown forgiveness and even support for controversial politicians, in South Korea – a country that is still relatively conservative in what it expects of public figures – such scandals have not typically played well.

In recent years, Lee’s political ambitions have been saddled with even more pressing controversies – including the ongoing legal cases that continue to hang over him, threatening to hamstring if not scuttle his chances at election.

One of these concerns a string of high-profile charges, including corruption, bribery and breach of trust, associated with a land development project in 2023.

Another, perhaps more critical legal battle concerns allegations that Lee made a knowingly false statement during a debate in the last presidential campaign.

During the debate, which aired on South Korean television in December 2021, Lee had denied personally knowing Kim Moon-ki, a key figure in a corruption-ridden land development scandal who had taken his own life just days earlier.

Prosecutors allege that claim was false, thus violating the Public Official Election Act, and in November 2024 Lee was convicted of the false statements charge and given a one-year suspended prison sentence.

Then, in March, an appeals court cleared him of the charges – only for that ruling to be overturned by South Korea’s Supreme Court. At the time of writing, the case is still awaiting a verdict.

Other threats against Lee’s future political ambitions posed a more fatal danger.

In January 2024, while answering questions from reporters outside the construction site of a planned airport in Busan, Lee was stabbed in the neck by a man who had approached him asking for an autograph.

The injury to Lee’s jugular vein, though requiring extensive surgery, was not critical – but he now campaigns behind bulletproof glass, wearing a bulletproof vest, surrounded by agents carrying ballistic briefcases.

The assailant, who had written an eight-page manifesto and wanted to ensure that Lee never became president, was later sentenced to 15 years in prison.

The attack raised concerns about deepening political polarisation in South Korea – embodied perhaps most publicly in the bitter rivalry between Lee and Yoon, and more privately in the country’s increasingly extreme online discourse.

In December 2023, just weeks before Lee was attacked, a survey sponsored by the newspaper Hankyoreh found that more than 50% of respondents said they felt South Korea’s political divide worsening.

Some claim that, as Democratic Party leader, Lee played a major role in fuelling the problem, frequently blocking motions by Yoon’s government and effectively rendering him a lame duck president.

Such constant stonewalling by the Democratic Party only exacerbated Yoon’s leadership struggles – which also included repeated impeachment attempts against administration officials and constant opposition to his budget.

Finally, as the pressure against him mounted, the former president took the drastic step of declaring martial law.

Yoon’s declaration of martial law on 3 December – made in a self-proclaimed bid to eliminate “anti-state forces” and North Korea sympathisers – served as the catalyst for Lee to emerge as a leading presidential candidate.

Within hours of the declaration, Lee appealed to the public via a livestream broadcast and urged them to assemble in protest outside the National Assembly building in central Seoul.

Thousands responded, clashing with police and blocking military units as opposition lawmakers rushed into the assembly building, clambering over fences and walls in a desperate attempt to block Yoon’s order.

Lee was among them, climbing over the fence to enter the National Assembly and helping to pass the resolution to lift martial law.

The Democratic Party later decided to impeach President Yoon – a decision that was unanimously upheld by South Korea’s Constitutional Court on 4 April, 2025.

It was then that Lee began the path to a full-fledged election bid, announcing his resignation as leader of the Democratic Party on 9 April ahead of his presidential run. In the Democratic Party presidential primary held on April 27, he was selected as the general candidate with overwhelming support.

The result of Yoon’s abortive martial law attempt was a political maelstrom from which South Korea is still reeling: a constitutional crisis that ended the former president’s career and left his PPP in tatters.

But of the small few who have managed to leverage that chaos to their advantage, none have benefitted more than Lee.

Now the controversial presidential candidate awaits the verdict on his political future – not only from the South Korean people, but also the courts.

If his guilty ruling is ultimately confirmed, Lee will likely lose his seat in the National Assembly. As a candidate, that would prevent him from running for president for a period of five years.

But with the courts having now approved Lee’s request to postpone his legal hearings until after the election, another possibility has emerged: that Lee, who remains the electoral favourite, could be convicted after winning the presidency.

And that could mean that South Korea, having just endured a months-long period of political turmoil, may not be done with its leadership dramas just yet.

Students around the world are anxious and in limbo, they say, as the Trump administration makes plans to temporarily halt US student visa appointments.

An official memo seen by BBC’s US partner CBS ordered a temporary pause in appointments as the state department prepares to increase social media vetting of applicants for student and foreign exchange visas.

It is part of a wide-ranging crackdown by US President Donald Trump on some of America’s most elite universities, which he sees as overly liberal.

For students, the changes have brought widespread uncertainty, with visa appointments at US embassies now unavailable and delays that could leave scholarships up in the air.

Some students told the BBC that the confusion has even left them wishing they had applied to schools outside the US.

“I already regret it,” said a 22-year-old master’s student from Shanghai, who did not wish to be named for fear of jeopardising their visa to study at the University of Pennsylvania.

The student said they feel lucky their application was approved, but that has not eased their uncertainty.

“Even if I study in the US, I may be chased back to China without getting my degree,” they said. “That’s so scary.”

Asked about the decision to pause all student visa appointments, state department spokesperson Tammy Bruce told reporters on Tuesday: “We take very seriously the process of vetting who it is that comes into the country, and we’re going to continue to do that.”

As part of his wider crackdown on higher education, Trump has moved to ban Harvard from enrolling international students, accusing the school of not doing enough to combat antisemitism on campus.

Harvard filed a lawsuit in response, and a judge has halted Trump’s ban for now, with a hearing on the matter scheduled for 29 May.

A student from Guangzhou City, who runs a consultancy group for Chinese students wishing to study in the US, said they are not sure how to advise applicants because the rules keep changing.

The student, who also wished not to be named, added that they think there will be fewer students who see the US as a viable education option.

More than 1.1 million international students from over 210 countries were enrolled in US colleges in the 2023-24 school year, according to Open Doors, an organisation that collects data on foreign students.

Universities often charge these international students higher tuition fees – a crucial part of their operating budgets.

For Ainul Hussein, 24, from India, the visa implications are both financial and personal.

Mr Hussein said he was excited to begin the next chapter of his life in New Jersey, enrolled in a master’s of science programme in management.

He received a I-20 document from the university – a crucial piece of paper that allows him to apply for a US student visa.

But recent processing delays left him “deeply worried”, he said, with appointments at consulates now either postponed or unavailable.

Foreign students who want to study in the US usually must schedule interviews at a US embassy in their home country before approval.

He said he may be forced to book flights to the US, still unsure of the situation. He also risks losing his scholarship if he has to defer his studies.

Students in the UK are being affected, too.

Oliver Cropley, a 27-year-old from Norwich, said he was due to study abroad for a year in Kansas, but that plan is now in jeopardy.

“Currently I’ve no student visa, despite forking out £300 on the application process,” Mr Cropley said.

News of the US pausing visa applications is “a huge disappointment”.

He, too, risks losing a scholarship if he is unable to complete his study abroad in the US, and may have to find last-minute accommodation and liaise with the university to make sure it does not delay him academically.

Alfred Williamson, from Wales, told Reuters he was excited to travel after his first year at Harvard, but couldn’t wait to get back. But now, he hasn’t heard about his visa.

It’s “dehumanising”, he told Reuters.

“We’re being used like pawns in the game that we have no control of, and we’re being caught in this crossfire between the White House and Harvard,” Mr Williamson told the news agency.

The US Court of International Trade on Wednesday struck down President Donald Trump’s tariffs imposed under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).

The court ruled IEEPA did not give the president the authority to impose certain tariffs.

This affects the “fentanyl” tariffs imposed by the White House on Canada, Mexico, China since Trump returned to the White House. These tariffs were brought in to curb smuggling of the narcotic into the US.

It also affects the so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs announced on 2 April, including the universal 10% baseline tariff on all imports to the US.

However, the ruling does not affect the Trump administration’s 25% “sectoral” tariffs on steel and aluminium imports and also his 25% additional tariffs on cars and car part imports, as these were implemented under a different legal justification.

A US federal appeals court decided on Thursday night that Trump’s global tariffs can temporarily stay in place while it considers the White House’s appeal against the trade court’s judgement – but the future of the President’s tariff agenda remains in the balance.

Data from US Customs shows the amount of revenue collected in the 2025 financial year to date (ie between 1 October 2024 and 30 April) under various tariffs.

The data gives an approximate sense of the proportion of tariffs struck down and unaffected by the trade court’s ruling.

It shows the tariffs imposed under IEEPA on China, Mexico and Canada in relation to the fentanyl smuggling had brought in $11.8bn (£8.7bn) since February 2025.

The 10% reciprocal tariffs – also justified under IEEPA – implemented in April had brought in $1.2bn (£890m).

On the other side of the ledger, the tariffs on metals and car parts – which are unaffected by this ruling – brought in around $3.3bn (£2.4bn), based on rounded figures.

And the biggest source of tariff revenue for the US in the period was from tariffs imposed on China dating back to Trump’s first term in office, which raised $23.4bn (£17.3bn). These are also not affected by the court ruling, as they were not justified by IEEPA.

However, this is a backward looking picture – and the new tariffs were expected to raise considerably more revenue over a full financial year.

Analysts at the investment bank Goldman Sachs have estimated that the tariffs the trade court has struck down were likely to have raised almost $200bn (£148bn) on an annual basis.

In terms of the overall impact on Donald Trump’s tariff agenda, the consultancy Capital Economics estimates the court ruling would reduce the US’s average external tariff this year from 15% to 6.5%.

This would still be a considerable increase on the 2.5% level of 2024 and would be the highest since 1970.

Yet 15% would have been the highest since the late 1930s.

Trump had been using his tariffs as negotiating leverage in talks with countries hit by his 2 April tariffs.

Some analysts believe this trade court ruling will mean countries will now be less likely to rush to secure deals with the US.

The European Union (EU) intensified negotiations with the White House last weekend after Trump threatened to increase the tariff on the bloc to 50% under IEEPA.

The EU – and others, such as Japan and Australia – might now judge it would be more prudent to wait to see what happens to the White House’s appeal against the trade court ruling before making any trade concessions to the US to secure a deal.

The response of stock markets around the world to the trade court ruling on Wednesday suggested it would be positive.

But it also means greater uncertainty.

Some analysts say Trump could attempt to reimpose the tariffs under different legal justifications.

For instance, Trump could attempt to re-implement the tariffs under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which empowers the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) to address foreign practices that violate trade agreements or are deemed “discriminatory”.

And Trump has also threatened other sectoral tariffs, including on pharmaceuticals and semiconductors. Those could still go into effect if they are not justified by IEEPA.

Last month the World Trade Organization (WTO) said that the outlook for global trade had “deteriorated sharply” due to Trump’s tariffs.

The WTO said it expected global merchandise trade to decline by 0.2% in 2025 as a result, having previously projected it would grow by 2.7 per cent this year.

The trade court ruling – if it holds – might help global trade perform somewhat better than this.

But the dampening impact of uncertainty regarding whether US tariffs will materialise or not remains.

The bottom line is that many economists think trade will still be very badly affected this year.

“Trump’s trade war is not over – not by a long shot,” is the verdict of Grace Fan of the consultancy TS Lombard.

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Elon Musk’s time in the Trump administration is coming to an end after a tempestuous 129 days in which the world’s richest man took an axe to government spending – stirring ample controversy along the way.

Earlier this week, the South African-born billionaire, on his social media platform, X, thanked President Trump for his time at the Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge.

Trump announced he will host a news conference in the Oval Office on Friday with Musk, writing: “This will be his last day, but not really, because he will, always, be with us, helping all the way.”

While Musk’s time in government lasted little more than four months, his work with Doge upended the federal government and had an impact not just in the halls of power in Washington – but around the world.

Let’s take a look at some of the ways Musk has left a mark.

Musk took a job with the Trump White House with one mission: to cut spending from the government as much as possible.

He began with an initial target of “at least $2 trillion”, which then shifted to $1tn and ultimately $150bn.

To date, Doge claims to have saved $175bn through a combination of asset sales, lease and grant cancellations, “fraud and improper payment deletion”, regulatory savings and a 260,000-person reduction from the 2.3 million-strong federal workforce.

A BBC analysis of those figures, however, found that evidence is sometimes lacking.

This mission has at times caused both chaos and controversy, including some instances in which federal judges halted mass firings and ordered employees reinstated.

In other instances, the administration has been forced to backtrack on firings.

In one notable instance in February, the administration stopped the firing of hundreds of federal employees working at the National Nuclear Security Administration, including some with sensitive jobs related to the US nuclear arsenal.

Musk himself repeatedly acknowledged that mass firings would inevitably include mistakes.

“We will make mistakes,” he said in February, after his department mistook a region of Mozambique for Hamas-controlled Gaza while cutting an aid programme. “But we’ll act quickly to correct any mistakes.”

Doge’s efforts to access data also garnered controversy, particularly the department’s push for access to sensitive treasury department systems that control the private information of millions of Americans.

Polls show that cuts to government spending remain popular with many Americans – even if Musk’s personal popularity has waned.

The presence of Musk – an unelected “special government employee” with companies that count the US government as customers – in Trump’s White House has also raised eyebrows, prompting questions about potential conflicts of interest.

His corporate empire includes large companies that do business with US and foreign governments. SpaceX has $22 billion in US government contracts, according to the company’s chief executive.

Some Democrats also accused Musk of taking advantage of his position to drum up business abroad for his satellite internet services firm, Starlink.

The White House was accused of helping Musk’s businesses by showcasing vehicles made by Tesla – his embattled car company – on the White House lawn in March.

Musk and Trump have both shrugged off any suggestion that his work with the government is conflicted or ethically problematic.

Around the world, Musk’s work with Doge was most felt after the vast majority – over 80% – of the US Agency for International Development’s (USAID’s) programmes were eliminated following a six-week review by Doge. The rest were absorbed by the State Department.

The Musk and Doge-led cuts formed part of a wider effort by the Trump administration to bring overseas spending closer in line with its “America First” approach.

The cuts to the agency – tasked with work such as famine detection, vaccinations and food aid in conflict areas – quickly had an impact on projects including communal kitchens in war-torn Sudan, scholarships for young Afghan women who fled the Taliban and clinics for transgender people in India.

USAID also was a crucial instrument of US “soft power” around the world, leading some detractors pointing to its elimination as a sign of waning American influence on the global stage.

While Musk – and Trump – have for years been accused by detractors of spreading baseless conspiracy theories, Musk’s presence in the White House starkly highlighted how misinformation has crept into discourse at the highest levels of the US government.

For example, Musk spread an unfounded internet theory that US gold reserves had quietly been stolen from Fort Knox in Kentucky. At one point, he floated the idea of livestreaming a visit there to ensure the gold was secured.

• Fact-checking Trump’s Oval Office confrontation with Ramaphosa

More recently, Musk spread widely discredited rumours that the white Afrikaner population of South Africa is facing “genocide” in their home country.

Those rumours found their way into the Oval Office earlier in May, when a meeting aimed at soothing tensions between the US and South Africa took a drastic twist after Trump presented South African President Cyril Ramaphosa with videos and articles he said were evidence of crimes against Afrikaners.

Musk’s work in government also showed that, despite public pledges of unity, there are tensions within the “Trump 2.0” administration.

While Trump publicly – and repeatedly – backed the work of Musk and Doge, Musk’s tenure was marked by reports of tension between him and members of the cabinet who felt Doge cuts were impacting their agencies.

“They have a lot of respect for Elon and that he’s doing this, and some disagree a little bit,” Trump acknowledged in a February cabinet meeting. “If they aren’t, I want them to speak up.”

At one point, he was asked whether any cabinet members had expressed dissatisfaction with Musk and turned to the room to ask them. No one spoke.

The announcement of Musk’s departure also came the same day CBS – BBC’s US partner – publicised part of an interview during which Musk said he was “disappointed” by Trump’s “big, beautiful” budget bill. The bill includes multi-trillion dollar tax breaks and a pledge to increase defence spending.

Musk said the bill “undermines” the work of Doge to cut spending – reflecting larger tensions within the Republican Party over the path forward.

Two years ago, zoologist Khlur Baiaineh Mukhim spotted something intriguing in a stream in a remote underground cave in India’s north-eastern Meghalaya state.

It was a fish he had never seen before, with long barbels – the whisker-like protrusion around a fish’s mouth – yellowish-green in colour and, most importantly, with eyes.

Cave-dwelling fish, or species of fish that live exclusively in caves, usually don’t have eyes, as they have adapted to living in darkness, which is why the fish Mr Mukhim spotted stood out to him.

Researchers in Meghalaya now say it is a brand new species of fish, one that has adapted to living above as well as under the ground – a unique characteristic among cave-dwelling species.

Their findings were published earlier this month in the latest issue of the Journal of Fish Biology, a leading peer-reviewed publication on fish research.

The researchers have named the fish after the thick black stripe on its tail.

They say that the species is endemic to the cave it was discovered in – Krem Mawjymbuin – in the eastern Khasi Hills, and has been found to exist in both water pools 60m (196ft) deep inside the cave, as well as a nearby stream above ground.

Dandadhar Sarma, a professor of zoology and one of the researchers of the study, says that the environment inside the cave is harsh, where temperatures drop to 18C (64.4F) – the ideal temperature for tropical fish to survive is much higher – and oxygen levels are extremely low.

“So it’s remarkable that the fish can adapt to both – harsh subterranean conditions as well as more favourable surface conditions,” Mr Sarma says.

is the sixth cave-dwelling species of fish that has been discovered in Meghalaya over the past two to three decades, but the only one which has been found to show this ability to adapt to two very different kinds of environments.

The state is known to have some of the most complex cave systems in the world but many of its estimated 1,500 to 1,700 limestone and sandstone caves remain unexplored, as they are located in remote, forested regions that are challenging to access.

These cave networks are home to numerous animal species that display fascinating evolutionary characteristics but they remain largely unknown because of insufficient research, Mr Sarma says.

Over the past five years, a team of researchers from the state, funded by the federal government, have been systematically exploring Meghalaya’s vast network of caves to locate and document new species of fish living inside them.

In 2019, the research team discovered Neolissochilus pnar, the largest cave-dwelling fish species in the world, Mr Sarma says.

The fish was found inside the Krem Umladaw cave in the western Jaintia Hills in a deep pond hundreds of metres below the ground.

Mr Mukhim, who is part of the team and has undertaken dozens of cave expeditions, says that cave-dwelling fish display evolutionary traits that are as fascinating as the those displayed by animals living at the Earth’s poles or deep inside its oceans.

“Cave ecosystems are one of the harshest environments to live in,” he says.

“These fish usually live in perpetual darkness, stagnant, shallow water pools with dangerously low oxygen levels and sometimes, go for months with little to no food.”

Nature has helped them survive by doing away with the unwanted and strengthening what’s necessary for survival.

Consequently, they’ve lost their eyesight and ability to produce colourful pigments, which would otherwise be a needless waste of energy inside a pitch-dark cave.

Instead, they have a sharper sense of taste and smell, and sensory organs on their skin help them detect vibrations to navigate the substrate and avoid predators.

Their sources of food include only what’s available inside the cave, like leaf debris and marine organisms flushed in by seasonal floods, and even bat excreta.

And within this extremely harsh environment, these cave-dwelling fish species live out their lives, some living up to a decade, and even produce offspring.

Remarkably, their offspring are born with eyesight – a feature that links them to the surface-dwelling ancestors from which they’ve evolved – and gradually, they lose their eyesight as they age.

But searching for these fish is no easy task.

It involves rappelling down hundreds of meters into cavernous holes in the earth, squeezing through tiny tunnels with little oxygen and wading through pools filled with creatures yet unknown in pitch darkness.

“Our headlights are the only source of light,” Mr Mukhim says.

Catching fish involves squatting near pools for hours, and swiftly sweeping up the skittish creatures in a net as they present themselves.

Mr Mukhim, who has been studying fish found in the caves of Meghalaya for over a decade, says that there’s a need to study these species as that is the only way we will be able to conserve them.

“Once a species is wiped out, you can never bring them back,” Mr Mukhim says.

“It’s painful to think that an entire ecosystem in our midst, one of the most fascinating ones, has been studied so little,” he adds.

“It’s time we paid a little more attention to these cave-dwelling marvels of nature.”

Israeli ministers say 22 new Jewish settlements have been approved in the occupied West Bank – the biggest expansion in decades.

Several already exist as outposts, built without government authorisation, but will now be made legal under Israeli law. Others are completely new, according to Defence Minister Israel Katz and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

Settlements – which are widely seen as illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this – are one of the most contentious issues between Israel and the Palestinians.

Katz said the move “prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel”, while the Palestinian presidency called it a “dangerous escalation”.

The Israeli anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now called it “the most extensive move of its kind” in more than 30 years and warned that it would “dramatically reshape the West Bank and entrench the occupation even further”.

Israel has built about 160 settlements housing some 700,000 Jews since it occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem – land Palestinians want, along with Gaza, for their hoped-for future state – in the 1967 Middle East war. An estimated 3.3 million Palestinians live alongside them.

Successive Israeli governments have allowed settlements to grow. However, expansion has risen sharply since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power in late 2022 at the head of a right-wing, pro-settler coalition, as well as the start of the Gaza war, triggered by Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel.

On Thursday, Israel Katz and Bezalel Smotrich – an ultranationalist leader and settler who has control over planning in the West Bank – officially confirmed a decision that is believed to have been taken by the government two weeks ago.

A statement said they had approved 22 new settlements, the “renewal of settlement in northern Samaria [northern West Bank], and reinforcement of the eastern axis of the State of Israel”.

It did not include information about the exact location of the new settlements, but maps being circulated suggest they will be across the length and width of the West Bank.

Katz and Smotrich did highlight what they described as the “historic return” to Homesh and Sa-Nur, two settlements deep in the northern West Bank which were evacuated at the same time as Israel withdrew its troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005.

Two years ago, a group of settlers established a Jewish religious school and an unauthorised outpost at Homesh, which Peace Now said would be among 12 made legal under Israeli law.

Nine of the settlements would be completely new, according to the watchdog. They include Mount Ebal, just to the south of Homesh and near the city of Nablus, and Beit Horon North, west of Ramallah, where it said construction had already begun in recent days.

The last of the settlements, Nofei Prat, was currently officially considered a “neighbourhood” of another settlement near East Jerusalem, Kfar Adumim, and would now be recognised as independent, Peace Now added.

Katz said the decision was a “strategic move that prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel, and serves as a buffer against our enemies.”

“This is a Zionist, security, and national response – and a clear decision on the future of the country,” he added.

Smotrich called it a “once-in-a-generation decision” and declared: “Next step sovereignty!”

But a spokesperson for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas – who governs parts of the West Bank not under full Israeli control – called it a “dangerous escalation” and accused Israel of continuing to drag the region into a “cycle of violence and instability”.

“This extremist Israeli government is trying by all means to prevent the establishment of an independent Palestinian state,” Nabil Abu Rudeineh told Reuters news agency.

Lior Amihai, director of Peace Now, said: “The Israeli government no longer pretends otherwise: the annexation of the occupied territories and expansion of settlements is its central goal.”

Elisha Ben Kimon, an Israeli journalist with the popular Ynet news site who covers the West Bank and settlements, told the BBC’s Newshour programme that 70% to 80% of ministers wanted to declare the formal annexation of the West Bank.

“I think that Israel is a few steps from declaring this area as Israeli territory. They believe that this period will never be coming back, this is one opportunity that they don’t want to slip from their hands – that’s why they’re doing this now,” Mr Ben Kimon told the BBC’s Newshour programme.

Israel effectively annexed East Jerusalem in 1980, in a move not recognised by the vast majority of the international community.

This latest step is a blow to renewed efforts to revive momentum on a two-state solution to the decades-old Israel-Palestinian conflict – the internationally approved formula for peace that would see the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel – with a French-Saudi summit planned at the UN’s headquarters in New York next month.

Jordan’s foreign ministry condemned what it called a “flagrant violation of international law” that “undermines prospects for peace by entrenching the occupation”.

UK Foreign Office Minister Hamish Falconer said the move was “a deliberate obstacle to Palestinian statehood”.

Since taking office, the current Israeli government has decided to establish a total of 49 new settlements and begun the legalisation process for seven unauthorised outposts which will be recognised as “neighbourhoods” of existing settlements, according to Peace Now.

Last year, the UN’s top court issued an advisory opinion that said “Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful”. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) also said Israeli settlements “have been established and are being maintained in violation of international law”, and that Israel should “evacuate all settlers”.

Netanyahu said at the time that the court had made a “decision of lies” and insisted that “the Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land”.

France’s National Assembly has voted to abolish low-emission zones, a key measure introduced during President Emmanuel Macron’s first term to reduce city pollution.

So-called ZFEs () have been criticised for hitting those who cannot afford less-polluting vehicles the hardest.

A handful of MPs from Macron’s party joined opposition parties from the right and far right in voting 98-51 to scrap the zones, which have gradually been extended across French cities since 2019.

The motion was put forward by Pierre Meurin of the far-right National Rally, and backed by some motoring organisations.

But it was a personal victory for writer Alexandre Jardin who set up a movement called (Beggars)arguing that “ecology has turned into a sport for the rich”.

“Everyone played their part in the vote. The MPs voted either for the end of this nightmare, or they abstained,” he told Le Figaro newspaper.

“They were afraid of going back to their constituencies if they had voted against the abolition of the ZFEs.”

The low-emission zones began with 15 of France’s most polluted cities in 2019 and by the start of this year had been extended to every urban area with a population of more than 150,000, with a ban on cars registered before 1997.

Those produced after 1997 need a round “Crit’Air” sticker to drive in low-emission zones, and there are six categories that correspond to various types of vehicle.

The biggest restrictions have been applied in the most polluted cities, Paris and Lyon, as well as Montpellier and Grenoble.

They have turned into something of a lightning rod for Macron’s opponents.

Marine Le Pen condemned the ZFEs as “no-rights zones” during her presidential campaign for National Rally in 2022, and her Communist counterpart warned of a “social bomb”.

The head of the right-wing Republicans in the Assembly, Laurent Wauquiez, talked of “freeing the French from stifling, punitive ecology”, and on the far left, Clémence Guetté said green policies should not be imposed “on the backs of the working classes”.

The government tried to head off Wednesday night’s revolt by watering down the restrictions, but also preserving the zones in Paris and Lyon. This amendment was defeated by a large margin.

Agnès Pannier-Runacher, the minister for green transition, told MPs that “air pollution is behind almost 40,000 premature deaths a year… and the low-emission zones have helped bring down [that number]”.

The Greens and Socialists also voted to maintain the zones.

Green Senator Anne Souyris told BFMTV that “killing [the ZFEs] also means killing hundreds of thousands of people” and Socialist MP Gérard Leseul said the vote sent a negative signal as it did not address the reduction that had to be made to levels of air pollution.

The abolition is expected to go through the upper house, France’s Senate, but it still needs to be approved in a broader bill in the lower house in June and will have to be approved by France’s Constitutional Council, which is not guaranteed.

The victims of prolific French paedophile Joel Le Scouarnec have expressed their dismay that the former surgeon’s 20-year prison sentence does not include preventive detention – meaning he could be released from jail in the early 2030s.

The 74-year-old was found guilty on Tuesday of sexually abusing hundreds of people, most of them underage patients of his, over decades.

Over the course of the trial he had confessed to committing 111 rapes and 188 sexual assaults, and was sentenced to the maximum of 20 years in jail.

Prosecutors – who dubbed Le Scouarnec “a devil in a white coat” – had asked the court to take the extremely rare provision to hold him in a centre for treatment and supervision even after release, called preventive detention.

The judge rejected this demand, arguing Le Scouarnec’s age and his “desire to make amends” had been taken into account.

Le Scouarnec will have to serve two-thirds of his sentence before being eligible for parole.

But because he has already served seven years due to a previous conviction for the rape and sexual assault of four children, he may be eligible for parole by 2032.

His lawyer, Maxime Tessier, pointed out that saying Le Scouarnec could be released then was “inaccurate”, as parole is not tantamout a release.

Now, his victims – many of whom assiduously attended the three-month-long trial in Vannes, northern France – are lamenting the sentence.

“For a robbery you risk 30 years. But the punishment for hundreds of child rapes is lighter?” one victim told Le Monde.

The president of a child advocacy group, Solène Podevin Favre, said that she might have expected the verdict “to be less lenient” and to include a post-sentence preventive detention.

“It’s the maximum sentence, certainly,” she said. “But it’s the least we could have hoped for. Yet in six years, he could potentially be released. It’s staggering.”

Marie Grimaud, one of the lawyers representing the victims, told reporters that while she “intellectually” understood the verdict, “symbolically” she could not.

Another lawyer, Francesca Satta, said that she felt 20 years was too short a time given the number of victims in the case.

“It is time for the law to change so we can have more appropriate sentences,” she argued.

But in her judgement read out to the court, Judge Aude Burési said that, while the court had “heard perfectly the demands from the plaintiffs that Le Scouarnec should never be released from jail, it would be demagogic and fanciful to let them believe that would be possible”.

“In fact,” she added, “the rule of law does not allow for that to happen.”

One of Le Scouarnec’s victims, Amélie Lévêque, said the verdict had “shocked” her and that she would have liked preventive detention to be imposed. “How many victims would it take? A thousand?”

She argued that French law needed to change and allow for harsher sentences to take into account the serial nature of crimes.

Similar complaints were raised in the aftermath of the Pelicot trial last December, in which Dominique Pelicot was found guilty of drugging and raping his wife, Gisèle, and recruited dozens of men to abuse her over almost a decade.

Pelicot, too, was sentenced to 20 years – the maximum sentence for rape in French law – with the obligation to serve a minimum of two-thirds in jail.

His case, however, will have to be re-examined at the end of the prison sentence before the question of preventive detention can be explored.

In France, sentences are not served consecutively. Public prosecutor Stéphane Kellenberger noted last week that had Le Scouarnec been on trial in the US – where people serve one prison sentence after another – he may have faced a sentence of over 4,000 years.

But Cécile de Oliveira, one of the victims’ lawyers, praised the sentence, which she said had been “finely tailored” to Le Scouarnec’s “psychiatric condition”.

She agreed with the court’s decision not to impose preventive detention on the former surgeon, adding: “It needs to remain an entirely exceptional punishment.”

After the verdict was read out, victims, journalists and lawyers mingled outside the courthouse in Vannes. Many of the civil parties and their relatives, angered by the verdict, brought their frustration to the media.

“All that I ask for is that this man cannot offend again,” the mother of a victim told French outlets.

“If this kind of behaviour needs to entail a life sentence, so be it.”

Airline passengers to Turkey will be fined if they stand up before the seatbelt sign turns off after landing, regulators have said.

The Turkish civil aviation authority said it imposed the order after receiving complaints from passengers. The rules came into effect earlier this month.

Turkish media said fines are around US$70 (£50), although no amount is mentioned in the authority’s guidance.

The authority warned that there was a “serious increase” in such incidents, with many complaints about passengers grabbing overhead baggage before their plane had been parked.

The country welcomes tens of millions of tourists a year.

The aviation authority said commercial airlines must now issue an in-flight announcement and report those who do not follow orders.

Passengers must be told to keep their seatbelts locked, and refrain from standing and opening overhead lockers until the seatbelt sign is off.

Those who do not follow these rules must be reported to the authority, it says.

Turkish Airlines, the national carrier, has updated its landing announcement, according to Euronews.

“Passengers who do not comply with the rules will be reported to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation through a Disruptive Passenger Report, and an administrative fine will be imposed in accordance with the applicable legal regulations,” the airline says upon landing, according to the TV network.

The BBC has contacted the airline for comment.

Five musicians who disappeared in the Mexican city of Reynosa, near the US border, were murdered by suspected drug cartel members, Mexican authorities have said.

Nine alleged members of the notorious Gulf Cartel have been arrested on suspicion of murder, according to Irving Barrios Mojica, attorney general for the Mexican state of Tamaulipas.

The musicians – known as Grupo Fugitivo – were kidnapped while travelling to a private event on 25 May, Barrios Mojica said. Soon after, their relatives reported receiving ransom demands.

Investigators are working to establish a motive for the killings.

The musicians were aged between 20 and 40, and often played at local parties and dances.

Nine firearms and two vehicles were also seized during the arrests.

Grupo Fugitivo performed a range of regional Mexican music, a genre which includes corridos – songs that have historically been used to pay homage to drug cartels and their leaders.

It is not immediately clear if the group was targeted because of their music, or were caught up in the violence that has long beset Tamaulipas, where the Gulf Cartel has a strong presence.

The Trump administration has designated the Gulf Cartel, alongside several other criminal groups, a “global terrorist organisation”.

In January, the US embassy in Mexico issued a level 4 travel advisory, the highest level, warning its citizens not to travel to several Mexican cities, including Reynosa.

It cited the risk of “crime and kidnapping” and “increasingly frequent gun battles occurring in and around” the city.

“Heavily armed members of criminal groups often patrol areas of the state and operate with impunity particularly along the border region from Reynosa to Nuevo Laredo,” the US state department said.

“In these areas, local law enforcement has limited capacity to respond to incidents of crime.”

A Russian book distributor has ordered bookshops to “return or destroy” works by the Pulitzer Prize-winner Jeffery Eugenides and the British bestseller Bridget Collins, among others, in the latest case of censorship targeting the country’s literary scene.

Trading House BMM sent a letter to shops this week, seen by the BBC, with a list of 37 titles that should immediately be removed from sale.

The list also included texts by Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, Japanese novelist Ryu Murakami, and a number of Russian writers.

The order comes amid growing Kremlin censorship since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which has targeted books featuring anti-war sentiment, LGBTQ themes, and criticism of Russia’s leadership.

The letter warned of “adverse consequences” if books such as Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides and Murakami’s Ecstasy were not pulled from shelves as there were suspicions they “do not comply with Russian laws,” without providing further details.

Booksellers should “immediately cease sales and return [the titles] or destroy the remaining copies, providing writing confirmation of destruction”, the message said.

The targeted books are an eclectic mix.

Bridget Collins’ book The Binding, about an apprentice bookbinder, features, as does An Oral History of Reggae by David Katz, along with Lisi Harrison’s romance The Dirty Book Club.

The letter was signed by BMM’s chief executive Anastasia Nikitanova, who hung up when the BBC approached her for comment and did not respond to further messages.

“We checked the list and we don’t have these books in stock now,” an employee of one of the shops that had received the letter told the BBC on condition of anonymity.

They continued: “If we did, we could have tried to understand what’s wrong with them. I have no idea why the publisher chose these books… it’s a sign of the moral panic that has overtaken the market.”

The newly banned books were released in Russia by the publishing houses Ripol Classic and Dom Istorii, which are affiliated with BMM.

Sergei Makarenkov, the head of Ripol Classic, said: “I think [the list] is most likely connected to the anti-LGBT law. This needs to be clarified with BMM… I can’t clearly explain to you what has happened here.”

“Such lists appear everywhere now, it’s become completely routine,” he added. Makarenkov said he would get back to the BBC when further details were available but at the time of publication had not responded to follow-up calls.

Russia banned the promotion of “non-traditional sexual orientations” to minors in 2013 but since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine has expanded the law to forbid “LGBT propaganda” being disseminated among people of any ages.

Moscow has also labelled what it calls the “international LGBT movement” an “extremist organisation,” despite no such official movement existing.

The BMM letter follows a high-profile case against the publishers behind the teen romance novel A Summer in the Red Scarf and other titles with LGBT themes.

A Summer in the Red Scarf tells the story of two teenage boys who fall for each other at a Soviet pioneer camp.

The backlash against the book prompted its two authors to leave Russia. And earlier this month, a Moscow court placed under house arrest managers from Popcorn Books and Individuum – which are part of Russia’s largest publishing group, Eksmo.

The FBI is investigating an effort by one or more unknown people to access the personal phone of Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, sources told the BBC’s US news partner CBS.

The key Trump ally told people that her phone had been hacked after a impersonator – or impersonators – used her contacts file to message other top US officials, sources told CBS.

Some recipients of the messages raised suspicions after they were asked if they could continue a conversation in another platform, such as Telegram.

“The White House takes the cybersecurity of all staff very seriously, and this matter continues to be investigated,” a White House spokesperson said.

The period of time over which the messages were received is unknown.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the incident and the FBI probe launched in response.

The impersonation was targeted at her personal phone, not government phone, the Wall Street Journal reported. It also reported that the recipients included US senators, governors and top business executives.

Wiles is the first female White House chief of staff and was seen as a key architect of US President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign.

It is not the first time she has been at the centre of concerns around cybersecurity.

Last year, three members of a cyber espionage unit associated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards – a powerful branch of Iran’s armed forces – were indicted for launching cyber attacks on the Trump campaign team, which Susie Wiles led.

Responding to the latest incident, FBI director Kash Patel said in a statement to CBS News: “The FBI takes all threats against the President, his staff, and our cybersecurity with the utmost seriousness; safeguarding our administration officials’ ability to securely communicate to accomplish the President’s mission is a top priority.”

A senior Hamas official has told the BBC the Palestinian armed group will reject the latest US proposal for a new Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal.

The White House said on Thursday that Israel had “signed off” on US envoy Steve Witkoff’s plan and that it was waiting for a formal response from Hamas.

Israeli media cited Israeli officials as saying it would see Hamas hand over 10 living hostages and the bodies of 18 dead hostages in two phases in exchange for a 60-day ceasefire and the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

The Hamas official said the proposal did not satisfy core demands, including an end to the war, and that it would respond in due course.

The Israeli government has not commented, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told hostages’ families on Thursday that he accepted Witkoff’s plan.

Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza and resumed its military offensive against Hamas on 18 March following the collapse of a two-month ceasefire brokered by the US, Qatar and Egypt.

It said it wanted to put pressure on Hamas to release the 58 hostages it is still holding, at least 20 of whom are believed to be alive.

On 19 May, the Israeli military launched an expanded offensive that Netanyahu said would see troops “take control of all areas” of Gaza. The next day, he said Israel would also ease the blockade and allow a “basic” amount of food into Gaza to prevent a famine.

Almost 4,000 people have been killed in Gaza over the past 10 weeks, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

The UN says another 600,000 people have been displaced again by Israeli ground operations and evacuation orders, and a report by the UN-backed IPC warns that about 500,000 people face catastrophic levels of hunger in the coming months.

At a news conference in Washington DC on Thursday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked whether she could confirm a report by Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya TV that Israel and Hamas had agreed a new ceasefire deal.

“I can confirm that Special Envoy Witkoff and the president submitted a ceasefire proposal to Hamas that Israel backed and supported. Israel signed off on this proposal before it was sent to Hamas,” she said.

“I can also confirm that those discussions are continuing, and we hope that a ceasefire in Gaza will take place so we can return all of the hostages home,” she added.

However, a senior Hamas official later said the deal contradicted previous discussions between the group’s negotiators and Witkoff.

The official told the BBC that the offer did not include guarantees the temporary truce would lead to a permanent ceasefire, nor a return to the humanitarian protocol that allowed hundreds of trucks of aid into Gaza daily during the last ceasefire.

Nevertheless, he said Hamas remained in contact with the mediators and would submit its written response in due course.

Earlier, Israel’s Channel 12 TV reported the Netanyahu told hostages’ families at a meeting: “We agree to accept the latest Witkoff plan that was conveyed to us tonight. Hamas has not yet responded. We do not believe Hamas will release the last hostage, and we will not leave the Strip until all the hostages are in our hands.”

His office later issued a statement accusing one of the channel’s reporters of trying to “smuggle” a recording device into the room where the meeting took place. But it did not deny that he had agreed to the US proposal.

Netanyahu has previously said that Israel will end the war only when all the hostages are released, Hamas is either destroyed or disarmed, and its leaders have been sent into exile.

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

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response Hamas’ cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

Another four people, two of them dead, were already being held captive in Gaza before the conflict.

So far, Israel has secured the return of 197 hostages, 148 of them alive, mostly through two temporary ceasefire deals with Hamas.

At least 54,249 people have been killed in Gaza during the war, including 3,986 since Israel resumed its offensive, according to the territory’s health ministry.

On Thursday, at least 54 people were killed by Israeli strikes across Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Civil Defence agency. They included 23 people who died when a home in the central Bureij area was hit, it said.

The Israeli military said it had struck “dozens of terror targets” over the past day.

Russia has continued to make billions from fossil fuel exports to the West, data shows, helping to finance its full-scale invasion of Ukraine – now in its fourth year.

Since the start of that invasion in February 2022, Russia has made more than three times as much money by exporting hydrocarbons than Ukraine has received in aid allocated by its allies.

Data analysed by the BBC show that Ukraine’s Western allies have paid Russia more for its hydrocarbons than they have given Ukraine in aid.

Campaigners say governments in Europe and North America need to do more to stop Russian oil and gas from fuelling the war with Ukraine.

Proceeds made from selling oil and gas are key to keeping Russia’s war machine going.

Oil and gas account for almost a third of Russia’s state revenue and more than 60% of its exports.

In the wake of the February 2022 invasion, Ukraine’s allies imposed sanctions on Russian hydrocarbons. The US and UK banned Russian oil and gas, while the EU banned Russian seaborne crude imports, but not gas.

Despite this, by 29 May, Russia had made more than €883bn ($973bn; £740bn) in revenue from fossil fuel exports since the start of the full-scale invasion, including €228bn from the sanctioning countries, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).

The lion’s share of that amount, €209bn, came from EU member states.

EU states continued importing pipeline gas directly from Russia until Ukraine cut the transit in January 2025, and Russian crude oil is still piped to Hungary and Slovakia.

Russian gas is still piped to Europe in increasing quantities via Turkey: CREA’s data shows that its volume rose by 26.77% in January and February 2025 over the same period in 2024.

Hungary and Slovakia are also still receiving Russian pipeline gas via Turkey.

Despite the West’s efforts, in 2024 Russian revenues from fossil fuels fell by a mere 5% compared with 2023, along with a similar 6% drop in the volumes of exports, according to CREA. Last year also saw a 6% increase in Russian revenues from crude oil exports, and a 9% year-on-year increase in revenues from pipeline gas.

Russian estimates say gas exports to Europe rose by up to 20% in 2024, with liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports reaching record levels. Currently, half of Russia’s LNG exports go the EU, CREA says.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, says the alliance has not imposed “the strongest sanctions” on Russian oil and gas because some member states fear an escalation in the conflict and because buying them is “cheaper in the short term”.

LNG imports have not been included in the latest, 17th package of sanctions on Russia approved by the EU, but it has adopted a road map towards ending all Russian gas imports by the end of 2027.

Data shows that money made by Russia from selling fossil fuels has consistently surpassed the amount of aid Ukraine receives from its allies.

The thirst for fuel can get in the way of the West’s efforts to limit Russia’s ability to fund its war.

Mai Rosner, a senior campaigner from the pressure group Global Witness, says many Western policymakers fear that cutting imports of Russian fuels will lead to higher energy prices.

“There’s no real desire in many governments to actually limit Russia’s ability to produce and sell oil. There is way too much fear about what that would mean for global energy markets. There’s a line drawn under where energy markets would be too undermined or too thrown off kilter,” she told the BBC.

In addition to direct sales, some of the oil exported by Russia ends up in the West after being processed into fuel products in third countries via what is known as “the refining loophole”. Sometimes it gets diluted with crude from other countries, too.

CREA says it has identified three “laundromat refineries” in Turkey and three in India processing Russian crude and selling the resulting fuel on to sanctioning countries. It says they have used €6.1bn worth of Russian crude to make products for sanctioning countries.

India’s petroleum ministry criticised CREA’s report as “a deceptive effort to tarnish India’s image”.

“[These countries] know that sanctioning countries are willing to accept this. This is a loophole. It’s entirely legal. Everyone’s aware of it, but nobody is doing much to actually tackle it in a big way,” says Vaibhav Raghunandan, an analyst at CREA.

Campaigners and experts argue that Western governments have the tools and means available to stem the flow of oil and gas revenue into the Kremlin’s coffers.

According to former Russian deputy energy minister Vladimir Milov, who is now a diehard opponent of Vladimir Putin, sanctions imposed on trade in Russian hydrocarbons should be better enforced – particularly the oil price cap adopted by the G7 group of nations, which Mr Milov says “is not working“.

He is fearful, though, that the US government shake-up launched by President Donald Trump will hamper agencies such as the US Treasury or the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which are key for sanctions enforcement.

Another avenue is continued pressure on Russia’s “shadow fleet” of tankers involved in dodging the sanctions.

“That is a complex surgery operation. You need to periodically release batches of new sanctioned vessels, shell companies, traders, insurers etc. every several weeks,” Mr Milov says. According to him, this is an area where Western governments have been much more effective, particularly with the introduction of new sanctions by Joe Biden’s outgoing administration in January 2025.

Mai says that banning Russian LNG exports to Europe and closing the refining loophole in Western jurisdictions would be “important steps in finishing the decoupling of the West from Russian hydrocarbons”.

According to Mr Raghunandan from CREA, it would be relatively easy for the EU to give up Russian LNG imports.

“Fifty percent of their LNG exports are directed towards the European Union, and only 5% of the EU’s total [LNG] gas consumption in 2024 was from Russia. So if the EU decides to completely cut off Russian gas, it’s going to hurt Russia way more then it’s going to hurt consumers in the European Union,” he told the BBC.

Experts interviewed by the BBC have dismissed Donald Trump’s idea that the war with Ukraine will end if Opec brings oil prices down.

“People in Moscow are laughing at this idea, because the party which will suffer the most… is the American shale oil industry, the least cost-competitive oil industry in the world,” Mr Milov told the BBC.

Mr Raghunandan says that Russia’s cost of producing crude is also lower than in Opec countries like Saudi Arabia, so they would be hurt by lower oil prices before Russia.

“There is no way that Saudi Arabia is going to agree to that. This has been tried before. This has led to conflict between Saudi Arabia and the US,” he says.

Ms Rosner says there are both moral and practical issues with the West buying Russian hydrocarbons while supporting Ukraine.

“We now have a situation in which we are funding the aggressor in a war that we’re condemning and also funding the resistance to the war,” she says. “This dependence on fossil fuels means that we are really at the whims of energy markets, global energy producers and hostile dictators.”

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A father-of-three and former Royal Marine has been charged following the Liverpool parade crash in which 79 people were injured.

Paul Doyle, 53, from Burghill Road in West Derby, was arrested on Monday, when a car ploughed into fans attending Liverpool’s Premier League victory celebration, Merseyside Police confirmed. He will appear at Liverpool Magistrates’ Court on Friday morning.

A nine-year-old was among those injured when the car Mr Doyle is alleged to have been driving crashed into supporters at 18:00 BST on Water Street.

The local businessman faces multiple counts of causing, and attempting to cause unlawful and malicious grievous bodily harm with intent as well as one of dangerous driving and two counts of unlawful and malicious wounding with intent.

Assistant Chief Constable Jenny Sims, of Merseyside Police, told a news conference seven people remain in hospital after the incident.

The BBC has spoken to the suspect’s neighbours, who said they were shocked and in “disbelief”.

They said that Burghill Road was swarming with police in the hours after the crash.

One said: “I came out late on Monday night and there’s police everywhere. Looking around all the houses, so I had a thought – imagine if it was him?”

Assistant Chief Constable Jenny Sims said detectives were reviewing a “huge volume” of CCTV and mobile phone footage.

Sarah Hammond, Chief Crown Prosecutor for Crown Prosecution Service in the Mersey-Cheshire region, said this included footage from CCTV, mobile phones, businesses and dashcams, along with witness statements.

She said the charges “will be kept under review” while the investigation progresses.

“It is important to ensure every victim gets the justice they deserve,” she added.

Mr Doyle has been charged with seven offences, which can be broken down into four groups.

The first includes two counts of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm (GBH) – one of these is an alleged offence against one child.

The second is two counts of causing unlawful and malicious GBH with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.

According to the Sentencing Council, it relates to the nature of the injury allegedly caused.

GBH does not require an open wound to have been suffered. Wounding requires the victim’s skin to have been broken.

Mr Doyle also faces two charges of attempted unlawful and malicious GBH with intent to cause GBH, and again one of these alleged offences relates to a child.

The final count is dangerous driving.

Police confirmed the ages of those injured in the incident ranged from nine to 78.

Assistant Chief Constable Sims, said she understood many have questions about the incident, and detectives were “working tirelessly, with diligence and professionalism, to seek the answer to all of those questions”.

“When we are able to, we will provide further information,” she added.

Banksy’s latest piece of grafitti art has been revealed to the world – but where it was painted remains a mystery for now.

Images posted on the elusive artist‘s Instagram depict a lighthouse stencilled on a drab, beige wall, along with the words: “I want to be what you saw in me”.

A false shadow appears to have been drawn on the pavement from a nearby bollard, giving the illusion that the lighthouse is itself a silhouette of the mundane street furniture.

But unlike a lighthouse, the post gives little away as to the artwork’s location. A second, wider shot showing two people walking their dogs offers little more.

Geoguessers on social media have speculated that the street art may lurk in Marseille, in the south of France, while others debate how to interpret the work’s meaning.

Another image of the art circulating online shows a blurred person riding a scooter in front of the piece, with a graffiti tag seemingly reading “Yaze” further along the wall.

The tag matches that used by a Canadian graffiti artist Marco The Polo, whose Instagram account features photos of his own work but who has called Banksy an inspiration.

Banksy has kept his true identity a secret throughout his career, and it is only through the Instagram account that works are identified as genuine.

Often imbuing his works with a political message, his previous pieces have alluded to immigration, the war in Ukraine and homelessness, among other things.

The meaning of some of his works, though, is less clear – such as his motivation behind the series of animals painted in various locations across London last summer.

Prior to the lighthouse, in December, Banksy posted another piece, depicting a Madonna and child with a fixture in the wall appearing like a bullet wound in her chest.

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Xiao Chen turned up at the US Consulate in Shanghai on Thursday morning, hours after Washington announced that it would “aggressively” revoke the visas of Chinese students.

The 22-year-old had a visa appointment: she was headed to Michigan in the autumn to study communications.

After a “pleasant” conversation, she was told her application had been rejected. She was not given a reason.

“I feel like a drifting duckweed tossed in wind and storm,” she said, using a common Chinese expression used to describe feeling both uncertain and helpless.

She had been hopeful because she already had the acceptance letter. And she thought she had narrowly escaped the bombshells in recent days.

First, Donald Trump’s administration moved to end Harvard University’s ability to enrol international students, a move that has since been blocked in court. And then it said it had stopped visa appointments for all foreign students.

But now, Chen is ready for plan B. “If I can’t get the visa eventually, I’ll probably take a gap year. Then I’ll wait to see if things will get better next year.”

A valid visa may still not be enough, she adds, because students with visas could be “stopped at the airport and deported”.

“It’s bad for every Chinese student. The only difference is how bad.”

It has been a bleak week for international students in the US – and perhaps even harder for the 280,000 or so Chinese students who would have noticed that their country has been singled out.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused Harvard of “co-ordinating with the Chinese Communist Party”.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the move against Chinese students in the US would include “those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields”.

That could hit a wide swathe of them given membership of the Communist Party is common among officials, entrepreneurs, business people and even artists and celebrities in China.

Beijing has called it a “politically motivated and discriminatory action”, and its foreign ministry has lodged a formal protest.

There was a time when China sent the highest number of foreign students to American campuses. But those numbers slipped as the relationship between the two countries soured.

A more powerful and increasingly assertive Beijing is now clashing with Washington for supremacy in just about everything, from trade to tech.

Trump’s first term had already spelled trouble for Chinese students. He signed an order in 2020 barring Chinese students and researchers with ties to Beijing’s military from obtaining US visas.

That order remained in place during President Joe Biden’s term. Washington never clarified what constitutes “ties” to the military, so many students had their visas revoked or were turned away at US borders, sometimes without a proper explanation.

One of them, who did not wish to be named, said his visa was cancelled by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) when he landed in Boston in August 2023.

He had been accepted into a post-doctoral program at Harvard University. He was going to study regenerative medicine with a focus on breast cancer, and had done his master’s degree from a military-affiliated research institution in China.

He said he was not a member of the Communist Party and his research had nothing to do with the military.

“They asked me what the relationship was between my research and China’s defence affairs,” he told the BBC then. “I said, how could breast cancer have anything to do with national defence? If you know, please tell me.”

He believes he never stood a chance because the officials had already made up their minds. He recalled one of them asking: “Did Xi Jinping buy your suitcase for you?”

What was surprising, or even shocking then, slowly turned normal as more and more Chinese students struggled to secure visas or admissions to study science and technology in US universities.

Mr Cao, a psychology major whose research involves neuroscience, has spent the past school year applying for PhD programs in the US.

He had graduated from top-tier universities – credentials that could send him to an Ivy League school. But of the more than 10 universities he applied to, only one extended an offer.

Trump’s cuts to biomedical research didn’t help, but the mistrust surrounding Chinese researchers was also a factor. Allegations and rumours of espionage, especially in sensitive subjects, have loomed over Chinese nationals at US universities in recent years, even derailing some careers.

“One of the professors even told me, ‘We rarely give offers to Chinese students these days, so I cannot give you an interview,” Mr Cao told the BBC in February.

“I feel like I am just a grain of sand under the wheel of time. There is nothing I can do.”

For those who did graduate from US colleges, returning home to China has not been easy either.

They used to be lauded as a bridge to the rest of the world. Now, they find that their once-coveted degrees don’t draw the same reaction.

Chen Jian, who did not want to use his real name, said he quickly realised that his undergraduate degree from a US college had become an obstacle.

When he first came back in 2020, he interned at a state-owned bank and asked a supervisor if there was a chance to stay on.

The supervisor didn’t say it outright, but Chen got the message: “Employees should have local degrees. People like me (with overseas degrees) won’t even get a response.”

He later realised that “there really weren’t any colleagues with overseas undergraduate background in the department”.

He went back to the US and did his master’s at Johns Hopkins University, and now works at Chinese tech giant Baidu.

But despite the degree from a prestigious American university, Mr Chen does not feel he has an edge because of the stiff competition from graduates in China.

What also has not helped is the suspicion around foreign graduates. Beijing has ramped up warnings of foreign spies, telling civilians to be on the lookout for suspicious figures.

In April, prominent Chinese businesswoman Dong Mingzhu told shareholders in a closed-door meeting that her company, home appliance maker Gree Electric, will “never” recruit Chinese people educated overseas “because among them are spies”.

“I don’t know who is and who isn’t,” Ms Dong said, in comments that were leaked and went viral online.

Days later, the CIA released promotional videos encouraging Chinese officials dissatisfied with the government to become spies and provide classified information. “Your destiny is in your own hands,” the video said.

The suspicion of foreigners as the US and China pull further away from each other is a surprising turn for many Chinese people who remember growing up in a very different country.

Zhang Ni, who also did not want to use her real name, says she was “very shocked” by Ms Dong’s remarks.

The 24-year-old is a recent journalism graduate from Columbia University in New York. She says she “doesn’t care about working at Gree”, but what surprised her was the shift in attitudes.

That so many Chinese companies “don’t like anything that might be associated with the international” is a huge contrast from what Ms Zhang grew up with – a childhood “filled with [conversations centred on] the Olympics and World Expo”.

“Whenever we saw foreigners, my mom would push me to go talk to them to practice my English,” she says.

That willingness to exchange ideas and learn from the outside world appears to be waning in China, according to many.

And America, once a place that drew so many young Chinese people, is no longer that welcoming.

Looking back, Ms Zhang can’t help but recall a joke her friend made at a farewell dinner before she left for the US.

Then a flippant comment, it now sums up the fear in both Washington and Beijing: “Don’t become a spy.”

Five musicians who disappeared in the Mexican city of Reynosa, near the US border, were murdered by suspected drug cartel members, Mexican authorities have said.

Nine alleged members of the notorious Gulf Cartel have been arrested on suspicion of murder, according to Irving Barrios Mojica, attorney general for the Mexican state of Tamaulipas.

The musicians – known as Grupo Fugitivo – were kidnapped while travelling to a private event on 25 May, Barrios Mojica said. Soon after, their relatives reported receiving ransom demands.

Investigators are working to establish a motive for the killings.

The musicians were aged between 20 and 40, and often played at local parties and dances.

Nine firearms and two vehicles were also seized during the arrests.

Grupo Fugitivo performed a range of regional Mexican music, a genre which includes corridos – songs that have historically been used to pay homage to drug cartels and their leaders.

It is not immediately clear if the group was targeted because of their music, or were caught up in the violence that has long beset Tamaulipas, where the Gulf Cartel has a strong presence.

The Trump administration has designated the Gulf Cartel, alongside several other criminal groups, a “global terrorist organisation”.

In January, the US embassy in Mexico issued a level 4 travel advisory, the highest level, warning its citizens not to travel to several Mexican cities, including Reynosa.

It cited the risk of “crime and kidnapping” and “increasingly frequent gun battles occurring in and around” the city.

“Heavily armed members of criminal groups often patrol areas of the state and operate with impunity particularly along the border region from Reynosa to Nuevo Laredo,” the US state department said.

“In these areas, local law enforcement has limited capacity to respond to incidents of crime.”

China does not want to go to war with anyone, especially the US.

But Beijing does have aspirations to be the number one economic power in the world.

And that means flexing its muscles to rid the seas around East and South East Asia of their US military presence, so it can dominate the shipping lanes so vital for global trade.

By building up its nuclear and conventional arsenals, China aims to show the US that times have changed and that it’s too dangerous a power to challenge.

The US has long had the upper hand in the Asia-Pacific – with tens of thousands of troops based in Japan and South Korea, alongside several military bases.

Trump’s administration has clearly focused its energy on countering China – by initiating a trade war and seeking to strengthen alliances with Asian nations.

The Shangri-La Dialogue has historically been the setting for top-level encounters between the US and China – an arena for the superpowers to set out their vision for security in the region.

And it’s opening again in Singapore on Friday. Here’s what we can expect from the three-day event:

The growing struggle for dominance between the US and China is undoubtedly the biggest issue in Asia-Pacific security.

Gone are the days when China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was characterised by outdated weaponry and rigid Maoist doctrine. Today it is a formidable force deploying state-of-the-art hypersonic missiles and fifth-generation warplanes like the J20.

Its navy has the largest number of warships in the world, outstripping the United States.

While China lags far behind the US and Russia in its number of nuclear warheads, it is rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal, with missiles that can travel up to 15,000km, putting the continental US easily within range.

The US Navy’s formidable 7th Fleet, based in Yokosuka, just south of Tokyo, can no longer claim to have guaranteed naval supremacy in the region.

China’s array of Dong Feng missiles and swarms of explosive drones would make any approach to its shores extremely hazardous for US warships.

Ultimately, Beijing is believed to be working to “push” the US military out of the western Pacific.

Taiwan is a liberal, self-governing, pro-Western island democracy that China’s President Xi Jinping has vowed to “take back” by force if necessary.

It has an economic importance well beyond its geographic small size. It manufactures more than 90% of the world’s high-end microchips, the all-important semi-conductors that power so much of our tech.

Recent opinion polls have made clear that a majority of Taiwanese people do not want to be ruled by Beijing, but Xi has made this a key policy aim.

The US has done much to help Taiwan bolster its defences but the key question of whether Washington would go to war with China over Taiwan has always been shrouded in something called “strategic ambiguity”, i.e. keeping Beijing guessing.

On more than one occasion President Biden indicated the US would respond militarily in the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan. But the return of Donald Trump to the Oval Office has brought back a degree of uncertainty.

There are also major concerns in the region over China’s attempts to turn the entire South China Sea into what some have called a “Chinese lake”.

The PLA Navy has established military bases on reefs, many artificially dredged, across the strategically important South China Sea, an area through which an estimated $3 trillion’s worth of maritime trade passes annually.

Today China deploys a vast, industrial fishing fleet across the South China Sea, backed by its fleet of coastguard ships and warships. These vessels clash frequently with Filipino fishermen, fishing close to their own country’s shores.

China frequently challenges planes and ships transiting the South China Sea, warning them they are entering Chinese territory without permission, when the rest of the world considers this to be international waters.

Donald Trump, when asked during his first presidency if North Korea could ever develop nuclear missiles that could reach the continental United States, vowed “it’s never going to happen”. But it has.

In what amounts to a serious CIA intelligence failure, Pyongyang has demonstrated that it now possesses both the nuclear know-how and the means to deliver those warheads across the Pacific Ocean.

Successive US presidencies have failed to curb North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and this isolated, economically backward yet militarily powerful nation is thought to have at least 20 nuclear warheads.

It also has an enormous, well-armed army, some of which its autocratic leader Kim Jong Un has sent to help Russia fight Ukraine.

Defence analysts are still dissecting the recent, brief but alarming conflict between these two nuclear-armed neighbours. India’s military far outnumbers Pakistan’s and yet the latter was allegedly able to land an embarrassing blow against India’s air force, when Pakistan’s Chinese-made J10-C jets went up against India’s advanced, French-made Rafales.

Pakistan reportedly shot down at least one of the Indian warplanes, using Chinese-made PL-15 air-to-air missiles. The reports were denied in India’s media.

China’s assistance to Pakistan in the conflict has reportedly been critical to Islamabad, including repositioning its satellites to provide it with real-time intelligence.

Both India and Pakistan are expected to make high-level addresses at the Shangri-La Dialogue this weekend while the US and others will be looking for ways to prevent a repeat of their clash over Kashmir.

All of this is happening in a dramatically changed US context.

Donald Trump’s sudden imposition of trade tariffs, while eventually modified, has caused many in the region to rethink their reliance on Washington. Would an ally that is prepared to inflict so much economic pain on its friends really come to their aid if they were attacked?

China has been quick to capitalise on the confusion. It reached out to neighbours such as Vietnam – a country it went to war with in 1979 – to point out the People’s Republic represented stability and continuity in an unstable world.

Under the previous US administration, Washington signed up to a multi-billion dollar trilateral partnership between the US, UK and Australia under the acronym of Aukus.

It aims to not only build Canberra’s next generation of submarines but to guarantee freedom of navigation across the South China Sea using intelligence and naval force deployed by the three nations.

President Trump, when asked in February about his commitment to the Aukus pact, appeared not to recognise the term, asking in reply: “What does that mean?”

But early this Saturday morning the US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth will be addressing the Shangri-La Dialogue, potentially offering some clarity on Aukus as well as how the US plans to work with, and quite possibly against, China’s interests across the Asia-Pacific region.

US President Donald Trump can keep collecting import taxes for now, an appeals court has said, a day after a trade ruling found the bulk of his global tariffs to be illegal.

A federal appeals court granted a bid from the White House to temporarily suspend the lower court’s order, which ruled that Trump had overstepped his power by imposing the duties.

Wednesday’s judgement from the US Court of International Trade drew the ire of Trump officials, who called it an example of judicial overreach.

Small businesses and a group of states had challenged the measures, which are at the heart of Trump’s agenda and have shaken up the world economic order.

In its appeal, the Trump administration said the decision issued by the trade court a day earlier had improperly second-guessed the president and threatened to unravel months of hard-fought trade negotiations.

“The political branches, not courts, make foreign policy and chart economic policy,” it said in the filing.

Shortly before Thursday’s tariff reprieve from the appeals court, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told a press briefing: “America cannot function if President Trump, or any other president, for that matter, has their sensitive diplomatic or trade negotiations railroaded by activist judges.”

Trump blasted the lower court ruling on Thursday in a social media post, writing: “Hopefully, the Supreme Court will reverse this horrible, Country threatening decision, QUICKLY and DECISIVELY.”

Wednesday’s decision by the little-known trade court in New York would void tariffs imposed by Trump in February on goods from China, Mexico and Canada, which he justified as a move intended to address a fentanyl smuggling.

The lower court’s decision would also dismiss a blanket 10% import tax that Trump unveiled last month on goods from countries around the world, together with higher so-called reciprocal tariffs on trade partners, including the EU and China.

The 1977 law Trump invoked to impose many of the tariffs, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, did not allow for such sweeping levies without input from Congress, the lower court said.

But its ruling did not affect Trump’s tariffs on cars, steel and aluminium, which were implemented under another law.

The White House has suspended or revised many of its duties while trade negotiations grind on.

But the appeals court decision allow the tariffs to be used for now while the case is litigated. The next hearing is on 5 June.

On Thursday, another federal court overseeing a separate tariffs case reached a similar conclusion to the trade court.

Judge Rudolph Contreras found the duties went beyond the president’s authority, but his ruling only applied to a toy company in the case.

Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro told reporters on Thursday: “You can assume that even if we lose [in court], we will do it [tariffs] another way.”

No court has struck down tariffs on cars, steel and aluminium that Trump imposed citing national-security concerns under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.

He could expand import taxes under that law to other sectors such as semiconductors and lumber.

The president could also invoke Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which he invoked for his first-term tariffs on China.

A separate 1930 trade law, Section 338 of the Trade Act, which has not been used for decades, allows the president to impose tariffs of up to 50% on imports from countries that “discriminate” against the US.

But the White House seems more focused for now on challenging the court rulings. The matter is widely expected to end up at the Supreme Court.

• What tariffs has Trump announced and why?
• Simon Jack: Tariff ruling doesn’t really change US-UK deal
• Where does court ruling leave Trump’s tariff agenda?

Lawyer Ilya Somin, who helped work on the case brought by businesses before the trade court, said he was “guardedly optimistic” the ruling would ultimately be upheld on appeal.

He noted that the trade court order came from justices appointed by both Democratic and Republican presidents, including one by Trump himself.

“It’s not normal for the president of the United States to make such an enormous power grab and start the biggest trade war since the Great Depression,” he said.

But Terry Haines, founder of the Pangaea Policy, which advises firms on Washington policies, said he thought “the president is probably going to be given the benefit of the doubt” by the courts.

Business owners, while expressing hope, said they did not yet feel like the situation was resolved.

“I was incredibly happy and relieved but I’m also still very cautious,” said Kara Dyer, the owner of Boston-based Story Time Toys, which makes toys in China and imports them to the US for sale.

“It’s just been so chaotic and so impossible to plan as a business,” she said.

“I want this to work its way through our court system so we have a little bit more certainty about what tariffs will be in the future.”

Dmitry Grozoubinski, a former trade negotiator who represented Australia at the World Trade Organization, said the court battle had weakened Trump’s ability to use the duties for leverage over other countries.

“It will be a lot harder for him to raise tariffs in the future,” he said.

“This was ultimately a negotiation in which President Trump was threatening other countries with a big stick and that stick just got considerably more ephemeral.”

A former assistant of rap mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs has told a New York court that he repeatedly sexually assaulted her while she was employed by him for eight years.

The witness – who testified anonymously under the pseudonym “Mia” – also tearfully said she lived in fear of violent rages from Mr Combs as she worked by his side.

The hip-hop mogul watched from the defence table with arms folded in his lap as she testified about her fears of retribution for reporting his alleged abuse.

Mr Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to federal charges of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution.

Warning: This story contains details some readers may find distressing

“I couldn’t tell him no about a sandwich,” she said. “I couldn’t tell him no about anything.”

Mr Combs’ legal team has not yet had the chance to question Mia, or respond to her claims.

She is the second witness in the New York trial to allege that Mr Combs sexually abused her, along with Mr Combs’ ex-girlfriend, Casandra Ventura.

Mia testified that she started working for Mr Combs as a personal assistant in 2009 when she was in her mid-20s, joining what she described as a “chaotic” and “toxic” work environment.

“The highs were really high and the lows were really, really low,” she told the court on Thursday.

The job required her being “always within eyesight” of Mr Combs, she testified, and “anticipating his needs, whims and moods”.

She said she was often required to stay at his homes, where she could not lock the door or leave without the rapper’s permission.

During her time working for Mr Combs, he was frequently violent towards her, Mia testified.

On one occasion, she said he threw a spaghetti bowl at her, which narrowly missed her head, Mia told the court.

Another time, she said Mr Combs forcefully threw his computer at Mia’s head when she told him the wifi nearby was still being fixed, she testified.

She also testified about another situation when she witnessed Mr Combs being violent with his ex-girlfriend, Ms Ventura, who had became close friends with Mia during her time working for the rapper.

Mia once went on holiday with the couple in the Turks and Caicos, she told the court. One late night on the trip, she said Ms Ventura ran into her room screaming that Mr Combs was “going to kill me”, she testified. They ran away and hid on the beach, she said.

Also on that holiday, Mia testified that she and Ms Ventura had used a paddle board to go into the water to escape Mr Combs, who was pacing back and forth on the beach. Before they knew it, the sky turned dark, portending a storm.

“I was trying to weigh if it was scarier to face mother nature, or go back to Puff [Mr Combs],” Mia testified.

Mia was also there one night in 2013 when she said that Mr Combs was banging on Ms Ventura’s door in Los Angeles.

She testified that he attacked her and cut open her eyebrow when throwing her on to the bed frame. Mia told the court that she tried to jump on Mr Combs’ back, but he threw her against the wall.

“He’s actually going to kill her,” Mia said she remembered thinking to herself.

Mia told the court that despite witnessing Mr Combs’s abuse toward Ms Ventura, she did not report him because she “believed that Puff’s authority was above the police”.

She testified about multiple instances where she alleged Mr Combs sexually assaulted her, including one time when she said she woke up to him trying to rape her.

Mia told the court that the assaults began early in her career working for Mr Combs, including one night on his 40th birthday at the Plaza Hotel in New York City.

She said he gave her two vodka shots that hit her “very hard” and kissed her and put his hand up her dress.

Another night, between the years of 2009-10, while Mia was sleeping in a bunk bed at Mr Combs’ Los Angeles home, she said she woke up to the “weight” of Mr Combs on top of her. She was confused, she said, and Mr Combs began to rape her.

“I just froze,” she said. “It was very quick but it felt like forever.”

Mia told the court that Mr Combs sexually assaulted her “sporadically” throughout her time working for the rapper.

But she told the court she didn’t always remember the details, only a “dark feeling in my stomach”.

Pressed by a prosecutor on why she did not say “no” when Mr Combs assaulted her or go to the police, Mia told the court she feared what he would do.

“I knew his power,” she said. “I knew his control over me and I didn’t want to lose everything I worked so hard for.”

She told the court that another assistant had been fired for reporting Mr Combs’ violence toward Ms Ventura.

Mr Combs also threatened to tell Ms Ventura, Mia’s close friend, about the sexual encounters between them, she testified.

After the alleged assaults, Mia told the court that she tried her best to pretend the “most shameful thing” of her life never happened.

Asked by prosecutors why she was telling her story in court, she replied: “I had to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

Mia will continue to testify on Friday and Mr Combs’ defence team will be able to question her on the stand.

The Swiss village of Blatten has been partially destroyed after a huge chunk of glacier crashed down into the valley.

Although the village had been evacuated some days ago because of fears the Birch glacier was disintegrating, one person has been reported missing, and many homes have been completely flattened.

Blatten’s mayor, Matthias Bellwald, said “the unimaginable has happened” but promised the village still had a future.

Local authorities have requested support from the Swiss army’s disaster relief unit and members of the Swiss government are on their way to the scene.

The disaster that has befallen Blatten is the worst nightmare for communities across the Alps.

The village’s 300 inhabitants had to leave their homes on 19 May after geologists monitoring the area warned that the glacier appeared unstable. Now many of them may never be able to return.

Appearing to fight back tears, Bellwald said: “We have lost our village, but not our heart. We will support each other and console each other. After a long night, it will be morning again.”

The Swiss government has already promised funding to make sure residents can stay, if not in the village itself, at least in the locality.

However, Raphaël Mayoraz, head of the regional office for Natural Hazards, warned that further evacuations in the areas close to Blatten might be necessary.

Climate change is causing the glaciers – frozen rivers of ice – to melt faster and faster, and the permafrost, often described as the glue that holds the high mountains together, is also thawing.

Drone footage showed a large section of the Birch glacier collapsing at about 15:30 (14:30 BST) on Wednesday. The avalanche of mud that swept over Blatten sounded like a deafening roar, as it swept down into the valley leaving an enormous cloud of dust.

Glaciologists monitoring the thaw have warned for years that some alpine towns and villages could be at risk, and Blatten is not even the first to be evacuated.

In eastern Switzerland, residents of the village of Brienz were evacuated two years ago because the mountainside above them was crumbling.

Since then, they have only been permitted to return for short periods.

In 2017, eight hikers were killed, and many homes destroyed, when the biggest landslide in over a century came down close to the village of Bondo.

The most recent report into the condition of Switzerland’s glaciers suggested they could all be gone within a century, if global temperatures could not be kept within a rise of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, agreed ten years ago by almost 200 countries under the Paris climate accord.

Many climate scientists suggest that target has already been missed, meaning the glacier thaw will continue to accelerate, increasing the risk of flooding and landslides, and threatening more communities like Blatten.

A father-of-three and former Royal Marine has been charged following the Liverpool parade crash in which 79 people were injured.

Paul Doyle, 53, from Burghill Road in West Derby, was arrested on Monday, when a car ploughed into fans attending Liverpool’s Premier League victory celebration, Merseyside Police confirmed. He will appear at Liverpool Magistrates’ Court on Friday morning.

A nine-year-old was among those injured when the car Mr Doyle is alleged to have been driving crashed into supporters at 18:00 BST on Water Street.

The local businessman faces multiple counts of causing, and attempting to cause unlawful and malicious grievous bodily harm with intent as well as one of dangerous driving and two counts of unlawful and malicious wounding with intent.

Assistant Chief Constable Jenny Sims, of Merseyside Police, told a news conference seven people remain in hospital after the incident.

The BBC has spoken to the suspect’s neighbours, who said they were shocked and in “disbelief”.

They said that Burghill Road was swarming with police in the hours after the crash.

One said: “I came out late on Monday night and there’s police everywhere. Looking around all the houses, so I had a thought – imagine if it was him?”

Assistant Chief Constable Jenny Sims said detectives were reviewing a “huge volume” of CCTV and mobile phone footage.

Sarah Hammond, Chief Crown Prosecutor for Crown Prosecution Service in the Mersey-Cheshire region, said this included footage from CCTV, mobile phones, businesses and dashcams, along with witness statements.

She said the charges “will be kept under review” while the investigation progresses.

“It is important to ensure every victim gets the justice they deserve,” she added.

Mr Doyle has been charged with seven offences, which can be broken down into four groups.

The first includes two counts of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm (GBH) – one of these is an alleged offence against one child.

The second is two counts of causing unlawful and malicious GBH with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.

According to the Sentencing Council, it relates to the nature of the injury allegedly caused.

GBH does not require an open wound to have been suffered. Wounding requires the victim’s skin to have been broken.

Mr Doyle also faces two charges of attempted unlawful and malicious GBH with intent to cause GBH, and again one of these alleged offences relates to a child.

The final count is dangerous driving.

Police confirmed the ages of those injured in the incident ranged from nine to 78.

Assistant Chief Constable Sims, said she understood many have questions about the incident, and detectives were “working tirelessly, with diligence and professionalism, to seek the answer to all of those questions”.

“When we are able to, we will provide further information,” she added.