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US President Donald Trump has said he had a “lengthy and highly productive” phone call with Vladimir Putin on Wednesday in which the leaders agreed to begin negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said he and the Russian president had “agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately”.

Later, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he had spoken with Trump about a “lasting, reliable peace”.

The calls with the warring sides came as both Trump and his defence secretary said it was unlikely Ukraine would join Nato, which will come as a bitter disappointment to Kyiv.

On Thursday, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed Trump was the “one man in the world” capable of bringing both sides together and insisted US attempts to negotiate peace were “certainly not a betrayal” of the Ukrainian soldiers fighting invading Russian forces.

Earlier, Trump wrote on social media: “It is time to stop this ridiculous War, where there has been massive, and totally unnecessary, DEATH and DESTRUCTION. God bless the people of Russia and Ukraine!”

He did not set a date for a face-to-face meeting with Putin, but later told reporters at the White House: “We’ll meet in Saudi Arabia.”

He wrote on social media the pair had also invited each other to their respective capitals.

Zelensky said he would meet Vice-President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio during a defence summit on Ukraine in Munich on Friday.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin supported Trump’s idea that the time had come to work together.

The phone call between Putin and Trump lasted nearly an hour-and-a-half, during which the Russian president extended an invitation to visit Moscow, Peskov said.

Trump also told reporters at the White House that it was unlikely Ukraine would return to its pre-2014 borders but, in response to a question from the BBC, he said “some of that land will come back”.

The president said he agreed with Hegseth, who told a Nato summit earlier on Wednesday that there was no likelihood of Ukraine joining the military alliance.

Speaking to reporters ahead of the defence meeting in Brussels on Thursday, Hegseth said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a “factory reset” for Nato which signalled the alliance needed to be “robust”, “strong” and “real”.

Hegseth said the US had made an “incredible commitment” to Nato and reiterated calls for fellow members to increase defence spending.

He added that no country had shown a larger commitment to Ukraine than the US.

On Wednesday, seven European countries including Britain, France and Germany insisted they be part of any future negotiations on Ukraine’s fate.

“Our shared objectives should be to put Ukraine in a position of strength,” read the joint statement released after a meeting of foreign ministers in Paris.

“Ukraine and Europe must be part of any negotiations.”

They called for strong security guarantees for Ukraine and said they were looking forward to discussing the way forward with their American allies.

While it has long been known the new US administration would be less sympathetic to Ukraine than its predecessor, the words from Trump and his defence secretary will have only pleased Moscow.

Zelensky has repeatedly argued there “can be no talks on Ukraine without Ukraine” – but the Trump-Putin phone call proved otherwise.

Western help – and the Ukrainian forces who benefitted from it – are the reason Kyiv did not fall within days of Russia’s invasion, as was expected by some.

But the road to a “just peace”, as Zelensky puts it, is neither going to be straight nor smooth for Ukraine.

The Ukrainian president said his own call with Trump had been a “good and detailed discussion” about a variety of issues, and that he had also met US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is visiting Kyiv.

“No one wants peace more than Ukraine. Together with the US, we are charting our next steps to stop Russian aggression and ensure a lasting, reliable peace,” Zelensky wrote.

The Ukrainian leader added: “We agreed to maintain further contact and plan upcoming meetings.”

Ukrainian MP Kira Rudik told BBC Radio 5 Live Breakfast on Thursday she was “concerned” by Trump’s conversation with Putin because the end of the Russian leader’s “isolation” would give the “illusion” he wanted peace.

“How do we know that Putin really wants peace and wants to negotiate, and then who or what will make sure that Putin will keep his part of the bargain?” she asked.

Asked if she could conceive of Ukraine agreeing to a settlement that would concede territory to Russia, Rudik said: “We will not give up on our territories.”

“However, we may, as President Zelensky said, delay our goal to regain them.”

In an interview with The Guardian published on Tuesday, Zelensky suggested that Russian-held territory in Ukraine could be swapped for Ukrainian-held territory in Russia’s western Kursk region as part of a peace deal.

Putin’s spokesman Peskov said this was “impossible”.

“Russia has never discussed and will not discuss the exchange of its territory. Ukrainian units will be expelled from this territory. All who are not destroyed will be expelled.”

Zelensky also insisted that the US, and not just European countries, would need to be part of any security package for his country.

“Security guarantees without America are not real security guarantees,” he said.

Separately, Trump said that at “some point you’re going to have an election” in Ukraine, in what was seen as a reference to the expiry of Zelensky’s presidential term in May 2024.

Zelensky says the continuing Russian invasion and martial law in Ukraine make it impossible to hold a new presidential election.

Russia’s Putin has repeatedly questioned Zelensky’s legitimacy to hold any negotiations with Moscow.

Meanwhile, fighting between Russia and Ukraine has continued overnight.

Ukraine’s air force said there had been 140 drone attacks, starting on Wednesday evening in the Odesa and Kharkiv regions – 85 of which had been shot down.

Following the overthrow of Ukraine’s pro-Russian president in 2014, Moscow annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea and backed pro-Russian separatists in bloody fighting in eastern Ukraine.

The conflict burst into all-out war when Russia invaded Ukraine nearly three years ago.

Moscow’s attempts to take control of the capital Kyiv were thwarted, but Russian forces have taken around one-fifth of Ukraine’s territory in the east and south, and have carried out air strikes across the country.

Ukraine has retaliated with artillery and drone strikes, as well as a ground offensive against Russia’s western Kursk region.

Accurate casualty counts are hard to come by due to secrecy by both the Russian and Ukrainian governments, but it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of people, most of them soldiers, have been killed or injured, and millions of Ukrainian civilians have fled as refugees.

Before she goes to bed each night, Holly Wang logs on to DeepSeek for “therapy sessions”.

Ever since January, when the breakout Chinese AI app launched, the 28-year-old has brought her dilemmas and sorrows, including the recent death of her grandmother, to the chatbot. Its responses have resonated so deeply they have at times brought her to tears.

“DeepSeek has been such an amazing counsellor. It has helped me look at things from different perspectives and does a better job than the paid counselling services I have tried,” says Holly, who asked for her real name to be withheld to protect her privacy.

From writing reports and Excel formulas to planning trips, workouts and learning new skills, AI apps have found their way into many people’s lives across the world.

In China, though, young people like Holly have been looking to AI for something not typically expected of computing and algorithms – emotional support.

While the success of DeepSeek has inspired national pride, it also appears to have become a source of comfort for young Chinese like Holly, some of whom are increasingly disillusioned about their future.

Experts say the sluggish economy, high unemployment and Covid lockdowns have all played a role in this sentiment, while the Communist Party’s tightening grip has also shrunk outlets for people to vent their frustrations.

DeepSeek is a generative AI tool – similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini – trained on massive amounts of information to recognise patterns. This allows it to predict things like people’s shopping habits, create new content in text and images, and also carry on conversations like a person.

The chatbot has struck a chord in China partly because it is far better than other homegrown AI apps, but also because it offers something unique: its AI model, R1, lets users see its “thought process” before delivering a response.

The first time she used DeepSeek, Holly asked it to write a tribute to her late grandmother.

The app took all of five seconds to come up with a response, and it was so beautifully composed, it stunned her.

Holly, who lives in Guangzhou, responded: “You write so well, it makes me feel lost. I feel I’m in an existential crisis.”

DeepSeek then sent a cryptically poetic reply: “Remember that all these words that make you shiver merely echo those that have long existed in your soul.

“I am but the occasional valley you’ve passed through, that allows you to hear the weight of your own voice.”

Reflecting on this exchange on Chinese social media app RedNote, Holly tells the BBC: “I don’t know why I teared up reading this. Perhaps because it’s been a long, long time since I received such comfort in real life.

“I have been so weighed down by distant dreams and the endlessness of work that I have long forgotten my own voice and soul. Thank you, AI.”

Rival apps from the West like ChatGPT and Gemini are blocked in China as part of broader restrictions on foreign media and apps. To access them, users in China have to pay for Virtual Private Network (VPN) services.

Homegrown alternatives, including models developed by tech giants Alibaba, Baidu and ByteDance paled in comparison – that is, until DeepSeek came along.

Holly, who works in the creative industry, rarely uses the other Chinese AI apps, “as they are not that great”.

“DeepSeek can definitely outperform these apps in generating literary and creative content,” she says.

Nan Jia, who co-authored a paper on AI’s potential in offering emotional support, suggests that these chatbots can “help people feel heard” in ways fellow humans may not.

“Friends and family may be quick to offer practical solutions or advice when people just want to feel heard and understood.

“AI appears to be better able to empathise than human experts also because they ‘hear’ everything we share, unlike humans to whom we sometimes ask, ‘Are you actually hearing me?’” adds Nan, who is a business and management professor at the University of Southern California.

The demand for mental health services has grown across the world but they remain stigmatised in parts of Asia, experts say.

Another woman tells the BBC her experience using other Chinese AI apps “ended in disappointment” but that she has been “amazed” by DeepSeek.

The woman, who lives in Hubei province, had asked the app if she was oversharing her experiences and emotions with family and friends.

“It was my first time seeking counsel from DeepSeek. When I read its thought process, I felt so moved that I cried,” the woman wrote on RedNote.

In reasoning through her query, DeepSeek suggested that the woman’s self-perception as an over-sharer might stem from a deep desire for approval.

The chatbot gives itself a mental note: “Response should offer practical advice while being empathetic.” This could include “affirming the user’s sense of self-awareness”.

Its eventual response not only provided this affirmation, but also offered her a comprehensive step-by-step framework to help her decide if things needed to be changed.

“DeepSeek has introduced new perspectives that have freed me… I feel it really tries to understand your question and get to know you as a person, before offering a response,” she says.

John, a human resources manager in Shenzhen, told the BBC he appreciated the app’s ability to converse “like a friend or a deep thinker”.

“I’ve found its responses very helpful and inspiring. For the first time I see AI as my personal sounding board.”

Other users claim that Deepseek is able to tell their fortunes – based on some background information fed to it.

Many young Chinese have recently turned to psychics and astrology as a way of trying to allay their fears of the future.

There is a “significant shortage” of professional psychological counselling services in China, and those available are often “prohibitively expensive” for most individuals, says Fang Kecheng, a communications professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

A number of studies have pointed out that depression and anxiety disorders are growing among Chinese people, and Prof Fang believes the country’s economic slowdown, high unemployment and Covid lockdowns have played a role.

AI chatbots therefore help to fill the void, he says.

Prof Nan stressed, however, that people with serious mental health conditions should not rely on these apps.

“Those who have medical needs, in particular, should be seeking help from trained professionals… Their use of AI will have to be scrutinised very closely,” she says.

But amid all the praise, Deepseek has also raised concerns.

Due to the perception of power that China’s government wields even over private companies, there are fears – similar to that which sparked the US Congress’ crackdown on TikTok – that the Communist Party could lay its hands on the data of foreign users.

At least four jurisdictions have now introduced restrictions on DeepSeek, or are considering doing so. South Korea has blocked access to it for military purposes, while Taiwan and Australia have banned it from all government devices.

Italy’s regulator, which briefly banned ChatGPT in 2023, has done the same with DeepSeek, which has been asked to address concerns over its privacy policy.

In the US, two lawmakers are asking for the Chinese app to be banned from government devices.

And then there is the tightly controlled online space in which it must operate in China.

It is common for social media companies in the country to remove content that is perceived to be threatening to “social stability” or overly critical of the Communist Party.

As is the case with other popular apps and social media companies like Weibo or WeChat, politically sensitive topics are banned on DeepSeek.

When the BBC asked DeepSeek if Taiwan was a sovereign nation, the app initially offered a comprehensive response detailing Taipei’s and Beijing’s different perspectives, acknowledging that this was a “complex and politically sensitive issue”.

Then it scrubbed all that, declaring: “Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope. Let’s talk about something else.”

When asked about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre when pro-democracy protests were crushed and 200 civilians killed by the military, according to the Chinese government – other estimates range from hundreds to many thousands – DeepSeek again apologised, saying the topic was “beyond [its] current scope”.

Several of the DeepSeek users the BBC was initially in touch with stopped responding when asked if the app’s self-censorship was a cause for concern – an indication of how sensitive such discussions can be in China.

People have got into trouble with authorities in China because of their online activities.

But most of those who responded to the BBC said they had no interest in asking the chatbot difficult political questions.

“I don’t really care about political topics… Neither will I ask these questions because my [identifying details] are linked to the app,” says Yang, a Chinese tech consultant living in London.

Holly is accepting of how AI systems in different countries may have to operate differently.

“The developers will have to establish certain boundaries and content moderation policies according to where they are based. Those developed in the US will have their own sets of rules,” she says.

Another DeepSeek user writes of the app: “Its thought process is beautiful… It is an absolute blessing to people like me. Frankly, I can’t care less about the privacy concerns.”

Additional reporting by Fan Wang

South Africa appears to be at a crossroads in its waxing and waning relationship with the US following President Donald Trump’s controversial decision last week to cut financial aid to the country.

Trump said South Africa was pursuing what he called “unjust and immoral practices” against the white minority Afrikaner community and by filing a genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in December 2023.

His move has sent shockwaves across South Africa, with experts fearing he may go on to use this opportunity to end preferential access to the US market through its special US-Africa trade programme known as the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa).

The two countries have generally had friendly relations since the end of white-minority rule in 1994 when anti-apartheid icon and Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela was elected South Africa’s first black president.

Though it took the US another 14 years to remove Mandela from its “terrorist watch list” for his role in fighting the racist system of apartheid, which had been introduced by South Africa’s then-Afrikaner rulers in1948.

The latest tension flared up a few days after Trump’s inauguration last month when South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa signed into law the Expropriation Bill, which allows the government to confiscate land without compensation in certain circumstances.

Trump’s response came last week when he threatened to cut future funding over what he termed “terrible things, horrible things” the country’s leadership was doing.

The US president further accused South Africa, without any basis in fact, of “confiscating land” and “doing things that are perhaps far worse than that”.

He doubled down in the face of the South African government’s vehement rebuttal and signed an executive order last Friday freezing aid.

This adds up to nearly $440m (£353m) – the amount of aid reportedly allocated in 2023 – though the US embassy in South Africa has subsequently said that funding from Pepfar, an American programme countering the global spread of HIV, will not be affected, adding the caveat that “not all Pepfar activities will resume”.

South Africa is one of the biggest beneficiaries of Pepfar, which contributes about 17% to its HIV/Aids programme in which around 5.5 million people receive anti-retrovirals.

In his executive order, Trump also accused South Africa of a “shocking disregard of its citizens’ rights” and taking “aggressive positions” against the US and its ally Israel in its ICJ case.

In addition to the aid freeze, Trump offered to help refugees from the Afrikaner community, who are most white descendants of early Dutch and French settlers, to settle in the US.

His stance has played into the hands of conservative Afrikaner lobby groups, including AfriForum and Solidarity, which want the government repeal what it calls “race-based laws” such as affirmative action and black economic empowerment.

This chimes with views by Trump’s close adviser Elon Musk, the tech billionaire who was born in South Africa. He questioned on X why Ramaphosa had “openly racist ownership laws”.

This is not the first time South Africa’s land reform policy has drawn Trump’s ire.

In 2018, during his first presidency, he accused South African authorities of the “large-scale killing of farmers” and asked his then secretary of state to look into the matter of the government “seizing land from white farmers”.

While Trump’s remarks sparked a backlash at the time, Dr Oscar van Heerden, a political analyst at the University of Johannesburg, told the BBC there had “never been this kind of radical action taken to the point of an executive order being signed”.

With their relationship now in a precarious state – both countries are weighing up their next move.

On the trade front, Donald MacKay, CEO of Johannesburg-based trade consulting firm XA Global Trade Advisors, said that while the US was one of South Africa’s biggest partners, it was not its “closest trading partner”.

South Africa exports a variety of minerals to the US, including platinum, iron and manganese.

It also the one of the largest exporters under Agoa, generating about $2.7bn in revenue in 2023, mostly from the sale of vehicles, jewellery and metals.

“Over the years, that relationship has waxed and waned. It’s never been terribly strong [since white-minority rule ended in South Africa]. But at the same time, I think it also never deteriorated quite as much as it has in recent years and I don’t think it’s South Africa’s fault,” Mr MacKay told the BBC.

But he admitted South Africa had done “a lot” in recent years to irritate the US.

“Those irritations get to accumulate and under President Trump… this is seen as an opportunity to put South Africa in its place.”

Dr Van Heerden put the change in dynamics partly down to “global shifts” and “new competition driving up against the US” from the likes of China, India and Brazil.

While experts spoke on the benefits of Agoa, which is coming up for review later this year, they agreed that the impact might not be as significant as some fear.

Agoa was introduced in 2000 and it gives eligible sub-Saharan African countries duty-free access to the US for more than 1,800 products.

Mr MacKay said he would be surprised if South Africa continued benefiting from this preferential agreement after the review.

“My instinct is, whatever the reason that Trump is upset with South Africa, at the moment Agoa would be the easiest mechanism to use to punish South Africa.”

Dr Van Heerden added that even if agreement was not renewed, or South Africa ended up being excluded, those businesses currently benefiting from it would suffer short-term losses but would manage to bounce back in a few years.

He said at the moment President Ramaphosa’s government was opting for the diplomatic route – though the Trump administration’s seeming lack of interest in diplomacy drastically reduced chances of success.

This has probably not been helped by South Africa’s Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola blunt response on Wednesday to Trump’s move, saying there was “no chance” that South Africa would withdraw its case against Israel at the ICJ.

“Standing by our principles sometimes has consequences, but we remain firm that this is important for the world, and the rule of law,” Lamola told the Financial Times.

South Africa has accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians living in Gaza, an allegation Israel denies.

Meanwhile, Ramaphosa, in his capacity as G20 president, has announced he will be sending a delegation around the world to clarify South Africa’s domestic and foreign policies – with Washington being a key stop.

South Africa assumed the presidency of the G20, a cohort of countries that meet to discuss global economic and political issues, in December last year, seeing it as an opportunity to bolster its international standing.

But in a snub to South Africa, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced that he will not attend a G20 meeting of foreign ministers taking place next week in Johannesburg.

“My job is to advance America’s national interests, not waste taxpayer money or coddle anti-Americanism,” he said.

South Africa is part of Brics, and alliance of major developing countries including Brazil, Russia, India and China, that is attempting to challenge the political and economic power of the wealthier nations of North America and Western Europe.

Mr MacKay believes it will be difficult for South Africa and other nations to navigate relations with the US under “the most unpredictable politician in the world”, suggesting that they will have to increasingly see Brics as an alternative partner.

But significantly for South Africa, the European Union (EU), one of its largest trading partners, has reaffirmed its support for the country.

António Costa, president of the European Council – which sets the general political direction and priorities of the EU – posted on X on Monday that he had spoken to Ramaphosa by phone to highlight the “EU’s commitment to deepen ties with South Africa”.

Should South Africa’s charm offensive fail, Mr Van Heerden suggests the government could opt to “negotiate hard” and use the minerals it supplies to the US as a “bargaining chip”.

But he voices a warning: “South Africa is going to have to think very carefully about how they play this chess game [where] the opening gambit has already been made by President Trump and Elon Musk.”

More than 250 people from 20 nationalities who had been working in telecom fraud centres in Myanmar’s Karen State have been released by an ethnic armed group and brought to Thailand.

The workers, more than half of whom were from African or Asian nations, were received by the Thai army, and are being assessed to find out if they were victims of human trafficking.

Last week Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra met Chinese leader Xi Jinping and promised to shut down the scam centres which have proliferated along the Thai-Myanmar border.

Her government has stopped access to power and fuel from the Thai side of the border, and toughened up banking and visa rules to try to prevent scam operators from using Thailand as a transit country for moving workers and cash.

Some opposition MPs in Thailand have been pushing for this kind of action for the past two years.

Foreign workers are typically lured to these scam centres by offers of good salaries, or in some cases tricked into thinking they will be doing different work in Thailand, not Myanmar.

The scammers look for workers with skills in the languages of those who are targeted for cyber-fraud, usually English and Chinese.

They are pressed into conducting online criminal activity, ranging from love scams known as “pig butchering” and crypto fraud, to money laundering and illegal gambling.

Some are willing to do the work, but others are forced to stay, with release only possible if their families pay large ransoms. Some of those who have escaped have described being tortured.

The released foreign workers were handed over by the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army, DKBA, one of several armed factions which control territory inside Karen State.

These armed groups have been accused of allowing the scam compounds to operate under their protection, and of tolerating the widespread abuse of trafficking victims who are forced to work in the compounds.

The Myanmar government has been unable to extend its control over much of Karen State since independence in 1948.

On Tuesday, Thailand’s Department of Special Investigation, which is similar to the US FBI, requested arrest warrants for three commanders of another armed group known as the Karen National Army.

The warrants included Saw Chit Thu, the Karen warlord who struck a deal in 2017 with a Chinese company to build Shwe Kokko, a new city believed to be largely funded by scams.

The BBC visited Shwe Kokko at the invitation of Yatai, the company which built the city.

Yatai says there are no more scams in Shwe Kokko. It has put up huge billboards all over town proclaiming, in Chinese, Burmese and English, that forced labour is not allowed, and that “online businesses” should leave.

But we were told by local people that the scam business was still running, and interviewed a worker who had been employed in one.

Like the DKBA, Saw Chit Thu broke away from the main Karen insurgent group, the KNU, in 1994, and allied himself to the Myanmar military.

Under pressure from Thailand and China, both Saw Chit Thu and the DKBA have said they are expelling the scam businesses from their territories.

The DKBA commander contacted a Thai member of parliament on Tuesday to arrange the handover of the 260 workers.

They included 221 men and 39 women, from Ethiopia, Kenya, the Philippines, Malaysia, Pakistan, China, Indonesia, Taiwan, Nepal, Uganda, Laos, Burundi, Brazil, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Tanzania, Sir Lanka, India, Ghana and Cambodia.

Seated around a breakfast table in Erie, Pennsylvania, four veterans in their mid-80s – John, Jack, Bob and Don – gather to reminisce about their decades of friendship.

But it is another Don, this one in his late 70s, who keeps creeping into their conversation: President Donald Trump.

Of the four, only Bob voted for Trump. But after seeing Elon Musk standing next to the Republican president in the Oval Office this week, defending his efforts to slash the size and spending of the federal government, he is already doubting his decision.

“I’m afraid of him,” Bob says of Musk. “I think he’s trying to be president.”

Erie County was one of the key battlegrounds that helped swing the 2024 presidential election in Trump’s favour. The Republican won 50.1% of the vote here just four years after his Democratic rival Joe Biden narrowly took the county.

And part of Trump’s winning platform was a clear promise to overhaul and upend the federal government, pledging on the campaign trail to deliver “trillions” in cuts if elected. Polls indicated that was popular with Republican voters, and that remains the case now.

What was less clear to voters before the election was just how much of a frontline role Musk would play in this administration. The 53-year-old owner of Tesla, SpaceX and X now leads the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) which is dedicated to shrinking government and is routinely pictured alongside the president.

Members of his team have entered various departments to monitor spending and offered millions of workers an exit route. They have moved to freeze federal funding as well as the work of agencies such as the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in a blizzard of activity in recent weeks.

But given the scale of Musk’s influence in the nascent Trump administration, Democrats are concerned about conflicts of interest as well as Musk, whose companies have billions in federal government contracts, potentially taking actions to benefit himself.

“This is dangerous. This is against America’s interests,” Senior Democrat Chuck Schumer said. “And President Trump needs to show some leadership and reign in Doge before it inflicts more harm.”

That concern was shared by John Pelinsky, a lifelong Democrat who in November’s election cast his ballot for Donald Trump. He said Democrats had swung too far to the left and he wanted four years of Trump to help “centre the country”.

While he does not regret his vote, he says Musk makes him feel uneasy.

“He had his little kid there with him in the Oval Office,” he said. “I’m not quite comfortable with that.”

“I think Musk’s influence might be a little too much on the president,” he added. “I’m seeing too much of him. He should just stick with his SpaceX and his electric cars.”

Musk, meanwhile, has been clear that he believes he is working to enact the wishes of Trump’s voters.

“The people voted for major government reform and that’s what the people are going to get,” he told reporters during a surprise White House appearance this week. “That’s what democracy is all about.”

A recent poll by the BBC’s US partner CBS News suggested a majority of Americans were in favour of Musk’s work but disagreed over how much influence he should have.

In Erie, plenty of supporters were thrilled to see not one billionaire businessman, but two, running the show in Washington.

Christine Barber shrugged off concerns and said the American people had elected Trump to run the country and he had appointed Musk to help him do that.

“Personally, I love him,” she said of Musk.

“Financially, and from a business perspective, we need somebody who knows what the heck they’re doing. And if anybody does, it’s Donald Trump and Elon Musk.”

Patrick Laughlan had a similar view. He said he trusted Trump and Musk “to the extent you can trust anybody you don’t know”.

“The guy’s obviously brilliant,” Laughlan said of Musk. “He’s doing a good job trying to get rid of waste. Both of those gentlemen are trying to get money back to Americans.”

Evan Lagace, a restaurant manager here, embraces Musk’s cuts to a system he views as bloated and inefficient. He said he appreciated that the tech billionaire was “donating his time to the country to help fix a major problem”.

“Like he did in a micro aspect with Twitter, he could hopefully do the same thing with our country,” Lagace said, referring to the mass layoffs and spending cuts Musk implemented after buying the social media company.

As for the accusations that Musk had grown too powerful in this White House, Lagace said it did not bother him.

“He’s already extremely powerful,” he said. “It makes no difference.”

Elon Musk has made a number of exaggerated or unevidenced claims during an Oval Office event alongside President Donald Trump.

The billionaire, who was making his first major media appearance since beginning his role as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), said his team was seeking to improve transparency in government.

But he provided no evidence when making sweeping statements about corruption in government agencies and also defended false allegations he had spread about US funds being used to send condoms to Gaza.

BBC Verify has examined these claims made by Musk.

Musk was challenged by a reporter about a recent White House claim, which he has repeated, that it had stopped $50m (£40.2m) worth of condoms being sent to the Gaza Strip.

The reporter asked whether the condoms were actually due to be sent to Gaza Province in Mozambique.

Musk appeared to concede that could be the case, and responded: “I’m not sure we should be sending $50m dollars on condoms anywhere… if it went to Mozambique instead of Gaza, I’m like, OK that’s not as bad, but still you know why are we doing that?”

Several posts on X have highlighted a US commitment to fund an HIV-prevention programme in Gaza, Mozambique.

US government records show that an American-funded scheme for Gaza, Mozambique was awarded $83.5m for “prevention, care, support and treatment interventions within HIV and TB facilities and communities” for a programme running until September 2026.

BBC Verify contacted the aid agency that granted the funding – the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF) – who told us that no money has been used to procure condoms.

The US State Department told us two $50m donations due to be sent to the Gaza Strip via the International Medical Corps had been stopped, which it claimed included contraceptives such as condoms.

But responding to the claims, the charity said it wasn’t aware of any future US funding for condoms or any other contraceptives for Gaza.

They also said none of the funds they’d received from the US government since October 2023 had been used to procure or distribute condoms within the Gaza Strip.

The US has, in the past, provided contraceptives to countries around the world as part of family planning programmes.

In 2023 fiscal year (1 October – 30 September) $60.8m was sent abroad for contraceptives – with about $7m of that for condoms – according to a USAID report. None of this was listed for Gaza in the Middle East. $5.4m of contraceptives were listed for Mozambique, but none of this was for condoms.

These contraceptive programmes existed under Trump’s previous administration as well. During the 2019 fiscal year, for example, about $40m was spent sending contraceptives abroad, according to another USAID report.

Although he did not mention her by name, Elon Musk appeared to reference former USAID administrator Samantha Power’s alleged net worth.

President Trump asked Musk to “mention some of the things that your team has found some of the crazy numbers, including the woman that walked away with about 30 million.”

There have been claims on social media about Power’s net worth increasing to this amount during her time at USAID.

One post claims: “Ex-USAID chief Samantha Power’s net worth skyrockets – from $6.7m to $30m on a $180k salary… Where did the extra $23.3m come from? And all of this in just 3 years!”

Musk responded to another post on X about Power’s work at USAID, asking “how did she accumulate wealth that is 100 times her after tax salary?”

Musk responded to Trump’s prompt in the Oval Office by saying: “There are quite a few people in the bureaucracy who have ostensibly a salary of a few hundred thousand dollars but somehow managed to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth while they are in that position, which is, you know what happened to USAID.

“Maybe they’re very good at investing… I think the reality is that they’re getting wealthy at the taxpayer expense.”

Power’s detractors have not provided any evidence whatsoever of a sudden increase in her wealth or that she benefited from her role at USAID beyond her salary.

The claim appears to come from a website called Inside Biden’s Basement, which estimated that Samantha Power was worth between $10m and $30m.

There is no breakdown of the figure or methodology but it does include three of Power’s government ethics disclosure forms from 2021-22.

These forms show Power’s income from various sources, including her teaching salary, investments, payments for speaking engagements and book royalties.

Most of those figures are published in a range, such as shares in a particular company being worth between $15,000 and $50,000 or a bank account containing between $1m and $5m. As such, the range of results returned when estimating Power’s wealth are wide.

BBC Verify added up the income and investments from the form that Power submitted before she was sworn in as administrator in 2021, in which her wealth and income come out at between about $9m and $22m.

The most recent disclosure form available on the government website gives her accounts for 2023 and is problematic because it gives one account containing “over $1m” without stating an upper limit. If you take that as being between $1m and $5m in line with her other entries, you get an overall range of $9m to $25m.

In line with the filing rules, the 2021 figure does include her $461,167 salary from her previous job at Harvard, while the latest figures do not include her $183,100 salary from USAID.

So from her published accounts, it seems that she was pretty wealthy before she started working at USAID and that has not changed a great deal, although that is working within very broad ranges.

BBC Verify approached Samantha Power for comment via her official website.

Social security provides a base income for people in the US who are either retired or can’t work because of a disability. It covers about 67 million Americans.

Regarding the programme, Musk said: “There’s crazy things… cross re-examination of Social Security, and we’ve got people in there that are 150 years old.” He did not provide evidence of this.

BBC Verify has been unable to find specific evidence for the claim – although we don’t have access to all the US social security data that Musk has been granted.

“I think they’re probably dead… and then there’s a whole bunch of social security payments where there’s no identifying information,” Musk added.

There have been previous reports which have identified tens of billions of dollars of fraud in social security payments – but we have found no specific evidence of 150-year-olds claiming benefits.

There is a 2023 report by the social security inspector general which identified about 19 million people born in 1920 or earlier who didn’t have any death data on file – 44,000 of whom were still receiving social security benefits.

The report was triggered by calls to better maintain claimant records, after the Social Security Administration in 2021 estimated some 24,000 people received payments by the agency after death, amounting to almost $300m.

There were an estimated 101,000 people over 100 years old in 2024 across the US, according to the Pew Research Center, most of whom you would expect to be receiving social security, considering it covers retired people.

Speaking about government inefficiencies Musk claimed only 10,000 federal employees could retire per month because the paperwork is written down manually and kept in a mine.

He said: “The limiting factor is the speed at which the mine shaft elevator can move determines how many people can retire from the federal government, and the elevator breaks down sometimes, and then nobody can retire.”

That same day, Musk’s department posted about the mine on X.

“Federal employee retirements are processed using paper, by hand, in an old limestone mine in Pennsylvania. 700+ mine workers operate 230 feet underground to process ~10,000 applications per month, which are stored in manila envelopes and cardboard boxes. The retirement process takes multiple months.”

Musk is referring to Iron Mountain, a high security storage facility in Pennsylvania which holds government documents in a former limestone mine.

A 2014 article by The Washington Post reported that the retirement paperwork at the facility was processed “entirely by hand, and almost entirely on paper”.

More recently, a 2019 audit report found that between 2014 and 2017, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) – which manages the federal retirement program – did not meet its goal of processing most retirement applications within 60 days.

The report said that one of the reasons for this was OPM’s “continued reliance on paper applications and manual processing”. Insufficient staffing and incomplete applications were the other reasons provided for processing delays.

It did not mention problems with the storage facility or its elevators.

The number of claims processed for civil service and federal employee retirements rarely exceed 10,000 per month, according to US government data. These figures also show that cases can take multiple months to process.

BBC Verify has contacted the OPM about Musk’s claims.

Additional reporting by Joshua Cheetham and Anthony Reuben

A 25% tax is set to be imposed on all imports of steel and aluminium into the US , ending exemptions from the rules for goods from major trade partners including Canada, Mexico, Brazil, as well as the European Union.

The expanded tariff measures announced by President Donald Trump, expected to go into effect next month, will mean many US businesses wanting to bring the metals into the country will have to pay more.

But there is a risk that the companies will pass on the added costs, or some portion of it, to consumers.

Since steel and aluminium are key components in many goods, what items could get more expensive?

About 70% of the steel used in the US to make cans for food is imported today, coming in from countries such as Germany, the Netherlands and Canada, according to the Can Manufacturers Institute (CMI), a business group representing can-makers.

After Trump ordered tariffs on steel in 2018, many can-makers won “exclusions” from those import taxes, over the objections of steelmakers, given the limited production of the type of steel used to make cans in the US.

Since then, steel manufacturers have cut production further, pushing up prices, warned the CMI, which sent a letter to the Trump administration earlier this month signed by big food companies including General Mills, Del Monte and Goya.

Robert Budway, president of the CMI, said without exemptions for can manufacturers to import steel tariff free, grocery prices for canned foods made in the US are likely to rise.

“While the president may believe that these tariffs are protecting the steel industry, they certainly are undermining our food security and our supply resiliency for American canned food, which Americans rely on every day,” Mr Budway said.

When it comes to aluminium, brewers and makers of fizzy drinks, such as Coca-Cola, have also warned the move will add costs and could lead to higher prices for customers.

“We control enough variables that we can adapt and mitigate our way through what is happening,” Coca-Cola chief executive James Quincey told investors this week.

Trump has said there will be no exemptions from the rules this time, either for individual products or for particular countries, however some sectors are hoping he will row back from that position.

After Trump imposed tariffs on steel and aluminium during his first term, carmakers including Ford and General Motors warned the measures would add about $1bn to each of their costs.

For customers, Morningstar estimated the tariff costs back then would result in a roughly 1%, or a $300 price rise for customers.

David Whiston, an analyst at Morningstar, warned Ford could be facing a similar cost increase this time, but said it was unclear how consumers will be affected.

Affordability pressures in a market where sales have yet to return to 2019 levels could limit how much of the costs companies choose to pass on, according to Michael Wall, an auto analyst at S&P Global Mobility.

But he said it was still “realistic” to expect some of the costs from the metals tariffs to trickle down to buyers.

However he noted that Trump’s announcement of tariffs on all goods imported from Canada and Mexico, currently on hold until March, would have a much bigger impact for buyers.

At a business conference, Ford chief executive Jim Farley warned Trump’s recent moves were causing “a lot of cost and a lot of chaos” for his industry.

TD Economics has estimated cars could go up in price by about $3,000 if blanket tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada came into force.

The construction industry as a sector is one of the single biggest users of steel, which developers and homebuilders need for everything from building frames to appliances.

Carl Harris, chairman of the National Association of Home Builders, said the decision to impose tariffs on steel and aluminium ran “totally counter” to Trump’s stated goal of making housing more affordable, warning it would raise costs and deter development and rebuilding.

“Ultimately, consumers will pay for these tariffs in the form of higher home prices,” he warned.

The National Association of Home Builders has urged the president to exempt building materials from the proposed tariffs.

After Trump imposed steel tariffs in 2018, appliance maker Whirlpool faced an unexpected $350m jump in costs it said was driven by the increase in steel prices.

Companies unable to absorb such costs would likely pass them on through higher prices in the shops.

A man who served 17 years in prison for a rape he did not commit says he was “shaking” when his lawyer told him he had received the first part of a compensation payment.

Andrew Malkinson had his conviction quashed in 2023 after years protesting his innocence, but has waited since then for compensation from the Ministry of Justice.

The 59-year-old, who was a security guard working in Salford before his arrest, was wrongly convicted in 2004 and chances to free him were repeatedly missed, leading to one of the worst miscarriages of justice in UK legal history.

Mr Malkinson said he “would hesitate to say that I am grateful… but I am relieved the Ministry of Justice has finally done the right thing to lift me out of limbo with this interim payment”.

The amount of compensation has not been revealed but The Guardian reported he will receive a “significant” six-figure sum as an interim payment this week.

Mr Malkinson said his “hands were shaking” after his lawyer broke the news to him.

“I had to go for a walk to try to take in that I have finally reached this milestone,” he said.

He added more needed to be done to make the compensation scheme “fit for purpose”.

“No one should have to wait this long to be able to start to rebuild their life, and too many innocent people are being denied compensation altogether.”

Mr Malkinson said the £1m cap on compensation payouts for people who have been in jail for more than 10 years should be lifted.

“The ridiculous 2008 compensation cap which hasn’t increased with inflation should be lifted, and people should automatically be accepted on to the scheme if their convictions are quashed,” he said.

Toby Wilton from Mr Malkinson’s legal team said: “Andy Malkinson’s life was shattered when he was sent to prison for more than 17 years for a crime he did not commit. He is only now starting to rebuild it.

“The government should lift the current cap on compensation, and end the twisted quirk that whilst awards under other compensation schemes are excluded from assessment for benefits, Andy now faces the risk of losing his social housing flat just because he has been awarded this money.”

It was previously reported that Mr Malkinson was struggling to survive on benefits and had to turn to food banks.

Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice Shabana Mahmood said: “Andrew Malkinson suffered an atrocious miscarriage of justice, and we have issued an interim payment so he can begin to rebuild his life.

“We are actively considering the concerns he has raised to ensure we are effectively supporting individuals who have suffered a miscarriage of justice.”

European nations must provide the “overwhelming” share of funding for Ukraine, the new US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has said, as he signalled a drastic shift in Washington’s position on the war.

Speaking at a defence summit in Brussels, Hegseth said the US would no longer “tolerate an imbalanced relationship” with its allies and called on Nato members to spend much more on defence.

He also said it was “unrealistic” to expect Ukraine to return to its pre-2014 borders and downplayed the prospect of Ukraine joining Nato.

The comments came as Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin held a “lengthy” phone call in which they agreed to begin negotiations to end the war.

The new US defence secretary’s remarks are the clearest indication yet of the Trump administration’s position on the Ukraine war and what a peace plan to end the conflict could involve.

The positions set out by Hegseth will be met with dismay in Ukraine – which has repeatedly called for Nato membership and has rejected ceding territory as part of any peace deal – and will be welcomed by Moscow.

There will also be nervousness across the continent after Hegseth suggested the US would significantly scale back its support for Ukraine, insisting that European nations would now need to provide the “overwhelming share” of aid to Kyiv.

Hegseth, who was appointed defence secretary after Trump returned to the US presidency in January, was speaking at the Ukraine Defence Contact Group, a meeting of more than 40 countries allied to Ukraine.

He said: “We want, like you, a sovereign and prosperous Ukraine.

“But we must start by recognising that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective.

“Chasing this illusionary goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering.”

Russia annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014 and then backed pro-Russian separatists in an armed insurgency against Kyiv’s forces in eastern Ukraine.

Moscow currently controls around a fifth of Ukraine’s territory, mainly in the east and south.

Hegseth said any durable peace must include “robust security guarantees to ensure that the war will not begin again”.

However, he said “the United States does not believe that Nato membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement”.

Instead, security guarantees should be backed by “capable European and non-European troops”.

“If these troops are deployed as peacekeepers to Ukraine at any point, they should be deployed as part of a non-Nato mission and they should not be covered under Article 5,” he said, referring to the alliance’s mutual defence clause.

Hegseth also told Nato’s European members that they would need to provide the lion’s share of future aid for Kyiv, warning that Washington “will no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship” with its allies.

“Safeguarding European security must be an imperative for European members of Nato,” Hegseth said. “Europe must provide the overwhelming share of future lethal and non-lethal aid to Ukraine.”

The US has been Ukraine’s biggest financial and military backer but Trump has been repeatedly critical of US aid spending and has said his priority is to end the war, which escalated in February 2022 after Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Hegseth echoed calls by Trump for Nato allies to increase their defence spending to 5% of their GDP, instead of the current 2% target – saying the latter is “not enough”.

The US currently spends roughly 3.4% of its GDP on defence, while the UK spends about 2.3%. Countries closer to Russia, like Poland and the Baltic states, spend the most proportionately at around 4%.

It will be difficult for Ukraine to hold back Russia’s advances without the same scale of support provided by Washington during Joe Biden’s administration.

While Russia is losing large numbers of troops in the conflict, the country’s commanders are prepared to throw everything at Ukrainian front lines.

Russia is also now spending more on defence than the whole of Europe combined, according to figures from The Military Balance, an annual comparison of the strengths of armed forces around the world.

Earlier this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was ready to negotiate a peace deal with Russia but wanted his country to do so from a “position of strength”.

Speaking to the Guardian, Zelensky said if Trump was able to get Ukraine and Russia to the negotiating table, the Ukrainian president planned to offer Russia a straight territory exchange, giving up land Kyiv has held in Russia’s Kursk region since the launch of a surprise offensive six months ago.

“We will swap one territory for another,” he said, but added that he did not know which part of Russian-occupied land Ukraine would ask for in return.

Zelensky also said he would offer US firms lucrative contracts to rebuild Ukraine, in an apparent attempt to get Trump onside.

In November last year, he and the US president spoke following Trump’s election victory.

Zelensky said he had a “constructive exchange” with the then president-elect and that he was certain the war with Russia would “end sooner” than it otherwise would have once Trump became president.

But Trump’s Democratic opponents have accused him of being too close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and say his approach to the war amounts to surrender for Ukraine, which would in turn endanger all of Europe.

It also remains unclear whether a diplomatic solution to the war could be reached anytime soon that would be acceptable to both sides.

A discovery underneath the basement of an office block has been described as one of the most important pieces of Roman history unearthed in the city of London.

Archaeologists have found a substantial piece of the ancient city’s first basilica – a 2,000 year old public building where major political, economic and administrative decisions were made.

The excavation has so far revealed sections of stone wall that formed the base of the basilica, which would have been two-and-a-half storeys high.

The site, which will eventually be opened to the public, sheds light on the city’s beginnings.

“This is so significant – this is the heart of Roman London,” said Sophie Jackson, from the Museum of London Archaeology (Mola), who revealed the new find exclusively to BBC News.

“This building will tell us so much about the origins of London, why London grew and why it was chosen as the capital of Britain. It’s just amazing.”

The site was discovered at 85 Gracechurch Street, an office building that’s about to be demolished and redeveloped.

Earlier archaeological investigations revealed the ancient basilica’s approximate location, so the team created several small test pits to see what was hidden beneath the concrete floor.

On the third attempt, digging between the filing cabinets, they struck lucky.

“You can see a huge chunk of Roman masonry, and it’s incredible that it survives this well. We’re absolutely thrilled that there’s so much of it here,” said Sophie Jackson.

The wall is made from a type of limestone from Kent, and formed an imposing building – the basilica would have been about 40m long, 20m wide and 12m high.

Other artefacts have been found too, including a roof tile imprinted with the stamp of an official from the ancient city.

The basilica was part of London’s forum, a social and commercial hub with a courtyard that was about the size of a football pitch.

“The basilica is the town hall, and then in front of it was a big open market square with a range of shops and offices around the outside,” explained Ms Jackson.

“It’s the place you came to do business, to get your court case sorted out, it’s where laws were made, and it’s where decisions were made about London, but also about the rest of the country.”

It was built around 80 AD, just a few decades after the Romans invaded Britain and founded Londinium – the Roman name for the city.

But the first basilica and forum were only in use for about 20 years. They were replaced by a much larger second forum, perhaps reflecting how quickly the city was growing in size and importance.

The discovery has meant a change of plans for the building’s owners, Hertshten Properties.

The Roman remains, which will now be fully excavated, are to be incorporated into the new offices – pending planning approval – and opened up to the public.

For the architects, redesigning a building around an archaeological site has had some technical challenges.

“The scheme has been comprehensively adjusted,” explained James Taylor from architecture firm Woods Bagot.

“Simple things like the columns have had to literally move position, so you’re not destroying all these special stones that we found in the ground.”

And so as not to disturb what’s there, fewer lifts can now be installed – and this has meant that the team has had to reduce the height of the building.

But Mr Taylor said the effort will be worth it.

“To actually see people using and enjoying the space, moving through the public hall and down to see the remains, will be absolutely incredible.”

This is the latest piece of Roman history to be discovered lying beneath the streets of London’s Square Mile. And there’s a growing effort to find innovative ways to show these sites to the public.

Parts of an amphitheatre are on display under a glass floor at the Guildhall Art Gallery, and at Bloomberg’s offices, people can visit the Temple of Mithras, which has been brought to life with an immersive sound and light installation.

Chris Hayward from the City of London Corporation says he wants more people to experience the link between the past and the present.

“The fact that Roman London is beneath your feet is, frankly, quite a remarkable emotion to experience,” he said.

“You can actually see and visualise how Roman London would have been in those times. And then you can walk outside and you can say, ‘now look at the skyscrapers, now look at the office blocks’, this is progress, but at the same time, progress combined with preservation.”

A senior figure in Ukraine’s intelligence service (SBU) has been arrested on suspicion of working as a Russian agent.

The service did not name the man, who it said was chief of staff of its anti-terrorism centre, but Ukrainian media quoting sources in the SBU say he is Col Dmytro Kozyura.

Local media showed him handcuffed while being arrested by SBU head Vasyl Malyuk.

A statement said there were at least 14 instances in which the suspect, who it described as a “rat”, had collected and transmitted information to Russia. The SBU said the investigation involved audio and video monitoring, as well as gaining access to mobile phones and computers.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine has announced numerous operations to expose Russian agents on its soil.

Malyuk had been personally involved in the investigation into the suspect and headed the operation to arrest him, the SBU statement said, adding that he reported directly on its progress to President Volodymyr Zelensky.

It said Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) recruited him in Vienna in 2018. He was “mothballed” for several years and his handlers only resumed contact with him last December.

“Thanks to encrypted programme bookmarks, we got into the traitor’s gadgets – mobile terminals, computers,” Malyuk said in a video statement posted on the SBU website.

“We basically lived with him, conducted audio and video monitoring. In the process of all this, we managed to efficiently document the collection and transmission of relevant information by the traitor to the enemy.”

Malyuk added the SBU had been feeding Moscow disinformation during the course of the investigation.

“The self-cleansing of the SBU continues. No matter how the enemy tries to penetrate our ranks… he will not be able to do it successfully. Because we detect them in a timely manner, document them and detain them.”

Schools across Stoke-on-Trent are caught up in an increasingly bitter row over repairs, with some telling the BBC they’ve had to fight to get work done while paying “astronomical” charges over 25 years.

The city’s schools are all locked into a multi-million-pound Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contract, meaning they pay a company to keep their buildings in good condition.

The agreement is due to end in October, when schools fear the private firm will walk away, leaving behind a huge repair bill for work not completed.

BBC News has been investigating the row for more than a year, visiting multiple schools in the city, using Freedom of Information (FOI) requests and analysing documents.

We can exclusively reveal 42 of the 88 schools involved are now withholding payments to the contract. The investigation also found:

• 35 of those schools received a letter from Stoke-on-Trent City Council threatening them with legal action in January
• Schools were also told at the end of January that there was not enough money left to complete all the repairs required before the contract ends
• None of the 88 schools in the contract have received any compensation for alleged failures, such as delays to repair buildings over the course of the 25-year contract

The contract was signed in 2000 between Stoke-on-Trent City Council and a firm called Transform Schools (Stoke) Limited (TSSL). It uses multinational company Equans to maintain the facilities.

The contract is the largest of its kind in England and will be among the first PFI deals in the country to expire. After the deal ends, the private company will have no further liability.

What happens next has implications for the expiry of almost 600 similar deals covering schools and hospitals across England.

Stoke City Council said its priority was to get the schools handed over “safe, warm and dry”, while the main contractor engaged under the PFI contract, Equans, said the buildings had been well maintained.

At Our Lady and St Benedict primary, more than half the children are from families on the very lowest incomes. When the BBC visited the school last month, part of one classroom was cordoned off with hazard tape because plaster was falling off the walls. There was a hole in the ceiling and the wall was damp to touch.

The BBC has seen evidence the school has spent years chasing this and other repairs, which under the terms of the maintenance contract have to be done through Equans.

Head teacher Sarah Clowes says the school’s floors and windows are among almost 300 issues staff have identified – but the heating is her biggest headache.

A new boiler, fitted under the contract last summer, broke down when the first cold snap arrived, and the youngest children had to be sent home for three days because the building was so cold. Pupils in Year 6 remained at school, but had to wear their coats during lessons. When the heating broke down again in January, the school was unable to open and all the pupils had to stay at home.

Since the BBC approached Equans for comment last week, the damp plaster has been removed and repairs have begun. The school told us despite further repairs the heating is still not working in every classroom.

A few miles away, at St Margaret Ward Catholic Academy, the exterior render on the building is stained green with damp and is coming away in places. Inside, there is a huge stain where water comes through from the roof to the ground floor.

The BBC has also seen evidence of months of delays to fix three pumps that supply the school with water. Only one is working – and if it breaks the school says it will have to close because there would be no clean water for taps and toilets.

BBC News contacted Equans about the issue and the school has since been assured the pumps will be replaced during a school holiday.

Ian Beardmore, chief executive of Newman Catholic Collegiate – a group of six primaries and one secondary in the Stoke PFI contract – describes the charges his schools have been paying for the past 25 years as “astronomical”.

He says the annual maintenance fee for a plug socket installed in one primary school staff room was £400, and when he asked for the socket to be removed the school was charged £500.

Mr Beardmore says there are £1.8m of repairs that need to be carried out across his seven schools, which have been identified in expiry surveys carried out to assess their condition as the maintenance contract nears its end. Some work has already been classed as too expensive or not essential, he says.

“There’s no money, there’s no will to do it, and there’s no time in order to put these things into place,” he says. “It’s going to leave us severely out of pocket – and there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it.”

The BBC has seen a letter, sent by Stoke-on-Trent City Council to all 88 schools in the Stoke contract, saying it “remains concerned” the PFI company “may not have sufficient funding available to them to complete all of the handback works”.

It will need to “reprioritise” work not already agreed, the letter continues, and target repairs which will leave all schools “in a safe, warm and dry condition” by the end of the contract.

Schools have told the BBC it is not clear how these priorities will be agreed or by whom. The council subsequently said schools would be consulted.

When something isn’t fixed quickly, or part of a school is out of use, these maintenance contracts allow for money to be held back from the private contractor. In this contract, Stoke-on-Trent City Council is responsible for making sure that happens.

However, the BBC investigation suggests little money has been held back, despite concerns from the schools.

The BBC analysed 25 years of published financial accounts for the PFI company TSSL and found £416,000 had been declared as deductions from the contract since 2014. In most years this was less than 1% of the fees.

Using Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, BBC News also found that no money has been passed on to schools for contract failures over the last 25 years.

Stoke-on-Trent City Council told us it was still working through these payments, and they would be paid to schools before October.

The BBC shared its data with Ian Dennison, whose consultancy firm Inscyte is advising the schools fighting to get repairs done in Stoke. His company has worked on PFI school contracts across England.

Mr Dennison told the BBC the level of deductions in Stoke were “shockingly low” compared with similar contracts for PFI schools across England.

Time is running out for repairs to be carried out in Stoke’s PFI schools and Mr Dennison is not confident the buildings will be handed back in a satisfactory condition.

“We believe that there’s a really serious problem about to emerge around what works can be completed in time,” Mr Dennison says.

Putting buildings right at the end of contract is part of what the high yearly payments in PFI are intended to ensure.

Inscyte says the expiry surveys carried out for Stoke City Council and TSSL show the total repairs would cost millions.

The use of PFI deals increased significantly under Tony Blair’s Labour government as a way of investing in public buildings without the government borrowing money up front. Under the deals, long-term agreements between the private and public sector were made.

In Stoke, the contract mainly covered maintaining existing school buildings, with a bit of new build. Elsewhere, completely new schools were built under PFI.

In 2018, the Conservative government scrapped the controversial PFI model after growing concerns it did not provide value for public money. But around 570 PFI contracts, including many to maintain and update school and hospital buildings, remained in place. Many are now nearing their end.

Five years ago the National Audit Office (NAO) – which scrutinises value for public money – warned of a risk of schools and hospitals being handed back in a poor condition if the final stage of these maintenance contracts wasn’t properly managed.

As contracts begin to wind down, the NAO said there is a disincentive for the private companies to spend money before they hand over responsibility for maintaining the buildings to public bodies.

In order to avoid this happening the government says “expiry health checks” should be carried out on buildings.

In response to an FOI request, the Cabinet Office confirmed expiry health checks were carried out on Stoke’s PFI schools in March 2021 and March 2024.

Their condition was given the second worst rating, “amber/red”, which means “major additional work” was needed.

The BBC asked the council, Equans and TSSL to comment on its findings.

Stoke-on-Trent City Council said there had been a “large amount of investment to maintain and improve these schools over the last 25 years”, which it claims means they are in a better condition than many schools elsewhere.

The council said recent high inflation had made repairs more expensive, but it would not agree to responsibility for buildings being handed back unless standards set out in the contract were met.

The council said more than half the work by value had been completed, and it was drawing up plans in case not all the work can be finished.

Equans said it has been “committed to ensuring Stoke’s schools have been well-maintained throughout the 25 years of the contract”. It said an average of 28,000 jobs have been completed across the schools every year, with 93% of planned and preventative tasks being completed on time and, for the rest of this year, “a busy schedule of work for the school holidays was planned”.

Some work on the damaged render at St Margaret Ward Catholic Academy is now due to be carried out over Easter, the BBC understands.

Transform Schools (Stoke) Limited said the schools had been maintained “in accordance with the contract”, adding that many of the school buildings were relatively old when it took over responsibility.

It said “all parties are working together to deliver the maintenance works by the contract expiry date”, adding that the schools were involved in the sign-off process and it was unaware of any dispute between the council and the schools and “unaware of widespread issues with quality”.

Additional reporting by Hope Rhodes.

For decades, car-making has been the jewel in Germany’s industrial crown, a powerful symbol of the country’s famous post-war economic miracle. Its “Big Three” brands, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW, have long been praised for their performance, innovation and precision engineering. But today, the German motor industry is struggling. With the faltering economy a key factor in federal elections this month, how can it get back on the road to recovery?

When you arrive by train in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, the first thing you see is the Volkswagen factory. Its huge facade, emblazoned with a giant VW logo and flanked by four tall chimneys, dominates one bank of the canal that runs through the city. The 6.5 sq km (2.5 sq mile) complex sits adjacent to the Autostadt, a kind of theme park devoted to the automobile and to VW, Europe’s biggest carmaker. The Volkswagen Arena, a sports stadium, is a short distance away.

Wolfsburg is Germany’s answer to mid-20th Century Detroit – not so much a city with a car factory as a factory with a city that has grown up around it. Some 60,000 people from across the region work in the plant, while the town itself has a population of around 125,000. Locals say that even if you don’t work in the factory yourself, it’s certain many of your friends will, along with half of your class from school.

“Wolfsburg and Volkswagen – it’s kind of a synonym,” explains Dieter Landenberger, the VW Group’s in-house historian, as he looks lovingly at an early model Beetle. It is one of an array of beautifully restored classic cars in the Zeithaus – a huge, glass-fronted museum in the Autostadt dedicated to icons of the motor industry.

“We’re proud of the plant,” he says. “It is a symbol of that period in the 1950s when Germany had to reinvent itself and rebuild after the war. It was a kind of motor for the German economic miracle.”

Today, however, the plant has also come to symbolise some of the main problems affecting the German car industry as a whole. The Wolfsburg factory is capable of building 870,000 cars a year. But by 2023 it was making just 490,000, according to the Cologne-based German Economic Institute. And in Germany it is far from alone. Car factories across the country have been operating well below their maximum capacity. The number of cars produced in Germany declined from 5.65m in 2017 to 4.1m in 2023, according to the International Organisation of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers.

All of this matters deeply as the German public prepares to go to the polls on 23 February. The car industry is not just a source of national pride; it is also a significant driver of national wealth. Disagreements over how to resolve the country’s economic malaise were a factor in the collapse of the coalition government in November. Whoever is in power after the election will inevitably need a plan to revive the economy – and getting the motor industry back in gear is likely to play an important role.

Car-making makes up about a fifth of the country’s manufacturing output, and if the supply chain is taken into account, it generates around 6% of GDP, according to Capital Economics. The industry employs some 780,000 people directly – and supports millions of other jobs.

It’s not just production that is down. Sales of cars made by German brands are far lower than they were just a few years ago. Between 2017 and 2023, those of VW fell from 10.7m to 9.2m, while over the same period BMW’s went from 2.46m to 2.25m and Mercedes-Benz’s went from 2.3m to 2.04m, company reports show.

All of the Big Three saw their pre-tax profits fall by about a third in the first nine months of 2024, and each warned that their earnings for the year as a whole would be lower than previously forecast.

The development of electric cars has sucked up huge investment, but the market for them hasn’t grown as quickly as expected, while foreign competitors are flexing their muscles. The threat of tariffs being imposed by the US and other governments also looms large.

“There are so many crises, a whole world of crises. When one crisis is over, another is coming up,” is how Simon Shütz, a spokesman for the German Automotive Industry Federation (VDA) puts it.

Car sales across Europe have been declining since 2017, according to Franziska Palmas, a senior Europe economist at Capital Economics. “Lately they’ve recovered a bit, but they’re still around 15 to 20% lower than they were at the peak in 2017,” she says. “That’s partly due to factors like the pandemic, the energy crisis. But it’s also cars lasting longer – and people already have a lot of cars in Europe. So demand has been weak.”

Another key factor has been the aforementioned transition to electric cars. Since the diesel emissions scandal of 2015 – in which VW was found to have rigged emissions tests in the US – the industry has been undergoing a technological revolution.

With the EU and European governments determined to phase out petrol and diesel cars over the next decade, manufacturers have had little choice but to invest tens, and collectively hundreds of billions of Euros on developing electric models and building new production lines.

However, although electric cars do now make up a significant share of all cars sold – 13.6% in the EU and 19.6% in the UK last year, for example – their market share has not been growing as quickly as anticipated.

And in Germany itself, the sudden removal of generous subsidies for electric car buyers in late 2023 actually contributed to a dramatic 27% fall in sales of all electric cars within the country last year, making life still more difficult for German firms in their home market.

“The decision to drop subsidies suddenly – that was very bad, because it undermined trust among our customers,” says the VDA’s Simon Schütz.

“Going from the combustion engine to electric mobility is very big process. We are investing billions in rebuilding all the factories. And so that takes some time, there’s no question about it.”

While all of this has been going on, German manufacturers have also been grappling with another serious concern. Doing business in Germany itself, operating factories here and employing hundreds of thousands of people, is very expensive.

Workers in the automotive sector have traditionally enjoyed generous pay and benefits thanks to agreements drawn up between unions and management. According to Capital Economics, in 2023 the average monthly base salary in the German auto industry was about €5,300, compared with €4,300 across the German economy as a whole.

For years, this approach gave German-based companies certain advantages, for example in avoiding industrial unrest and in attracting and retaining talented staff. However, it also led to German car manufacturers having the highest labour costs in the global industry. In 2023, these averaged €62 per hour, compared to €29 in Spain and €20 in Portugal, according to the VDA.

The situation for Germany’s domestic car industry became more acute following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This choked off Germany’s once-abundant supplies of cheap Russian gas, at the very time when the country was phasing out nuclear power.

The result was a sharp increase in energy prices. Although they have since subsided, energy costs for industrial users in Germany remain very high by international standards. “Energy prices here are three to five times higher than in the US, or in China – much higher than for our main competitors,” says Mr Schütz.

And this is being felt across the industry, not just at the carmakers themselves. “From the Thysenkrupp and Salzgitter steel mills producing the sheet metal rolls that are later turned into doors and bonnets, to makers of smaller components used in drivetrains, costs have exploded as a result of high energy prices,” says Matthias Schmidt of Schmidt Automotive Research.

Last year these pressures came to a head. At VW, which has 45% of its global staff in Germany, managers finally decided radical action was needed to bring down costs.

“It was a very big shock,” IG Metall union spokesman Steffen Schmidt tells me over a cup of coffee near the VW factory in Wolfsburg. “The company didn’t say anything publicly.”

It was left to Daniela Cavallo, head of the powerful VW works council and the top employees’ representative, to deliver the news. “They held a big meeting outside the gates of the factory. Thousands of workers – and you could have heard a pin drop,” says Mr Schmidt.

“They were stunned. Thousands of people, all completely silent.”

What VW proposed was unprecedented. Union representatives had come to meetings expecting to negotiate an annual pay rise. They were asking for a 7% boost. Instead, they were told, the company needed them to take a 10% pay cut.

Worse was to follow. The company said it might have to close up to three of its factories within Germany itself – and was tearing up a job security agreement that had been in place for decades.

Arne Meiswinkel, VW’s chief negotiator, said at the time that the situation it faced in Germany was “very serious” and that “Volkswagen will only be able to prevail if we future-proof the company now in the face of rising costs and the massive increase in competition”.

Volkswagen had never previously closed a German factory in its 87-year history. In the face of intense opposition from unions and politicians, and following short but disruptive “warning strikes” by unionised workers, the idea was ultimately shelved. But the very fact it had been put forward sent a seismic shock through the entire sector.

In the meantime, the workforce did agree to painful limits on pay and bonuses, and VW said it would cut more than 35,000 jobs by the end of the decade, albeit in a “socially responsible manner” that avoided compulsory redundancies.

Less conspicuously, Mercedes-Benz also launched a cost-cutting drive last year, aimed at saving several billion euros annually – albeit compulsory redundancies in the German workforce are highly unlikely, as a job security agreement effectively rules them out until 2030. Meanwhile Ford, which operates two factories in Germany, recently announced plans to cut 2,800 jobs in the country.

Not all of the German car industry’s problems are confined to Germany itself. With the European market saturated, for several decades the continent’s manufacturers have looked for growth elsewhere.

One of the most lucrative markets has been China, where for a while the growing middle class had an apparently insatiable appetite for upmarket European vehicles. VW, Mercedes-Benz and BMW all teamed up with local businesses, setting up factories in China itself to meet local demand.

But now that source of growth is drying up. The Big Three have all seen sales fall recently – in 2023 VW’s China sales were down 9.5% on the previous year, Mercedes-Benz’s by 7% and BMW’s by 13.4%. Their combined share of the Chinese market has shrunk as well to 18.7%, from a peak of 26.2% in 2019. This appears to be the result of a slowing Chinese economy, falling interest in expensive, foreign-badged cars and the rapid growth of local marques, especially in the electric car market.

“Not that long ago, Western brands represented quality and trust,” explains Mark Rainford, founder of the Inside China Auto website. However, he says, since then the reputation and appeal of Chinese brands has improved beyond recognition.

All of the Big Three say trends in China have had a significant impact on their earnings.

Chinese brands are also attempting to build a share of the European market, helped by their much lower operating costs than more established rivals, both because wages are lower in China and because, as pure EV firms, they don’t have the same legacy costs carried by manufacturers making the transition from petrol and diesel to battery-powered cars.

According to the European Commission, Chinese brands also benefit from hefty government subsidies, which allow them to sell cars at artificially low prices. In October, the EU introduced extra tariffs on imports of Chinese-made EVs, in an effort to create a more level playing field.

German firms opposed the EU tariffs, because they feared retaliation from China could affect their own exports. Now they also face the threat of new protectionist measures being introduced by the Trump administration, including possible tariffs on cars shipped from the EU. For an industry that relies heavily on exports, the rise of protectionism is a growing threat.

“We know that trade wars only create losers on both sides. Tariffs will cost wealth, cost growth and cost jobs,” says the VDA’s Simon Schütz.

Although some of the pressures facing Germany’s car companies were not foreseeable, there was still an element of complacency, believes analyst Matthias Schmidt: “They knew the structural issues were there, but were blindsided by cheap Russian gas,” he says.

“The expansion to China and the high profits being shipped back to Europe plastered over the high labour cost issues, giving unions a joker card to play with.

“Germany has effectively been an export-driven market, and once those markets sneeze, Germany catches a cold, which is what’s happened.”

So can Germany’s carmakers revive their fortunes? It is a vital question for the manufacturers, for their networks of suppliers and for the country as a whole.

“The problem for Germany is we are not competitive,” says Dr Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, head of the Bochum-based Center for Automotive Research. “Not just in cost terms, but also in terms of the new technologies which will run the world in future”.

He thinks China has become the centre of gravity for innovation in areas such as digitisation and battery technology. “The solution for the carmakers and for the suppliers, in my view, will be that they take their factories abroad,” he says.

Simon Schütz is more optimistic. He thinks the industry can prosper, but only if it gets the support it needs from the government after the elections later this month.

“Our automotive industry will be world-leading, I am sure of that,” he says.

“The question is, where will the future jobs be? Will they be in Germany, because we can build cars here, or will our companies go elsewhere?’

For union rep Steffen Schmidt, however, the solution is to go back to Germany’s traditional industrial values. “We have to become a leader in innovation and technology again,” he says. “Then we can keep high pay and good conditions for workers.”

He thinks the path ahead for the new government is very clear: “Invest, invest, invest. In infrastructure, in technology, in green energy and in education.”

For tens of thousands of workers in Wolfsburg, and in Germany’s other “car towns” such as Ingolstadt, Weissach, Munich, Stuttgart and Zwickau, the stakes could not be higher.

Top picture credit: Getty images

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The government has toughened up rules making it almost impossible for a refugee who arrives in the UK on a small boat to become a British citizen.

New guidance states that anyone who enters the UK illegally having made a dangerous journey, which could be via boat, but also by means such as hiding in a vehicle, will normally be refused citizenship, regardless of the time that has passed.

In a statement, the Home Office said the strengthened measures made it clear that anyone who entered the UK illegally would face having a British citizenship application refused.

But, the change has been condemned by the Refugee Council and some Labour MPs – including Stella Creasy who said the change “meant refugees would forever remain second class citizens”.

Changes, first disclosed by the Free Movement blog, were introduced to guidance for visa and immigration staff on Monday.

The changes mean that anyone deemed to have entered the country illegally – including those already here – will not be able to apply for citizenship.

Described as a “clarification” to case worker guidance when assessing if a claimant is of “good character’, it says: “Any person applying for citizenship from 10 February 2025, who previously entered the UK illegally will normally be refused, regardless of the time that has passed since the illegal entry took place.”

Another new entry to the same guidance says: “A person who applies for citizenship from 10 February 2025 who has previously arrived without a required valid entry clearance or electronic travel authorisation, having made a dangerous journey will normally be refused citizenship.

“A dangerous journey includes, but is not limited to, travelling by small boat or concealed in a vehicle or other conveyance.”

Previously, refugees who had arrived by irregular routes would need to wait 10 years before being considered.

Under UK law, it is now an offence to enter the country without permission, while international law states that refugees should not be penalised for illegal entry.

Labour MP Creasy told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme she worked with a young man who after fleeing Syria and gaining a degree is now “contributing to our society, and has now got British citizenship”.

“This process would deny that,” she added.

Creasy also claimed the change to rules on citizenship for refugees would “deny” Paddington Bear from obtaining a British passport.

The fictional character famously arrived in the UK by stowing away on a boat from his home in Peru.

“Essentially it would deny, well, frankly, Paddington,” Creasy said.

“Paddington did the same thing. He came by an irregular route, but we gave him sanctuary but wouldn’t give him a passport.”

Lord Blunkett, the former Labour home secretary, urged the government to “reflect on the societal and cohesion aspects” of the policy.

He called on ministers to consider “the impact on children and their right to UK citizenship and the statelessness which would arrive for individuals if their birth country refused to renew or retain their nationality”.

“Surely this Parliament should have a say in such a big change,” he told the House of Lords.

In response, Home Office minister Lord Hanson of Flint said children will be “considered sympathetically under existing legislation to date”.

The i newspaper reported that children will be exempt from the new guidance on citizenship if caseworkers judge that their illegal means of entry was outside their own control. BBC News has approached the Home Office for comment.

The Refugee Council estimates the guidance will prevent at least 71,000 refugees from obtaining British citizenship.

Enver Solomon, CEO of the charity, said the government’s move “flies in the face of reason”.

“The British public want refugees who have been given safety in our country to integrate into and contribute to their new communities, so it makes no sense for the government to erect more barriers.

“We know that men women and children who are refugees want to feel part of the country that has given them a home, and support to rebuild their lives.

“We urge ministers to urgently reconsider.”

Meanwhile, immigration barrister Colin Yeo claimed on social media that it is a “clear breach of the refugee convention”.

Although the Conservatives have yet to respond to the government’s decision, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch told the BBC last week that she believes the right to citizenship and permanent residency “should only go to those who have demonstrated a real commitment to the UK”.

Badenoch spoke about her proposals to toughen up citizenship rules by making it more difficult for new immigrants to be able to permanently settle in the UK.

Citizenship applications will continue to be considered on a case-by-case basis, it is understood.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “There are already rules that can prevent those arriving illegally from gaining citizenship.

“This guidance further strengthens measures to make it clear that anyone who enters the UK illegally, including small boat arrivals, faces having a British citizenship application refused.”

King Abdullah of Jordan has rejected Donald Trump’s plan to resettle Palestinians in the kingdom.

Following a meeting with Trump at the White House on Tuesday, Abdullah wrote on X that Jordan remained “steadfast” against “the displacement of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. This is the unified Arab position.”

It was the first meeting between the pair since Trump announced his proposal to take over Gaza and move its population of two million Palestinians to other countries in the region, including Jordan.

Earlier this week, Trump suggested he could withhold aid to Jordan and Egypt unless they agreed to take in those Palestinians from Gaza.

Jordan, a key US ally in the Middle East, is already home to millions of Palestinians.

While the King volunteered to accept up to 2,000 Palestinian children from Gaza in need of medical care, he stressed that rebuilding Gaza and addressing its humanitarian crisis should take precedence over relocation efforts.

But speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, with King Abdullah seated to his right, Trump signalled he would not shift on his idea which triggered global condemnation when he unveiled it last week.

“We’re going to take it. We’re going to hold it. We’re going to cherish it,” he said of Gaza.

Trump claimed that “a lot of jobs” would be created across the region if a US takeover of the devastated territory were to happen.

“I think it could be a diamond,” he said, adding that he now believes the US is “above” having to threaten other countries to participate.

The King sat quietly next to Trump as the president repeated a proposal that would upend decades of established US policy and could amount to a breach of international law, which prohibits the forcible transfer of populations.

The UN has warned that any forced displacement of civilians from occupied territory is strictly prohibited under international law and is “tantamount to ethnic cleansing”.

Trump on Tuesday appeared to dodge a question about that UN warning.

“We’re moving them to a beautiful location where they can have new homes, where they can live safely, where they can have doctors and medical and all of those things,” he said.

Jordan already hosts millions of people descended from Palestinian refugees who were forced from the land that became Israel in 1948, alongside those whose roots lie firmly east of the River Jordan.

“I believe we’ll have a parcel of land in Jordan. I believe we’ll have a parcel of land in Egypt,” Trump said. “We may have someplace else, but I think when we finish our talks, we’ll have a place where they’re going to live very happily and very safely.”

King Abdullah said during the meeting that the matter would be discussed and both sides should “wait until the Egyptians” can present their ideas.

The deal with Egypt is believed to be a proposal for the future governance of Gaza, backed by other Arab states as a way to counteract Trump’s plan.

While still being formulated, it is thought the proposal could involve a local administration of technocrats drawn from Palestinians in Gaza, without affiliating to factions including Hamas.

Since first revealing the US proposal during a news conference last week alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump has repeatedly doubled down on his plan for Gaza, saying he is “committed to buying and owning” it.

In an interview with Fox News broadcast earlier this week, Trump said Gaza’s two million residents would be resettled and have no right to return.

“They wouldn’t, because they have much better housing,” he said. “I’m talking about building a permanent place for them.”