Category: Trending Now

The tall, shiny buildings which rise out of the cornfields on the Myanmar side of the Moei river are a sight so jarring you find yourself blinking to be sure you haven’t imagined it.

Eight years ago there was nothing over there in Karen State. Just trees, a few roughly-built cement buildings, and a long-running civil war which has left this area of Myanmar one of the poorest places on earth. But today, on this spot along the border with Thailand, a small city has emerged like a mirage. It is called Shwe Kokko, or Golden Raintree.

It is accused of being a city built on scams, home to a lucrative yet deadly nexus of fraud, money-laundering and human trafficking. The man behind it, She Zhijiang, is languishing in a Bangkok jail, awaiting extradition to China.

But Yatai, She Zhijiang’s company which built the city, paints a very different vision of Shwe Kokko in its promotional videos – as a resort city, a safe holiday destination for Chinese tourists and haven for the super-rich.

The story of Shwe Kokko is also one of the unbridled ambition which has rippled out of China in the last two decades.

She Zhijiang dreamed of building this glittering city as his ticket out of the shadowy world of scams and gambling which he inhabited.

But by aiming so high he has drawn the attention of Beijing, which is now keen to stamp out the fraud operations along the Thai-Myanmar border which are increasingly targeting Chinese people.

Publicity about the scams is also hurting Thai tourism – Thailand is shutting down power to compounds over the border, toughening its banking rules and promising to block visas for those suspected of using Thailand as a transit route.

Shwe Kokko has been left marooned in post-coup, war-wracked Myanmar, unable to bring in the flow of investment and visitors it needs to keep going.

Yatai is trying to fix the city’s sinister image by allowing journalists to see it, holding out hope that more favourable reporting might even get She Zhijiang out of jail.

So they invited the BBC to Shwe Kokko.

Getting there is tricky.

Ever since construction began in 2017, Shwe Kokko has been a forbidden place, off-limits to casual visitors.

As the civil war in Myanmar escalated after the 2021 military coup, access became even more difficult. It takes three days from the country’s commercial hub Yangon – through multiple checkpoints, blocked roads and a real risk of getting caught in armed skirmishes. Crossing from Thailand takes just a few minutes, but requires careful planning to avoid Thai police and army patrols.

She Zhijiang’s colleagues took us on a tour, highlighting the newly-paved streets, the luxury villas, the trees – “Mr She believes in making a green city,” they told us. Our guide was Wang Fugui, who said he was a former police officer from Guangxi in southern China. He ended up in prison in Thailand, on what he insists were trumped-up fraud charges. There he got to know She Zhijiang and became one of his most trusted lieutenants.

At first glance, Shwe Kokko has the appearance of a provincial Chinese city. The signs on the buildings are written in Chinese characters, and there is a constant procession of Chinese-made construction vehicles going to and from building sites.

Yatai is vague about the tenants of all its buildings, as it is about many things. “Rich people, from many countries, they rent the villas,” they told us. And what about the businesses? “Many businesses. Hotels, casinos.”

However, most of the people we saw were local Karen, one of Myanmar’s ethnic minorities, who come into Shwe Kokko every day to work. We saw very few of the overseas visitors who are supposed to be the customers of the hotels and casinos.

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 was not allowed, and that “online businesses” should leave. But we were quietly told by local people that the scam business was still running.

Starting a decade ago in the unchecked frenzy of Chinese investment on the Cambodian coast, then moving to the lawless badlands of Myanmar’s border with China, the scam operators have now settled along the Thai-Myanmar border. Around them, the Myanmar military and a hotch-potch of rebel armies and warlords are fighting for control of Karen State.

The scams have grown into a multi-billion dollar business. They involve thousands of workers from China, South East Asia, Africa and the Indian subcontinent kept in walled-off compounds where they defraud people all over the world of their savings.

Some work there willingly, but others are abducted and forced to work. Those who have escaped have told harrowing stories of torture and beatings. Some have come from Shwe Kokko.

We were able to speak to a young woman who had been working in one of the scam centres a couple of weeks before our visit. She had not enjoyed it and been allowed to leave.

Her job, she said, was as part of the modelling team, made up mostly of attractive young women, who contact potential victims and try to build an intimate online relationship with them.

“The target is the elderly,” she said. “You start a conversation like ‘oh you look just like one of my friends’. Once you make friends you encourage them by sending pictures of yourself, sometimes wearing your night clothes.”

Then, she explains, the conversation moves to get-rich-quick schemes, such as crypto investments, with the women claiming that’s how they made a lot of money.

“When they feel close to you, you pass them on to the chatting section,” she says. “The chatting people will continue messaging with the client, persuading them to buy shares in the crypto company.”

During our brief time in Shwe Kokko we were only allowed to see what Yatai wanted us to see. Even so, it was evident that the scams have not stopped, and are probably still the main business in the city.

Our request to see inside any of the newly-built office buildings were turned down. Those are private, they kept telling us. We were escorted at all times by security guards seconded from the militia group which controls this part of the border.

We were allowed to film the construction work, and the outsides of the buildings, but not to enter them. Many of the windows had bars on the insides.

“Everybody in Shwe Kokko knows what goes on there,” said the young woman who used to work in a scam centre.

She dismissed Yatai’s claim that it no longer permitted scam centres in Shwe Kokko.

“That is a lie. There is no way they don’t know about this. The whole city is doing it in those high-rise buildings. No-one goes there for fun. There is no way Yatai doesn’t know.”

“I can promise that Yatai would never accept telecom fraud and scams,” said She Zhijiang on a call from Bangkok’s Remand Prison, where he is being held.

Yatai wanted us to hear from the man himself, and hooked up a ropey video link. Only Mr Wang could be seen talking to him; we had to stay out of view of the prison guards, and had to rely on Mr Wang to put our questions to him.

Not much is known about She Zhijiang, a small-town Chinese entrepreneur who Beijing alleges is a criminal mastermind.

Born in a poor village in Hunan province in China in 1982, he left school at 14 and learned computer coding. He appears to have moved to the Philippines in his early 20s and into online gambling, which is illegal in China.

This is where he started to make his money. In 2014 he was convicted by a Chinese court of running an illegal lottery, but he stayed overseas.

He invested in gambling businesses in Cambodia, and managed to get Cambodian citizenship. He has used at least four different names.

In 2016, he struck a deal with a Karen warlord Saw Chit Thu,

to build a new city together. She Zhijiang would provide the funds, the Chinese construction machinery and materials, while Saw Chit Thu and his 8,000 armed fighters would keep it safe.

Glitzy videos by Yatai promised a $15bn (£12.1bn) investment and depicted a high-rise wonderland of hotels, casinos and cyberparks. Shwe Kokko was described as part of Xi Jinping’s Belt-and-Road Initiative or BRI, bringing Chinese funds and infrastructure to the world.

China publicly dissociated itself from She Zhijiang in 2020, and the Myanmar government launched an investigation into Yatai, which was building far beyond the 59 villas authorised by its investment permit and was operating casinos before these had been legalised in Myanmar.

In August 2022, acting on a Chinese request to Interpol, She Zhijiang was arrested and imprisoned in Bangkok. He and his business partner Saw Chit Thu have also been sanctioned by the British government for their links to human trafficking.

She Zhijiang claims to be a victim of double dealing by the Chinese state. He says he founded his company Yatai on the instruction of the Chinese Ministry of State Security, and insists that Shwe Kokko was then a part of the BRI.

He accuses China’s communist leadership of turning on him because he refused to give them control of his project. They wanted a colony on the Thai-Myanmar border, he says. China has denied any business relationship with She Zhijiang.

While he denied any wrongdoing on Yatai’s part, She Zhijiang, however, admitted to “a high probability” that scammers were coming to Shwe Kokko to spend their money.

“Because our Yatai City is completely open to anyone who can go in and out freely. Refusing customers, for a businessman like me, is really difficult. This is my weakness.”

It is, however, stretching credulity to believe that Yatai, which runs everything in Shwe Kokko, was unable to stop scammers coming in and out of the city.

It is also hard to think of any business other than scams which would choose to operate here.

With Thailand cutting off power and telecommunications, electricity comes from diesel generators, which are expensive to run. And communications go through Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite system, which is also very costly.

Yatai’s strategy is “to whitewash the project to create a narrative that Shwe Kokko is a safe city”, says Jason Tower, from the United States Institute for Peace, which has spent years researching the scam operation in Shwe Kokko.

He says they may even “begin moving some of the more notorious components of the scam industry, like torture, into other zones”.

But he doesn’t think the plan will work: “What kinds of legitimate businesses will go into Shwe Kokko? It’s simply not attractive. The economy will continue to be a scam economy.”

When we were eventually allowed to see inside one casino in Shwe Kokko, run by a genial Australian, he told us they were going to close it down.

Inside the only customers were local Karen, gambling on a popular arcade-like game where they had to shoot digital fish. We were forbidden from doing any interviews. The back rooms, with the card and roulette tables, were empty.

The Australian manager said the casino – built six years ago – had been popular and profitable when there were just one or two of them, before the civil war. But these days, with at least nine in operation, there were not enough customers to go around.

The real money was in online gambling, which he said was the main business in Shwe Kokko.

It is impossible to know how much money is made through online gambling, and how much through outright criminal activities like money laundering and scams. They are usually run from the same compounds and by the same teams. When we asked Yatai how much money they made they would not tell us – not even a ballpark figure. That is private, they said.

The company is registered in Hong Kong, Myanmar and Thailand, but these are little more than shell companies, with very little income or revenue passing through them.

We turned down Yatai’s offer to see the go-kart track, water park and model farm that they have built. We did glimpse one other casino, while being taken to eat breakfast in Yatai’s own luxury hotel, though we could not go inside it. It seemed empty.

The only other facility we were allowed to see was a karaoke club, with spectacular private rooms, cavernous domes entirely covered in digital screens on which huge tropical fish and sharks swam.

They also ran video loops extolling the vision and virtues of She Zhijiang. This club too seemed deserted, except for some young Chinese women who worked there.

They wore opera masks to avoid being identified, and danced unenthusiastically to music for a few minutes before giving up and sitting down.

Interviews were not permitted. We were allowed to talk to a local Karen member of staff, but she was so intimidated by this we got little more than her name.

In his absence, She Zhijiang has left the running of Shwe Kokko to a young protégé, 31-year-old He Yingxiong. He lives with Wang Fugui in a sprawling villa they have built on the banks of the Moei River, overlooking Thailand, and guarded by massive Chinese bodyguards. There they play mahjong, eat the finest food and drink, and keep an eye on business.

Mr He has a slightly different explanation from his boss for the scams still operating under their noses. “We are just property developers,” he said. “I can guarantee that this kind of thing does not happen here.

“But even if it does, the local people have their own legal system, so it is their job to deal with it. Our job is just to provide good infrastructure, good buildings and supporting industries.”

But there is no legal system in this part of Myanmar, nor any government. It is ruled by the various armed groups which control different bits of territory along the Thai border.

Their commanders decide who can build or run a business, taking their cut to help fund their wars against the Myanmar military, or against each other. Many of them are known to be hosting scam compounds.

Mr He admitted that it was the war which had allowed Yatai to obtain the land so cheaply. Karen human rights groups have accused Saw Chit Thu of driving the original inhabitants off their land, with minimal compensation, though it is clear Yatai is also providing badly needed jobs for the locals.

It is the lawlessness of Karen State which makes it so appealing to illegal businesses – and that doesn’t help the image of Shwe Kokko.

Neither do recent headlines.

Last month a 22-year-old Chinese actor, Wang Xing, was rescued from a scam centre on the border after being lured to Thailand with an offer of work on a movie shoot. His disappearance spurred a barrage of questions on Chinese social media, forcing the Thai and Chinese authorities to mount a joint operation to free him.

Chinese tourists have been cancelling their holidays in Thailand, fearing for their safety. Other rescues have followed.

The BBC has been sent emails by some scam victims pleading for help; rescue organisations believe there are still thousands trapped. Nearly all are in smaller compounds along the border south of Shwe Kokko.

Yatai stressed to us that they are not the same as these rougher operations, some little more than a collection of sheds built in forest clearings. That is where all the bad things happen now, they said.

They talked about KK Park, a notorious compound south of the border town of Myawaddy, and Dongmei, a cluster of low-rise buildings run by a prominent Chinese crime lord called Wan Kuok Koi, better known as Broken Tooth.

That distinction hasn’t helped She Zhijiang, who once had the ear of politicians, police bosses and even minor royalty in Thailand. Today he appears to have lost even the influence he once had in prison, to buy himself special privileges. He has complained of being roughed up by the guards.

His lawyers are appealing against the Interpol red notice used to justify his arrest, but China’s voice will probably be loudest in determining his fate.

From our interview with him, Shi Zhijiang seemed genuinely outraged over his sudden reversal of fortune.

“Before, I had no understanding of human rights, but now I really understand how horrible it is to have human rights infringed upon,” he said.

“It is hard to imagine how the human rights of ordinary people in China are trampled upon when a respected businessman like me, who used to be able to go to the same state banquets as Xi Jinping, does not have his human rights and dignity protected in any way.”

It seems he really did believe he could build something which would one day transcend Shwe Kokko’s sordid origins as a scam city.

What happens to it now is hard to guess, but if the Thai and Chinese governments keep acting to shut down the scams, the money will start to dry up.

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order sanctioning the International Criminal Court, accusing it of “illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel”.

The measure places financial and visa restrictions on individuals and their families who assist in ICC investigations of American citizens or allies.

Trump signed the measure as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was visiting Washington.

Last November, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu over alleged war crimes in Gaza, which Israel denies. The ICC also issued a warrant for a Hamas commander.

A White House fact sheet circulated earlier on Thursday accused the Hague-based ICC of creating a “shameful moral equivalency” between Hamas and Israel by issuing the warrants at the same time.

Trump’s executive order said the ICC’s recent actions “set a dangerous precedent” that endangered Americans by exposing them to “harassment, abuse and possible arrest”.

“This malign conduct in turn threatens to infringe upon the sovereignty of the United States and undermines the critical national security and foreign policy work of the United States government and our allies, including Israel,” the order said.

It adds that “both nations [the US and Israel] are thriving democracies with militaries that strictly adhere to the laws of war”.

The US is not a member of the ICC and has repeatedly rejected any jurisdiction by the body over American officials or citizens.

International Criminal Court: What is the ICC and what does it do?

The White House accused the ICC of placing constraints on Israel’s right to self-defence, while accusing the body of ignoring Iran and anti-Israel groups.

Trump has repeatedly criticised the court, and took several steps to sanction the body during his first term in office.

At the time, he imposed sanctions on ICC officials who were investigating whether US forces had committed war crimes in Afghanistan. Those sanctions were lifted by President Joe Biden’s administration.

Last month, the US House of Representatives voted to sanction the ICC, but the bill foundered in the Senate.

The ICC was founded in 2002 – in the wake of the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the Rwandan genocide – to investigate alleged atrocities.

Over 120 countries have ratified the the Rome Statute – which constituted the ICC – while another 34 have signed and may ratify in the future.

Neither the US nor Israel is party to the Rome Statute.

The ICC is a court of last resort and it is meant to intervene only when national authorities cannot or will not prosecute.

During his time in office, President Biden also criticised the ICC’s warrant for Netanyahu, calling the move “outrageous” and saying there was no equivalence between Israel and Hamas.

Trump’s signing of his latest executive order follows his announcement during a joint press conference with the Israeli prime minister on Tuesday of a plan for the US to “take over” Gaza, resettle its Palestinian population and turn the territory into the “Riviera of the Middle East”.

After Arab leaders and the UN condemned the idea, the US president restated it on his Truth Social social media platform on Thursday.

“The Gaza Strip would be turned over to the United States by Israel at the conclusion of fighting,” Trump wrote.

He repeated that the plan would involve resettling Palestinians, and that no American soldiers would be deployed.

His post did not make clear whether the two million residents of the Palestinian territory would be invited to return, leaving officials scrambling to explain.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Wednesday that any displacement would be temporary.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Gazans would leave for an “interim” period while reconstruction took place, under the proposal.

Trump signed the order as Netanyahu continued his visit to Washington, meeting lawmakers from both the Republican and Democratic parties on Capitol Hill.

The Israeli prime minister also presented a golden pager to Trump.

The gift was a reference to Israel’s deadly operation against Hezbollah in September last year, using booby-trapped communications devices.

Dozens of people were killed and thousands injured in the attacks.

Israel said it was tailored to hit only members of the Iran-backed group, but Lebanese officials said civilians were among the victims.

Israel’s defence minister has told its military to prepare a plan to “allow any resident of Gaza who wishes to leave to do so”, in line with President Donald Trump’s proposal for the US to take over the territory and resettle its 2.1 million Palestinians elsewhere.

Israel Katz said Gazans should have “freedom of movement and migration” and countries critical of Israel’s war with Hamas were “obligated” to take them in.

Trump meanwhile said Gaza would be “turned over” to the US by Israel “at the conclusion of fighting”.

But the Palestinian presidency reiterated its rejection of the plan, which it has said would violate international law, and insisted that “Palestine… is not for sale”.

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

More than 47,550 people have been killed and 111,600 injured in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Most of Gaza’s population has also been displaced multiple times and almost 70% of its buildings are estimated to be destroyed or damaged.

Healthcare, water, sanitation and hygiene systems have collapsed and there are shortages of food, fuel, medicine and shelter.

The Israeli defence minister wrote on X on Thursday that he welcomed the US president’s “bold initiative”, saying it could “support long-term reconstruction efforts in a demilitarized, threat-free Gaza after Hamas”.

Katz announced that he had instructed the Israeli military to “prepare a plan that will allow any resident of Gaza who wishes to leave to do so, to any country willing to receive them”.

“The plan will include exit options via land crossings, as well as special arrangements for departure by sea and air,” he said.

“Countries such as Spain, Ireland, Norway, and others, which have falsely accused Israel over its actions in Gaza, are legally obligated to allow Gazans to enter their territory. Their hypocrisy will be exposed if they refuse.”

He alleged that Hamas was preventing people leaving Gaza and said that they should have “the right to freedom of movement and migration”.

Hamas official Basem Naim accused Katz of trying to cover up for “a state that has failed to achieve any of its objectives in the war on Gaza” and said Palestinians would refuse to leave.

Meanwhile, the spokesman for the Palestinian presidency asserted that “Palestine, with its land, history and holy sites, is not for sale”.

Nabil Abu Rudeineh also said the Palestinians would “will not give up an inch of their land”, whether in Gaza or the occupied West Bank.

“The Palestinian people and their leadership will not allow the repetition of the catastrophes of 1948 and 1967, and will thwart any plan aimed at liquidating their just cause through investment projects whose place is neither in Palestine nor on its land.”

The 1948 “Nakba”, which means “catastrophe” in Arabic, saw hundreds of thousands of Palestinians flee or driven from their homes before and during the war that followed the creation of the State of Israel.

Many of those refugees ended up in Gaza, where they and their descendants make up three quarters of the population. Another 900,000 registered refugees live in the West Bank, which Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war along with Gaza, while 3.4 million others live in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, according to the UN.

Israel unilaterally withdrew its troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005, though it retained control of its shared border, airspace and shoreline, giving it effective control of the movement of people and goods. The UN still regards Gaza as Israeli-occupied territory because of the level of control Israel has.

On Wednesday, Jordan’s king expressed its “rejection of any attempts to annex land or displace Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank”, while Egypt’s foreign minister stressed the importance of reconstruction “without the Palestinians leaving the Gaza Strip”.

Hamas – which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US, the UK and other countries – said Trump’s plan was “absurd” and would “only put oil on the fire” in the region.

The UN human rights office warned that any forcible transfer in, or deportation of, people from occupied territory was strictly prohibited under international law.

The UN’s secretary general also said it was “essential to avoid any form of ethnic cleansing” and stressed that Gaza would be an integral part of a future Palestinian state.

Antonio Guterres told a meeting in New York that the world had “seen a chilling, systematic dehumanisation and demonization of an entire people”.

Trump unveiled his plan for the US to take “long-term ownership” of Gaza and oversee its reconstruction during a visit to the White House by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday.

The president said most of the Palestinians living in Gaza would have to be relocated to achieve his vision of creating “the Riviera of the Middle East”, and that they would be housed in Jordan, Egypt and other countries.

“I hope we can do something where they wouldn’t want to go back,” he said, echoing earlier remarks in the Oval Office where he talked about resettling people “permanently”.

At the White House briefing on Wednesday, spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt was asked to confirm whether all Palestinians who wanted to stay in Gaza would be allowed to do so.

“I can confirm that the president is committed to rebuilding Gaza and to temporarily relocating those who are there because… it is a demolition site,” she replied, appearing to contradict the president.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio also said the idea was for Gazans to leave the territory for an “interim” period while debris was cleared and reconstruction took place.

On Thursday, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that Gaza would “be turned over to the United States by Israel at the conclusion of fighting”.

A ceasefire in effect between Israel and Hamas has halted the war and aims to lead to a permanent end to the fighting.

“The Palestinians… would have already been resettled in far safer and more beautiful communities, with new and modern homes, in the region. They would actually have a chance to be happy, safe, and free,” he added.

The president also said no US soldiers would be needed to maintain stability.

In an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, Israel’s prime minister called Trump’s proposal “remarkable” and something that should be “examined, pursued and done”.

Netanyahu also suggested that Gazans would be able to return, saying: “They can leave, they can then come back, they can relocate and come back, but you have to rebuild Gaza.”

The use of lethal force by SAS soldiers was unjustified when they opened fire killing four IRA men in an ambush at Clonoe in County Tyrone, an inquest has ruled.

Kevin Barry O’Donnell, 21, Sean O’Farrell, 22, Peter Clancy, 21, and Patrick Vincent, 20, died in February 1992, minutes after they had carried out a gun attack on Coalisland police station.

The soldiers opened fire as the men arrived at St Patrick’s Church car park in a hijacked lorry which had a heavy machine gun welded to its tailgate.

Security forces had intelligence the car park would be used and 12 soldiers were in position behind a hedgerow.

In response to the ruling, Downing Street said “addressing the issues of the past must be done in a way that commands the support of families, survivors and, importantly, the families of those killed serving the state”.

A spokesperson added that “any veteran who served during the Troubles is provided legal support where appropriate”.

The four armed IRA men were killed about 20 minutes after firing 60 shots at Coalisland police station – no-one was injured in the attack.

SAS soldiers opened fire without warning when the lorry drove in – firing more than 500 rounds.

In statements at the time, the soldiers stated the use of lethal force was justified to protect their lives and those of their colleagues from the danger the IRA unit presented.

However, coroner Mr Justice Michael Humphreys found the use of lethal force cannot have been reasonable.

He said there was no attempt to arrest the four IRA men, even as they lay wounded.

Mr Justice Humphreys said the experienced soldiers lying in wait at the church would have known the men would need to dismount the machine gun and in that scenario the ability to arrest them would have improved.

The coroner said the operation “was not planned and controlled in such a way as to minimise to the greatest extent possible the need for recourse to lethal force”.

However, he said the soldiers chose not to wait but to stand up and begin shooting.

Two of those killed, Mr O’Donnell and Mr O’Farrell, were shot in the back while running away and had bullets fired into their faces as they lay on the ground.

“No attempt was made by the soldiers to arrest any members of the PIRA unit, even as they lay seriously injured and incapacitated either on the ground or in the lorry,” the judge stated.

“The soldiers did not have an honest and genuinely held belief that the use of force was necessary to defend themselves or others.”

Mr Justice Humphreys added that state agencies had “perpetuated falsehoods” about the incident, having claimed at the time there had been a gun battle.

In fact, the IRA men had not fired on the soldiers.

He referred to a Ministry of Defence document which had mentioned the operation as “an excellent security forces success”.

After the ruling, Patrick Vincent’s sister Marian said: “It has been the entirety of my life that this process has been ongoing.

“It’s hard to say you’re delighted at a finding over your family member’s death.

“We’re overwhelmed and we’re delighted with the result, but we’re also very aware at a huge expense to us, as families.”

Solicitor Niall Murphy said: “Anyone who sat through those months of hearings, the inescapable conclusion, the only conclusion is the verdict the judge has found today.

“Whereas truth has been excavated and published today, justice has not.

“We’re going to carefully consider this verdict with regards to any prospect of prosecutions.”

Speaking to BBC News NI, Mr Murphy added that the verdict would be carefully considered saying he would anticipate that “the families will expect a file to be prepared for submission to the Public Prosecution Service”.

Sinn Féin MP Cathal Mallaghan welcomed the decision and called on the British government to “to fully repeal and replace the Legacy Act”.

He added the ruling “confirms what many in our community knew for a long time; that these four men were executed by the SAS without justification.”

TUV MP Jim Allister said: “When four fully-armed terrorists go out on a murder mission, that mission includes their escape plan.

“If the continuing threat posed by such fully-armed, would be murderers is neutralised, then that is a service to the public to whom they are a danger.”

The judgement is “another illustration of the coronial system” of putting the security forces “in the dock”, Allister added.

The Ulster Unionist Party’s justice spokesperson Doug Beattie described the outcome of the inquiry as “ludicrous”.

“Instead of dead police officers, civilians and lawful military personnel, four PIRA terrorists were killed,” he said in a statement.

“It is ludicrous to say that the shooting was unjustified”.

The use of lethal force by SAS soldiers was unjustified when they opened fire killing four IRA men in an ambush at Clonoe in County Tyrone, an inquest has ruled.

Kevin Barry O’Donnell, 21, Sean O’Farrell, 22, Peter Clancy, 21, and Patrick Vincent, 20, died in February 1992, minutes after they had carried out a gun attack on Coalisland police station.

The soldiers opened fire as the men arrived at St Patrick’s Church car park in a hijacked lorry which had a heavy machine gun welded to its tailgate.

Security forces had intelligence the car park would be used and 12 soldiers were in position behind a hedgerow.

In response to the ruling, Downing Street said “addressing the issues of the past must be done in a way that commands the support of families, survivors and, importantly, the families of those killed serving the state”.

A spokesperson added that “any veteran who served during the Troubles is provided legal support where appropriate”.

The four armed IRA men were killed about 20 minutes after firing 60 shots at Coalisland police station – no-one was injured in the attack.

SAS soldiers opened fire without warning when the lorry drove in – firing more than 500 rounds.

In statements at the time, the soldiers stated the use of lethal force was justified to protect their lives and those of their colleagues from the danger the IRA unit presented.

However, coroner Mr Justice Michael Humphreys found the use of lethal force cannot have been reasonable.

He said there was no attempt to arrest the four IRA men, even as they lay wounded.

Mr Justice Humphreys said the experienced soldiers lying in wait at the church would have known the men would need to dismount the machine gun and in that scenario the ability to arrest them would have improved.

The coroner said the operation “was not planned and controlled in such a way as to minimise to the greatest extent possible the need for recourse to lethal force”.

However, he said the soldiers chose not to wait but to stand up and begin shooting.

Two of those killed, Mr O’Donnell and Mr O’Farrell, were shot in the back while running away and had bullets fired into their faces as they lay on the ground.

“No attempt was made by the soldiers to arrest any members of the PIRA unit, even as they lay seriously injured and incapacitated either on the ground or in the lorry,” the judge stated.

“The soldiers did not have an honest and genuinely held belief that the use of force was necessary to defend themselves or others.”

Mr Justice Humphreys added that state agencies had “perpetuated falsehoods” about the incident, having claimed at the time there had been a gun battle.

In fact, the IRA men had not fired on the soldiers.

He referred to a Ministry of Defence document which had mentioned the operation as “an excellent security forces success”.

After the ruling, Patrick Vincent’s sister Marian said: “It has been the entirety of my life that this process has been ongoing.

“It’s hard to say you’re delighted at a finding over your family member’s death.

“We’re overwhelmed and we’re delighted with the result, but we’re also very aware at a huge expense to us, as families.”

Solicitor Niall Murphy said: “Anyone who sat through those months of hearings, the inescapable conclusion, the only conclusion is the verdict the judge has found today.

“Whereas truth has been excavated and published today, justice has not.

“We’re going to carefully consider this verdict with regards to any prospect of prosecutions.”

Speaking to BBC News NI, Mr Murphy added that the verdict would be carefully considered saying he would anticipate that “the families will expect a file to be prepared for submission to the Public Prosecution Service”.

Sinn Féin MP Cathal Mallaghan welcomed the decision and called on the British government to “to fully repeal and replace the Legacy Act”.

He added the ruling “confirms what many in our community knew for a long time; that these four men were executed by the SAS without justification.”

TUV MP Jim Allister said: “When four fully-armed terrorists go out on a murder mission, that mission includes their escape plan.

“If the continuing threat posed by such fully-armed, would be murderers is neutralised, then that is a service to the public to whom they are a danger.”

The judgement is “another illustration of the coronial system” of putting the security forces “in the dock”, Allister added.

The Ulster Unionist Party’s justice spokesperson Doug Beattie described the outcome of the inquiry as “ludicrous”.

“Instead of dead police officers, civilians and lawful military personnel, four PIRA terrorists were killed,” he said in a statement.

“It is ludicrous to say that the shooting was unjustified”.

India’s Foreign Minister S Jaishankar has told parliament the government is working with the US to ensure Indian citizens are not mistreated while being deported.

His statement came a day after a US military flight brought back 104 Indians accused of entering the US illegally.

One of the deportees told the BBC they had been handcuffed throughout the 40-hour flight, sparking criticism.

But Jaishankar said he had been told by the US that women and children were not restrained. Deportation flights to India had been taking place for several years and US procedures allowed for the use of restraints, he added.

Deportation in the US is organised and executed by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“We have been informed by ICE that women and children are not restrained,” Jaishankar said.

He added that according to ICE, the needs of deportees during transit, including for food and medical attention, were attended to and deportees could be unrestrained during bathroom breaks.

“There has been no change from past procedure,” he added.

However Jaspal Singh, one of the deportees on the flight that landed in Amritsar city in the state of Punjab on Wednesday, told BBC Punjabi that he was shackled throughout the flight.

“We were tortured in many ways. My hands and feet were tied after we were put on the plane. The plane stopped at several places,” he said, adding that he was unshackled only after the plane landed in Amritsar.

The US has not given further details of how deportees were treated on the flight. Officials have said that enforcing immigration laws is “critically important to the national security and public safety of the United States” and it was US policy to “faithfully execute the immigration laws against all inadmissible and removable aliens”.

The US border patrol chief posted video showing deportees in shackles, saying the deportation flight to India was the “farthest deportation flight yet using military transport”.

President Donald Trump has made the mass deportation of undocumented foreign nationals a key policy. The US is said to have identified about 18,000 Indian nationals it believes entered illegally.

Trump has said India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi had assured him that the country would “do what’s right” in accepting US deportations.

In his statement on Thursday, Jaishankar said all countries had an obligation to take back their nationals who had entered other countries illegally. They often faced dangerous journeys and inhumane working conditions once they had reached their destinations, he said.

Fraudulent Indian travel agencies are known to take huge sums of money from people desperate to travel abroad for work, and then make them undertake dangerous journeys to avoid being caught by immigration officials.

Jaspal said he had taken a loan of 4m rupees ($46,000; £37,000] to travel to the US, a dangerous journey that took months and during which he saw bodies in the jungle of other migrants who had died on the route.

Opposition leaders have condemned the manner in which migrants were brought back to the country and have asked the government what action it plans to take over the treatment meted out to its citizens.

Congress MP Manickam Tagore called it “shocking and shameful”.

“The way the US is deporting Indians – chained like criminals – is inhumane and unacceptable,” he posted on X.

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said the US had the right to deport people who had entered the country illegally but criticised the manner in which they were deported.

“To send them like this abruptly in a military aircraft and in handcuffs is an insult to India, it’s an insult to the dignity of Indians,” he said.

This isn’t the first time that the US has faced the ire of politicians for allegedly mistreating migrants from their countries.

Last month, Brazil’s government expressed outrage after about 88 of its nationals arrived in their homeland handcuffed. The government said that it would demand an explanation from Washington over the “degrading treatment of passengers on the flight”.

Meanwhile, Colombia sent its own planes to collect deportees after Colombian President Gustavo Petro barred US military aircraft from landing, arguing that those on board were being treated like criminals.

Rights groups have urged countries to ensure deportees are treated humanely.

Additional reporting by Gurpreet Chawla, BBC Punjabi

Syrians and a Bosnian were among the 10 victims of a gunman who carried out the worst shooting in Swedish history, at a school in Orebro on Tuesday.

It was the first information about those murdered, and it came from two embassies rather than police, who said only that there were victims of a number of nationalities.

Police said the suspected gunman, named locally as 35-year-old Rickard Andersson, was found dead afterwards, with three guns by his side.

The regional police chief said police faced an “inferno” when they entered the school buildings: “Dead people, screams and smoke.”

Lars Wiren spoke of a scene of chaos at Risbergska school, with people running in and out of a very large complex that stretched over about 17,000 sq m.

Anna Bergqvist, the head of the police investigation, told the BBC police could confirm only that people of multiple nationalities and ages were caught up in the shooting.

One Bosnian national was killed and another wounded, the Bosnian embassy said. Ambassador Bojan Sosic laid flowers outside the school in Orebro on Thursday.

The Syrian embassy gave no details of the number of Syrians affected, but said: “We offer our sincere condolences and sympathies to the families of the victims, including dear Syrian citizens, and to the friendly Swedish people.”

However, it soon emerged that Salim Iskef, a 29-year-old Orthodox Christian who fled the war in Syria in 2015, was one of the 10 victims.

Santa Maria church in Orebro said his life had ended tragically in the shooting.

Jacob Kasselia, the priest at Orebro’s Syrian Orthodox church, told the BBC that Mr Iskef was a kind and thoughtful young man who had arrived from Aleppo in 2015 and was due to get married this summer.

Swedish reports said he had become a Swedish citizen.

The priest said Mr Iskef’s fiancée had been “very badly affected” by the murder.

“She is going through a very difficult, very dark experience,” Mr Kasselia said.

Mr Iskef’s aunt told Arabic-language website Alkompis he had made a video call to his mother to say he had been shot and asked her to look after his fiancée.

The Bosnian embassy said it had chosen to wait for official information from police, although it had relevant information from Orebro’s Bosnian community.

There has been some frustration in Orebro at the slow pace at which police have been releasing information about their inquiry.

“I find it odd, to say the least, that the police choose to withhold information that pertains to foreign citizens, from respective embassies,” Ambassador Sosic told the BBC. He described the Bosnian community as among the best integrated in Sweden.

Police in Orebro say the alarm was raised at 12:33 (11:33 GMT) on Tuesday and after about five minutes the first patrols had reached the school, which sits on a large education campus about 200km (124km) west of Stockholm.

Police chief Lars Wiren said 130 police officers had eventually reached the school and found an “inferno”.

He told the BBC that there was no evidence bombs had been detonated, but said there was thick smoke that could have come from the suspect setting fires or smoke grenades.

He said they believed the suspect had fired at police but that officers did not fire back. The gunman was found dead at the scene over an hour later.

Police investigator Anna Bergqvist said that the suspect had killed himself.

She confirmed that three guns were found at the scene next to the gunman, of a total of four known to be legally registered to the suspect.

However, she refused to comment on the types of guns or ammunition used.

Police remain tight-lipped about both the suspect and the possible motive behind the attack.

Anna Bergqvist explained that the delay in naming the suspect was because of the wait for DNA samples to be matched.

Swedish police are usually cautious about naming suspects and would not normally do so ahead of charges being laid, but Ms Bergqvist said they expected to make an exception in this case and release a name in the coming days.

Risbergska school provides adult education for people aged over 20 who did not finish primary or secondary school, as well as Swedish classes for immigrants.

Young residents in Orebro had already expressed fears of a racial element to the shooting, and the Syrian statement confirmed that immigrants were among the victims.

Sweden’s TV4 channel broadcast a video recorded from a school toilet during the gun attack, in which the words “away from Europe!” can be heard.

It is not clear who shouted the words and police have been careful not to discuss a motive.

However, Ms Bergqvist appeared to row back the initial statement from authorities on Tuesday that the motive for the attack was not ideological.

“Why they said that, I cannot comment,” she said. “We are looking at different motives, we will declare it when we have it.”

Rickard Andersson has been described locally as a recluse and one report by Swedish website Aftonbladet suggested his attack may have targeted local social services.

A source told the site that he had argued with a social worker after he had lost his welfare benefits because he had not done enough to find work.

Police on Tuesday had said that the suspect had no previous convictions, no apparent links to gangs and they did not believe the attack was motivated by terrorism.

Syrians and a Bosnian were among the 10 victims of a gunman who carried out the worst shooting in Swedish history, at a school in Orebro on Tuesday.

It was the first information about those murdered, and it came from two embassies rather than police, who said only that there were victims of a number of nationalities.

Police said the suspected gunman, named locally as 35-year-old Rickard Andersson, was found dead afterwards, with three guns by his side.

The regional police chief said police faced an “inferno” when they entered the school buildings: “Dead people, screams and smoke.”

Lars Wiren spoke of a scene of chaos at Risbergska school, with people running in and out of a very large complex that stretched over about 17,000 sq m.

Anna Bergqvist, the head of the police investigation, told the BBC police could confirm only that people of multiple nationalities and ages were caught up in the shooting.

One Bosnian national was killed and another wounded, the Bosnian embassy said. Ambassador Bojan Sosic laid flowers outside the school in Orebro on Thursday.

The Syrian embassy gave no details of the number of Syrians affected, but said: “We offer our sincere condolences and sympathies to the families of the victims, including dear Syrian citizens, and to the friendly Swedish people.”

However, it soon emerged that Salim Iskef, a 29-year-old Orthodox Christian who fled the war in Syria in 2015, was one of the 10 victims.

Santa Maria church in Orebro said his life had ended tragically in the shooting.

Jacob Kasselia, the priest at Orebro’s Syrian Orthodox church, told the BBC that Mr Iskef was a kind and thoughtful young man who had arrived from Aleppo in 2015 and was due to get married this summer.

Swedish reports said he had become a Swedish citizen.

The priest said Mr Iskef’s fiancée had been “very badly affected” by the murder.

“She is going through a very difficult, very dark experience,” Mr Kasselia said.

Mr Iskef’s aunt told Arabic-language website Alkompis he had made a video call to his mother to say he had been shot and asked her to look after his fiancée.

The Bosnian embassy said it had chosen to wait for official information from police, although it had relevant information from Orebro’s Bosnian community.

There has been some frustration in Orebro at the slow pace at which police have been releasing information about their inquiry.

“I find it odd, to say the least, that the police choose to withhold information that pertains to foreign citizens, from respective embassies,” Ambassador Sosic told the BBC. He described the Bosnian community as among the best integrated in Sweden.

Police in Orebro say the alarm was raised at 12:33 (11:33 GMT) on Tuesday and after about five minutes the first patrols had reached the school, which sits on a large education campus about 200km (124km) west of Stockholm.

Police chief Lars Wiren said 130 police officers had eventually reached the school and found an “inferno”.

He told the BBC that there was no evidence bombs had been detonated, but said there was thick smoke that could have come from the suspect setting fires or smoke grenades.

He said they believed the suspect had fired at police but that officers did not fire back. The gunman was found dead at the scene over an hour later.

Police investigator Anna Bergqvist said that the suspect had killed himself.

She confirmed that three guns were found at the scene next to the gunman, of a total of four known to be legally registered to the suspect.

However, she refused to comment on the types of guns or ammunition used.

Police remain tight-lipped about both the suspect and the possible motive behind the attack.

Anna Bergqvist explained that the delay in naming the suspect was because of the wait for DNA samples to be matched.

Swedish police are usually cautious about naming suspects and would not normally do so ahead of charges being laid, but Ms Bergqvist said they expected to make an exception in this case and release a name in the coming days.

Risbergska school provides adult education for people aged over 20 who did not finish primary or secondary school, as well as Swedish classes for immigrants.

Young residents in Orebro had already expressed fears of a racial element to the shooting, and the Syrian statement confirmed that immigrants were among the victims.

Sweden’s TV4 channel broadcast a video recorded from a school toilet during the gun attack, in which the words “away from Europe!” can be heard.

It is not clear who shouted the words and police have been careful not to discuss a motive.

However, Ms Bergqvist appeared to row back the initial statement from authorities on Tuesday that the motive for the attack was not ideological.

“Why they said that, I cannot comment,” she said. “We are looking at different motives, we will declare it when we have it.”

Rickard Andersson has been described locally as a recluse and one report by Swedish website Aftonbladet suggested his attack may have targeted local social services.

A source told the site that he had argued with a social worker after he had lost his welfare benefits because he had not done enough to find work.

Police on Tuesday had said that the suspect had no previous convictions, no apparent links to gangs and they did not believe the attack was motivated by terrorism.

The Bank of England has halved its growth forecast for this year in a blow to the government.

The economy is now expected to grow by 0.75% this year, the Bank said, down from its previous estimate of 1.5%.

The government has made growing the economy one of its key policies and last week the chancellor announced a number of measures to try to boost the UK’s performance.

The Bank’s new growth forecast came as it cut interest rates to 4.5% from 4.75% in a move that had been widely expected.

It also predicted that higher energy and water bills would push up inflation “quite sharply” later this year.

Inflation – the rate at which prices rise – is now expected to rise to 3.7% and take until the end of 2027 to fall back to its 2% target.

The Bank said it would take a cautious approach to future interest rate cuts as it weighs up a number of factors that could affect inflation, including threats of trade tariffs from US President Donald Trump.

“We’ll be monitoring the UK economy and global developments very closely and taking a gradual and careful approach to reducing rates further,” said Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey.

“Low and stable inflation is the foundation of a healthy economy and it’s the Bank of England’s job to ensure that.”

Chancellor Rachel Reeves said the interest rate cut was “welcome news”.

“However, I am still not satisfied with the growth rate. Our promise in our Plan for Change is to go further and faster to kickstart economic growth to put more money in working people’s pockets.”

In its quarterly inflation report, the Bank said economic growth had been “broadly flat since March last year”.

The UK economy showed zero growth between July and September.

For the following three months, the Bank of England now expects it to shrink by 0.1% against a previous forecast for 0.3% growth.

A recession is defined as two consecutive three-month periods of economic contraction.

The Bank now expects the economy to grow by just 0.1% between January and March, down from its 0.3% forecast published last November.

The latest official growth figures for the UK economy will be published next Thursday.

A government decision to dismantle Grenfell Tower has been met with anger by some bereaved relatives and survivors.

Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner told a meeting on Wednesday that the west London tower block, where a fire killed 72 people in 2017, would be dismantled to ground level.

But a spokesperson for Grenfell United, which represents some of the bereaved families and survivors, said no-one at the meeting supported it and people “had been ignored”.

There has been several years of debate over the future of the 24-storey tower, with some hoping it would remain in place as a lasting reminder of the tragedy and others wanting it replaced with a new memorial.

A formal announcement by the government is expected to be made on Friday.

The spokesperson for Grenfell United said Rayner had refused to confirm how many bereaved people and survivors had been spoken to in the “recent, short four week consultation”.

“Today’s meeting showed just how upset bereaved and survivors are about not having their views heard or considered in this decision,” they said in a statement.

“Ignoring the voices of bereaved on the future of our loved ones’ gravesite is disgraceful and unforgivable.”

Kimia Zabihyan, from Grenfell Next of Kin, which also acts for some of the bereaved families, told the BBC she had attended the meeting with Rayner.

She described the meeting as “charged”, but said Rayner appeared to have come along with the “best of intentions”.

“The deputy prime minister was very clear that she has taken this decision very seriously, that it is a serious responsibility and that it is a very sensitive decision to make, but it is one that she felt she had to make,” said Ms Zabihyan, adding that Rayner said she had made the decision based on what engineers had recommended.

The government has previously been warned the structure may be unsafe due to the extent of the fire damage.

In 2020, a report recommended the tower be propped up in various places because the concrete that reinforces it had been damaged by the weather, and also the heating and drying of summers and winters creates some instability.

The engineers recommended that the tower was brought down – and in 2019 the government was told the tower should be taken down above the 10th floor.

Ms Zabihyan said she understood the government’s rationale for the decision, but said many people were very unhappy.

She said that at the meeting one person had told Rayner: “No-one cares about this more than me, because I had just bits of bone to bury of my mother so that building means a lot to me. That is where her soul is, where her ashes are. It’s in that building.”

Following the meeting, a government spokesperson said: “The priority for the deputy prime minister is to meet with and write to the bereaved, survivors and the immediate community to let them know her decision on the future of the Grenfell Tower.

“This is a deeply personal matter for all those affected, and the deputy prime minister is committed to keeping their voice at the heart of this.”

But the head of a local residents’ association told Radio 4’s The World Tonight he and “the overwhelming majority” of local residents supported the decision to take down the tower.

Mushtaq Lasharie, a local resident and chairman of Lancaster West Estate Residents Association, told Radio 4: “We were waiting over seven-and-a-half years for a closure and I hope this decision will bring a closure.

“When we surveyed a few years back the overwhelming majority wanted to take it out and the reason is, number one, it is dangerous, number two, it reminds us every day.”

Emma O’Connor, who lived on 20th floor of tower and escaped the fire that night, told Radio 4’s Today programme she thought the tower should be “taken down from the top to the 10th floor which they say is the most unstable so it then can be erected into a standing memorial”.

“We understand it’s unsafe but if it’s out of sight, it will be definitely be out of mind for those responsible for the tragic deaths,” she said.

Ms O’Connor was at the meeting with Rayner and said survivors and relatives were told ‘I’ve made this decision, I’ll take questions now’, but said officials “didn’t answer how they came to the decision” to dismantle the tower.

Emma Dent Coad, who was Labour MP for Kensington at the time of the Grenfell fire and is now an independent councillor on Kensington and Chelsea Council, said a lot of the bereaved and families were “absolutely distraught”.

She said: “We’ve been told the work will start after the 8th anniversary which is this coming June and will be gone by the 10th so that may take two years to deconstruct as they’re calling it.”

She said while there were concerns from the local community about public health issues, some of the bereaved wanted the tower to stay – “a lot of people regarded it as a sacred site”.

There is a range of views about what to do with the tower.

Kate Lamble, a journalist, producer and presenter of The Grenfell Tower Inquiry Podcast and Grenfell: Building a Disaster, told Radio 4’s Today programme that some people still believe the tower is the resting place of their loved ones and should remain.

There are others, she said, “who see it while they’re taking their kids to school or going to work see it as this reminder of a very traumatic event and welcome the idea of it being take down.”

The fire on 14 June 2017 was originally caused by a faulty fridge in a fourth-floor flat and quickly spread around the block because it was covered in highly flammable cladding.

A public inquiry concluded in September that the disaster had been the result of numerous government failures, and failure of the construction industry to act on the dangers of flammable materials on high-rise buildings.

The west London tower block was covered in combustible cladding because of the “systematic dishonesty” of firms who made and sold it, inquiry chairman Sir Martin Moore-Bick said.

Many bereaved families have called for criminal action to be brought against some of those implicated in the inquiry but police and prosecutors have said that no decision will be made on potential charges until the end of 2026.

In a 2023 report, the Grenfell Tower Memorial Commission set out a series of recommendations for a “sacred space”, designed to be a “peaceful place for remembering and reflecting”.

It said the space should include a garden, monument and dedicated space for the private expression of grief and mourning for the families who lost loved ones.

A shortlist of five potential design teams was announced last month, and a winning design team is set to be selected this summer.

Don’t mess with Canada – that’s the private message to the US from the very top of Ottawa’s political system. Just like nearly a century ago with the infamous American Smoot-Hawley tariffs, Canada got its retaliation in to Donald Trump’s import taxes very quickly.

While the White House is claiming Canada’s pledge to spend $1.3bn (£1bn) on a border protection plan has given it diplomatic victory in its battle over fentanyl traffic, there was very little conceded that was not already planned by America’s northern neighbour.

Crucially, both Mexico and Canada were undeterred by a clear threat in Trump’s executive orders that any retaliation would lead to higher tariffs on imports into the US.

After consulting each other, Canada and Mexico instead both negotiated a month’s pause with Trump.

The returning US president likes making threats of tariffs on most days, and in many directions.

Since his inauguration, these have also been directed at Denmark, Colombia, China, Taiwan, the European Union as well as all of the Brics countries which include Brazil, Russia and India.

The rationale for his tariffs keeps changing and much about this situation defies logical explanation.

So, Mexico, Canada and every other country facing tariffs or the threat of them have to decipher what Trump is really playing at.

And when they’ve done that, the question for the whole world is whether what we are seeing is an attempt by the US president to rewrite the entire global monetary system – and at what risk to America?

Trump has claimed that fentanyl trafficking was the legal pretext for tariffs, allowing him to bypass Congress and use emergency powers to impose border taxes on Canada, Mexico and China, by declaring an “unusual or extraordinary threat”.

But while talking about the fentanyl trade, he also referred to Canada’s goods trade surplus with the US (which means Canada sells more to the US than it imports), and introduced the idea that Canada should become the “51st state” of America.

While any country might demand talks about both illicit and legal trade flows, it is difficult to see how to handle these conversations when there is a parallel threat of continental annexation of a free trade ally which is also part of Nato and one of the Group of Seven (G7) most advanced economies in the world.

Europe, meanwhile, seems unwilling to stir the pot as it attempts to work out the president’s precise motivations and how this feeds itself into what he decides over Transatlantic tariffs.

Trump’s long-standing animus with the EU comes from the bloc’s substantial goods trade surplus with the US, arising from areas such as high-end German car exports.

Underlying all of this is a perceived unfairness that other markets are more restrictive against America such as when it comes to the prices paid for US drugs or fines placed on US tech companies.

But if this really is about trade deficits, it is something of a mystery as to why Trump has not yet announced tariffs against the likes of Vietnam, Japan and South Korea – who have far bigger surpluses with the US.

In any case, for Trump to focus solely on goods means that he is willingly ignoring the US’s great export – services.

I put this precise point to the EU Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic last month.

He told me: “Sure, we have a trade surplus in goods, but the US has a trade surplus in services.

“And on top of it, every year, €300bn (£249bn) is flowing across the Atlantic into the American companies from our pension funds, from the saving accounts of the European citizens because they’re investing in the US. So I think that it’s a pretty balanced relationship.”

As it happens, the UK trade position with the US is more balanced, a point made to me by the Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds. In fact, on some measures, the US has a surplus with Britain.

Amid the fog of Trump’s true intentions, European negotiators have resorted to stressing co-operation, partnership and deals with the US and studiously avoided directly criticising even the extraordinary suggestion of using tariffs against Nato-ally Denmark over the fate of Greenland.

In November 2024, Stephen Miran, before becoming President Trump’s White House chief economics advisor, authored a paper laying out further questions that could determine how much more the US should tariff specific countries.

These ranged from an assessment of whether a country applies similar tariffs to the US, suppresses its currency, respects US intellectual property, pays its Nato obligations, votes against the US at the United Nations or its “leaders grandstand against the US in the international theatre”.

It also talked of forcing other nations “to choose between facing a tariff on their exports to the American consumer or applying tariffs to their imports from China”, asking: “Which will they choose?”

The president himself was pretty clear in his video address to a stunned World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January.

“Your choice,” he said to the assembled international executives. Build your goods in American factories with tax incentives, or import into the US from foreign factories and pay tariffs that would raise “hundreds of billions of dollars and even trillions of dollars” for the US Treasury.

“Most of the world has come to understand that Trump does use tariffs as a negotiating tool,” Stephen Moore, a former Trump economic advisor who recently visited the president, told me.

It may be that a part of Trump’s logic is very simple: remodel the US tax system so that everything coming into the country attracts a levy but, in return, the public sees income tax rates slashed.

“By the way, I do think at the end of the day, there will be an across-the-board tariff imposed by Trump,” says Mr Moore.

“He’s talked about this, that if you’re bringing something into the United States whether it’s from Britain, whether it’s Mexico, Canada, China, Europe, you’re going to pay a little bit more but if something is made in the United States, he’s going to lower the tax. And to a lot of Americans, that’s a very attractive proposition.”

Mr Moore has suggested a 15% universal tariff on all imports from everywhere in order to fund a cut in income tax rates down to 15%.

Mr Miran’s paper also contains a proposal that led to jaws dropping in global central banks and finance ministries: bring down the value of the dollar in order to boost US industry and exports.

Arranging this would mean a fundamental change to the way the global monetary system operates. But Mr Miran suggests that punitive tariffs could be used as leverage to make reluctant trading partners like Europe and China “become more receptive” to the idea.

He suggests that in time there could be a summit of the world’s economic powers, where allies and rivals thrash out the revaluation of the dollar, perhaps at the president’s Florida residence. It could be known as the Mar-a-Lago Accord.

Early discussions of the idea in international forums have been highly sceptical, recalling the history of similar attempts to manage global currency values.

But it is the recently published concept of the top White House economic advisor. Tariff now, tariff hard and tariff everywhere in order to, in the future, get the world to help bring down the value of the dollar.

Such a radical idea comes with risk and already simply with the tariffs, there is a danger for the White House that the US overplays its hand.

Mark Carney, who is frontrunner to replace Justin Trudeau as Canadian Liberal Party leader, and as Prime Minister, at least until an election, has a rather unique approach.

The former governor of both the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada decided to come out punching, ridiculing the fentanyl rationale and telling the BBC that Canada would retaliate “dollar for dollar” and that Canadians would “stand up to a bully”.

He said that the tariff move would rebound on the US economy itself by fuelling inflation, forcing the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates and crippling the ability of the US to sign trade deals, given they would have effectively ripped up their biggest – the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) – just a few years after the president had personally renegotiated it.

Mr Carney then publicly suggested that Canada removes a subsidy from exports to the US of its oil, and stressed that Canada’s green investments might need to be protected from US carbon emissions.

For those countries like the UK trying to avoid tariffs, he had a simple message: “Good luck”.

The clear sense was that from his own experience of having dealt with Trump at the G20, the way to deal with him was to show strength.

This is partly a calculation that the muted opposition to these policies within the US will not be sustained. Again, the harder, more strategic and more coordinated the retaliation, the more pause for thought it will give big US corporates and some in the competing courts around the President.

Elon Musk, the normally prolific social media poster on his X platform and chief executive of electric vehicle-maker Tesla, was curiously largely quiet about the single biggest move from the president.

He eventually reposted the news from the Mexican president that their tariffs had been delayed.

A leading US tech chief executive told me that his company was already making plans, assuming they would be on the receiving end of retaliatory tariffs.

His hope was that Trump’s focus on the rising value of the US stock market would create a natural restraint against excessive tariffs. Some saw the modest fall on the Dow Jones index on Monday as contributing to this week’s pauses.

Retaliation is standard procedure in trade wars.

Indeed in the most famous of them all, when US Republicans passed the calamitous 1930s Smoot-Hawley tariffs, Canada was the first to hit back, doing so before the US had even finished legislating. History points to Henry Ford being one of those begging Herbert Hoover to veto the Smoot-Hawley tariffs in 1930.

And, in 2025, the car industry is one obvious potential tariff loser.

“It’s true to say that there is no such thing as a Canadian auto industry, an American auto industry and a Mexican auto industry,” says Peter Frise, a professor of mechanical and automotive engineering at the University of Windsor.

“There are Canadian, American, and Mexican components of a North American auto industry and the integration among the three countries is absolutely foundational to how the industry works.”

Not only are models like the Honda Civic, which is hugely popular in the US, manufactured in Canada – Prof Frise says “very few” cars assembled in the US will not contain some parts that come from across the border. And so, says he adds, tariffs “would drive up costs for everyone” – US consumers included.

Another risk for Trump is that as Mr Carney and Mr Sefcovic said, they are all now responding to the direction of US trade policy by diversifying with one another. The EU is busy doing trade deals with Latin America. “There is huge demand in the outside world for free and fair trade relationships,” says Mr Sefcovic.

The UK has also restarted trade negotiations with India and the Gulf countries.

Reynolds says that the “challenging international position” means the UK has to push its “genuine competitive advantage” as the “most connected market in the world” with the US, the EU and China.

The other issue here is that if the direction of travel is a universal tariff, as Trump and his advisors keep suggesting, is there much incentive to try to avoid it?

There is some startling thinking circulating in Trumponomics circles. It is talk of that revenue grab of trillions of dollars that is spooking even allies who think they might escape the tariffs.

It sounds like a wild economic gamble. But such talk is relative, at a time when the US president is putting tariffs on his closest economic G7 and Nato partner over fentanyl, while simultaneously claiming it should become part of the US.

It could be an extensive and surprising tariff war. This week’s trade dramas are just early skirmishes.

Top picture credit: Getty Images

BBC InDepth is the home on the website and app for the best analysis, with fresh perspectives that challenge assumptions and deep reporting on the biggest issues of the day. And we showcase thought-provoking content from across BBC Sounds and iPlayer too. You can send us your feedback on the InDepth section by clicking on the button below.

The Palestinian president has said he strongly rejects President Donald Trump’s proposal for the US to take over Gaza and resettle the 2.1 million Palestinians living there.

“We will not allow the rights of our people… to be infringed on,” Mahmoud Abbas stressed, warning that Gaza was “an integral part of the State of Palestine” and forced displacement would be a serious violation of international law.

Hamas, whose 15-month war with Israel has caused widespread devastation, said Trump’s plan would “put oil on the fire” in the region.

The idea has been rejected by countries in the region such as Jordan and Egypt, and key US allies, while the UN issued a warning against “any form of ethnic cleansing”.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said Gaza was an integral part of a future Palestinian state, telling a meeting in New York the rights of Palestinians to live as human beings in their own land was slipping further out of reach.

The world, he said, had “seen a chilling, systematic dehumanisation and demonisation of an entire people”.

Saudi Arabia said Palestinians would “not move” from their land and it would not normalise ties with Israel without the establishment of a Palestinian state.

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Trump’s proposal could “change history” and was “worth paying attention to”.

Later on Wednesday, the White House sought to clarify President Trump’s proposal, with spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt telling journalists the president was committed to rebuilding Gaza and “temporarily” relocating its residents. Trump said on Tuesday the displacement would be permanent.

She also said the president had not committed to sending US troops to Gaza.

Trump’s comments come two weeks after the start of a fragile ceasefire in Gaza, during which Hamas has released some Israeli hostages it is holding in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

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

More than 47,540 people have been killed and 111,600 injured in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Most of Gaza’s population has also been displaced multiple times, almost 70% of buildings are estimated to be damaged or destroyed, the healthcare, water, sanitation and hygiene systems have collapsed, and there are shortages of food, fuel, medicine and shelter.

Trump’s first major remarks on Middle East policy shattered decades of US thinking on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“The US will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too,” he told reporters at the White House on Tuesday night, alongside the visiting Israeli prime minister.

“We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site, and get rid of the destroyed buildings.”

Trump said Palestinians living in Gaza would have to be relocated to achieve his vision of creating “the Riviera of the Middle East”, and that they would be housed in Jordan, Egypt and other countries.

When asked whether the refugees would eventually be allowed to return, he said that “the world’s people” would live in Gaza, before adding “also Palestinians”.

Trump also brushed aside previous objections from Jordan and Egypt’s leaders to taking in refugees, insisting that they would eventually “open their hearts and will give us the kind of land that we need to get this done”.

Netanyahu later said there was nothing wrong with idea of “allowing the Gazans who want to leave to leave” the territory.

“They can leave, they can then come back, they can relocate and come back. But you have to rebuild Gaza,” he told Fox News on Wednesday.

A unnamed senior Israeli official was also quoted as saying that Trump’s ideas surpassed all his “expectations and dreams”.

Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said the proposal was “the real answer to 7 October” and pledged to “definitively bury… the dangerous idea of a Palestinian state”.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has characterised the plan as a “generous offer” to rebuild Gaza, not as a hostile takeover.

And Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth praised Trump’s “outside the box” thinking and said the Pentagon was “prepared to look at all options” related to the enclave.

The Palestinian leadership condemned the plan in a statement issued on Wednesday.

“These calls represent a serious violation of international law,” Abbas said, adding that “peace and stability will not be achieved in the region without the establishment of a Palestinian state”.

Abbas leads Hamas rivals Fatah and governs parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

He declared that Palestinians would not “give up their land, rights, and sacred sites” and that the Gaza Strip was an “integral part of the land of the State of Palestine, along with the West Bank and East Jerusalem”.

The head of the Palestinian mission to the UK, Husam Zomlot, told the BBC: “It’s a call for ethnic cleansing, for the forced displacement and expulsion of a people from their native land. It is immoral, it is illegal, and it is dangerous.”

Hamas – which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US, the UK and other countries – said in a statement that Trump was “aiming for the United States to occupy the Gaza Strip”.

It warned that his proposal was “aggressive to our people and cause, won’t serve stability in the region and will only put oil on the fire”.

Palestinians in Gaza also said the plan was completely out of the question.

“We have endured nearly a year and a half of bombings and destruction, yet we remain in Gaza,” one man told BBC Arabic.

“We would rather die in Gaza than leave it. We will stay here until we rebuild it. Trump can do as he pleases, but we firmly reject his decisions.”

Palestinians also fear a repeat of the “Nakba”, or “catastrophe”, when hundreds of thousands fled or were driven from their homes before and during the war that followed the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.

Many of those refugees ended up in Gaza, where they and their descendants make up three quarters of the population. Another 900,000 registered refugees live in the West Bank, while 3.4 million others live in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, according to the UN.

Israel withdrew its troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005, though it retained control of its shared border, airspace and shoreline, giving it effective control of the movement of people and goods.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry said the kingdom “unequivocally rejected” Trump’s proposal and said it would continue its efforts to establish an independent Palestinian state.

Egypt’s foreign minister said he had agreed with the Palestinian Authority prime minister on the importance on moving forward with “early recovery projects” without Palestinians leaving Gaza.

While Jordan’s King Abdulla said he rejected any attempts to “annex land or displace Palestinians”, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said it was “absurd to even consider” the relocation of Palestinians from Gaza.

Western governments also expressed alarm about any forced displacement.

France’s foreign ministry said it would mean a “serious violation of international law” an attack on the Palestinian aspirations and would represent a “major obstacle to the two-state solution”.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said Palestinians “must be allowed home”.

“They must be allowed to rebuild, and we should be with them in that rebuild on the way to a two-state solution,” he told Parliament.

Last month was the world’s warmest January on record raising further questions about the pace of climate change, scientists say.

January 2025 had been expected to be slightly cooler than January 2024 because of a shift away from a natural weather pattern in the Pacific known as El Niño.

But instead, last month broke the January 2024 record by nearly 0.1C, according to the European Copernicus climate service.

The world’s warming is due to emissions of planet-heating gases from human activities – mainly the burning of fossil fuels – but scientists say they cannot fully explain why last month was particularly hot.

It continues a series of surprisingly large temperature records since mid-2023, with temperatures around 0.2C above what had been expected.

“The basic reason we’re having records being broken, and we’ve had this decades-long warming trend, is because we’re increasing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” Gavin Schmidt, director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told BBC News.

“The specifics of exactly why 2023, and 2024, and [the start of] 2025, were so warm, there are other elements involved there. We’re trying to pin those down.”

January 2025 ended up 1.75C warmer than January temperatures of the late 19th Century, before humans started significantly warming the climate.

Early last year, global temperatures were being boosted by the natural El Niño weather pattern, where unusually warm surface waters spread across the eastern tropical Pacific. This releases extra heat into the atmosphere, raising global temperatures.

This year, La Niña conditions are developing instead, according to US science group Noaa, which should have the opposite effect.

While La Niña is currently weak – and sometimes takes a couple of months to have its full effect on temperatures – it was expected to lead to a cooler January.

“If you’d asked me a few months ago what January 2025 would look like relative to January 2024, my best shot would have been it would be cooler,” Adam Scaife, head of monthly to decadal predictions at the UK Met Office, said.

“We now know it isn’t, and we don’t really know why that is.”

A number of theories have been put forward for why the last couple of years have been warmer than anticipated.

One idea involves a prolonged response of the oceans to the 2023-24 El Niño.

While it was not especially strong, it followed an unusually lengthy La Niña phase from 2020-23.

The El Niño event might therefore have “lifted the lid” on warming, allowing ocean heat that had been accumulating to escape into the atmosphere.

But it’s unclear how this would still be directly affecting global temperatures nearly a year after El Niño ended.

“Based on historical data, that effect is likely to have waned by now, so I think if the current record continues, that explanation becomes less and less likely,” says Prof Scaife.

The fact that sea temperatures in other regions of the world remain particularly warm could suggest “that the behaviour of the ocean is changing”, according to Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus.

“We’re really looking to see how the ocean temperatures evolve because they have a direct influence on air temperatures.”

Another prominent theory is a reduction in the number of small particles in the atmosphere, known as aerosols.

These tiny particles have historically masked some of the long-term warming from greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane by helping to form bright clouds and reflecting some of the Sun’s energy back into space.

Aerosol numbers have been falling recently, thanks to reductions in tiny particles from shipping and Chinese industry, for example, aimed at cleaning the air that people breathe.

But it means they haven’t had as large a cooling effect to offset the continued warming caused by greenhouse gases.

And this cooling effect of aerosols has been underestimated by the UN, argues James Hansen, the scientist who made one of the first high-profile warnings on climate change to the US Senate in 1988.

Most scientists aren’t yet convinced that this is the case. But, if true, it could mean there is greater climate change in store than previously assumed.

The “nightmare scenario”, says Prof Scaife, would be an extra cloud feedback, where a warming ocean could cause low-level reflective clouds to dissipate, in turn warming the planet further.

This theory is also very uncertain. But the months ahead should help to shed some light on whether the “extra” warmth over the past couple of years is a blip, or marks an acceleration in warming beyond what scientists had anticipated.

Currently, most researchers still expect 2025 will end up slightly cooler than 2023 and 2024 – but the recent warmth means they can’t be sure.

What they do know, however, is that further records will follow sooner or later as humanity continues to heat up the planet.

“In time, 2025 is likely to be one of the cooler years that we experience,” Dr Burgess said.

“Unless we turn off that tap to [greenhouse gas] emissions, then global temperatures will continue to rise.”

Graphics by Erwan Rivault

Ismail Moradi, 16, would normally be carrying his textbooks into school.

But on Wednesday he was clutching a bunch of red flowers to lay in tribute to those murdered in Sweden’s worst ever mass shooting.

“I was shocked and didn’t know if I wanted to come to school today after what happened so nearby,” he explains to us.

Ismail’s own elementary school is next to the adult learning centre that was targeted yesterday.

Although police still have not given a motive for the attack, Ismail – who is Kurdish – says he fears there was a clear racial element to the shooting.

“In this school, it’s only newcomers to Sweden. There’s not so many Swedish people. So, I think it was targeted for one special group of people.”

Swedish police are still investigating the gunman’s personal history and have not said the attack, which killed 11 people, was targeted.

Hellen Werme, a 35-year-old trainee nurse, survived the shooting. She and her classmates locked themselves inside their classroom as the shooter prowled the corridors.

“We could hear him firing,” she told us. “I just felt that at any moment I would be shot and I could never come home to my children.”

We met her outside the college. All day, there’s been a steady procession of locals lighting candles and gazing across to the school site which remains sealed off.

Vacant faces in the icy wind reflect the sense of shock that has gripped many Swedes in the past 24 hours.

A hush descended on the scene when Sweden’s King arrived to leave his own flowers. The solemnity echoing the national mood as flags fly at half-mast.

The collective grief is complicated by the lack of any explanation for the assault. The police, now in the midst of huge investigation have not given away anything to that end.

Trying to build a profile of a “clean skin” – someone not previously known to the police or security service – makes any probe all the more difficult.

But the scale of the loss of life means the public and politicians want answers from the police now.

More than 100 specialist officers are involved, on a local, regional and national level.

Unconfirmed reports in the Swedish media say the gunman was a 35-year-old local man who legally owned a gun.

Reham Attala, 21, is a law student also thinks it was no coincidence this college – popular with immigrants – was chosen, rather than others which were reported to be near the suspect’s home.

“I’m so sad and scared,” she tells us at the site of the shooting. “This shouldn’t have happened.”

Reham explains that her dad is Syrian and her mum is Palestinian but for her Sweden is home. She’s has lived in Orebro for the past 11 years.

She is alarmed that the gunmen attacked a school where Swedish for Immigrants (SFI) courses are known to be taught.

“Those people lost yesterday were studying Swedish and this make me think about my future and am I even going to live here, should I have children here? All these questions.”

People should be free to learn and live in peace on campus without fear of this happening, she sighs.

Swedish police said they were still investigating the motive behind the country’s deadliest mass shooting, as local media began reporting details about the gunman.

The suspect, named in reports as 35-year-old local man Rickard Andersson, was reported to be a former student of the school in Orebo, a city 157 km (98 miles) west of Stockholm, where the attack took place on Tuesday.

Eleven people died in the shooting, including the attacker, with at least six others injured.

The attack has sent shockwaves through the nation, with King Carl XVI Gustaf on Wednesday saying: “All of Sweden is mourning.”

Authorities are still yet to release details about the dead and injured. Health officials said three women and two men were in a critical but stable condition, while another woman was treated for minor injuries.

Police declined to confirm media reports naming Andersson as the suspect. Orebro police said they had identified the suspect but would “not publish his name yet, due to the investigation”.

They have not said how he died but indicated on Wednesday he had most likely killed himself after an exchange of fire with police.

Police said they were still investigating why the gunman had chose to attack the Risbergska adult educational centre. Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet reported the suspect was previously enrolled at the school but had not attended classes since 2021.

Police on Tuesday said the suspect had no apparent links to gangs and did not appear to be motivated by ideology.

They also do not believe the attack was motivated by terrorism.

“We will get back on what motives there are,” local police chief Roberto Eid Forest told reporters on Wednesday.

The suspect had no previous convictions and obtained his weapon legally, local media reported.

Sweden’s public broadcaster SVT suggested it was a hunting weapon, while Swedish Radio said police had listed the weapon as an automatic firearm.

Local police chief Mr Forest also defended authorities’ delay in releasing accurate information about the number of dead and wounded. He said the size of the school premises had led to delays in ensuring there were not more victims.

Police said they were using fingerprints, dental records and DNA to identify victims – alongside interviews with family members.

In addition to providing Swedish language classes for immigrants, the Risbergska centre also provided adult education for people aged over 20 who did not finish primary or secondary school.

Earlier, Orebro residents attended a candlelit vigil outside the educational centre, which remains cordoned off. Flags around Orebro and at government buildings, parliament and royal palaces across the country were also lowered to half-mast.

King Carl XVI Gustaf, who visited the campus on Wednesday with Queen Silvia, told reporters: “All of Sweden feels it has experienced this traumatic event.”

“All Swedes are thinking of those people who lost their loved ones,” the King told the BBC. He said he was “sure the country would overcome the tragedy… one way or another, but it will take time”.

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, who also visited the site on Wednesday, described Tuesday’s attack as a dark day in Swedish history.

“Together, we must help the injured and their relatives bear the grief and weight of this day,” he said.

Additional reporting by Johanna Chisholm in London

After days of speculation over the precise role the world’s richest man would play in Donald Trump’s White House – how much power he would hold, whether he is a government employee at all – he took to the social media platform he owns to clarify.

“My preferred title is just ‘Tech Support,’” Elon Musk wrote on X on Tuesday. It was a knowing understatement.

As the head of the nascent Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), Musk has emerged as a dominant force in the dizzying start to Trump’s second administration.

In just two weeks he has led efforts to seize access to the federal payment system, dismantled an entire agency and offered millions of civil servants an ultimatum – quit or face being fired.

But Musk’s increasingly bold attempt to remake the federal government with the same blunt force he used to take control of companies like Twitter have put him on a collision course with the Washington establishment.

And while he has secured a place in Trump’s inner circle, observers wonder if a showdown between these two powerful personalities could be looming.

Musk’s journey from billionaire entrepreneur to White House power player was not straightforward. By his own accounting, Musk had – for decades – been a reliable vote for the Democrats.

But unhappy with Biden’s position on issues from labour laws to transgender rights, Musk began to look to the other side of the aisle in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election.

Initially, Musk called for Trump to “hang up his hat & sail into the sunset” and had backed his rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, for the Republican nomination. But he soon became the president’s biggest booster, contributing $288m to Trump and other Republican candidates and becoming a key adviser on the campaign.

By the time of Trump’s inauguration, Musk was his right-hand man, seated just behind the president’s left shoulder on the dais – an unmistakable symbol of his influence.

“You know I always say we have to be protective of our geniuses because we don’t have too many. But that one is a good one,” Trump said of Musk, after welcoming him on stage at a rally the day before.

Musk has been a near constant presence in the nation’s capital ever since.

Almost immediately after his election Trump tapped Musk to run Doge, and this new role has seemingly empowered him in a far-reaching mission to slash and transform the federal government, pushing for massive reforms with stunning speed.

Although Trump had said Musk would not be given an office in the West Wing, the tech leader and his team have moved beds into the federal personnel office next door to the White House, according to the New York Times.

He has top secret security clearance, a Trump administration official confirmed, potentially giving him access to a broad swathe of highly classified information.

His tactics – relentless, sometimes ruthless – are reminiscent of how he ran his previous companies, former employees say.

A former programme manager at Tesla, who spoke to the BBC on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said Musk “did not care” about the human cost of his decisions.

“He’s only concerned with the objective at hand. I think he views interpersonal issues and conflicts as ancillary things that are not worth his time,” he said.

Occasionally, Musk tended toward the impulsive. The manager recalled seeing Musk fire a fellow Tesla employee on the spot over an overflowing rubbish can.

“He interpreted that as a sign that this person didn’t take as much pride in his work as he should,” he said. “That was the nuance to it… but at the end of the day someone got fired because they admitted that their trash can was overflowing.”

The approach yielded a committed workforce, the employee said. If you were on board with Musk’s mission, that single-minded focus was motivating, he said, and helped fuel regular 13 plus-hour days on the job.

“He can get more out of people than anyone else I have ever seen,” he recalled, although he added that the intensity at Tesla was par for the course in Silicon Valley.

But for those in the federal government, the employee added, “it’s gotta be a culture shock.”

Nowhere has Musk’s purported work on behalf of Trump been felt as intensely as USAID.

The government agency responsible for international development went from dispensing billions in aid to programmes around the world to an effective dead stop in just over two weeks.

Trump already curtailed USAID’s work significantly when he ordered a 90-day pause in US foreign spending, while the administration reviewed the funds in order to make sure they were in line with the president’s policy goals.

But in recent days, employees have watched with increasing alarm as Musk set his sights directly on USAID, labelling their agency a “criminal organisation” on X.

Musk’s increasingly harsh rhetoric has coincided with equally drastic changes at USAID.

On 1 February, the USAID website stopped working; its X account appeared to vanish not long after. That same weekend, two top security officials were placed on administrative leave after a confrontation with Doge representatives over access to a secure facility used for reviewing classified information, the Washington Post and other US outlets reported.

On Monday, USAID employees were told to stay at home while hundreds of employees were locked out of their email. CBS, the BBC’s US news partner, reports USAID employees are being pulled out of their respective countries worldwide by Friday.

“It’s beyond repair,” Musk said of the agency during his 50-minute conversation on X Spaces early Monday morning.

“I went over it with him in detail, and he agreed that we should shut it down,” Musk said of his conversation with Trump. “And I actually checked with him a few times [and] said ‘are you sure?’”

“The comments from Elon Musk have been particularly cutting, calling us a ‘criminal organisation’ that needs to ‘die,”” said a USAID staffer, who asked not to be named because they feared retaliation from Musk and the administration.

“Coming from the wealthiest man on the planet, that feels pretty grotesque,” said the staffer, who has since been put on administrative leave along with many other colleagues.

“I see foreign service officers that have spent their entire lives serving – a large part of it overseas – and the sacrifices they made,” they said. “To be dragged through the mud like this is disrespectful.”

The upheaval at USAID has raised concerns from Democrats and experts about whether Trump and Musk’s actions are legal.

On its face, efforts by Trump and Musk to shut down USAID are “not legal because it runs afoul of what Congress has explicitly done previously,” said Jon Rogowski, a political science professor at the University of Chicago who studies the separation of powers in the US government.

Congress has established USAID as an independent agency, and the legislative branch appropriates funding.

As head of the federal agencies, however, Trump does have broad authority to bring certain USAID functions under the state department’s control, according to George Ingram, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former USAID deputy assistant administrator.

One such move included appointing Secretary of State Marco Rubio as the acting head of USAID, when in the past the agency had functioned independently of the state department, while following its guidance on foreign policy.

And influential Republicans in Congress appear ready to work with the administration to allow some degree of change.

“I’m supportive of the Trump administration’s efforts to reform and restructure the agency in a way that better serves US national security interests,” said Senator James Risch, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Though Musk does not have the authority to shut down or restructure USAID, the agency likely could not have been dismantled as swiftly and thoroughly without his influence.

“I cannot think of any precedent where a presidential administration has essentially handed over the reins to a private citizen, to remake and take control of the executive branch as they see fit,” Mr Rogowski said.

In a statement to the BBC, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Musk “is selflessly serving President Trump’s Administration as a special government employee, and he has abided by all applicable federal laws”.

Prior to Trump’s inauguration, some of Musk’s peers expressed optimism at the prospect of an injection of start-up culture in Washington.

“I think we’ve just had a very exciting moment,” Marc Benioff, the billionaire founder and CEO of Salesforce who has been vocal in his support of Trump, told the BBC in December. “It’s a new chapter for America.”

“There’s a lot of incredible people like Elon Musk in the tech industry and in the business community. And if you can tap the power of expertise to make the best of America, that’s a great vision,” he said at the time.

But two weeks into the Trump administration, some observers say not everyone in Silicon Valley is enthusiastic.

Niki Christoff, a former Salesforce executive who now runs a communication firm in DC, told the BBC that many “people in the [tech] industry seem dumbstruck by the events of the past two weeks”.

“Most CEOs of publicly traded multinational tech companies want predictability. They want stability. They want a strong dollar,” she added. “They want predictable supply chains, and a lot of the policies and the headlines coming out of Washington are creating anxiety and uncertainty.”

Dr Philip Low, a neuroscientist and CEO of neurotechnology company Neurovigil, said Musk’s playbook could wreak havoc on governmental institutions. The two were close for nearly 15 years before their relationship soured, he said.

“His pattern is to take companies, invest in them, destabilise them, and then take them over,” said Dr Low, citing Twitter as an example.

“In that context, the White House is his biggest investment to date. And he is destabilising the American government now.”

According to Dr Low, Musk will not be satisfied being a trusted deputy, which may set him on a collision course with the president, his boss.

“Knowing Elon as I do, he doesn’t want to be number two or number three. He will want to take over,” he said.

“Whatever he decides, goes,” the former Tesla employee said, echoing Dr Low. “He never takes no for an answer.”

After the shake-up at USAID, Trump made it clear that final authority would always rest with him.

When asked if he was happy with Musk after the upending of the agency, he said yes – “for the most part”.

“Sometimes we won’t agree with it, and we’ll not go where he wants to go. But I think he’s doing a great job,” he said on Monday.

“Elon can’t do and won’t do anything without our approval, and we’ll give him the approval where appropriate. Where it’s not appropriate we won’t,” the president said.

“He reports in.”

Donald Trump’s plan for the US to “take over” and “own” Gaza, resettling its population in the process, is not going to happen. It requires the co-operation of Arab states that have rejected it.

They include Jordan and Egypt – countries that Trump wants to take in Gaza’s Palestinians – and Saudi Arabia, which might be expected to foot the bill.

Western allies of the US and Israel are also against the idea.

Some – perhaps many – Palestinians in Gaza might be tempted to get out if they had the chance.

But even if a million left, as many as 1.2m others would still be there.

Presumably the United States – the new owners of Trump’s “Riviera of the Middle East” – would have to use force to remove them.

After America’s catastrophic intervention in Iraq in 2003, that would be deeply unpopular in the US.

It would be the final end of any lingering hope that a two-state solution was possible. That is the aspiration that a conflict more than a century old could be ended with the establishment of an independent Palestine alongside Israel.

The Netanyahu government is adamantly against the idea, and over years of failed peace talks, “two states for two peoples” became an empty slogan.

But it has been a central plank of US foreign policy since the early 1990s.

The Trump plan would also violate international law.

America’s already threadbare assertions that it believes in a rules-based international order would dissolve. Russia’s territorial ambitions in Ukraine and China’s in Taiwan would be turbocharged.

Why worry about all that if it is not about to happen – at least not in the way Trump announced in Washington, watched by a grinning and clearly delighted Benjamin Netanyahu?

The answer is that Trump’s remarks, however outlandish, will have consequences.

He is the president of the United States, the most powerful man in the world – no longer a reality TV host and political hopeful trying to grab headlines.

Short-term, the disruption caused by his stunning announcement could weaken the fragile ceasefire in Gaza. One senior Arab source told me it could be its “death knell”.

The absence of a plan for Gaza’s future governance is already a fault line in the agreement.

Now Trump has provided one, and even if it does not come to pass, it presses very big buttons in the minds of Palestinians and Israelis.

It will nourish the plans and dreams of ultra-nationalist Jewish extremists who believe all the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river, and perhaps beyond, is a God-given Jewish possession.

Their leaders are part of Netanyahu’s government and keep him in power – and they’re delighted. They want the Gaza war to resume with the longer-term objective of removing the Palestinians and replacing them with Jews.

The finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said Trump had provided the answer to Gaza’s future after the 7 October attacks.

His statement said that “whoever committed the most terrible massacre on our land will find himself losing his land forever. Now we will act to finally bury, with God’s help, the dangerous idea of a Palestinian state.”

Centrist opposition leaders in Israel have been less effusive, perhaps fearing trouble ahead, but have offered a polite welcome to the plan.

Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups may feel the need to answer Trump with some kind of show of force against Israel.

For Palestinians, the conflict with Israel is driven by dispossession and the memory of what they call al-Nakba, “the catastrophe”. That was the exodus of Palestinians as Israel won its war for independence in 1948.

More than 700,000 Palestinians either fled or were forced from their homes by Israeli forces. All but a handful were never allowed back and Israel passed laws it still uses to confiscate their property.

Now the fear will be that it is happening again.

Many Palestinians already believed Israel was using the war against Hamas to destroy Gaza and expel the population.

It is part of their accusation that Israel is committing genocide – and now they might believe Donald Trump is adding his weight to Israel’s plans.

Just because Trump says something, that does not make it true or certain.

His statements are often more like opening gambits in a real estate negotiation than expressions of the settled policy of the United States.

Perhaps Trump is spreading some confusion while he works on another plan. He is said to crave the Nobel peace prize.

Middle East peacemakers, even when they do not ultimately succeed, have a strong track record of winning it.

As the world was digesting his Gaza announcement, he posted on his Truth Social platform his desire for a “verified nuclear peace agreement” with Iran.

The Iranian regime denies it wants nuclear weapons but there has been an open debate in Tehran about whether they are now so threatened that they need the ultimate deterrent.

For many years Netanyahu has wanted the US, with Israeli help, to destroy Iran’s nuclear sites. Doing a deal with Iran was never part of his plan.

During Trump’s first term, Netanyahu waged a long and successful campaign to persuade him to pull the US out of the nuclear deal Barack Obama’s administration signed with Iran.

If Trump wanted to throw the Israeli hard-right something to keep them happy as he makes overtures to the Iranians, he has succeeded.

But he has also created uncertainty and injected more instability into the world’s most turbulent region.