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US President Donald Trump announced a sweeping new set of tariffs on Wednesday, arguing that they would allow the United States to economically flourish.

These new import taxes, which Trump imposed via executive order, are expected to send economic shockwaves around the world.

But the US president believes they are necessary to address trading imbalances and to protect American jobs and manufacturing.

Here are the basic elements of the plan.

In a background call before Trump’s speech, a senior White House official told reporters that the president would impose a “baseline” tariff on all imports to the US.

That rate is set at 10% and will go into effect on 5 April.

It is the companies that bring the foreign goods into the US that have to pay the tax to the government, although this could have knock-on effects to consumers.

Some countries will only face the base rate. These include:

• United Kingdom
• Singapore
• Brazil
• Australia
• New Zealand
• Turkey
• Colombia
• Argentina
• El Salvador
• United Arab Emirates
• Saudi Arabia

White House officials also said that they would impose what they describe as specific reciprocal tariffs on roughly 60 of the “worst offenders”.

These will go into effect on 9 April.

Trump’s officials say these countries charge higher tariffs on US goods, impose “non-tariff” barriers to US trade or have otherwise acted in ways they feel undermine American economic goals.

The key trading partners subject to these customised tariff rates include:

• European Union: 20%
• China: 54% (which includes earlier tariffs)
• Vietnam: 46%
• Thailand: 36%
• Japan: 24%
• Cambodia: 49%
• South Africa: 30%
• Taiwan: 32%

The 10% baseline rate does not apply to Canada and Mexico, since they have already been targeted during Trump’s presidency.

The White House said it would deal with both countries using a framework set out in Trump’s previous executive orders, which imposed tariffs on both countries as part of the administration’s efforts to address the entry of fentanyl to the US and border issues.

Trump previously set those tariffs at 25% on all goods entering from both countries, before announcing some exemptions and delays.

In addition, the president confirmed the beginning of a new American “25% tariff on all foreign made-automobiles”.

This tariff went into effect almost immediately, at midnight local time.

Syria has strongly condemned a fresh wave of Israeli strikes on airbases and other military sites overnight as an “unjustified escalation”.

The foreign ministry said the attacks almost destroyed Hama airbase and injured dozens of people. A monitoring group reported that four defence ministry personnel were killed.

Israel’s military said it hit “capabilities that remained” at the western Hama and central T4 airbases, along with military infrastructure in Damascus. It also said Israeli forces killed gunmen during a ground operation in Deraa province, where authorities put the death toll at nine.

It came amid reports that Turkey was moving to station jets and air defences at Syrian airbases.

Israel’s defence minister warned Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa on Thursday that he would “pay a very heavy price” if he allowed “forces hostile to Israel” to enter the country.

The Israeli military has carried out hundreds of strikes across Syria to destroy military assets – including jets, tanks, missiles, air defence systems, weapons factories and research centres – since former president Bashar al-Assad’s regime was overthrown by rebel forces in December after 13 years of civil war.

The rebels were led by Sharaa’s Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – a former al-Qaeda affiliate that is still designated as a terrorist organisation by the UN, the US, the EU and the UK.

Israel has also sent troops into the UN-monitored demilitarised buffer zone in the Golan Heights, as well as several adjoining areas and the summit of Mount Hermon.

And it has demanded the complete demilitarisation of the three neighbouring southern provinces of Deraa, Quneitra and Suweida, saying it would not accept the presence of the forces of Sharaa’s government there.

The Syrian foreign ministry said Wednesday night’s air strikes targeted “five locations across the country within 30 minutes, resulting in the near-total destruction of Hama Military Airport and injuring dozens of civilians and military personnel”.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said there were at least 18 strikes which targeted planes, rail tracks and towers at Hama airbase.

Israel also hit T4 airbase, which is near Palmyra, and a branch of the Scientific Studies and Research Centre (SSRC) in the Barzeh neighbourhood of Damascus, it added.

“This unjustified escalation is a deliberate attempt to destabilise Syria and exacerbate the suffering of its people,” the Syrian foreign ministry said.

It called the strikes “a blatant violation of international law and Syrian sovereignty”, and urged the international community to “exert pressure on Israel to cease its aggression”.

Syria may have been the location for these strikes, but the real target was Turkey.

Israel has been nervously eyeing a joint defence pact Turkey is negotiating with Syria’s transitional government, and these latest air strikes come amid Turkish reports of military equipment being moved to Syrian airbases, including T4.

In a statement on Thursday morning, Israeli defence minister Israel Katz warned President Sharaa: “If you allow forces hostile to Israel to enter Syria and endanger Israeli security interests – you will pay a very heavy price.”

“Yesterday’s air force activity… is a clear message and a warning to the future – we will not allow the security of the State of Israel to be harmed.”

Katz did not elaborate on what forces he considered “hostile”, but foreign minister Gideon Saar separately said that Israel was concerned at the “negative role” that Turkey was playing in Syria.

“They are doing their utmost to have Syria as a Turkish protectorate. It’s clear that is their intention,” he told a news conference in Paris.

The SOHR also reported that Israeli ground forces shelled a national park west of the southern city of Deraa on Wednesday night, killing nine gunmen who attempted to confront them.

Prior to the shelling, dozens of Israeli military vehicles had entered the al-Jabaliya Dam area near Nawa and taken up positions there, prompting “calls from the mosques in the area [to wage] jihad against the Israeli incursion”, it added.

Deraa province’s government warned that the “massacre” of nine people had sparked widespread public anger. It has not so far identified those killed.

The Israeli military confirmed that its forces had operated in Deraa overnight, “seizing weapons and destroying terrorist infrastructure”.

“Several armed men fired at our forces in the area. The forces responded with gunfire and eliminated several armed militants from the ground and air,” it added.

The military said it would “not allow a military threat to exist in Syria”.

However, Turkey’s growing investment in Syria is seen by Israel as another level of threat.

The risk of regional confrontation is growing, and with it the risk of Syria once again becoming host to the conflicts of outside powers.

New trade tariffs unveiled by US President Donald Trump on Wednesday are expected to have a major global impact, and have been condemned by the European Union and other key US allies.

But Trump’s latest import taxes may get a different response in China, whose leader could see them as a gift.

Here, BBC reporters in five major economies look at the nuances of how the announcements are being received where they are.

By Katya Adler, Europe editor in Brussels

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen spoke on behalf of all European Union (EU) countries when she said the new tax imports would cause “dire” consequences for millions of people around the globe.

She said there was “no clear path through the complexity and chaos” that the new tariffs would unleash worldwide.

But the Commission has promised to protect EU businesses, some of which will be more hard hit than others – like Germany’s car industry, Italy’s luxury goods and France’s wine and champagne producers.

French President Emmanuel Macron has called an emergency meeting of French business leaders later on Thursday.

As the biggest single market in the world, the EU can hurt the US – targeting goods and services, including ‘big tech’ like Apple and Meta with counter-measures.

But it says its aim is not to up the ante here – it’s to persuade Trump to negotiate.

On Wednesday night, Italian PM Georgia Meloni said that while she considered the tariffs wrong, everything would be done to try and reach an agreement with the US.

By Stephen McDonell, China correspondent in Beijing

A 54% tariff hit on Chinese goods entering the US is certainly huge and will no doubt hurt Chinese companies trying to sell into that market.

Beijing’s countermeasures will also hurt US companies trying to reach the massive Chinese market.

But, in one way, these moves from Trump are also a gift to Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Xi is portraying his country as a champion of free trade, a backer of multilateral institutions, and making comparisons with the world’s other superpower which is seen as trashing both of these.

Just last week, China’s leader was sitting down with chief executives from big international corporations – including many from Europe – and the imagery was clear. The US under Donald Trump = chaos, trade destruction, national self-interest. China under Xi Jinping = stability, free trade, global cooperation.

The Chinese government has already mobilised its state media sector to attack this latest round of tariffs from the Trump Administration.

People may quibble with the Chinese Communist Party’s reading of where the world sits, but every time Trump takes measures like these, it makes Xi’s sales pitch easier to deliver.

And economic necessity may draw many countries closer to China and further from the US.

By Chris Mason, BBC political editor in London

Folks in government here had picked up a sense of the mood music – a sense that the UK was “in the good camp rather than the bad camp” as one figure put it to me – but they had no idea in advance what that would mean exactly.

But now we do know – a 10% tariff on the UK’s exports to the US.

I detect a sense of relief among ministers, but make no mistake – they are not delighted. The tariffs imposed on the UK will have significant effects, and the tariffs on the UK’s trading partners will have a profound impact on jobs, industries and global trading flows in the weeks, months and years to come.

It will be “hugely disruptive,” as one government source put it.

There is an acute awareness in particular about the impact on the car industry.

Negotiations with the US over a trade deal continue. I am told a team of four UK negotiators are in “pretty intensive” conversation with their US counterparts – talking remotely, but willing to head to Washington if signing a deal appears imminent.

By Nikhil Inamdar, India business correspondent in Delhi

Asian economies are among the hardest hit by Trump’s new tariffs. Americans will have to pay a 46% tax on imported goods from Vietnam, and 49% for goods from Cambodia.

Relatively speaking, India has fared better.

But a 26% across-the-board tariff rate is still steep, and will severely affect major “labour-intensive exports”, says Priyanka Kishore of the Asia Decoded consultancy.

“That will likely have a knock-on impact on domestic demand and headline gross domestic product(GDP)” at a time when growth is already stuttering, according to Kishore.

But India’s electronics exports may potentially benefit as higher tariffs on rivals such as Vietnam could leads to the re-routing of trade.

That is unlikely to mitigate the overall negative growth impact of Trump’s salvo though.

Unlike Canada, Mexico or the European Union, India has so far adopted a conciliatory approach to Trump and is negotiating a bilateral deal with the US. Whether this triggers a retaliation in Delhi, will be very closely watched.

The pharmaceutical industry – which accounts for India’s largest industrial exports at some $13bn (£9.9bn) annually – will be breathing a sigh of relief, however, as medicines are exempt from these “reciprocal” tariffs.

By Wycliffe Muia in Nairobi

Trump’s “reciprocal tariffs” are targeting dozens of African countries, including 30% for South Africa and 50% for Lesotho.

Many of these nations are already grappling with the effects of US foreign aid cuts, which provided health and humanitarian assistance to vulnerable countries.

South Africa – like some of the continent’s other biggest economies including Nigeria and Kenya – has long had open trade agreements with the US, and the new tariffs could significantly affect existing economic ties.

It is included in the long list of countries dubbed the “worst offenders” that now face higher US rates – payback for unfair trade policies, Trump says.

“They have got some bad things going on in South Africa. You know, we are paying them billions of dollars, and we cut the funding because a lot of bad things are happening in South Africa,” he said, before going on to name other countries.

In a statement, the South African presidency condemned the new tariffs as “punitive”, saying they could “serve as a barrier to trade and shared prosperity”.

Lesotho was slapped with the White House’s highest tariff rates in the list released by US President Donald Trump on Wednesday.

Americans bringing goods in from the small southern African country will have to pay an additional 50% import tax.

The US has a big trade deficit with Lesotho, which sells textiles – including jeans – and diamonds to America.

The 50% rate for Lesotho was part of what Trump described as “reciprocal tariffs” imposed on imports from dozens of countries, including 20 in Africa. All nations face a minimum rate of 10%.

Responding to the news, Lesotho’s Trade Minister Mokhethi Shelile said his government would send a delegation to Washington to argue against the new trade measure.

“My biggest concern was the immediate closure of factories and job losses,” the AFP news agency quotes him as telling journalists on Thursday.

One of Trump’s aims with his tariff announcement is to reduce his country’s trade deficit with the rest of the world.

And this gives a clue as to why Lesotho has been hit so hard.

According to White House figures, in 2024 while the US exported just $2.8m (£2.1m) worth of goods to Lesotho, its imports from the southern African country amounted to $237.3m.

In their calculations, US officials used the difference between the value of imports and exports in setting the tariff rates for different countries.

In recent years, Lesotho has been successful in selling textiles to the US, making the most of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa). This US legislation from 2000 allowed eligible African countries to send some goods to the US without having tariffs slapped on them.

Signed into law by President Bill Clinton, Agoa was intended to help African countries grow their economies and create jobs, but these tariffs appear to threaten its future.

Lesotho’s garment factories have made jeans for major American brands such as Levi’s and Wrangler in recent years.

Clothes make up nearly three-quarters of what Lesotho exports to the US – its second biggest trading partner after South Africa.

The value of that US trade amounts to more than 10% of its total annual national income. The extra costs that the tariffs will incur for American buyers could reduce demand and therefore have a big impact on Lesotho’s economy.

“This has been a devastating day for us,” Teboho Kobeli, founder of Lesotho clothes manufacturer Afri-Expo Textiles, told the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme.

He said he had spent the day in talks with industry colleagues and the government about what to do next.

While his business, which Mr Kobeli says employs around 2,000 people, can look for other markets, the US is so significant that “we can’t just shelve the US market… we need to do everything we can to bring [it] back”.

Colette van der Ven, a lawyer who specialises in international trade, told the BBC that the 50% figure Trump has imposed on Lesotho “makes little sense logically”.

She described it as “ironic” that the US was effectively punishing Lesotho for the success it has enjoyed under Agoa.

“It’s this sense that the US is being taken advantage of because it’s running a trade deficit. It’s really reflective of a new ideology about trade and who is benefiting and who is not”.

Other African countries hit with extra tariffs include 47% for Madagascar, 40% for Mauritius, 37% for Botswana and 30% for South Africa.

Nigerian exports will be hit too – at a rate of 14%.

Kenya, Ghana, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda, Senegal and Liberia were among those countries whose exports to the US will be subject to the baseline tariff of 10%. The US is not running a trade deficit with these countries.

Trump said the reciprocal tariffs were “for countries that treat us badly”.

During Wednesday’s announcement at the White House, the Republican president said that the US had been taken advantage of by “cheaters” and had been “pillaged” by foreigners.

“Our taxpayers have been ripped off for more than 50 years, but it is not going to happen any more,” Trump said.

South Africa is on the long list of countries dubbed the “worst offenders”, which also includes China, Japan and the European Union. These now face higher US rates – payback for unfair trade policies, Trump said.

“They have got some bad things going on in South Africa. You know, we are paying them billions of dollars, and we cut the funding because a lot of bad things are happening in South Africa,” he said, before going on to name other countries.

US-South Africa relations have become increasingly strained since the start of the Trump presidency in January.

South Africa’s biggest export to the US is platinum, which may be exempted from the import tax. But its second biggest export – cars – will be hit hard.

In a statement, the South African presidency condemned the new tariffs as “punitive”, saying they could “serve as a barrier to trade and shared prosperity”.

“We now have to look amongst ourselves and say, within the customs union in southern Africa… how we’re going to respond to these issues,” South Africa’s Trade Minister Parks Tau is quoted by AFP as saying.

“Diversifying our trade is going to be important… enhancing our work on the African continent and collaborating,” he said.

The White House released a list of roughly 100 countries and the tariff rates that the US would impose on what Trump dubbed “liberation day” for the American people.

Trump added 34% to the existing 20% duties on all Chinese imports to the US, making it the highest rate globally.

In addition, Trump imposed a 25% tariff on all foreign-made cars.

The US is expected to start charging the 10% tariffs on 5 April, with the higher duties for certain nations starting on 9 April.

African countries like South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya have long-standing trade relations with the US, and the new tariffs could significantly affect existing economic ties.

Annabel Bishop, chief economist at Investec, a South Africa-based banking and investment firm, believes the impact will be “very negative”.

But she told the BBC that the tariffs could accelerate the current shift in Africa’s trading practices.

“What we would expect to see is greater trade with the Global South, where possible, [there] is likely to be some switching in trade partners.”

The tariffs also come in as many African countries are already grappling with the effects of US foreign aid cuts, which provided health and humanitarian assistance to vulnerable nations.

Trump announced the aid freeze on his first day in office in January as part of a review into the US government spending.

Additional reporting by Basillioh Rukanga, Mayeni Jones and Cecilia Macaulay

A British couple who face being deported from Australia after one of them was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) have said it is not fair the life they built could be taken away “any minute”.

Jessica Mathers was told the potential cost to health services of treating her condition meant her 2023 application for permanent residency alongside boyfriend Rob O’Leary was rejected.

The 30-year-old, a project manager and DJ from Macclesfield who has lived in Sydney since 2017, said the couple had been “living in a state of uncertainty” for years as they waited for an outcome of an appeal against the decision.

The Australian Department of Home Affairs said it cannot comment on individual cases.

Ms Mathers and Mr O’Leary, 31, from East London, met while backpacking in the country in 2017 and have lived there ever since.

He started a business in the carpentry and construction trade three years ago, and said the couple had “made the most of our lives here”.

But Ms Mathers’s diagnosis of the relapsing-remitting variant of MS in 2020 has led to a visa battle with authorities that could see the pair thrown out of the country.

Symptoms are typically mild for this form of MS, according to the NHS, but about half of cases can develop into a more progressive form of the disease.

She has received treatment in Australia under a reciprocal health agreement with the UK and said her condition had been “well managed” so far.

But the couple’s requests for permanent residency were rejected in 2023 due to the costs associated with her medical care.

Non-citizens entering Australia must meet certain health requirements, including not having “unduly increasing costs” for the country’s publicly-funded healthcare service Medicare.

The couple lodged an appeal with the Administrative Appeals Tribunal after the visa rejection in 2023, and have been waiting for the past two years for an outcome.

Mr O’Leary said they had offered to pay the medical costs themselves or take out private insurance, “but the law is black and white, and the refusal is based on that, it’s really hard for us”.

They have started an online petition to call for Australia’s Minister for Home Affairs to review their case and look into immigration policies that “unfairly target individuals with well-managed health conditions”.

Mr O’Leary said the couple were “not asking for special treatment” but a chance to continue “working hard to contribute to this country in meaningful ways”.

He said: “We’ve always paid tax, we’ve always worked, Jess has done heaps of charity work.”

Ms Mathers said the couple had been “stuck not knowing what to do” as they waited for the outcome of their appeal, which had made it difficult for her to find anything other than temporary work.

She said: “It’s held up our whole life, it’s really upsetting.

“We know that we could get a refusal from the tribunal and then get given 28 days to leave the country, at any minute.

“We’ve got so much opportunity in Australia, and to walk away from it would be so sad.”

Twenty-three more women have come forward to the police with allegations against serial rapist Zhenhao Zou – a Chinese PhD student found guilty in London last month of drugging and raping 10 women across two continents.

Police said at the conclusion of his trial they had video evidence, filmed by Zou himself, of potentially 50 more victims – and they have been trying to trace these women. Detectives now say, however, that they believe Zou’s “offending group is far greater”.

Warning: This story contains descriptions of sexual violence

Two women who have contacted police in the past month with new allegations have also spoken to the BBC World Service. One said Zou raped her in his hometown in China, after spiking her drink which left her conscious but unable to speak or move. The other said Zou drugged her too – in London – and that she had woken up to find him filming himself sexually assaulting her.

We have also spoken to two women whose testimony helped convict Zou – who will be sentenced in June. “If I had spoken up earlier, maybe there wouldn’t have been so many victims after me,” one of them told us.

She and the other women say they struggle with the guilt of now knowing that Zou has assaulted so many women.

One of the women making new allegations, who we are calling Alice, told the BBC that Zou had assaulted her in London in 2021, but that she had only felt able to go to police after his trial last month. “I didn’t know that was something you could report,” the Chinese national told us.

She says she first met Zou while out clubbing in London with other Chinese-student friends. The group had all added one another on WeChat, a popular social messaging app.

Not long afterwards, a mutual friend invited Alice to have drinks at Zou’s upmarket student accommodation in Bloomsbury.

There were two bottles of spirits on the table, she says, both already opened and half-empty. She began to share drinks from one of the bottles with her friend – but says Zou only drank from the other one.

Alice says her friend normally tolerated alcohol well, but this time became drunk very quickly and appeared to fall asleep on the floor. The alcohol kicked in suddenly for Alice too, she says.

“Normally when you drink too much, you feel good for a while. But that night I just felt extremely dizzy and sleepy right away.”

Zou persuaded her it wouldn’t be safe to take a taxi home in the state she was in, she told us, and asked her to take a nap in his bedroom. She says she agreed, knowing her friend was also still in the apartment.

The next thing she says she remembers is waking up to Zou removing her trousers.

“I stopped him right away,” she says – explaining how she then noticed a torchlight from a mobile phone above her head, and realised, to her horror, that he was filming her.

Alice describes trying to leave his bedroom but being aggressively “yanked back from the doorway”. Zou used such strong force to try to keep her in the bedroom, she says, that she “had to cling on to the door frame with both hands”.

It was only when she threatened to scream for help, that he let go – she told us – with Zou then telling her not to make “a big deal” of things, or to go to the police.

Zou contacted Alice the next day on WeChat, she says, but he made no mention of the previous night. He asked her to dinner but she says she ignored him and they were never in touch again.

Alice confided in a few close friends, but took things no further.

“I thought that, first, you needed evidence. And second, something substantial had to have happened before you could call the police.”

Alice says the next time she saw Zou’s face was nearly four years later in the media – after he was charged by police.

It is challenging for foreign nationals to report sexual crimes in the UK, says Sarah Yeh, a trustee at Southeast and East Asian Women’s Association in London.

“It would be daunting for anyone [from] overseas to be traumatised by rape and then have to navigate the British legal system and the NHS, or even access the services provided for victims,” she told us.

They might not understand their rights or what resources are available to them – she says – as well as being concerned about repercussions, negative impacts on their studies, shame brought on themselves and their families, and potential legal challenges.

About a year after Alice says she was assaulted, she discovered that one of her male friends in London also knew Zou, but had cut all contact because he found out Zou had been spiking women’s drinks.

The friend – who the BBC is calling Jie – told us he “wasn’t surprised at all” when he heard Zou had been convicted.

“A lot of friends at the time probably knew [what Zou was doing]. I reckon some of our female friends knew too.”

Jie told us he accidentally drank from someone else’s glass at a party in 2022, and then became “unwell” and “very sleepy”. Zou then told him he had spiked the drink – says Jie – and had meant for a woman at the party to drink it.

Jie says Zou later showed him a small bag of drugs and asked if he wanted to “collaborate with him”. He says he took from this that Zou wanted his help finding girls whose drinks he could spike. Jie says he refused.

The BBC asked Jie why he had initially continued to see Zou and why he didn’t go to the police. Jie told us they both had lots of mutual friends so it was difficult not to socialise together. He says he did warn his friends about Zou, telling them not to hang out with him “because he was drugging people”.

Jie doesn’t like thinking about those memories, he says, and that is why he hasn’t gone to the police – adding that he had believed the women’s testimonies were enough to convict Zou.

Eventually, Jie says, he did cut all ties with him.

Another young woman who has been in touch with police in London and China since Zou’s trial is “Rachel”. She says she was drugged and raped by him in 2022 in his hometown of Dongguan – in Guangdong province.

Rachel told the BBC she had gone on a date with Zou, having met him online. She thought they were going to a bar, she says, but ended up at his home – a large villa which Zou had described as one of his family’s many properties.

With his back turned to her, she says Zou mixed her a green-coloured cocktail. They then started a drinking game, she says, and she experienced a “wave of dizziness”. Rachel has told UK police that Zou took her up to a bedroom, where she became unable to speak or move her body, and then raped her.

She thought about calling the police the next day, but decided against it. She feared it would be very difficult to prove non-consent. “It’s hard for me to prove the fact that I was willing to go to his place for drinks and that was not a signal that I was consenting to sex,” she told us.

She added that Dongguan is a small place and there was always a risk that people she knew – her parents, relatives and colleagues – would find out and think she was “indiscreet”.

• Details of help and support with sexual violence are available at BBC Action Line

We have seen Rachel’s statement to UK police. She wants her story to be heard now, she says, to encourage more victims to come forward – and because she would like to see Zou prosecuted in China as well as the UK.

Cdr Kevin Southworth – who leads public protection at the Metropolitan Police – told the BBC officers were still working their way through the 23 potential new cases and that some of the people were “definitely not identical” to those featured in Zou’s seized secret footage or from the charge cases so far.

“It speaks to the fact that his offending group is actually far greater than we had realised,” he says.

A second trial for the convicted rapist has not been ruled out and there is “certainly a case” to discuss with the Crown Prosecution Service, given the numbers of women coming forward, he adds.

The BBC has also spoken to the only two victims who police were able to identify ahead of Zou’s trial – both are Chinese nationals who had been studying in London. The women got to know each other on social media after one of them, who we are calling Beth, posted about her experience.

Beth was raped by Zou in 2023 and had tried to report the crime to the Metropolitan Police soon afterwards. But then she decided not to pursue things because she felt unsure of UK law and had been left feeling discouraged after her initial interaction with the police, which included a poor translation of her 999 call.

“Back then I didn’t know [Zou’s name]. I didn’t know his address, I could only give general information,” she says.

In frustration, Beth posted a warning on social media about what had happened to her. Another Chinese student, “Clara”, says she “immediately” knew this was the same man who had drugged and raped her after a night out in London’s Chinatown, two years before.

Every detail in Beth’s post pointed to the same man, says Clara: “He has a Guangdong accent, he looks honest and he wears a Rolex submariner watch.”

The women began to speak online and Beth encouraged Clara to report what had happened to her to the police.

Months later, police contacted Beth to say they were re-investigating the case. Clara had come forward.

On Zou’s seized devices, police had also found a video featuring Beth.

The Met has since expressed regret over how it initially handled her allegations.

“We want to avoid situations where victims feel like they’re maybe not being taken seriously, or heaven forbid, being disbelieved,” says Cdr Southworth. Additional training is now being rolled out to all front line officers, he says.

Clara describes a positive experience with British police. She says she didn’t want to fly to London for the trial, in case her parents found out, so the Met sent two officers to China to support her as she gave evidence by video instead.

The officers were assisted by the Chinese authorities, who have been working collaboratively with the Met and are “very supportive”, says Cdr Southworth.

“I hope that can give some encouragement to victim-survivors, wherever they are in the world, that you are safe to come forward.”

In addition to his time in London, Zou also studied in Belfast between 2017 and 2019 – police do not know if his campaign of drug rape had already begun while he was there.

Beth – who gave her evidence in court in London – says it was only afterwards that she realised that she and Clara were the only two women to have helped convict Zou.

“I thought for a long time that I wasn’t an important part of the case against Zou,” she says.

Now she is glad she testified and is encouraging other women to come forward.

If you have information about this story that you would like to share with us please get in touch.

You can contact BBC journalist wanqing.zhang@bbc.co.uk – please include contact details if you are willing to speak to her.

Pronatalists, a controversial fringe group almost exclusively from the political right, claim that some of the most powerful people in the US government are sympathetic to their cause. But how much influence do they really have?

Listen to Stephanie read this article

Simone Collins is sitting in her 18th century cottage in Pennsylvania, dressed in a black pilgrim pinafore with a wide collar, bouncing one of her four children on her lap. It is 8.30am and she looks a little tired – she runs several businesses, a foundation and is currently pregnant with her fifth child, though she and her husband Malcolm plan to have more.

“At least seven,” she declares, “and as many as I can physically carry – 12 would be even more brilliant.”

The US couple, aged 37 and 38, ardently believe that the world needs to have more babies or risk civilisational collapse. They have become the poster children for pronatalism, a movement that believes falling birth rates are a big problem for society. And that big families are the answer.

For the last five years, they have spread the word about their goal by opening up their home for interviews and photoshoots. They claim to have used special technology, during the IVF process, to screen their embryos for traits such as intelligence.

“The studies let us know what our genetic predilection for IQ is,” they told an undercover reporter in 2023. “We will never choose a child who is less privileged in IQ than either of us.”

Speaking today, however, Malcolm admits, “The easiest way to [spread the word about pronatalism] was to turn ourselves into a meme… If we take a reasonable approach to things and say things are nuanced, nobody engages. And then we go and say something outrageous and offensive and everyone’s into it.”

But since Donald Trump was sworn in as US President for the second time earlier this year, they have taken their evangelising to a new level. The Collinses now see certain people in the White House as potential allies – and they fully intend to capitalise on that.

Elon Musk, who is said to have fathered 14 children, has called fertility decline “the biggest danger civilisation faces, by far”. He has donated $10m (£7.75m) to the Population Wellbeing Initiative in Texas, which conducts research into fertility, parenting, and the future of population growth.

The US Vice President JD Vance has also spoken openly about his views on procreation. At an anti-abortion rally in January he declared: “I want more babies in the United States of America.”

There are early indications that the Trump administration is prioritising family too. On 18 February, Trump signed an executive order to improve access for IVF that recognised “the importance of family formation and that our nation’s public policy must make it easier for loving and longing mothers and fathers to have children”.

Pronatalists are buoyed by this and many hope it is a sign of things to come.

The facts of fertility decline are clear. The US is at a record low of 1.62 children per woman, and by the end of the century the UN projects a majority of countries will have a shrinking population. That will have a profound effect on society and our economies. Some people believe we can adapt over time to this new reality, but pronatalists are less sanguine.

But there is a political element to the movement too. Pronatalists are almost exclusively from the political right. Malcolm and Simone Collins, for example, describe themselves as former liberals who became disillusioned with progressive, “woke” politics.

They see themselves as pragmatic and profoundly anti-bureaucratic.

“We are a coalition of people who are incredibly different in our philosophies, our theological beliefs, our family structures,” says Malcolm. “But the one thing we agree on is that our core enemy is the urban monoculture; the leftist unifying culture.”

So, could this fringe group really gain the ear of some of the most powerful people in the US government? And if so, just how much soft power could they have to influence policy not only around population decline but about wider issues too?

Last weekend, a group of roughly 200 pronatalists congregated in Texas for the second Natal Conference, an annual weekend-long event that cost around $1,000 (£775) to attend.

The conference brings together two strands in pronatalism that come from very different branches of the American right: both conservative Christians and members of the so-called ‘tech right,’ an ascendant wing that came out of the libertarian, start-up culture of Silicon Valley.

Some are connected to the current US government. Michael Anton was appointed by Trump as the Director of Policy Planning at the State Department. He spoke at last year’s conference.

Other speakers at this year’s conference included Carl Benjamin, who has links to far-right activist Tommy Robinson, and Charles Cornish-Dale, an influencer who goes by the name Raw Egg Nationalist.

“It’s like an unholy alliance,” says Catherine Pakaluk, an economist, mother of eight and stepmother of six. She too spoke at the conference but is reluctant to call herself a pronatalist. “It’s a complicated movement and includes people with very different positions,” she says.

One thing they have in common, however, is that they all want their message to be heard at the highest levels of government.

Some believe they already are being heard. “[If you ask me] do we have pronatalists in the White House right now who are pushing policy,” says Malcolm, “my response to this would be, ‘I mean, duh, like Elon and JD Vance’.”

In President Trump’s executive orders to date, there has been little apart from the order on IVF that could be seen as directly pro-family. But pronatalist thinking may be starting to influence policy that is less explicitly about fertility.

In January, the US transportation secretary Sean Duffy circulated a memo instructing his department to “give preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average” when awarding grants.

Roger Severino, Vice-President of Domestic Policy at right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation, sees the influence of JD Vance in that policy. “Vance comes at it from a long history of pro-family thinking and policymaking,” he says.

Vance has often spoken about the need to fix a “broken culture” that is tearing the US family apart, by undermining men.

In a recent interview, he said: “We actually think God made male and female for a purpose and we want you guys to thrive as young men and young women and we’re going to help with our public policy to make it possible to do that.”

This idea has been echoed in pronatalist circles.

“Vance is a vocal pronatalist,” says Rachel Cohen, policy correspondent at Vox. “Trump himself campaigned on implementing a new “baby boom” and last week he declared himself the ‘fertilisation president’.”

Malcolm says he has already made attempts to influence the White House. He claims to have engaged in “backroom channelling of influential people, making sure that pronatalism became normal to talk about within the centres of power, and that ended up dripping its way up to administration and core tech culture”.

They are in discussions on pronatalist policy with the Heritage Foundation. Then there is a rather more direct approach they claim to have taken. “We have submitted draft executive orders to the Trump administration,” says Simone.

Their proposals include suggestions for how to remove layers of regulation from childcare providers and expanding car seat choice so cars can fit more children.

The couple aren’t sure if those are going to translate into anything concrete just yet – but they believe they have a receptive audience.

Their connection to power is thanks to the so-called tech right, a reactionary movement against liberalism led by some of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley. Those in the tech right include Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel – who sponsored Vance’s Senate race and has invested in fertility technology – and venture capitalists David Sacks and Marc Andreessen.

Simone Collins was formerly the managing director of an exclusive members’ club run by Mr Thiel, and the couple say they ran two other invite-only networking groups for business elites. Their Pronatalist Foundation, founded in 2021, received just under $500,000 (£387,000) through a fund of the Skype co-founder, Estonian billionaire Jann Tallinn.

“The tech right bring a lot of energy to the discussion,” says Roger Severino, Vice-President of Domestic Policy at the Heritage Foundation. “We’ve been discussing how we could blend these various strains on the right. We’re trying to cohere the movement.”

There are, however, cracks in the alliance which add to the challenge of trying to make the movement “coherent”.

Many on the traditional religious right have misgivings about the use of IVF and disagree with embryo screening, while some also oppose gay marriage and parenthood.

“It’s just an odd alliance of people who seem to agree on this one point: that the birth rate is too low. But there are wildly different prescriptions and ideas about what might be done to fix it,” says Ms Pakaluk.

“There’s a renewed interest in pronatalism and family promotion among American conservatives,” says Timothy Carney, author of Family Unfriendly, How our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder than it Needs to Be. But he adds: “There will definitely be tensions.”

One of those most divisive issues in pronatalism are the mention of certain aspects related to genetics among some of its tech right proponents. It’s something that has prompted concern, in particular around the ethics of this, on all sides of the political spectrum.

Patrick T Brown, a fellow at the right-leaning American Ethics and Public Policy Centre working on pro-family policy, suggests that the executive order to improve access to IVF could show the influence of the tech-right on policy. But he has his concerns about that influence, particularly around embryo screening. “Turning children into consumer products is something that I really worry about,” he says. “That leads to a troublesome place.”

Some of those attending the recent conference describe themselves as “race realists”, and one has published offensive views alleging a link between intelligence and race that, according to many scientists, are plain wrong.

Geneticist Adam Rutherford describes the data used as “fraudulent and racist, drawn from hopeless sample sizes that wouldn’t constitute valid scientific evidence to anyone vaguely interested in truth.

“These assertions are recapitulations of historical ideas of scientific racism.”

The associations with extreme views in the movement is one of the reasons some people don’t like to call themselves pronatalists. Catherine Pakaluk is one of them. “I think there probably are some people who are just pure eugenicists or white supremacists,” she says.

“I find it disgusting and reprehensible and I have no interest in ever being aligned with people like that.”

The question that remains is, where does all of this leave pronatalists – and just how much power do they wield?

According to some onlookers, their impact is already being felt. “There’s definitely strong influence from pronatalists in the Trump White House,” claims Ms Cohen. “I think an outstanding question is how this will all overlap with efforts to restrict birth control and contraception, and how this will affect debates around spending like on childcare funding.”

Mr Carney is more circumspect: “Vance is very pro-family and very pronatalist, and he wants the government to promote families and to help drive up the birth rate – but JD Vance is not the president. I don’t think Donald Trump has firm conviction on this.”

He also believes there might be resistance to some pro-family policies, pointing out that at least some of the Republicans in control of Congress don’t like the idea of family support. “They think that it’s welfare to the undeserving.”

The attention gleaned by the Collinses, and by the recent conference, is undoubtable. But one expert suggests they are doing little more than stirring up controversy.

“If you go to Capitol Hill, and talk to members of Congress or governors in states across America, they don’t necessarily even recognise the problem,” argues Mr Brown.

As he puts it, “the incentives of the internet” aren’t always the incentives of a successful mass movement. “And what gets attention is provocation and being edgy and crossing the line. That gets clicks, that gets followers.

“[But] that to me is not how you end up changing the political dynamics.”

Top picture credit: Getty Images

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Wisconsin voters have elected a Democratic-backed judge to serve on the state supreme court, according to projections, following the most expensive judicial election in US history.

Susan Crawford is on course to beat conservative rival Brad Schimel, which would keep intact the 4-3 liberal control of the Midwestern state’s highest court.

President Donald Trump’s billionaire adviser Elon Musk was a prominent fundraiser in the campaign, and was the subject of Democratic attack ads. More than $100m (£77m) was spent by the candidates and their allies, including $20m by Musk.

The result is expected to have far-reaching implications, potentially even affecting the balance of power in the US Congress.

That is because the state’s supreme court is expected to play a key role in cases related to congressional redistricting ahead of midterm elections in 2026 and the next presidential election, in 2028.

With the majority of ballots tallied, Crawford had won about 54% of the vote, and Schimel had around 45%, according to the BBC’s US partner CBS News.

Addressing the fundraising by Musk, Crawford told supporters in her victory speech: “Wisconsin stood up and said loudly that justice does not have a price. Our courts are not for sale.”

The Dane county judge was formerly a private lawyer for Planned Parenthood and she backed abortion rights during her campaign.

After giving his personal backing to Schimel, Tuesday’s result was a setback for Trump in a crucial swing state that he won by less than a percentage point during last November’s presidential election.

However, he took consolation from fellow Republicans managing to hold on to two congressional seats in Florida elections on Tuesday.

The contest was seen as a test of Musk’s powerbroking status. The SpaceX and Tesla boss travelled to the state to give out millions of dollars to voters who pledged to support conservative causes.

In celebrating Crawford’s win, Democrats framed her victory as Musk’s defeat.

“Wisconsin cannot be bought. Our democracy is not for sale. And when we fight, we win,” Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote in a post on social media.

Musk addressed the defeat of his candidate in a post on his social media site X, writing: “I expected to lose, but there is value to losing a piece for a positional gain.”

In the city of Milwaukee, which leans Democratic, officials reported a shortage of ballots on Tuesday “due to unprecedented and historic voter turnout”, the city’s election commission said in a statement.

Wisconsin separately voted on Tuesday to enshrine into the state constitution a law requiring voters to show ID to cast their ballots.

Voters were already required to show ID, but adding it to the state constitution made it harder to change in the future. Crawford had opposed the voter ID constitutional amendment.

At an NBA game in Milwaukee on Tuesday, several voters spoke to the BBC about their concerns.

Milwaukee Bucks fan Mike McClain said he was motivated by a dislike for Musk, who he referred to as “the real president”.

“I don’t know how a billionaire, almost a trillionaire, can decide what’s going on,” he said. “You can’t even relate with common people.”

Crawford also benefited from large donations by billionaire donors, including financier George Soros, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. But Musk outspent them all.

A Schimel supporter who did want to give his name said he was supporting the conservative out of loyalty to Trump.

“We got to take it back home here and reinforce everything that Donald Trump has done,” he said.

Much of the liberal campaign focused on the role played by Musk in the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), a cost-cutting taskforce that has moved to fire thousands of government workers and slash the federal payroll.

During a rally on Sunday, Musk distributed two $1m cheques to voters at a rally who signed a petition of his against “activist judges”.

Others who signed it received $100 from Musk.

On Tuesday, Musk’s political action committee added that it would pay $50 to anyone who snapped a picture of a Wisconsin resident standing outside a polling site and holding a photo of Schimel.

Musk donated more than a quarter of a billion dollars to help elect Trump to the White House. He held similar $1m giveaways to boost the Republican president’s campaign last year.

Wisconsin’s supreme court is expected to play a key role in determining the shape of congressional districts if Democrats seek to challenge current district maps as they are widely expected to do.

Republicans currently hold six of the state’s eight seats in the US House of Representatives.

At his rally on Sunday, Musk alluded to the looming fight over congressional districts, saying the judicial race was ultimately about control of the US House of Representatives, where Republicans currently hold a narrow majority.

That slender margin was shored up on Tuesday in special congressional elections in Trump’s political heartland of Florida.

Republican candidates Jimmy Patronis and Randy Fine held on to those ruby-red seats in races that were seen as a barometer of the political landscape ahead of next year’s Midterm elections.