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BBC Listen to this article The US has “dropped the ball” on chip manufacturing over the years, allowing China and other Asian hubs to steam ahead. So said Gina Raimondo, who at the time was the US Commerce Secretary, in an interview with me back in 2021. Four years on, chips remain a battleground in…

Hamas says it has “lost contact” with the group of fighters holding an Israeli-American hostage captive in Gaza following an Israeli strike on their location. The 21-year-old soldier, Edan Alexander, has appeared in videos released by the group in recent days. Israel had asked for him to be released on day one of a new…

Peru’s former president, Ollanta Humala, has been found guilty of money laundering and sentenced to 15 years in prison. A court in the capital, Lima, said that Humala had accepted illegal funds from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht to bankroll his election campaigns in 2006 and 2011. His wife, Nadine Heredia, who co-founded the Nationalist…

Former President Barack Obama is applauding Harvard University’s decision to refuse the White House’s demands that it change its policies or lose federal money, in his first social media post to criticise the Trump administration since at least Inauguration Day. President Donald Trump is freezing more than $2bn (£1.5bn) in federal funds for Harvard because…

A hairdresser from St Petersburg has been given a jail term of five years and two months on a charge of spreading fake news about the Russian army. Anna Alexandrova denied posting eight anti-war messages on social media, insisting the case was motivated by a squabble over land with a neighbour. Her neighbour told the…

Laura Bicker China correspondent The BBC’s Laura Bicker: ”A number of businesses in limbo” in China, after US tariffs on imports “Trump is a crazy man,” says Lionel Xu, who is surrounded by his company’s mosquito repellent kits – many were once best sellers in Walmart stores in the United States. Now those products are…

Companies have been sharing their concerns about the impact of US tariffs at the Canton Fair in Guangzhou, the world’s longest running import-export fair. “We’ve been hearing from several Chinese companies who’ve told us that their products are stuck in ports here, waiting to go to the United States. The tariffs are simply too high…

Ghana has banned all foreigners from trading in its local gold market as part of efforts to boost national revenue and streamline the country’s mining sector. It follows the enactment of a new law earlier this month that grants exclusive authority of gold mining to a new state body, the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod). “All…

The Sudanese city of el-Fasher has been largely cut off from the outside world for a year as a result of the country’s civil war, which began two years ago. It is the Sudanese army’s last stronghold in Darfur against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Mostafa, Hafiza and Manahel are residents of the city…

Yolande Knell Middle East correspondent Rushdi Abualouf Gaza correspondent EPA Armed members of Hamas’s military wing took part in hostage handover ceremonies during the recent ceasefire Hamas is said to have rejected an Israeli proposal for a six-week ceasefire in Gaza which called for the armed group to give up its weapons. A senior Palestinian…