feeds

From the end of April, the 500-year-old Royal Mail will be controlled by a Czech billionaire who co-owns a football club and is a major investor in a British supermarket – so, why would he want this ailing institution?

“A pair of scissors, one empty teapot and some hot water, please.” The slightly baffled staff at Claridge’s scrambled to comply with Daniel Kretinsky’s breakfast order as he sanitised and moisturised his hands.

The upscale hotel has been serving tea to the global elite for decades but Mr Kretinsky brought along his own packet of Chinese green tea, which he snipped open (hence the scissors) and poured into the empty pot.

He was tall, perfectly groomed, steely-eyed but unfalteringly polite and thoughtful. If you told anyone in the dining room he was a billionaire, they would have no problem believing it.

Known as the Czech Sphinx for his enigmatic style, Mr Kretinsky, who is 49, is worth £6bn according to the Sunday Times Rich List. He lives in plush mansions in Paris and London, was originally a lawyer and made his fortune in European energy markets.

Our meeting was at Claridge’s in June 2024 – I was trying to convince him to give me an interview about his audacious attempt to buy a British institution that was once seen as a national treasure: Royal Mail.

His profile as a buyer was one that unions and ministers typically would be wary of because of his historic connections with Russia – his companies own a gas pipeline that has transported Russian gas to Europe.

But six months on, his bid to buy Royal Mail’s parent company was cleared by the UK government after he agreed “legally binding” undertakings.

The government was awarded a so-called “golden share”, requiring it to be notified of any major changes to Royal Mail’s ownership, headquarters location and tax residency. The deal was also blessed by unions.

Earlier this month, the owner of Royal Mail said that the takeover could be completed by the end of April as the deal cleared the final regulatory hurdles standing in the way.

But step back and Royal Mail seems a strange target for a globally mobile oil and gas billionaire investor to set his sights on. It begs the question why would anyone, let alone a successful international entrepreneur, want to buy this faded relic?

Royal Mail was founded by Henry VIII more than 500 years ago and still carries the royal cipher on its vans. It is part of the fabric of British life and many people still have a fond relationship with their ‘postie’, who walks down their path bringing their letters and parcels to their door.

But in recent years Royal Mail’s crown has slipped. It is losing money and market share, has been fined for missing delivery targets and has made an enemy of its own workforce through a series of bitter strikes.

Royal Mail’s letter business is in steep decline too. It has gone from a peak of 20 billion letters sent in 2004 to under seven billion sent last year.

In December 2024, it was fined £10.5m by the regulator Ofcom for failing to meet delivery targets for first and second class mail.

While the boom in e-commerce has seen the volume of parcels rise, Royal Mail’s share of that more profitable business has been falling as new competitors like DPD, DHL, Amazon and Evri have eaten into its market share.

Royal Mail was split off from the Post Office in 2012 and privatised in 2013 at a value of £3.3bn. Its shares immediately rocketed by 38% on the first day of trading, leading to criticism – from the National Audit Office, among others – that it had been sold on the cheap.

At its peak in Covid-era May 2021, the company was worth more than £6bn but had slumped to just over £2bn when Mr Kretinsky launched his takeover bid last April.

He sealed the deal at £3.6bn – 63% higher than before he signalled his intent, but barely more than it was worth at privatisation over a decade ago.

“Royal Mail is a business that has historically found it difficult to grow revenues by more than costs,” says Alex Paterson, an analyst at Peel Hunt stockbrokers. “It has seen its parcels market share eroded by more dynamic competition that has been able to invest more in technology, and it has struggled with industrial relations to keep staff working towards a common goal.

“This is not a challenge to underestimate nor one that can be overcome quickly, but that requires considerable long-term investment in infrastructure, technology and staff.”

Part of the challenge, and one that puts Royal Mail at a disadvantage compared with its rivals, is that unlike them, Royal Mail has to meet a string of legal and regulatory obligations, says Hazel King, the editor of Parcel and Post Technology International.

Under what is called the universal service obligation (USO), Royal Mail is required by law to deliver letters six days a week and parcels five days a week to every address in the UK. So it cannot pick and choose which business it wants to do.

“Royal Mail must meet their universal service obligation while trying to compete with private firms who often cherry-pick the most profitable business,” says Ms King.

Mr Kretinsky says he has a plan. His success in the energy sector allowed him to buy a 27.5% stake in Royal Mail’s parent company, International Distribution Services (IDS). And his company – EP Group – intends to build a pan-European conglomerate built on three pillars: energy, retail and logistics.

He sees IDS as the cornerstone of the logistics pillar, with a plan to go toe-to-toe with the likes of Deutsche Post DHL, DPD and Amazon.

The USO has been under review by Ofcom, with Royal Mail hoping that the regulator will reduce the requirement to deliver second-class letters from six days a week to every other weekday. That single move could save Royal Mail £300m a year – putting it back on a break-even footing.

Mr Kretinsky told me during our interview that he would honour the USO “as long as I am alive”, but he is unsurprisingly very much in favour of changing its terms. He said he hopes that “rational minds prevail” when reforming a service that is unsustainable in its current form.

So far, the noises from Ofcom seem to be supportive. The regulator’s chief executive Dame Melanie Dawes told the BBC there were “real questions about what the service needs to be going into the future”.

Given letter numbers are falling, “we have to think about what is economical”, she said, adding Ofcom would be publishing plans for the regulation of Royal Mail “to make sure it is sustainable”.

While Royal Mail generally welcomed the proposed changes to the Universal Service Obligation, Royal Mail pushed back against proposed new delivery time and business customer requirements.

Royal Mail said last week that the level at which Ofcom is proposing to set the new delivery targets – 99.5% of First Class letters delivered within three days, and the same percentage of Second Class letters within five – is “over specified and will add significant cost to the delivery of the Universal Service”.

It also expressed concerns that proposals to add a new category of regulation to ensure timely delivery for business users like direct mail companies “goes against the wider government drive to reduce unnecessary regulation”.

But there are other factors that may have driven the sale. Some analysts have speculated that there is another jewel in the crown of IDS – and that Mr Kretinsky may really be after a different part of the business.

Along with Royal Mail, IDS also owns a European parcels business called GLS which it acquired in 1999 – long before Royal Mail was split off from the Post Office and privatised.

Last year GLS made a profit of £320m, compared to Royal Mail, which lost £348m as letter volumes continued to plunge and new competitors ate into its market share of the more profitable parcels business.

“GLS has been a profitable growth business, which has seen investment whereas Royal Mail has been a perpetual underperformer, as the board of parent company IDS has invested where it thinks it will see the best returns,” says Mr Paterson.

Mr Kretinsky rejects suggestions from some quarters that he wants to break up the group and has committed to keeping it together for at least five years. Even beyond that, he says the plan is to grow the company rather than shrink it, so a disposal of GLS would be “nonsensical”.

In fact, Mr Kretinsky says he hopes to bring the European parcel know-how at GLS to bear on Royal Mail’s operations.

What the unions are hoping, and Kretinsky is promising, is that Royal Mail will see greater investment and over time begin to look a bit more like GLS and its European counterparts such as Deutche Post DHL.

Given all the challenges Royal Mail faces, there’s an obvious question – why would a billionaire want to chance his arm on turning round something that others couldn’t, while up against powerful competitors?

Well, if you believe as Kretinsky does – and he is surely right – that getting parcels to people is a profitable and growing industry, then buying Royal Mail and GLS gives you a way to become a big European player in logistics quickly.

Add to that a powerful and historic brand, a database with every single UK address and a frontline workforce that most of its customers are fond of and pleased to see when they walk down the path – then, despite the challenges, it begins to make sense.

Mr Kretinsky is convinced future growth lies in out-of-home (OOH) delivery. The parcel lockers found in supermarket car parks and elsewhere, operated by the likes of Amazon, Evri and UPS, have grown quickly across Europe.

Earlier this month it was reported that Sainsbury’s would be the first supermarket to partner with Royal Mail and install parcel lockers at supermarkets. Some are already operating at several stores including ones in Clapham, Kidderminster and Chislehurst.

Royal Mail has also trialled a new postbox that can take small parcels. Customers procure a barcode from an app, then at the postbox they scan the barcode and drop the parcel into a drawer – this is all powered by solar panels on the box.

Emma Gilthorpe, Royal Mail chief executive, called it an “historic change” to give postboxes “a new lease of life”.

All of this boils down to the same thing: convenience. It means customers don’t have to wait at home for a delivery – the sender or parcel business emails or texts a code to unlock the locker. For the business it’s more efficient, allowing couriers to deliver lots of parcels to one place – meaning fewer miles on the road and less time.

“If they can grow the parcels business and claw back market share, there is every chance that they can add new jobs that could offset the reduction in jobs in the declining letters business,” says Mr Paterson.

“There is a significant long-term opportunity to run Royal Mail more successfully with regulatory changes to the USO and greater investment in technology and out-of-home deliveries.”

But Royal Mail still has a lot of catching up to do with its competitors. It currently has 1,500 lockers in the UK and aims to grow this figure to at least 20,000 over time. By contrast, Amazon already has 5,000 lockers across the UK and InPost has 7,500 across the UK.

That Mr Kretinsky has pulled off the takeover is no easy feat. Royal Mail is, after all, considered vital national infrastructure and as such the deal required review under national security laws.

Then there is the fact that his companies own a gas pipeline that has transported Russian gas to Europe – paid for and approved by EU member states. The small amount that was transported was reduced to zero at the end of 2024 when Ukraine refused to renew permission for any gas to flow across its borders.

Speaking in front of MPs in November, UK Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds referred to Mr Kretinsky as a “legitimate business figure” whose alleged links to Russia had already been reviewed and dismissed when he became the biggest shareholder in the company two years ago.

Getting the unions on board seemed even more of a challenge and the Communication Workers Union was wary of Mr Kretinsky. “The CWU believes Royal Mail should be in public hands,” Dave Ward, the CWU’s general secretary, told the BBC in June. “We know there are legitimate concerns about Royal Mail Group being owned by a foreign private equity investor.”

But during negotiations, union representatives secured a series of time-limited commitments from him, including guarantees that he will protect Royal Mail’s pension surplus, that there will be no compulsory redundancies for two years, no sell-off or break-up of any operational part of the existing company and no outsourcing of grades represented by the CWU.

Mr Kretinsky also agreed to restrictions on moving dividends out of Royal Mail Group and to respect agreements with and recognition of the CWU. He said he would keep the brand name and Royal Mail’s headquarters and tax residency in the UK for the next five years.

Union bosses told me that a life under Mr Kretinsky “couldn’t be any worse than what we have had for the last 10 years”.

So, as Mr Kretinsky looks certain to pull off the sale, what will customers notice?

The frequency of second-class deliveries may be reduced after the Ofcom review. We will see new Royal Mail lockers appearing in our neighbourhoods. And the price of first-class mail may go up: second-class stamps are regulated by Ofcom, while first-class ones are not.

The monarch’s head will still be on those stamps, but there is a new king of our mail system. And his name is Daniel Kretinsky.

Top image credit: Getty

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.

Get our flagship newsletter with all the headlines you need to start the day. Sign up here.

Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.  The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

Listen to Laura read this article

If you say the name Donald Trump in the halls of wholesale markets and trade fairs in China, you’ll hear a faint chuckle.

The US president and his 145% tariffs have not instilled fear in many Chinese traders.

Instead, they have inspired an army of online Chinese nationalists to create mocking memes in a series of viral videos and reels – some of which include an AI-generated President Trump, Vice-President JD Vance and tech mogul Elon Musk toiling on footwear and iPhone assembly lines.

China is not behaving like a nation facing the prospect of economic pain and President Xi Jinping has made it clear that Beijing will not back down.

“For more than 70 years, China has always relied on self-reliance and hard work for development… it has never relied on anyone’s gifts and is unafraid of any unreasonable suppression,” he said this month.

His confidence may come in part because China is far less dependent than it was 10 years ago on exports to the US. But the truth is Trump’s brinkmanship and tariff hikes are pushing on pressure points that already exist within China’s own struggling economy. With a housing crisis, increasing job insecurity and an ageing population, Chinese people are simply not spending as much as their government would like.

Xi came to power in 2012 with a dream of a rejuvenated China. That is now being severely tested – and not just by US tariffs. Now, the question is whether or not Trump’s tariffs will dampen Xi’s economic dreams, or can he turn the obstacles that exist into opportunities?

With a population of 1.4 billion, China has, in theory, a huge domestic market. But there’s a problem. They don’t appear willing to spend money while the country’s economic outlook is uncertain.

This has not been prompted by the trade war – but by the collapse of the housing market. Many Chinese families invested their life savings in their homes, only to watch prices plummet in the last five years.

Housing developers continued to build even as the property market crumbled. It’s thought that China’s entire population would not fill all the empty apartments across the country.

The former deputy head of China’s statistics bureau, He Keng, admitted two years ago that the most “extreme estimate” is that there are now enough vacant homes for 3 billion people.

Travel round Chinese provinces and you see they are littered with empty projects – lines of towering concrete shells that have been labelled “ghost cities”. Others have been fitted out, the gardens have been landscaped, curtains frame the windows, and they appear filled with the promise of a new home. But only at night, when you see no lights, can you tell that the apartments are empty. There just aren’t enough buyers to match this level of construction.

The government acted five years ago to restrict the amount of money developers could borrow. But the damage to house prices and, in turn, consumer confidence in China, has been done and analysts have projected a 2.5% decline in home prices this year, according to a Reuters poll in February.

And it’s not just house prices that worry middle-class Chinese families.

They are concerned about whether the government can offer them a pension – over the next decade, about 300 million people, who are currently aged 50 to 60, are set to leave the Chinese workforce. According to a 2019 estimate by the state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the government pension fund could run out of money by 2035.

There are also fears about whether their sons, daughters and grandchildren can get a job as millions of college graduates are struggling to find work. More than one in five people between the ages of 16 and 24 in urban areas are jobless in China, according to official data published in August 2023. The government has not released youth unemployment figures since then.

The problem is that China cannot simply flip a switch and move from selling goods to the US to selling them to local buyers.

“Given the downward pressure on the economy, it is unlikely domestic spending can be significantly expanded in the short term,” says Prof Nie Huihua at Renmin University.

“Replacing exports with internal demand will take time.”

According to Prof Zhao Minghao, deputy director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University, “China does not have high expectations for talks with the Trump administration… The real battleground is in the adjustment of China’s domestic policies, such as boosting domestic demand.”

To revive a slowing economy, the government has announced billions in childcare subsidies, increased wages and better paid leave. It has also introduced a $41bn programme offering discounts on items such as consumer electronics and electric vehicles (EVs) to encourage more people to spend. But Prof Zhang Jun, the Dean of Economics at Fudan University, believes this is not “sustainable”.

“We need a long-term mechanism,” he says. “We need to start increasing residents’ disposable income.”

This is urgent for Xi. The dream of prosperity he sold when he took power 13 years ago has not become reality.

Xi is also aware that China has a disheartened younger generation worried about their future. That could spell bigger trouble for the Communist Party: protests or unrest.

A report by Freedom House’s China Dissent Monitor claims that protests driven by financial grievances saw a steep increase in the last few months.

All protests are quickly subdued and censored on social media, so it is unlikely to pose a real threat to Xi for now.

“Only when the country does well and the nation does well can every person do well,” Xi said in 2012.

This promise was made when China’s economic rise looked unstoppable. It now looks uncertain.

Where the country has made huge strides over the past decade is in areas such as consumer electronics, batteries, EVs and artificial intelligence as part of a pivot to advanced manufacturing.

It has rivalled US tech dominance with the chatbot DeepSeek and BYD, which beat Tesla last year to become the world’s largest EV maker.

Yet Trump’s tariffs threaten to throw a spanner in the works.

The restrictions on the sale of key chips to China, including the most recent move tightening exports from US chip giant Nvidia, for instance, are aimed at curbing Xi’s ambitions for tech supremacy.

Despite that, Xi knows that Chinese manufacturers are at a decades-long advantage, so that US manufacturers are struggling to find the same scale of infrastructure and skilled labour elsewhere.

President Xi is also trying to use this crisis as a catalyst for further change and to find more new markets for China.

“In the short term, some Chinese exporters will be greatly impacted,” says Prof Zhang. “But Chinese companies will take the initiative to adjust the destination of exports to overcome difficulties. Exporters are waiting and looking for new customers.”

Donald Trump’s first term in office was China’s cue to look elsewhere for buyers. It has expanded its ties across South East Asia, Latin America and Africa – and a Belt and Road trade and infrastructure initiative shored up ties with the so-called Global South.

China is reaping the rewards from that diversification. More than 145 countries do more trade with China than they do with the US, according to the Lowy Institute.

In 2001, only 30 countries chose Beijing as their lead trade partner over Washington.

As Trump targets both friend and foe, some believe Xi can further upend the current US-led world order and portray his country as a stable, alternative global trade partner and leader.

The Chinese leader chose South East Asia for his first trip abroad after the tariff announcement, sensing his neighbours would be getting jittery about Trump’s tariffs.

Around a quarter of Chinese exports are now manufactured or shipped through a second country including Vietnam and Cambodia.

Recent US actions may also present a chance for Xi to positively shape China’s role in the world.

“Trump’s coercive tariff policy is an opportunity for Chinese diplomacy,” says Prof Zhang.

China will have to tread carefully. Some countries will be nervous that products being manufactured for the US could end up flooding into their markets.

Trump’s tariffs in 2016 sent a glut of cheap Chinese imports, originally intended for the US, into South East Asia, hurting many local manufacturers.

According to Prof Huihua, “about 20% of China’s exports go to the US – if these exports were to flood any regional market or country, it could lead to dumping and vicious competition, thereby triggering new trade frictions”.

There are barriers to Xi presenting himself as the arbiter of free trade in the world.

China has subjected other nations to trade restrictions in recent years.

In 2020, after the Australian government called for a global inquiry into the origins and early handling of the Covid pandemic, which Beijing argued was a political manoeuvre against them, China placed tariffs on Australian wine and barley and imposed biosecurity measures on some beef and timber and bans on coal, cotton and lobster. Some Australian exports of certain goods to China fell to nearly zero.

Australia’s Defence Minister Richard Marles said earlier this month that his nation will not be “holding China’s hand” as Washington escalated its trade war with Beijing.

China’s past actions may impede Xi’s current global outreach and many countries may be unwilling to choose between Beijing and Washington.

Even with all the various difficulties, Xi is betting that Beijing will be able to withstand any economic pain longer than Washington in this great power competition.

And it does appear that Trump has blinked first, last week hinting at a potential U-turn on tariffs, saying that the taxes he has so far imposed on Chinese imports would “come down substantially, but it won’t be zero”.

Meanwhile, Chinese social media is back in action.

“Trump has chickened out,” was one of the top trending search topics on the Chinese social media platform Weibo after the US president softened his approach to tariffs.

Even if or when talks do happen, China is playing a longer game.

The last trade war forced it to diversify its export market away from the US towards other markets – especially in the Global South.

This trade war has China looking in the mirror to see its own flaws – and whether it can fix them will be up to policies made in Beijing, not Washington.

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.

People from Haiti, Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela who had temporary permission to stay in the country are receiving emails telling them to go.

California senator Alex Padilla was pushed out of the news conference by authorities after he interrupted Noem.

US President Donald Trump will oversee a huge military parade in Washington DC on the same day as nationwide protests are planned.

The move comes as the continent’s exports face the possibility of high tariffs from the US.

LA Mayor Karen Bass has accused federal authorities of “provoking” residents and spreading “chaos” with immigration raids.

Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.  The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

Among the cactuses in the desert of Arizona, just outside Phoenix, an extraordinary collection of buildings is emerging that will shape the future of the global economy and the world.

The hum of further construction is creating not just a factory for the world’s most advanced semiconductors. Eventually, it will mass produce the most advanced chips in the world. This work is being done in the US for the first time, with the Taiwanese company behind it pledging to spend billions more here in a move aimed at heading off the threat of tariffs on imported chips.

It is, in my view, the most important factory in the world, and it’s being built by a company you may not have heard of: TSMC, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. It makes 90% of the world’s advanced semiconductors. Until now they were all made on the island of Taiwan, which is 100 miles east of the Chinese mainland. The Apple chip in your iPhone, the Nvidia chips powering your ChatGPT queries, the chips in your laptop or computer network, all are made by TSMC.

Its Arizona facility “Fab 21” is closely guarded. Blank paper or personal devices are not allowed in case designs are leaked. It houses some of the most important intellectual property in the world, and the process to make these chips is one of the most complicated and intensive in global manufacturing.

They’re hugely protective of the secrets that lie within. Important customers, such as Apple and Nvidia, trust this company to safeguard their designs for future products.

But after months of asking, TSMC let the BBC in to look at the partial transfer of what some argue is the most critical, expensive, complex and important manufacturing in the world.

President Trump certainly seems to think so. He often mentions the factory in passing. “TSMC is the biggest there is,” he has said. “We gradually lost the chip business, and now it’s almost exclusively in Taiwan. They stole it from us.” This is one of the US president’s regular refrains.

TSMC’s recent decision to expand its investments in the US by a further $100bn (£75bn) is something Trump attributes to his threats of tariffs on Taiwan and on the global semiconductor business.

The expansion of the Arizona facility, which was announced in March is, he believes, the poster child for his economic policies – in particular the encouragement of foreign companies to relocate factories to the US to avoid hefty tariffs.

China is also watching developments carefully. Taiwan’s chip-making prowess has been part of what its government has called its “Silicon Shield”, against a much-feared invasion. While the original strategy was to make Taiwan indispensable in this area of critical technology, the pandemic supply chain difficulties changed the calculus because relying on a single country seemed like a greater risk.

China claims the self-ruled Taiwan as its territory but Taiwan sees itself as distinct from the Chinese mainland.

So, many currents of the world economy, frontier technology and geopolitics flow through this one site and within it lies the essential contradiction of Trump’s economic and diplomatic policy.

He sees this plant as the exemplar of America First, and the preservation of economic and military superiority over China. Yet the manufacture of these modern miniaturised miracles at the frontier of physics and chemistry inherently relies on a combination of the very best technologies from around the world.

Greg Jackson, one of the facilities managers, takes me around in a golf buggy. The factories are almost a carbon copy of the TSMC spaces in Taiwan, where he trained. “I would say these facilities are probably some of the most advanced and complicated in the world,” he says.

“It’s quite the dichotomy. You’ve got really, really small chips with really small structures, and it takes this massive facility with all the infrastructure to be able to make them… Just the sheer complexity, the amount of systems that it takes, is staggering.”

Inside the “Gowning Building”, workers dress in protective clothing before crossing a bridge that is supposed to create the cleanest environment on Earth, in order to protect the production of these extraordinary microscopic transistors that create the microchips underpinning everything.

Konstantinos Ninios, an engineer, shows me some of the very first productions from TSMC Arizona: a silicon wafer with what is known as “4 nanometre chips”.

“This is the most advanced wafer in the US right now,” he explains. “[It] contains about 10 to 14 trillion transistors… The whole process is 3,000 to 4,000 steps.”

If you could somehow shrink your body to the same scale and get inside the wafer, he says that the many different layers would look like very tall streets and skyscrapers.

TSMC was founded at the behest of the Taiwanese government in 1987, when chip executive Morris Chang was directed to start the business. The model was to become a dedicated foundry for microchips, manufacturing other companies’ designs. It became wildly successful.

Driving the advancement of the technology is the miniaturisation of the smallest feature on chips. Their size is measured these days in billionths of a metre or nanometres. This progress has enabled mobile phones to become smartphones, and is now setting the pace for the mass deployment of artificial intelligence.

It requires incredible complexity and expense through the use of “extreme ultraviolet (UV) light”. This is used to etch the intricate building blocks of our modern existence in a process called “lithography”.

The world’s dependence on TSMC is built on highly specialised bus-sized machines, which are in turn sourced almost entirely from a Dutch company called ASML, including in Arizona.

These machines shoot UV light tens of thousands of times through drops of molten tin, which creates a plasma, and is then refracted through a series of specialised mirrors.

The almost entirely automated process for each wafer of silicon is repeated thousands of times in layers over months, before the $1m LP-sized wafer of 4nm silicon chips is formed.

“Just imagine a particle or a dust particle falling into this,” Mr Ninios says to me incredulously. “The transistors are not going to work. So all of this is cleaner than hospital operating rooms.”

Taiwan does not have special access to the raw materials – but it has the know-how to stay years ahead of other companies in the intricate process of producing these atomic building blocks of modern life.

Some in the Taiwanese government are cautious about spreading the frontier of this technology off the island. Trump wasted little time in claiming the firm’s decision to bring its highest level of technology to the US was due to his economic policies.

He said this would not have happened without the stick of his planned tariffs on Taiwan and semiconductors. Those I speak to at TSMC are diplomatic about that claim.

Much of this was already planned and subsidised under former US President Biden’s Chips Act.

On the walkway into the building are photographs showing Biden’s visit in 2022, with the building site draped in the Stars and Stripes and a banner saying “a future Made in America”.

“The semiconductor supply chain is global,” says TSMC Arizona President Rose Castanares. “There’s really no single country at this moment that can do everything from chemicals to wafer manufacturing to packaging, and so it’s very difficult to unwind that whole thing very quickly.”

As for the semiconductor supply chain, tariffs will not help. The supply chain stretches all over the world. Whether it’s the silicon wafers from Japan, the machines required from the Netherlands, or mirrors from Germany, all sorts of materials from all around the world are required. Now, they could face import charges.

That said, TSMC’s boss was quick off the mark in confirming the expansion of the US site at an event with Trump at the White House. In recent weeks, America’s tech elite – from Apple’s Tim Cook, to Nvidia’s Jensen Huang – have been queueing up to tell the world that TSMC Arizona will now produce many of the chips in their US products.

The global chip industry is very sensitive to the economic cycle, but its cutting-edge technology enjoys very healthy margins, that could cushion some of these planned tariffs.

There are many geopolitical subtexts here. The factory sits at the heart of US strategy to gain technological, AI and economic supremacy over China.

Both the Biden and Trump administrations have developed policies to try to limit Chinese access to the frontier semiconductor technology – from a ban on exports to China of ASML’s machines, to new legislation to ban the use of Huawei AI chips in US software or technology anywhere in the world.

Taiwan’s President Lai this week urged democracies such as Japan and the US to develop “non-Red” supply chains to counter China.

Not everyone is convinced that this strategy is working, however. Chinese technologists have been effective at working around the bans to develop competitive indigenous technology. And Bill Gates this week said that these policies “have forced the Chinese in terms of chip manufacturing and everything to go full speed ahead”.

Trump wants TSMC Arizona to become a foundation stone for his American golden age. But the company’s story to date is perhaps the ultimate expression of the success of modern globalisation.

So for now, it’s a battle for global tech and economic supremacy, in which Taiwan’s factory technology, some of which is now being moved to the Arizona desert, is the critical asset.

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.

People from Haiti, Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela who had temporary permission to stay in the country are receiving emails telling them to go.

California senator Alex Padilla was pushed out of the news conference by authorities after he interrupted Noem.

India can’t grow enough apples to meet demand but farmers are struggling to raise production.

US President Donald Trump will oversee a huge military parade in Washington DC on the same day as nationwide protests are planned.

The strength of the economy affects things like pay rises and how much tax the government can raise to pay for services.

Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.  The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

Listen to Theo read this article

In China, they call it the Seagull, and it has looks to match. It is sleek and angular, with bright, downward-slanting headlights that have more than a hint of mischievous eyes about them.

It is, of course, a car. A very small one, designed as a cheap city runabout – but it could have huge significance. Available in China since 2023, where it has proved extremely popular, it has just been launched in Europe with the name Dolphin Surf (because Europeans apparently aren’t as keen on seagulls as Chinese people).

When it goes on sale in the UK this week, it’s expected to have a price tag of around £18,000. That will still make it, for an electric car on western markets, very cheap indeed.

It won’t be the outright lowest-priced model on offer: the Dacia Spring, manufactured in Wuhan jointly by Renault and Dongfeng, and the Leapmotor T03, which is being produced by a joint venture between Chinese startup Leapmotor and Stellantis, both cost less.

But the Dolphin Surf is the new arrival that has long-established brands most worried. That is because the company behind it has been making ever bigger waves on international markets.

BYD is already the biggest player in China. It overtook Tesla in 2024 to become the world’s best-selling maker of electric vehicles (EVs), and since entering the European markets two years ago, it has expanded aggressively.

“We want to be number one in the British market within 10 years,” says Steve Beattie, sales and marketing director for BYD UK.

BYD is part of a wider expansion of Chinese companies and brands that some believe could change the face of the global motor industry – and which has already prompted radical action from the US government and the EU.

It means once-unknown marques like Nio, Xpeng, Zeekr or Omoda could become every bit as much household names as Ford or Volkswagen. They will join classic brands such as MG, Volvo and Lotus, which have been under Chinese ownership for years.

The products on offer already encompass a huge range, from runabouts like the tiny Dolphin Surf to exotic supercars, like the pothole-jumping U9, from BYD’s high-end sub-brand Yangwang.

“Chinese brands are making massive inroads into the European market,” says David Bailey, professor of business and economics at Birmingham Business School.

In 2024, 17 million battery and plug-in hybrid cars were sold worldwide, 11 million of those in China. Chinese brands, meanwhile, had 10% of global EV and plug-in hybrid sales outside their home country, according to the consultancy Rho Motion. That figure is only expected to grow.

For consumers, it should be good news – leading to more high-quality and affordable electric cars becoming available. But with rivalry between Beijing and western powers showing no sign of subsiding, some experts are concerned Chinese vehicles could represent a security risk from hackers and third parties. And for established players in Europe, it represents a formidable challenge to their historic dominance.

“[China has] a huge cost advantage through economies of scale and battery technology. European manufacturers have fallen well behind,” warns Mr Bailey.

“Unless they wake up very quickly and catch up, they could be wiped out.”

China’s car industry has been developing rapidly since the country joined the World Trade Organisation in 2001. But that process accelerated rapidly in 2015, when the Communist Party introduced its “Made in China 2025” initiative. The 10-year plan to make the country a leader in several high-tech industries, including EVs, attracted intense criticism from abroad, and particularly the US, amid claims of forced technology transfers and theft of intellectual property – all of which the Chinese government denies.

Fuelled by lavish state funding, the plan helped lay the groundwork for the breakneck growth of companies like BYD – originally a maker of batteries for mobile phones – and allowed the Chinese parent companies of MG and Volvo, SAIC and Geely, to become major players in the EV market.

“The general standard of Chinese cars is very, very high indeed,” says Dan Caesar, chief executive of Electric Vehicles UK.

“China has learned extremely quickly how to manufacture cars.”

Yet competition in China has become ever more cut-throat, with brands jostling for space in an increasingly saturated market. This has led them to hunt for sales elsewhere.

While Chinese firms have expanded into East Asia and South America, for years the European market proved a tough nut to crack – that is, until governments here decided to phase out the sale of new petrol and diesel models.

The transition to electric cars opened the door to new players.

“[Chinese brands] have seen an opportunity to get a bit of a foothold,” says Oliver Lowe, UK product manager of Omoda and Jaecoo, two sub brands of the Chinese giant Chery.

Low labour costs in China, coupled with government subsidies and a very well-established supply chain, have given Chinese firms advantages, their rivals have claimed. A report from the Swiss bank UBS, published in late 2023, suggested that BYD alone was able to build cars 25% more cheaply than western competitors.

Chinese firms deny the playing field is uneven. Xpeng’s vice chairman Brian Gu told the BBC at the Paris Motor Show in 2024 that his company is competitive “because we have fought tooth and nail through the most competitive market in the world”.

Concerns that Chinese EV imports could flood international markets at the expense of established manufacturers reached fever pitch in 2024.

In the US, the Alliance for American Manufacturing warned they could prove to be an “extinction-level event” for the US industry, while the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen suggested that “huge state subsidies” for Chinese firms were distorting the European market.

The Biden administration took dramatic action, raising import tariffs on Chinese-made EVs from 25% to 100%, effectively making it pointless to sell them in the US.

It was condemned by Beijing as “naked protectionism”.

Meanwhile, in October 2024, the EU imposed extra tariffs of up to 35.3% on Chinese-made EVs. The UK, however, took no action.

Matthias Schmidt, founder of Schmidt Automotive Research, says the EU’s tariffs have now made it harder for Chinese firms to gain market share.

“The door was wide open in 2024… but the Chinese failed to take their chance. With the tariffs in place, Chinese manufacturers are now unable to push their cost advantage onto European consumers.”

European manufacturers have been racing to develop their own affordable electric cars. French car-maker Renault is among them.

At its factory in Douai, in northeastern France, an army of spark-spitting robots weld sections of steel to form car bodies, while on the main assembly line, automated systems mate together bodyshells, doors, batteries, motors and other parts, before human workers apply the finishing touches.

The factory has been making cars for Renault since 1974, but four years ago, the ageing production lines were replaced with new highly automated, digitally-controlled systems.

Part of the site was also taken over by the Chinese-owned battery firm AESC, which built its own “gigafactory” next door.

It’s part of Renault’s wider plan to set up an ultra-modern EV “hub” in northern France. Mirroring the lean production techniques of Chinese manufacturers, the hub cuts costs by maximising efficiency and ensuring that suppliers are located as close as possible.

“Our target was to be able to produce affordable electric cars here to sell in Europe,” explains Pierre Andrieux, director of the Douai plant, arguing that automated processes “will enable us to do that profitably”.

But the company is also exploiting something the Chinese brands do not have: heritage. Its latest model, the Renault 5 E-tech, built in Douai, borrows its name from one of the company’s most famous products.

The original Renault 5, launched in 1972, was a quirky little everyman car with boxy looks and low running costs that became a cult classic.

The new design, despite being a state-of-the art EV, pays homage to its predecessor in name and appearance, in an effort to emulate its popular appeal.

But irrespective of how desirable Chinese cars are in comparison with European rivals, some experts believe we should be wary of them – for security reasons.

Most modern vehicles are internet-enabled in some way – to allow satellite navigation, for example – and drivers’ phones are often connected to car systems. Pioneered by Tesla, so-called “over-the-air updates” can upgrade a car’s software remotely.

This has all led to concerns, in some quarters, that cars could be hacked and used to harbour spyware, monitor individuals or even be immobilised at the touch of a keyboard.

Earlier this year, a British newspaper reported that military and intelligence chiefs had been ordered not to discuss official business while riding in EVs; it was also alleged that cars with Chinese components had been banned from sensitive military sites.

Then in May, a former head of the intelligence service MI6 claimed that Chinese-made technology in a range of products, including cars, could be controlled and programmed remotely. Sir Richard Dearlove warned MPs that there was the potential to “immobilise London”.

Beijing has always denied all accusations of espionage.

A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in London says that the recent allegations are “entirely unfounded and absurd”.

“China has consistently advocated the secure, open, and rules-based development of global supply chains,” the spokesperson told the BBC. “Chinese enterprises operating around the world are required to comply with local laws and regulations.

“To date, there is no credible evidence to support the claim that Chinese EVs pose a security threat to the UK or any other country.”

Joseph Jarnecki, research fellow at defence and security think-tank The Royal United Services Institute, argues that potential risks can be mitigated.

“Chinese carmakers exist in this highly competitive market. While they’re beholden to Chinese law and that may require compliance with national security agencies, none of them want to damage their ability to grow and to have international exports by being perceived as a security risk,” he says.

“The Chinese government equally is conscious of the need for economic growth. They’re not hell-bent on solely conducting surveillance.”

But the car industry is just one area in which Chinese technology is becoming increasingly enmeshed in the UK economy. To achieve the government’s climate objectives, for instance, “It will be necessary to use Chinese-supplied technology”, adds Mr Jarnecki.

He believes that regulators of key industries should be given sufficient resources to monitor cyber security and advise companies using Chinese products of any potential issues.

As for electric cars powered by Chinese technology, there’s no question that they’re here to stay.

“Even if you have a car that’s made in Germany or elsewhere, it probably contains quite a few Chinese components,” says Dan Caesar.

“The reality is most of us have smartphones and things from China, from the US, from Korea, without really giving it a second thought. So I do think there’s some fearmongering going on about what the Chinese are capable of.

“I think we have to face the reality that China is going to be a big part of the future.”

Top image credit: Reuters

The £1.5m investment will see chargers also fitted in council-run car parks.

The move comes as the continent’s exports face the possibility of high tariffs from the US.

Taipei has accused Beijing of sabotaging its cables, describing it as a “grey zone” tactic.

Footage shows flames and thick smoke billowing into the sky, as bystanders watch the blaze erupt in southwest China.

The world’s two biggest economies have agreed in principle a framework for de-escalating trade tensions.

Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.  The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

Council tax is expected to rise by 5% a year to pay for local services, documents in the Spending Review suggest.

Bills are also expected to rise further to pay for an increase in police funding.

Local authorities have the power to raise the tax by up to 5% every year, although some choose lower increases.

However, Wednesday’s Spending Review assumes councils will raise it to the maximum level.

The review allocated a 1.1% increase in grant funding to local government, but said total spending power for councils would rise by 2.6%. That includes funds councils can raise from council tax, as well as things like business rates.

Councils can raise council tax by more than 5% if they hold a local referendum or get approval from central government.

Council tax has generally increased by the maximum of 5% a year recently amid strained town hall budgets. Some councils in particular financial difficulty have increased bills by significantly more.

On whether councils would have to raise council tax by 5%, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said nothing had been changed in terms of the 5% council tax cap, which was brought in by the previous government.

“It is a cap, councils don’t have to increase council tax by 5%,” she told BBC Breakfast.

“That’s to invest in things like social care, but also as is normal to put money into policing.”

Local services ranging from social care and libraries to bin collection and street cleaning are funded through council tax.

The Spending Review also says police spending power will rise by 2.3% a year in real terms.

Council tax includes a so-called police precept, which helps fund services such as regular community policing.

Police and Crime Commissioners can raise this precept by £14 a year for a Band D council tax bill without having to have a referendum. This is in addition to a 5% general rise.

Police budgets are made up of funding from both central government and local government and the increase in police spending power assumes a rise in the police precept, Treasury documents suggest.

“This includes projected spending from additional income, including estimated funding from the police council tax precept,” the documents say.

Police leaders have already called for greater funding, with some arguing extra money provided in the Spending Review would quickly go on covering officers’ pay

Louise Gittins, who chairs the Local Government Association, which represents councils, said there were some welcome areas of support in the Spending Review, including children’s services, affordable homes and investment in transport.

However, she said council budgets would remain under “severe financial pressure”.

“Many will continue to have to increase council tax bills to try and protect services but still need to make further cutbacks,” she said.

Tiff Lynch, acting chair of the Police Federation for England and Wales, which represents rank-and-file officers, said: “This Spending Review should have been a turning point after 15 years of austerity that has left policing and police officers broken. Instead, the cuts will continue and it’s the public who will pay the price.

“We await the government’s decision on police pay in the coming weeks. But with this Spending Review, the signs are deeply worrying; the consequences will be even more so.”

Jim McMahon said the council’s financial position was “deteriorating rapidly” and unable to improve.

The rain and high winds experienced during stormy weather can damage homes and cause power outages.

The chancellor highlights “uncertainty” in the world as economists warn of tax rises if the economy fails to grow.

Council tax bills in England are predicted to increase by the maximum amount every year until 2029.

Details about how the region could be split up to form unitary councils has been shared.

Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.  The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

Struggling budget chain Poundland has been sold for £1 and now faces a shake-up which could see up to 100 stores close, the BBC understands.

Its owner Polish firm Pepco confirmed it had sold the brand for a “nominal” sum to US investment firm Gordon Brothers.

Poundland has 825 UK stores and around 16,000 staff and was struggling to compete with other discount stores, with sales down this January and February.

Following the sale a proposed restructure will be put to the High Court in England, Pepco said.

It comes after Pepco warned that increased employer National Insurance contributions which kicked in in April would put added pressure on the chain.

Pepco Group has owned Poundland since 2016, but the firm had to auction the brand off after sales slumped over the past year.

Gordon Brothers is a global investment firm which formerly owned fashion label Laura Ashley.

Pepco said it was effectively offloading an unprofitable part of the business and Poundland remained a well-loved brand with millions of customers annually.

But retail analyst Sofie Willmott from GlobalData said Poundland’s appeal has been waning as UK consumers sought better quality and value for money elsewhere.

“Those who favoured Poundland for low price groceries have been tempted away by the supermarkets who have been aggressively competing on price, and the failure of its clothing range has been a distraction for the retailer”, she said.

Consumer expert Kate Hardcastle said a sale for a nominal amount “often signals a business model that has struggled to keep pace with market forces,

“In this case, it reflects not just internal challenges but profound shifts in how consumers now shop,” she said.

Brands such as Temu and Shein have “fundamentally changed consumer expectations around price, speed and convenience”, she added.

She said this put “unrelenting pressure” on the likes of Poundland.

“Against that backdrop, the once-simple promise of a ‘pound shop’ no longer carries the same weight or differentiation”.

Following its sale the business will continue to be led by Barry Williams, currently managing director of Poundland, it said.

The business will continue to operate under the Poundland brand in the United Kingdom and under the Dealz brand in the Isle of Man and Republic of Ireland, it added.

“We want to sincerely thank all the Poundland team for their ongoing commitment and contribution to the group and wish Barry Williams and his team all the best for the future,” said Pepco chief executive Stephan Borchert.

In March, Pepco said Poundland was “operating in an increasingly challenging UK retail landscape that is only intensifying”.

“Pepco Group expects to obtain a minority investment interest in Poundland”, Pepco wrote in a release.

Gordon Brothers is investing a total of £80m in Poundland which includes an existing secured loan of £30m and a further £30m overdraft.

Mark Newton-Jones, head of Gordon Brothers’ Europe group said it was “delighted” to provide financing for “the substantial turnaround of this iconic retailer”.

He added: “We believe Poundland is an essential retailer serving UK consumers and plays an important role on the High Street.”

He said the group would “ensure we continue providing exceptional value to budget-conscious consumers in the UK.”

Increasing costs are presenting financial challenges and its trips are on hold, the charity says.

A charity that helps parents with young babies says it is itself “massively feeling the pinch”.

Higher prices for some items were offset by declines in other areas, such as petrol, airfares and clothing.

Spending limits for government departments are being outlined by the chancellor. This is how it affects you.

Grants of more than £13m will go to 12 UK food charities to feed people in need.

Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.  The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

A charity that helps financially struggling parents of young babies has said it has seen a big increase in the number of families seeking assistance.

Tippy Toes in Lostock Hall, near Preston in Lancashire, describes itself as “a food bank with baby items”.

Families with children from birth to four years old are provided with essential items including prams, nappies and formula.

Manager Sian Haddon said: “Week on week the referrals are coming in thick and fast and we’re at the point where the demand on our service unfortunately is more than we can meet.”

She told BBC Radio Lancashire: “We rely on the community for donations, people bring to us their pre-loved baby items, or are kind enough to go any buy things like formula, nappies and wipes for us.

“We are struggling to meet that demand now. With summer pending, people know that they’ve potentially got school uniforms to buy for older children.

“The cost of living is absolutely horrendous for everyone at the moment, even doing a weekly food shop, it’s going up week by week, so adding on a £15 tin of formula is just unattainable.”

Ms Haddon said some families come to them to “keep topped up” when they cannot afford to buy essential items every week.

Tippy Toes also helps expectant parents who are struggling.

“For them we give a full kit,” she said. “And that can be a pram, a Moses basket with a brand new mattress, all their toiletries, a bag of baby clothes – basically everything you would go and buy for your newborn baby, we provide as a bundle.”

The charity, based at the South Ribble Family Wellbeing Centre on Wilkinson Street, was established in 2019.

“There’s so many charities out there who are trying to get funding, so there’s a lot of competition to get money and our shelves are empty week on week,” Ms Haddon said.

Listen to the best of BBC Radio Lancashire on BBC Sounds and follow BBC Lancashire on Facebook, X and Instagram and watch BBC North West Tonight on BBC iPlayer.

Increasing costs are presenting financial challenges and its trips are on hold, the charity says.

The BBC understands up to 100 of the brand’s 825 UK stores could close as the new owners shake up the business.

Higher prices for some items were offset by declines in other areas, such as petrol, airfares and clothing.

Spending limits for government departments are being outlined by the chancellor. This is how it affects you.

People in Cornwall and Devon are looking to see more funding for the NHS and education.

Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.  The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

A landmark heritage site in Birmingham has closed suddenly and said increasing costs had presented financial challenges.

Roundhouse Birmingham informed customers its city and canal tours were cancelled via a Facebook post on Wednesday.

It said customers who had already booked tours would receive a refund and apologised for the inconvenience.

The charity’s website said the horseshoe-shaped Grade II* listed building, on Sheepcote Street, is closed with only the restaurant open as per its usual hours.

A spokesperson said all tours and activities were being paused while they carried out a review of leisure activities.

“While the visitor programme of guided walks, kayak tours and boat trips has been well received, increasing costs outside our control have presented some financial challenges,” they added.

“Other parts of the building are used as office space or let to local business tenants which are unaffected by the review and will remain open as usual, including the Ristorante Café Arena.”

Roundhouse Birmingham is a heritage enterprise and independent charity which looks after the building and uses it as a base for tours and activities.

The charity was created through a partnership between Canal & River Trust and the National Trust in an attempt to find a new and sustainable purpose for the Roundhouse.

The building was built in the 19th Century as a stables and stores and was restored from 2013.

According to the Canal & River Trust, the building was originally designed and built in 1874 by Birmingham based architect W.H. Ward for the Public Works Department and as part of a massive city improvement plan.

The BBC has contacted the Canal & River Trust for comment.

Follow BBC Birmingham on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.

A charity that helps parents with young babies says it is itself “massively feeling the pinch”.

The BBC understands up to 100 of the brand’s 825 UK stores could close as the new owners shake up the business.

Higher prices for some items were offset by declines in other areas, such as petrol, airfares and clothing.

Spending limits for government departments are being outlined by the chancellor. This is how it affects you.

Grants of more than £13m will go to 12 UK food charities to feed people in need.

Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.  The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

The Met Office has issued multiple warnings for thunderstorms covering southern England, Wales and southern Scotland.

Some areas may see torrential downpours of 30-50 mm of rain, which could lead to flash flooding.

Hail, lightning and gusty winds could also cause problems in parts of the country.

There are a number of steps you can take:

If you are in a flood-risk area, try to move valuable or essential items upstairs or store them as high as you can on the ground floor.

Strong winds can cause damage to buildings, such as tiles coming off roofs, and heavy rain can lead to flooding. Public transport may be disrupted.

People are advised to stay inside as much as possible and keep internal doors closed.

Unplug any non-essential electrical items in case of power surges.

If you do have to go out, you should avoid walking next to buildings, trees and the sheltered side of walls or fences, in case of collapse.

You should not attempt to repair any damage to your property or possessions while a storm is in progress.

The RSPCA advises bringing all animals inside and ensuring you have sufficient food, bedding and fresh water.

Listen out for bad weather warnings on local radio and TV, and check government and news websites for the latest updates.

In you become trapped by floodwater, you should go to the highest level of the building you are in.

Avoid attic spaces due to the risk of being trapped by rising water, and only go onto the roof if absolutely necessary. Call 999 and wait for help.

If you lose electricity you make sure all non-essential appliances are switched off, but leave a light on so you know when the supply returns.

You can report a power cut online or by calling 105, which is a free service in England, Scotland and Wales.

Alternatively, you can find the details of your energy network operator by using this postcode search tool.

It may put you on a priority list for assistance if you have medical equipment in your home that needs electricity.

If you can smell gas and suspect there is a leak in your home, you can report it by ringing 0800 111 999.

Do not drive unless your journey is unavoidable.

You should steer clear of flooded or exposed routes such as bridges or high open roads.

If you do have to drive, make sure you have essential supplies such as warm clothing, food, drink, blankets and a torch, and carry a fully-charged phone.

Drive slowly, and be especially cautious around high-sided vehicles and when overtaking. Give other vehicles extra room.

Turn on your headlights or use fog lights if visibility is especially poor.

Driving during a weather warning – including the most serious category, red – does not automatically invalidate your car insurance but it may make a claim more difficult.

An insurer might try to prove negligence, such as driving on a road when advised not to, and refuse the claim.

Most home building, contents and commercial business policies cover storm damage.

If you have suffered damage to your property or possessions you should:

There is a common misconception that homeowners are responsible for the fences on the left of their property.

In fact there is no general rule about which fence belongs to whom, so homeowners should check their title deeds to see which boundaries they own.

It can take weeks or even months for a property to fully dry out after storm damage, so you may need to wait some time before redecorating.

Temperatures on Friday will likely match the previous hottest day of 2025 so far.

A yellow thunderstorm warning is in place across the region until 19:00 BST.

Council tax is expected to rise by 5% a year to pay for local services, documents in the Spending Review suggest.

Spending limits for government departments are being outlined by the chancellor. This is how it affects you.

The warning said an area of heavy weather will move northwards, covering Devon and Cornwall.

Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.  The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

Sneha Sachar, who spent half her life in Delhi and now lives in California, is used to heat. But her hometown feels much hotter now than when she was growing up.

Even commuting by car is so uncomfortable in certain months, says Ms Sachar, who works for the Clean Cooling Collaborative, a philanthropic initiative focused on improved cooling.

Rising temperatures are even worse for outdoor workers. “This is really impacting the ability of people to continue to earn their livelihoods,” Ms Sachar says.

She says that there are a number of low-tech ways to keep buildings cool, such as designing for air flow.

For outdoor workers, even a 20-minute break from the heat and humidity, such as in well-designed cooling stations, can make a difference.

But beyond this, active cooling will become increasingly critical as temperatures continue to rise due to climate change.

Morgan Stanley is predicting that the annual growth rate of the cooling market, already worth $235bn (£180bn) a year, could more than double by 2030.

Yet existing cooling devices have serious drawbacks. One issue the refrigerant – the fluid that transitions back and forth from liquid to gas, in a process that transfers heat.

It’s common for them to leak from standard systems, harming both efficiency and potentially health.

The refrigerants typically used in cooling today are hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a group of synthetic gases with high global warming potential. HFCs are much more potent than carbon dioxide.

So one option is to replace the refrigerants with more climate-friendly versions. But the candidates with the lower global warming potential, also have problems.

For instance, propane is highly flammable. Ammonia is toxic. Carbon dioxide works at high pressures, requiring specialised equipment.

But as many places phase down HFCs, alternative refrigerants will remain important.

Ms Sachar says that we still need refrigerants because for home cooling, “A/Cs as we know them today will continue to be the solution, at least for the next decade or so”.

In the longer term, some scientists are looking toward cooling devices that don’t need liquid refrigerants at all.

Lindsay Rasmussen, who manages building and land-use projects at the energy non-profit RMI, calls these “revolutionary technologies”.

A major set of revolutionary cooling tech is solid-state cooling. This uses solid materials and some sort of additional force to induce temperature changes. That extra force could be pressure, voltage, magnets or mechanical stress.

Ms Rasmussen says that solid-state devices can go further than incremental improvements because “not only do they eliminate those super-polluting refrigerants, but they can also offer improved efficiency to the systems”.

RMI has identified between 10 and 20 start-ups working on early versions of solid-state cooling devices.

One of those startups is the German company Magnotherm, which uses magnets. Certain materials change temperature when exposed to magnetic fields.

“With our technology, it’s inherently safe because it’s not toxic, it’s a metal, and we operate at very low pressures,” according to Timur Sirman, the CEO and cofounder of Magnotherm.

The idea of magnetocaloric cooling has been around for years, but commercialising it is relatively new. Magnotherm has built about 40 beverage coolers, and about five refrigerators, in what is so far a manual and in-house process.

The permanent magnets are the most expensive part of the technology, Mr Sirman reports. “But it never breaks, so we can always reuse this quite cost-intensive component.”

The company is seeking out alternative sources of magnetic fields, as well as optimising materials, as they aim to dramatically increase the cooling capacity of their devices.

Mr Sirman believes that if you account for the efficiency and health issues of refrigerants, like leakages, Magnotherm products can compete on price. “We are not targeting customers who are only looking at initial cost.”

He acknowledges that for now the company’s beverage coolers are quite pricey. Their customers tend to be early adopters of new technologies.

Another technology under development is thermoelectric cooling.

This involves moving heat between two sides of a device. With the application of electrical energy, heat is transferred in the direction of the current.

A notable thermoelectric start-up is Phononic, which is based in the US and has an additional manufacturing facility in Thailand.

Millions of Phononic cooling devices are now in use, including in data centres, supermarkets and other buildings.

Their cooling devices are built in a similar way to computer chips, using semiconducting materials to transfer the heat.

“Our chips are really thin, really small, but they get really cold. They consume a small amount of electricity in generating that coldness, but they pack one hell of a punch,” says Tony Atti, the CEO of Phononic.

He says that, to work at their best, traditional fridges need to be run all the time.

But thermoelectric devices can be easily switched on off. This helps to reduce the costs, energy use and space requirements.

“We like to present the coolness on demand where you need it,” says Mr Atti.

Another advantage is that thermoelectric cooling can operate silently. “That’s because there’s zero moving parts,” Ms Rasmussen explains. “The heat is occurring because of the reaction in the material level.”

In contrast, standard vapour compression systems contain pumps, condensers and expanders for refrigerant, which all generate much of the noise.

A different type of solid-state cooling is elastocaloric cooling. This achieves temperature changes through mechanical stress to elastocaloric materials, which can cool down or heat up with the application of stress.

Researchers in four European countries are collaborating on SMACool, an elastocaloric air conditioner that uses metal tubes made from specific metallic alloys.

At the moment, elastocaloric prototypes have much lower cooling capacity than commercial air conditioning. And the maximum possible efficiency of SMACool is still lower than that of conventional air conditioning, although the aim is to beat the energy efficiency of A/C.

However, progress is continuing. A team led by Hong Kong researchers recently created an A/C alternative that achieved a cooling power of 1,284W—the first time an elastocaloric device surpassed the 1,000W mark. One innovation was using graphene nanofluid rather than distilled water to transfer the heat.

Overall, Ms Rasmussen says, solid-state devices are generally not yet as powerful as conventional vapour-compression air conditioning. But she expects performance improvements over time.

She also expects improvements in affordability. So far solid-state cooling has mainly been deployed in wealthy countries.

A key question, Ms Rasmussen says, is “Can these technologies scale up to where they could be affordable for those who need it the most and where the greatest demand for cooling is coming from?”

The innovative collection created by Blackburn College students will be auctioned off for charity.

The BBC looks at the latest innovation and technology as workboats try to decarbonise.

Customers need stronger protections against scammers capitalising on green energy schemes, says Scotland’s consumer body.

Light shows involving hundreds and even thousands of drones are becoming big attractions.

Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.  The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.