China has sent back planes it ordered from the US in its latest retaliation over Trump tariffs, the boss of aircraft maker Boeing has said.

Kelly Ortberg said two planes had already been returned and another would follow after trade tensions between the two countries escalated.

Boeing’s chief executive told CNBC that 50 more planes were due to go to China this year but their customers had indicated they will not take delivery of them.

The US put 145% tariffs on imports from China and it hit back with a 125% tax on US products.

Speaking in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump said he was optimistic about improving trade relations with China, saying the level of tariffs he had imposed would “come down substantially, but it won’t be zero”.

However, Mr Ortberg said China “have in fact stopped taking delivery of aircraft because of tariff environment”.

Boeing is America’s largest exporter with about 70% of its commercial aircraft sales outside of the US.

Mr Ortberg said Boeing was assessing options to re-market 41 of the already built planes to other customers as there was high demand from other airlines.

He said there were nine planes not yet in Boeing’s production system and he wanted to “understand their intentions and if necessary we can assign to other customers”.

He added Boeing was “not going continue to build aircraft for customers who will not take them”.

Boeing in daily talks with Trump’s team
Later in the afternoon, Mr Ortberg told an investor call “there is not a day that goes by that we’re not engaged with either cabinet secretaries or either POTUS himself (President Trump) regarding the trade war between China and the USA.”

He added he was “very hopeful we’ll get to some negotiations”.

On Wednesday, America’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told the International Monetary Fund (IMF) conference there was an opportunity for a “big deal” between the US and China on trade.

Asked about an upcoming meeting between the countries, Bessent said it would be an “incredible opportunity” to strike an agreement, if China was “serious” on making its economy less dependent on manufacturing exports.

Mr Ortberg also told investors others in the Boeing supply chain were now exposed to tariffs – mainly in Japan and Italy where universal tariffs of 10% are being implemented.

Brian West, Boeing’s chief financial officer said during the call “free trade policy is very important to us” and Boeing will continue to work to with suppliers to ensure continuity.

Boeing has reported smaller losses for the first quarter of the year after it manufactured and delivered more planes.

Production had slumped in 2024 due to a series of crises and a strike by about 30,000 American factory workers.

It wants to increase output of its 737 MAX jets to 38 a month in 2025.

(BBC News)

French Prime Minister François Bayrou says his eldest daughter’s revelation that she was among children who were abused at a Roman Catholic school “stabs him to the heart as a father”.

Hélène Perlant, who is now 53, alleges that a priest at Notre-Dame de Bétharram beat her at a summer camp when she was 14.

In recent weeks, details of physical and sex abuse perpetrated over decades at Bétharram in the Pyrenees have drawn increasing attention to Bayrou, who was local MP and education minister at the time.

Bayrou, 73, has denied suggestions that he knew about the abuse pupils allegedly suffered from the 1950s to 2010. He is due to appear next month before a parliamentary inquiry.

The boarding school is located in his stronghold in the south-west and he sent three of his children there.

Hélène Perlant was one of them, and in the latest twist to the saga she has accused a priest at the school of beating her when she was 14.

However, she was adamant she had never spoken to her father about the incident, which took place in the 1980s.

“I remained silent for 30 years. Other than this, I’ve never mentioned it to anyone,” she said in an interview with weekly Paris Match on Tuesday.

The priest, she told the magazine, “grabbed me by the hair, dragged me across the floor for several metres, then punched and kicked me all over, especially in the stomach,” she the told magazine.

“I wet myself and stayed like that all night, damp and rolled up in a ball in my sleeping bag,” she added.

Explaining why she had not talked about the experience, she said: “Bétharram was organised like a sect or a totalitarian regime exercising psychological pressure on pupils and teachers, so they stayed silent.”

Notre-Dame de Bétharram – which was renamed Le Beau Rameau (The Beautiful Branch) in 2009 – is a primary and secondary school about 25km (15 miles) from Pau, a city Bayrou has led as mayor since 2014.

The school also lies within the constituency Bayrou represented as MP from the 1980s to the 2010s.

A number of allegations of abuse committed by priests and staff surfaced in the 1990s.

But in 1996 an investigation by the French education ministry concluded that “Notre-Dame de Bétharram is not a school where pupils are brutalised”.

Later a former headteacher accused of raping a 10 year-old pupil was released without charge.

Allegations continued to trickle out until 2023, when a man who had attended the school in the 1980s formed a Facebook group for alleged victims.

The social-media campaign led to about 200 complaints being filed. Almost half include allegations of sexual violence, including rape by two priests.

By February 2025 the scandal had reached national proportions and increased pressure on Bayrou’s already fragile prime ministership.

Three of his six children have attended the school and his wife was a religious studies teacher there. In addition, Bayrou was education minister in the mid-1990s, when the first reports of abuse emerged.

A judge who handled the rape case told Le Monde newspaper last year that he had a meeting with Bayrou in 1998 and that the politician had expressed concern about his son, who was a pupil at the school.

Bayrou disputes this account and maintains that he “hadn’t heard of any sexual violence at the school at that time.”

In her interview, Hélène Perlant backs up her father’s version of events. “I place him on the same level as all the parents. The more involved you are, the less you see and the less you understand.”

During a visit to a prison in south-eastern France on Wednesday, the prime minister said she had never spoken to him about the incident.

“That we didn’t know and the fact such abuses took place are almost unbearable for me,” he said.

But he made clear that in his role “as a public official, which goes beyond the role of father, it’s the victims I think of”.

The centrist leader became prime minister in December. He leads a vulnerable minority government that could be toppled if left-wing parties and the far right unite in a vote of no confidence.

Hélène Perlant has also given her account to Alain Esquerre, who has written a book about his tireless campaign to expose physical and sexual abuse at the school.

Esquerre told the AFP news agency it was a shame for the victims that her account had become so prominent, “because it steals their limelight a little”.

(BBC News)

India has closed its main border crossing with Pakistan, expelled its diplomats and suspended a landmark water-sharing treaty following an attack that killed 26 tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir.
Pakistan has denied involvement in the attack and will convene a national security meeting on Thursday to discuss a response to the measures taken by India.

Gunmen burst out of forests and opened fire on visitors with automatic weapons in the attack near the picturesque tourist town of Pahalgam.

More details have been emerging about those killed. They include a honeymooning groom and a businessman on holiday.

There’s been no official confirmation yet on who carried out the brutal attack but some media reports say a group linked to Pakistan-based organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba may have claimed responsibility.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi cut short a foreign trip to return to Delhi to meet security chiefs. He’s pledged those responsible will not be spared.

Kashmir, which is claimed by both India and Pakistan, has seen a decades-long insurgency against Indian rule that has claimed tens of thousands of lives – but attacks on tourists are rare.

(BBC News)