Israel has cut off humanitarian supplies to Gaza in an effort to pressure Hamas into accepting a change in the ceasefire agreement to allow for the release of hostages without an Israeli troop withdrawal.

The office of the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Sunday it was imposing a blockade on Gaza because Hamas would not accept a plan which it claimed had been put forward by the US special envoy, Steve Witkoff, to extend phase one of the ceasefire and continue to release hostages, and postpone phase two, which envisaged an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

“With the end of phase one of the hostage deal, and in light of Hamas’s refusal to accept the Witkoff outline for continuing talks – to which Israel agreed – Prime Minister Netanyahu has decided that, as of this morning, all entry of goods and supplies into the Gaza Strip will cease. Israel will not allow a ceasefire without the release of our hostages,” it said in a statement. “If Hamas continues its refusal, there will be further consequences.”

After the announcement, Netanyahu’s spokesperson, Omer Dostri, wrote in a social media post: “No trucks entered Gaza this morning, nor will they at this stage.”

The existence and details of a Witkoff plan had not been confirmed by Washington by Sunday morning. A statement from Hamas called the suspension of aid a “war crime” and a violation of the ceasefire agreement. It said Netanyahu’s “decision to suspend humanitarian aid is cheap blackmail, a war crime and a blatant coup against the [ceasefire] agreement”.

During the 15 months of the Israel-Gaza war, the Netanyahu government repeatedly denied claims from aid agencies that it was blocking humanitarian deliveries, blaming the very limited flow on other factors. Before the ceasefire, UN officials had warned that widespread famine was imminent. In the six weeks of the first phase of the truce, deliveries returned to the prewar levels of about 600 trucks a day, mostly carrying food.

Aid officials said that even with the restoration of food deliveries, the lack of drinkable water, the near complete destruction of Gaza’s hospitals and clinics, the lack of shelter in the midst of winter, and the buildup of untreated sewage among the rubble could all be lethal to the surviving 2.2 million population.

Netanyahu made his announcement, which his office claimed had US backing, after the breakdown of talks in Cairo aimed at maintaining the ceasefire as it approached the end of its first six-week phase, over whether the truce should advance to a second phase.

The prime minister’s office said earlier on Sunday that it agreed on the adoption of what it described as Witkoff’s proposal to extend the first phase of the ceasefire through Ramadan and Passover, which end on 20 April, during which half of the living hostages and half of the bodies of those who have died would be released.

On the conclusion of that temporary extension, the statement said: “If agreement is reached on a permanent ceasefire, the remaining living and deceased hostages will be released.”

The first phase of the ceasefire chiefly involved the release of Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinians held in Israeli jails, an increase in aid deliveries and a retreat of Israeli troops from some positions. The second phase requires a complete Israeli withdrawal and a more enduring cessation of hostilities.

The Witkoff plan as described by Netanyahu’s office appeared similar to Israel’s proposal for a six-week extension of the first phase of the ceasefire, with hostage releases, but it made no mention of the troop withdrawal that was part of the original truce agreement in January.

Hamas said the proposal made clear that Israel was seeking to disavow the deal it previously signed.

Hamas has not been directly participating in the talks in Cairo, but has been coordinating with Qatari and Egyptian officials who are at the negotiating table with US and Israeli delegations. The negotiators left Cairo on Friday night, and there was no sign of them reconvening late on Saturday.

An Israeli withdrawal would first involve a pullback from the Philadelphi corridor along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt but such a retreat could trigger the collapse of Netanyahu’s rightwing coalition, which would in turn force new elections, in which his political future would be uncertain.

Israeli political analysts have suggested that Netanyahu agreed to the ceasefire under pressure from Donald Trump, confident that the agreement would never reach a second phase. Since the start of the ceasefire, he prevented Israeli negotiators from discussing a second phase. Witkoff has, however, insisted that a second phase of the ceasefire deal should be implemented, to ensure the release of the remaining 59 hostages, only 25 of whom are thought to be still alive. Most Israelis also want the government to make a priority of freeing the hostages, but that position is opposed by the Israeli far right, without whom the coalition could not stay in power. The rightwing parties argue Israel’s priority should be the destruction of Hamas.

The far-right Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said the decision to halt the flow of aid was “an important step in the right direction”.

Referring to Donald Trump’s earlier threat to open the “gates of hell” on Gaza, Smotrich said in a social media post: “Now we need to open these gates as quickly and deadly as possible on to the enemy, until complete victory.”

There remains no agreement on who should run Gaza once an enduring end to the war can be agreed. Trump caused consternation and bewilderment early in February with the shock suggestion that the US should “own” Gaza, which would be somehow emptied of its more than 2 million Palestinian inhabitants to make way for a “Riviera on the Mediterranean”.

A US judge on Saturday declared president Donald Trump’s firing of the head of a federal watchdog agency illegal in an early test of the scope of presidential power likely to be decided at the US supreme court.

US district judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington had previously ruled that Hampton Dellinger, head of the Office of Special Counsel who is responsible for protecting whistleblowers, could remain in his post pending a ruling.

Jackson said in her ruling on Saturday that upholding Trump’s ability to fire Dellinger would give him “a constitutional license to bully officials in the executive branch into doing his will”.

The justice department filed a notice late on Saturday saying it was appealing against Berman’s ruling to the US court of appeals for the district of Columbia.

Dellinger, who was appointed by Democratic president Joe Biden and approved by the Senate to a five-year term last year, said in an email to Reuters he was “grateful to see the court confirm the importance and legality of the job protections Congress afforded my position”.

He added his “efforts to protect federal employees generally, and whistleblowers in particular, from unlawful treatment will continue”.

Lawyers for the Trump administration have argued that the order keeping Dellinger in place is an encroachment on Trump’s authority over officials serving in his administration.

Jackson, who was named to the bench by president Barack Obama, rejected the contention that the statute is unconstitutional, saying the special counsel’s job is to review unethical or unlawful practices directed at federal civil servants and help whistleblowers act without suffering reprisals.

“It would be ironic, to say the least, and inimical to the ends furthered by the statute if the special counsel himself could be chilled in his work by fear of arbitrary or partisan removal,” Jackson wrote.

The Trump administration previously urged the US supreme court, which has already delayed a ruling in the case, to get involved earlier this week.

Trump has sought to rein in the independence of federal agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission and a ruling in Dellinger’s case could help determine the extent of his authority to do so.

Jackson said her ruling was “extremely narrow” and did not diminish Trump’s powers. “This is the only single-headed agency left for the courts to consider, and it is unlike any of them,” she wrote.

The acting solicitor general, Sarah Harris, said earlier that Dellinger’s continued work as special counsel was harming the Trump administration, pointing to Dellinger’s role on Tuesday in halting the firing of six probationary government workers the administration had sought to dismiss.

At least 25 undercover police officers who infiltrated political groups formed sexual relationships with members of the public without disclosing their true identity to them, the Guardian can disclose.

The total shows how women were deceived on a systemic basis over more than three decades. It equates to nearly a fifth of all the police spies who were sent to infiltrate political movements.

Four of the police spies fathered, or are alleged to have fathered, children with women they met while using their fake identities to infiltrate campaigners.

One woman, known as Jacqui, has said her life was “absolutely ruined” after she discovered by chance that the father of her son was an undercover officer, more than 20 years after his birth. The officer, Bob Lambert, abandoned them when the son was an infant, claiming falsely that he had to go on the run abroad to escape being arrested by police.

Other women had intimate relationships lasting up to six years with men who concealed the fact they were undercover officers who had been sent to spy on them and their friends.

More than 50 women are so far known to have been deceived by the undercover officers, although the total is unknown at the moment and is likely to be higher. They unknowingly shared their most intimate lives with the spies and some attended weddings and funerals with them.

The women were devastated when they discovered how the men had betrayed them, leaving them profoundly traumatised and unable to form trusting intimate relationships again.

The scale of the deception has been revealed as ITV starts to broadcast a major series on what has become known as the “spy cops” scandal.

Starting on Thursday, the series – made in collaboration with the Guardian – shows how five women pieced together disparate clues to expose the real identities of their former boyfriends. The identities of its covert officers is one of the British state’s deepest secrets.

The women scoured obscure archives and even travelled abroad to unmask the men after they abruptly vanished from their lives using what turned out to be fake claims.

Their detective work over many years led to a series of revelations that have exposed the highly secret undercover operations to infiltrate political campaigns and misconduct by the spies, forcing the government to set up a public inquiry.

The long-running inquiry – led by the retired judge John Mitting – is examining decades of undercover deployments. A key part of the inquiry is looking at how the women were deceived and who among those supervising the undercover work knew about it.

David Barr, the inquiry’s chief barrister, told a hearing last year that it was not scrutinising whether sexual deception was justified. “It was not,” he said.

Years of campaigning and legal action by the women have forced police chiefs to apologise and admit that the “abusive, deceitful, manipulative” relationships resulted from “a wider culture of sexism and misogyny” within the police. The police have also admitted that the managers supervising the officers – imbued with that culture – failed to prevent the abuse from happening.

The deceptive relationships were a frequent part of intensely secret operations that began in 1968 and lasted more than 40 years.

The relationships started in the 1970s and continued until 2010. Only two of the 25 officers were women. Many of the identities of the police spies remain secret, meaning there is an unknown number of women who may be unaware that they had been deceived into sexual relationships.

In total, about 139 undercover officers – employed in two covert squads – spied on more than 1,000 political groups. Tens of thousands of mainly leftwing and progressive campaigners were put under surveillance.

Many of the spies created aliases based on the identities of dead children after searching through archives containing birth and death records to locate suitable matches.

The officers typically spent four years pretending to be campaigners while they infiltrated political groups, befriending activists while simultaneously hoovering up information about their protests.

They routinely gathered huge amounts of information about the personal lives of political activists, such as their holiday plans, sexuality and bank accounts.

As well as the 25, there are a further three spies who deny they had sexual relations under their fake identity.

Estonia’s entry for this year’s Eurovision song contest has said he never intended to offend Italy with his song that pokes fun at Italian stereotypes of coffee-drinking, spaghetti-eating mafiosi – and said he submitted the song after his grandmother cried over it.

There have been calls in Italy for Tommy Cash’s catchy song, Espresso Macchiato, to be banned from the competition, which takes place in Basel, Switzerland, in May.

“I love Italy and have the utmost respect for the country,” Cash said during an interview with Italy’s Rai Radio2 at the weekend.

His song, in a blend of broken English and Italian, depicts a life of sweet indulgence. “Ciao bella, I’m Tomaso, addicted to tobacco. Mi like mi coffè very importante,” the first verse begins.

Cash goes on to sing: “Mi money numeroso, I work around the clocko. That’s why I’m sweating like a mafioso,” and: “Life is like spaghetti, it’s hard until you make it.”

Codacons, an Italian consumers association, lodged an appeal to the European Broadcasting Union questioning whether it was appropriate “to allow a song that offends a country and an entire community” to be part of the competition.

In a statement in February, the association said the song was filled with “the usual cliches of coffee and spaghetti, but above all the mafia and the ostentation of luxury, which conveys a message of a population tied to organised crime.”

In a video for the song, Cash drinks coffee from a takeaway paper cup, in what was perceived as another slight on Italian coffee culture.

Cash said he loved Italy for “the food, architecture, design and coffee” and he had never imagined that the song would cause such offence.

“I believe a lot in this song,” he said. “It has something magical. None of my team wanted it to come out because it was very different from my previous songs, but when I played it to my grandmother she started crying and I realised there was something special [about it].”

Indignation over Espresso Macchiato has mostly been outweighed by bemusement and appreciation from Italians. One comment beneath the video on YouTube said: “As an Italian I am amused but also confused but also offended but also honoured.”

Referring to some of the lyrics, another commenter wrote: “‘No stresso, no stresso, don’t need to be depresso’ – as an Italian, I think I’m going to get this tattooed.”

Pope Francis, who is in hospital with pneumonia, has thanked well-wishers for their support after missing his Sunday Angelus for a third week in a row.

The pontiff, 88, is in a stable condition after a breathing crisis on Friday that caused him to vomit. He was admitted to Rome’s Gemelli hospital on 14 February and was diagnosed with a respiratory tract infection and pneumonia in both lungs.

“I would like to thank you for the prayers,” Francis said in a message shared on his X account. “I feel all your affection and closeness and … I feel as if I am ‘carried’ and supported by all God’s people.”

In a separate message, he said he was praying “above all for peace”. “From here, war appears even more absurd,” he said. “Let us pray for martyred Ukraine, Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Myanmar, Sudan and Kivu.”

On Sunday morning the Vatican said the pope had rested well overnight. He later met Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state.

The pope had an episode akin to an asthma attack on Friday that caused him to inhale vomit.

In a more positive statement on Saturday, the Vatican said Francis was in a stable condition and had spent long periods off the noninvasive ventilation he initially needed, in a sign that his lung function was improving.

A full medical update was expected later on Sunday.

The pope is prone to lung infections because he developed pleurisy as a young adult and had part of one lung removed while he was training to be a priest in his native Argentina.

Nightly prayer vigils for the pope’s health are continuing to take place at St Peter’s Basilica as well as in towns and cities across Italy and abroad.

Before his hospital admission, the pope maintained an intense schedule, especially with events related to the Catholic jubilee year.

Pope Francis, who is in hospital with pneumonia, has thanked well-wishers for their support after missing his Sunday Angelus for a third week in a row.

The pontiff, 88, is in a stable condition after a breathing crisis on Friday that caused him to vomit. He was admitted to Rome’s Gemelli hospital on 14 February and was diagnosed with a respiratory tract infection and pneumonia in both lungs.

“I would like to thank you for the prayers,” Francis said in a message shared on his X account. “I feel all your affection and closeness and … I feel as if I am ‘carried’ and supported by all God’s people.”

In a separate message, he said he was praying “above all for peace”. “From here, war appears even more absurd,” he said. “Let us pray for martyred Ukraine, Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Myanmar, Sudan and Kivu.”

On Sunday morning the Vatican said the pope had rested well overnight. He later met Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state.

The pope had an episode akin to an asthma attack on Friday that caused him to inhale vomit.

In a more positive statement on Saturday, the Vatican said Francis was in a stable condition and had spent long periods off the noninvasive ventilation he initially needed, in a sign that his lung function was improving.

A full medical update was expected later on Sunday.

The pope is prone to lung infections because he developed pleurisy as a young adult and had part of one lung removed while he was training to be a priest in his native Argentina.

Nightly prayer vigils for the pope’s health are continuing to take place at St Peter’s Basilica as well as in towns and cities across Italy and abroad.

Before his hospital admission, the pope maintained an intense schedule, especially with events related to the Catholic jubilee year.

Local government officials in New Orleans, which endured an intentional, deadly truck ramming attack on its most famous street during New Year’s Day celebrations, have not shut down vehicular cross traffic on that street during major events nearly 90 times – evidently failing to fully enact public safety plans that they touted ahead of the gatherings, a Guardian investigation has confirmed.

In many cases, cars and other vehicles were allowed to cross the street for the entire period that the city’s press releases said they would be forbidden from doing so. And during all but a handful of days, officials failed to place any physical barriers that would prevent motorists intending to attack crowds there from turning in either direction on to Bourbon Street, a one-way thoroughfare, leaving pedestrians vulnerable to terrorists for many years.

The findings lend an air of inevitability to the attack carried out on Bourbon Street early on 1 January by a US military veteran and sympathizer of the Islamic State terror group, who drove his rented Ford F150 Lightning pickup into revelers along three blocks of one of the globe’s most festive drags.

Shamsud-Din Jabbar not only managed to kill 14 people and injure nearly 60 more before he crashed into a parked construction vehicle and was shot to death while exchanging gunfire with police. He also exposed a years-long failure to place anti-vehicle barriers along Bourbon Street, giving terrorists a clear path down the street for much longer than most have likely realized.

Those failures persisted even as federal counter-terrorism officials in early December warned local governments about online materials suggesting an increased threat from lone attackers targeting public winter celebrations. Another chilling admonition came in the form of a 20 December vehicle ramming attack at a Christmas market in Germany that killed six people – including a nine-year-old boy – and wounded more than 200 others.

Based on thousands of public, archived and timestamped images from two Bourbon Street web cameras, the Guardian’s new analysis shows New Orleans’ public safety establishment also routinely failed to implement the next outermost line of protection: blocking the approaches to Bourbon Street from sidestreets during special events drawing dense crowds.

The city’s department of homeland security and emergency preparedness has overall responsibility for these events’ security planning. The New Orleans police department (NOPD)’s eighth district – which is headquartered a block off Bourbon Street – is supposed to execute those plans, including the street closures.

Spokespeople for both the office of the incumbent mayor, LaToya Cantrell – who has been in power since 2018 – and the police department declined to respond to emailed questions about the Guardian’s findings. The law enforcement agency cited ongoing litigation.

Though police didn’t specify, city officials are being sued by injured victims as well as families of those slain by Jabbar, who have accused the city of failing to adequately protect New Year’s revelers on the day of the attack.

It was the administration of Cantrell’s mayoral predecessor – Mitch Landrieu – that announced $40m in spending in 2017 to harden Bourbon Street from vehicular attacks such as ones that had victimized crowds in Nice and Berlin. The city’s plan called for placement of various physical barriers – including permanent, movable bollards – along the main commercial stretch of Bourbon Street as well as a protective perimeter one block out at cross streets during special events to prevent vehicles from approaching pedestrians.

But delays pertaining to construction, reports of debris clogs, the Covid-19 pandemic and a failure to provide interim replacement measures meant the central protective portion of the plan to protect Bourbon Street was never fully implemented until after the attack in January.

The closest New Orleans officials came was in early 2020, when bollards located at a minimum of four intersections were used for 15 days in a time period spanning New Year’s, the college football championship at the city’s Superdome, and the peak of the Mardi Gras season.

Activity restrictions aimed at slowing the spread of Covid in 2020 – as well as their crushing effects on tourism – stopped further bollard deployments, and they essentially never restarted, according to the Guardian’s analysis.

In place of bollards, the NOPD usually placed a single, lightweight metal crowd control barrier on the downstream side of Bourbon Street intersections. The upstream sides of the intersections were often not blocked at all.

Meaningless security-related press releases

The years-long lack of protective equipment meant to provide the backbone of the Bourbon Street security plan pushed the final line of defense against attacks outward to the cross street approaches.

In press releases ahead of a half-dozen major special events each year, the city announced mostly overnight cross street closures one block to either side of Bourbon Street, as well as along Bourbon Street itself. In many of the press releases, the city termed this a “hard” or “interior” closure.

“Soft” or “exterior” closures, which were announced at the same time, refer to the city requiring permits for vehicles used by French Quarter residents or people with business to enter from the edges of the neighborhood. Prior to 2017, soft closures were the only type implemented for special events.

After Jabbar’s attack on New Year’s Day, the NOPD claimed it placed police vehicles at perimeter intersections to act as cross street closures. It was a measure not recommended by experts.

And, in any case, surveillance video showed how Jabbar simply drove his truck around the front of a solitary police cruiser stationed at the foot of Bourbon Street to then take aim at people partying among the drag’s bars, clubs, eateries and other establishments.

The Guardian compared 32 street closure-related press releases since July 2018 with thousands of public timestamped images archived from two web cameras at the Cat’s Meow karaoke bar at the corner of Bourbon and St Peter streets. Since the press releases called for all sidestreets to be closed and opened simultaneously, St Peter Street served as an effective proxy to gauge the other sidestreets.

Private vehicles were seen crossing Bourbon Street along St Peter during the closure times on 88 of 121 days – or about 73% of the time. Nineteen other days could not be analyzed because of low-quality image data or lack of publicized closure times.

On 61 days, over half the time, private vehicles crossed Bourbon Street more than an hour after the publicized closing time, an hour before the publicized opening time, or both.

On 39 days, cars and trucks were observed crossing Bourbon Street at times so different from the scheduled times – three hours or more – as to render the press releases meaningless.

Thirty of the 39 days with at least three-hour discrepancies between their announced and actual closure hours fell during only two events over the years: Mardi Gras and French Quarter Fest, typically held in April.

In 2020, the city made a major change to its publicized Carnival security plan. The “interior” closure of Bourbon Street and its sidestreets for the last long weekend of Mardi Gras was changed from just overnight to around the clock. The around-the-clock closure announcements have been standard every year since, except when New Orleans canceled Mardi Gras in 2021 as part of its response to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

But nothing changed in practice. Images from the St Peter Street cameras showed that traffic flowed along and across Bourbon Street during the daytime – through thousands of Mardi Gras revelers – just as it had until 2019. The NOPD only shut down Bourbon Street cross traffic on overnights, contradicting the Cantrell administration’s announced plans for the last four Carnival seasons held.

City ordinances allow daytime deliveries between 6am and 4pm to the many Bourbon Street bars and restaurants, accounting for a fraction of the traffic. But the cameras showed far more: private cars, non-delivery trucks and all sorts of motorized vehicles passed through the intersection along both streets – and the crowds on them – without limit prior to the eventual late afternoon closures.

Aerial images in 2024 of Lundi Gras (the second-to-last day of the Carnival season), stored on the city property tax assessor’s website confirmed the full extent of the failure to enforce the publicized plans. The overhead photos taken in mid-afternoon showed dozens of cars and trucks rolling through throngs of revelers along Bourbon Street and all eight cross streets that were supposed to be blocked off.

For the first time in many years, the city’s press release for the Carnival season culminating with Mardi Gras on Tuesday, 4 March 2025, makes no mention of specific times for street closures. It says only that there will be an interior closure of Bourbon Street, “implemented at the discretion” of the NOPD’s eighth district commander “based on pedestrian traffic flow”.

French Quarter Fest revelers also unguarded

Visitors during the extended weekend of French Quarter Fest have also unknowingly been left unguarded. The festival stages music performances across the French Quarter neighborhood surrounding Bourbon Street, including along the street itself during the daytime.

For three of the four years since 2019 that the festival has been held (it shut down due to the pandemic in 2020 and 2021), the city issued press releases claiming a “hard” closure along and around Bourbon Street during the four evenings of the April event. The 2022 city press release left out the Bourbon Street and cross street closures while calling out a roster of other standard precautions.

But there were apparently no substantial street closures along the sidestreets leading to Bourbon Street during the evenings of the French Quarter Fest in 2019, 2022, 2023 and 2024. The St Peter Street cameras showed steady flows of traffic along the sidestreets across Bourbon Street each year. Even the stationing of police vehicles and officers at the corner of St Peter and Bourbon streets – standard for most other events – was absent in 2022, 2023 and 2024.

The danger to pedestrians was clear. While most of the performances on the stages set up along Bourbon Street itself were over by 5pm, other festival performances elsewhere in the French Quarter continued well into the evening. So thousands of festivalgoers walked the streets without the protection promised by the city.

The Guardian asked Emily Madero, the president and CEO of French Quarter Festivals Inc, which produces the spring event, about the repeated failures to secure Bourbon Street’s intersections and sidestreets. She said her organization defers to the NOPD “to make all decisions regarding traffic and public safety” and had no further comment.

Bitcoin has recorded its largest monthly loss since June 2022, pushing it into a bear market as the euphoria over cryptocurrencies after Donald Trump’s election win faded.

The price of bitcoin fell by 17.5% in February, the biggest monthly drop since June 2022, and its 11th worst month in the last decade, as negative sentiment gripped financial markets.

The world’s largest crypto asset ended February at about $84,252 (£67,010), having hit a three-month low of about $78,273 during trading on Friday.

Bitcoin has now dropped more than 20% below the record high of $109,071 set in mid-January, which puts it into a technical bear market.

Bitcoin weakened amid rising volatility in the financial markets, blamed on fears of a global trade war as Donald Trump vowed to impose new tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico and China this week.

Having been driven upward by the “Trump trade” that fuelled markets after last November’s election, crypto stumbled as stocks on Wall Street, and the US dollar, also weakened during February.

Cryptocurrencies surged after Trump’s election win, driven by speculation that the White House would take a pro-crypto approach, and could create a bitcoin strategic reserve.

However, that optimism has faded, as traders wait for a clear pro-crypto regulatory framework from the Trump administration. Sentiment was also hurt by a cyber-attack on the Bybit exchange in which $1.5bn of digital assets were stolen in February.

Susannah Streeter, the head of money and markets at Hargreaves Lansdown, said the crypto market continued to be battered by a wave of negative sentiment.

“The bears have been prowling around the crypto market, with crypto dropping 20% from its recent peak.”

Streeter added: “Donald Trump’s aggressive trade approach has sparked concerns with investors hurtling away from riskier assets, and the huge hack of the Bybit exchange in Dubai has also rattled sentiment. Without any firm moves from Trump to show his support for the crypto sector, nervousness looks set to continue.”

Bitcoin has recovered from sharp monthly falls in the past. In June 2022, its worst month, it dropped 41% from $31,700 to $18,700, before jumping by 26% in July.

China’s manufacturing activity expanded at the fastest pace in three months in February, despite the looming threat that Donald Trump will impose tariffs this week.

Production at China’s factories returned to growth last month, an official survey showed, thanks to higher new orders and purchase volumes.

Beijing’s official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index rose to 50.2 for February, up from 49.1 in January, the National Bureau of Statistics reported, above the 50-point mark showing stagnation.

National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) statistician Zhao Qinghe said the PMI data in February was helped by factories resuming production after the Spring festival holiday, when many shut down temporarily.

China officials are expected to discuss the state of the economy when they meet in Beijing for an annual parliamentary meeting on Tuesday, the day when Trump has said an extra 10% tariff on Chinese imports will begin.

Those tariffs could dent demand for Chinese goods in America, and might lead China to direct unwanted goods to Europe instead, potentially pushing down European inflation and hurting Europe’s manufacturers.

Zhiwei Zhang, chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management, said it remained to be seen “how much will the US raise tariffs next week, [and] how damaging will it be for China’s export orders”.

The damage caused by Donald Trump to the United States’ reputation is creating opportunities for China, particularly with regards to Taiwan, according to a retired senior colonel from China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

Speaking to the Guardian in Beijing, Zhou Bo said that Trump was damaging the US’s reputation “more than all of his predecessors combined”.

“By the end of his second term, I believe America’s global image will simply become more tarnished, its international standing will just go down further,” Zhou said. The people of Taiwan “know that America is going down”, which “might affect their mentality” with regards to China.

In 2024, Trump said Taiwan should pay the US for help to defend itself, despite the fact that the self-governing island already spends billions of dollars on arms from the US. Taiwan is reportedly considering purchasing a further $7-10bn worth of weapons this year, as the Taiwanese government explores a range of options for currying favour with the Trump administration.

“How confident would the Taiwanese be with the United States, especially with the Trump administration?” Zhou said. “Maybe the Taiwanese will one day consider, ‘Well, we cannot move away anyway. We will have to stay here. Maybe it’s not bad for us to be a member of the strongest nation on earth.”

Zhou retired as a senior colonel in 2020, having served more than 40 years in the PLA and in the ministry of defence. Now a senior fellow at the Centre for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University, he is a frequent commentator on China’s foreign affairs. “Should the World Fear China?”, published on 27 March, is a collection of Zhou’s essays written between 2013 and 2024, addressing themes such as managing US-China relations and China’s view on safeguarding its own interests.

One of the most pressing issues in the US-China relationship is the question of Taiwan. Beijing regards the self-governing island as part of its territory and has vowed to unify it with China, refusing to rule out the use of force. In 2024, Taiwan elected the pro-sovereignty Democratic Progressive party into power for the third consecutive term. Nearly 70% of people in Taiwan identify as being Taiwanese rather than Chinese, with the share rising to 85% among under-35s, according to Pew Research.

The US does not formally recognise Taiwan but is its largest security backer. Trump’s position on Taiwan has been unclear. Despite suggesting that the US’s support of Taiwan may have a price, he is surrounded by China hawks who are strongly opposed to China’s claims on Taiwan. Earlier this month the state department removed a line from its fact sheet on Taiwan that stated: “We do not support Taiwan independence”, a move which was condemned by Beijing.

Zhou said the fate of Taiwan was not just up to the Taiwanese people. China’s population of 1.4 billion dwarfs Taiwan’s 23 million. “We can just not only think about what the Taiwanese think about it. We have to think about what mainlanders think about it.”

‘China is definitely indispensable’

Despite tensions over Taiwan, Zhou sees Trump as overall being “rather friendly” towards China, noting that the tariffs on Chinese imports announced in Trump’s first days in office were much lower than the 60% he had threatened.

In recent weeks, Trump’s comments on China have been relatively muted, in part because the US has been preoccupied with Ukraine – an issue which exploded in spectacular fashion when Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenksyy clashed in the Oval Office on Friday. .

In the early days of the war in Ukraine, western leaders leaned on China’s president, Xi Jinping, to use his influence in Russia to help end the conflict. But China has been an economic lifeline to Russia, enabling the continuation of the war. On 24 February – the third anniversary of the Ukraine invasion – Russian president Vladimir Putin spoke on a video call with Xi. The Chinese leader described China-Russia relations as “strong” and “unique” and “not affected by any third party”, according to a Chinese readout.

“The US really holds the key to resolving this issue,” Zhou said, rejecting the suggestion that China was becoming irrelevant in the peace talks. “China is definitely indispensable … China’s role will be there when it comes to the time of a ceasefire or armistice.”

Zhou said China might decide to send peacekeepers to Ukraine, along with other non-Nato European countries and countries from the global south, as peacekeepers from Nato countries would be viewed by Russia as “wolves in sheep’s clothing”. China is the second-largest contributor to the UN’s peacekeeping budget, after the US.

A widely held view in China’s academic and policy circles is that China has received too much criticism for its relationship with Russia. The two countries share a 4,200km border that was only fully agreed by both sides in 2003. Beijing is the more powerful partner in the relationship, but it has to balance Moscow’s interests too, the argument goes. The China-Russia relationship “is strong, but short of an alliance”, Zhou said. “I describe it as two lines in parallel. That means no matter how close they are, they won’t overlap.”

Younger adults are increasingly overwhelmed by in-person interaction and soothing themselves instead with sensory online content, according to a report on the wildly popular online content known as ASMR.

ASMR – autonomous sensory meridian response – describes a particular sensory phenomenon that is triggered by specific sights or sounds, which usually begins with a tingling sensation across the scalp and results in feelings of deep calm and relaxation.

Platforms such as YouTube and TikTok are crammed with thousands of these visceral videos, in which ASMR creators play with squishy slime, role-play braiding the viewer’s hair, whisper loving affirmations or paint the camera lens with spit, all aimed at stimulating these “tingles”.

Now the award-winning behavioural insights agency Revealing Reality has published a landmark report on the phenomenon, interviewing viewers and creators of ASMR content and analysing thousands of videos based on common triggers – such as exaggerated whispering, breathing and mouth sounds, tapping and crinkling sounds, gentle or fluttering hand movements – which many people use to help them unwind and sleep.

But the researchers note their “shock” at the “significantly higher” rates of younger people who said they found face-to-face interaction and noisy public places overstimulating, and question what the growing appeal of ASMR videos for this cohort reveals about their ability to navigate the messy unpredictability of offline life.

In a survey of more than 2,000 adults, Revealing Reality found a close correlation between age and sensitivity to both social and sensory stimuli: younger adults, aged 18-44, are more likely to find the world overstimulating, to want to shield themselves from external noise and face-to-face interactions as well as reporting greater enjoyment of ASMR.

In some cases, the age differences were pronounced:

• 47% of those aged 25-34 said they felt overwhelmed in noisy or busy places such as shopping centres or train stations, compared with 35% of those aged 55-64.

• 39% of those aged 18-24 felt the need to shut out noise, for example using noise-cancelling headphones in public, compared with only 21% of those age 45-54.

• Younger age groups were also more likely to prefer chatting to people online rather than face to face and to prefer to work alone rather than around other people.

The research comes as audiologists raise concerns about an increase in young people referred to them with auditory processing problems, which may be linked to the overuse of noise-cancelling headphones.

But with data from the UK and the US showing that, compared with previous generations, young people are spending less time out in the world and experiencing more anxiety, the report also questions the impact on those who “shun the messy unpredictability of in-person interaction and try to meet all their human needs through a screen”.

In detailed interviews, users of ASMR content explain the comfort and pleasure they take from it: the “visceral calming” and “escapism”, from a world that is “too much”, and where even a stranger appearing to give you their full attention is “a luxury experience”.

But the researchers question whether ASMR is “like digital soma” for “increasing numbers of young people seeking to meet their natural wish for comfort and connection, for tactile experiences and messy play, for intimacy and attention” through these “synthetic” experiences.

“What if we forget that sometimes it’s good for us to do things that feel hard? What if, in shying away from the messiness of embodied human interactions, we miss out on things we need as individuals and as a species – pheromones, non-verbal communication, adaptability, emotional growth.”

Likewise, they question whether life really is more overwhelming than it used to be, or whether by “opting out of its more abrasive aspects” people are reducing their ability to deal with them.

Jenny Radesky, an associate professor at the University of Michigan and expert in the interaction of technology and child development, said the report offered an opportunity to reflect on how young people built resilience. “If life feels overwhelming then ASMR is an easy, fast, accessible resource that calms them down without having to do the work demanded, for example, by practising breathing exercises or mindfulness.”

The difficulty was that ASMR calmed but did not necessarily enable young adults to reconnect with the wider world, she added. “Learning skills to apply at other times in your life is not usually an explicit part of ASMR. If you’re dependent on this content and you always need to access it to feel better, that is a problem for developing those skills independently. We need other options in young people’s real world, their social and physical context, so that there is more potential to learn resilience.”