Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) will pause shipments of its UK-made cars to the US for a month as it considers how to mitigate the cost of Donald Trump’s tariffs.

The 25% tariff imposed by the US on imported cars and light trucks took effect on 3 April.

A JLR spokesperson said: “The USA is an important market for JLR’s luxury brands. As we work to address the new trading terms with our business partners, we are enacting our short-term actions including a shipment pause in April, as we develop our mid to longer-term plans.”

JLR, which is owned by India’s Tata Motors, is one of Britain’s biggest producers, selling 400,000 Range Rover Sports, Defenders and other models annually.

Exports to the US account for almost a quarter of those sales and JLR is at the centre of Britain’s car industry, accounting for £1 in every £8 of the country’s exports.

The Sunday Times reported that JLR is thought to have a couple of months’ supply of cars already in the US, which will not be subject to the new tariffs. Shipping vehicles across the Atlantic takes about 21 days.

A pause in shipments will add to fears over the impact of tariffs on Britain’s car industry, which employs about 200,000 people in manufacturing.

The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) thinktank has said more than 25,000 direct jobs in the car manufacturing industry could be at risk as exports to the US are predicted to fall.

The US is the second biggest importer of British-made cars after the European Union, with nearly a 20% share, data from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) shows.

On Wednesday, Trump announced tariffs on other goods from countries across the globe, upending global trade.

The FTSE 100 plummeted on Friday in its worst day since the Covid pandemic.

Britain has said it is focused on trying to secure a trade deal with Washington.

Keir Starmer is expected to spend the weekend speaking to foreign leaders about the tariffs, after calls with the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, and the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, on Friday in which the leaders agreed that an all-out trade war would be “extremely damaging”.

After the announcement of the tariffs, Mike Hawes, the SMMT chief executive, said: “The announced imposition of a 10% tariff on all UK products exported to the US, whilst less than other major economies, is another deeply disappointing and potentially damaging measure.

“Our cars were already set to attract a punitive 25% tariff overnight and other automotive products are now set to be impacted immediately.

“While we hope a deal between the UK and US can still be negotiated, this is yet another challenge to a sector already facing multiple headwinds.”

Donald Trump’s 10% tariff on all imports from many countries, including the UK, has come into force after 48 hours of turmoil.

US customs agents began collecting the unilateral tariff at US seaports, airports and customs warehouses at 12.01am ET (04:01 GMT), with higher levies on goods from 57 larger trading partners due to start next week – including from the EU, which will be hit with a 20% rate.

Keir Starmer was expected to spend the weekend speaking to foreign leaders about the tariffs, after calls with the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, and the Italian PM, Giorgia Meloni, on Friday in which the leaders agreed that an “all-out trade war would be extremely damaging”.

Starmer was “clear the UK’s response will be guided by the national interest” and officials would “calmly continue with our preparatory work, rather than rush to retaliate”, a No 10 spokesperson said.

Up until now, UK ministers have avoided voicing any criticism of Trump as they sought to secure a trade agreement with the US – hoping for some exemption from the tariffs. However, the UK government has drawn up a list of products that could be hit in retaliation, and was consulting with businesses on how any countermeasures could affect them.

Ralph Goodale, the high commissioner for Canada in the UK, told BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme that the US needed to “feel the pain” and Canada would stand firm.

He said: “The action taken by the US government is completely illogical. It will damage the United States itself. It will raise costs in the United States. It will eliminate jobs in the United States, it will reduce growth in the United States and we have to make it abundantly clear not just that that is going to happen rhetorically, but the US has to feel the pain, because ultimately it will be Americans who will persuade their government to stop this foolishness.”

Trump’s announcement of the tariffs on Wednesday shook global stock markets to their core, wiping out $5tn in stock market value for S&P 500 companies by Friday’s close, a record two-day decline. The prices of oil and commodities plunged, as investors fled to the safety of government bonds.

“This is the single biggest trade action of our lifetime,” said Kelly Ann Shaw, a trade lawyer at Hogan Lovells and former White House trade adviser during Trump’s first term.

While speaking at a Brookings Institution event on Thursday, Shaw said she expected that over time the tariffs would evolve as countries started negotiating lower rates for themselves, but she called the change “huge”.

Shaw said: “This is a pretty seismic and significant shift in the way that we trade with every country on Earth.”

Australia, the UK, Colombia, Argentina, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are among countries initially hit with the 10% tariff.

At 12.01 ET on Wednesday, Trump’s higher “reciprocal” tariff rates of 11% to 50% are due to take effect. EU imports will face a 20% tariff, while Chinese goods will be hit with a 34% tariff, bringing Trump’s total new levies on China to 54%.

Canada and Mexico were exempt from Trump’s latest duties because they are still subject to a 25% tariff related to the US fentanyl crisis for goods that do not comply with the US-Mexico-Canada rules of origin.

Reuters contributed to this report

Donald Trump’s vast overhaul of US trade policy this week has called time on an era of globalization, alarming people, governments and investors around the world. No one should have been surprised, the US president said.

The announcement of 10% to 50% tariffs on US trading partners tanked stock markets after Trump unveiled a “declaration of economic independence” so drastic it drew comparison with Britain’s exit from the European Union – Brexit.

But Trump, who won re-election promising that tariffs would make America great again, has advocated for the return of widespread tariffs with “great consistency” for decades. “I’ve been talking about it for 40 years,” he noted in the White House Rose Garden.

Many businesses, economists and politicians believe Trump’s trade plan is wrongheaded, flawed and risky. Some have even suggested it might have been written by ChatGPT. But he is unquestionably right when it comes to the number of decades he has argued for it.

“This is so unusual for Trump. He’s a conventional politician in one way: he doesn’t believe in much deeply,” Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. Tariffs are different. “This one thing, he seems to deeply believe in.”

As far back as 1987, when a fame-hungry real estate tycoon took out full-page ads in newspapers, the now president called for such a strategy. Other major economies are the “greatest profit machines ever created”, he argued way back when. “‘Tax’ these wealthy nations, not America.”

Eight years after the start of his first term and just 10 weeks into his second, he has finally set about seriously delivering that dream – and cast aside warnings it may deteriorate into a nightmare.

On the campaign trail last year, Trump made no secret of his vision: tariffs would unshackle the US economy, he promised, revitalize its industrial heartlands and unlock a gigantic financial windfall for the federal government.

But after pitching this big, beautiful and bold reconstruction of the global economic order, the early actions of the second Trump administration were strikingly smaller, messier and altogether more hesitant than trailed.

The focus, at first, narrowed dramatically from the world to just a handful of nations: China, Canada and Mexico. While China was hit hard, sweeping tariffs on Canada and Mexico were interrupted by a dizzying array of deadlines, delays and dispensations.

Tariffs were increased on steel and aluminum. But Trump’s trade agenda was largely characterized by threats and spats: rhetoric, but not reality.

On Wednesday, dubbed “liberation day” by Trump and his aides, he did his best to draw a sharp line under weeks of wavering, doubt and confusion – and imposed the universal and “reciprocal” tariffs he pledged so many times to introduce while fighting to regain the White House.

Defying the stark forecasts and concerns of mainstream economists and corporations, Trump went with his gut. “That was true of the Brexiteers, was it not? They really believed it deeply from the core of their souls,” said Sabato.

At one point during his address, Trump switched from president to historian. “In 1913, for reasons unknown to mankind, they established the income tax,” he said, setting the stage for a sharp reduction in tariffs on foreign goods. “Citizens, rather than foreign countries, would start paying the money necessary to run our government.”

Decades of US prosperity “came to a very abrupt end” with the Great Depression from 1929, Professor Trump opined before his class of aides, cabinet secretaries and supporters. “It would have never happened if they had stayed with the tariff policy,” he claimed. “It would have been a much different story.”

Actual historians took issue with this account. “It’s what we would call a lie. False. Not true,” said Andrew Cohen, professor of history in the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. “He’s wrong. No one thinks that. Even conservative economists don’t think that. Even protectionist economists don’t think that.”

Months into the depression, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 – which hiked tariffs on hundreds of imports in a bid to boost the US economy – is widely considered to have prolonged, and even deepened, the crisis. No other president has tried the same tactic again – until now.

The swift rebuttal to Trump’s analysis of the past was surpassed only by the response to his ambitious predictions for the future.

The president has promised a new Golden Age, with millions of new jobs, billions more dollars’ worth of US exports and trillions of dollars in tariff revenues. Outside his administration, skepticism is high.

“The Trump tariffs mark a liberation from the benefits of free trade for American businesses and consumers,” said Eswar Prasad, professor of trade policy at Cornell University, and a former official at the International Monetary Fund. “Trump has taken the hatchet to trade with practically every major US trading partner, sparing few allies or rivals,” he added, with action that will be “severely disruptive to the US economy, with the effects felt by American consumers and businesses in practically every industry”.

Who pays the price? The rest of the world, according to the president and his aides. But import tariffs are paid by the companies and consumers that import the goods from the rest of the world – in this case, US companies and consumers – rather than the overseas companies exporting them.

Trump’s tariffs will increase the average US household’s costs by $3,800, according to the Yale Budget Lab.

“These tariff increases are likely to be some of the biggest tax increases in US history and will result (if fully implemented) in some of the highest tariff rates the US has ever seen,” wrote Jeremy Horpedahl, adjunct scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute, who noted that they could exceed the post-Smoot-Hawley levels of 1930.

“Like all tariffs, some large portion of these new levies will be paid by US consumers and businesses in the form of higher prices,” added Horpedahl.

If Trump is right, and his decades-old dream revives the world’s largest economy, enriching its citizens and transforming its industrial base into a manufacturing powerhouse, his administration will be one of the most successful in modern memory.

But if he’s wrong, the very Americans who elected him to rapidly bring down the cost of living are likely to be hit hardest.

“It’s either going to be Trump and his team or it’s going to be a large majority of experienced mainstream economists,” said Sabato. “I know where my bet is.”

Mobile phone footage of the last moments of some of the 15 Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers killed by Israeli forces in an incident in Gaza last month appears to contradict the version of events put forward by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

The almost seven-minute video, which the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said on Saturday was recovered from the phone of Rifat Radwan, one of the men killed, appears to have been filmed from inside a moving vehicle. It shows a red fire engine and clearly marked ambulances driving at night, using headlights and flashing emergency lights.

The vehicle stops beside another that has driven off the road. Two men get out to examine the stopped vehicle, and then gunfire erupts before the screen goes black.

The Israeli military has said its soldiers “did not randomly attack” any ambulances, insisting they fired on “terrorists” approaching them in “suspicious vehicles”.

Lt Col Nadav Shoshani, a military spokesperson, said troops opened fire on vehicles that had no prior clearance to enter the area, and were driving with their lights off.

The IDF said on Saturday that the incident was still under investigation and that “all claims, including the documentation circulated about the incident, will be thoroughly and deeply examined to understand the sequence of events and the handling of the situation”.

Fifteen Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers, including at least one UN employee, were killed in the incident in Rafah on 23 March, in which the UN says Israeli forces shot the men “one by one” and then buried them in a mass grave.

According to the UN humanitarian affairs office (Ocha), the PRCS and civil defence workers were on a mission to rescue colleagues who had been shot at earlier in the day, when their clearly marked vehicles came under heavy Israeli fire in Rafah’s Tel al-Sultan district. A Red Crescent official in Gaza said there was evidence of at least one person being detained and killed, as the body of one of the dead had been found with his hands tied.

The shootings happened one day into the renewed Israeli offensive in the area close to the Egyptian border after the breakdown of a two-month ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Another Red Crescent worker on the mission is still reported missing.

Gaza is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a civilian now that Israeli forces have resumed their military campaign with even more ferocity, but for the first responders who rush towards the wreckage of bombed buildings, the risks are multiplied many times over.

The 15 paramedics and rescue workers whose bodies were found last weekend in a bulldozed pit outside Rafah knew they were putting their lives in peril to try to save others, but they could not have been prepared for what awaited them in the early hours of 23 March.

Saleh Moamer, a 45-year-old Red Crescent ambulance officer and paramedic, had already come close to death twice, his brother, Bilal, recalled. Earlier in the war Saleh was assigned to transport patients between hospitals when his vehicle came under Israeli army fire. The driver was killed instantly and a bullet lodged in Saleh’s chest near his heart. Administering first aid on himself he slid below his seat and steered the vehicle out of the line of fire by following directions given over the radio by his colleagues.

Saleh spent three months in hospital then returned to work. Not long after, on a rescue mission near Rafah, his ambulance was shot at again and he was wounded in the right shoulder. He and Bilal talked about how he had used up all his luck and the third time would be fatal. It was half-joke, half deadly serious, and turned out to be prophetic.

“He said that whatever was intended for him, would happen,” Bilal said.

Before he went out on his night shift on 22 March, Saleh bought bulk quantities of household goods for his wife, their six children, and his brother’s two children who they had been looking after since their father was killed in the conflict.

“He said it would benefit them in the future. It was as if he had a feeling he would not return,” Bilal said.

Saleh joined the Red Crescent during the 2008-09 Israeli invasion of Gaza. He had studied business administration at Al-Azhar University, but his urge to do something immediate to help people amid the turmoil and bloodshed led him to train as a paramedic.

“What kept him going, despite the dangers, was his drive to save innocent lives,” Bilal said, describing his older brother as cheerful and friendly but profoundly dedicated.

“He was deeply passionate about his work and spent most of his time in the ambulance and emergency department,” he said. “When he finished his work in the ambulance, he would head to the vehicle maintenance department at the Red Crescent, fixing any electrical problems. He even formed a team to visit the homes of the injured to check on them. If he had any medicine or medical supplies, he would seek outpatients in need.”

When the dispatch call came early on Sunday 23 March that people had been injured in an airstrike on the Tel al-Sultan area of Rafah, Saleh took an ambulance to the scene. Seeing the extent of the damage he called for more ambulances, collected the wounded he could find and returned to base, according to his brother.

On arriving back he learned that radio contact had been lost with another ambulance also dispatched to the site. That ambulance, which was being driven by Saleh’s colleague, Mustafa Khafaja, had come under intense Israeli fire and by the time he heard they were missing at about 4.30am, Khafaja and his fellow paramedic Ezz alDin Shatt were already dead, according to the third man in the ambulance, Munther Abed, who had survived but was detained by Israeli soldiers. Abed later described them as special forces.

Before dawn, Saleh drove back to the scene and could only see the empty ambulance in an area of sandy dunes in Tel al-Sultan known as Hashashin, Bilal said. He drove back to the ambulance station in al-Mawasi, a few miles up the coast, and organised a rescue convoy of Red Crescent ambulances, a bright red civil defence fire truck and a UN vehicle. In all, 13 paramedics and rescue workers drove to Hashashin to look for their missing colleagues, and that was the last time they were seen alive.

Bound and made to lie on the ground, Abed, the detained paramedic from the first ambulance, saw one rescue vehicle after another ambushed by waiting Israeli forces. Later he saw a military digger excavate a pit and the vehicles being thrown in before a bulldozer covered it over.

The families of the missing first responders spent a whole week in agony before receiving the call that bodies had been found. Bilal, his surviving brother and his parents rushed to the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, hoping Saleh would not be among the remains, but that hope was quickly smashed.

“When the bodies arrived, they were wrapped in white shrouds with their names written on them. I was the one who uncovered my brother’s face, and I began to wonder if it was really him,” Bilal said. The bodies had been in the ground for a week. They confirmed it was Saleh by the ring on his finger.

“There were marks from restraints on Saleh’s wrists where the Israeli army had bound him. His fingers were also broken,” he said. Two other witnesses have told the Guardian that some of the victims had had their hands or feet bound.

Israel’s military has said its “initial assessment” of the incident found that its troops had opened fire on several vehicles “advancing suspiciously toward IDF troops without headlights or emergency signals”, and has claimed, so far without evidence, that Hamas fighters and other militants had been using the ambulances for cover.

For Bilal, the Israeli claim that the ambulances were carrying terrorists, was a further insult. “These paramedics were providing humanitarian services. They did not pose any threat or carry weapons. What was their crime for them to be killed like this?” he asked.

Among the other families who dashed to the morgue at Nasser hospital was a 63-year-old father, Sobhi Bahloul, searching for his son, Mohammad, a volunteer Red Crescent paramedic.

Finding his body, Sobhi said he went into shock and could not cry. “Perhaps I wasn’t fully conscious of what was happening,” he said. “[The dead] were still in their uniforms, covered in blood and dirt. I was able to recognise Mohammad’s features with difficulty. I moved closer until my face was right in front of his, and only then was I certain it was him. Then we pulled his ID from his trouser pocket.”

Sobhi said: “The gunshot wounds were clear – shots to the chest and his wrist. It looked like he had raised his hand to shield himself, and the bullets went through his hand into his chest and out of his back. There were more than four bullets, all in the chest and heart area. I believe he died instantly.”

Like Saleh, Mohammad was passionate about his work as a paramedic. He graduated from Al-Azhar University with a degree in nursing, then took a series of intensive courses, obtained an ambulance driving licence, trained as a paramedic, and had continued studies in health administration at Al-Quds Open University. He had been volunteering since 2018 and had hoped it would become a paid job, but the absence of a salary did not dim his commitment.

“We hardly saw him at home,” his father recalled. “He was constantly at the hospital, with the ambulance teams. He was courageous and proactive, never waiting for instructions – always taking the initiative.”

“I raised my children to love goodness and to do good deeds,” Sobhi said. “We had a principle in our home: do good without expecting thanks or praise. Mohammad lived by this principle.

“We never expected this to happen – not even in our worst nightmares,” Sobhi added. “They went to save lives, only to become victims themselves.”

Left-leaning organizations say that more than 500,000 people are expected to take to the streets to protest in Washington DC, Florida and elsewhere around the country on Saturday to oppose Donald Trump’s “authoritarian overreach and billionaire-backed agenda”.

MoveOn, one of the organizations planning the day of protest they’re calling Hands Off along with dozens of labor, environmental and other progressive groups, said that more than 1,000 protests are planned across the US, including at state capitols.

“This is shaping up to be the biggest single-day protest in the last several years of American history,” Ezra Levin, a founder of Indivisible, one of the groups planning the event, said on a recent organizing call.

The largest event is expected to be on the National Mall in Washington DC, where members of Congress, including the Democrats Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Maxwell Frost of Florida and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, are scheduled to speak to crowds.

“This is a nationwide mobilization to stop the most brazen power grab in modern history,” says the website for the protest. “Trump, Musk, and their billionaire cronies are orchestrating an all-out assault on our government, our economy, and our basic rights – enabled by Congress every step of the way.

“They want to strip America for parts – shuttering social security offices, firing essential workers, eliminating consumer protections, and gutting Medicaid – all to bankroll their billionaire tax scam. They’re handing over our tax dollars, our public services, and our democracy to the ultra-rich. If we don’t fight now, there won’t be anything left to save.”

The protests come after the stock market plummeted this week following Trump’s 1 April announcement of tariffs. Despite the economic fallout, Trump said on Friday: “My policies will never change.”

Trump’s approval rating this week fell to 43%, his lowest since taking office, according to a Reuters poll.

After Trump was first elected to the White House in 2016, at least 470,000 people – three times the size of the crowd at Trump’s inauguration – joined the Women’s March protest in Washington DC, and millions more rallied around the country, making it the largest single-day protest in US history.

Barack Obama has called on US citizens, colleges and law firms to resist Donald Trump’s political agenda – and warned Americans to prepare to “possibly sacrifice” in support of democratic values.

“It has been easy during most of our lifetimes to say you are a progressive or say you are for social justice or say you’re for free speech and not have to pay a price for it,” Obama said during a speech at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, on Thursday.

The two-term former Democratic president painted a picture of the Trump White House looking to upend the international order created after the second world war – and a domestic political reconfiguration in which ideological disagreement falling within mutual respect for free speech and the rule of law being eroded.

“It is up to all of us to fix this,” Obama said, including “the citizen, the ordinary person who says, ‘No, that’s not right.’”

Obama said he disagreed with some of the president’s economic policies, including widespread new tariffs. But the former president said he is “more deeply concerned with a federal government that threatens universities if they don’t give up students who are exercising their right to free speech”.

That referred to decisions by the Trump administration to pull federal funding for top universities unless they agreed to abandon student diversity programs and implement guidelines on what it considered to be the line between legitimate protest in support of Palestine and antisemitism.

Obama also said schools and students should review campus environments around issues of academic freedom and to be prepared to lose government funding in their defense.

“If you are a university, you may have to figure out, ‘Are we, in fact, doing things right?’” he said during the conversation at Hamilton College. “Have we in fact violated our own values, our own code, violated the law in some fashion?

“If not, and you’re just being intimidated, well, you should be able to say, ‘That’s why we got this big endowment.’”

Columbia University, in New York, has become the centerpiece of administration efforts to crack down via federal funding on what it contends were campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war that strayed into antisemitism.

Federal immigration agents have arrested and sought to deport one graduate student that they claimed he violated immigration rules by engaging in pro-Palestine demonstrations. Another student sued after immigration agents tried to arrest and deport her after she also engaged in such demonstrations.

The university agreed to make policy changes, including hiring security officers with arrest powers and banning protests in academic buildings, after the Trump administration stripped it of $400m in federal grants. The administration says it may now reinstate the money.

Harvard, Princeton University and other institutions are also under federal funding review over their policies on the issue.

“Now we’re at one of those moments where, you know what? It’s not enough just to say you’re for something; you may actually have to do something,” Obama said.

The former president went on to question deals between corporate law firms and the administration after they were hit by executive orders over their connection to attorneys involved in prosecution efforts against Trump during Joe Biden’s presidency – or for representing the current administration’s political opponents.

“It’s unimaginable that the same parties that are silent now would have tolerated behavior like that from me or a whole bunch of my predecessors,” Obama said, going on to question a decision by the White House to restrict access of the Associated Press to official events over the news agency’s decision to reject Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

About 40 Youth Demand protesters were told to move on by the police during a pro-Palestinian rally in central London on Saturday.

The campaigners began gathering at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on Saturday morning and made their way to King’s Cross station.

The action is part of Youth Demand’s plans for demonstrations every Tuesday and Saturday in April. Some protesters held banners which read “Stop arming Israel” while others let off green flares before being moved along by the Metropolitan police.

Youth Demand said its supporters divided into two groups and, at about 12.15pm, a group of 40 people blocked traffic on Euston Road near King’s Cross.

The Met issued the protesters with a warning under section seven of the Public Order Act, Youth Demand said, and the group moved on after 10 minutes. No arrests were made, according to Scotland Yard.

A Met spokesperson previously said: “Youth Demand have stated an intention to ‘shut down’ London over the month of April using tactics including ‘swarming’ and road blocks.

“While we absolutely recognise the importance of the right to protest, we have a responsibility to intervene to prevent activity that crosses the line from protest into serious disruption and other criminality.”

Last Thursday, six people from Youth Demand were arrested at a Quaker House meeting on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance. More than 20 uniformed police, some equipped with Tasers, forced their way into the Westminster meeting house.

However, Youth Demand said the publicity surrounding the raid had had the effect of increasing awareness of their activities, and has resulted in a large number of people signing up to join.

About 40 Youth Demand protesters were told to move on by the police during a pro-Palestinian rally in central London on Saturday.

The campaigners began gathering at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on Saturday morning and made their way to King’s Cross station.

The action is part of Youth Demand’s plans for demonstrations every Tuesday and Saturday in April. Some protesters held banners which read “Stop arming Israel” while others let off green flares before being moved along by the Metropolitan police.

Youth Demand said its supporters divided into two groups and, at about 12.15pm, a group of 40 people blocked traffic on Euston Road near King’s Cross.

The Met issued the protesters with a warning under section seven of the Public Order Act, Youth Demand said, and the group moved on after 10 minutes. No arrests were made, according to Scotland Yard.

A Met spokesperson previously said: “Youth Demand have stated an intention to ‘shut down’ London over the month of April using tactics including ‘swarming’ and road blocks.

“While we absolutely recognise the importance of the right to protest, we have a responsibility to intervene to prevent activity that crosses the line from protest into serious disruption and other criminality.”

Last Thursday, six people from Youth Demand were arrested at a Quaker House meeting on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance. More than 20 uniformed police, some equipped with Tasers, forced their way into the Westminster meeting house.

However, Youth Demand said the publicity surrounding the raid had had the effect of increasing awareness of their activities, and has resulted in a large number of people signing up to join.

The appearance of the vivid-green powder elicits smiles and appreciative sounds, and anticipation among dozens of tea lovers. Their hand-milled batches now ready for whisking with hot water, they will soon be rewarded for their patience.

The foreign tourists attending a matcha-making experience in Uji, near Kyoto in western Japan, are united in their love of the powdered, bitter form of green tea the Japanese have been drinking for centuries, and which is now at the centre of a global boom.

Made from the leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant and originally served, in highly stylised fashion, at formal tea ceremonies by masters of sado – the way of tea – matcha is the flavour profile of the times, the must-have ingredient in everything from lattes and chocolates to ice-cream and boiled sweets.

After the lean years of the Covid-19 pandemic, businesses in Uji, a town known for deep historical ties to the matcha trade, are cashing in.

Buoyed up by record levels of tourism to Japan, restaurants take the matcha theme to its culinary extreme: gyoza and takoyaki drizzled in matcha-infused dressing, and bowls of “stamina” ramen topped with the chlorophyll-rich green stuff. Every cafe is packed on an overcast, drizzly afternoon, as are the family-run shops doing a roaring trade in packets of locally produced tea, colourfully decorated containers and matcha-themed confectionery.

At Chazuna, a park and museum devoted to the town’s tea culture, matcha workshops are fully booked for the next fortnight. Of the 60 people a day who come to make, and then drink, their own tea, about 90% are from overseas.

“We opened in 2021 and for the first two years we didn’t have many visitors,” says Chazuna’s director, Naoto Sakayori. “Then everything changed in March last year and, since August, interest has rocketed. It’s all about matcha, matcha. People think that if they come to Kyoto on holiday, then they absolutely have to come here for a matcha experience. And then everyone posts their photos and videos online.”

Stephen Blackburn, a tourist from New York, was among the first to ride the matcha wave. “I have more or less stopped drinking coffee and now just drink matcha,” says Blackburn, a former barista who started drinking the Japanese pick-me-up eight years ago. “I like the taste and the way it makes me feel. It’s not like coffee. It doesn’t leave me agitated … it makes me more focused.”

But some visitors to Uji are still not convinced. “To be honest, we don’t really like matcha,” says Henrik Hantel, who is honeymooning in Japan with his wife, Tessa. “We tried it in Germany several times and disliked it, but we thought Japanese matcha might be different … and it’s everywhere here, so we don’t have much choice but to try it in its traditional home. We’re going to give it one more go and hope we won’t be disappointed again.”

However, the global appetite for all things matcha is a double-edged sword. Reports of a shortage emerged last autumn, prompting tea companies in Kyoto to impose unprecedented purchase limits on the powder, which has been consumed in Japan since the 12th century after it was introduced by Buddhist monks from China.

Soaring demand in Europe, the US and Australia has prompted warnings of further shortages this year. While consumption of leaf green tea and matcha is declining in Japan, the rest of the world can’t get enough, with the global market in matcha alone expected to surge from $2.8bn [£2.2bn] in 2023 to about $5bn by 2028.

According to the agriculture ministry, Japan produced 4,176 tonnes of matcha in 2023, almost three times the quantity in 2010. Keen to exploit the growing commercial potential, Japan’s government is reportedly planning subsidies to encourage growers to move away from traditional leaf tea, or sencha, and produce more tencha – tea for grinding – the type of leaf that produces matcha.

Official campaigns to spread the word about matcha have been wildly successful. The tea promotion account on Instagram, run by the Japan Food Product Overseas Promotion Centre, has almost 50,000 followers.

This year’s tea harvest, which will start this month, will replenish the matcha supply, but relief will be temporary. Overseas consumption “reached a record high last year”, Fumi Ueki, chief of the Leaf Brand Group, a department of Ito En, one of Japan’s largest tea companies, told the Japan Times.

Inevitably, social media has been a driver of interest. Matcha content is hard to avoid on TikTok, with users pointing to evidence of the health benefits of regular consumption of antioxidant-rich green tea, whose caffeine levels are slightly lower than those in coffee.

While he has been taken aback by the levels of interest in matcha – Chazuna will soon host large groups of British visitors – Sakayori appreciates its aesthetic, even spiritual, appeal.

“It’s not like drinking coffee or English tea,” he says. “It’s about more than the taste… drinking matcha is an experience.”

The march of the brilliant-green powder continues, winning unlikely converts along the way, including Henrik and Tessa Hantel. “We decided to try matcha along with a dessert and, to be honest, it was the best experience we’ve had so far,” they wrote in an email after speaking to the Observer. “I still don’t think we’ll order it back in Germany but it was a happy way to end our matcha experience in Japan.”

Dietary changes could reduce the pain of endometriosis for half of those living with the disease, a new study suggests. The largest international survey ever conducted on diet and endometriosis, involving 2,599 people, found 45% of those who stopped eating gluten and 45% of those who cut out dairy reported experiencing an improvement in their pain.

When women cut down on coffee or other caffeine in their diet, 43% said their pain was reduced, while 53% of women who cut back on alcohol reported the same.

Philippa Saunders, senior author of the study and professor of reproductive steroids at the University of Edinburgh, said: “It really feels like we are on the cusp of something pretty big with understanding how diet affects endometriosis symptoms.

“It is so important for women if they feel they can do something for themselves to tackle the pain of endometriosis – that is tremendously empowering.”

Endometriosis occurs when cells similar to those in the lining of the womb grow in other parts of the body. It affects one in 10 women of reproductive age in the UK.

However, there is very little research into the causes of the disease or how to treat it – beyond surgery, which is often only a short-term fix, or managing symptoms through hormonal contraceptives like the pill, which many women dislike because of side effects. It takes an average of almost seven years for women to receive a diagnosis of endometriosis due to lack of awareness about the disease.

The new study, led by Edinburgh University and published last week in the American medical Association’s journal JAMA Network Open, asked volunteers about changes to their diet and about dietary supplements used to try to improve their symptoms. Researchers believe that the women who cut out gluten or dairy and reported feeling less pain may have experienced changes in their gut bacteria.

Reducing caffeine may work because it can affect sleep, and pain often feels worse when people are tired. Cutting back on alcoholic drinks is potentially impactful because alcohol has a similar effect on cells to oestrogen – the hormone that fuels endometriosis.

Endometriosis largely causes pain in the pelvic area, which is often worse during periods, but many sufferers report sciatic pain, with others experiencing breast pain or a flu-like joint pain affecting the whole body.

The womb-like tissue of endometriosis is able to grow new nerve cells – the cells that transmit pain sensations – and make existing nerve cells more active. The pain signals this sends to the brain are increased even more by inflammation – an overreaction of the immune system. It is this inflammation that could be tackled by dietary changes, experts believe.

Cutting back on certain foods may reduce bacteria in the gut that powers inflammation. The study found almost 40% of respondents reported reduced pain from endometriosis after cutting out processed food like ready meals, ice-cream and sweets, which are known to alter gut bacteria.

Almost a third of women said their pain improved after cutting out garlic and onion, which could relieve so-called “endo belly” – uncomfortable bloating sufferers can experience.

Experts say people should check with their doctor before making dietary changes. Larger studies, with women randomly assigned to different diets, are still needed to gather compelling evidence on how diet might affect endometriosis, and could include measurements of people’s inflammation and pain.

The Edinburgh study relied on self-reported pain levels and surveyed people from 51 countries, including 1,115 people from the UK.

Francesca Hearn-Yeates, who led the study from the University of Edinburgh, said: “Women are in need of anything that can help with the pain of endometriosis. This condition is so under-researched and there is so much to discover, but there is growing evidence that gut bacteria could play a part in symptoms, and that explains why many women have experimented with changing their diets, and why we have found that this appears to work for many.”

Jo Hanley, specialist adviser for Endometriosis UK, said: “We follow with interest studies on the potential impact and role of diet and nutrition in the management of endometriosis.

“There is a need for more high-quality evidence but I’ve heard many a success story from individuals where dietary changes have led to improved pain, although unfortunately others have reported no improvements.

“An anti-inflammatory diet can help reduce the body’s inflammation response, and anti-inflammatory foods can include fruit, vegetables, beans, chickpeas, wholegrains, nuts, seeds and olive oil, with some fish and poultry.

“Foods that contain refined sugars, carbohydrates, unhealthy fats, dairy, red and processed meats … can create inflammation in the body. I would advise keeping a food and symptom diary, which will help to identify any food triggers that could be flaring symptoms such as constipation and bloating, which make pain worse.”

Ying Cheong, professor of reproductive medicine at the University of Southampton, said: “While these self-reported benefits are promising, further clinical research is needed to confirm the true impact of specific dietary changes.”

Dr Nilufer Rahmioglu, senior research scientist at Nuffield Department of Women’s and Reproductive Health within the University of Oxford, said: ‘This study provides valuable insights into the lived experiences of individuals with endometriosis who have explored dietary modifications and supplements to manage their pain.

“While it cannot assess causality, the findings highlight the need for further rigorous research into these potential non-hormonal strategies.”

Eighteen people, including nine children, have been killed in a Russian missile strike on Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s home city, a Ukrainian official has said.

A further 61 people were injured in the attack on Kryvyi Rih on Friday, including a three-month-old baby and elderly residents, the regional governor, Serhii Lysak, said. Forty remain in hospital, including two children in critical condition and 17 in a serious condition.

“The missile struck an area right next to residential buildings – hitting a playground and ordinary streets,” Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram.

He blamed the daily strikes on Russia’s unwillingness to end the war: “Every missile, every drone strike proves Russia wants only war,” he said, urging Ukraine’s allies to increase pressure on Moscow and bolster Ukraine’s air defences.

“The United States, Europe, and the rest of the world have enough power to make Russia abandon terror and war,” he said.

“There can never be forgiveness for this,” said Oleksandr Vilkul, the head of the city’s defence council. “Eternal memory to the victims.”

The UK’s Europe minister, Stephen Doughty, said attacks on civilian infrastructure were “a sobering reminder that Putin continues to wage his barbaric war against Ukraine”.

He added: “Our thoughts are with the families and loved ones of the victims. As the prime minister has said, Russia could choose to accept a ceasefire but instead continues to bombard Ukraine and its population.”

Local authorities said the strike damaged about 20 apartment buildings, more than 30 vehicles, an educational building and a restaurant.

The Russian defence ministry claimed on Friday it had carried out a high-precision missile strike with a high explosive warhead on a restaurant where a meeting had taken place with unit commanders and western instructors.

Russian military claimed the strike had killed 85 military personnel and foreign officers and destroyed 20 vehicles. The military’s claims could not be independently verified. The Ukrainian General Staff rejected the claims.

A later drone strike on Kryvyi Rih killed one woman and wounded seven other people.

The head of the British armed forces, Adm Sir Tony Radakin, met Zelenskyy on Friday alongside the leader of the French armed forces, Gen Thierry Burkhard.

“Britain and France are coming together and Europe is stepping up in a way that is real and substantial, with 200 planners from 30 nations working to strengthen Ukraine’s long-term security,” Radakin said.

The UK and France have been at the forefront of planning for a “coalition of the willing” made up of nations that could help to keep Ukraine secure in the event of a peace deal with Russia.

Eighteen people, including nine children, have been killed in a Russian missile strike on Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s home city, a Ukrainian official has said.

A further 61 people were injured in the attack on Kryvyi Rih on Friday, including a three-month-old baby and elderly residents, the regional governor, Serhii Lysak, said. Forty remain in hospital, including two children in critical condition and 17 in a serious condition.

“The missile struck an area right next to residential buildings – hitting a playground and ordinary streets,” Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram.

He blamed the daily strikes on Russia’s unwillingness to end the war: “Every missile, every drone strike proves Russia wants only war,” he said, urging Ukraine’s allies to increase pressure on Moscow and bolster Ukraine’s air defences.

“The United States, Europe, and the rest of the world have enough power to make Russia abandon terror and war,” he said.

“There can never be forgiveness for this,” said Oleksandr Vilkul, the head of the city’s defence council. “Eternal memory to the victims.”

The UK’s Europe minister, Stephen Doughty, said attacks on civilian infrastructure were “a sobering reminder that Putin continues to wage his barbaric war against Ukraine”.

He added: “Our thoughts are with the families and loved ones of the victims. As the prime minister has said, Russia could choose to accept a ceasefire but instead continues to bombard Ukraine and its population.”

Local authorities said the strike damaged about 20 apartment buildings, more than 30 vehicles, an educational building and a restaurant.

The Russian defence ministry claimed on Friday it had carried out a high-precision missile strike with a high explosive warhead on a restaurant where a meeting had taken place with unit commanders and western instructors.

Russian military claimed the strike had killed 85 military personnel and foreign officers and destroyed 20 vehicles. The military’s claims could not be independently verified. The Ukrainian General Staff rejected the claims.

A later drone strike on Kryvyi Rih killed one woman and wounded seven other people.

The head of the British armed forces, Adm Sir Tony Radakin, met Zelenskyy on Friday alongside the leader of the French armed forces, Gen Thierry Burkhard.

“Britain and France are coming together and Europe is stepping up in a way that is real and substantial, with 200 planners from 30 nations working to strengthen Ukraine’s long-term security,” Radakin said.

The UK and France have been at the forefront of planning for a “coalition of the willing” made up of nations that could help to keep Ukraine secure in the event of a peace deal with Russia.

Venezuelans with legal permission to live and work in the United States are being unlawfully arrested by federal authorities at their homes, in their cars, at regular immigration check-ins and on the streets, attorneys say.

They are then stuck in immigration detention around the country, sometimes for weeks, despite the law explicitly banning the government from keeping them behind bars.

“I’ve seen a lot of terrible policies, and a lot of mistreatment, and government abuses and misconduct and, you know, even wrongful deportations,” said Sirine Shebaya, executive director of the National Immigration Project, an organization of attorneys, advocates and community members based in Washington DC.

“But this level of impunity and lack of even a pretense of following legal standards or thinking about the facts of someone’s situation before targeting them is something that I truly have never seen before,” she added.

The Venezuelans who are being apprehended have what is called temporary protected status (TPS), which allows people to stay in the US short term and apply for work permits when it’s unsafe for them to go back to their home countries because of extraordinary circumstances such as political unrest or a natural disaster.

Venezuela qualifies for a TPS designation because of an ongoing crisis where its president, Nicolás Maduro, is using security forces to imprison and abuse his critics while the vast majority of citizens endure intimidation and desperate poverty. The ensuing fallout has forced nearly 8 million Venezuelans to flee their homeland, whether because of potential persecution or simply the impossibility of surviving without potable water, reliable electricity and other household basics.

Although most Venezuelan immigrants and asylum seekers have settled elsewhere in Latin America, in recent years an increasing number have traveled farther north to the US. In recognition of their inability to safely return home, the federal government has allowed many of them to qualify for TPS.

But after the outgoing Biden administration extended these protections for Venezuelans, the new Trump administration’s homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, quickly tried to revoke them once in office, rendering people who are legally in the country now vulnerable to deportation and, meanwhile, being unlawfully thrown into detention.

A federal judge has since paused Noem’s attempt to terminate TPS for Venezuelans, providing a much-needed if temporary reprieve for 350,000 people who would have lost their legal status come 7 April. The judge wrote in his order that the secretary’s actions could “inflict irreparable harm on hundreds of thousands of persons whose lives, families, and livelihoods will be severely disrupted, cost the United States billions in economic activity, and injure public health and safety in communities throughout the United States” – the very opposite of the sort of warnings Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again (Maga) movement puts out.

Yet even as a battle over the protections plays out in the courts, the Trump administration has been pre-emptively arresting Venezuelan TPS holders and keeping them in bleak US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facilities. This is despite the law saying that someone with TPS “shall not be detained” based on their immigration status. There are narrow exceptions, but attorneys who spoke to the Guardian say none of the myriad cases they’ve seen so far would apply.

It’s unclear why immigration officers have been going after these legal immigrants, though one conjecture is that the Trump administration is preparing for mass deportations in case Venezuelans do end up eventually losing TPS.

“To some extent, I think it’s hard to know whether what’s happening here is a concerted policy or instead just a lot of rogue activity,” said Ahilan T Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Law.

“I think it’s possible that no Ice official was willing to write down that ‘we want to jail Venezuelan TPS holders in advance because we think that TPS will end soon’, because doing that would be illegal,” he continued, “but that nonetheless they were willing to sort of send the message out that this would be a useful thing to do in order to swiftly deport a lot of Venezuelan TPS holders, you know, if and when the TPS grant termination takes effect.”

Venezuelans with TPS have faced immigration enforcement in Virginia, New York, Texas and New Mexico, with no changes in their cases that would explain why. In one instance, a man was complying with his supervision rules and attending an Ice check-in when he was handcuffed and held in custody in New Mexico for six weeks. He couldn’t work, was separated from his long-term romantic partner, and felt officials were provoking him to agree to leave the country despite his right to stay.

The man has documentation proving he has no criminal record in Venezuela, and he has not committed any crimes in the US. But he has tattoos of his mother’s and daughter’s names. Tattoos seemingly put him on the US’s radar as a potential member of the transnational criminal organization, Tren de Aragua (TdA). The US government has been using the TdA label as carte blanche on multiple fronts to dragnet people accused of crimes as well as those who are not, and to often bypass due process, while employing abnormal procedures and abstruse legal arguments.

“Venezuelan men are being painted as TdA members, as dangerous gang members, at like the highest levels, by President Trump himself,” said Zoe Bowman, an attorney at Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, which is based in El Paso, Texas. “And so they’re trying to show people that to them, it doesn’t matter what kind of status you have – that they have the power to detain you anyways.”

The man has since been released based on a temporary restraining order from a judge, which seemingly prompted Ice to also let out other TPS holders who had been detained in the area, Bowman said.

But the man is still being forced to wear an ankle monitor so that Ice can track him. And though it isn’t working properly, he’s too afraid he’ll be detained again if he tries to go into a government-affiliated office to get it fixed.

“This is mental anguish for him,” said Crystal Sandoval, director of cross-border strategies at Las Americas.

Likewise, in the DC area, a couple was arrested twice – once at home, once in their car, both times in front of their children. The Trump administration accused them of crossing the border unlawfully in 2022, a criminal charge that Shebaya, of the National Immigration Project, said immigrants are suddenly being prosecuted for now, several years after they entered the country.

Ice later tried to assert the couple was also connected to TdA, which was completely baseless, Shebaya said. At a hearing over their confinement, a judge ordered them released immediately, letting them freely walk out of the courtroom. “That is how little basis there was for their detention,” Shebaya said.

“I think that what we’re seeing right now is just a blatant disregard for the law,” she added. “And it is going to be very much up to us as a community and the courts to really hold the administration accountable and say: ‘Even if you have an agenda that you’re trying to pursue, there are legal boundaries that cannot be crossed.’”

World leaders should be ashamed of their neglect of people whose lives were “hanging by a thread” at a time of surging violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the international charity leader Jan Egeland has said.

In a stinging attack on aid cuts and the “nationalistic winds” blowing across Europe and the US, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s head told the Guardian how people were living out in the open, in overcrowded, unsanitary displacement encampments around the city of Goma, where 1.2 million people have had to flee from their homes as the M23 rebels advanced through the DRC’s North and South Kivu provinces.

“The level of global neglect experienced by civilians in eastern DRC should shame world leaders,” he said, adding that European countries and others had ignored the suffering for years.

“We hope that a Europe and the US, which is very self-centred, where nationalistic winds are blowing, where aid is being cut and international solidarity is not what it was, will open their eyes to the immense suffering that is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” said Egeland, who has just returned from a visit to the area.

“[I saw] overflowing latrines, 25 people sleeping in a classroom where they have to drag their few belongings out every morning because the classroom is used for school, then every afternoon return to the classroom to sleep overnight. It’s really subhuman,” he said.

Eastern DRC has long suffered from violence, and the camps in Goma, capital of North Kivu province, host people who have been displaced for years.

However, conditions have deteriorated since the M23 rebellion launched in 2022. The Rwandan-backed group has managed to seize large parts of eastern DRC, including Goma and other key towns, since January.

Egeland said the humanitarian situation had been complicated by M23 forcing displaced people to leave the camps, often giving them only 72 hours to move on. Many people had returned to their homes, where there was relative safety now that the M23 had taken control.

He warned, however, that a political settlement was needed now as well as aid, especially in the form of cash, to ensure displaced people could buy food and rebuild their homes and livelihoods in places devastated by years of conflict.

Egeland said charities were struggling because they often had still not been paid for work done last year because of President Donald Trump’s freezing of US aid spending in January, and even projects that had been approved by Washington had not yet received money.

He said that while support from Norway, which had fast-tracked pre-existing pledges, had allowed the NRC to continue working, other humanitarian organisations were struggling.

“At a time of enormous needs – because of the recent increase in fighting – and of opportunity [to help] the many who can return, the money is not coming in,” he said. “It means people are not helped, they linger in camps with worsening conditions, that children cannot go to school.”

She lived around 3,500 years ago – but facial reconstruction technology has brought a woman from late bronze age Mycenae back to life.

The woman was in her mid-30s when she was buried in a royal cemetery between the 16th and 17th centuries BC. The site was uncovered in the 1950s on the Greek mainland at Mycenae, the legendary seat of Homer’s King Agamemnon.

Dr Emily Hauser, the historian who commissioned the digital reconstruction, told the Observer: “She’s incredibly modern. She took my breath away.

“For the first time, we are looking into the face of a woman from a kingdom associated with Helen of Troy – Helen’s sister, Clytemnestra, was queen of Mycenae in legend – and from where the poet Homer imagined the Greeks of the Trojan war setting out. Such digital reconstructions persuade us that these were real people.”

Hauser, a senior lecturer in classics and ancient history at the University of Exeter, said: “It is incredibly exciting to think that, for the first time since she was laid beneath the ground over 3,500 years ago, we are able to gaze into the actual face of a bronze age royal woman – and it truly is a face to launch a thousand ships.

“This woman died around the beginning of the late bronze age, several hundred years before the supposed date of the Trojan war.”

A digital artist, Juanjo Ortega G., has developed the lifelike face from a clay reconstruction of the same woman that was made in the 1980s by Manchester University, pioneers of one of the major methods in facial reconstruction.

Hauser, whose book Mythica: A New History of Homer’s World, Through the Women Written Out of It will be published next week, said that technical developments in forensic anthropology and DNA analysis, as well as radiocarbon dating and 3D digital printing, have led to dramatic improvements in reconstructions of the ancient world.

“We can – for the first time – peer back into the eyes of the past.”

The woman had been buried with an electrum face mask and a warrior kit of weapons – including three swords that were assumed to be associated with the man buried next to her, but are now thought to have belonged to her.

Hauser said: “The traditional story is that, if you have a woman next to a man, she must be his wife.” Facial similarities had previously been noted, but DNA has confirmed that these were brother and sister rather than husband and wife.

“This woman was buried there by virtue of her birth, not her marriage. That tells us a different story about how important she was … Data that is coming out is suggesting that far more of what archaeologists call warrior kits are associated with women than with men in these late bronze age burials, which is completely overturning our assumptions of how women are associated with war.”

She added that archaeological evidence and DNA analysis were allowing “the real women of ancient history to step out of the shadows”.

The condition of the woman’s bones suggests that she suffered from arthritis in her vertebrae and hands, perhaps “evidence of repeated weaving, a common and physically wearing activity among women, and one which we have seen Helen undertaking in the Iliad,” Hauser said.

“So this is such a wonderful way to connect real women’s experiences to the ancient myths and tales.”

Elton John has spoken of his distress at losing his eyesight and how he can no longer watch his young sons playing.

John revealed in a social media post last year that a “severe eye infection” had left him “with only limited vision in one eye”.

In an interview with the Times, the singer and songwriter, who has two children, Zachary, 14, and Elijah, 12, with his husband, the filmmaker David Furnish, said he “can’t see the telly” and he had not “been able to see anything since last July”.

He added: “I can’t read. I can’t see my boys playing rugby and soccer, and it has been a very stressful time because I’m used to soaking it all up. It’s distressing.

“You get emotional, but you have to get used to it because I’m lucky to have the life I have. I still have my wonderful family, and I can still see something out of here,” he said, pointing to his left eye.

He added: “You say to yourself, just get on with it.”

John has previously said his eye issues have affected his ability to record music and have left him feeling “stuck”.

However, he recently recorded Who Believes In Angels?, a collaboration with the US singer Brandi Carlile, which involved working with the producer Andrew Watt and his long-term songwriting partner Bernie Taupin.

Last month, and before the album’s release on Friday, John and Carlile hosted an evening of performance and storytelling at the London Palladium.

His headline set at Glastonbury in 2023 had previously been his last UK performance, as part of his 330-date Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour, which ended with an emotionally charged show in Stockholm, Sweden.

John reflected on how he used to do “120 shows a year” but said having children had made him entirely shift his perspective.

“I always said I wanted to die on stage,” he said. “Now I want my gravestone to read: ‘He was a great dad.’ My career has been wonderful, but the kids are what matters.”

Reflecting on his career he said he was “riddled with music” and it was the “greatest gift” he had ever been given. “Here I am at 78, feeling better than I have ever been,” he said.

Gesturing to his eyes, he added: “This is a bastard, but we’ll get over it. There is a lot more to do.”