People across the US took to the streets on Saturday to oppose what left-leaning organizations called Donald Trump’s “authoritarian overreach and billionaire-backed agenda”.

Organizers estimated that more than 500,000 people demonstrated in Washington DC, Florida and elsewhere.

At Washington’s national mall, demonstrators from as far afield as New Hampshire and Pennsylvania gathered in the shadow of the Washington monument before the anti-Trump rally there.

In overcast conditions, protesters displayed a vast array of placards and, in some cases, Ukrainian flags, expressing opposition to the policies of the administration, which has sought cordial relations with Russia amid its invasion of Ukraine.

Some protesters said they hoped the event – the first mass demonstration in Washington DC since Trump took office – would act as an example to inspire others to register opposition. “The aim is, get people to rise up,” said Diane Kolifrath, 63, who had travelled from New Hampshire with 100 fellow members of New Hampshire Forward, a civic society organisation.

“Many people are scared to protest against Trump because he has reacted aggressively and violently to those who have stood up,” Kolifrath said. The goal of this protest is to let the rest of Americans who aren’t participating see that we are standing up and hopefully when they see our strength, that will give them the courage to also stand up.”

MoveOn, one of the organizations behind the day of protest dubbed “Hands Off” along with dozens of labor, environmental and other progressive groups, said that more than 1,000 protests took place across the US, including at state capitols.

“We want to send a signal to all people and institutions that have been showing anticipatory obedience to Trump and showing they are willing to bend the knee that there is, in fact, a mass public movement that’s willing to rise up and stop this,” said Leah Greenberg, Indivisible’s executive director.

“If our political leaders stand up, we will have their backs. We want them to stand up and protect the norms of democracy and want them to see that there are people out there who are willing to do that. The goal of this is building a message.”

The largest event was at the National Mall in DC, where demonstrators numbered in the tens of thousands. Members of Congress, including the Democrats Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Maxwell Frost of Florida and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, spoke to the crowd.

“They believe democracy is doomed and they believe regime change is upon us if only they can seize our payments system,” said Raskin, a Democratic representative from Maryland who is the party’s top figure on the House judiciary committee.

He added: “If they think they are going to overthrow the foundations of democracy, they don’t know who they are dealing with.”

Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign advocacy group, criticized the administration’s treatment of the LBGTQ+ community at the rally at the National Mall.

“The attacks that we’re seeing, they’re not just political. They are personal, y’all,” Robinson said. “They’re trying to ban our books, they’re slashing HIV-prevention funding, they’re criminalizing our doctors, our teachers, our families and our lives.”

“We don’t want this America, y’all,” Robinson added. “We want the America we deserve, where dignity, safety and freedom belong not to some of us, but to all of us.”

The scene in Hollywood, Florida, about an hour south of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, was lively as well. Referring to the White House’s billionaire business adviser Elon Musk and the government cuts he has overseen, predominantly white protesters chanted: “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Trump and Musk have got to go.

They jeered motorists in Tesla Cybertrucks manufactured by Musk’s electric vehicle maker – and wielded colorful placards that left little doubt as to where they stood with the Trump administration.

“Prosecute and jail the Turd Reich,” read one. Some reserved special ire for the world’s richest person: “I did not elect Elon Musk.” Others emphasized the protesters’ anxieties about the future of democracy in the US. “Hands off democracy,” declared one placard. “Stop being [Vladimir] Putin’s puppet,” enjoined another, referring to Russia’s dictator.

Many motorists driving past the assembled demonstrators honked their horns and flashed thumb’s-up gestures in solidarity. Broward county was one of only six counties in Florida that voted for Kamala Harris in November – she defeated Trump there by 16 percentage points – and it is host to one of the US’s most vibrant LGBTQ+ communities.

“This is an assault on our democracy, on our economy, on our civil rights,” said Jennifer Heit, a 64-year-old editor and resident of Plantation who toted a poster that read: “USA: No to King or Oligarchy.” She added: “Everything is looking so bad that I feel we have to do all we can while we can, and just having all this noise is unsettling to everyone.”

Heit attended a protest outside a Tesla dealership in Fort Lauderdale recently, and she has been outraged by the Trump administration’s frontal assault on the rule of law and the judiciary – including with respect to people who have been deported without due process. “We’re supposed to be a nation of laws and due process,” she said.

Public health researcher Donna Greene, 62, came dressed as France’s beheaded queen Marie Antoinette and carried a placard that said: “Musk and Trump Say Let Them Eat Cake.”

She said she is proud of the 65 missions that her father Sam Ragland flew for the US military during the second world war. But, she said, the country her dad fought for is not the same one she sees emerging under Trump.

“Everything my father fought for and everything we hold dear as a country is being dismantled,” Greene said. “I am beyond incredulous at how quickly our country’s institutions have been dismantled with no pushback from the Republicans who are currently in charge.”

In Ventura, California, Sandy Friedman brought her eight-year-old graddaughter, Harlow Rose Rega, to demonstrate. Friedman said she was worried about her social security, remarking: “I worked my whole life and so did my husband. Now I’m afraid Trump will take it away.”

Harlow held up a sign reading: “Save my future.”

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.

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 Palestinians 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 whom they claimed violated immigration rules by engaging in pro-Palestinian 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.

Demonstrators estimated to be in the tens of thousands gathered in Washington on Saturday in a display of mass dissent against Donald Trump’s policies that organizers hoped would snowball into a rolling cycle of protests that could eventually stymie the US president in next year’s congressional elections.

Anger with Trump and his billionaire lieutenant, the SpaceX and Tesla entrepreneur Elon Musk, was expressed in a sea of placards and banners on the Washington mall, in the shadow of the Washington monument. Multiple messages denounced the two men for shuttering government agencies, cutting jobs and services and – in often graphic terms – for threatening the survival of US democracy.

“Resist like it’s 1938 Nazi Germany” and “Fascism is alive and well and living in the White House”, read two slogans at the Hands Off gathering, organized by the civil society group Indivisible and featuring speeches from a host of other organizations as well as Democratic members of Congress.

The rally, which coincided with roughly 1,000 other similarly themed events across the country, was punctuated by a fusillade of barbs aimed at Trump as well as Musk, whose infiltration into government agencies through the unofficial “department of government efficiency”, or Doge, without congressional approval, and cash-fueled interventions in election races have been seen as anti-democratic affronts.

“They believe democracy is doomed and they believe regime change is upon us if only they can seize our payments system,” said Jamie Raskin, a Democratic representative from Maryland who is the party’s top figure on the House judiciary committee.

He added: “If they think they are going to overthrow the foundations of democracy, they don’t know who they are dealing with.”

Saturday’s events followed weeks of anxiety among anti-Trump forces that the president had railroaded through his agenda in the absence of adequate resistance from congressional Democrats and minus the displays of popular mass opposition that appeared early in his first presidency.

But they also came days after the Democrats drew encouragement from victory in a race for a vacant supreme court seat in Wisconsin into which Musk had unsuccessfully ploughed $25m of his own money to support the Trump-endorsed Republican candidate.

It also followed the roll-out of Trump’s flagship policy of import tariffs, which triggered massive plunges in international stock markets and fueled fears of an economic downturn.

Multiple speakers and attendees said they hoped the rallies would embolden other American disillusioned by Trump’s policies to join future rallies, giving a fledgling protest movement much-needed momentum.

“We want to send a signal to all people and institutions that have been showing anticipatory obedience to Trump and showing they are willing to bend the knee that there is, in fact, a mass public movement that’s willing to rise up and stop this,” said Leah Greenberg, Indivisible’s executive director.

“If our political leaders stand up, we will have their backs. We want them to stand up and protect the norms of democracy and want them to see that there are people out there who are willing to do that. The goal of this is building a message.”

Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, a consumer-rights advocacy group, told the crowd: “There’s only one thing that can face down the authoritarian moment we are facing, and that’s the movement we see here today.”

Asked by the Guardian whether the mass demonstrations were sufficient to stop Trump, he said: “It’s not a one-time thing. It’s got to be a sustaining phenomenon. There’s been a lot of criticism of the Democrats for not standing up in Congress, so an event like this will stiffen their spine.

“It’s about making the Democrats better and giving them courage – and it will. That’s also true for ordinary people, because Trump’s authoritarian playbook is designed to make people think it’s useless to resist. This demonstrates power and it will bring in more people.”

Several congressional Democrats predicted the rally would inspire more protests, ultimately fueling an electoral triumph in next year’s congressional midterms, when control of the House of Representatives and the Senate will be up for grabs.

“This is what freedom fighting against fascism looks like,” said Eric Swalwell, a representative for California. “This is not the last day of the fight, it’s the first day. When it all comes to [be] written about, you will see that April 5 is when it all came alive. Energy and activism beget energy and activism.”

Several members acknowledged that protests were rarely enough to supplant authoritarian governments, as demonstrated in countries like Turkey and Hungary, whose strongman leaders, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Viktor Orbán respectively, have survived in office despite repeated episodes of street protests.

“We invited some historians in to discuss that question,” said Raskin. “They said, in some countries there was just a legislative parliamentary strategy, and that only succeeded about one-third of the time.

“In other countries, there was just a popular-resistance strategy, and that succeeded a little bit more than a third of the time. But when you have a popular-resistance strategy and an effective legislative strategy, it wins more than two-thirds of the time. It’s not a guarantee, but you need to have national mass popular action at the same time that you’ve got an effective legislative strategy, too.”

Representative Don Beyer, whose northern Virginia district – home to 75,000 federal workers – has been disproportionately affected by Musk’s assault on government agencies, compared the effect of Trump’s actions to the upheaval wrought by Mao Zedong in the Chinese cultural revolution.

But, he said, Trump would be derailed by next year’s election, which he said he was “somewhat confident” would be ‘“free and fair”.

“They’re not perfect [but] the people do have a chance to speak,” Beyer said. “Elections are very much decentralized and organized precinct by precinct. There are lots of chances to push back. We just saw that in Wisconsin.”

The world’s biggest youth Christian missionary organisation is facing allegations of spiritual abuse and controlling behaviour from young people who say they were left “traumatised”.

An Observer investigation has revealed evidence of safeguarding failings within Youth With a Mission (YWAM), a global movement that trains young Christians to spread the gospel. A spokesperson for YWAM said the organisation was “heartbroken” by the claims and was “deeply committed to the safety and wellbeing” of everyone in its care.

The allegations span two decades and include claims that young missionaries were publicly shamed, subjected to rituals to “cure” their homosexuality, and told that leaving was against God’s will.

Young British adults who signed up for training schools and overseas mission trips – many during their gap years – described regular confession sessions where they were pressured to admit their “sins” in a group.

These included perceived moral transgressions such as homosexual thoughts, sexual activity, abortions and watching pornography, as well as other “sins” such as disobeying a leader or having “rebellious thoughts”. Those who confessed could be questioned and made to give public apologies, according to former missionaries. They could be prayed for or could face punishment, including being removed from volunteer roles. In some cases, interventions were more extreme. Former YWAM volunteers described the use of rituals similar to exorcisms to banish demons from people who acknowledged having sex outside marriage.

Another former British YWAM worship leader described a “casting out” at a base in Australia, arranged after a man revealed that he had sexual relations with other men. Leaders placed their hands on him before chanting prayers to “banish the spirit of homosexuality”, and he reportedly convulsed. The British man was himself struggling with his sexuality and said he was left feeling as though a “demon” was living inside him.

Others described how people disclosed being victims of assault or sexual abuse, as well as transgressions such as speeding fines.

The “repentance and forgiveness” rituals are alleged to be part of a wider picture of control at some bases, which also included restrictions on romantic relationships, clothing and when missionaries could visit family.

Commands were often communicated by leaders as though they were instructions from God. “They were always changing what other people wanted to do by saying: ‘I reckon, God is saying this.’ It was used to manipulate,” one former missionary said.

YWAM operates in about 180 countries and sends about 25,000 people on short-term missions each year. It was founded in 1960 by the American missionary Loren Cunningham and has key bases in the US, Australia, Switzerland and the UK, where it is a registered charity.

A spokesperson for YWAM England said it was committed to “continuous improvement in safeguarding practices” and that each location was responsible for upholding standards. It said it was “strongly opposed” to forced confessions. “While confession of sin may occur, the person should never be publicly shamed or pressured to apologise.”

Last year, YWAM’s base in Perth, Australia – one of the biggest in the world – faced scrutiny over its handling of alleged historic sexual misconduct, including claims that its leaders told alleged victims to apologise to their alleged attackers for “leading them on”. A YWAM base in the UK was recently closed amid claims of spiritual abuse.

The allegations come as a prayer movement linked to YWAM – which aims to recruit the next generation of Christian missionaries – sweeps through Britain.

The Send UK & Ireland, an initiative by a coalition of Christian groups, which is legally controlled by the YWAM branch in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, launched with a show last July at Ovo Arena Wembley. It has since held pop-ups at churches and concert halls across the UK.

Its aim is to recruit 100,000 young British adults to do missionary work in the UK and abroad and reverse the trend of decline among western missions.

After the Wembley event, hundreds of people signed up via QR code to serve as missionaries through YWAM and the Send’s other partner organisations.

The allegations, made by former missionaries whose experiences span two decades and 18 countries, raise questions about culture and safeguarding within YWAM, which has a decentralised structure that critics say leads to insufficient oversight. The organisation defers power to leaders on bases around the world, who say they take safeguarding seriously.

YWAM has underlying statements of principles and runs discipleship training schools which have a similar structure across all bases, with lectures on topics such as “sin, repentance and restitution”, “spiritual warfare” and “discipling nations”.

The code of conduct for the University of the Nations, YWAM’s unaccredited Christian university, which oversees YWAM training schools, says “any moral violation”, including “sexual immorality”, is grounds for disciplinary action. Other bases list fornication and homosexuality as immoral behaviours alongside incest and bestiality.

In 2020, Lynn Green, one of YWAM’s most senior leaders and the founder of YWAM England, published a blog post urging the human race to “repent for ignoring the laws of God”, blaming abortion and “the homosexual agenda” for “bringing destruction”.

Felicity Davies, 34, a designer from Yorkshire who spent six years in YWAM after joining at the age of 18, said the “purity culture” and alleged controlling behaviour at a base in South Africa left her feeling “suffocated” and “not good enough”.

“I constantly had to do certain things in order for God to love me or to be accepted,” she said. “People should be aware that this isn’t all happy-clappy. A lot of people get traumatised.”

Lena Stary, 26, from Bristol, who joined YWAM aged 18, said her experience in Switzerland left her suffering panic attacks and had taken years to untangle. It had made it “very difficult to trust other people”. She is no longer religious. “I just found it so difficult to believe that God is a loving being if all of what I was being told was true,” she said.

A YWAM spokesperson said: “Although a high number of individuals have had a positive experience in YWAM, we are aware and deeply regret that some have had harmful experiences of spiritual abuse and manipulation.” They said each base was responsible for safeguarding and was held to account by leadership teams overseeing specific regions.

In England, a YWAM spokesperson said leaders had “implemented stricter oversight mechanisms” after claims of spiritual abuse at a base which has since closed. They said YWAM held “traditional Christian views on sexuality and marriage” but was reviewing how it communicated those beliefs to prevent “shame or rejection”, and that it condemned any practice that traumatised people or associated their identity with demonic influence.

“We are deeply grieved to hear reports that spiritual practices intended for healing were instead used in coercive or shaming ways,” they said.

Green stood by his comments on abortion and homosexuality and said he sought to approach the matters “with both grace and faithfulness”, adding that he, “like others in YWAM”, condemned any form of spiritual abuse.

A YWAM Perth spokesperson said any comment that an alleged victim had “led on” their alleged attacker or must apologise to them did not reflect the views of leadership.

One Sunday last summer, 5,000 young people packed into the Wembley Arena for a “mass gathering of gen Z Jesus followers”. They danced to Christian rock, hugged, wept and sang. Between performances, charismatic leaders proclaimed something “huge” was afoot.

“Tonight kicks something off,” said Andy Byrd, a leader of Youth With a Mission (YWAM). He told the crowd they were witnessing the start of a “spiritual awakening”. Soon, the UK would send out “thousands of missionaries” to preach the name of Jesus – and “see every tribe, tongue and nation worshipping before the throne”.

The event, called The Send, was a hit. Hundreds of attenders scanned a QR code committing to devote their lives to Jesus. Some poured into London and preached to passengers on the tube.

The organisers of the event say it heralds a new era for the UK. Since Wembley, pop-ups from St Albans to Sheffield have recruited more people to the cause. “What we’re seeing – [our generation] have never had this. It’s one of those history-making moments,” a Send volunteer said.

For those who are no longer in the fold, its rise rings alarm bells. Daniel* from Bristol signed up with YWAM, the global organisation leading The Send UK, aged 19. He moved to Perth, Australia for a training course, later leading mission trips to countries including India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Mozambique. At first, it was everything he’d hoped for: fun, adventure, a shared sense of purpose. “It was an experience that not many people get to have.”

But behind the scenes, there was a darker side. Back at the base, there were strict rules about morality, purity and sexuality. Daniel, who is using a pseudonym, felt closely watched by the base leaders, who were “treated like royalty” and viewed as messengers for God. There was an expectation of obedience and absolute transparency, with regular confession of “sins”. People publicly repented for perceived moral transgressions, including disobedience, negativity, masturbation and homosexual thoughts. Sometimes, they underwent “healing” to banish demons. “The reaction was ‘This is a deep sin, so we’re going to need to cast this out’,” said Daniel, who was privately questioning his own sexuality.

At one point, he considered leaving. But base leaders said it wasn’t God’s plan and told him to “go away and re-pray”. He stayed for another two years. “I thought, ‘Maybe God really is saying this,’” he said.

For centuries, Christian missionaries have travelled the world preaching the gospel. In the 1800s and 1900s, western missionaries helped spread Christianity in Africa, Asia and Latin America. It was “very mixed up with colonialism”, said Rev Canon Mark Oxbrow from the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies.

Today, the flow of western missionaries has slowed. “In Britain and Europe, there’s been a pretty steep decline,” said Brian Stanley, professor emeritus of world Christianity at the University of Edinburgh.

At the same time, YWAM (pronounced why-wam) has thrived. Founded in 1960 by American Loren Cunningham, it has bases across more than 180 countries and trains young people to spread the gospel in “the nations”, often on short-term trips. Key targets include “the Muslim world”, “the Hindu world”, “tribal peoples”, and “the poor and needy”.

The Observer has spoken to 21 current and former YWAMers whose experiences span two decades and 18 countries. For each of them, their first exposure to YWAM was a discipleship training school (DTS).

Costing £5,000 to £10,000, the programmes, which follow a similar structure at all YWAM bases, are a “gateway” to the movement, combining an outreach trip with lectures on topics such as “sin, repentance and restitution”, “spiritual warfare” and “discipling nations”. Afterwards, graduates can stay on as unpaid volunteers in roles ranging from mentoring new students and leading mission trips to cooking and cleaning at a base.

One former missionary, Lena Stary, 26, from Bristol, signed up for a DTS at YWAM’s base in Switzerland after leaving school. She said her A-levels hadn’t gone well and she was wondering “what on earth” she would do. Growing up in a churchgoing family, missionaries had been “revered”, so she began researching YWAM.

Scrolling through the website for the YWAM base in Lausanne, near Lake Geneva, Stary, then 18, was captivated by the “whimsical, Swiss adventure vibes”. She took on two jobs to save £6,000 for the programme, room and board.

At the base, she shared a room with five other young women and had a schedule of lectures and prayer sessions from “when you wake up to when you go to sleep”. Outside the classroom, she recalls rules on general life, including restrictions on dating, expectations about what people would wear, and how often they could leave to visit family.

Early on, there was a message drilled in that “the best thing to do with your life is be a missionary”. She claims that leaders suggested “people who had left had backslidden” and that lectures were “very shame-driven” and “heavily focused on obedience, submitting to God and laying down your rights”. On the third day, students were invited to a “testimony night”, the first of many during Stary’s 18 months there. In a room in the headquarters – a converted hotel – they sat in a circle and confessed their sins. “You’re expected to share all your secrets,” Stary says. “If you were more reserved, it’s like you weren’t really committed to giving your life to Jesus.”

Ex-missionaries from bases around the world describe similar sessions – often lasting late into the night or held over several days at a time. For some, it could feel cathartic. One British woman who did a DTS and trained as an outreach leader in London in 2019 said she spoke about “classic teenage insecurities” and that the sessions could feel like “counselling”.

Other times, it felt punitive. People admitted to kissing outside marriage, homosexual thoughts, masturbating, having abortions, using sex toys, illegally streaming TV programmes and speeding. They could be prayed for, made to apologise, questioned in front of the group – or face punishment. A man in his 20s who admitted to having masturbated said he was asked to step back from a leadership role.

Sources across multiple bases described how people were also put under pressure to confess to sinful thoughts – such as thinking highly of themselves or disagreeing with leaders, which was seen as “having a rebellious spirit”.

Anything related to sex outside marriage was particularly problematic because of the belief that it leads people to form “soul ties”, soaking up each other’s sin. In this context, some people disclosed suffering sexual abuse. One woman who said she had been raped was prayed for by the group.

At a base in Brazil, two British ex-YWAMers described how a man and woman were forced to apologise to the group after they were found to have “hooked up”. The other missionaries then voted on whether they should stay.

Others were subjected to “healing” rituals similar to exorcisms. At a base in South Africa, a British ex-YWAMer described rituals branded as “inner healing”, which were used for people who had sex outside marriage. “We ‘prayed off’ all the demons and sin and asked God to forgive them and make them whole again.”

Daniel recalled a similar ritual in Perth, where a man who admitted sexual relations with other men was subjected to a “casting out”. Leaders laid hands on him, chanting prayers as he convulsed on the floor. “People would say it was the opposite of God in you. I saw it as the spirit of homosexuality which needed to come out.”

These “repentance and forgiveness” rituals are alleged to have been part of a wider picture of control. Former YWAM volunteers described rules ranging from an alcohol ban to restrictions on what music they could play, what clothes they could wear, when they could visit relatives and who they could date.

Sammy*, 24, from Sheffield, joined a DTS during her gap year in 2018 at a now-closed YWAM base in King’s Cross. At first, she loved it. But when she returned for a leadership course, she found it “quite controlling”. At one point, she was put under pressure not to attend her ill grandmother’s birthday because it clashed with a church service. When she started dating a man from a Christian dating app she says she was told it was “ungodly”.

“[The leader] said, ‘It’s your choice. You do what you want to do,’ but also, ‘It’s really bad.’ I got on the train home and cried a lot. There is shame that seeps through, even if you disagree.”

At other bases, women were told not to wear leggings or strappy tops to avoid “tempting men” and opening “a door to the devil”. “There was so much [pressure] on the woman not to ‘let the brothers stumble’. It just makes you feel shit to be a woman,” an ex-YWAMer said.

In South Africa, a woman was reprimanded by base leaders after telling friends she was considering getting dreadlocks. In an email, she was told not to get the hairstyle because it was linked with “rebellion, false worship, mind control, witchcraft … ostracisation from society, destruction and death” and would compromise the “spiritual integrity” of the base. “We thank you in advance for your submission to this boundary,” the email said.

The woman said her time in YWAM had left her feeling “very trapped” and that the email was the “cherry on top”. Since leaving, she has had to unlearn what she had been taught about sex and the way women should behave. “It’s so damaging,” she said. “You are programmed that you have to hide yourself and that sex is wrong.”

Many who shared their stories caveated them by saying it was not black and white. They made friends for life in YWAM, missed the strong sense of community and said the bad experiences were mixed with good ones.

But several described the intense control and insular community as feeling “cult-like”. Though everyone was technically free to leave, they said there were practical and psychological barriers. “You’re not physically restrained, but the level of thought control – and the level of influence other people had over the way that you were living your life – made it hard,” said Stary.

Often, YWAMers were young, thousands of miles from home, and reliant on YWAM for their housing and visas. Many say they were discouraged from taking outside jobs and encouraged to raise donations that were paid to YWAM for living expenses. One fundraising guide advised listing the names of “everyone you know, literally everyone” to ask for support.

Some say they struggled to cover their basic needs, let alone extras like plane tickets. “I’d have to sell my furniture at the end of each month and then buy it all back again,” said one YWAMer.

Eudo Albornoz, 35, a Venezuelan political sciences graduate now living in Bristol, left YWAM in December 2019 after spending seven years in Switzerland, Albania, and the Dominican Republic. He did missionary work in homeless shelters and orphanages and felt like he was “doing a good thing”, but found the experience “alienating”.

“You feel like you are a saint, because you’re a missionary. And you feel like the leaders hear God more directly than your family would,” he said. “You don’t know how to get back to a regular church. You start mistrusting everybody outside YWAM.”

Some say they were directly put under pressure by leaders not to leave. Emily Garcés, 43, a former YWAM staff member who now runs a Facebook group for those who have left, says she was told by base leaders in Argentina in 2005 that she could not leave with their blessing. “We sat in this big circle of leaders and they said, ‘We don’t think you should be doing this. If you go, you will fall into sexual sin.’”

In the mission field, meanwhile, people described having a genuine desire to help the communities they served. YWAM says it aims to address “practical and physical needs” through relief and development initiatives. But looking back, some question the impact of the work. Daniel, the former outreach leader based in Perth, said teams would often work with people in extreme poverty; during one trip to Indonesia, he preached the gospel to sex workers in a Jakarta slum and collected statistics on how many people had been saved. “We would promise them that Jesus would change their life. But then a week later it was, ‘See you later! Bye! Have a nice life!’ And they’re still living in the slums,” he said. “I really look back and think, what was the fruit of our labour?”

Others recall finding themselves in risky situations with little practical training – and being praised by leaders for their devotion. One YWAMer described smuggling bibles into countries where it was banned or strictly controlled. “No one said: ‘Don’t do this.’ It was more, like, encouraged. But if you are caught with them, you can go to prison. It was putting young people in really vulnerable situations,” he said.

In South Africa, a young woman described going into a red light district while posing as the partner of a man hosting a sex party. The idea was to gather data on the sex trade and share the evidence with the police, but “there were a lot of gangs … watching these places and we were going door to door, trying to find the youngest girls”.

Looking back, she says there was a lack of safeguarding, with “red flags left, right and centre”. “There was also this element of, if you’re doing something that’s a bit scary and a bit dramatic, it’s seen as more radical. We were praised for it. But actually, what was radical about it? We were being so stupid.”

In response, YWAM said that while many people had positive experiences, some had suffered “spiritual abuse”, which it “deeply regrets”. It said it had sought to strengthen its policies, encouraged people to speak out and took safeguarding seriously. It has a decentralised structure, which devolves responsibility for bases to local leaders.

In England, a spokesperson said YWAM held “traditional Christian views on sexuality and marriage” but was actively reviewing how it taught those views to ensure it did not cause “shame or rejection”. They said the organisation “strongly opposed” pressured public confessions; that no one should be shamed or made to apologise; and that “healing prayer must be conducted only with informed consent, trauma-awareness and appropriate spiritual and pastoral oversight”. They also condemned any practice that traumatised people or associated them with demonic influence. “We are deeply grieved to hear reports that spiritual practices intended for healing were used in coercive or shaming ways,” they said.

YWAM Perth said the same, adding that while it held “traditional Christian convictions” about marriage and sexuality, it recognised that “in the past, some of our methods of encouraging this have lacked grace or sensitivity”. It was “truly saddened” by any negative impacts and never aimed to “coerce or control” anyone. It said a voluntary audit of its practices by an external agency in 2021 had led to it improving its policies and reporting structures.

YWAM Lausanne denied missionaries were subject to strict rules, saying they could take six weeks of holiday a year, and that “instruction on what to wear” involved advice for their protection, such as when travelling to countries with a malaria risk or playing sports. It denied suggesting people who left had “backslidden”, saying it valued “every form of engagement in society equally”. It said claims that people felt alienated from the outside world did not reflect its beliefs or practices. “We encourage relationships and good communication with family, friends and the local church,” a spokesperson said.

In relation to mission trips, a YWAM England spokesperson said teams were given thorough pre-departure briefings, including training in cultural sensitivities, and dangerous trips were discouraged. Teams also had an orientation on arrival. “We understand that these briefings are consistently practised across YWAM,” they said.

Ex-YWAMers said they wanted the organisation to improve its complaints processes and to strengthen central oversight of bases, to improve the safety of both young missionaries and the communities they serve.

Olivia Jackson, a re­search­er at Durham University who worked as a human rights consultant to mission movements and spent 10 years in YWAM herself, said the current decentralised structure allowed for “plausible deniability about abuse and poor behaviour”. When people did complain, she said concerns were not always escalated. “You’re told: ‘If it’s not on a par with what Jesus suffered for your sake, then you’ve got no right to complain.’”

Sammy from the London base felt her concerns about leadership had not been taken seriously. She said there had been a “clear hierarchy” if another student or volunteer was accused of wrongdoing – but not when it was a base leader. “I remember talking to my [YWAM] mentor and the response was just: ‘Our leaders aren’t perfect,’” she said.

While there is a decentralised structure, YWAM is founded on principles that apply across all bases. The University of the Nations, an unaccredited university that oversees training schools, sets the direction of courses and has codes of conduct that students must follow. These say “any moral violation”, including “sexual immorality”, is grounds for disciplinary action. Individual bases are more explicit about their policies, including a US base which lists fornication and homosexuality as immoral behaviours alongside incest and bestiality, and another which says changing gender “goes against God’s will”.

Leaders have also made their views clear. In 2020, Lynn Green, founder of YWAM England, published a blogpost urging the human race to repent “for ignoring the laws of God”, blaming abortion and “the homosexual agenda” for “bringing destruction”.

For Daniel, who was struggling with his sexuality, knowing YWAM had strict rules on sex outside marriage meant it initially felt like a “safe space”. Any niggles he might be gay became “more and more silenced”. “It felt quite nonexistent. There was nothing going on there,” he said.

Witnessing the treatment of other gay people eventually made it impossible to ignore his own sexuality. He began believing his heart was “not clean” and said he felt that “fundamentally there was something wrong” with him.

He would regularly repent of his thoughts and dreams. “I felt as though this demon was inside of me and I needed to get my heart right,” he said. “It was this constant struggle to be accepted by God.”

At YWAM England’s HQ – a 48-acre campus in Harpenden, Hertfordshire – The Send UK and Ireland’s director, Josh Cutting, distanced the movement from problems of the past.

He emphasised safeguarding, saying The Send was working with an external organisation which had given it a “vision” of how to “help people make good decisions”, prevent spiritual abuse and “avoid the power play” that could arise. And he said The Send was open to all. “Everyone’s in. We go on the journey together of people that are willing to say yes to [Jesus].”

Cutting added that while The Send was closely connected to YWAM, it works in collaboration with 60 other churches and Christian groups, including those supporting people to do missions work at home as well as abroad. “The thing we have in common is we want to follow Jesus and obey his words and share the good news,” he said.

Some ex-YWAMers say that, even so, it makes them “nervous”. With slick TikTok and Instagram marketing, The Send’s website pitches it as a modern movement for those who have shunned the church as a “tradition of the past”. But behind the marketing, there is a strong link to the evangelical right, including groups opposed to same-sex marriage and abortion.

The Send itself was born out of The Call, an American prayer movement whose co-founder, Lou Engle, has caused controversy with his radical views, including speaking at a rally supporting Ugandan anti-gay laws, calling for the criminalisation of abortion and saying Muslim proclamations were fuelling the “demonic realm”.

Asked about The Send UK’s link to Engle, who was pictured on its website until last week, Cutting provided a written comment saying the organisation was aware of “past statements” made by Engle which “do not reflect the culture or tone we want for The Send UK & Ireland”. He said that, while Engle played a role in the movement’s “early days” in the US, its UK team operated independently, adding that it held a “traditional Christian view of marriage” but rejected “any approach that fosters fear, exclusion, or internalised shame”.

When the Observer spoke to Cutting, he said The Send had “an orthodox view on the things Jesus says” and that there was an “alignment” with Engle on issues such as marriage, but that he hoped that, in practice, this would “look slightly different in the UK because of how we would do it”. “It’s less polarising; it’s more nuanced,” he said. “That’s not to take away from what we believe.”

In his written statement, he said The Send did not endorse, condone or facilitate public confession, coercion, shame or forced “healing”, adding that it had clear processes for reporting concerns. He said he was aware of concerns within YWAM and supported efforts to bring the issues to light, adding that The Send UK was committed to “fostering a message of respect, service to others and love”.

For Sarah*, a current volunteer with YWAM and The Send, “submitting to Jesus” has been “the most releasing thing”. The 24-year-old said she had previously been living a “lukewarm lifestyle” with one foot in her religion and one out. So she quit her job at a PR agency in London to do a DTS in Hawaii. She now runs Send events in the UK and said she felt “honoured” to be part of it.

Felicity Davies, a designer from Yorkshire, said she had joined YWAM at 18 because she was passionate about her religion and “really wanted to help people”. But she said her six years at bases in New Zealand and South Africa had left her feeling “suffocated” and “not good enough”. “I constantly had to do certain things in order for God to love me,” she said.

After leaving, she came out as queer. She also began questioning the version of Christianity she had been taught. “I think there’s a lot of solid good bits in the Bible, but the version I’d seen just didn’t sit right,” she said.

Now 34, she said movements such as The Send made her “nervous” for the next generation – and hopes speaking out will help young people make a more informed choice. “I learned so much about generosity and community in YWAM, so it wasn’t all awful. But people should be aware that this isn’t all happy-clappy,” she said. “A lot of people get traumatised. And no one’s held to account.”

*Names have been changed

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”.

Late on Saturday, Reuters cited an anonymous Israeli military official as telling journalists that the initial account of the vehicles not having emergency lights on was mistaken.

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.

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”.

Late on Saturday, Reuters cited an anonymous Israeli military official as telling journalists that the initial account of the vehicles not having emergency lights on was mistaken.

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.”

Another round of torrential rain and flash flooding on Saturday hit parts of the US south and midwest already heavily waterlogged by days of severe storms that also spawned deadly tornadoes. Forecasters warned that rivers in some places would continue to rise for days.

Day after day of heavy rains have pounded the central US, rapidly swelling waterways and prompting a series of flash flood emergencies from Texas to Ohio. The National Weather Service (NWS) said dozens of locations in multiple states were expected to reach major flood stage, with extensive flooding of structures, roads, bridges and other critical infrastructure possible.

At least 16 weather-related deaths have been reported since the start of the storms, including 10 in Tennessee.

A 57-year-old man died on Friday evening after getting out of a car that washed off a road in West Plains, Missouri. Flooding killed two people in Kentucky – a 9-year-old boy swept away that same day on his way to school, and a 74-year-old whose body was found Saturday inside a fully submerged vehicle in Nelson County, authorities said.

Also on Saturday a 5-year-old died at a home in Little Rock, Arkansas, in a weather-related incident, according to police. No details were immediately provided.

Tornadoes earlier in the week destroyed entire neighbourhoods and caused at least seven deaths.

And interstate commerce is affected – the extreme flooding across a corridor that includes the major cargo hubs in Louisville, Kentucky and Memphis could lead to shipping and supply chain delays, said Jonathan Porter, chief meteorologist at AccuWeather.

The outburst comes at a time when nearly half of NWS forecast offices have 20% vacancy rates after Trump administration job cuts – twice that of just a decade ago.

Louisville mayor Craig Greenberg on Saturday said the Ohio River rose five feet (about 1.5 meters) in 24 hours and would continue to swell for days.

“We expect this to be one of the top 10 flooding events in Louisville history,” he said.

Flash flood emergency and tornado warnings continued to be issued across Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee, with more heavy rains and damaging winds in the mix.

In north-central Kentucky, emergency officials ordered a mandatory evacuation for Falmouth, a town of 2,000 people in a bend of the rising Licking River. The warnings were similar to catastrophic flooding nearly 30 years ago when the river reached a record 50 feet (15 meters), resulting in five deaths and 1,000 homes destroyed.

In Arkansas, weather officials pleaded with people to avoid travel unless absolutely necessary due to widespread flooding.

BNSF Railway confirmed that a railroad bridge in Mammoth Spring was washed out by flood waters, causing the derailment of several cars. No injuries were reported, but there was no immediate estimate for when the bridge would reopen.

Since Wednesday more than a foot of rain (30.5 centimeters) has fallen in parts of Kentucky, and more than 8 inches (20 centimeters) in parts of Arkansas and Missouri, forecasters said Saturday.

Forecasters attributed the violent weather to warm temperatures, an unstable atmosphere, strong wind shear and abundant moisture streaming from the Gulf.

At least two reports of observed tornadoes were noted Friday evening in Missouri and Arkansas, according to the National Weather Service. One, near Blytheville, Arkansas, lofted debris at least 25,000 feet (7.6km) high, according to the NWS meteorologist Chelly Amin. The state’s emergency management office reported damage in 22 counties from tornadoes, wind, hail and flash flooding.

Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets of Spain in the latest protest against housing speculation and to demand access to affordable homes.

Organisers claim that up to 150,000 joined the protest in Madrid while smaller demonstrations were held in about 40 cities across the country. Protesters from Málaga on the Costa del Sol to Vigo in the Atlantic northwest chanted “end the housing racket” and “landlords are guilty, the government is responsible”.

Valeria Racu, a spokesperson for the Madrid tenants’ union, called for rent strikes such as those mounted recently in some Catalan coastal towns.

“This is the beginning of the end of the housing business,” Racu said. “The beginning of a better society, without landlordism and this parasitical system that devours our salaries and our resources.”

The union says 1.4m Spanish households spend more than 30% of their income on housing, 200,000 families more than 10 years ago.

Housing has become the number one social issue in Spain as a combination of property speculation and tourist apartments have driven the cost of rented housing beyond the reach of all but the most wealthy.

Official statistics suggest there are at least 15,000 illegal tourist apartments in Madrid while in Barcelona the city council says it will not renew the existing 10,000 tourist apartment licences when they expire in 2028.

What was initially a problem in areas with a high concentration of tourists, such as the Balearic and Canary Islands, as well as Barcelona, has become an issue across the country, with protests in Seville, Valencia, Santiago de Compostela, Burgos and San Sebastián, among other cities, where protesters rattled sets of keys in what has become a symbol of discontent over the lack of affordable homes.

In the Balearics the average rent for a small apartment has risen by 40% in five years to about €1,400 (£1,190) a month, more than the average monthly salary of those working in the hospitality sector, the region’s main industry.

The young have been hardest hit as housing costs have soared while salaries remain stagnant. A study published by the Spanish youth council showed that a lack of affordable housing meant that last year 85% of young people under 30 were still living with their parents.

In Barcelona, where thousands gathered in the Plaça d’Espanya, protesters demanded a 50% reduction in rents, indefinite leases and an end to property speculation.

According to the Catalan housing agency, rents in Barcelona have increased by 70% in the past 10 years. Salaries rose by 17.5% over the same period.

“The housing game is rigged in favour of anyone with assets while tax incentives encourage them to acquire more and more property,” said Jaime Palomera of the Barcelona Urban Research Institute and the author of El Secuestro de la Vivienda (The Kidnapping of Housing).

“The rich have got richer since the financial crash in 2008 and the Covid crisis and they have used this wealth to buy more and more property, constantly driving up prices and increasing inequality.

“The fact is that property offers a better return than other investments. We have an economic model that encourages investment in assets that don’t create any value but simply use rent as a way of sucking money out of the middle classes.”

The solution, Palomera says, is to tax those who own multiple properties.

He cites the example of Singapore, where the state offers financial support to first-time buyers but imposes an ascending tax regime on second and subsequent homes.

Firefighters are dealing with a wild blaze that has spread over a large area of forest in Scotland with police urging people to stay away from the area.

Emergency services were called to Glentrool in Galloway, southern Scotland, at about 11.50pm on Friday with fire crews still on the scene on Saturday afternoon.

Police Scotland said the wildfire was expected to reach the Loch Doon area of East Ayrshire at about midnight

Helicopters are being used in efforts to extinguish the flames which have also affected Merrick Hill, Ben Yellary and Loch Dee, police said. One appliance from the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) is at the scene.

Another wildfire had been reported in around the same area on Thursday and covered about 1.5 miles (2.4km).

On Wednesday, crews in Scotland tackled a large grass fire at Gartur Moss in Port of Menteith, Stirling.

The National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) has warned it needs “long-term and sustained investment” to cope with the climate crisis and “increased demand” on its services, after firefighters battled wildfires across the UK this week.

This year has seen 286 wildfires hit the UK, according to the NFCC, more than 100 above the number recorded in the same period in 2022, a year that had record-breaking temperatures and unprecedented wildfire activity.

The NFCC warned the government that it could not continue to cope with “significant increases in wildfires” with current budgets “already under strain”.

Phil Garrigan, chairman of the NFCC, said: “There is no getting away from the fact that climate change is driving increases in extreme weather events, such as wildfires.

“Responding to wildfires requires a lot of resource, and often over long periods of time, which puts pressure on other fire and rescue service activities.

“Rising resilience threats mean there is an increased demand on fire and rescue services and that has to be met with long-term and sustained investment. This is really crucial to ensuring we can continue to keep our communities safe.”

Fire services in Scotland, Wales and England have all warned against barbecues and campfires in open spaces this weekend, as well as urging people to dispose of cigarettes properly.

Firefighters are dealing with a wild blaze that has spread over a large area of forest in Scotland with police urging people to stay away from the area.

Emergency services were called to Glentrool in Galloway, southern Scotland, at about 11.50pm on Friday with fire crews still on the scene on Saturday afternoon.

Police Scotland said the wildfire was expected to reach the Loch Doon area of East Ayrshire at about midnight

Helicopters are being used in efforts to extinguish the flames which have also affected Merrick Hill, Ben Yellary and Loch Dee, police said. One appliance from the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) is at the scene.

Another wildfire had been reported in around the same area on Thursday and covered about 1.5 miles (2.4km).

On Wednesday, crews in Scotland tackled a large grass fire at Gartur Moss in Port of Menteith, Stirling.

The National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) has warned it needs “long-term and sustained investment” to cope with the climate crisis and “increased demand” on its services, after firefighters battled wildfires across the UK this week.

This year has seen 286 wildfires hit the UK, according to the NFCC, more than 100 above the number recorded in the same period in 2022, a year that had record-breaking temperatures and unprecedented wildfire activity.

The NFCC warned the government that it could not continue to cope with “significant increases in wildfires” with current budgets “already under strain”.

Phil Garrigan, chairman of the NFCC, said: “There is no getting away from the fact that climate change is driving increases in extreme weather events, such as wildfires.

“Responding to wildfires requires a lot of resource, and often over long periods of time, which puts pressure on other fire and rescue service activities.

“Rising resilience threats mean there is an increased demand on fire and rescue services and that has to be met with long-term and sustained investment. This is really crucial to ensuring we can continue to keep our communities safe.”

Fire services in Scotland, Wales and England have all warned against barbecues and campfires in open spaces this weekend, as well as urging people to dispose of cigarettes properly.

Paul Schrader, the writer of Taxi Driver and director of American Gigolo, has been accused in a lawsuit of sexually assaulting his former personal assistant, firing her when she wouldn’t acquiesce to advances and reneging on a settlement that was meant to keep the allegations confidential.

The former assistant, identified in court documents as Jane Doe, sued the filmmaker and his production company on Thursday. She is seeking a judge’s order to enforce the agreement after Schrader said he couldn’t go through with it. The terms, including a monetary payment, were not disclosed.

“This is an open-and-shut settlement enforcement matter,” Doe’s lawyer, Gregory Chiarello, wrote in court papers accompanying the breach-of-contract claim.

Schrader’s lawyer, Philip J Kessler, deemed the lawsuit “desperate, opportunistic and frivolous” – and said many of the allegations in it are false or materially misleading.

“We absolutely deny that there was ever a sexual relationship of any kind between Mr Schrader and his former assistant, and we deny that Mr Schrader ever made an attempt to have a sexual relationship of any kind with his former assistant,” Kessler said.

The lawsuit, filed in a New York court, laid bare allegations that the confidential settlement between Doe, 26, and Schrader, 78, had been intended to keep under wraps.

They include her claim that the filmmaker trapped her in his hotel room, grabbed her arms and kissed her against her will last year while they were promoting his latest film, Oh, Canada, at the Cannes film festival in France.

Two days later, the lawsuit said, Schrader called Doe repeatedly and sent her angry text messages claiming he was “dying” and couldn’t pack his bags. When Doe arrived to help, the lawsuit said, Schrader exposed his genitals to her as he opened his hotel room door wearing nothing but an open bathrobe.

Doe alleges Schrader fired her last September after she again rejected his advances. Soon after, the lawsuit said, he sent her an email expressing fear that he’d become “a Harvey Weinstein” in her mind. Weinstein, the movie mogul turned #MeToo villain, was convicted of rape in Los Angeles in 2022 and is awaiting a 15 April retrial in his New York rape case.

According to the lawsuit, Schrader agreed to the settlement on 5 February but changed his mind after an illness and “soul searching”. Schrader conveyed through his lawyers in March that he “could not live with the settlement”, the lawsuit said. Kessler disputed that.

“The agreement that they’re trying to enforce against Mr Schrader, in plain English, required both parties to sign it before it became legally effective,” Kessler said. “Mr Schrader declined to sign it. It’s frankly as simple as that.”

Doe worked for Schrader from 2021 until 2024, according to the lawsuit. During that time, Kessler said, she posted on social media about how much she loved her job and referred to Schrader as an extraordinary mentor and “my man”.

Schrader rose to fame through his collaborations with the director Martin Scorsese, beginning with Taxi Driver in 1976. Robert De Niro’s iconic line “You talkin’ to me?” is seared into the lexicon and ranked among the American Film Institute’s all-time greatest movie quotes.

Schrader co-wrote Scorsese’s 1980 boxing drama Raging Bull, also starring De Niro, and authored his 1988 religious epic The Last Temptation of Christ and his 1999 paramedic drama Bringing Out the Dead.

He also directed 23 of his own films, including 1980’s American Gigolo, which he also wrote. He received his only Academy Award nomination for writing First Reformed, a 2017 thriller about a small-town minister that he also directed.

Schrader told the Associated Press last year that he made Oh, Canada – the film that Doe said brought them to Cannes – as he reconciled his own mortality after a string of hospitalizations for long Covid.

In 2016, Schrader told the Hollywood Reporter that police visited him after he ranted on Facebook about Donald Trump’s then-looming first presidency. Schrader wrote that Trump’s election was “a call to violence” and said people should be “willing to take arms”.

In 2023, he trashed the Oscars as scrambling “to be woke” with diversity efforts and more international voters. And in 2021, in the wake of #MeToo, he decried so-called “cancel culture”, telling Deadline it was “so infectious, it’s like the Delta virus”.

“If your friend says, ‘They’re saying these terrible things about me that aren’t true,’ you’re afraid to come to their defense, because you might catch that virus, too,” Schrader told the entertainment news outlet.

The UK’s foreign secretary has criticised Israeli authorities for denying two Labour MPs entry into the country and deporting them.

Yuan Yang and Abtisam Mohamed were rejected because they were suspected of plans to “document the activities of security forces and spread anti-Israel hatred”, according to a statement from the Israeli immigration ministry cited by Sky News and Politics UK.

Yang, who represents Earley and Woodley in Berkshire, and Mohamed, the MP for Sheffield Central, both flew into Ben Gurion airport from Luton with their aides, according to reports.

The foreign secretary, David Lammy, said in a statement on Saturday: “It is unacceptable, counterproductive, and deeply concerning that two British MPs on a parliamentary delegation to Israel have been detained and refused entry by the Israeli authorities.

“I have made clear to my counterparts in the Israeli government that this is no way to treat British parliamentarians, and we have been in contact with both MPs tonight to offer our support.

“The UK government’s focus remains securing a return to the ceasefire and negotiations to stop the bloodshed, free the hostages and end the conflict in Gaza.”

Since renewed military operations last month ended a short-lived truce in its war with Hamas, Israel has pushed to seize territory in the Gaza Strip in what it said was a strategy to force militants to free hostages still in captivity.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said 1,249 people have been killed since Israel resumed intense bombing last month, bringing the overall death toll since the war began to 50,609.

The 7 October 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the war resulted in 1,218 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

King Charles will have to temper his public support for net zero after Kemi Badenoch broke the political consensus over the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Senior royal sources have conceded that the 76-year-old monarch, who has spent more than half a century highlighting environmental challenges, will have to choose his words more carefully now that the Conservatives under Badenoch have said it will be impossible for the UK to hit net zero by 2050.

“The only way that we can regain it [trust] is to tell the unvarnished truth – net zero by 2050 is impossible,” the Conservative leader said last month.

Charles III has spoken publicly about how vital it is to hit net zero by the 2050 target date, set by Theresa May’s government in 2019 and agreed upon by subsequent administrations. Successive prime ministers have used the king’s long track record on campaigning for climate action to help promote Britain’s leadership on combatting the challenges.

In December 2023, for example, the king told the Cop28 UN climate change conference in Dubai that more urgent action was needed to bring the world towards a zero-carbon future. “After all, ladies and gentlemen, in 2050 our grandchildren won’t be asking what we said, they will be living with the consequences of what we did or didn’t do,” he said.

At that point, the main UK political parties were agreed on the issue. Now the monarch runs the risk of becoming embroiled in a party political dispute. In addition to the change in the Conservative view, Reform wants to scrap net zero completely.

Craig Prescott, a constitutional expert at Royal Holloway, University of London, suggested the king must be less specific about his own views on the target. “I think if you take the view that the monarchy has to be ‘two or three steps away’ from party politics then, as party politics changes, the monarchy should change,” he said.

Charles, who flies to Italy tomorrow with Queen Camilla for a state visit that lasts until Thursday, will still put tackling the climate crisis and other environmental challenges at the heart of his monarchy.

The work to create a more sustainable future will be a feature of the trip. In Rome, the king will join a meeting chaired by the foreign secretary, David Lammy, and attended by business leaders to hear how Britain and Italy are working together on the transition to clean energy. In Ravenna he will meet farmers whose land and crops have been severely affected by devastating floods in the region in the past few years.

He and Camilla, who celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary at a state banquet in Rome on Wednesday evening, will visit the Colosseum and celebrate close defence ties between the two countries, in spite of the political differences between Keir Starmer’s Labour party and Italy’s rightwing leader, Giorgia Meloni.

The need to avoid involving the king in party political controversy has been highlighted after documents released on Friday revealed that the monarch secretly met Prince Andrew to discuss his future and was twice briefed about plans for him to be involved in a £2.4bn investment fund run by an alleged Chinese spy, Yang Tengbo. Buckingham Palace insisted Yang, since banned from Britain despite protesting his innocence, was not specifically mentioned.

Prince William is likely to attend the Cop30 UN climate conference in Belém, Brazil, in November and may also be more guarded than before about his views on achieving net zero, although royals may still be expected to reflect on government policy on the international stage.

Any silencing of the monarch and his heir threatens to weaken Britain’s voice abroad, according to some environmental groups. Shaun Spiers, executive director of the environmental thinktank Green Alliance, said Charles might be unable to speak out specifically on the 2050 target but could talk generally about the need for climate action. “The king is a well-respected leader and it would be a shame if he didn’t speak on it, particularly internationally,” he said.

Reshima Sharma, deputy head of politics at Greenpeace UK, pointed to popular support for green policies. “King Charles has long been an important advocate for action to clean up our environment and tackle climate change. While the monarchy must remain politically neutral, thankfully climate action continues to receive the kind of popular support that politicians can only dream of. This is reflected across voters of all stripes,” she said.

Buckingham Palace declined to comment.

Paul Simon largely avoided mention of the health problems that had kept him off the road for the previous seven years when the storied singer-songwriter kicked off his return – and evident farewell – tour in New Orleans on Friday.

Yet, having strummed and crooned his way through some of his catalogue’s more discreet entries, and having reached a part where he treated the audience to a finishing salvo of three of his mega hits, Simon made apparent reference to those issues by letting some lyrics from The Boxer hang in the air.

“He carries the reminders / of every glove that laid him down / or cut him till he cried out / in his anger and his shame / ‘I am leaving, I am leaving,’” Simon sang, before casting a knowing glance at the audience and intoning, “but the fighter still remains / Yes – he still remains.”

That was the moment the opener of what had been billed A Quiet Celebration Tour stopped being quiet. Crowd members who had audibly joked about struggling to stay awake through some of Simon’s mellower, deeper cuts joined those around them in collectively belting out the concluding “lie-la-lie” refrain and a round of cheers that ultimately rivaled the closing standing ovation later.

Simon’s 19-number turn at New Orleans’ Saenger Theater – designed to resemble one of Italy’s baroque courtyards – marked his return to touring after announcing in 2018 that he would stop, citing in part the rigors of travel and time away from family.

Of course, the 16-time Emmy winner didn’t stop creating music. He has previously explained how a dream telling him to write Seven Psalms later led to the release of a 33-minute album of that name, which he has described as a contemplation of faith, spirituality and the struggle to maintain belief. But he has also said he did consider fully retiring after losing most of the hearing in his left ear while recovering from severe Covid and recording Seven Psalms.

Embarking on A Quiet Celebration, with plans for 55 shows across 20 North American cities, demonstrated that the 83-year-old opted for at least one final circuit of curtain calls.

As had been telegraphed ahead of time, Simon played the entire Seven Psalms album in order without commentary, marked largely by his voice and guitar except for a couple of duets with spouse and fellow lyricist Edie Brickell. Then there was an intermission. He traded in the dark business suit with which he started for a baseball cap, velour jacket and jeans.

And things got palpably bluesier and more upbeat as he delivered on a show-opening promise to spend the post-intermission period on rearranged, more familiar selections from his and the Simon & Garfunkel songbooks, including Graceland, Slip Sliding Away, Homeward Bound and – with Brickell – Under African Skies.

Simon avoided letting the second part of the show become a “best of” compilation. He announced he would toss in some of the lesser-known work he has produced through a career spanning eight decades, though he joked that he knew them well because “I mean, they’re my songs.” But he coupled them with anecdotes about their inspiration.

He set up St Judy’s Comet – saying it’s one “I very rarely perform” – by recounting how he named it after Robert St Judy, a drummer in the band led by Clifton Chenier, a zydeco musician from Opelousas, Louisiana, about three hours north-west of New Orleans. He played The Late Great Johnny Ace and explained how he got the idea for it having learned of the 1954 accidental, self-inflicted shooting death of the R&B singer of that name.

And while playing Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War, he explained he came up with it having seen a picture of a surrealist painter with his wife and their pet some time following the second world war. The song’s title was the photograph’s caption.

The final three numbers needed no introduction. Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard and The Boxer elicited sing-alongs that contrasted starkly with the Seven Psalms portion. Then Simon went without his backing ensemble for the solo finale: The Sound of Silence.

Concertgoers left pockets of seats in at least some parts of the venue empty. One likely factor may simply involve New Orleans having the reputation for last-minute, walk-up crowds while also knowing Simon had a second show scheduled at the Saenger on Saturday.

Prices, however, were a talking point in and around the theater among fans. With tickets being listed for between about $99 and $450, T-shirts inside were $40. Zip-up fleeces were $100. Someone whose water bottle rolled down several rows quipped it was no big deal because it only cost roughly $17.

Meanwhile, at least four people in New Orleans’ central business district – where the Saenger stands – could be overheard on Friday engaging in gallows humor about their 401(k) retirement accounts being drained after tariffs imposed by the Trump administration upended stock markets.

Nonetheless, if that same kind of chatter was any indication, Simon likely hit the right pitch with his mix of song choices.

Father and daughter Enrique and Yedithza Nunez said they traveled from Sacramento, California, to both visit New Orleans and see Simon play live for the first time during what they called a bucket-list trip. Echoing others in the theater, they viewed listening to Seven Psalms as sort of part of the admission price to then indulge in the music that vaulted the main attraction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist and member of Simon & Garfunkel.

Married couple Ron and Darlene Moore made the short trip over to the Saenger from their home in New Orleans’ Marigny neighborhood to see Simon in person for a third time. They said they had been most looking forward to seeing him play Seven Psalms live, having already taken in his more commercially successful material.

“I do like the old pieces,” Darlene Moore said. “But I love how he evolves.”