Since Donald Trump returned to the White House, Americans have grown used to high drama and rapid-fire headlines, as executive orders from the Oval Office have reshaped the US, from stripping back LGBTQ rights to gutting environmental regulations amid a sense that America is slipping into authoritarianism.

But even against that backdrop, last week stood out, as Trump launched a fierce global trade war, imposed tariffs on its trading partners and triggered a global market meltdown, including on Trump’s own cherished Wall Street, where hundreds of billions of dollars of stock values evaporated.

Now, with all eyes nervously on Monday’s markets amid fears that the calamitous drops will continue, recession fears are mounting in America. JP Morgan analysts last week boosted their odds on a global recession to 60% and Americans are bracing for a return of inflation – the thing that above all else likely doomed Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden.

But Trump remained unmoved by market drops and the global political condemnation – and even rare criticism from his own Republican party – saying now is a “great time to get rich” and that “China played it wrong – they panicked”.

On the streets of New York too, there was panic among some. In Washington Square Park, two sisters from Detroit were sitting on a park bench nearby the magnolia trees now in bloom. Kathleen, a primary school teacher, said she worried about whether there was a plan in place before changes are made.

“I want to be optimistic, but I live under an umbrella of worry with this administration,” Kathleen said. “I worry about the leadership, worry about a lack of continuity within the leadership, and so many changes at once without a plan.”

Her sister, Elizabeth, said she’d grown so anxious she’d stepped back from the news. “Our mum definitely had a huge jump in anxiety over this past week over her investments. She worked hard for those and she lives on them – a retired schoolteacher, and the drop in stocks very much impacts her day-to-day feeling of security.”

But Leo Ezekiel, 39, had a different perspective. As a financier, he wasn’t so worried about the stock markets. “It’s mostly that big corporations are deciding to sell off, and that will affect people, but in the long run, if stocks go down, it gives room for them to move up. It’s part of the game – and it’s always been like that in the United States.”

Trump made his move because he dreams of a return of American manufacturing might, convinced that tariffs will force factories home to the US, even though almost all economists think that is highly unlikely.

Yet, for such a momentous decision which has rattled the entire world economy, Trump reportedly only made up his mind at the last minute. According to the Washington Post, Trump didn’t arrive on an exact plan until just three hours before the Rose Garden announcement.

The “liberation day” announcement from the White House was a choreographed event, and his speech drew cheers from audience, largely made up cabinet members and blue-collar workers from manufacturing sectors that have for decades been economically pummeled by foreign competition. He offered up a vision that tariffs would bring back an older American economy, reopening factories and returning prosperity to ordinary workers.

“Taxpayers have been ripped off for more than 50 years,” Trump complained “But it is not going to happen any more.”

Vice-President JD Vance said: “We’ve seen closing factories, we’ve seen rising inflation. We’ve seen the cost of housing so high that most Americans can’t afford to buy a home right now,” Vance said. “President Trump is taking this economy in a different direction.”

America’s largest trading partners, Mexico, Canada, China, Germany, and Japan, were less enthusiastic, to say the least. China has announced retaliatory duties of 34%; the Canadian prime minister Mark Carney announced a limited set of counter-measures and called the US moves a “tragedy” for 80 years of “free and open exchange of goods and services”, led by the US.

The British PM Keir Starmer said nothing would be “off the table” when it came to the UK’s response to the tariffs – the UK imports $76.2bn in US services – but that “just as with defence and security” the world was “entering a new era” in economy and trade.

It is one where answers to even the most basic questions remain unknown. Will Trump’s tariffs on US trade partners go down as an act of economic self-sabotage? Or are tariffs merely a negotiating ploy to influence other nations – war by other means? Or is Trump finally getting to express his long-held economic view that the US has been making bad deals for decades?

The next few months may provide some clues. But, in an effort to get ahead of the US tariffs coming into effect next week, some effects were already being felt. The cost of flying goods into the US from China are reported to have risen 40% in four weeks. One car factory in Canada has already shuttered.

On Friday, Jerome Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, warned that Trump risked stoking even higher inflation and slower growth. “It is now becoming clear that the tariff increases will be significantly larger than expected,” he said. “The same is likely to be true of the economic effects, which will include higher inflation and slower growth.”

As the financial markets continued to convulse on Friday, the Washington Post reported that Trump is unbowed by negative headlines, criticism from foreign leaders, and was determined to listen to a single voice to secure what he views as his political legacy. That voice was of course his own.

“He’s at the peak of just not giving a fuck any more,” a White House official with knowledge of Trump’s thinking told the newspaper. “Bad news stories? Doesn’t give a fuck. He’s going to do what he’s going to do. He’s going to do what he promised to do on the campaign trail.”

But even some former Trump economic officials privately expressed doubts that returning the US to an era of manufacturing self-sufficiency was likely impossible.

The author Michael Wolff, who has published four books about Trump in power, says the US president will now be keenly gauging how his interruption into global trade norms is going down, with updates and live-action replays provided by aides. Trump, Wolff says, is likely caught between two opposing instincts.

“It’s great for him – he’s dominating the news once again. Nobody is talking about anything else except tariffs. Suddenly, tariffs, an arcane piece of trade policy, are the most dramatic thing in the world that he’s imbued with reality-show stuff. He’ll be really pleased with that.”

But on the other hand, Wolff predicts, Trump will be watching the financial markets. “He’ll have the business guys calling up saying: what the fuck are you doing? I’m sure he hasn’t come to any conclusion. So on the one hand it’s great – he’s the world’s leading guy again. On the other, it might collapse in on him.”

And that, he adds, is the essence of Trump. “He’s fundamentally self-destructive, but that self-destructive impulse is exactly what keeps him at the forefront of the news.”

Keir Starmer is preparing to rethink key elements of the government’s economic policy in an emergency response to Donald Trump’s tariff blitz, amid growing concern in Downing Street that the US president’s trade war could do lasting damage to the UK.

The prime minister believes, say allies, that “old assumptions should be discarded” in the UK’s response, suggesting he and the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, may be preparing to raise taxes again – despite having promised not to do so – or even possibly change their “iron clad” fiscal rules to allow more borrowing and fire up economic growth at home in the event of recession.

Almost $5tn (£4tn) was wiped off the value of global stock markets after Trump launched his tariff offensive last Wednesday on the rest of the world, including a 10% base tariff on imports into the US from the UK.

On Friday, the FTSE 100 closed more than 7% lower than last Monday, after what was its worst week since the height of panic over the Covid pandemic in March 2020.

Underlining the potential impact on UK businesses of a global trade war, Britain’s luxury carmaker Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) said on Saturday that it would “pause” shipments to the US in April as it considered how to respond. “As we work to address the new trading terms with our business partners, we are taking some short-term actions, including a shipment pause in April, as we develop our mid- to longer-term plans,” said JLR.

This week, Starmer, who has refused to criticise Trump or his tariffs directly, will focus on how to frame an economic response to a global economic shock that protects working people, and their incomes and jobs – as well as the UK’s public services.

He believes that the last few days have ushered in a “new era”, that the “world has changed” and that a global trade war risks “undermining a proud, hard-working nation”.

The kind of language now emanating from Starmer’s circles will be seen by economists – and politicians at Westminster – as preparing the ground for big potential shifts in economic policy on the basis that emergency times may require emergency measures.

Speaking to the Observer, Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said: “To the extent that this does change the economic situation in ways that could not have been predicted, that does give permission to do things that were not politically doable otherwise.”

He added “And if this is an economic crisis, it changes what is the appropriate policy response.”

On Friday, China, the world’s second-largest economy, hit back at Trump by announcing a punitive 34% of additional tariffs on imports into China of US goods, mirroring the levy imposed on Beijing by Washington on Wednesday.

The EU has yet to announce its response, while the UK said it is keeping all options available.

Starmer spoke with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, on Saturday to “share their concerns about the global economic and security impact”, said a Downing Street spokesperson. “They agreed that a trade war was in nobody’s interests, but nothing should be off the table.”

In an interview with the Observer, former World Trade Organization head Pascal Lamy, who is also an ex-EU trade commissioner in Brussels, said the EU “can use its big trade firepower to threaten the US with strong and well-targeted countermeasures, and hit the US if they do not move back”.

Lamy said there was a danger that European countries could be flooded with cheap goods from nations such as China that could no longer sell them into the US. But he added: “We have both a trade defence arsenal with anti-dumping, anti-subsidy and safeguard systems in case of import surges.”

Referring to Trump’s tactics, Lamy said it was best to respond robustly in a way the US president understood: “I think Mr Trump learned to do business in the New York mafia-influenced real estate market and that his tactics are based on extortion – you hit and keep hitting for as long as you do not get a good price for stopping. Showing your muscle, it seems to me, is the way to transact with him and his people.”

In a sign of growing concern in the US about the direction of the country after Trump’s election, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Washington and other big cities on Saturday in a show of defiance against the president’s “authoritarian overreach and billionaire-backed agenda”.

The “Hands Off” protests – of which more than 1,000 events are planned across the country – were expected to be the largest single day of action since Trump was sworn into office for a second term.

On Thursday evening, towards the end of a long week at a textiles factory on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City, Nguyen Thi Dieu and her husband were watching the news. More than 8,700 miles away, US president Donald Trump was announcing sweeping, unprecedented tariffs on every country around the world. Nowhere was safe, even the uninhabited Heard Island and McDonald Islands off the western coast of Australia that, for some unexplained reason, were hit with a 10% tariff.

His announcement launched a fierce global trade war and triggered a global market meltdown, including on Trump’s own cherished Wall Street, where hundreds of billions of dollars of stock values evaporated.

And for Dieu and her husband, it could mean they lose their jobs. They both work for a Taiwanese company making footwear in Vietnam for an American company, that exports them around the world. It is hard to find a better example of modern globalisation – and now, as the US enters a new age of protectionism, a speech in the White House Rose Garden means that Dieu doesn’t know how her family will survive.

“Nothing is clear,” said Dieu on Saturday night, as she browsed a roadside market in one of Ho Chi Minh City’s industrial zones, home to tens of thousands of people who work in the city’s factories. “I feel confused and worried that my job may not be stable.”

Officials in Vietnam are concerned. The US is Vietnam’s biggest market, with exports making up 30% of the country’s GDP and fuelling its economic growth. Hours after the announcement, Vietnam’s prime minister ordered the creation of a “rapid response team” and said the deputy prime minister, Ho Duc Phoc, would head to the US for a “working visit”.

Every country around the world has had a similar reaction. In Europe, leaders condemned Trump’s tariffs as “fundamentally wrong” (Olaf Scholz), “brutal and unfounded” (Emmanuel Macron) and “contrary to the interests of millions of people, on both sides of the Atlantic” (Pedro Sánchez).

European media were similarly brutal. “Filled with paranoia, vengeance and coerciveness” was the verdict of Le Monde, while Italy’s Corriere della Sera urged the EU to threaten “counter-tariffs … to bring the US to the table. Clearly, the EU is being put through what amounts to a stress test. It will need to demonstrate unity.”

But while Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission chief, said Europeans felt “let down by their oldest ally” and warned the tariffs were “a major blow to the world economy” with “dire consequences”, the EU did not immediately respond.

Partly, that is because – in the words of Mujtaba Rahman of the Eurasia group consultancy – the bloc’s “ultimate aim is to prevent a further escalation, bring the US to the table, and explore paths to mutually rolling back transatlantic trade barriers”.

Brussels still hopes that over the coming weeks, “a combination of counter-duties, threats and offers” will bring results, Rahman said, limiting the damage to an EU-US trade relationship that was worth more than €1.6tn (£1.3tn) in 2023.

There is a lot for Europe to lose if it doesn’t. Trump’s “liberation day” tariff of 20% on almost all EU exports to the US came after 25% levies on steel, aluminium, cars and car parts. In total, about 70% – or €380bn – of EU exports to the US will be affected.

EU officials calculate that would raise about €80bn for the US treasury if trade remained unchanged, which it most probably won’t: economists have estimated that in the medium term, EU exports to the US could fall by 50% because of the tariffs.

But if Brussels hopes a staggered approach to retaliation will encourage the US to negotiate, there is another reason it is not rushing to respond: getting 27 member states, each with national interests to defend, to agree on a single strategy is not easy.

The EU’s response to Trump’s steel and aluminium tariffs, which were announced six weeks ago, will probably include levies on emblematic American products such as orange juice, blue jeans, bourbon whiskey and Harley-Davidson motorcycles.

Due to be unveiled in mid-April, however, its exact details have still not been decided. Still less, the bloc’s retaliatory response to the 25% duties on EU cars and car parts that came into force on 3 April – let alone the latest liberation day tariffs.

Member states are nervous. France, Italy and Ireland, for example, are campaigning hard to have bourbon removed from the list – because Trump has threatened to hit European wines and spirits with a 200% duty if the EU includes it.

Targeting the US whiskey, they argue, would do more economic harm than good: EU countries import barely €500m of bourbon annually, but export €8bn of wine and spirits to the US – and some EU winemakers rely on the US for up to 20% of sales.

“What matters,” said Ignacio García Bercero, a former senior EU trade negotiator, “is that you maximise the political impact [on the US], and limit the economic impact [to the EU]”. It is a delicate balancing act.

The EU does, however, have one strong hand to play in services. Trump is obsessed with the $236bn US trade deficit with the EU in goods, but less well known is that the US runs a trade surplus in services with the EU of €109bn.

If necessary, limiting US companies’ access to EU public procurement tenders or to European markets ranging from banking and other financial services to big tech could prove a powerful riposte. For the time being, though, it has not come to that.

“We are buying the space we need to negotiate, and looking at targeting our response in the most effective way possible,” an EU official said: not just “how we impact the US”, but also “saving our member states and our industry the pain wherever possible”.

As Europe reeled from the shock of the tariffs, the unspoken message from Beijing was: welcome to our world. “There are no winners in trade wars, and there is no way out for protectionism,” the commerce ministry said on Thursday.

For Xi Jinping’s government, there was no Brussels-style hesitancy – they immediately hit back. On Friday, China announced that it would be imposing retaliatory tariffs of 34% on US imports, starting on 10 April. China also added US entities to its export control list, restricting their ability to do business in China.

Chinese companies have been figuring out how to circumnavigate Trump’s tariffs since 2018, when Trump’s first US-China trade war started. Companies have been moving their supply chains to south-east Asia, while the government has been signing trade deals with global south countries with increasing gusto.

Even with countries without a free trade agreement, such as Brazil, Chinese bilateral trade has soared in the past seven years. In 2023, China-Brazil trade reached a record $157.5bn.

Economists noted that the US tariffs on Chinese goods did not change the fact that the US is a net importer of products that China produces, such as fast fashion, electronics and clean energy equipment. “If the US shifts around its importing pattern without changing its net imports, it’s not going to make much of a difference to the world,” said Michael Pettis, a professor of finance at Peking University. “You’ll see trade shift around, but the basic imbalances will remain there.”

Trump and his team have tried to tackle this problem by imposing tariffs on the countries that have been used by Chinese companies to reroute their supply chains, such as Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia. Those countries are being hit with even higher tariffs than China, at 46%, 36% and 49%, respectively.

Whether or not the tariffs have the desired effect from the US perspective, there is one clear strategic victory – for China. China, once again, can present itself as the stable global partner for third countries, in contrast to the capricious US.

Back in Washington, Trump was claiming on social media that “China played it wrong – they panicked”, insisting that despite the market drops, global political condemnation and even rare criticism from his own Republican party, his tariffs had made it a “great time to get rich”.

But with all eyes nervously on Monday’s markets amid worries that the calamitous drops will continue, recession fears are mounting in America. JP Morgan analysts last week boosted their odds on a global recession to 60% and Americans are bracing for a return of inflation – the thing that above all else probably doomed Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden.

On the streets of New York too, there was panic among some. In Washington Square Park, two sisters from Detroit were sitting on a park bench nearby the magnolia trees now in bloom. Kathleen, a primary school teacher, said she worried about whether there was a plan in place before changes are made.

“I want to be optimistic, but I live under an umbrella of worry with this administration,” Kathleen said. “I worry about the leadership, worry about a lack of continuity within the leadership, and so many changes at once without a plan.”

Her sister, Elizabeth, said she’d grown so anxious she’d stepped back from the news. “Our mum definitely had a huge jump in anxiety during this past week over her investments. She worked hard for those and she lives on them … a retired schoolteacher, and the drop in stocks very much affects her day-to-day feeling of security.”

Trump made his move because he dreams of a return of American manufacturing might, convinced that tariffs will force factories home to the US, even though almost all economists think that is highly unlikely.

Yet, for such a momentous decision which has rattled the entire world economy, Trump reportedly only made up his mind at the last minute. According to the Washington Post, Trump didn’t arrive on an exact plan until just three hours before the Rose Garden performance.

The “liberation day” announcement from the White House was a choreographed event, and his speech drew cheers from the audience, largely made up cabinet members and blue-collar workers from manufacturing sectors that have for decades been economically pummelled by foreign competition. He offered up a vision that tariffs would bring back an older American economy, reopening factories and returning prosperity to ordinary workers.

“Taxpayers have been ripped off for more than 50 years,” Trump complained “But it is not going to happen any more.”

Vice-president JD Vance said: “We’ve seen closing factories, we’ve seen rising inflation. We’ve seen the cost of housing so high that most Americans can’t afford to buy a home right now. President Trump is taking this economy in a different direction.”

Most observers would probably agree that the US economy was heading in a “different direction”, but would not be quite as enthusiastic as the vice-president.

On Friday, Jerome Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, warned that Trump risked stoking even higher inflation and slower growth. “It is now becoming clear that the tariff increases will be significantly larger than expected,” he said. “The same is likely to be true of the economic effects, which will include higher inflation and slower growth.”

As the financial markets continued to convulse on Friday, the Washington Post reported that Trump was unbowed by negative headlines, criticism from foreign leaders, and was determined to listen to a single voice to secure what he views as his political legacy. That voice was his own.

“He’s at the peak of just not giving a fuck any more,” a White House official with knowledge of Trump’s thinking told the newspaper. “Bad news stories? Doesn’t give a fuck. He’s going to do what he’s going to do. He’s going to do what he promised to do on the campaign trail.”

But even some former Trump economic officials privately expressed doubts that returning the US to an era of manufacturing self-sufficiency was probably impossible.

The author Michael Wolff, who has published four books about Trump in power, says the US president will now be keenly gauging how his interruption to global trade norms is going down, with updates and live-action replays provided by aides. Trump, Wolff says, is probably caught between two opposing instincts.

“It’s great for him – he’s dominating the news once again. Nobody is talking about anything else except tariffs. Suddenly, tariffs, an arcane piece of trade policy, are the most dramatic thing in the world that he’s imbued with reality-show stuff. He’ll be really pleased with that.”

But on the other hand, Wolff predicts, Trump will be watching the financial markets. “He’ll have the business guys calling up saying: what the fuck are you doing? I’m sure he hasn’t come to any conclusion. So on the one hand it’s great – he’s the world’s leading guy again. On the other, it might collapse in on him.”

And that, he adds, is the essence of Trump. “He’s fundamentally self-destructive, but that self-destructive impulse is exactly what keeps him at the forefront of the news.”

Back in Vietnam, Trump’s image as a successful businessman chimed with many in the country, where entrepreneurship is prized. Several of his books have been translated into Vietnamese, including The Art of the Deal. During his first term, many Vietnamese also welcomed his tough stance on China, and polling suggests Vietnam was one of the few countries where most of the population was confident in his leadership.

“I view him all the time on TV,” said Dieu, who adds that she also likes him. Will her mind change after his tariff announcement? There’s a pause. “It’s hard to say.”

Additional reporting by Nguyen Thanh Hue in Ho Chi Minh City

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is set to travel to Washington to meet with US president Donald Trump to discuss issues including tariffs, Gaza and the “Iranian threat”, his office has confirmed.

The meeting will take place on Monday, a White House official said on the condition of anonymity.

The US and Israel are dealing with a set of extremely thorny issues, including Trump’s shock imposition of 17% tariffs on Israeli imports, an elusive search for a ceasefire in Gaza, and mounting concern over Iran’s nuclear program.

Netanyahu will meet Trump to “discuss tariffs, efforts to bring back Israeli hostages (from Gaza), Israel-Turkey relations, the Iranian threat, and the fight against the International Criminal Court”, which has accused the Israeli leader of war crimes, his Jerusalem office said in a statement.

The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu alleging responsibility for war crimes in Gaza last November.

Tariff talks would make Netanyahu the first foreign leader to travel to Washington in an attempt to negotiate a better deal with Trump.

Israel had attempted to duck the tariffs imposed on nearly every country by moving preemptively on Tuesday – a day before Trump’s big global tariff announcement – to drop all remaining duties on the 1% of American goods still affected by them.

But Trump moved ahead with the tariffs, saying the US had a significant trade deficit with its ally and top beneficiary of military aid.

The US is Israel’s closest ally and largest single trading partner. The two countries signed a free trade agreement 40 years ago and about 98% of goods from the US are now tax-free.

An Israeli finance ministry official said on Thursday that Trump’s latest tariff announcement could impact Israel’s exports of machinery and medical equipment.

Trump’s initial 10% “baseline” tariff paid by US importers has already taken effect at US seaports, airports and customs warehouses, ushering in Trump’s full rejection of the post-second world war system of mutually agreed tariff rates.

The changes have shaken global stock markets, wiping out $5tn in value for S&P 500 index companies by Friday’s close, a record two-day decline.

Trump’s higher “reciprocal” tariff rates of 11% to 50% are due to take effect on Wednesday. European Union 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%.

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.

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 planning 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, flew into Ben Gurion airport from Luton with their aides, according to reports. They said they were part of an MPs’ delegation coming to visit humanitarian aid projects and communities in the West Bank with UK charity partners. The pair were on their way back to the UK on Sunday, according to the chief secretary to the Treasury, Darren Jones.

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.”

In a joint statement posted on X, the two MPs said they were “astounded” at being denied entry, and that it was vital for parliamentarians to be able to witness the situation on the ground in Palestine.

Dame Emily Thornberry, the chair of the House of Commons foreign affairs committee, said that Israel would “rue the day that they did this to British parliamentarians”.

Yang and Mohamed said: “We’re astounded at the unprecedented step taken by the Israeli authorities to refuse British MPs entry on our trip to visit the occupied West Bank. It is vital that parliamentarians are able to witness first-hand the situation in the occupied Palestinian territory.”

They added: “We are two, out of scores of MPs, who have spoken out in parliament in recent months on the Israel-Palestine conflict and the importance of complying with international humanitarian law. Parliamentarians should feel free to speak truthfully in the House of Commons without fear of being targeted.”

Their deportation comes amid the resumption, after a short truce, of Israel’s offensive in Gaza, in which it has killed 1,249 people since last month, according to the strip’s health ministry. It puts the overall death toll since the war began at 50,609, mostly civilians. The military campaign began after the 7 October 2023 attack on southern Israel by Hamas that resulted in 1,218 deaths, mostly civilians, and in which 250 people were taken hostage according to Israel.

While the world’s focus has been on Gaza, the Palestinian-Israeli rights group B’tselem has documented 64 airstrikes that killed 261 Palestinians – including militant and civilian casualties, and at least 41 minors – in the West Bank since the 7 October attacks. Additionally, military operations in three West Bank refugee camps in January forced 40,000 people from their homes.

Describing the two deported MPs as “potential leaders”, Thornberry told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme: “They are highly respected parliamentarians, and Israel is badly advised to try to alienate them, to humiliate them, and to treat them in this way because people listen to what these two young women say, and they will do for decades to come.

“In my view, Israel really needs to start making friends as opposed to alienating people in this way. I think that it’s an insult to Britain and an insult to parliament.”

She added: “I think that they will rue the day that they did this to British parliamentarians. This is the first time that they’ve ever refused MPs access to the country.”

The Council for Arab-British Understanding (Caabu) and Medical Aid for Palestinians (Map) said they had organised the delegation to Israel that included Yang and Mohamed and that they had run such trips to the occupied West Bank for more than a decade.

Amid the fury at Israel over the MPs’ treatment, the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, also faced criticism after she told Sky News’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips programme: “I think that every country should be able to control its borders, and that’s what Israel is doing, as far as I understand.”

She said she understood they “were coming in to do something that they were not allowed to do, and so I respect that decision”.

In response, Lammy wrote on X: “It’s disgraceful you are cheerleading another country for detaining and deporting two British MPs. Do you say the same about Tory MPs banned from China?”

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 Democratic senator Cory Booker took a version of his record-breaking Senate floor speech on the road Saturday to a town hall meeting in a New Jersey gymnasium, calling on people to find out what they can do to push back against Donald Trump’s agenda.

Booker took questions at suburban New Jersey’s Bergen Community College the same day that more than 1,200 “Hands Off” demonstrations took place around the country. The town hall event was punctuated both by celebratory shouts of “Cory, Cory” as well as at least a half-dozen interruptions by protesters.

It was Booker’s first in-person event in his home state since his speech this week, where he held the Senate floor for 25 hours and 5 minutes in opposition to Trump’s policies. In doing so, he broke the record for the longest floor speech, which was set by the segregationist senator Strom Thurmond in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

Questioner after questioner asked what they could be doing to show their disagreement and worry over the president’s policies. Booker told them it only takes a little bit more – could they afford a trip to Washington to lobby against budget cuts? One of the loudest moments of applause came after he addressed a woman who said she worried about what potential Medicaid cuts could mean for her son with autism.

“A gathering like this can’t be the end of our activism,” Booker said. “This has got to be a moment in America where all of us begin to say, what more can I do?”

The questions and Booker’s response mirror what voters and other Democrats have been hearing during town halls. He said he didn’t want to focus on the Democratic party, which has struggled to find a message since losing the 2024 election. Instead, he said, he would focus on “the people of our country”.

“I think the Democratic party lost a lot of elections because people didn’t believe that they cared about them. So let’s stop worrying about the politics and get more focused on the people,” Booker said.

After the event, Booker said he was reluctant to tell people the exact tactics to use, citing civil rights activists like the late John Lewis. He said creativity has a role to play.

“I know one thing it’s not, is sitting down and doing nothing and just watching on TV and getting stuck in a state of sedentary agitation,” he said. “Everybody has to be taking measures to put the pressure on to change.”

Booker, who ran unsuccessfully for president in 2020, said after the event that he was focused on running for re-election to the Senate in 2026 and that 2028 “will take care of itself”.

Booker, 55, is in his second full term in the Senate. He chairs the Strategic Communications Committee, his party’s messaging arm. His team is focused on boosting Senate Democrats’ presence across social platforms through more frequent and casual content.

Booker himself has amassed one of the largest followings on social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok and X, where his commentary appears to connect with the party’s base. But staffers are now focused on how to transfer that success to Booker’s fellow senators, who are often less digitally fluent and face different political landscapes in their home states.

That has involved turning the communications committee into a nerve center for testing and coordinating the easiest-to-use formats for lawmakers looking to boost their digital brands.

Booker hopes to double the engagement that senators receive with their content directly online and increase the caucus’s appearances with online digital media personalities.

The start of Saturday’s event included six disruptions, including by several people who decried the treatment of Palestinians. Police in the gymnasium escorted them from the arena.

“I hear you and I see you,” Booker said.

The British artist called “truly the worst” by the US president, Donald Trump, after he derided a portrait she created of him, has said the criticism called her “integrity into question” and is threatening her career.

Sarah A Boardman painted Trump’s official portrait for the Colorado state capitol building in Denver, where it hung for six years from 2019.

In March, Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform that the portrait had been “purposefully distorted”. Trump said Boardman’s portrait of the former US president Barack Obama was “wonderful”, but “the one on me is truly the worst”.

In her first comment since the incident, Boardman said Trump’s comments meant that her “intentions, integrity and abilities were, in my opinion, called into question”.

Boardman rebuked the president’s claims in a statement, saying she had “completed the portrait accurately, without ‘purposeful distortion’, political bias, or any attempt to caricature the subject, actual or implied”.

The artist said that while she acknowledged Trump’s right to comment, the “additional allegations that I ‘purposefully distorted’ the portrait, and that I ‘must have lost my talent as I got older’ are now directly and negatively impacting my business of over 41 years, which now is in danger of not recovering”.

Discussing her work with the Colorado Times Recorder in 2019, she acknowledged that there would “always be anger at a president from one side or the other. It is human nature.”

In response to Trump’s criticism, officials said the portrait would be removed, and it has been since. Boardman says that for the first six years after she painted the portrait, she “received overwhelmingly positive reviews and feedback”, but that since Trump’s comments “that has changed for the worse”.

Boardman was born in Britain, and her website says she spent years travelling around Australia, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, Malaysia, the Middle East, Europe and the US while “conducting a successful career in airline travel and business”.

In 1985, she began studying techniques of the old masters in Germany and built a successful career as an artist, eventually winning a nationwide “call for artists” by the state of Denver, to paint the official portraits of presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

Trump guards his image closely. In January 2025, before his inauguration, he released a portrait that was variously described by critics as serious or ominous, and seemed to reference his 2023 mugshot.

That image was taken after he was charged with attempting to overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden in the state of Georgia – a charge Trump denied.

After Trump’s criticism of Boardman, his envoy Steve Witkoff confirmed the White House had been sent a new work from Moscow, which was a gift from Vladimir Putin. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov described it as a “personal gift”.

Witkoff described the picture as a “beautiful portrait” by a “leading Russian artist”.

Washington is revoking all visas for South Sudanese passport holders and blocking new arrivals, secretary of state Marco Rubio said on Saturday, complaining the African nation is not accepting its nationals expelled from the US.

The state department “is taking actions to revoke all visas held by South Sudanese passport holders and prevent further issuance to prevent entry”, Rubio said in a statement.

It was the first such measure singling out all passport holders from a particular country since Donald Trump returned to the White House on 20 January, having campaigned on an anti-immigration platform.

Rubio accused the transitional government in Juba of “taking advantage of the United States”, saying that “every country must accept the return of its citizens in a timely manner when another country … seeks to remove them.”

Washington “will be prepared to review these actions when South Sudan is in full cooperation”, Rubio added.

The world’s newest country and also one of the poorest, South Sudan is currently prey to tensions between political leaders.

Some observers fear a renewal of the civil war that killed 400,000 people between 2013 and 2018.

South Sudanese nationals had been granted “temporary protected status” (TPS) by the administration of Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden, with the designation set to expire on 3 May 2025.

The US grants TPS, which shields people against deportation, to foreign citizens who cannot safely return home because of war, natural disasters or other “extraordinary” conditions.

There were about 133 South Sudanese in the US under the TPS program, with another 140 eligible to apply, the Department of Homeland Security said in September 2023.

But the Trump White House has begun overturning TPS designations, revoking protection in January from more than 600,000 Venezuelans.

A federal judge this week put that decision on hold after calling into question the government’s claims that the majority of Venezuelans in the US were criminals.

According to the Pew Research Center, as of March 2024 there were 1.2 million people eligible for or receiving TPS in the US, with Venezuelans making up the largest group.

The Trump administration’s singling out of South Sudan also comes after growing numbers of Africans attempted to enter the US via its southern border – an alternative to risky routes into Europe.

Washington is revoking all visas for South Sudanese passport holders and blocking new arrivals, secretary of state Marco Rubio said on Saturday, complaining the African nation is not accepting its nationals expelled from the US.

The state department “is taking actions to revoke all visas held by South Sudanese passport holders and prevent further issuance to prevent entry”, Rubio said in a statement.

It was the first such measure singling out all passport holders from a particular country since Donald Trump returned to the White House on 20 January, having campaigned on an anti-immigration platform.

Rubio accused the transitional government in Juba of “taking advantage of the United States”, saying that “every country must accept the return of its citizens in a timely manner when another country … seeks to remove them.”

Washington “will be prepared to review these actions when South Sudan is in full cooperation”, Rubio added.

The world’s newest country and also one of the poorest, South Sudan is currently prey to tensions between political leaders.

Some observers fear a renewal of the civil war that killed 400,000 people between 2013 and 2018.

South Sudanese nationals had been granted “temporary protected status” (TPS) by the administration of Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden, with the designation set to expire on 3 May 2025.

The US grants TPS, which shields people against deportation, to foreign citizens who cannot safely return home because of war, natural disasters or other “extraordinary” conditions.

There were about 133 South Sudanese in the US under the TPS program, with another 140 eligible to apply, the Department of Homeland Security said in September 2023.

But the Trump White House has begun overturning TPS designations, revoking protection in January from more than 600,000 Venezuelans.

A federal judge this week put that decision on hold after calling into question the government’s claims that the majority of Venezuelans in the US were criminals.

According to the Pew Research Center, as of March 2024 there were 1.2 million people eligible for or receiving TPS in the US, with Venezuelans making up the largest group.

The Trump administration’s singling out of South Sudan also comes after growing numbers of Africans attempted to enter the US via its southern border – an alternative to risky routes into Europe.

A Briton held captive by the Taliban for more than nine weeks has said he is living in dire conditions in a prison in Kabul, describing it as “the nearest thing to hell I can imagine”.

In a recording of a phone call from Pul-e-Charkhi maximum-security jail, Peter Reynolds, 79, also spoke of his fears for the safety of his wife, Barbie, who is being held in the women’s section of the prison.

“I’ve been joined up with rapists and murderers by handcuffs and ankle cuffs, including a man who killed his wife and three children, shouting away, a demon-possessed man,” Reynolds said in recordings shared with the Sunday Times.

Reynolds said he was living in “a cage rather than a cell”, but described his circumstances as “VIP conditions” compared with where his wife is being held. He said he had lost weight and received only one meal a day.

The couple have been running projects in schools in Afghanistan for 18 years and decided to stay in the country after the Taliban seized power in 2021. They were detained at the start of February when they travelled to their home in Bamiyan province in a small plane rented by their Chinese-American friend, Faye Hall.

Hall was also detained, but she was released last weekend after the Trump administration lifted bounties worth $10m from the heads of senior Taliban figures including Sirajuddin Haqqani, the interior minister.

Reynolds said that when he was detained, he was initially told the plane lacked proper landing permission and they would be released. Instead, their phones were confiscated and they were transferred to the interior ministry in Kabul, where the couple were separated then locked up in Pul-e-Charki prison.

Reynolds said he was told by the Taliban that they had confiscated 59 books from their home that were “against Islam”. He was asked why they had them. “I asked, ‘Can you tell me any part of those books which is against Islam?’ ” he said. “No one has been able to, so I think it’s an outrage.

“They have interrogated more than 30 people who worked with us in Yakawlang and Kabul, including our accountant and tax people, and we had to put our thumbprint on a nine-page-long CID [criminal investigation department] report and they said they could find no crime. That was three weeks ago but still they haven’t released us.

“These things are an utter disgrace and shame. The Taliban have made a mistake and need to face up to it.”

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.

Pope Francis has made a surprise appearance in St Peter’s Square during a special jubilee mass for the sick and health workers, marking his first public appearance at the Vatican since his discharge from hospital two weeks ago.

The pontiff waved at the crowd that stood and applauded as he was appeared unannounced, assisted in a wheelchair to the front of the altar in the square.

“Good Sunday to everyone,’’ Francis said, speaking into a microphone, which he tapped to make sure it was working on a second attempt. “Thank you very much.”

The pontiff’s voice sounded stronger than when he addressed wellwishers outside Gemelli hospital on the day of his release on 23 March, after being diagnosed with life-threatening pneumonia during a five-week hospital stay. He has just completed two weeks of at least two months of doctor-ordered rest as he continues physical, respiratory and speech therapy, as well as treatment for a lingering lung infection.

The pope referred to his experience with illness in both the traditional Sunday blessing and the homily read by Archbishop Rino Fisichella, the organiser of the Holy Year, which is expected to bring 30 million pilgrims to Rome.

Addressing the sick among the crowd, the pope said in the homily read by Fisichella that “in this moment of my life I share a lot: the experience of infirmity, feeling weak, depending on the others for many things, needing support.

“It is not easy, but it is a school in which we learn every day to love and to let ourselves be loved, without demanding and without rejecting, without regretting, without despairing, grateful to God and to our brothers for the good that we receiev, trusting for what is still to come.”

He also urged the faithful not to push the fragile from their lives “as unfortunately a certain mentality does today. Let’s not ostracise pain from our surroundings. Let’s instead make it an opportunity to grow together, to cultivate hope.”

In the traditional Sunday blessing, he offered prayers for doctors, nurses and health care workers “who are not always helped to work in inadequate conditions, at times the victims of aggression. Their mission is not easy and must be supported and respected.”

Sneaky fees that are estimated to cost consumers £2.2bn a year are to be banned from today under new consumer protection laws.

Businesses, including travel websites, ticket agencies and food delivery apps, will be required to include any mandatory fees in the headline price. Research has found these fees can be more than 25% of the product price.

The ban comes into force under reforms in the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Act 2024, passed under the previous government. The new laws also impose bans on the use or commissioning of fake reviews.

A report for the Department for Business and Trade in September 2023 found that in the entertainment sector 45% of providers included at least one mandatory “dripped” fee. The figures were 21% for the holiday and hospitality sector and 3% for retail, excluding delivery charges. It also found consumers are commonly required to click through 10 website pages or more before they can finally make the chosen purchase. They can face a range of optional purchases and mandatory fees before finally being able to complete the transaction.

Under the new requirements, a one-time installation fee for broadband must be included in the total price. Any administration or booking fees on ticket websites must also be flagged upfront. The new laws only cover unavoidable fees. Optional fees, such as airline seats and luggage upgrades for flights, are not included.

Justin Madders, minister for employment rights, competition and markets, said: “From today consumers can confidently make purchases knowing they are protected against fake reviews and dripped pricing.

“These changes will give consumers more power and control over their hard-earned cash, as well as help to establish a level playing field by deterring bad actors that undercut compliant businesses.”

The value of positive online reviews has spawned a small industry in generating glowing, but fake endorsements of products and services. These now face a crackdown, which will be enforced by the Competition and Markets Authority.

A research study published by the Department for Business and Trade in April 2023 found that at least one in 10 of all product reviews on third party e-commerce platforms are likely to be fake – most positive and designed to encourage consumer purchases.

Officials say the new laws will prevent diners turning up to a restaurant with 5-star reviews “only to be served 1-star quality food”. It will also reduce the chances of ordering a product that never turns up or does not resemble the marketing materials, despite glowing reviews.

Amazon has filed multiple lawsuits against brokers who attempt to facilitate fake reviews, often in exchange for money or free products. The online retailer says it has successfully stopped millions of fake reviews from being posted on its platform.

Reviews were found to be used by 90% of consumers and contributed to the £217bn spent in online retail markets in 2023, according to the Department for Business and Trade. Businesses will now be accountable for the reviews on their pages, and will be legally required to take steps to prevent and remove the publication of fake reviews.

Ministers say that the laws will also help prevent compliant businesses from being undercut by those seeking to unfairly profit from consumers with hidden additional prices and fake reviews.

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.