Donald Trump said foreign governments would have to pay “a lot of money” to lift sweeping tariffs that he characterised as “medicine,” as markets in Asia plunged in early trading on Monday.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One late on Sunday, the US president indicated he was not concerned about market losses that have already wiped out nearly $6tn in value from US stocks. “I don’t want anything to go down. But sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something,” he said.

Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index tumbled nearly 9% in early trading on Monday, as concerns over a tariff-induced global recession continued to rip through markets.

The Nikkei dropped as much as 8.8% to hit 30,792.74 for the first time since October 2023. Japanese prime minister Shigeru Ishiba said on Monday his government will continue to ask Trump to lower tariffs but said results “won’t come overnight”.

“As such, the government must take all available means” to limit the economic impact on Japan, including offering funding support for domestic firms and taking measures to protect jobs, he told parliament.

Hong Kong and Chinese stocks dived, with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index down 8% in early trade. Shares in Chinese tech giants Alibaba and Tencent fell more than 8%.

In South Korea, trading on the Kospi index was halted for five minutes at 9.12am as stocks plummeted.

Taiwan’s stock exchange fell almost 10% on the Monday open, the first day of trading since the tariffs were announced due to a two-day holiday last week. Falls were driven by TSMC and Foxconn, triggering circuit breakers, and marked the largest one-day point and percentage loss on record, according to local media.

On Sunday evening Taiwan’s financial regulator had announced limits on short selling among other measures to maintain stability. Shortly after the open on Monday, the stock exchange chairman Sherman Lin said they would coordinate with the regulator if more measure were needed.

Australian shares were also sharply lower, with more than $160bn wiped off the markets in early trading. Treasurer Jim Chalmers said on Monday afternoon: “We expect more manageable impacts on the Australian economy, but we still do expect Australian GDP to take a hit and we expect there to be an impact on prices here.”

Trump said he had spoken to leaders from Europe and Asia over the weekend, who hope to convince him to lower tariffs that are as high as 50% and due to take effect this week. “They are coming to the table. They want to talk but there’s no talk unless they pay us a lot of money on a yearly basis,” Trump said.

Trump’s tariff announcement last week jolted economies around the world, triggering retaliatory levies from China and sparking fears of a global trade war and recession. On Sunday morning talkshows, Trump’s top economic advisers sought to portray the tariffs as a savvy repositioning of the US in the global trade order. They also tried to minimise the economic shocks from last week’s tumultuous rollout. Wall Street stock futures opened sharply lower on Sunday, in a sign of further turbulence.

Treasury secretary Scott Bessent said more than 50 nations had started negotiations with the US since last Wednesday’s announcement. “He’s created maximum leverage for himself,” Bessent said on NBC News’ Meet the Press. Neither Bessent nor the other officials named the countries or offered details about the talks. But simultaneously negotiating with multiple governments could pose a logistical challenge for the Trump administration and prolong economic uncertainty.

Bessent said there was “no reason” to anticipate a recession, citing stronger-than-anticipated US jobs growth last month, before the tariffs were announced.

Tony Sycamore, a market analyst at IG in Sydney, said: “Things have gone from bad to worse this morning. The lack of reaction from Trump and from Bessent, in terms of their concern levels appearing to be very, very low in terms of the market dislocation. If there isn’t some sort of walking back of the announcements, then we’re heading for a liquidity event and liquidity will get sucked out of these markets big time across all asset classes.”

JP Morgan economists now estimate the tariffs will result in full-year US gross domestic product declining by 0.3%, down from an earlier estimate of 1.3% growth, and that the unemployment rate will climb to 5.3% from 4.2% now.

The Republican president spent the weekend in Florida, playing golf and posting a video of his swing to social media on Sunday.

US customs agents began collecting Trump’s unilateral 10% tariff on all imports from many countries on Saturday. Higher “reciprocal” tariff rates of 11% to 50% on individual countries are due to take effect on Wednesday at 12.01am EDT (4.01am GMT).

Some governments have already signalled a willingness to engage with the US to avoid the duties.

In his first significant intervention since the US ushered in a new economic era last week, British prime minister Keir Starmer said the government would step in to support key British industries. He is to announce plans to give carmakers more flexibility over how they meet a target to stop sales of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030. Other sectors to be hit by Trump’s tariffs are expected to receive support later in the week, with life sciences likely to be among them.

Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te, on Sunday offered zero tariffs as the basis for talks with the US, pledging to remove trade barriers and saying Taiwanese companies would increase their US investments. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would seek a reprieve from a 17% tariff on the country’s goods during a planned meeting with Trump on Monday.

An Indian government official told Reuters the country does not plan to retaliate against a 26% tariff and said talks were under way with the US over a possible deal. In Italy, prime minister Giorgia Meloni – a Trump ally – pledged on Sunday to shield businesses that suffered damage from a planned 20% tariff on goods from the European Union. Italian wine producers and US importers at a wine fair in Verona on Sunday said business had already slowed and feared more lasting damage.

Tariff-stunned markets face another week of potential turmoil after the worst week for US stocks since the onset of the Covid-19 crisis five years ago.

The S&P 1500 Composite Index, among the widest measures of the US market, has had almost $10tn wiped out since mid-February, a significant blow to millions of Americans’ retirement nest eggs.

White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett denied that the tariffs were part of a Trump strategy to crash financial markets to pressure the US Federal Reserve to cut interest rates. He said there would be no “political coercion” of the central bank.

In a Truth Social post on Friday, Trump shared a video that suggested his tariffs aimed to hammer the stock market on purpose in a bid to force lower interest rates.

The social media post fuelled global debate over whether Trump’s tariffs were part of a permanent new tariff regime or simply a negotiating tactic that could lead to the tariffs being eased through concessions by other countries.

With Reuters

Asia’s key indexes tumbled in early trading on Monday as fears of a tariff-induced global recession continued to rip through markets. Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index plunged nearly 9% in early trading on Monday, while South Korea’s Kospi index was halted for five minutes as stocks plummeted.

Despite his tariffs wiping $6tn off US stocks, Trump appeared nonchalant late Sunday, saying, “I don’t want anything to go down. But sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.”

Separately, Hugo Lowell exclusively reveals how Trump’s national security adviser Mike Waltz came to include the Atlantic’s chief editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, to the infamous Signal group chat about plans for US strikes in Yemen. An internal investigation showed a series of missteps that started during the 2024 campaign and went unnoticed until Waltz created the group chat last month.

Here are the key stories at a glance:

Catching up? Here’s what happened on 5 April 2025.

Senior officials within Donald Trump’s administration gave conflicting messages on Sunday about the US president’s global tariffs that have caused a meltdown in stock markets, prompted warnings of a world recession and provoked rare expressions of dissent from within his Republican party.

Cabinet members fanned out across Sunday’s political talk shows armed with talking points on Trump’s 10% across-the-board tariff on almost all US imports, with higher rates targeted at about 60 countries. If the intention was to calm nerves with a clear statement of intent, then it backfired as top officials gave starkly contrasting signals.

Howard Lutnick, the billionaire commerce secretary, struck an aggressive note on CBS News’s Face the Nation in which he portrayed the tariffs as here to stay. Asked whether there was a chance that tariffs would be postponed to allow countries to negotiate a deal with Washington, he replied: “There is no postponing – they are definitely going to stay in place for days and weeks, that is sort of obvious.”

Lutnick added that Trump intended to “reset global trade”.

“The president has made it crystal, crystal clear,” he said.

However, two other cabinet members gave the opposite take, suggesting that negotiations with individual countries were very much on the cards. Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, told Meet the Press on NBC News that Trump had “created maximum leverage for himself, and more than 50 countries have approached the administration about lowering their non-tariff trade barriers, lowering their tariffs, stopping currency manipulation”.

The agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, echoed Bessent by flagging up possible talks. “We’ve got 50 countries that are burning the phone lines into the White House,” she told CNN’s State of the Union.

The scale of Trump’s tariffs have sent shockwaves around the world, catching US investors as well as top Republican politicians by surprise. In just two days last week, more than $6tn was wiped off Wall Street’s market value.

Trump told US consumers in a post on his Truth Social network to “hang tough, it won’t be easy, but the end result will be historic”. Yet as he spent the weekend golfing at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, his unprecedented tax increase goaded senior Republicans to speak out, in a vanishingly rare display of criticism of their leader.

Trump’s former vice-president, Mike Pence, denounced the tariffs as the “largest peacetime tax hike in US history”. Thom Tillis, the Republican senator from North Carolina, said: “Anyone who says there may be a little bit of pain before we get things right needs to talk to farmers who are one crop away from bankruptcy.”

Ted Cruz, a senator from Texas, warned of a “bloodbath” for Republicans in the 2026 midterm elections should the tariffs force the US into recession.

Democrats are detecting opportunity in such unusual challenges to Trump from within his own party. Adam Schiff, the Democratic senator from California, floated on Meet the Press what sounded like a draft campaign strategy for the midterms.

“If we head into a recession, it will be the Trump recession,” he said. Of Trump, Schiff also said: “He’s wrecking our economy.”

Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota who ran as the Democrats’ vice-presidential candidate in last November’s defeat to Trump, called the tariffs “really, really terrifying” on State of the Union. He warned that if you punish dependable trading partners like Mexico and Canada, “they don’t come back overnight.”

As the tariffs kick in, analysts are increasingly pointing to the chances of a recession, which is normally assessed as being two consecutive quarters of falling GDP. The head of economic research at JP Morgan, Bruce Kasman, has raised the probability of global recession to 60%, a figure that he included in a memo titled There Will Be Blood.

Larry Summers, the US treasury secretary during Bill Clinton’s presidency, called the tariffs the “biggest self-inflicted wound we’ve put on our economy in history”. Speaking on ABC News’s This Week, he gave his own estimate of the total loss to US consumers at $30tn – equivalent to doubling petrol prices at the pump.

Trump’s cabinet members attempted to use rhetorical devices as a way of assuaging rattled investors and consumers. Rollins said the markets weren’t crashing – they were “adjusting”.

Asked what he would say to Americans close to retirement who had just watched their lifetime savings drop significantly in recent days, Bessent called that a “false narrative”.

“Americans who want to retire right now, they don’t look at the day-to-day fluctuations of what’s happening,” Bessent said.

Bessent’s answer was coloured, perhaps, by his own net worth, which has been put at more than $521m.

There were moments of the surreal in the exchanges between Trump’s top officials and the political show hosts. Asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper why 10% tariffs had been placed on Heard Island and McDonald Islands, which are populated by penguins near Antarctica but no humans, Rollins said: “I mean, come on, whatever. Listen, the people that are leading this are serious, intentional, patriotic – the smartest people I’ve ever worked with.”

Tapper then pushed back on the agriculture secretary’s justification for the 20% “reciprocal” tariffs that have been imposed on EU goods sold to the US. Rollins said that Honduras bought more pork from the US than the entire European Union.

Tapper pointed out that the EU had tight restrictions on hormone use in livestock production. The EU banned use of synthetic hormones in 1981, and blocked imports of animals that had been treated in that way.

Rollins then accused the EU of using “fake science” to prohibit US products. “That’s just absolute bull,” she said. “We produce the safest, the most secure, the best food in the world.”

A war crimes complaint against 10 Britons who served with the Israeli military in Gaza is to be submitted to the Met police by one of the UK’s leading human rights lawyers.

Michael Mansfield KC is one of a group of lawyers who will on Monday hand in a 240-page dossier to Scotland Yard’s war crimes unit alleging targeted killing of civilians and aid workers, including by sniper fire, and indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas, including hospitals.

The report, which has been prepared by a team of UK lawyers and researchers in The Hague, also accuses suspects of coordinated attacks on protected sites including historic monuments and religious sites, and forced transfer and displacement of civilians.

For legal reasons, neither the names of suspects, who include officer-level individuals, nor the full report are being made public.

Israel has persistently denied that its political leaders or military have committed war crimes during its assault on Gaza, in which it has killed more than 50,000 people, most of them civilians. The military campaign was in response to Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on southern Israel, in which more than 1,200 people, also mostly civilian, were killed and a further 250 taken hostage.

Mansfield, who is known for his work on landmark cases such as the Grenfell Tower fire, Stephen Lawrence and the Birmingham Six, said: “​If one of our nationals is committing ​an offence, we ought to be doing something about it​. Even if we can’t stop the government of foreign countries behaving badly, we can at least stop our nationals from behaving badly.

“British nationals are under a legal obligation not to collude with crimes committed in Palestine. No one is above the law.”

The report, which has been submitted on behalf of the Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) and the British-based Public Interest Law Centre (PILC), covers alleged offences committed in the territory from October 2023 to May 2024 and took six months to compile.

Each of the crimes attributed to the 10 suspects, some of whom are dual nationals, amounts to a war crime or crime against humanity, according to the report.

One witness, who was at a medical facility, saw corpses “scattered on the ground, especially in the middle of the hospital courtyard, where many dead bodies were buried in a mass grave”. A bulldozer “ran over a dead body in a horrific and heart-wrenching scene desecrating the dead”, the witness said. They also said a bulldozer demolished part of the hospital.

Sean Summerfield, a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers, who helped compile the dossier, said it was based on open-source evidence and witness testimony, which together presented a “compelling” case.

“The public will be shocked, I would have thought, to hear that there’s credible evidence that Brits have been directly involved in committing some of those atrocities,” he said, adding that the team wanted to see individuals “appearing at the Old Bailey to answer for atrocity crimes”.

The report says Britain has a responsibility under international treaties to investigate and prosecute those who have committed “core international crimes”.

Section 51 of the International Criminal Court Act 2001 states that it “is an offence against the law of England and Wales for a person to commit genocide, a crime against humanity, or a war crime”, even if it takes place in another country.

Raji Sourani, the director of the PCHR, said: “​This is illegal, this is inhuman and​ enough is enough. The government cannot say we didn’t know; we are providing them with all ​the evidence.”

Paul Heron, the legal director of the PILC, said: “We’re filing our report to make clear these war crimes are not in our name.”

Scores of legal and human rights experts have signed a letter of support urging the war crimes team to investigate the complaints.

Israel’s military razed huge swathes of land inside the perimeter of Gaza and ordered troops to turn the area into a “kill zone” where anybody who entered was a target, according to testimony by soldiers who carried out the plan.

Israeli combatants said they were ordered to destroy homes, factories and farmland roughly 1km (0.6 miles) inside the perimeter of Gaza to make a “buffer zone”, with one describing the area as looking like Hiroshima.

The testimonies are some of the first accounts by Israeli soldiers to be published since the latest war started in October 2023 after Hamas’s attack on Israel. They were collected by Breaking the Silence, a group founded in 2004 by Israeli veterans who aim to expose the reality of the military’s grip over Palestinians. The Guardian interviewed four of the soldiers who corroborated the accounts.

Titled “The Perimeter” and published on Monday, the report said the stated purpose of the plan was to create a thick strip of land that provided a clear line of sight for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to identify and kill militants. “This space was to have no crops, structures, or people. Almost every object, infrastructure installation, and structure within the perimeter was demolished,” it said.

Soldiers were “given orders to deliberately, methodically, and systematically annihilate whatever was within the designated perimeter, including entire residential neighbourhoods, public buildings, educational institutions, mosques, and cemeteries, with very few exceptions”, the report added.

The ultimate result, however, was the creation of “a death zone of enormous proportions”, the report said. “Places where people had lived, farmed, and established industry were transformed into a vast wasteland, a strip of land eradicated in its entirety.”

It stretches along the frontier with Israel, from the Mediterranean coast in the north to the strip’s south-east corner next to Egypt.

A sergeant in the combat engineers corps said that once an area in the perimeter “was pretty much empty of any Gazans, we essentially started getting missions that were about basically blowing up houses or what was left of the houses”.

This was the routine, they said: “Get up in the morning, each platoon gets five, six, or seven locations, seven houses that they’re supposed to work on. We didn’t know a lot about the places that we were destroying or why we were doing it. I guess those things today, from my perspective now, are not legitimate. What I saw there, as far as I can judge, was beyond what I can justify that was needed.”

Some soldiers testified that commanders viewed the destruction as a way of exacting revenge for the 7 October attacks by Hamas, which sparked the current war when Palestinian militants killed hundreds and kidnapped Israeli and foreign citizens.

While Israel says the war is targeted at Hamas, Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, is fighting allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the international criminal court, including starvation of civilians and “extermination”.

The IDF did not respond to a request for comment on the report and combatants’ accounts.

One of the soldiers who provided testimony to Breaking the Silence on condition of anonymity said their unit was told to shoot anyone in the perimeter area on sight. The mentality in their unit, they said, was that there was no such thing as a “civilian” and everyone who walked into the perimeter would be considered a “terrorist”.

Rules on who can be killed on sight appeared to vary for different units, according to the accounts.

A sergeant in the armoured corps said that in 2024 he was given “shoot to kill” orders for any male adult who entered the perimeter. “For women and children, [the order was] ‘shoot to drive away’, and if they come close to the fence, you stop [them]. You don’t kill women, children, or the elderly. ‘Shoot to drive away’ means a tank fire,” he said.

But a captain in an armoured corps unit who operated in Gaza earlier in the war, in November 2023, described the border area as a “kill zone”, saying: “The borderline is a kill zone. Anyone who crosses a certain line, that we have defined, is considered a threat and is sentenced to death.”

Another captain said there were “no clear rules of engagement at any point” and described a “generally massive use of firepower, especially, like with tanks”. They added: “There was a lot of instigating fire for the sake of instigating fire, somewhere between [wanting to produce] a psychological effect and just for no reason.

“[We] set out on this war out of insult, out of pain, out of anger, out of the sense that we had to succeed. This distinction [between civilians and terrorist infrastructure], it didn’t matter. Nobody cared. We decided on a line … past which everyone is a suspect.”

How Palestinians would know they were crossing an invisible line was not made clear to them, the soldiers said. “How they know is a really good question. Enough people died or got injured crossing that line, so they don’t go near it.”

Before the latest war, Israel had previously established a buffer zone inside Gaza that extended to 300 metres, but the new one was intended to range from 800 to 1,500 metres, according to the testimonies.

Satellite imagery has previously revealed the IDF destroyed hundreds of buildings that stood within 1km to 1.2km of the perimeter fence, in a systematic demolishing act that rights groups say may constitute collective punishment and should be investigated as a war crime. Last week, Israel’s defence minister said the military would seize “large areas” in Gaza in a fresh offensive.

The perimeter accounts for just over 15% of the Gaza Strip, which is entirely off-limits to Palestinian residents. It represents 35% of the strip’s entire agricultural land, according to the report.

Despite shoot-to-kill orders, a warrant officer stationed in northern Gaza said Palestinians kept going back to the area “again and again after we fired at them”.

The officer said the Palestinians appeared to want to pick edible plants growing in the area. “There was hubeiza [mallow] there because no one went near there. People are hungry, so they come with bags to pick hubeiza, I think.”

Some got away with their food and their lives, the officer said. “The thing is that, at that point, the IDF really is fulfilling the public’s wishes, which state: ‘There are no innocents in Gaza’.”

In an interview with the Guardian, the same officer said the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023 made many Israelis feel the “need to pick up a gun”.

“A lot of us went there, I went there, because they killed us and now we’re going to kill them,” they said. “And I found out that we’re not only killing them – we’re killing them, we’re killing their wives, their children, their cats, their dogs. We’re destroying their houses and pissing on their graves.”

More women risk dying in pregnancy and childbirth because of aid cuts by wealthy countries, which could have “pandemic-like effects”, UN agencies have warned.

Pregnant women in conflict zones are the most vulnerable, and face an “alarmingly high” risk that is already five times greater than elsewhere, according to a new UN report on trends in maternal mortality.

Deaths due to complications in pregnancy and childbirth declined 40% globally between 2000 and 2023, but progress is “fragile” and has slowed since 2016, the authors said. An estimated 260,000 women died in 2023 from pregnancy-related causes.

There is a “threat of major backsliding” amid “increasing headwinds”, the authors said. US funding cuts this year have meant clinics closing and health workers losing their jobs, and disrupted the supply chains that deliver life-saving medicines to treat leading causes of maternal death such as haemorrhage, pre-eclampsia and malaria, World Health Organization experts warned.

The report – itself part-funded by the US – revealed that maternal deaths rose by 40,000 in 2021 due to the Covid pandemic, probably driven by complications from the virus itself and by the disruptions to healthcare.

Dr Bruce Aylward, an assistant director general at the WHO, said that rise could offer insights into the possible impact of current aid cuts.

“With Covid, we saw an acute shock to the system, and what’s happening with financing is an acute shock,” he said.

“Countries have not had time to put in place and plan for what other financing they’re going to use, what other workers they’re going to use, [and] what are the trade-offs they’re going to make in their systems to try to make sure the most essential services can continue.”

The shock to services, he said, would lead to “pandemic-like effects”, adding that funding cuts risked not only progress, “but you could have a shift backwards”.

Deaths around the world would need to fall 10 times faster than at present – by 15% rather than 1.5% a year – to achieve the sustainable development goal target of less than 70 per 100,000 live births before 2030.

The report highlighted significant inequalities. In poor countries in 2023, there were 346 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births – nearly 35 times the 10 per 100,000 in rich countries. While in high- and upper middle-income countries, 99% of births are attended by a health professional, this falls to 73% in poor countries.

Countries where there are conflicts, or which are characterised as “fragile”, accounted for 61% of global maternal deaths, but only 25% of global live births.

A 15-year-old girl in a poor country has a one in 66 chance of dying from a pregnancy or childbirth-related cause. In a rich country, the figure is one in 7,933 – and in a country at war the figure is one in 51.

Catherine Russell, Unicef’s director, said: “Global funding cuts to health services are putting more pregnant women at risk, especially in the most fragile settings, by limiting their access to essential care during pregnancy and the support they need when giving birth.

“The world must urgently invest in midwives, nurses and community health workers to ensure every mother and baby has a chance to survive and thrive.”

Maternal mortality rates have “stagnated” in many parts of the world since 2015, the report found, including northern Africa and much of Asia, Europe, North and Latin America, and the Caribbean.

The authors called for further efforts to ensure critical services were maintained and to improve access to family-planning services and education.

Pascale Allotey, director of the WHO’s reproductive health department, said: “It is an indictment on our humanity and a real travesty of justice that women die in childbirth today.

“It really is something that we all have a collective responsibility for,” she said. “We have to step up.”

It would be unsafe for Russia to restart the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant and would take Ukraine up to two years in peacetime if it regained control, the chief executive of the company that runs the vast six-reactor site has said.

Petro Kotin, chief executive of Energoatom, said in an interview there were “major problems” to overcome – including insufficient cooling water, personnel and incoming electricity supply – before it could start generating power again safely.

The future of the Zaporizhzhia plant, Europe’s largest nuclear reactor, is a significant aspect of any negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. Seized by Russia in spring 2022 and shut down for safety reasons a few months later, it remains on the frontline of the conflict, close to the Dnipro River.

Russia has said it intends to retain the site and switch it back on, without being specific as to when. Alexey Likhachev, head of Russian nuclear operator Rosatom, said in February it would be restarted when “military and political conditions allow”.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump has expressed an interest in taking control of it, though this possibility is considered very remote.

Kotin said Energoatom was prepared to restart the plant but it would require Russian forces to be removed and the site to be de-mined and demilitarised.

He said such a restart by Ukraine would take anywhere “from two months to two years” in an environment “without any threats from militaries”, while a Russian restart during wartime “would be impossible, even for one unit [reactor]”.

Kotin said the six reactors could only be brought online after the completion of 27 safety programmes agreed with Ukraine’s nuclear regulator, including testing the nuclear fuel in the reactor cores because it had exceeded a six-year “design term”.

That raises questions about whether Russia could restart the plant after a ceasefire without incurring significant risk. The plant was already unsafe, Kotin said, given that it was being used as “a military base with military vehicles present” and there were “probably some weapons and blasting materials” present as well.

Russia has acknowledged that it has placed mines between the inner and outer perimeters of the plant “to deter potential Ukrainian saboteurs” while inspectors from the IAEA nuclear watchdog have reported that armed troops and military personnel are present at the site.

Last month, the US Department of Energy said the Zaporizhzhia plant was being operated by an “inadequate and insufficently trained cadre of workers”, with staffing levels at less than a third of prewar levels.

The US briefing said Ukrainian reactors, though originally of the Soviet VVER design, had “evolved differently” from their Russian counterparts and “particularly the safety systems”. Russian-trained specialists acting as replacements for Ukrainian staff were “inexperienced” in operating the Ukrainian variants, it said.

Kotin said an attempt to restart the plant by Russia would almost certainly not be accepted or supported by Ukraine. It would require the reconnection of three additional 750kV high-voltage lines to come into the plant, he said.

A nuclear reactor requires a significant amount of power for day-to-day operation, and three of the four high-voltage lines came from territories now under Russian occupation. “They themselves destroyed the lines,” Kotin said, only for Russia to discover engineers could not rebuild them as the war continued, he added.

Only two lines remain to maintain the site in cold shutdown, a 750kV line coming from Ukraine, and a further 330kV line – though on eight separate occasions shelling disrupted their supply of energy, forcing the plant to rely on backup generators.

Experts say a pumping station has to be constructed at the site, because there is insufficient cooling water available. The June 2023 destruction by Russian soldiers of the Nova Kakhova dam downstream eliminated the easy supply of necessary water from the Dnipro river.

Two civilians were reportedly killed by Russian missile attacks on Sunday, including one in a ballistic missile strike in an eastern district of Kyiv; while Russia said it captured a border village near Sumy in north-east Ukraine.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia had launched more than 1,460 guided aerial bombs, nearly 670 attack drones, and more than 30 missiles over the past week. The Ukrainian president said: “The number of air attacks is increasing.”

US-brokered ceasefire talks have only achieved limited results thus far. Both sides agreed to stop attacking energy targets, though each accuses the other of violations; while a maritime ceasefire agreed to by Ukraine has not been accepted by Russia.

A Russian official involved in the negotiations said on Sunday that diplomatic contacts between Russia and the US could come again as early as next week.

• French president Emmanuel Macron on Sunday called for “strong action” if Russia continued “to refuse peace”, days after a Russian ballistic missile killed 20 people, including nine children, in Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s home town. Despite US and European efforts to secure peace in Ukraine, Russia continued “to murder children and civilians”, Macron said. “My thoughts are with the children and all civilian victims of the bloody attacks carried out by Russia, including on 4 April in Kryvyi Rih,” Macron said on X. “A ceasefire is needed as soon as possible. And strong action if Russia continues to try to buy time and refuse peace.” Macron said that even though Ukraine accepted US president Donald Trump’s proposal for a complete ceasefire and European countries were also working to secure peace, “Russia is continuing the war with renewed intensity, with no regard for civilians.”

• Ukraine’s president said Russian attacks were launched on Sunday from the Black Sea, showing why Moscow is refusing to agree to an unconditional ceasefire: “they want to preserve their ability to strike our cities and ports from the sea.” Zelenskyy said a ceasefire at sea was key for overall security and bringing peace closer and suggested Vladimir Putin does not want to end the war, adding: “He is looking for ways to preserve the option of reigniting it at any moment, with even greater force.”

• Zelenskyy said on Sunday that Russia was increasing its aerial bombardment after its forces mounted a “massive” missile and drone attack on Ukraine overnight, killing two people. “The pressure on Russia is still insufficient,” the Ukrainian president added.

• It would be unsafe for Russia to restart the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant and would take Ukraine up to two years in peacetime if it regained control, the chief executive of the company that runs the site has said. Petro Kotin, chief executive of Energoatom, said “major problems” to overcome included insufficient cooling water, personnel and incoming electricity supply. The future of the Zaporizhzhia plant, Europe’s largest nuclear reactor, is a significant aspect of any negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.

The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has told supporters in Paris she would fight “a political, not a judicial ruling” that could bar her from the next presidential election, as a rival rally denounced an “existential threat” to the rule of law after her conviction for embezzling public funds.

“This decision has trampled on everything I hold most dear: my people, my country and my honour,” the figurehead of National Rally (RN) told a crowd of flag-waving supporters as the country’s three main political movements staged events in the Paris.

Speaking from a temporary stage in front of the Hôtel des Invalides with the party’s 120 members of parliament behind her, Le Pen said she would “not give up” and was the victim of a “witch-hunt”, adding: “It is we who are the most ardent defenders of the rule of law.”

But speaking at a leftwing rally a few kilometres away on the Place de la République, the Green party leader, Marine Tondelier, said Le Pen’s defence amounted to “a total conspiracy theory” and a full-blown attack on judicial independence.

“This is about more than Marine Le Pen,” Tondelier said. “It’s about defending the rule of law from people who think justice is optional. For everyone else, she wants tough justice, tolerance zero, jail for the first offence. For her, it’s too tough.”

Manuel Bompard of the radical left France Unbowed (LFI) told the rally the RN’s mask had slipped after years of trying to clean up its image and pose as a future party of government. “It’s dangerous for democracy, dangerous for the rule of law,” he said.

Police said 7,000 people were at the RN rally and 5,000 at the leftwing rival.

The three-time presidential candidate and frontrunner to succeed Emmanuel Macron was found guilty on Monday of embezzling more than €4m (£3.4m) of European parliament funds to pay RN party workers in France through a vast fake jobs scam.

Le Pen was sentenced to four years in prison, of which two were suspended and two may be served with an electronic bracelet, fined €100,000 and – under a law she had backed – barred from running for public office for five years with immediate effect.

The Paris appeals court has said it will deliver a verdict on her case by next summer, potentially allowing her to contest the 2027 presidential race if her conviction is overturned, which is seen as unlikely, or the ban on running for public office lifted.

The ruling, which followed a 10-year investigation and a nine-week trial, has dramatically shaken up the political landscape and been fiercely attacked by far-right politicians in France and beyond as politically motivated and anti-democratic.

Jordan Bardella, the RN’s 29-year-old president and Le Pen’s likely replacement if she remains ineligible, told cheering RN voters that it was “not just Marine Le Pen who has been unjustly condemned, but French democracy that has been put to death”.

The court decision would go down as “a dark day in our nation’s history”, he said, a “direct attack on our democracy, a wound for millions of patriots” and an attempt to “deprive us of free choice, to wipe from the scene an entire part of France”.

Speaking before her rally, Le Pen – whose vote share in the presidential first round was put at 36% by one poll on Sunday, far ahead of all rivals – said the RN would “follow the example of Martin Luther King’s struggle, who defended civil rights”.

Wearing a “Marine présidente” T-shirt and a “Save democracy” sticker, Patrick, 57, who had come from Normandy, said Le Pen’s sentence was “an outrage. Do they really think they can just get rid of an election favourite like that? It’s a banana republic.”

Valérie, 36, a legal assistant, said the court’s decision was flawed because “the texts it was based on, defining how European parliament money should be used”, were “unclear and imprecise. No one’s been defrauded. It’s all a complete fiction to stop Marine.”

On the Place de la République, several thousand protesters waved placards reading “No Trumpism in France” and “Nobody is above the law”. Vincent Lemaitre, 44, a primary school teacher, said the court’s ruling showed French democracy worked.

The judges, he said, “simply applied the law, which was passed by parliament, including many deputies who represent the RN. Le Pen and her colleagues broke that law. Popularity should not give politicians immunity. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

Anaïs Desmets, 31, said the argument that politicians should only be judged at the ballot box was “absurd. If someone harms children, they are kept away from kids. If someone steals public money, they shouldn’t be allowed to manage it.”

In the working-class northern Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, Macron’s Renaissance party and its allies warned of “an existential threat” to the rule of law. “If you steal, you pay,” the former prime minister Gabriel Attal said. “Especially if you are a politician.”

Attal, addressing an audience that included the present prime minister, François Bayrou, also denounced “unprecedented interference” in France’s affairs including from Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Hungary’s Viktor Orbàn and Italy’s Matteo Salvini.

He said every effort should be made not to politicise the court’s decision. “It’s not up to us, or to anyone else, to say whether the court’s judgement was good or bad,” Attal said. “It is our responsibility to always stick to the facts.”

The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has told supporters in Paris she would fight “a political, not a judicial ruling” that could bar her from the next presidential election, as a rival rally denounced an “existential threat” to the rule of law after her conviction for embezzling public funds.

“This decision has trampled on everything I hold most dear: my people, my country and my honour,” the figurehead of National Rally (RN) told a crowd of flag-waving supporters as the country’s three main political movements staged events in the Paris.

Speaking from a temporary stage in front of the Hôtel des Invalides with the party’s 120 members of parliament behind her, Le Pen said she would “not give up” and was the victim of a “witch-hunt”, adding: “It is we who are the most ardent defenders of the rule of law.”

But speaking at a leftwing rally a few kilometres away on the Place de la République, the Green party leader, Marine Tondelier, said Le Pen’s defence amounted to “a total conspiracy theory” and a full-blown attack on judicial independence.

“This is about more than Marine Le Pen,” Tondelier said. “It’s about defending the rule of law from people who think justice is optional. For everyone else, she wants tough justice, tolerance zero, jail for the first offence. For her, it’s too tough.”

Manuel Bompard of the radical left France Unbowed (LFI) told the rally the RN’s mask had slipped after years of trying to clean up its image and pose as a future party of government. “It’s dangerous for democracy, dangerous for the rule of law,” he said.

Police said 7,000 people were at the RN rally and 5,000 at the leftwing rival.

The three-time presidential candidate and frontrunner to succeed Emmanuel Macron was found guilty on Monday of embezzling more than €4m (£3.4m) of European parliament funds to pay RN party workers in France through a vast fake jobs scam.

Le Pen was sentenced to four years in prison, of which two were suspended and two may be served with an electronic bracelet, fined €100,000 and – under a law she had backed – barred from running for public office for five years with immediate effect.

The Paris appeals court has said it will deliver a verdict on her case by next summer, potentially allowing her to contest the 2027 presidential race if her conviction is overturned, which is seen as unlikely, or the ban on running for public office lifted.

The ruling, which followed a 10-year investigation and a nine-week trial, has dramatically shaken up the political landscape and been fiercely attacked by far-right politicians in France and beyond as politically motivated and anti-democratic.

Jordan Bardella, the RN’s 29-year-old president and Le Pen’s likely replacement if she remains ineligible, told cheering RN voters that it was “not just Marine Le Pen who has been unjustly condemned, but French democracy that has been put to death”.

The court decision would go down as “a dark day in our nation’s history”, he said, a “direct attack on our democracy, a wound for millions of patriots” and an attempt to “deprive us of free choice, to wipe from the scene an entire part of France”.

Speaking before her rally, Le Pen – whose vote share in the presidential first round was put at 36% by one poll on Sunday, far ahead of all rivals – said the RN would “follow the example of Martin Luther King’s struggle, who defended civil rights”.

Wearing a “Marine présidente” T-shirt and a “Save democracy” sticker, Patrick, 57, who had come from Normandy, said Le Pen’s sentence was “an outrage. Do they really think they can just get rid of an election favourite like that? It’s a banana republic.”

Valérie, 36, a legal assistant, said the court’s decision was flawed because “the texts it was based on, defining how European parliament money should be used”, were “unclear and imprecise. No one’s been defrauded. It’s all a complete fiction to stop Marine.”

On the Place de la République, several thousand protesters waved placards reading “No Trumpism in France” and “Nobody is above the law”. Vincent Lemaitre, 44, a primary school teacher, said the court’s ruling showed French democracy worked.

The judges, he said, “simply applied the law, which was passed by parliament, including many deputies who represent the RN. Le Pen and her colleagues broke that law. Popularity should not give politicians immunity. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

Anaïs Desmets, 31, said the argument that politicians should only be judged at the ballot box was “absurd. If someone harms children, they are kept away from kids. If someone steals public money, they shouldn’t be allowed to manage it.”

In the working-class northern Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, Macron’s Renaissance party and its allies warned of “an existential threat” to the rule of law. “If you steal, you pay,” the former prime minister Gabriel Attal said. “Especially if you are a politician.”

Attal, addressing an audience that included the present prime minister, François Bayrou, also denounced “unprecedented interference” in France’s affairs including from Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Hungary’s Viktor Orbàn and Italy’s Matteo Salvini.

He said every effort should be made not to politicise the court’s decision. “It’s not up to us, or to anyone else, to say whether the court’s judgement was good or bad,” Attal said. “It is our responsibility to always stick to the facts.”

Israel’s military has backtracked on its account of the killing of 15 Palestinian medics in Gaza last month after footage contradicted its claims that their vehicles did not have emergency signals on when Israeli troops opened fire.

The military said initially it opened fire because the vehicles were “advancing suspiciously” on nearby troops without headlights or emergency signals. An Israeli military official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations late on Saturday, said that account was “mistaken”.

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, then gunfire erupts before the screen goes black.

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 said Israeli forces shot the men “one by one” and then buried them in a mass grave.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the incident was still under investigation. It added: “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.”

The official said the initial report received from the field did not describe lights but that investigators were looking at “operational information” and were trying to understand whether this was due to an error by the person making the initial report.

“What we understand currently is the person who gives the initial account is mistaken. We’re trying to understand why,” the official added.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (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 the Tel al-Sultan area of Rafah. 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.

Israeli strikes on Gaza on Sunday killed at least 44 people, rescuers said. “The death toll as a result of Israeli air strikes since dawn today is at least 44, including 21 in Khan Younis,” civil defence agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told AFP.

One such strike killed six people on Al-Nakheel Street in the Al-Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City, where a group had gathered near a bakery, Bassal said. Among the dead were three children, he confirmed.

On Sunday evening, Hamas said it had fired a barrage of rockets at cities in Israel’s south on Sunday in response to Israeli “massacres” of civilians in Gaza.

The IDF said about 10 projectiles were fired, but most were successfully intercepted. Israel’s Channel 12 reported a direct hit in the southern city of Ashkelon.

Israeli emergency services said they were treating one person for shrapnel injuries and teams were en route to locations of fallen rockets. Smashed car windows and debris lay strewn on a city street, videos disseminated by Israeli emergency services showed.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had ordered a strong response to the rocket attack, his office said.

Another Red Crescent worker on the mission last month, Assad al-Nassasra, is still reported missing and the organisation has asked the Israeli military for information on his whereabouts.

A survivor of the incident, the Palestinian Red Crescent paramedic Munther Abed, has said he saw Nassasra being led away blindfolded by Israeli troops.

The 27-year-old volunteer was in the back of the first ambulance to arrive on the scene of an airstrike in the Hashashin area of Rafah before dawn on 23 March when the vehicle came under intense Israeli fire.

His two Red Crescent colleagues sitting in the front were killed but he survived by throwing himself to the floor of the vehicle. “The door opened, and there they were – Israeli special forces in military uniforms, armed with rifles, green lasers and night-vision goggles,” Abed told the Guardian. “They dragged me out of the ambulance, keeping me face down to avoid seeing what had happened to my colleagues.”

Adeb was detained for several hours before being released.

The UN and Palestinian Red Crescent have demanded an independent inquiry into the killing of the paramedics.

Israeli media briefed by the military have reported that troops had identified at least six of the 15 dead as members of militant groups and killed a Hamas figure named Mohammed Amin Shobaki.

None of the 15 killed has that name and no other bodies are known to have been found at the site. The official declined to provide any evidence or detail of how the identifications were made, saying he did not want to share classified information.

“According to our information, there were terrorists there but this investigation is not over,” he told reporters.

Abed – a volunteer for 10 years – was adamant there were no militants travelling with the ambulances.

Jonathan Whittall, the interim head of Ocha in the occupied Palestinian territory, dismissed allegations that the people who died were Hamas militants, saying staff had worked with the same medics previously in evacuating patients from hospitals and other tasks.

“These are paramedic crews that I personally have met before,” he said. “They were buried in their uniforms with their gloves on. They were ready to save lives.”

The Israeli military official said the troops had informed the UN of the incident on the same day and initially covered the bodies with camouflage netting until they could be recovered, later burying them when the UN did not immediately collect the bodies.

The UN confirmed last week it had been informed of the location of the bodies but that access to the area was denied by Israel for several days. It said the bodies had been buried alongside their crushed vehicles – clearly marked ambulances, a fire truck and a UN car.

Northern Ireland’s public services, including hospitals, schools and police, are being “crippled” by lack of funding, impinging on the quality of life for many people, a report by a government committee has concluded.

The Northern Ireland select committee found patients waiting more than 12 hours to be seen in accident and emergency departments and mental health needs 40% greater than anywhere else in the UK. Hospital waiting lists are among the worst in the country.

Its investigation was also told that Northern Ireland “recently held the world record for prescribing the most anti-depressants per head of population”. It also found that children with special needs were waiting more than a year for support.

The budget for the Northern Ireland Police Service has been static since 2010, despite the special challenges it faces including cross-community recruitment and efforts to stamp out paramilitarism, one of the last vestiges of the Troubles.

One witness, the Law Society of Northern Ireland, said public services were “at risk of collapse”.

The former MP Stephen Farry, a co-director of Ulster University’s strategic policy unit, told the committee it was vital that the political classes in London understood just how bad public services were in NI compared with Great Britain.

He said: “The sheer scale of the crisis is that much greater.”

The committee chair, Tonia Antoniazzi, said: “The crisis afflicting public services in Northern Ireland has gone on for far too long with the crippling effects of underfunding impinging on the day to day lives of people across communities. The current hand to mouth approach when it comes to funding has often been too little, too late.”

The committee is calling on the government to ensure funding for the next fiscal year 2026 to 2027 is “according to NI’s level of need”.

Northern Ireland has the highest public spending per person in the UK, but raises the least revenue per person, the report found. It relies predominantly on what is known as a “block grant” allocated to the devolved administrations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

According to the so-called Barnett formula used to calculate funding, each nation receives the same pound for pound rise in funding per capita as the national funding. So, for example, if education in England is £100 a head, devolved governments must also get that level of finance.

In recognition of the dire state of Northern Ireland’s public services, the previous government raised funding to give NI’s public sector £124 a head.

The committee noted that research was being conducted to see if that needed to be raised again.

“During our predecessor committee’s inquiry in 2023–24, it heard that the funding and delivery of public services in Northern Ireland were under enormous pressure. One year on, little appears to have changed,” it said.

When power-sharing resumed in 2024 after a 24-month hiatus, the government provided a £3.3bn package, but as part of the settlement the Stormont government was encouraged to raise more revenue itself for public services.

The committee’s investigation found that this has proved to be “politically difficult” with few options open to the devolved government.

The benefits of taking drugs for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder outweigh the impact of increases in blood pressure and heart rate, according to a new study.

An international team of researchers led by scientists from the University of Southampton found the majority of children taking ADHD medication experienced small increases in blood pressure and pulse rates, but that the drugs had “overall small effects”. They said the study’s findings highlighted the need for “careful monitoring”.

Prof Samuele Cortese, the senior lead author of the study, from the University of Southampton, said the risks and benefits of taking any medication had to be assessed together, but for ADHD drugs the risk-benefit ratio was “reassuring”.

“We found an overall small increase in blood pressure and pulse for the majority of children taking ADHD medications,” he said. “Other studies show clear benefits in terms of reductions in mortality risk and improvement in academic functions, as well as a small increased risk of hypertension, but not other cardiovascular diseases. Overall, the risk-benefit ratio is reassuring for people taking ADHD medications.”

About 3 to 4% of adults and 5% of children in the UK are believed to have ADHD, a neurodevelopmental disorder with symptoms including impulsiveness, disorganisation and difficulty focusing, according to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice).

Doctors can prescribe stimulants, such as methylphenidate, of which the best-known brand is Ritalin. Other stimulant medications used to treat ADHD include lisdexamfetamine and dexamfetamine. Non-stimulant drugs include atomoxetine, an sNRI (selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor), and guanfacine.

The study of children, adolescents and adults states: “There is uncertainty regarding whether medications that are used for the treatment of ADHD may lead to cardiovascular diseases, and concerns remain around their cardiovascular safety.” It found all ADHD medications were associated with small increases of blood pressure and heart rate, except guanfacine, which led to decreased blood pressure and heart rate.

There were no significant differences regarding the impact on blood pressure and heart rate between stimulants (including methylphenidate and amphetamine) and non-stimulants (atomoxetine and viloxazine). The researchers advised people with existing heart conditions to discuss the side effects of ADHD medications with a specialist cardiologist before starting treatment.

Dr Ulrich Müller-Sedgwick, a consultant psychiatrist and expert on ADHD, said most clinicians prescribing ADHD medication understood the cardiovascular risks and followed Nice guidelines for monitoring blood pressure, pulse and weight. “We need more detailed guidelines for scenarios when ADHD medication needs to be adjusted or stopped,” he said.

Last year, a thinktank warned that the NHS was experiencing an “avalanche of need” over autism and ADHD, and said the system in place to cope with surging demand for assessments and treatments was “obsolete”. The number of prescriptions issued in England for ADHD medication has risen by 18% year on year since the pandemic, with the biggest rise in London.

Dr Tony Lord, a former chief executive of the ADHD Foundation, said the long-term benefits of ADHD medication were well established, and included a reduced risk of anxiety and depression, eating disorders, harm from smoking, improved educational outcomes and economic independence.

“Sadly ignorance about ADHD medications persists – a throwback to the 80s and 90s when ADHD medications were mistakenly viewed as a morality pill that made naughty, fidgety disruptive children behave – which of course it is not,” he said.

“It is simply a cognitive enhancer that improves information processing, inhibits distractions, improves focus, planning and prioritising, self monitoring and reduces impulsivity of thought and action.”

Poor countries have accused the rich world of “backsliding” and betrayal of their climate commitments, as they desperately tried to keep alive a long-awaited deal to cut carbon from shipping.

Nations from 175 countries have gathered in London this week at the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) to hammer out the final details of a deal, more than a decade in the making, that could finally deliver a plan to decarbonise shipping over the next 25 years.

If the most ambitious proposals are realised, the agreement would also require all ships to pay a small charge based on the greenhouse gases they emit, with the proceeds going to fund climate action in poor countries. This levy is seen as a crucial source of funding for poor countries, which are seeing increasing economic devastation from extreme weather.

But powerful economies, including China, Brazil and Saudi Arabia, oppose the levy, while others, including the EU, may agree to drastically water it down.

The IMO talks formally open on Monday, and are scheduled to end on Friday. They are the culmination of a series of attempts to rein in carbon from shipping, which have been going on for more than a decade. Shipping accounts for more than 2% of global emissions – roughly the same share as Japan, and set to grow further without urgent action.

Poor countries fear the negotiations are already falling apart, and that they will be the losers. Ambassador Albon Ishoda from the Marshall Islands, speaking for an alliance of Pacific and Caribbean small island states, said rich nations and large developing countries were “backsliding” on previous promises.

“It is difficult to understand what these countries are thinking,” he told the Guardian. “Maybe they are worried about their national sovereignty. But we are basing our argument [for decarbonisation and a levy on shipping] on scientific grounds. The most vulnerable countries are acting as the adults in the room.”

He pointed out that governments in 2023 agreed a roadmap to decarbonise shipping by 2050, and urged them to fulfil it. “We need them [the big economies] to start showing leadership,” he said. “We can all see what is right – let them do what is right.”

Brazil, China, Saudi Arabia and allies have fought the levy on the basis that it could raise prices to consumers. The EU is officially still in favour of a levy, but the Guardian understands it could opt for a compromise that would water down the proposal.

Simon Kofe, minister for transport for Tuvalu, another member of the 6Pac+ alliance of small islands, said a levy on shipping would have minimal effect on the prices of goods to consumers.

He said: “Concerns about the impact of a levy on trade and consumer prices are understandable, but they are also overstated.”

Shipping makes up only about 1% to 5% of the final price of most consumer goods, and the switch to low-carbon technology is forecast by the IMO to raise shipping costs by only between 1% and 9%. At $150 per tonne of carbon, a levy would have only a minimal impact on end prices, according to Kofe: if a $100 pair of shoes, shipped across the world, includes $3 as the shipping cost, the levy would increase that to just $3.72 – so the new retail price of the shoes would be $100.72, he said.

“[Our levy proposal] ensures that the cost of pollution is borne by those responsible. By placing a levy directly on emissions, we uphold the principles of fairness, accountability and climate justice, ensuring no country is left behind in the transition to a cleaner future,” he said.

The IMO talks take place against an increasingly unsettled backdrop for international trade, as US president Donald Trump last week imposed sweeping tariffs on exports to the US from nearly all countries, except Russia and South Korea. The Guardian understands that the US is not playing an obstructive role at the IMO talks.

Arsenio Dominguez, secretary-general of the IMO, said he was confident the meeting would produce the long-awaited settlement on decarbonising shipping. “Just under two years ago, IMO member states were decisive in their commitments in the IMO 2023 greenhouse gas strategy to approve at [this year’s meeting] midterm measures to cut emissions from ships, including a global fuel standard and an emission pricing mechanism.

“These would be the first set of binding measures for an entire global industry to shift to zero or low-carbon fuels and energy sources, on the basis of mandatory emission targets. The measures are more than climate aspirations – they will become mandatory for ships operating globally. [This] week we will take another positive step that will set the course for a net zero future for the maritime sector.”

With the next few days likely to be taken up by highly technical negotiations, however, time is running out. Constance Dijkstra, shipping manager at the Transport and Environment thinktank, said: “We have reached extra time in the IMO negotiations and the IMO is sleepwalking into failure by wasting its last chance to decarbonise the shipping sector. A carbon levy would be a major step in the right direction.”

The talks are scheduled to end on Friday, but whatever the outcome, it will still take many months to implement. Under the complex IMO rules, any deal struck this week will be subject to refinement by officials and member states, until a further meeting this October, where the new settlement can be formally adopted.

Emergency services were on Sunday continuing to battle a wildfire that started in Galloway in the south of Scotland, and has spread north into East Ayrshire, forcing the evacuation of walkers and wild campers.

The blaze started in the Newton Stewart area on Thursday, then spread northwards over the weekend after a change in wind direction to reach Loch Doon.

Residents living nearby were advised to keep windows and doors closed and police told people to avoid the area.

On Sunday evening the Scottish government held an emergency meeting to coordinate its response.

In a statement posted to X, it said: “The Scottish government’s Resilience Room (SGORR) has been activated in response to a wildfire in the area of Galloway Forest Park. Justice Secretary Angela Constance will chair a meeting this evening.”

By 10.20pm on Sunday, the Scottish fire and rescue service (SFRS) confirmed that fire crews had withdrawn from the area due to low light, but planned to resume operations at first light on Monday.

Stewart Gibson, the team leader at Galloway mountain rescue, told BBC Scotland fire crews had employed four helicopters to drop water on the flames from above, with the fire front several miles wide at one stage.

Rising temperatures across the UK earlier this week led to wildfire warnings being put in place, with the Scottish fire and rescue service saying there was a “very high to extreme risk” of fires spreading because of warm, dry conditions.

The service has warned the public to avoid outdoor fires and barbecues, and to dispose of cigarettes and glass safely.

Further north in the Highlands, crews were tackling another wildfire north of Ullapool on Sunday with roads closed and heavy smoke hampering visibility.

Six crews were in attendance, with personnel travelling almost 70 miles to offer assistance and firefighters at the scene reporting a firewall stretching more than 3 miles and large plumes of smoke descending over the area.

Meanwhile, in Northern Ireland, fire brigades were called to the scene of a blaze in County Antrim on Sunday afternoon. Six fire engines attended the incident near Conogher Road, Dervock, while 40 firefighters were involved in tackling the flames.

Danny Ard, the group commander for the Northern Ireland fire and rescue service, said the firefighters had utilised “jets” and “specialist wildfire equipment to contain the fire”. It was extinguished at 8pm on Sunday.

A significant wildfire that broke out on Saturday and triggered a major incident in Northern Ireland’s Mourne mountains district was extinguished on Sunday morning. One man was arrested by police.

More than 100 firefighters and 15 fire appliances were deployed on Saturday to Sandbank Road, Hilltown, to tackle the blaze, which was believed to have been caused deliberately, fire chiefs said.

Northern Ireland fire and rescue service said the fire had a front of approximately 2 miles “including a large area of forestry close to property”.