US stocks fell again on Thursday after a historic rally following Donald Trump’s shock retreat on Wednesday on the hefty tariffs he had just imposed on dozens of countries.

The falls came as the president blamed “transition problems” for the market reaction and the sell-off deepened after a White House clarification noted that total tariffs on China had been raised by 145% since Trump took office.

Speaking at the White House, Trump said: “We think we’re in very good shape. We think we’re doing very well. Again there will be a transition cost, transition problems, but in the end it’s going to be a beautiful thing.”

On CNN, former US treasury secretary Janet Yellen called Trump’s economic policies the “worst self-inflicted wound” an administration had ever imposed on a “well-functioning economy”.

The sell-off comes as Democrats continue to react with anger over the sudden retreat that rattled markets, while Republicans praised Trump’s “art of the deal” in action, referencing Trump’s 1987 book.

By the end of Thursday, the Dow was down 2.5% after soaring on Wednesday afternoon. The Nasdaq Composite was down more than 4%, after posting its biggest gain in more than two decades on Wednesday, and the S&P 500 down 3.4%.

The market seems to be in a state of fatigue after a rollercoaster week. Stocks were even unresponsive to news on Thursday morning that the European Union announced it will suspend 25% retaliatory tariffs against US imports and new data showed inflation in the US cooled to 2.4% in March – both would typically be cause for optimism on Wall Street.

Trump said in an abrupt announcement on Wednesday that he would be implementing a 90-day pause on his tariff plan, and that goods entering the US from most countries would now face a 10% blanket tariff until July, except for Chinese exports, which he said would face tariffs totaling 145% effective immediately – 125% in “reciprocal” tariffs plus 20% already imposed for China’s alleged role in the fentanyl crisis.

Republican lawmakers praised the decision to pause the tariffs, with the House speaker, Mike Johnson, stating on social media: “Behold the ‘Art of the Deal.’ President Trump has created leverage, brought MANY countries to the table, and will deliver for American workers, American manufacturers, and America’s future!”

Before the pause was announced, a small but growing number of Republican lawmakers and Trump supporters in the business world expressed concerns about the risks of the president’s tariff policy.

By Wednesday afternoon, many were praising Trump for the rollback as part of a purported strategy.

Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge fund manager and Trump supporter who advocated for Trump to pause his trade war over the weekend, reacted to the announcement saying that “this was brilliantly executed by @realDonaldTrump. Textbook, Art of the Deal.”

The benefit of Trump’s approach, Ackman claimed, “is that we now understand who are our preferred trading partners, and who the problems are. China has shown themselves to be a bad actor. Our counterparties also have a taste of what life is like if they don’t take down their trade barriers. This is the perfect set-up for trade negotiations over the next 90 days.”

But some industry leaders criticized the administration’s back-and-forth and tariff decisions.

On Thursday, Amazon’s CEO, Andy Jassy, said the company was still waiting to see the impact of the tariffs but warned third-party sellers may “pass that cost on” to consumers.

“The effective tariff rate is actually HIGHER with the pause than it was as announced on April 2, due to the tariffs on China,” Diane Swonk, the chief economist of the professional services firm KPMG, wrote on social media. “There will be some diversion through connector countries. However, the effective tariff rate now peaks at 30.5% during the pause. That is worse than our worst case scenarios.”

While Republicans and White House officials praised Trump’s decisions, Democratic lawmakers such as Senator Chuck Schumer pushed back. Schumer told his supporters that “this chaos is all a game to Donald Trump”.

“He thinks he’s playing Red Light, Green Light with the economy,” Schumer said. “But it is very real for American families.”

Some Democrats have made accusations of possible market manipulation.

“These constant gyrations in policy provide dangerous opportunities for insider trading,” Senator Adam Schiff said. “Who in the administration knew about Trump’s latest tariff flip-flop ahead of time? Did anyone buy or sell stocks, and profit at the public’s expense? I’m writing to the White House – the public has a right to know.”

The New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez echoed similar concerns, urging any member of Congress who purchased stocks over the last two days to disclose that.

“I’ve been hearing some interesting chatter on the floor,” she said. “Disclosure deadline is May 15th. We’re about to learn a few things. It’s time to ban insider trading in Congress.”

The Democratic House whip, Katherine Clark, wrote: “Two hours before announcing his tariff pause, Trump told his paid Truth Social subscribers it was ‘a great time to buy’ on the stock market. Corruption is the name of their game.”

The Nevada representative Steven Horsford questioned the US trade representative, Jamieson Greer, asking the representative during a committee hearing whether the climbdown was market manipulation.

“How is this not market manipulation?” Horsford asked, to which Greer responded: “No.”

“If it was always a plan, how is this not market manipulation?” Horsford asked again.

“Tariffs are a tool, they can be used in the appropriate way to protect US jobs and small businesses, but that’s not what this does,” Horsford said. “So if it’s not market manipulation, what is it? Who’s benefiting? What billionaire just got richer?”

Donald Trump is facing accusations of market manipulation after posting on social media that it was a “great time to buy” just hours before he made a dramatic U-turn on his trade war that led to big rises in stock markets around the world.

Shortly after US markets opened on Wednesday morning, Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social: “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT”.

Less than four hours later, he shocked investors by announcing a 90-day pause on additional trade tariffs on most countries except China, sending share indexes soaring.

In America the S&P 500 blue chip index closed up by more than 9%, while the technology-focused Nasdaq index shut more than 12% up. Stocks continued to rise in Asia and Europe on Thursday, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 index up by 9%, and London’s FTSE 100 index rising by as much as 4% in early trading.

Trump does not usually sign off his post with his initials. Those letters happen to be the same as the ticker for Trump Media & Technology Group, the business that controls Truth Social, whose stock shot up by 22% on Wednesday.

The timing of the US president’s posts and subsequent huge share jumps has sparked accusations of market manipulation. The Democratic senator Adam Schiff has called for an investigation, saying: “These constant gyrations in policy provide dangerous opportunities for insider trading.

“Who in the administration knew about Trump’s latest tariff flip-flop ahead of time? Did anyone buy or sell stocks, and profit at the public’s expense? I’m writing to the White House – the public has a right to know.”

The Democratic senator Chris Murphy also wrote on X that an “insider trading scandal is brewing … Trump’s 9:30am tweet makes it clear he was eager for his people to make money off the private info only he knew. So who knew ahead of time and how much money did they make?”

The New York Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called for all members of Congress to disclose any stocks they had bought in the past 24 hours. “I’ve been hearing some interesting chatter on the floor,” she wrote on X. “Disclosure deadline is May 15th. We’re about to learn a few things. It’s time to ban insider trading in Congress.”

When asked by US reporters on Wednesday evening when exactly he arrived at his decision to pause the tariffs on most countries for 90 days, Trump said: “For a period of a time. I would say this morning. Over the last few days, I’ve been thinking about it.”

However White House officials have argued the shift was part of the strategy all along, with his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, arguing it was his “art of the deal” at work.

Several investors have used volatility in the stock market in recent weeks as a buying opportunity. The US representative for Georgia, Republican and Trump ally Marjorie Taylor Greene, disclosed that she had made several purchases on 3 and 4 April – days when there were sharp market falls after Trump first detailed his “liberation day” tariffs on 2 April – including shares in Amazon.com and Apple. Shares in the technology companies rose by 12% and 15% respectively on Wednesday.

While Trump has paused many of the new country-specific tariffs, he has maintained pressure on China, the second biggest economy in the world. He increased the tariff on Chinese imports to 125% from the 104% level that started on Wednesday. Beijing could respond again after hitting US imports with 84% tariffs that began on Thursday.

Donald Trump’s climbdown on Wednesday from the most draconian aspects of his tariff regime has uncovered a damning picture of chaos at the heart of his presidency without necessarily alleviating their most painful effects.

The president’s landmark “liberation day” unveiling of tariffs in the White House Rose Garden on 2 April was supposed to be symbolic gateway to his promised “golden age of American greatness”; instead, it triggered a cascade of global market crashes that prompted warnings of a recession, or even a 1930s-style depression, while Trump brushed it all off as temporary “disruption”.

Time alone will tell how much damage has been inflicted on the credibility of Trump’s economic policy and indeed his entire administration by the ditching of nearly 80 years of US economic and free trading architecture, only to be followed by a sharp, if partial, U-turn.

The president’s sudden and unheralded retreat from a signature policy that he has advocated for more than four decades has placated Wall Street and international bond markets, which rallied at the news of his 90-day pause on tariffs that rose to above 50% on the goods from some countries deemed to have been “ripping off” the US in their trade practices.

But left untouched was a 10% across-the-board duty levied on all foreign imports – not to mention a further tariff hike on all goods from China – meaning that higher consumer prices are on the way for Americans, no matter how relieved the masters of the universe on Wall Street and other international trading centers are feeling.

“Most Americans care less about the spin and more about the fact that his 10% across-the-board tariff will still cost families an average of $2,600 more annually,” Matt McDermott, a Democratic pollster, posted on Bluesky.

The market mayhem unleashed by Trump’s “liberation day” tariff rollout is reminiscent of the reaction to the attempt by the British prime minister, Liz Truss, to stage a radical reordering of UK economic policy in 2022.

The constitutional niceties of the America’s political system will no doubt save the president from the fate of the hapless Truss, who was memorably outlasted by a head of lettuce and driven from Downing Street within 50 days of taking office as international markets rejected her policies as non-credible.

No such mechanism exists for removing a US president whose policies trigger market turmoil at home and abroad.

Perhaps buoyed up by that knowledge, Trump’s closest aides and acolytes tried to present his political backflip as a sign of strategic genius that had always been part of a brilliant plan.

“This was his strategy all along. President Trump created maximum negotiating leverage for himself,” said Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, who had been locked in urgent discussions with the president onboard Air Force One on Sunday about the effect of last week’s “liberation day” tariffs, according to the New York Times.

“Many of you in the media clearly missed The Art of the Deal. You clearly failed to see what President Trump is doing here,” explained the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, who a day before had said that Trump was not considering a delay to putting the tariffs into effect.

Yet the depiction of a carefully plotted strategy going perfectly to plan was undermined by Trump himself, who gave a strikingly blunt explanation for his volte-face.

“Well, I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line,” he said. “They were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid.”

It seemed a graphic portrayal of a loss of nerve – all the more so given that Trump had told Republicans that “I know what the hell I’m doing” and urged his followers to ignore the plunging markets and “BE COOL” on a post on his Truth Social network just hours earlier. “Everything is going to work out well,” he insisted.

That remains to be seen.

So too does the strength of Trump’s determination to plough ahead with a tariff policy which, even in its diluted iteration following Wednesday’s announcement, threatens to lumber Americans with higher living costs – an outcome at odds with the president’s campaign promise to reduce prices “on day one”.

Writing in the Washington Post, Aaron Blake noted that Wednesday’s decision was Trump’s second tariff climbdown since taking office without gaining anything in return, having previously backed away from duties on Mexico and Canada with only minor concessions.

Rather than being strategic, as Bessent, Leavitt and others claimed, he wrote, there was “reason to believe that this is indeed another example of Trump caving. And a big one at that.”

Trump has marketed his leadership on a message of strength, which has communicated itself to congressional Republicans, who – with a few notable exceptions – have fallen publicly into line with his tariff policies, whatever their qualms.

But having seen the president apparently buckle to market pressure, the question now arises over whether more of them will find the courage to push back. It is a question that could acquire added urgency as next year’s midterms loom into view, presenting an opportunity for voters to punish the GOP at the ballot box if inflation surges.

The top US commander in the Pacific has warned senators that the military support that China and North Korea are giving Russia in its war on Ukraine is a security risk in his region as Moscow provides critical military assistance to both in return.

Adm Samuel Paparo, head of US Indo-Pacific Command, told the Senate armed services committee that China has provided 70% of the machine tools and 90% of the legacy chips to Russia to help Moscow “rebuild its war machine”.

In exchange, he said, China is potentially getting help in technologies to make its submarines move more quietly, along with other assistance.

Senators pressed Paparo and Gen Xavier Brunson, commander of US Forces Korea, on China’s advances in the region, including threats to Taiwan. They also questioned both on the US military presence in South Korea, and whether it should be shielded from personnel cuts.

Both said the current US forces there and across the Indo-Pacific region are critical for both diplomacy in the region and US national security, as ties between Russia and China grow. The US has 28,500 military personnel in South Korea.

Paparo said North Korea is sending “thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of artillery shells” and thousands of short-range missiles to Russia. The expectation, he said, is that Pyongyang will receive air-defense and surface-to-air missile support.

“It’s a transactional symbiosis where each state fulfills the other state’s weakness to mutual benefit of each state,” Paparo said.

Brunson said North Korea has shown the ability to send munitions and troops to Russia while advancing development of its own military capabilities, including hypersonic weapons. Pyongyang, he said, “boasts a Russian-equipped, augmented, modernized military force of over 1.3 million personnel”.

North Korea’s efforts to develop advanced nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles “pose a direct threat to our homeland and our allies”, Paparo added.

North Korea also has sent thousands of soldiers to fight with the Russians against Ukraine. And the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said on Wednesday that Russia is actively recruiting Chinese citizens to fight alongside its forces in the Ukraine war. He said more than 150 such mercenaries are already active in the battle with Beijing’s knowledge.

China has called the accusation “irresponsible”.

The US supreme court upheld on Thursday a judge’s order requiring Donald Trump’s administration to facilitate the return to the United States of a Salvadoran man who the government has acknowledged was deported in error to El Salvador.

US district judge Paula Xinis last week issued an order that the administration “facilitate and effectuate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, in response to a lawsuit filed by the man and his family challenging the legality of his deportation.

The supreme court, in an unsigned decision, said that the judge’s order “properly requires the government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador”.

However, the court said that the additional requirement to “effectuate” his return was unclear and may exceed the judge’s authority. The justices directed Xinis to clarify the directive “with due regard for the deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs”.

The administration, meanwhile, “should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps,” the court directed.

Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran migrant who was living in Maryland and has had a work permit since 2019, was stopped and detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He was deported on 15 March on one of three high-profile deportation flights to El Salvador that also included alleged Venezuelan gang members.

Justice department lawyers in a supreme court brief had argued that the judge’s order, by requiring the Trump administration to “effectuate” Abrego Garcia’s return, had impermissibly encroached on presidential authority on foreign relations in violation of the US constitution’s separation of powers between its judicial and executive branches.

“The United States does not control the sovereign nation of El Salvador, nor can it compel El Salvador to follow a federal judge’s bidding,” justice department lawyers wrote.

The supreme court has a 6-3 conservative majority. Its three liberal justices on Thursday issued a statement agreeing with the court’s decision, but said they would have denied the administration’s request outright.

“To this day, the government has cited no basis in law for Abrego Garcia’s warrantless arrest, his removal to El Salvador, or his confinement in a Salvadoran prison. Nor could it,” liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the statement.

Sotomayor added that the administration had requested “an order from this court permitting it to leave Abrego Garcia, a husband and father without a criminal record, in a Salvadoran prison for no reason recognized by the law”.

Abrego Garcia is married to a US citizen with whom he is raising a US citizen child in addition to his wife’s two children from a prior relationship. He had never been charged with or convicted of any crime, according to Abrego Garcia’s lawyers, who have denied the justice department’s allegation that he is a member of the criminal gang MS-13.

A helicopter crashed into the Hudson River in New York on Thursday, killing all six people onboard, including the pilot and a family of Spanish tourists with three children.

The sightseeing helicopter broke apart in midair and crashed upside down into the Hudson River between Manhattan and the New Jersey waterfront shortly after 3pm ET, leading to a huge response from emergency crews.

Videos posted on social media showed the aircraft mostly submerged, upside down in the water, and rescue vehicles crowding on to the streets on shore as emergency workers raced to save those onboard.

At the scene of the crash, the emergency response boats could be seen circling in the water. A crane could also be seen on a floating platform in the river, presumably trying to raise the sunken helicopter. Meanwhile on shore, fire and police personnel stopped the public and press from reaching the end of a long concrete pier on the river from downtown Manhattan, as scuba teams emerged from the water.

The New York mayor, Eric Adams, confirmed six people had been pronounced dead, including three children and three adults.

Speaking at a news conference on Thursday evening, Adams said his thoughts were with the crash victims and their families. An investigation into the cause of the accident was ongoing, he said.

Three adults and three children were on board the Bell 206 helicopter that had left from downtown Skyport, Adams said. The victims were a pilot and a family believed to be visiting from Spain, he said.

Jessica Tisch, the NYPD commissioner, said most of the passengers were already dead when they were removed from the water, but two passengers were taken to a nearby hospital, where they died soon after.

Witness Bruce Wall told the Associated Press he saw the helicopter “falling apart” in midair, with the tail and propeller coming off. The propeller was still spinning without the aircraft as it fell, he said.

Lesly Camacho, a hostess at a restaurant along the river in Hoboken, New Jersey, told the AP she saw the helicopter spinning uncontrollably before it slammed into the water.

The rescue operations took place near a site close to the Manhattan waterfront, near the end of a long maintenance pier for one of the ventilation towers for the Holland tunnel, a busy under-river road tunnel connecting the city with New Jersey.

Over the years, there have been multiple crashes in the skies over Manhattan, which are routinely filled with both planes and helicopters, including private recreational aircraft and commercial and tourist flights.

Prior incidents include a collision in 2009 when a tour helicopter and a small private airplane collided over the Hudson River, killing nine people. In 2018, a sightseeing helicopter offering “open door” flights went down into the East River, killing five people. New York City banned open-door helicopter flights following the crash.

The spot where the helicopter crashed is less than three miles (4.8km) south of where US Airways Capt Chesley Sullenberger expertly landed the passenger plane he was piloting, on the water, with no lives lost, after the engines were put out in a bird strike after takeoff from LaGuardia airport. The rare successful emergency landing on water became known as the “miracle on the Hudson”.

The crash site is close to the southern end of the island of Manhattan, within sight of the Statue of Liberty and the One World Trade skyscraper at the site of the September 11 terrorist attack.

New Yorkers were jogging and walking along the sidewalk near the Hudson as normal on Thursday evening, overlooking the scene of the crash with emergency boats still visible across the water on the New Jersey side, blue lights flashing.

Software engineers and friends Mike Jones, 37, and Omar Mohamed, 21, said they were out for a walk during a break and they had heard the news of the crash.

“It seems that helicopters crash a lot. And I’m afraid of heights anyway so helicopters are a no-go for me,” Jones said.

Mohamed said: “There was just another helicopter crash, right?” recalling the helicopter crash in Washington DC at the end of January, when a military flight collided midair with a passenger plane coming in to land. All people aboard both flights were killed.

A helicopter crashed into the Hudson River in New York on Thursday, killing all six people onboard, including the pilot and a family of Spanish tourists with three children.

The sightseeing helicopter broke apart in midair and crashed upside down into the Hudson River between Manhattan and the New Jersey waterfront shortly after 3pm ET, leading to a huge response from emergency crews.

Videos posted on social media showed the aircraft mostly submerged, upside down in the water, and rescue vehicles crowding on to the streets on shore as emergency workers raced to save those onboard.

At the scene of the crash, the emergency response boats could be seen circling in the water. A crane could also be seen on a floating platform in the river, presumably trying to raise the sunken helicopter. Meanwhile on shore, fire and police personnel stopped the public and press from reaching the end of a long concrete pier on the river from downtown Manhattan, as scuba teams emerged from the water.

The New York mayor, Eric Adams, confirmed six people had been pronounced dead, including three children and three adults.

Speaking at a news conference on Thursday evening, Adams said his thoughts were with the crash victims and their families. An investigation into the cause of the accident was ongoing, he said.

Three adults and three children were on board the Bell 206 helicopter that had left from downtown Skyport, Adams said. The victims were a pilot and a family believed to be visiting from Spain, he said.

Jessica Tisch, the NYPD commissioner, said most of the passengers were already dead when they were removed from the water, but two passengers were taken to a nearby hospital, where they died soon after.

Witness Bruce Wall told the Associated Press he saw the helicopter “falling apart” in midair, with the tail and propeller coming off. The propeller was still spinning without the aircraft as it fell, he said.

Lesly Camacho, a hostess at a restaurant along the river in Hoboken, New Jersey, told the AP she saw the helicopter spinning uncontrollably before it slammed into the water.

The rescue operations took place near a site close to the Manhattan waterfront, near the end of a long maintenance pier for one of the ventilation towers for the Holland tunnel, a busy under-river road tunnel connecting the city with New Jersey.

Over the years, there have been multiple crashes in the skies over Manhattan, which are routinely filled with both planes and helicopters, including private recreational aircraft and commercial and tourist flights.

Prior incidents include a collision in 2009 when a tour helicopter and a small private airplane collided over the Hudson River, killing nine people. In 2018, a sightseeing helicopter offering “open door” flights went down into the East River, killing five people. New York City banned open-door helicopter flights following the crash.

The spot where the helicopter crashed is less than three miles (4.8km) south of where US Airways Capt Chesley Sullenberger expertly landed the passenger plane he was piloting, on the water, with no lives lost, after the engines were put out in a bird strike after takeoff from LaGuardia airport. The rare successful emergency landing on water became known as the “miracle on the Hudson”.

The crash site is close to the southern end of the island of Manhattan, within sight of the Statue of Liberty and the One World Trade skyscraper at the site of the September 11 terrorist attack.

New Yorkers were jogging and walking along the sidewalk near the Hudson as normal on Thursday evening, overlooking the scene of the crash with emergency boats still visible across the water on the New Jersey side, blue lights flashing.

Software engineers and friends Mike Jones, 37, and Omar Mohamed, 21, said they were out for a walk during a break and they had heard the news of the crash.

“It seems that helicopters crash a lot. And I’m afraid of heights anyway so helicopters are a no-go for me,” Jones said.

Mohamed said: “There was just another helicopter crash, right?” recalling the helicopter crash in Washington DC at the end of January, when a military flight collided midair with a passenger plane coming in to land. All people aboard both flights were killed.

An elderly British couple taken captive by the Taliban have been interrogated 29 times since they were imprisoned more than two months ago, and still have “absolutely no idea” why they have been incarcerated, their daughter has said.

No charges have been brought against Peter Reynolds, 79, and his wife, Barbie, 75, who ran school training programmes and were arrested alongside an American friend, Faye Hall, as they travelled to their home in Bamyan province, in central Afghanistan, in February.

Hall was released last weekend after the Trump administration lifted bounties worth $10m (£7.8m) from the heads of senior Taliban figures, including Sirajuddin Haqqani, the interior minister.

Their daughter, Susie Romer, told Channel 5 that hearing her parents cry on the phone was “excruciating” for her, and called on the UK government to do more to secure their release.

Romer said that although the British government had been assisting the family, she would like the government to do more to make it clear to the Taliban that her parents “should be immediately released”, she said.

“It’s been 10 weeks now, and we’ve not been reassured that this message has been conveyed, but this is really urgent.

“Each day that they remain in prison, they’re at risk, so we’ll keep on asking the government to send that message.”

The couple have endured 29 interrogations so far, and have now been told “there is not actually a charge against them”, she said.

She described the conditions her parents were being held in as “absolutely horrific”. Mice and cockroaches are “running about” their cells and they receive just one meal a day.

In recordings shared with the Sunday Times last week, Peter Reynolds said: “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.”

He said he was living in “a cage rather than a cell”, but described his circumstances as “VIP conditions” compared with where his wife was being held.

During an interview with BBC News last week, the couple’s son, Jonathan Reynolds, said he had been “interacting” with the US government after a video plea to Donald Trump for help to have his parents released.

This week, the Taliban told the Associated Press the case “will soon be resolved” and “should not be a cause for concern”.

A spokesperson for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said: “We are supporting the family of two British nationals who are detained in Afghanistan.”

A Danish couple who fled their “forest resort” in Sweden for Guatemala and left behind a large tax debt and 158 barrels of human waste have hit back at criticism and claimed that their handling of the compost toilets was “very normal”.

Flemming Hansen and Mette Helbæk, both chefs, abandoned their purportedly eco-friendly retreat, Stedsans, in Halland, southern Sweden, last year. They owed large sums to Swedish and Danish tax authorities. They have since set up a business in Guatemala.

The story behind their disappearance and the abandoned human waste was revealed this week after an investigation by the newspapers Politiken and Dagens Nyheter. It also found that the couple had allowed wastewater to run into the forest and alleged that animals had died as a result of being left outside and that others were abandoned.

Hansen and Helbæk’s actions were described by local authorities as “environmental crime”. However, on Thursday, the couple claimed they were acting lawfully.

Commenting on the barrels left behind from their compost toilets, they said in a post on social media: “For people in rural Sweden it’s a very normal thing.”

They added: “It’s also a very important part of the permaculture principles that you deal with your own shit.”

The property’s new owner is aware of the barrels and they can be used for compost, they said. “Half of them are ready to use this spring, the other half is ready in 1 year, following the guidelines of Swedish law.”

But Daniel Helsing, the head of building and environment at the local authority, Hylte council, said the couple did not follow the necessary requirements for composting waste.

“There are a number of requirements that you have to follow and they have not,” he said. “Normal practice, if you do not have a water closet solution, is that you have a collecting service for your barrels that the local authorities in basically every county in Sweden provide. That would be the most common solution to handling toilet waste if you are not using water closets.”

It is possible to compost toilet waste but it has to be done according to local authority instructions, he said. “You would have to report that you are going to compost toilet waste and that gives us as the local authority a chance to set out rules and guidelines for how to do it.”

The Swedish Tourist Association said it was unfamiliar with the methods used at Stedsans. A spokesperson said: “I have never heard anything like that.”

Hansen and Helbæk accused the journalists behind the investigation of lying and of causing “our life’s biggest (literal!) shitstorm”.

They added: “The article claims that we have been damaging the local environment with our procedures at our permaculture resort and that we have left animals to die. All these claims and several others are false.”

Accusing the local authorities of being cowards, Hansen and Helbæk said that Hylte council was aware of their toilets. They had, the couple said, shown the toilets and procedures to authority representatives “several times”. “Either the municipality lies, or they have not done the work we have paid them to do, which is to make sure that all rules are followed.”

Hylte council said they had not been paid to deal with waste and that they were assessing whether it would be reported to police.

Hansen and Helbæk said their company had gone bankrupt and that they had tax debt in Denmark that had “multiplied tenfold” because of interest and fees over a decade. To prevent the debt from growing, they said, they would have to pay Danish tax authorities – which they accused of being “cold-hearted” and “narcissistic” – more than 50,000 DKK a month (£5,800), which they suggest they are unable to.

Hansen previously said they owed the Swedish tax agency “over 7m” SEK (more than £550,000).

Among the reasons they fled to Guatemala, they said, was “to give our family a second chance”. Describing it as their birthright, they added: “If you see us as villains for making this choice, we are sorry.”

Protective helmets were donned and sledgehammers wielded as Elon Musk critics vented their frustration at the Tesla boss and billionaire by smashing up a disused Tesla bound for the scrapheap.

The public art project was organised by the social media campaign group Everyone Hates Elon. A 2014 Tesla Model S was provided by an anonymous donor “to create a debate about wealth inequality”, a spokesperson for the group said.

The participants gathered at Hardess Studios in south London on Thursday to take it in turns to swing at the car with sledgehammers and baseball bats. The destroyed electric vehicle, which retails for about £14,000, will be auctioned in the next few weeks, with all proceeds going to food bank charities.

“We’re giving Londoners a chance to stand up to far-right hatred and billionaires and express how they feel about the current state of the world,” said the group. “Therapy is expensive, but this is free.”

Talia Denisenko, a 32-year-old writer, wore a Ukrainian flag as she took a hammer to the car’s bonnet as Britney Spears’s Hit Me Baby One More Time blared from a speaker. “My family is Ukrainian and Elon Musk wants to keep us occupied,” she said. “Things feel very disempowering at the moment. This is a little bit of therapy.”

Alice Rogers, a 24-year-old University of Cambridge researcher from Illinois, said: “Musk is acting in ways which violate our constitution. I’m very concerned by what I’m seeing – he’s gutting agencies and cutting USAID. This felt really cathartic. I’m not normally a smasher, but that felt really good.”

Everyone Hates Elon, which garnered attention this year for distributing stickers with the slogan “Don’t buy a Swasticar”, said it had made clear that the stunt, called London vs Musk, should not be replicated outside the event.

“This is a private event with a used Tesla that was destined for the scrapyard – it’s a supervised, controlled art piece and there are proper safety measures in place,” said a spokesperson. “We urge people not to damage other Teslas or any other cars.”

The battery of the scrap car had been removed and recycled.

“I’m just aghast at what I see going on in America at the moment,” said Lee Woods, a 45-year-old university lecturer who had travelled two hours from Hampshire for the event. “I think Musk is using his obscene wealth to promote the far right.”

Musk, the world’s richest person, leads the Trump administration’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge), which the president tasked with drastically reducing US government jobs and cutting national debt.

Tesla’s shares dropped 13% in the first three months of 2025 – an indication of buyer backlash as a result of Musk’s rightwing politics. Protests calling for a boycott of the electric vehicle company have been taking place on both sides of the Atlantic in recent months, including a global day of action where hundreds of Tesla branches were targeted by protesters from the US group Tesla Takedown.

“My opinion [on Musk] has changed hugely,” said Giles Pearson, 32, who dealt the first blow on Thursday. “Since buying Twitter he’s become seriously rightwing and alienated a lot of people by doing so. I would never normally do something like this … but I’ve always wanted to smash a car.”

Tesla was approached for comment.

A French researcher who was sentenced by Russia to three years in prison, in a case condemned by Paris, has been transferred to a transit penal colony.

Laurent Vinatier is one of several westerners jailed by Moscow since it began its Ukraine offensive. He was sentenced in October after being found guilty of violating Russia’s “foreign agent” law.

Vinatier, who works for a Swiss conflict-mediation NGO, was arrested last summer as tensions with France and other western countries soared over Ukraine.

According to a message from his family to AFP, Vinatier’s lawyer informed them that he was transferred from Moscow to Tula – about 120 miles (190km) south of the capital – to a transit penal colony.

He is to spend 15 days of quarantine in the prison. His family do not know where he will be transferred after that. Prisoner transfers in Russia’s huge penitentiary system can take weeks.

Vinatier, who speaks Russian, is a veteran researcher on Russia and post-Soviet countries.

As he lost his appeal in February, he said in court that his work always tried to “present Russia’s interests in international relations”.

France has demanded Vinatier’s release, condemning the sentence as “arbitrary”. President Emmanuel Macron has repeatedly calling on Russia to free him.

Prince Harry has visited amputees and wounded military personnel at an orthopaedic clinic in Ukraine, after spending two days at the high court in London appealing against the government’s decision to strip him of his security protection while he is in the UK.

The prince, 40, met with wounded veterans at the Superhumans Centre in Lviv, which treats and rehabilitates injured military personnel and civilians, including children, affected by the war.

Harry, who served 10 years in the British army, was accompanied by a contingent from the Invictus Games Foundation, including four veterans who have been through similar rehabilitation experiences.

He was given a tour of the centre, which provides prosthetics, reconstructive surgery and psychological help free of charge, and is also understood to have met with Ukraine’s minister of veterans affairs, Natalia Kalmykova.

The centre sees more than 3,000 patients a year, according to its website.

It is in western Ukraine, an area that has frequently been targeted by Russian missiles, and the visit was not announced until after Harry was out of the country.

In February, the prince met with the Superhumans chief executive, Olga Rudneva, at the Invictus Games, a Paralympic-style sporting competition for injured and sick military personnel and veterans, in Canada.

She presented him with a bracelet from the rehabilitation centre, created for all the centre’s ambassadors, which has the words “Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire” written on it in English and Ukrainian.

She also gave him a personal gift from a double amputee, a veteran who had met Harry on ski slopes in Whistler.

Harry is the second member of the royal family to visit Ukraine since the war in Russia began in 2022. His aunt Sophie, the Duchess of Edinburgh, also made an unannounced visit to the country last year.

Other members of the royal family have also openly shown their support for the war-torn nation. King Charles had tea with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, at his Norfolk estate last month, just two days after a meeting between Donald Trump and Zelenskyy at the White House descended into acrimony in front of the world’s media.

Prince William also met with Ukrainian refugees during a two day visit to Estonia last month.