The US has demanded control of a crucial pipeline in Ukraine used to send Russian gas to Europe, according to reports, in a move described as a colonial shakedown.

US and Ukrainian officials met on Friday to discuss White House proposals for a minerals deal. Donald Trump wants Kyiv to hand over its natural resources as “payback” in return for weapons delivered by the previous Biden administration.

Talks have become increasingly acrimonious, Reuters said. The latest US draft is more “maximalist” than the original version from February, which proposed giving Washington $500bn worth of rare metals, as well as oil and gas.

Citing a source close to the talks, the news agency said the most recent document includes a demand that the US government’s International Development Finance Corporation take control of the natural gas pipeline.

It runs from the town of Sudzha in western Russia to the Ukrainian city of Uzhhorod, about 750 miles (1,200km) away, on the border with the EU and Slovakia. Built in Soviet times, the pipeline is a key piece of national infrastructure and a major energy route.

On 1 January, Ukraine cut off the supply of gas when its five-year contract with the Russian state energy company Gazprom expired. Both countries had previously earned hundreds of millions of euros in transit fees, including during the first three years of full-scale war.

Volodymyr Landa, a senior economist with the Centre for Economic Strategy, a Kyiv thinktank, said the Americans were out for “all they can get”. Their bullying “colonial-type” demands had little chance of being accepted by Kyiv, he predicted.

Last autumn, Volodymyr Zelenskyy proposed giving the US access to Ukraine’s underdeveloped mineral sector. He envisaged a deal that would see the incoming Trump administration supply Ukraine with weapons, in return for future profits from joint investments.

Instead, Trump has refused to give security commitments or military support but wants the minerals anyway. Last week he complained Zelenskyy was trying to “back out of an agreement” and said Ukraine’s president would have “big problems” if he failed to sign.

Speaking to journalists on Thursday, Zelenskyy said he was ready to do a deal to modernise his country but that Ukraine could only agree if there was “parity” between the two sides, with revenues split “50-50”.

“I am just defending what belongs to Ukraine. It should be beneficial for both the United States and Ukraine. This is the right thing to do,” Zelenskyy said. The US Treasury confirmed “technical” talks were ongoing.

Meanwhile, the US special envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, said his remarks over a possible partition of Ukraine had been misinterpreted. In an interview with the Times, Kellogg said the country could be divided “almost like the Berlin after world war two” as part of a peace deal.

Writing on X, Kellogg said he was referring to “a post-cease fire resiliency force in support of Ukraine’s sovereignty”. Under this plan, Russian troops would remain in territory already seized by Moscow, with British and French forces stationed in Kyiv and in other parts of the country.

On Friday, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff held talks with Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg. Witkoff’s reported solution to the conflict was to give Russia the four Ukrainian provinces it is demanding – including territory that Ukraine controls, and which is home to 1 million people.

Meanwhile, at a meeting of the Ukraine defence contact group on Friday, Kyiv’s allies announced a record €21bn (£18.2bn) in additional military help. They accused Putin of dragging his feet over a 30-day ceasefire deal which Ukraine has accepted.

Early on Saturday, Russia carried out further air attacks against Ukrainian civilian targets. Three warehouses were destroyed in Kyiv, with two people injured. The Kremlin has fired 70 missiles and 2,200 drones at Ukraine since the 11 March US ceasefire proposal, Ukrainian officials said.

Zelenskyy paid tribute on Saturday to a 26-year-old pilot, captain Pavlo Ivanov, who was killed during an F-16 combat mission. Ukraine’s small air force “heroically” defends the country from Russian missiles and drones, and supported ground operations, he said.

• Ukraine could be partitioned like Berlin after the second world war, Donald Trump’s envoy to Kyiv has suggested, as Russia continues to hold out on accepting a truce. Gen Keith Kellogg appeared to suggest the country could be split into zones of control, with British and French troops as part of a “reassurance force” in the west and Moscow’s forces in the east. Between them would be Ukrainian forces and a demilitarised zone but the US would not provide any ground forces, he claimed. “You could almost make it look like what happened with Berlin after world war two, when you had a Russian zone, a French zone and a British zone,” he told the Times newspaper. Kyiv is yet to comment on the remarks.

• Donald Trump issued a rare warning to Vladimir Putin ahead of talks between the US president’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and the Russian president, saying on the Truth Social platform: “Russia has to get moving. Too many people ere [sic] DYING, thousands a week, in a terrible and senseless war – A war that should have never happened, and wouldn’t have happened, if I were President!!!” Putin was shown on state TV greeting Witkoff in St Petersburg’s presidential library at the start of the negotiations and state news agencies later said the talks lasted more than four hours. “The theme of the meeting: aspects of a Ukrainian settlement,” the Kremlin said after the meeting. Putin’s investment envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, who was seen in news footage accompanying Witkoff leaving a hotel in the city, called the talks productive, according to Russia’s state news agency Tass.

• Ukraine’s allies promised a record €21bn ($24bn) in additional military support for Kyiv and accused Vladimir Putin of dragging his feet and delaying US-led negotiations over a ceasefire deal, reports Luke Harding. Speaking at a meeting of the Ukraine defence contact group in Brussels, the British defence secretary, John Healey, said: “Putin said he wanted peace but he rejected a full ceasefire. His forces continue to fire on Ukraine, military and civilian targets alike.” The UK and Germany jointly convened Friday’s meeting in Ramstein, which was attended by more than 40 countries but not the US, with Trump’s defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, joining by video instead.

• Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged Ukraine’s military allies to focus on air defence, asking them to provide 10 additional Patriot systems. The Ukrainian president told the Ramstein meeting via video that Russian attacks showed Moscow was not ready to implement any realistic and effective peace proposals. Separately, Zelenskyy said Ukraine was ready to purchase additional air defence systems, adding that he discussed it with Donald Trump. “Ukraine is not just asking – we are ready to buy appropriate additional systems,” he said in his nightly address on Friday. The government would also strengthen air defences with additional funds for electronic warfare, he said.

• US and Ukrainian officials met on Friday on the US proposal to gain access to Ukraine’s mineral wealth but prospects for a breakthrough were scant given the meeting’s “antagonistic” atmosphere, a source with knowledge of the matter said. The Reuters report quoted the source as saying the strains in the Washington talks stemmed from the Trump administration’s “maximalist” latest draft proposal, which is more expansive than the original version. “The negotiating environment is very antagonistic.” A Treasury Department spokesperson confirmed the discussions, calling them “technical in nature”.

• Russia launched 88 drones at Ukraine in overnight attacks, the Ukrainian air force said on Saturday, and damage was reported in the centre, east and south of the country. It said Ukraine’s air defences shot down 56 of the drones, while 24 drones were “lost” as the military used electronic warfare to redirect them. The Russian defence ministry said earlier that its air defences destroyed 13 Ukrainian drones in the space of 30 minutes late on Friday. Between 10pm and 10.30pm nine drones were destroyed in the Rostov region, on Ukraine’s eastern border, and four in the Kursk region, on Ukraine’s north border, it said.

• More than a hundred Chinese citizens fighting for the Russian military against Ukraine are mercenaries who do not appear to have a direct link to China’s government, two US officials familiar with American intelligence and a former western intelligence official said. Chinese military officers had, however, been in the war behind Russia’s lines with Beijing’s approval to draw tactical lessons from the conflict, the former official said in the Reuters report. The US confirmed on Wednesday that Ukrainian forces had captured two men of Chinese origin in eastern Ukraine after Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country had information about 155 Chinese citizens fighting there on Russia’s behalf.

• Ukrainian legislators are almost certain to extend martial law again before it expires on 9 May, the parliamentary speaker has said, even as the US and Russia pressure Kyiv to hold a new vote. Ruslan Stefanchuk underlined the legal and practical implausibility of holding free and fair elections in a country that is part-occupied and still under constant attack, while stressing Ukraine’s commitment to democratic elections.

• Ukraine could be partitioned like Berlin after the second world war, Donald Trump’s envoy to Kyiv has suggested, as Russia continues to hold out on accepting a truce. Gen Keith Kellogg appeared to suggest the country could be split into zones of control, with British and French troops as part of a “reassurance force” in the west and Moscow’s forces in the east. Between them would be Ukrainian forces and a demilitarised zone but the US would not provide any ground forces, he claimed. “You could almost make it look like what happened with Berlin after world war two, when you had a Russian zone, a French zone and a British zone,” he told the Times newspaper. Kyiv is yet to comment on the remarks.

• Donald Trump issued a rare warning to Vladimir Putin ahead of talks between the US president’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and the Russian president, saying on the Truth Social platform: “Russia has to get moving. Too many people ere [sic] DYING, thousands a week, in a terrible and senseless war – A war that should have never happened, and wouldn’t have happened, if I were President!!!” Putin was shown on state TV greeting Witkoff in St Petersburg’s presidential library at the start of the negotiations and state news agencies later said the talks lasted more than four hours. “The theme of the meeting: aspects of a Ukrainian settlement,” the Kremlin said after the meeting. Putin’s investment envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, who was seen in news footage accompanying Witkoff leaving a hotel in the city, called the talks productive, according to Russia’s state news agency Tass.

• Ukraine’s allies promised a record €21bn ($24bn) in additional military support for Kyiv and accused Vladimir Putin of dragging his feet and delaying US-led negotiations over a ceasefire deal, reports Luke Harding. Speaking at a meeting of the Ukraine defence contact group in Brussels, the British defence secretary, John Healey, said: “Putin said he wanted peace but he rejected a full ceasefire. His forces continue to fire on Ukraine, military and civilian targets alike.” The UK and Germany jointly convened Friday’s meeting in Ramstein, which was attended by more than 40 countries but not the US, with Trump’s defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, joining by video instead.

• Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged Ukraine’s military allies to focus on air defence, asking them to provide 10 additional Patriot systems. The Ukrainian president told the Ramstein meeting via video that Russian attacks showed Moscow was not ready to implement any realistic and effective peace proposals. Separately, Zelenskyy said Ukraine was ready to purchase additional air defence systems, adding that he discussed it with Donald Trump. “Ukraine is not just asking – we are ready to buy appropriate additional systems,” he said in his nightly address on Friday. The government would also strengthen air defences with additional funds for electronic warfare, he said.

• US and Ukrainian officials met on Friday on the US proposal to gain access to Ukraine’s mineral wealth but prospects for a breakthrough were scant given the meeting’s “antagonistic” atmosphere, a source with knowledge of the matter said. The Reuters report quoted the source as saying the strains in the Washington talks stemmed from the Trump administration’s “maximalist” latest draft proposal, which is more expansive than the original version. “The negotiating environment is very antagonistic.” A Treasury Department spokesperson confirmed the discussions, calling them “technical in nature”.

• Russia launched 88 drones at Ukraine in overnight attacks, the Ukrainian air force said on Saturday, and damage was reported in the centre, east and south of the country. It said Ukraine’s air defences shot down 56 of the drones, while 24 drones were “lost” as the military used electronic warfare to redirect them. The Russian defence ministry said earlier that its air defences destroyed 13 Ukrainian drones in the space of 30 minutes late on Friday. Between 10pm and 10.30pm nine drones were destroyed in the Rostov region, on Ukraine’s eastern border, and four in the Kursk region, on Ukraine’s north border, it said.

• More than a hundred Chinese citizens fighting for the Russian military against Ukraine are mercenaries who do not appear to have a direct link to China’s government, two US officials familiar with American intelligence and a former western intelligence official said. Chinese military officers had, however, been in the war behind Russia’s lines with Beijing’s approval to draw tactical lessons from the conflict, the former official said in the Reuters report. The US confirmed on Wednesday that Ukrainian forces had captured two men of Chinese origin in eastern Ukraine after Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country had information about 155 Chinese citizens fighting there on Russia’s behalf.

• Ukrainian legislators are almost certain to extend martial law again before it expires on 9 May, the parliamentary speaker has said, even as the US and Russia pressure Kyiv to hold a new vote. Ruslan Stefanchuk underlined the legal and practical implausibility of holding free and fair elections in a country that is part-occupied and still under constant attack, while stressing Ukraine’s commitment to democratic elections.

Tourists from Great Britain who travel to the continent to satisfy their epicurean desires for cured meats and fragrant cheeses will be frustrated in their attempts to bring home some of their favourite foods after a ban on meat and dairy imports from EU countries came into force this weekend.

From Saturday, holidaymakers will no longer be able to bring meat from cattle, sheep, goats or pigs, or dairy products, from EU countries into Great Britain for personal use, in a move aimed at preventing the spread of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) after a rise in cases across Europe.

Even those attempting to bring sandwiches with offending items such as cheese and ham will be stopped by customs and excise. Cured meats, raw meats and milk are off limits regardless of whether they are packed, packaged or have been bought at duty-free.

FMD does not directly affect humans, but it can be devastating to cattle, and while there are no cases in the UK at present, the government wants to keep it that way.

FMD is a highly contagious viral disease that affects cattle, sheep, pigs, and other cloven-hoofed animals such as wild boars and deer.

In a statement, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said the outbreak in Europe “presents a significant risk to farm businesses and livestock”. The disease can cause “significant economic losses due to production shortfalls in the affected animals, as well as loss of access to foreign markets for animals, meat and dairy”, it added.

Earlier this year, the government placed bans on imports of cattle, sheep, other ruminants, pig meat and dairy products from Germany, Hungary, Slovakia and Austria in response to outbreaks of FMD in those countries.

The new restrictions apply only to travellers arriving in Great Britain and will not be imposed on personal imports arriving in Northern Ireland, Jersey, Guernsey or the Isle of Man.

The minister for food security and rural affairs, Daniel Zeichner, said: “This government will do whatever it takes to protect British farmers from foot-and-mouth. That is why we are further strengthening protections by introducing restrictions on personal meat and dairy imports to prevent the spread of the disease and protect Britain’s food security.”

The UK deputy chief veterinary officer for international and trade affairs, Jorge Martin-Almagro, said: “Robust contingency plans are already in place to manage the risk of this disease to protect farmers and Britain’s food security. This biosecurity measure, combined with all others we have implemented, are critical to limit the risk of FMD incursion.”

Martin-Almagro urged livestock keepers to keep an eye out for signs of disease, maintain biosecurity, and immediately report any suspicion of disease to the Animal and Plant Health Agency.

There are exemptions from the new rules, including a limited amount of infant milk, medical foods, and certain composite products such as chocolate, confectionery, bread, cakes, biscuits and pasta.

The government said: “Those found with these items will need to either surrender them at the border or will have them seized and destroyed. In serious cases, those found with these items run the risk of incurring fines of up to £5,000 in England.”

After lighting a fuse under global financial markets, Donald Trump stepped back – all the way to a Florida golf course. A week later, having just caved to pressure to ease his trade tariffs, the US president defended the retreat while hosting racing car champions at the White House.

Trump had spent the time in between golfing, dining with donors and making insouciant declarations such as “this is a great time to get rich”, even as the US economy melted down.

It was a jolting juxtaposition that prompted comparisons with the emperor Nero, who fiddled while Rome burned, or insane monarchs who lost touch with reality. It also provided a clear illustration of how Trump governs during his volatile and extreme second presidency: erratically, with little attention to convention, and often on the hoof from one public engagement to another surrounded by courtiers who never disagree with him.

“He’s certainly living up to the caricature of being a mad king,” said Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist. “When you’re addressing a ballroom in a tuxedo, telling people to take the painful medicine, or on your umpteenth golf vacation while economic chaos is rippling throughout this country and others, at best you’re completely out of touch.

“At worst, you’re a sociopathic narcissist who doesn’t give a crap about anyone suffering. Ultimately there will be a political price to pay for that.”

Trump had swerved past April Fools’ Day to make 2 April his so-called “liberation day”. Against a backdrop of giant US flags in the White House Rose Garden, he announced sweeping tariffs – taxes on foreign imports – on dozens of countries, using a widely discredited formula to upend the decades-old order of global trade.

Trump did not decide on the final plan until less than three hours ahead of his splashy event, according to the Washington Post newspaper, but found Vice-President JD Vance and other staff constantly deferential. The Post quoted a person close to his inner circle as saying: “He’s at the peak of just not giving a fuck any more. Bad news stories? Doesn’t give a fuck. He’s going to do what he’s going to do. He’s going to do what he promised to do on the campaign trail.”

A day later, with markets suffering trillions of dollars in losses, Trump boarded Air Force One bound for Miami, Florida. He arrived at his Doral resort for a Saudi-funded LIV Golf event in a golf cart driven by his son Eric Trump.

Trump woke up on Friday at Mar-a-Lago, his gilded private club in Palm Beach, Florida, and donned a red “Make America great again” cap and white polo shirt. His limousine glided down a street lined with palm streets and cheering fans before arriving at his golf club.

He also spent the morning defending himself on his Truth Social media platform and vowing to stay the course. “TO THE MANY INVESTORS COMING INTO THE UNITED STATES AND INVESTING MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF MONEY, MY POLICIES WILL NEVER CHANGE,” he wrote.

Trump remained in Florida during the dignified transfer of four US soldiers killed during a training exercise in Lithuania, sending Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, to Dover air force base in Delaware to represent him. Instead the president attended a candlelit dinner for Maga Inc, an allied political organisation, reportedly charging $1m a plate.

Maggie Haberman, a Trump biographer and New York Times reporter, commented on CNN: “I think long ago he stopped caring about certain optics, and he’s made very clear during this presidency, he’s going to do what he wants … He is not messaging this in a way that suggests that he understands what average people might be going through right now.”

On Saturday, Trump played at another family golf course, in Jupiter, Florida, prompting an official White House announcement: “The president won his second round matchup of the senior club championship today in Jupiter, Fla., and advances to the championship round on Sunday.”

When Sunday came the president played on even as his cabinet members scrambled to political TV shows and offered conflicting signals, with some insisting that his tariffs were set in stone and others suggesting that he remained open to negotiation.

Trump returned to Washington and a growing chorus of dissent from allies, captains of industry and his own Republican loyalty, pleading with him to change course before a potential recession turned into a depression. Yet his first public event was a celebration of baseball’s World Series winners, the Los Angeles Dodgers, where he was presented with a “Trump 47” baseball shirt.

On Tuesday, in bow tie and tuxedo, Trump told a fundraising dinner in Washington: “I know what the hell I’m doing.” He claimed that the tariffs were forcing world leaders to negotiate with him, boasting: “I’m telling you, these countries are calling us up, kissing my ass. They are. They are dying to make a deal.”

But the following day, Trump blinked. He posted on Truth Social that, while escalating tariffs on China, he would pause others for 90 days to allow space for negotiation. His bubble of wealth and power had finally been punctured.

Trump has often proved impervious to the kind of scandals or gaffes that would damage another politician, but his casual attitude even as the markets were on fire suggested a man uniquely detached from the anxieties of ordinary people, including his own voters.

Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “Let them eat cake: Marie Antoinette kind of fits. He won his own golf tournament at his own club. How about that? Bill Clinton also cheated at golf a lot and people would let him win because he was president. It’s just the way they are. Rules don’t apply.”

This is not the first time that Trump, accused by critics of demanding absolute loyalty from courtiers, pursuing vengeance against perceived enemies and displaying scorn for his subjects, has been likened to a monarch.

Speaking at the Politics and Prose bookshop in Washington last weekend, Maureen Dowd, a New York Times columnist and author of the book Notorious, compared the president to William Shakespeare’s Richard III.

“Richard III comes up to the edge of the stage and wraps the audience into the bad thing he’s about to do,” Dowd told the Guardian during a question and answer session. “He tells them and he uses humour so that he’s supposed to be the villain, but the humour kind of counters it so you don’t think of him as badly.

“Trump does the same thing … He has this kind of wacky side so then when he does the very authoritarian stuff you get deflected by the crazy side he has. I think the SNL [Saturday Night Live] mimic captures this where he’s sort of being funny, so then when he turns authoritarian, you’re thinking: wait, is he really doing what I think he’s doing?”

Donald Trump’s presidential administration has exempted smartphones and computers from the 125% levies imposed on imports from China as well as other reciprocal tariffs, which experts had cautioned might cause electronic consumer prices to dramatically spike in the US.

The announcement was made late on Friday in a US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) notice that said the devices would be excluded from the 10% global tariff that Trump recently imposed on most countries, along with the much heftier import tax on China.

The CBP’s notice follows concerns from tech companies that the price of electronics for US consumers might surge with many of them manufactured in China. The notice also contained exemptions for additional electronics and components, such as memory cards, solar cells and semiconductors.

The exclusions were applied retroactively to the products under the reciprocal tariffs beginning at 12.01am ET on 5 April, according to the notice.

“Importers may request a refund by filing a post summary correction for unliquidated entries, or by filing a protest for entries that have liquidated but where the liquidation is not final because the protest period has not expired,” the CBP said.

On Friday, Trump told reporters that there could be possible exceptions to the tariffs, saying: “There could be a couple of exceptions for obvious reasons, but I would say 10% is a floor.”

Speaking to CNBC, Dan Ives, the global head of technology research at the Los Angeles-based financial services firm Wedbush Securities, said on Saturday: “This is the dream scenario for tech investors … Smartphones, chips being excluded is a game-changer scenario when it comes to China tariffs.”

Ives added: “I think ultimately big tech CEOs spoke loudly, and the White House had to understand and listen to the situation that this would have been Armageddon for big tech if it were implemented.”

Since Trump announced his tariffs, Apple was among the hardest hit tech companies – as 90% of its iPhones are reportedly assembled in China.

Invoking imagery associated with the strongest classification for hurricanes, Ives had previously described the Chinese tariffs as a “category 5 price storm for the US consumer”. He added in a note to investors: “The reality is it would take three years and $30bn in our estimation to move even 10% of its supply chain from Asia to the US with major disruption in the process … For US consumers, the reality of a $1,000 iPhone being one of the best made consumer products on the planet would disappear.”

According to analysts at the investment bank UBS, costs of iPhones would rise exponentially under Trump’s Chinese tariffs. The price of an iPhone 16 Pro Max (with 256GB of storage) could rise by 79% from $1,199 (£915) to about $2,150 (£1,600), the Guardian reported earlier.

In attempts to mitigate the blow of Trump’s tariffs, Apple reportedly chartered cargo flights to transport iPhones from its Indian factories, with Reuters reporting the company having flown 600 tons of iPhones – or approximately 1.5m devices – to the US since March.

A few weeks ago, Dane began stocking up on “paper products”, “cases of paper towels, toilet paper”, “piddle-pads” for their shih-tzu, and his wife upgraded from an iPhone 8 to 14.

The 73-year-old in South Carolina said the purchases – which were made to get ahead of Donald Trump’s trade policies – reminded him of the early weeks of the Covid pandemic, when he scrambled to buy masks, gloves and toilet paper.

“It’s scary,” Dane said. “Prices are going to go up because of tariffs … It’s going to be messy.”

While campaigning last year, Trump constantly touted his love of tariffs. But it was not until his so-called “liberation day” on 2 April – where the president announced sweeping duties on incoming goods, punishing competitors, allies and small and developing countries alike – that he spooked global financial markets and provoked fears of spiralling inflation and stagnant growth.

Amid a US government bond sell-off, the president paused his most eye-watering tariffs for 90 days, apart from China, whose goods are set to be hit with a 145% levy.

Hundreds of Americans got in touch with the Guardian to share how the uncertainty is affecting their consumption habits.

Dane, who is retired, worked as an entrepreneur with his wife most of his career before later becoming an English teacher. He said he was a Republican in the 1980s but is fearful about how the US is “not going the right way” under Trump, and is unhappy with his “dystopian” policies towards global allies, the economy, education, scientific research and more.

Currently, Dane is on a trip to Paris and plans to bring home consumer goods potentially hit by 10% tariffs on European Union imports.

“We’ll probably be getting tea, bringing back some cheese, some butter,” he said. “I would love to bring back eggs but that would be a disaster. I’d have scrambled eggs in my suitcase.”

Amid tariff uncertainty, Heather, a 61-year-old college professor in Texas, said she and her husband can mostly weather food cost fluctuations, but brought forward the purchase of a new car “in anticipation of price hikes”.

She said they owned a 14-year-old Mini Cooper, which ran on gas, that they planned to replace with a hybrid vehicle at some point. They decided to replace their car now to avoid potential inflation – and reduce expenditure on gas.

“The economic instability of the Trump administration certainly gives one pause,” she said. “It’s just so much instability, chaos and [the] unknown.”

It’s a similar story for Stefanie, a 56-year-old educator and former tech worker in Nevada, who bought a Toyota Tacoma to replace her old Jeep as well as converting some investments into cash.

Stefanie began strategizing about being more resilient to tariffs as soon as Trump was elected.

“The one thing I learned in the first administration is to believe him: he says bizarre things, and then he does bizarre things,” she said.

She’s cutting back on subscriptions and future travel plans, while stockpiling kitchen staples such as rice, cooking oils, vinegar and flour and replacing worn-out clothes including shoes and jeans, “before inflation hits”.

“The supply chain is so globalized that tariffs really hit everything,” Stefanie said.

But for Ishaan*, a 51-year-old engineer in Texas, the economic picture means he is abstaining from major purchases.

“Everyone I know has started tightening their belts,” he said. “I am cutting out unnecessary expenses, cancelled my gym membership, focusing on savings.”

The focus for Ishaan, who fears higher prices and an economic slowdown, is to build up his savings in cash. He feels “scared to invest in any stocks or bonds right now” amid market volatility.

Likewise for Jonathan*, a 70-year-old in New Jersey, the financial fallout from Trump’s trade wars means he has been forced to rule out planned purchases and strip consumption back to the essentials.

Jonathan said his individual retirement account (IRA) was initially “decimated” – although it ticked up slightly after Trump paused his tariffs on Wednesday. He said it was currently down about 15%.

That means cancelling plans to redo the carpet in his house and replace two old televisions, Jonathan said. “In short, we’ll buy only necessities and pay bills until this stupidity ends.”

Russ a 35-year-old physicist in New Mexico, said the Trump administration’s policies were “causing me to think about what kinds of spending behavior I could have done without this whole time”.

He has an eight-year-old phone and nine-year-old MacBook computer that still work fine, which he will not be replacing. The prospect of runaway price rises for consumer electronics, often from China, have led him to reconsider: “Do I really need this, or do I just want this?

“I see these things as being as much toys as necessities,” he said. “Maybe I’ll just go back to a dumbphone or something like that – I fantasize sometimes about not getting all these notifications all the time, like the phones we had back in 2005. But maybe that’s a Luddite fantasy.”

Russ said that he was already boycotting Amazon and Target – companies that many feel have aligned themselves with Trump’s agenda such as rolling back their own DEI schemes. He’s trying to shop more at local, independent shops rather than “everything stores”, which he notes is more expensive and time consuming but ultimately worth it.

“As an American citizen and registered voter, nobody really cares what you think until November of every other year, you feel kind of voiceless,” he said. “You think, well, if dollars are the only tools we have any more, then damn it, I’m going to cast those votes and allocate my spending accordingly.”

Likewise, small business owner Christine* said the disruption could cause a wider re-evaluation of US consumer habits.

Amid the uncertainty, Christine, 41, stocked up on supplies for her Miami acupuncture business for two years, and bought her son’s fifth birthday present – a bike – early for July. But she said she had already noticed less demand for her work.

More broadly, the prospect of inflationary tariffs is accelerating Christine’s reconsideration of how much “stuff” she needs. She’s recently attended “these lovely parties” where friends bring unwanted clothes and they “switch it all around” rather than buying fast fashion.

“I really resent being drafted into this mad trade war,” Christine said, “but if there is a silver lining, maybe it’s that at least some people like me will question their unsustainable capitalistic practices.”

*Some names have been changed.

While Donald Trump recently instituted and paused hefty tariffs, sparking a trade war and chaos in financial markets, most of the country’s conservative media either applauded the US president or critiqued the policy but not the person behind it, according to journalists and observers of conservative media.

Meanwhile, economists, business leaders, Democrats and even some Republicans warned that the tariffs, which prompted the largest American stock market drop since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, could cause a recession.

“News is what impacts the greatest number of people,” like tariffs and “the evaporation of wealth and the ripple effect on not just the US economy, but the global economy”, said Howard Polskin, president of The Righting, a newsletter and website that monitors conservative media. “By any stretch of imagination, that should be a lead story.”

But the chaos of last week posed a serious challenge to many aspects of rightwing US media, which often acts as a largely unquestioning cheerleader for Trump and his Maga movement. The story was sometimes played down, sometimes cheered but rarely seriously questioned – even amid warnings of price rises, recession and cratering investments, especially precious 401(k) retirement accounts.

The most popular conservative news source in the United States is Fox News, which has a much larger audience than CNN and the leftwing MSNBC network. Its hosts, such as Sean Hannity and Jesse Watters, consistently praise Trump and bolster his inaccurate claims.

But Fox News has faced new competition from Newsmax and One American News Network (OANN), networks that positioned themselves as even more reliable Trump supporters. The Wall Street Journal, which has the same owner as Fox News, features a right-leaning opinion section, but also has done lengthy investigations into Trump and Joe Biden and is a favorite among people in the financial sector.

Rightwing commentators such as Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro also command a large audience through podcasts and social media.

After Trump declared 2 April “liberation day” and announced that the country would on 5 April institute a 10% universal tariff on all imported goods and on 9 April start “reciprocal tariffs” on some of its largest trading partners, including a 34% tariff on imports from China and a 20% tariff on goods from the European Union, Hannity described it as “a day that will be remembered as a turning point and the start, I hope for every American, of a new golden age”.

China retaliated with a 34% tariff. Global stock markets fell sharply; the Dow Jones industrial average declined more than 2,000 points over the next two days.

Economists and leaders of financial institutions said that the tariffs increased the likelihood of a recession and inflation. Most Republican lawmakers stood behind the president; a minority, like Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, expressed opposition and said the tariffs amounted to a tax increase for Americans.

While Fox Business, a sibling network, had guests who criticized the tariffs, Fox News personalities told viewers nervous about their investments that everything would work out well. A Fox News spokesperson did not respond to the Guardian’s requests for an interview.

“I don’t really care about my 401(k) today,” Jeanine Pirro said on 3 April on the show The Five. “We’ve got to have manufacturing in this country … and Donald Trump is the only one who could do it because he’s got the biggest consumer base in the world. He’s not afraid of anybody.”

Despite the market upheaval, the Fox News commentators were “in too deep” to break with Trump, said Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a leftwing advocacy group.

“They have, for nearly a decade now, sold their audience on the sense that Donald Trump would be a good president,” Gertz said 7 April. “Now he is single-handedly causing a worldwide market collapse,” but “they can’t abandon him”.

Other conservative news organizations opted to focus on other issues. At one point on 8 April, the only story on tariffs on the OANN frontpage concerned the former speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and her comments on tariffs in 1996.

The network did interview Arthur Laffer, a conservative economist who Trump awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Laffer said that if Trump kept the tariffs, he didn’t see how the country could avoid a recession, but he still “could not think of one person on Earth that I would prefer more to be president”.

On 9 April at Newsmax, the headline of their main story read, “Trump: Tariffs Bring in $2 Billion a Day.”

The actual number this month was about $200m, Reuters reported.

“A lot of times it feels more like propaganda,” Polskin said of the cable networks’ coverage. “I find it all extremely alarming, the stock market and that consumers of rightwing media could be misled so egregiously.”

Newsmax did not respond to the Guardian’s request for an interview.

There are exceptions in the conservative media sphere. The Journal has criticized Trump and his tariff policy.

“Trump Owns the Economy Now. He can try to blame the Fed, but the tariff blunder is his alone,” was the headline of a recent editorial.

Their editorial pages have been “characterized through the years as sort of the bastion of conservatism”, said Rick Edmonds, media business analyst for the Poynter Institute. “They are not at all sympathetic to the tariff actions.”

Shapiro, the rightwing pundit and a founder of the Daily Wire, devoted much of his podcasts after “liberation day” to scrutinizing the tariffs and questioned whether they could actually bring manufacturers back to the United States.

But Shapiro reassured listeners that he supported the president.

“What exactly is this designed to do?” Shapiro said of the tariffs during a 3 April episode of his podcast. “It is predicated on a bad idea of how international trade works. I’ve said this a thousand times: this is not coming from a place of I want Trump to fail.”

Shapiro called for Trump to fire Peter Navarro, the White House trade adviser who reportedly shaped the tariffs strategy. But, of course, it was Trump who instituted them.

“In general, the rightwing media, they are like Republican politicians. They don’t want to cross Trump,” Edmonds said.

Still, Aaron Rupar, a journalist who tracks speeches and interviews Trump and his officials give to conservative media, thought their coverage of the tariffs was “a little more honest” than their coverage of events like the January 6 attack on the Capitol or the trials Trump faced when he was out of office.

“With financial data, it’s a little harder to gaslight people,” he said.

Ultimately, hours after the reciprocal tariffs took effect, Trump announced a 90-day pause on them, except for China, whose tariff he increased to 125%.

“Many of you in the media clearly missed The Art of the Deal,” the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said afterwards, referring to Trump’s book. “You clearly failed to see what President Trump is doing here.”

A day later, with stocks still down significantly from before “liberation day”, Ainsley Earhardt, a Fox News host, reiterated Leavitt’s point.

“This is the art of the deal,” she said. “This shows how strong our president is.”

Prince Harry has said he is “exhausted” by his lengthy legal battle to reinstate his police protection.

According to the Daily Telegraph, Harry believes that his UK security was removed to “force” him “back into Britain and establishment life”.

He was prompted to sue the Home Office but said he had been “overwhelmed” by the legal action, which has lasted more than three years.

The prince told the Telegraph after a two-day hearing at the court of appeal in London this week that the removal of his police protection was “difficult to swallow”, and that of all his legal cases, including his legal battles with the tabloids, “this one always mattered the most”.

Harry reportedly does not feel safe when visiting the UK with his children. Much of this week’s appeal and the original hearing about his security were heard in private because of the “highly confidential” evidence. “People would be shocked by what’s being held back,” he said, adding that his “worst fears have been confirmed by the whole legal disclosure in this case and that’s really sad”.

The prince was not required to give evidence at the hearing, but flew from his home in California to attend what has been described as the “last throw of the dice” to overturn a decision. He “comprehensively lost” his case against the Home Office in February 2024 when Mr Justice Lane ruled that the government’s decision to remove his security was not unfair.

Harry reportedly views the removal of his and Meghan’s security as “a means of trying to force them back into Britain and establishment life, by making visits to the UK as outsiders more difficult and potentially unsafe”.

The prince also believes that his father, King Charles, could have intervened to reinstate his security detail because the king’s private secretary, Sir Clive Alderton, sits on the royal and VIP executive committee, but Buckingham Palace denied it had any decision-making power.

It is understood that Alderton was not on the committee when the decision over Harry’s security was made five years ago after he and Meghan had left their royal duties.

A palace source said: “These are matters of security and government policy and, as usual, it would be inappropriate to comment or intervene on either.”

It is alleged that Harry is still not on speaking terms with his father and brother. Harry saw the king last February after Charles was diagnosed with cancer, but they have not met since.

A result of his appeal will be handed down by a panel of three judges after Easter.

Prince Harry has said he is “exhausted” by his lengthy legal battle to reinstate his police protection.

According to the Daily Telegraph, Harry believes that his UK security was removed to “force” him “back into Britain and establishment life”.

He was prompted to sue the Home Office but said he had been “overwhelmed” by the legal action, which has lasted more than three years.

The prince told the Telegraph after a two-day hearing at the court of appeal in London this week that the removal of his police protection was “difficult to swallow”, and that of all his legal cases, including his legal battles with the tabloids, “this one always mattered the most”.

Harry reportedly does not feel safe when visiting the UK with his children. Much of this week’s appeal and the original hearing about his security were heard in private because of the “highly confidential” evidence. “People would be shocked by what’s being held back,” he said, adding that his “worst fears have been confirmed by the whole legal disclosure in this case and that’s really sad”.

The prince was not required to give evidence at the hearing, but flew from his home in California to attend what has been described as the “last throw of the dice” to overturn a decision. He “comprehensively lost” his case against the Home Office in February 2024 when Mr Justice Lane ruled that the government’s decision to remove his security was not unfair.

Harry reportedly views the removal of his and Meghan’s security as “a means of trying to force them back into Britain and establishment life, by making visits to the UK as outsiders more difficult and potentially unsafe”.

The prince also believes that his father, King Charles, could have intervened to reinstate his security detail because the king’s private secretary, Sir Clive Alderton, sits on the royal and VIP executive committee, but Buckingham Palace denied it had any decision-making power.

It is understood that Alderton was not on the committee when the decision over Harry’s security was made five years ago after he and Meghan had left their royal duties.

A palace source said: “These are matters of security and government policy and, as usual, it would be inappropriate to comment or intervene on either.”

It is alleged that Harry is still not on speaking terms with his father and brother. Harry saw the king last February after Charles was diagnosed with cancer, but they have not met since.

A result of his appeal will be handed down by a panel of three judges after Easter.

A London antiquities dealer has withdrawn an ancient Greek amphora from sale after evidence arose that links it to a notorious smuggler.

The Kallos Gallery in Mayfair, London, has removed a black-figure amphora – a jar with two handles and a narrow neck made around 550BC – from sale after the Observer contacted it about concerns raised by an expert in the illegal trade of antiquities.

Dr Christos Tsirogiannis, an archaeologist and leading expert in looted antiquities and trafficking networks, found evidence that led him to conclude the amphora probably came from an illicit excavation in Italy.

He spotted the amphora when the gallery offered it last month at Tefaf Maastricht, one of the world’s foremost art and antiques fairs, and matched it to a Polaroid photograph that appears to show the same object in the hands of Giacomo Medici, who was convicted in Italy in 2004 of dealing in stolen artefacts. That photograph was part of an archive seized from him by police and was on the website of the Italian Carabinieri.

The Dutch police have been notified. The object’s value is believed to be about £50,000.

The Kallos Gallery, which specialises in ancient art, was founded in 2014 by Baron Lorne Thyssen-Bornemisza, son of the late Baron Hans Heinrich von Thyssen Bornemisza, the Swiss billionaire who built up what was regarded as the greatest art collection in private hands in the world.

Measuring 23.6cm in height, the amphora is decorated with sphinxes, a ram and a lion. It is attributed to the artist known only as the Phineus Painter, named after a cup he decorated with the myth of Phineus, the blind king plagued by harpies and saved by Jason and the Argonauts.

The collecting history given by the gallery online only dated back to 1986. This raised Tsirogiannis’s suspicions that the jar could have been part of an illicit excavation, he said: “These are immediate red flags.”

He added that the provenance details included a gallery that had belonged to a dealer who was himself convicted for receiving stolen antiquities from Italy in the 1970s.

Tsirogiannis, an affiliated archaeology lecturer at the University of Cambridge, heads illicit antiquities trafficking research for the Unesco chair on threats to cultural heritage at the Ionian University in Corfu. The late Paolo Giorgio Ferri, the Italian public prosecutor who pursued and prosecuted traffickers in looted antiquities, gave Tsirogiannis access to tens of thousands of images and other archival material seized in police raids from traffickers and other individuals involved in the illicit trade.

Over 19 years, Tsirogiannis has identified more than 1,700 looted antiquities, alerting police and playing a role in their repatriation to 15 countries. The finds include an ancient Greek bronze horse that Sotheby’s New York intended to auction in 2018 until Tsirogiannis notified the authorities of its links to the British antiquities dealer Robin Symes. Greece claimed the horse as its national property, and in 2020 Sotheby’s lost its legal challenge, prompting the Greek culture minister to welcome the court’s ruling as a victory for countries seeking to reclaim their antiquities.

Last year, Christie’s withdrew ancient Greek vases from auction after Tsirogiannis discovered their link to another convicted antiquities trafficker. He criticised the auctioneer’s failure to reveal that the objects could be traced to Gianfranco Becchina, who was convicted in 2011 of illegally dealing in antiquities. Christie’s said at the time that it withdrew the works once it was made aware of the connection.

Tsirogiannis has identified many other Medici objects, which have been repatriated to Italy over the years. “Medici was receiving objects looted from tombs in Italy,” he said, adding that he believes the amphora came from Etruscan tombs in Italy.

He has repeatedly argued that auction houses and dealers do not make adequate checks with Greek and Italian authorities, and has criticised their failure to disclose objects’ full collecting history.

Madeleine Perridge, director of the Kallos Gallery, said: “We make every effort to do our due diligence and publish all collection and publication history known to us … The artwork in question has been immediately removed from sale pending advice from the relevant authorities. We have absolutely no interest in handling tainted artworks and welcome an opportunity to find practical and productive solutions to these complex issues.”

Donald Trump has authorized the military to take control of land at the US-Mexico border as part of the president’s broader efforts to crack down on undocumented immigration.

The authorization came late on Friday in a memorandum from Trump to interior secretary Doug Burgum, defense secretary Pete Hegseth, homeland security secretary Kristi Noem and agricultural secretary Brooke Rollins which outlined new policies concerning military involvement at the US’s southern border.

The memorandum, entitled the “Military Mission for Sealing the Southern Border of the United States and Repelling Invasions”, allows the US’s armed forces to “take a more direct role” when it comes to securing the boundary in question.

“Our southern border is under attack from a variety of threats,” the order claimed. “The complexity of the current situation requires that our military take a more direct role in securing our southern border than in the recent past.”

The memorandum added that the Department of Defense should be given jurisdiction to federal lands, including the Roosevelt Reservation, a 60ft-wide strip that stretches over California, Arizona and New Mexico. Doing that would give troops stationed there the legal right to detain immigrants accused of trespassing on what in effect is an elongated base – and unauthorized immigrants would be held in custody until they could be turned over to immigration agents.

Military activities that could be carried out on federal land include “border-barrier construction and emplacement of detection and monitoring equipment”, according to the memorandum.

After 45 days, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, will assess the “initial phase” of the order. But at any time, Hegseth could extend the amount of federal land included in the memorandum.

The ordered military takeover excludes native reservations, however, according to the memorandum.

Friday’s order is the latest step from Trump in his administration’s ongoing focus on immigration enforcement, which has involved declaring a national emergency on the southern border.

On Thursday, a US federal judge ruled that the Trump administration was allowed to require people who are in the country but not citizens to register with the federal government, a requirement that advocates say hasn’t been universally implemented since it was enacted as a law in the 1940s.

The ruling comes after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the new requirement on 25 February, adding that those who failed to report could face fines or possible prison time.

The DHS’s announcement was widely seen as a workaround of the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law that bars US military troops from participating in most civilian law enforcement actions.

One of the purported justifications for militarizing the US border most commonly cited by Trump and his Republican colleagues is that migrants crossing the border with Mexico without permission carry much of the fentanyl sold in the US. Yet official statistics show 90% of convicted fentanyl peddlers are US citizens.

A man sexually violated a corpse on a New York City subway train after stealing from the body, becoming the second of two people to rob that particular dead person, authorities said recently.

One of the more grotesque US crime stories of late unfolded on a southbound R train near the Whitehall Street station in Manhattan at about 12.20am on Wednesday, when “an unidentified individual had sexual contact with an unconscious and unresponsive adult male” in plain view of surveillance cameras, according to a police statement.

The police’s statement did not elaborate and did not identify the attacker or the victim – though they released surveillance photos of a suspect carrying a black backpack while wearing a blue baseball cap, a black hooded jacket, a yellow hooded sweatshirt, blue jeans, and red and white sneakers.

Nonetheless, a poster distributed to transit workers alleged that the man wanted in the case had engaged in sexual intercourse with “a dead human body”, as the New York City news website Gothamist reported. The poster, which was reviewed by the Guardian as well, alleged that investigators had probable cause to arrest a 51-year-old man identified as Carlos Garcia – whose last known address is in the Bronx – on a count of sexual misconduct of a dead human body.

Gothamist, citing police, also reported that the man identified in the wanted poster as Garcia could be seen on surveillance footage taking items from the pockets of the dead person before violating the corpse and fleeing.

That attack marked the second time the dead person – who was described as a man – had been stolen from in less than an hour. At about 10.48pm on Tuesday, police said a woman approached the late man, removed unspecified property from him and then left.

Police released surveillance images of a suspect in that initial robbery, which showed a woman wearing a yellow hooded sweatshirt, black pants and a black baseball cap.

A police spokesperson would not comment on the allegations of the wanted poster first reported on by Gothamist and later seen by the Guardian.

Another official on Saturday morning said there had not been any arrests made in the case. Police said anyone with useful information can submit it to New York City’s Crimestoppers website.

Wednesday morning’s case of necrophilia on the subway not only provided a graphically documented instance of a sexual disorder psychiatrists assume to be among the rarest. It also reignited a discussion about the safety of the New York City subway system that in some quarters is ongoing.

Statistics generally show violence on the subway is relatively rare, though high-profile cases have the tendency to unnerve the public.

For instance, in December, a 57-year-old woman named Debrina Kawam died after being set on fire while sleeping on a train at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station in Brooklyn. Days later, 45-year-old Joseph Lynskey was pushed in front of an oncoming train at Manhattan’s 18th Street station but survived.

Young men and boys fuelled by “strongly misogynistic” online material are hunting for vulnerable women and girls to exploit on websites such as eating disorder and suicide forums, senior officers have said.

The threat from young males wanting to carry out serious harm is so serious that counter-terrorism officers are joining the National Crime Agency (NCA) in the hunt for them, fearing they could go on to attack or kill.

Britain’s head of counter-terrorism, Matt Jukes, told the Guardian that a joint taskforce would be set up between his force and the NCA to tackle those fixated with violence online, in what he called a “decisive moment”.

Jukes, the Metropolitan police force’s assistant commissioner for specialist operations, said the new pairing would look for those consuming online material about killings or sexual abuse. Those who might go on to plot school shootings and other mass attacks, as well as those who encouraged women and girls to harm themselves, would also fall under their remit.

The new taskforce will also tackle so-called com networks (online communities), which counter-terrorism policing (CTP) and the NCA said involved hundreds of boys and young men. They will also hunt for those viewing material inciting sexual abuse.

The decision to pool the efforts of CTP and the NCA is being driven by the fear that it might be impossible to tell whether an obsession with violence and gore could turn into terrorism, a school massacre or other serious attack until it was too late.

Jukes, who is expected to be a candidate for the deputy commissionership of the Met, said: “What we’ve seen over the years is the characteristics of those cases looking increasingly similar.”

Com networks grew sixfold between 2022 and 2024 and are mainly young males joining together online to carry out hacking exercises and hunt for victims to steer into sexual abuse or worse.

James Babbage, the director general of threats for the NCA, said com networks were believed to have hundreds of people in the UK alone.

“We think they’re mostly doing it for kudos, for notoriety … within their peer group online,” he said. “In general, they are looking for victims who are already vulnerable. So they are looking at sort of suicidal ideation sites. They’re looking at eating disorders forums.”

Jukes said: “Young people who might have felt very isolated in some of their ideas and interests might never even have thought of some of the things which they’re now accessing … so people are getting both content and validation.

“We’re going to go after the com networks. We are going to go after those who appear to be administrating and facilitating them.”

The boost to the hunt for potentially violent young males comes after the Guardian revealed that the Southport attacker who murdered three girls at a dance class last July had been referred and rejected three times by the Prevent programme.

Prevent exists to identify those at risk of supporting terrorist violence. The Southport attacker had shown insufficient signs of ideological extremism but did have an interest in violence, including school massacres.

Babbage said: “The violence-fixated individuals that are coming up on the radar for terrorism policing, the tech-enabled violence against women and girls that police are seeing and the com networks that we’re seeing engaged in child sexual abuse and cybercrime – to some degree, this sort of young male community, it’s sort of the same threat.

“People are spinning up and radicalising and getting into more extreme harm, and might spin out and end up presenting as any one of those things.”

The material driving the young males to view horrific material and to potentially offend “has a very significant dose of misogyny in it”, Babbage added.

Jukes said the internet had “turbocharged” material triggering resentment among some young men: “In com networks and in terrorist networks, the idea that the interests of men and boys have been relegated, and the interests of women have been elevated, leads directly to violent misogyny.”

He said there were “technological and engineering” solutions to the crisis, and that big tech could help by stopping the algorithms pushing extreme content to youngpeople who wanted it. They could also aid police in helping to detect young people searching for violent content.

Jukes added: “The scale we’re talking about is beyond human intervention. There are too many users, too much traffic.”

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

One perfume smells suspiciously like a £355 bottle of Baccarat Rouge 540 eau de parfum. Another, which has notes of grapefruit, rose and Levantine spice, is reminiscent of a £215 bottle of Penhaligon’s Halfeti. But unlike those luxury brands, these “dupe scents” can cost as little as a fiver.

As many as half of UK consumers are now thought to have succumbed to the social media craze for cheap perfumes “inspired by” well-known luxury fragrances. And lawyers now say perfume brands and beauty companies need greater legal protection from rivals who imitate their products.

Intellectual property lawyers and chartered trademark attorneys told the Observer that the law must catch up to better protect the original creators of perfumes. Some said they had been contacted by companies seeking advice on how to legally dupe a perfume, while others had received enquiries from luxury brands about how to take legal action against dupe scents.

“Everybody wants to smell good and to have an affordable slice of luxury. However, it comes at the expense of proper artists, because perfume creation is an art,” Mireille Dagger, legal director at Broadfield law firm, told the Observer. “These companies are riding on the coattails of artists. It’s very unfair. It’s very hard to create a perfume brand and build it up. It requires expertise, artistic talent, time, energy and investment.”

“There have been no known cases in the UK of any perfume brands being able to trademark their scent – because under UK law, it’s a requirement that a trademark be graphically representable,” Dagger said.

While perfume manufacturers can trademark their brand names, distinctive labels and unique bottle shapes, none of the lawyers the Observer spoke to believed it would be possible, in practice, to trademark the scent of an original fragrance. A company needs to be able to clearly, precisely and objectively describe what they are protecting with a trademark.

“When it comes to scent, you just can’t do that, because scent is subjective. Different people smell different things. It’s very hard to consistently reproduce that scent on paper,” added Dagger. “You’re not able to put it in writing.”

Equally, a scent cannot usually be patented, said Eloise Harding, a partner in Mishcon de Reya’s intellectual property department, because this requires a particular perfume formulation to have an “inventive step” during its creation. “I don’t think any kind of fragrance is likely to have a sufficient level of inventive step,” she said.

A brand owner might not even want to patent its perfume formulation, said Robert Lye, legal director at Gateley. “The quid pro quo for patent protection is that the patented invention is made public, meaning that anyone would be able to copy the formulation once the patent has expired.” The maximum duration of a patent is 20 years, he added.

Some copycat perfume manufacturers are using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GCMS) to break down the complex chemical profiles of expensive perfumes so they can emulate these scents – potentially using cheaper, “substandard” ingredients, Dagger said. The cheaper imitations are particularly popular on TikTok, where there are thousands of posts with the hashtag #perfumedupe.

With the once-inaccessible trade secrets about a perfume’s formulation now able to be deduced using GCMS, “there is no way, legally, for perfumers to protect their work,” said Dagger.

She would like to see “dupe brands being forced to pay royalties to the original brands”. As for the law, “something creative needs to happen – protection for the fragrance industry is lagging woefully behind beauty and fashion.”

The UK fragrance market was estimated to be worth £1.74bn in 2024, and is on track to surpass £2bn by 2029, according to market researchers Mintel.

In a recent survey of 1,435 fragrance buyers in the UK, 50% said they had bought a dupe perfume. A third of those surveyed said they would be prepared to buy a dupe fragrance again while 18% of those who had not yet bought one said they would be interested in doing so.

“It is almost a lost cause for perfume brands to defend themselves, if all they are saying is ‘we came up with this fragrance first’, because I don’t think consumers really care about that,” said Dionne Officer, a Mintel research analyst.

Admirers of designer perfume brands no longer think they should have to pay through the nose to have access to luxury scents: “Seeing dupe scents on social media, and knowing influencers are buying them, has made them more acceptable,” she added.

Younger consumers in particular are accustomed to seeing fast-fashion brands duplicating independent designers, and are unlikely to feel it is a taboo to openly wear a dupe scent or even give one as a gift.

“Maybe in older generations, it would have been looked down upon, to copy something,” said Officer. “But younger consumers have grown up in a time of economic instability, where you’re praised if you get a bargain – it’s seen as quite cool, now.”

It is one of Britain’s most historic drinks, still sold in thousands of pubs across the nation, but cask beer has long been in decline.

Besides suffering from a reputation as an “old man’s drink” and the divisive debate over the “cellar temperature” at which it is served, the number of establishments selling it, and the volume and value of sales, have all dropped dramatically in recent years.

Last week, a petition was launched to protect the “historic and traditional serving method” that was “unique to the UK”, calling for the government to recognise the production and serving of cask ale as a Unesco intangible cultural heritage, akin to Belgian beer culture, Arabic coffee and French baguettes.

No British product yet holds the status, and the UK only ratified the 2003 Unesco convention for the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage in March 2024.

Jonny Garrett, who launched the petition and created the Keep Cask Alive online documentary series, said cask ale was a crucial part of British history. All beer used to be served in casks, but the practice faded from the beginning of the 20th century as easier-to-maintain, highly carbonated keg lagers became popular.

“We’re the only nation that meaningfully holds on to this tradition,” said Garrett, who loves cask ale for its “softer, moussier” feel in the mouth.

“We’ve ended up with this incredible brewing tradition of about 4% malt-led, bittersweet beers that is, in the brewing scene, the envy of the world. Yet we tend to pass over it and fetishise American, Belgian and German brewing. We have our own world-famous heritage.”

He added that drinking cask ale was like “tasting how our ancestors enjoyed beer”.

The initiative has been backed by the Campaign for Real Ale (Camra) and several breweries, including Timothy Taylor’s, Five Points and Shepherd Neame, which together own hundreds of pubs around the UK.

Garrett, who also runs the Craft Beer Channel on YouTube, hopes to raise awareness about cask ale, which still makes up about 10% of draught sales – more in strongholds such as Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield.

Garrett estimated that 3% to 4% of the market is craft keg beer, yet it “gets most of the headlines”. The campaign also seeks to protect breweries – the UK had 100 fewer in January 2025 than the year before – as well as barley and hop growers. According to the British Hop Association, only about 50 hop farms remain in the UK.

Earning cultural heritage status would provide a multi-pronged boost, said Garrett. The government would be beholden to protect the culture around cask ale and it could provide an “extra tool for bargaining” against raising alcohol duty or business rates. It would also provide funding for research and education, helping to bring in younger generations.

When Belgian beer culture was recognised in 2016, Garrett said it led to an “incredible surge in interest, both within Belgium but also in terms of tourism. That would be of real benefit, particularly now, when times are so tough for pubs and breweries”.

Pete Wells, chief executive of Wells & Co in Bedfordshire, said that cask ale had been an “important part” of the brewery’s 149-year history.

“The fantastic campaign is something we are pleased to support, and hope that this will honour what we have always known – that cask ale is a heritage worth protecting, while rejuvenating interest in a continuously changing market.”

Camra’s chair, Ash Corbett-Collins, said that cask beers were threatened by global brewing conglomerates absorbing historic breweries – “only to ignore and eventually disregard their beers”.

Garrett said there were rays of hope, with rising interest among the young craft beer crowd. He added that there were several reasons cask ale might be ripe for resurrection: it is generally lower in alcohol, more affordable and made more naturally – which should appeal to younger drinkers.

“A superb pint of cask ale is at the heart of what makes a great British pub,” said Richard Bradbury, managing director of Theakston Brewery in North Yorkshire.

“It would be fantastic to have that recognised and celebrated by Unesco. In this era of protectionism, it may, in time, motivate a lower rate of excise duty on cask beer.”

Corbett-Collins added: “The incredibly skilled brewers producing cask beer deserve to have their artisan trade respected and protected.”