The US attorney general declined on Tuesday to say whether Donald Trump’s suggestion of removing US citizens to El Salvador was legal, in alarming remarks about what experts think is an obviously illegal idea.

Trump proposed the idea on Monday in the Oval Office during a visit with El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, who has been accepting people deported from the US and imprisoning them in a gigantic facility notorious for human rights abuses.

The US president said “homegrown criminals that push people into subways, that hit elderly ladies on the back of the head with a baseball bat when they’re not looking” could be sent to El Salvador and imprisoned.

Asked by the Fox News host Jesse Watters if the idea was legal, Bondi demurred.

“These are Americans who he is saying have committed the most heinous crimes in our country, and crime is going to decrease dramatically because he has given us a directive to make America safe again,” she said.

“These people need to be locked up as long as they can, as long as the law allows. We’re not going to let them go anywhere, and if we have to build more prisons in our country, we will do it.”

Trump has previously said he “loved” the idea of deporting US citizens to El Salvador. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, has said Trump “simply floated” the idea.

During a White House briefing on Tuesday, Leavitt was asked whether it was legal to deport US citizens to Central American prisons. “It’s a legal question that the president is looking into,” she said, adding that Trump was only considering the action for those Americans “who are the most violent, egregious repeat offenders of crime”.

Lawyers and other experts say the idea is clearly illegal.

“There is no provision under US law that would allow the government to kick citizens out of the country,” the University of Notre Dame professor Erin Corcoran, an immigration law expert, told Reuters.

“It is pretty obviously illegal and unconstitutional,” said Ilya Somin, a professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, told NBC News.

The US is currently paying El Salvador $6m to house people whom it alleges are members of the Tren de Aragua gang for a year.

A 19-year-old Venezuelan in New York City reportedly was apprehended by Trump administration immigration authorities and deported to El Salvador despite agents’ realizing he was not whom they meant to arrest in a targeted operation.

Merwil Gutiérrez, whose family opened an asylum case after arriving in the US, was deported from the Bronx to the notorious Cecot prison in El Salvador despite his relatives’ insistence that he has no gang ties or criminal history, according to Documented, a newsroom dedicated to telling the stories of immigrants in New York City. The Gutiérrez family says it has been left without information or answers.

The teen was detained alongside 237 other Venezuelans on 24 February by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). His father, Wilmer Gutiérrez, told Documented: “I feel like my son was kidnapped.

“I’ve spent countless hours searching for him, going from one precinct to another, speaking with numerous people who kept referring me elsewhere. Yet, after all this, no one has given me any information or provided a single document about his case.”

The elder Gutiérrez reportedly said he overheard Ice agents saying that his son had not been the person they had come to get.

“The officers grabbed him and two other boys right at the entrance to our building. One said: ‘No, he’s not the one,’ like they were looking for someone else. But the other said: ‘Take him anyway,’” he recalled.

Gutiérrez has no criminal record either in Venezuela or the US, his family said. He also did not have any tattoos, which is a feature that US law enforcement often use to link people to the Tren de Aragua gang – a transnational criminal organization from Venezuela – and to justify their expulsions from the country.

Despite this, Gutiérrez was arrested and later deported to El Salvador, to which he has no ties.

Wilmer Gutiérrez says he discovered through a news report that his son had been deported to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. He watched videos on social media that showed detainees facing harsh conditions, such as having their heads shaved by authorities and being marched to their prison cells.

“I could have understood if he’d been sent back to Venezuela,” he said. “But why to a foreign country he’s never even been to?”

The Gutiérrez family’s reported ordeal comes after the Trump administration admitted to wrongly deporting a Maryland man, Kilmar Abrego García, to the same Cecot facility.

The president of El Salvador said in a meeting with Trump on Monday that the Salvadoran government would not order the return of Abrego García to the US.

Monday’s meeting at the White House came amid a broader push by the Trump administration to remove noncitizens from the US, including people who are here legally and have not been charged with crimes.

Trump has also openly stated that he would like to remove US citizens who commit unspecified violent crimes and send them to the same Salvadoran prison as Abrego García and Gutiérrez.

A Massachusetts immigration lawyer who is a US-born American citizen is speaking out after she received an email from Trump administration immigration authorities telling her she needed to leave the country.

Nicole Micheroni described receiving an email on 11 April – and that its heading was “notice of termination of parole”.

“It is time for you to leave the United States,” the email read. “If you do not depart the United States immediately you will be subject to potential law enforcement actions that will result in your removal from the United States.”

Micheroni told NBC Boston: “At first I thought it was for a client, but I looked really closely and the only name on the email was mine.

She added, “Probably, hopefully, [it was] sent to me in error. But it’s a little concerning these are going out to US citizens.”

News of Micheroni’s email comes as the Trump administration has waged an aggressive effort to remove non-citizens from the United States, including people who are here legally and have not been charged with crimes. Trump has also openly mused about removing US citizens who commit unspecified crimes from the country and sending them to prison in El Salvador.

Removing US citizens from the United States is clearly illegal, experts say.

An official with the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) told NBC Boston that Micheroni may have received the notice because her name and contact information is on the paperwork for clients.

US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) authorities “used the known email addresses of the alien to send notifications”, a DHS official told the network. “If a non-personal email such as an American citizen contact was provided by the alien, notices may have been sent to unintended recipients.

“CBP is monitoring communications and will address any issues on a case-by-case basis.”

Micheroni said, “I think it’s a scare tactic.

“I think they want people afraid of immigration.”

Barack Obama has come out in support of Harvard after the Trump administration elected to cut $2bn of its federal grants after the Ivy League school in Massachusetts rejected what it said was an attempt at “government regulation” of the university.

Meanwhile, faculty at Yale University – another prominent Ivy League institution – has asked its leadership “to resist and legally challenge any unlawful demands that threaten academic freedom and … self-governance”.

A statement from Obama, the US president from 2009 to 2017, says: “Harvard has set an example for other higher-ed institutions – rejecting an unlawful and ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom, while taking concrete steps to make sure all students at Harvard can benefit from an environment of intellectual inquiry, rigorous debate and mutual respect.

“Let’s hope other institutions follow suit.”

The standoff between some of the US’s most prestigious universities and the federal government deepened overnight on Monday after Harvard rejected elevated demands by Donald Trump’s administration, which the president has called an effort to curb antisemitism on campus. Many educators, however, see the demands as a thinly veiled effort to more broadly curb academic freedoms.

“No government – regardless of which party is in power – should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, said.

The Trump administration, through the multi-federal agency joint task force to combat anti-semitism, responded by freezing $2.2bn in multi-year grants and $60m in multi-year contract value to Harvard.

On Tuesday, Trump himself published a post on his Truth Social platform saying “perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity”.

The intervention by Obama came after 876 faculty members at Yale published a letter to their leadership expressing support for standing up to the Trump administration.

“We stand together at a crossroads,” the letter read. “American universities are facing extraordinary attacks that threaten the bedrock principles of a democratic society, including rights of free expression, association, and academic freedom. We write as one faculty, to ask you to stand with us now.”

Though the letter does not say Harvard specifically, it also asks Yale’s leadership to “work purposefully and proactively with other colleges and universities in collective defense”.

Columbia University in New York, the site of pro-Palestinian protests in 2024, has agreed to partly comply with a series of demands from the Trump administration about how it will handle such demonstrations, academic departments and antisemitism after it received warnings it would lose federal funding, but also defended academic freedoms.

Princeton in New Jersey has said it has not received a specific list of demands from the government. The university’s president, Christopher Eisgruber, said in an email to the community earlier in April that while the rationale for the administration’s threat to withhold funding was not yet clear, the university “will comply with the law”.

“We are committed to fighting antisemitism and all forms of discrimination, and we will cooperate with the government in combating antisemitism,” Eisgruber added. “Princeton will also vigorously defend academic freedom and the due process rights of this university.”

“The Trump administration is using the threat of funding cuts as a tactic to force universities to yield to government control over research, teaching, and speech on private campuses. It is flagrantly unlawful,” said a statement from Rachel Goodman, counsel of the American Association of University Professors.

Columbia agreed to a ban on face masks for the purposes of concealing one’s identity, to bar protests inside academic buildings and to review how Middle East studies programs are administered. It also acquiesced to expanding “intellectual diversity”, including by appointing new faculty members to its Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies department.

The stated goal of the Trump administration’s antisemitism taskforce is to “root out antisemitic harassment in schools and on college campuses”. But many believe that is a cover for a range of conservative goals, including eliminating racial quotas in admissions – and resetting what the administration sees as a far-left bias in academia.

“We are going to choke off the money to schools that aid the Marxist assault on our American heritage and on western civilization itself,” Trump said in 2023. “The days of subsidizing communist indoctrination in our colleges will soon be over.”

On Tuesday, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said Trump “wants to see Harvard apologize” for what she called “the egregious antisemitism that took place on their college campus”.

“When it comes to Harvard … the president has been quite clear: they must follow federal law,” Leavitt said.

In March, the taskforce leader, Leo Terrell, a former Fox News commentator, said: “We’re going to bankrupt these universities” if they do not “play ball”.

The administration, in total, has frozen or canceled more than $11bn in funding from at least seven universities as part of its effort to end what it calls “ideological capture”. At least 300 students, recent graduates and postdoctoral students have had their visas and legal immigration statuses revoked as part of the crackdown.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology president, Sally Kornbluth, said on Monday that nine MIT students had seen their visas revoked over the previous week – revocations that she said would have a chilling effect on “top talent” worldwide and would “damage American competitiveness and scientific leadership for years to come”.

But Trump’s education secretary, Linda McMahon, told the Wall Street Journal that it was within the federal government’s power to ask universities to make changes to campus policies.

“If you’re taking federal funds, then we want to make sure that you’re abiding by federal law,” McMahon said, though she rejected that the administration was attempting to curb academic freedom and the right to peacefully protest or disagree.

A White House spokesperson, Kush Desai, told the outlet that the taskforce “is motivated by one thing and one thing only: tackling antisemitism”.

Desai said: “Antisemitic protesters inflicting violence and taking over entire college campus buildings is not only a crude display of bigotry against Jewish Americans, but entirely disruptive to the intellectual inquiry and research that federal funding of colleges is meant to support.”

It might come to be seen as the moment the “woke liberal empire” of Donald Trump’s most fevered imaginings struck back.

Harvard University, the world-renowned institution emblematic of the elitism that Trump and his coterie hold in contempt, received an extortive demand from the administration that it surrender the core of its academic freedoms – and promptly told it to get lost.

That, in shorthand, is a summary of the exchange of letters between three Trump officials and Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, that may in time be seen as something of a turning point in relations between the administration and academia.

Echoing pressures imposed on other elite colleges, notably Columbia University, the Trump team – representing the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services, and the General Services Administration – had demanded sweeping reforms in how Harvard is run, including the installation of viewpoint-diverse faculty members and the end of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes.

The backdrop to a demand for what would be unprecedented government interference in the affairs of the world’s richest university is the alleged rise of campus antisemitism, arising from an upsurge of pro-Palestinian demonstrations that have gripped Harvard and other colleges following Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel and Israel’s retaliatory military offensive in Gaza.

Critics, however, see a more nefarious White House agenda – namely, gutting universities of what it sees as a liberal-left bias, while using antisemitism as a cudgel in an authoritarian power grab.

Having seen Columbia cave in to similar demands and threatening $9bn in federal funding, the White House may have thought it was on to a winner with Harvard.

“Investment is not an entitlement,” the administration’s 11 April letter read, accusing Harvard of having “failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment”.

The missive then set out a detailed list of 10 conditions that Harvard needed to satisfy in order to received continued funding.

Bolstered by a financial endowment that reached $53.2bn in 2024 and which might cushion the blow of federal cuts, Garber called the White House’s bluff.

He did so in terms clearly expressing his belief that the government’s stated goals of stamping out antisemitism – an issue Harvard had already taken steps to address, including, controversially, by adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of the prejudice – masked more insidious aims.

The administration’s demands made “clear that the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a cooperative and constructive manner”, Garber wrote.

“Although some of the demands outlined by the government are aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of the ‘intellectual conditions’ at Harvard.

“No government – regardless of which party is in power – should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”

The university’s lawyers, William Burck and Robert Hur, both of whom have conservative credentials, starkly set out the broader constitutional stakes, writing that the government’s demands were “in contravention of the first amendment” and concluding that “Harvard is not prepared to agree to demands that go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration”.

Within hours of Harvard’s rebuff, the administration retaliated by freezing $2.2bn in grants along with a $60m contract.

It seemed somehow fitting that Harvard’s stand was being made on the same day that the Trump administration was openly defying a supreme court ruling to return a wrongfully deported Salvadorian man, Kilmar Abrego García, and El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, was visiting the White House.

That posture appeared to put the onus on the supreme court to take a more forceful stand against the White House’s defiance.

Now, thanks to Harvard’s stance, some establishment figures hope the court may just find the spine to do so.

Michael Luttig, a conservative-leaning former federal appeals court judge who has previously accused the administration of “declaring war on the rule of law”, said Harvard’s pushback had “momentous significance”.

“This should be the turning point in the president’s rampage against American institutions,” he told the New York Times.

Other universities, faced with similar demands to capitulate, now have a stronger impetus to fight back, said Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, although most others lack Harvard’s financial reserves. “If Harvard had not taken this stand, it would have been nearly impossible for other institutions to do so,” he said.

It may also provide inspiration for law firms – several of whom have already agreed to demands that they provide pro bono services to Trump as he seeks retribution against those who have represented his adversaries – to stand firm in the face of future intimidation.

Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff and head of policy, is said to have wanted a fight with Harvard, believing it essential to break a liberal hold on higher education.

But if the university’s response serves as an example to others, the battle may turn into a wider front than he envisioned.

The United States has removed sanctions on a close aide of the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, the state department said, adding that the punitive measures had been “inconsistent with US foreign policy interests”.

Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, spoke on Tuesday with his Hungarian counterpart, the foreign minister Péter Szijjártó, and informed him of the move, state department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement.

“The Secretary informed Foreign Minister Szijjarto of senior Hungarian official Antal Rogán’s removal from the US Department of the Treasury’s Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List, noting that continued designation was inconsistent with US foreign policy interests,” Bruce said.

The two also discussed strengthening US-Hungary alignment on critical issues and opportunities for economic cooperation, Bruce said.

Orbán and his Fidesz party have been among Donald Trump’s most vocal supporters in Europe.

Joe Biden’s administration imposed sanctions on Rogán on 7 January over alleged corruption, in a move that Budapest pledged to challenge once Trump returned to the White House on 20 January.

Rogán is a close aide of Orbán and has run his cabinet office since 2015.

“Throughout his tenure as a government official, Rogán has orchestrated Hungary’s system for distributing public contracts and resources to cronies loyal to himself and the Fidesz political party,” the US treasury department said at the time.

Accusations of corruption and cronyism have dogged Orbán since he came to power in 2010, while Budapest’s relations with Washington became increasingly strained during Biden’s presidency, due in part to Budapest’s warm ties with Moscow despite the war in Ukraine.

Orbán has repeatedly denied allegations of corruption.

Rogán has been close to Orbán for decades, running his government’s media machine and helping orchestrate his election campaigns.

The all-female Blue Origin rocket launch may have received plenty of glowing media coverage – but not everyone is impressed.

The stunt has drawn criticism from a number of female celebrities who were not keen on the Jeff Bezos-owned Blue Origin NS-31 mission, which included Katy Perry, Bezos’s fiancee Lauren Sanchez, aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, film producer Kerianne Flynn and, in a twist straight out of Apple TV’s The Morning Show, CBS Mornings host Gayle King.

Model and actor Emily Ratajkowski said she was “disgusted” by the 11-minute space flight, which featured Perry serenading her fellow passengers with a cover of What a Wonderful World and advertising her upcoming tour setlist in brief zero gravity. “That’s end time shit,” Ratajkowski said. “Like, this is beyond parody.”

“You say that you care about Mother Earth, and it’s about Mother Earth, and you’re going up in a spaceship that is built and paid for by a company that’s single-handedly destroying the planet,” she added. “Look at the state of the world and think about how many resources went into putting these women into space. For what?”

The launch from west Texas on Monday, paid for by the Amazon founder’s private space company, met with widespread derision online and countless memes – such as photos of Perry holding up a daisy in tribute to her daughter Daisy Dove Bloom and kissing the ground on her return to Earth, captioned “getting off a commercial flight in 2025 #BlueOrigin”, in reference to a spate of airline incidents this year. Actor and director Olivia Wilde reshared the meme on her Instagram stories with the added caption “Billion dollars bought some good memes I guess”.

Amy Schumer also mocked the flight on Instagram, posting a sarcastic video in which she announced that she got a last-minute invitation to join the mission. “Guys, last second they added me to space and I’m going to space,” the comedian joked while holding up a Black Panther toy. “I’m bringing this thing. It has no meaning to me, but it was in my bag and I was on the subway, and I got the text and they were like, ‘Do you want to go to space?’ so I’m going to space.”

“Thank you to everyone who got me here and I’ll see you guys in space,” she added with the caption “space”.

In another video posted to her stories, Schumer continued to mock the hype around the flight: “So I’m going to space and I’m so excited. Lauren Sanchez, Katy Perry and Amanda Nguyen have been my guiding lights through this whole journey, which I just got called to be part of this space team this morning. And I’m loving it. I’ve always wanted to go to space, and also I just have to say, How high were the people who came up with the name for space? Were they like, ‘What should we call it? It’s got so much, like, space.’”

Earlier this month, actor Olivia Munn made waves when she questioned the flight’s objective. “I know this probably isn’t the cool thing to say, but there are so many other things that are so important in the world right now,” she said during an appearance on Today With Jenna and Friends on 3 April. “What are you guys gonna do up in space? What are you doing up there?

“I know this is probably obnoxious,” she continued, “but like, it’s so much money to go to space, and there’s a lot of people who can’t even afford eggs.”

Munn also called the flight “a bit gluttonous”, because “space exploration was to further our knowledge and to help mankind. What are they gonna do up there that has made it better for us down here?”

Some of the flight’s participants have defended the launch. Asked by People about overall criticism to the mission during a post-flight press conference, King said that in her eyes, “anybody that’s criticizing it doesn’t really understand what is happening here”.

“We can all speak to the response we’re getting from young women from young girls about what this represents,” the longtime broadcast journalist added. Sanchez then added that the derision got her “really fired up”.

“I would love to have them come to Blue Origin and see the thousands of employees that don’t just work here but they put their heart and soul into this vehicle. They love their work and they love the mission and it’s a big deal for them,” she continued. “So when we hear comments like that, I just say, ‘Trust me. Come with me. I’ll show you what this is about, and it’s, it’s really eye-opening.’”

The NS-31 mission marked the 11th mission in Blue Origin’s New Shepard program, the 31st flight overall and the first all-female mission in the company’s history. It was the first all-female space flight since 1963, when Soviet astronaut Valentina Tereshkova flew into orbit solo.

The company credited Sanchez, who will marry Bezos at a star-studded wedding in Venice this summer, with inspiring the flight. “She is honored to lead a team of explorers on a mission that will challenge their perspectives of Earth, empower them to share their own stories, and create lasting impact that will inspire generations to come,” the company said via press release shortly after the all-female crew was announced in February.

One of US defense secretary Pete Hegseth’s leading advisers, Dan Caldwell, was reportedly put on leave and removed from the Pentagon on Tuesday following a Department of Defense investigation into leaks.

Caldwell was escorted out of the Pentagon after being identified during the investigation and subsequently placed on administrative leave for “an unauthorized disclosure”, a source told Reuters.

“The investigation remains ongoing,” the source, an official within the administration, said. The source did not go into detail about the alleged disclosure of information, and they did not reveal whether it was made to a journalist or another entity.

A memo signed 21 March by Hegseth’s chief of staff, Joe Kasper, requested an investigation into “recent unauthorized disclosures of national security information involving sensitive communications”. The memo also mentions a potential “use of polygraphs in the execution of this investigation” but it is not currently known if Caldwell was subjected to a polygraph test.

“I expect to be informed immediately if this effort results in information identifying a party responsible for an unauthorized disclosure, and that such information will be referred to the appropriate criminal law enforcement entity for criminal prosecution,” Kasper wrote in the letter.

Caldwell has played a significant role as Hegseth’s adviser, with the defense secretary naming Caldwell as the best staff point of contact for the National Security Council as it prepared for the launch of strikes against the Houthis in Yemen in the leaked Signal chat published by the Atlantic last month.

The decision to put Caldwell on administrative leave is reportedly separate from the wave of federal firings in the past few weeks under the Trump administration.

Caldwell, a Marine Corps veteran, previously worked for Concerned Veterans for America, a non-profit group with strong ties to Republican lawmakers and promoting conservative policies.

He had worked with Hegseth at that organization before he joined Hegseth’s defense department team.

One of US defense secretary Pete Hegseth’s leading advisers, Dan Caldwell, was reportedly put on leave and removed from the Pentagon on Tuesday following a Department of Defense investigation into leaks.

Caldwell was escorted out of the Pentagon after being identified during the investigation and subsequently placed on administrative leave for “an unauthorized disclosure”, a source told Reuters.

“The investigation remains ongoing,” the source, an official within the administration, said. The source did not go into detail about the alleged disclosure of information, and they did not reveal whether it was made to a journalist or another entity.

A memo signed 21 March by Hegseth’s chief of staff, Joe Kasper, requested an investigation into “recent unauthorized disclosures of national security information involving sensitive communications”. The memo also mentions a potential “use of polygraphs in the execution of this investigation” but it is not currently known if Caldwell was subjected to a polygraph test.

“I expect to be informed immediately if this effort results in information identifying a party responsible for an unauthorized disclosure, and that such information will be referred to the appropriate criminal law enforcement entity for criminal prosecution,” Kasper wrote in the letter.

Caldwell has played a significant role as Hegseth’s adviser, with the defense secretary naming Caldwell as the best staff point of contact for the National Security Council as it prepared for the launch of strikes against the Houthis in Yemen in the leaked Signal chat published by the Atlantic last month.

The decision to put Caldwell on administrative leave is reportedly separate from the wave of federal firings in the past few weeks under the Trump administration.

Caldwell, a Marine Corps veteran, previously worked for Concerned Veterans for America, a non-profit group with strong ties to Republican lawmakers and promoting conservative policies.

He had worked with Hegseth at that organization before he joined Hegseth’s defense department team.

More students living in the United States are applying to Canadian universities or expressing interest in studying north of the border as Donald Trump cuts federal funding to universities and revokes foreign student visas.

Officials at the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) Vancouver campus said the school reported a 27% jump in graduate applications as of 1 March from US citizens for programs starting in the 2025 academic year, compared with all of 2024.

UBC Vancouver briefly reopened admissions to US citizens for several graduate programs this week with plans to fast-track applications from US students hoping to begin studies in September.

University of Toronto, Canada’s largest university by number of students, also reported more US applications by its January deadline for 2025 programs, while a University of Waterloo spokesperson reported an increase in US visitors to campus and more web traffic originating from the United States since September.

Gage Averill, UBC Vancouver’s provost and vice-president of academics, attributed the spike in US applications to the Trump administration abruptly revoking visas of foreign students and increased scrutiny of their social media activity.

“That, as a result, and especially as a result of the very recent crackdown on visas in the United States for international students, and now the development of a center that’s reading foreign students’ social media accounts,” Averill said.

The administration has frozen hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for numerous universities, pressing them to make policy changes and citing what it claims is a failure to fight antisemitism on campus. It has detained and begun deportation proceedings against some foreign students who took part in pro-Palestinian demonstrations, while visas for hundreds of other students have been canceled – actions that have raised concerns about speech and academic freedoms in the US. At the same time, Canada has capped the number of international students allowed to enter the country for the second year in a row, meaning there may be fewer spots for US and other international students.

Canada’s immigration ministry said it expects learning institutions to only accept the number of students they can support, including providing housing options. Provinces and territories are responsible for distributing spaces under the cap, the ministry said.

The University of Toronto, considered an alternative to US Ivy League schools, said it was seeing a “meaningful increase” in applications from those living or studying in the US over previous years. University of Waterloo, which is known for its technical graduate programs and churns out top-notch engineering talent, said some faculties including engineering have seen increased interest and applications from students in the US.

“We have seen an increase in US visitors to the UW visitors centre on campus, and web traffic that originates in the US has increased by 15% since September 2024,” a University of Waterloo spokesperson said.

It did not specify whether these students were foreign students studying in the US or US citizens.

Averill said UBC has seen only a modest 2% increase in undergraduate applications for this year’s programs, which closed around the time of Trump’s inauguration. However, interest appears to be growing, with campus tour requests from US students up by 20%.

“We were concerned about the United States universities, our sister institutions in the US, who are under enormous pressure right now,” said Averill, referring in particular to the Trump administration’s efforts to withhold funds from universities that continue with diversity and equity initiatives or study climate science.

According to UBC’s annual report, the United States ranks as one of the top three countries for international student enrollment. Currently, about 1,500 US students are enrolled in both graduate and undergraduate programs at the university’s two campuses.

A civil case against Andrew Tate over allegations he subjected four women to sexual violence and coercive control is the first case of its kind, a judge has been told.

The influencer is being sued by two women who worked for his webcam business in Luton, Bedfordshire, in 2015 and two former girlfriends in 2013 and 2014.

One woman has accused Tate, 38, of raping, strangling and whipping her with a belt in 2015. She has also alleged he pointed a gun in her face and said: “I’m a boss, I’m a fucking G, you’re going to do as I say or there’ll be hell to pay.”

Anne Studd KC, representing the women, told the judge, Richard Armstrong, it was thought to be the “first occasion” that coercive control was “brought before the high court in a civil context”.

In written submissions, the barrister added the case was “understood to be the first claim where allegations of coercive control have been considered in a civil context of whether that behaviour can amount to intentional infliction of harm”.

The hearing at the high court in London on Tuesday dealt with preliminary matters, including disclosure and legal costs. The judge said the claimants were “seeking damages likely to reach six figures” and scheduled a three-week trial for early 2027.

Tate denies the allegations and claims his relationships with the women were consensual. Studd told the court there was “a total denial of wrongdoing” and that Tate had dismissed the claims in his written defence as “a pack of lies” and “nonsense”. Tate’s lawyers further claim the allegations for personal injury are barred as they are subject to a three-year limitation period.

Studd said there was a “vast amount” to review in the case, including “thousands of pages of open-source material” produced by Tate, “as well as material provided from law enforcement agencies, material from criminal proceedings in other jurisdictions” and video footage.

She told the court: “[Tate] has a profile, largely made by himself, where he regularly discusses issues of violence against women and girls and misogyny” and gave his “seemingly high-profile support for behaviours of that type”.

The judge allowed the women to rely on evidence from one expert on “why victims of sexual violence do not always bring claims precipitously”, but refused to allow them to rely on a second expert on coercive control.

Studd had said expert evidence was needed so the court had “the whole picture”, describing coercive control as “a form of grooming and manipulation where the victim becomes less and less able to respond in what might be perceived as a normal way. In particular, she may not leave even if the door is open.”

But Vanessa Marshall KC, for Tate, said the additional expert evidence was “unnecessary”.

Armstrong did not allow Tate’s lawyers to claim the costs of travelling to Romania to take statements. “He has travelled to the US and Dubai recently, there is no reason he cannot travel to the UK,” the judge said.

Three of the women had reported Tate to Hertfordshire police in 2019 but the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to bring criminal charges.

Tate and his brother Tristan are under criminal investigation in Romania over allegations of human trafficking, trafficking of minors and money laundering.

Bedfordshire police are seeking to arrest the Tate brothers in relation to allegations of rape and trafficking dating to between 2012 and 2015. The two men deny all accusations against them.

France has expelled 12 Algerian consular and diplomatic officials and recalled its ambassador in Algiers, the French presidency said on Tuesday, in a retaliatory measure as a spat escalates between the two countries.

“The Algerian authorities are responsible for the sudden degradation of our bilateral relations,” President Emmanuel Macron’s office said.

Algiers has been protesting against France’s detention of an Algerian consular agent suspected of involvement in the kidnapping of an Algerian opposition activist. France later said Algeria had expelled 12 of its diplomatic staff.

France’s relations with its former colony have long been complicated, but took a turn for the worse last year when Macron supported Morocco’s position over that of Algeria over the disputed Western Sahara region.

Last week the French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, had said that ties between the two countries were returning to normal.

The activist and influencer Amir Boukhors is a critic of the Algerian president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, and has more than 1 million subscribers on TikTok, where he posts as Amir DZ.

He has lived in France since 2016 and was granted political asylum in 2023. Algeria has issued nine international arrest warrants against him on accusations of fraud and terrorism, but France refuses to extradite him.

In April 2024, Boukhors was snatched outside his home in Val-de-Marne, south of Paris, telling France 2 television in a later interview that he was handcuffed and bundled into a car by four men wearing police armbands. He claimed he was drugged and held in a “container” for more than 24 hours before being released at 3am. “I fell into a trap,” he said.

Three men were arrested and put under investigation on Friday for the “kidnap, holding and arbitrary detention” of Boukhors. France’s national anti-terrorist prosecutor confirmed that one of the men arrested worked for the Algerian consulate at Créteil, south-east of Paris.

Algeria has denied the official’s involvement in the kidnapping.

In a separate source of tension between the countries, Macron has also called on Algeria to release Boualem Sansal, a 75-year-old writer sentenced to five years in prison for “undermining the integrity” of the country.

Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report.

Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, has announced Iran must totally eliminate its nuclear programme, seeming to reverse the policy he had articulated on Fox News only 12 hours earlier that would have allowed Iran to enrich uranium at a low level for civilian use.

The switch to a more hardline policy is likely to make it much harder for the US to reach a negotiated agreement with Tehran, bringing back the threat of an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites.

In a further switch, it was agreed that the next round of indirect US-Iran talks, due to start on Saturday, will continue to be in Oman and the venue would not switch to Italy as proposed by the US.

In a statement posted to social media on Tuesday Witkoff said: “A deal with Iran will only be completed if it is a Trump deal. Any final arrangement must set in place a framework for peace, stability and prosperity in the Middle East – meaning that Iran must stop and eliminate its nuclear enrichment and weaponisation program. It is imperative for the world that we create a tough fair deal that will endure, and that is what President Trump has asked me to do.”

The previous day on Fox News, the special envoy had said “the conversation with the Iranians” would concern uranium enrichment at 3.67 % for civil nuclear purposes.

“In some circumstances they are enriching at 60% and at others at 20%. That cannot be,” he said. “You do not need to run, as they claim, a civil nuclear programme where you are enriching past 3.67%. This is going to be much about verification on the enrichment programme and then ultimately verification on weaponisation – that includes the type of missiles they have stockpiled there and the trigger for a bomb.”

Witkoff’s two positions are hard to reconcile – unless he is trying to distinguish between an interim deal that reduces Iranian uranium enrichment to civilian levels and a final agreement that eliminates its nuclear programme entirely.

It also possible Trump has faced a backlash from Iran hawks who warned that Witkoff’s negotiating stance was largely re-establishing the nuclear deal Barack Obama had agreed with Iran in 2015, from which Trump withdrew the US in 2018 saying it was unenforceable.

Witkoff’s apparent volte face may also be seen as another example of chaotic foreign policymaking, in which the administration battles behind the president’s back and he either does not focus on the policy details or does not understand the choices he is allowing to be made on his behalf.

Witkoff, a man with no diplomatic experience and charged with producing diplomatic breakthroughs in Gaza, Ukraine and Iran, has never tried to portray himself as anything than Trump’s messenger. He would have thought the proposals he aired in the weekend talks in Oman and on Fox News were those of the president.

Iran has repeatedly demanded the right to maintain a civil nuclear programme, meaning the latest iteration of US thinking will cause consternation in Tehran and could strengthen hardliners, who maintain the US cannot be trusted.

A rare consensus had broken out in Tehran that the talks between Witkoff and the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, could result in some US sanctions being lifted as part of the most positive development in relations between Iran and the US in a decade.

The head of the UN nuclear inspectorate, Rafael Grossi, is due to visit Iran this week to see if progress can be made on improving his inspectors’ access to Iran’s nuclear sites.

Most of the time, nothing much happens. A wide Nordic river, melting snow still lining its banks, meanders peacefully through a pristine forest of spruce and pine. But this spring, as every spring for the past six years, a lot of people will be glued to it.

When Den stora älgvandringen – variously translated as The Great Moose Migration or The Great Elk Trek – first aired on the public broadcaster SVT’s on-demand platform in 2019, nearly a million people tuned in. Last year, it was 9 million.

This year, who knows? Given the state of the world, a three-week-long, round-the-clock live stream of a few hundred moose gingerly crossing the Ångerman River in northern Sweden to reach their summer pastures could be just what viewers need.

The show’s latest edition launched a full week early on Tuesday because of warmer than usual spring weather. “There are a lot of moose about,” the producer, Stefan Edlund, told SVT. “They’re waiting for us. We’ve had to adjust. But it should be OK.”

The programme’s 15-strong crew, working out of a control room in Umeå, 400 miles (600km) north of Stockholm, had already laid most of their 20,000 meters of cables and positioned their 30-plus remote video and night vision cameras, Edlund said.

Which is just as well, because the show’s fans are more than ready.

Ulla Malmgren, 62, said she had stocked up on coffee and pre-cooked meals for the duration so she did not miss a moment. “Sleep? Forget it. I don’t sleep,” she said.

Malmgren, who is in a Facebook group of 76,000-plus viewers, told the Associated Press she loved the thought that there were “about a million people” watching “all saying about the same thing: ‘Go on! Yes, you can do it!’”

Another fan, William Garp Liljefors, 20, said he had been known to be late for class while the show was on. “I feel relaxed, but at the same time I’m like, ‘Oh, there’s a moose. Oh, what if there’s a moose? I can’t go to the toilet!’” he said.

The show – and its success – are part of a growing trend for “slow television” that some argue was pioneered by the late US pop artist Andy Warhol, whose 1964 film Sleep showed the poet John Giorno sleeping for five hours and 20 minutes.

More recently, the concept took off with the Norwegian broadcaster NRK’s pre-recorded Bergensbanen, which showed, minute by minute, a seven-hour train journey from Bergen to Oslo with archive footage to enliven time spent in the line’s 182 tunnels.

About 20% of Norway’s population tuned in at least once to that. Two years later, roughly half the country’s 5.5 million people watched at least some of NRK’s coverage – live and non-stop, this time – of a 134-hour sea voyage from Bergen to Kirkenes.

Since then the broadcaster has aired at least one slow TV show a year, including 18 hours of salmon swimming upstream, 12 hours of firewood burning, 24 hours of academic lectures on the constitution and a 12-hour knitting marathon.

Broadcasters in Spain, Portugal, France, the UK, Australia and elsewhere have followed suit. In Utrecht, in the Netherlands, a live stream from an underwater camera allows viewers to ring a virtual doorbell and let spawning fish through a lock gate.

Slow TV shows something happening at the rate it is experienced, rather than speeded up through plotting and editing. Its attraction, media experts say, seems to lie precisely in the soothing absence of staged tension and drama.

“It becomes, in a strange way, gripping, because nothing catastrophic is happening, nothing spectacular is happening,” said Annette Hill, a professor of media and communications at Jönköping University in Sweden.

“But something very beautiful is happening in that minute-by-minute moment.”

Espen Ytreberg, a professor of media studies at the University of Oslo, has likened slow TV to a sort of window or “escape valve” from the medium’s usual frenetic pace. “Just when did we come to accept that television should be this accelerated, busy, intense, in your face thing?” he wondered – appropriately, almost a decade ago – in an interview with CBS. “But at some point, that became the norm.”

Just occasionally, of course, stuff does happen. SVT even sends a push alert when the first moose shows up on The Great Moose Migration, and runs an on-screen counter showing how many have managed to cross the river, which is wide and can be perilous.

Last year, the programme’s cameras captured 87 making it safely across. Some do get into difficulties. Undeniably, though, viewers are, most of the time, staring at sky, water and trees. Maybe a duck or two. Wait, is that a moose?