The US attorney general Pam Bondi 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 federal judge has sharply rebuked the Trump administration and is evaluating whether officials are in contempt of court for failing to secure the return of a man wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

The US supreme court last week ordered that the Trump administration to facilitate the release and return of Kilmar Ábrego García, a refugee who has legally lived in the US for 25 years.

Meanwhile, immigration authorities reportedly apprehended and deported a 19-year-old Venezuelan, Merwil Gutiérrez, despite agents’ realizing he was not whom they meant to arrest in a targeted operation.

Catching up? Here’s what happened on 14 April 2025.

A federal judge sharply rebuked the Trump administration and scolded officials on Tuesday for taking no steps to secure the return of a man wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador, as the US supreme court had ordered in a contentious ruling last week.

The US district judge Paula Xinis said that Donald Trump’s news conference with El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, where the leaders joked that Kilmar Ábrego García would not be released, did not count as compliance.

“To date nothing has been done,” Xinis said, a day after senior Trump officials also mounted an effort to sidestep the supreme court decision by offering increasingly strained readings of the order to claim they were powerless to bring back Ábrego García.

The judge ultimately said she would require the administration to produce details under oath about its attempts to return Ábrego García to US soil in two weeks, an unusually expeditious timeline for discovery that indicated how she intends to move with the case.

At issue at the hearing in federal district court in Maryland was the administration’s narrow reading of the supreme court order that compelled it to “facilitate” the return of Ábrego García, who was supposed to have been shielded from being sent to El Salvador.

The administration had earlier conceded Ábrego García’s deportation was an administrative error. But it has since taken the position that it is powerless to bring him back beyond removing domestic obstacles, and that courts lack the constitutional power to dictate the president to do more.

The lead lawyer for the administration, Drew Ensign, also said in legal filings before the hearing that even if Ábrego García were returned to the US, the justice department would deport him to a different country or move to terminate the order blocking his removal to El Salvador.

But the judge rejected the administration’s narrow reading of “facilitate”, noting the plain meaning of the word meant officials needed to secure Ábrego García’s release – and that US immigration and customs enforcement had previously taken a number of positions on its meaning.

“Your characterization is not bound in fact,” Xinis said. “I need facts.”

The administration argued it had sought to comply with the supreme court’s order when Trump addressed the case and Bukele questioned whether he was supposed to smuggle Ábrego García across the border – which Ensign argued showed the matter had been raised at the “highest levels”.

The judge appeared unimpressed by the argument. “It’s not a direct response,” Xinis said. “Nor is the quip about smuggling someone into the US. If you were removing domestic barriers, there would be no smuggling, right? Two misguided ships passing in the night.”

The judge told Ábrego García’s lawyers to prepare by Wednesday their questions for the administration about what steps it had taken. She said they could depose up to six officials, including Robert Cerna, a top official at Ice, and Joseph Mazarra, the acting general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security.

“Cancel vacation,” Xinis told Ensign. “Cancel appointments. I’m usually pretty good about this in my courtroom, but not this time.”

After the hearing, Ábrego García’s lawyer Rina Gandhi called the hearing a win but added they were not yet done. “We have not brought Kilmar home,” she told reporters, “but we will be able to question those involved and get information and evidence as required.”

She also accused the administration of acting in bad faith. “This case is about the government unlawfully – and admitting to unlawfully – removing a gentleman from this country, from his home, his family, his children, and taking no actions to fix them as ordered by the supreme court,” Gandhi said.

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.

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 with Protect Democracy who represents the American Association of University Professors in its challenge to the termination of federal funding at Columbia.

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.

Joe Biden on Tuesday accused Donald Trump and his billionaire lieutenant, Elon Musk, of taking a “hatchet” to the social security administration as part of their warp-speed effort to tear down the federal government.

In his first public remarks since leaving office, the former president avoided any mention of Trump – his predecessor and successor – by name but assailed the administration for threatening social security, which he called a “sacred promise” that more than 70 million Americans rely on each month.

“In fewer than 100 days, this new administration has done so much damage and so much destruction,” Biden said, addressing the national conference of Advocates, Counselors and Representatives for the Disabled in Chicago. “It’s kind of breathtaking that it could happen that soon.”

Though it is unusual for a former president to return to the national stage so soon after exiting, Biden, 82, said he felt the issue was a matter of grave importance to millions of retirees and disabled Americans fearful that the check they rely on each month might not arrive on time – or at all.

On Tuesday, Democrats across the country held a day of action to “sound the alarm” over the Trump administration’s plans to downsize the social security administration, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said earlier on Tuesday. Biden referenced the sweeping cuts to the agency’s workforce and its services in his remarks.

“In the 90 years since Franklin Roosevelt created the social security system, people have always gotten their social security checks,” Biden said. “They’ve gotten them during wartime, during recessions, during a pandemic. No matter what, they got them. But now for the first time ever, that might change. It’d be a calamity for millions of families.”

Asked about his remarks earlier on Tuesday, the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt mocked Biden’s age. “I’m shocked that he is speaking at nighttime. I thought his bedtime was much earlier than his speech tonight.” Trump is 78.

Biden also joked about his age, tweaking Trump for falsely claiming that millions of people born over a century ago are still receiving social security benefits. “I want to meet them because I’d like to figure out how they live that long,” he said, drawing laughs from the audience. “I’m looking for longevity.” Though Trump and Musk have both pointed to the inclusion of people in the database with no recorded death date, the glitch is well known and almost none of the people listed are recorded as receiving payments.

Trump has pledged that his administration would not touch social security and congressional Republicans have accused Democrats of spreading lies about their support for the popular program.

In a series of tweets on X, owned by Musk, the social security agency rebutted many of the points made in Biden’s speech, writing that the president has “repeatedly promised to protect social security and ensure higher-take home pay for seniors by ending taxation on social security benefits”.

Yet the Trump administration’s assault on the agency has left it in turmoil. Under the Trump administration, the agency has announced plans for deep staff reductions and dozens of offices closures, while policy changes have already begun to impact the program’s operations, leaving many beneficiaries fearful.

Biden talked about the “profound” psychological impact on beneficiaries who rely on the social security checks. “How do you sleep at night?” he said.

He also criticized Musk for calling the program a “Ponzi scheme” and comments made by Trump’s commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, also a billionaire, who said his 94-year-old mother-in-law wouldn’t complain if she didn’t receive her social security check one month. “A fraudster always makes the loudest noise, screaming, yelling and complaining,” he said on the business and tech podcast All-In last month.

“She’s probably a lovely woman,” Biden said of Lutnick’s mother-in-law, but agreed that she would probably not miss the payment. “No kidding, her son-in-law is a billionaire. What about the 94-year-old mother living all by herself?”

On Tuesday, Trump signed a presidential memo titled Preventing Illegal Aliens from Obtaining Social Security Act Benefits – a benefit undocumented people are already ineligible for under US law. The directive orders an expansion of the social security administration’s full-time fraud prosecutor program and directs officials to scrutinize earnings reports for “persons age 100 or older”. It also establishes a similar prosecution program for Medicare and Medicaid.

During Biden’s speech on Tuesday, he briefly reflected on the current state of affairs, urging Americans to uphold “fundamental American values”.

“Nobody’s king,” he said, before lamenting how divided the nation had become. Healing the “soul of America” was a campaign theme that elevated Biden to office in the depths of the pandemic in 2020, but the divisions seemed only to deepen over the next four years. In an apparent aside, he said there was roughly “30%” of the country that “has no heart” – a remark Trump supporters immediately interpreted an insult.

“It’s what we see in America,” he continued. “It’s what we believe in – fairness. And that’s the America we can never forget or walk away from.”

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.

Hong Kong Post said on Wednesday it had suspended goods mail services by sea to the US and will suspend its air mail postal service for items containing goods from 27 April due to “bullying” US tariffs.

When sending items to the US, people in Hong Kong “should be prepared to pay exorbitant and unreasonable fees due to the US’s unreasonable and bullying acts”, Hong Kong Post said in a statement.

“The US is unreasonable, bullying and imposing tariffs abusively,” it said. “Hong Kong post will definitely not collect any so-called tariffs on behalf of the US.”

Other postal items containing documents only, without goods, would not be affected.

Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China, has been subjected to the same tariffs as China, according to a US government notice.

Hong Kong Post said its suspension was due to the US government’s elimination of the “de minimus” exemption and the increase in tariffs for postal items from Hong Kong containing goods to the US from 2 May.

Hong Kong has long been known as a free and open trading hub, but China’s imposition on the former British colony of a sweeping national security law in 2020 drew criticism from the US and led it to end the financial hub’s special status under US law.

Hong Kong Post said on Wednesday it had suspended goods mail services by sea to the US and will suspend its air mail postal service for items containing goods from 27 April due to “bullying” US tariffs.

When sending items to the US, people in Hong Kong “should be prepared to pay exorbitant and unreasonable fees due to the US’s unreasonable and bullying acts”, Hong Kong Post said in a statement.

“The US is unreasonable, bullying and imposing tariffs abusively,” it said. “Hong Kong post will definitely not collect any so-called tariffs on behalf of the US.”

Other postal items containing documents only, without goods, would not be affected.

Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China, has been subjected to the same tariffs as China, according to a US government notice.

Hong Kong Post said its suspension was due to the US government’s elimination of the “de minimus” exemption and the increase in tariffs for postal items from Hong Kong containing goods to the US from 2 May.

Hong Kong has long been known as a free and open trading hub, but China’s imposition on the former British colony of a sweeping national security law in 2020 drew criticism from the US and led it to end the financial hub’s special status under US law.

• Nato secretary general Mark Rutte has visited the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and declared “unwavering” support for Ukraine in the aftermath of a Russian attack on the northern city of Sumy that killed 35 people. Rutte said the military alliance was still strongly behind Kyiv, even as it also supported the ceasefire push by US president Donald Trump, who has issued fresh criticism of Zelenskyy, accusing him of starting the war. “Nato stands with Ukraine,” Rutte said at a press conference with Zelenskyy on Tuesday. “You and I know that this has been true all along. I also know that some have called Nato’s support into question in the last couple of months. But let there be no doubt: our support is unwavering.” Rutte also said: “Russia is the aggressor, Russia started this war. There’s no doubt.”

  Zelenskyy said the main focus of the talks was strengthening Ukraine’s air defence. “Absolutely everyone sees how urgent Ukraine’s need is for air defence systems and missiles for them,” he posted on X.

• Ukraine’s military said it had hit a base belonging to the Russian rocket brigade that conducted the Palm Sunday missile attack on Sumy. The Ukrainian strike caused a “secondary detonation of ammunition” and the results “are being clarified”, the military said on Telegram on Tuesday. World leaders have condemned the Sumy attack, Ukraine’s deadliest of 2025, and Zelenskyy called it an act of deliberate terror. Ukraine moved on Tuesday to dismiss Sumy governor Volodymyr Artyukh after he made comments implying the Russian attack had targeted a military gathering.

• Sweden said it had summoned the Russian ambassador to its foreign ministry to protest against Moscow’s attacks on Ukraine’s cities and civilian population. “Russia’s responsibility to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure in accordance with international humanitarian law was emphasised to the Russian ambassador during his appearance,” the Swedish foreign ministry said on Tuesday.

• China rejected what it called “manipulation and hype” around two of its nationals captured in Ukraine after Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Moscow of dragging Beijing into the war and said hundreds of Chinese nationals were fighting on the frontline. “China is verifying the relevant information and circumstances,” foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said about the prisoners of war, urging “relevant parties to accurately understand China’s objective and impartial stance”. Ukraine held a press conference on Monday at which the two Chinese prisoners of war under armed guard said they hoped to be in a prisoner swap and warned other Chinese nationals not to go to fight.

• A Ukrainian drone strike on the Russian city of Kursk killed an elderly woman and wounded nine others on Tuesday, local authorities said. Six of the injured were hospitalised for shrapnel wounds, burns and head injuries, they said. A Kyiv official alluded to the attack on social media but claimed a military target had been hit in the regional capital, about 90km from the Ukrainian border.

• A Russian military court has sentenced five young people for up to 18 years in jail after finding them guilty of setting fire to railway infrastructure and a helicopter outside Moscow last year, the state news agency Tass reported. It cited state prosecutors as saying that the group – then aged 19 to 22 – had acted on the orders of people close to Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence agency. GUR posted video at the time purporting to show the helicopter – which it said belonged to the Russian defence ministry – on fire, but it did not claim responsibility for the attack.

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.

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.

Tuvalu, one of the world’s most remote nations, has unveiled its first ever ATMs, at the headquarters of the National Bank of Tuvalu in the village of Vaiaku on Funafuti, the country’s main island.

Tuesday’s ceremony marked a historic shift for the island nation of 12,000 people, which has never before had access to electronic banking. Attended by prime minister Feleti Teo, the governor general, traditional leaders, members of parliament and representatives from the diplomatic and business sectors, the event celebrated a long-anticipated move toward financial modernisation.

Until now, all banking in Tuvalu has been done in cash. On pay day, workers are required to queue at the bank to withdraw their salaries, a process that often leads to long lines and limited access after the bank closes at 2pm. Daily transactions for groceries, hotels and services remain almost entirely cash-based.

“Today not only marks a momentous occasion but it is also historic as the bank moves into a totally new era, not just in terms of its services but also in terms of its strategic direction,” Teo said during his keynote speech.

Initiated in 2021, the total cost of the ATM and point-of-sale rollout exceeded A$3m, according to the bank’s general manager, Siose Penitala Teo, who spoke to the Guardian at the main office of the bank.

“We’ve been in an analogue space all along, these were dreams for us,” Teo said. “These machines don’t come cheap. But with government support and sheer determination, we were able to roll out this service for our people.”

The prime minister said the bank initially worked with an external adviser but later contracted Pacific Technologies Limited in Fiji to deliver and install the systems, which will now be operational at multiple locations on Funafuti, including at the airport and within local villages. Five ATMs have been installed, and 30 point-of-sale terminals will be installed across the island.

“We explored different options and undertook due diligence to find cost-effective solutions tailored to our customers’ needs,” Teo said. “That’s how we procured the ATMs and point-of-sale systems that are now operational.”

For now, only prepaid cards can be used at the machines. Teo said customers would have to obtain prepaid cards before they could use the ATMs.

The bank plans to roll out Tuvalu-issued debit cards next, with the goal of eventually providing Visa debit and credit card functionality that can be used overseas for travel and online purchases.

With about 6,000 banking customers, many of whom hold multiple accounts, the introduction of electronic banking is expected to ease congestion, reduce reliance on cash and improve access to financial services across the outer islands.

“We’re providing the service for free until people get the hang of it,” Teo said. “In time we’ll look at fees, but right now this is about accessibility and progress.”

Worldwide consumption of wine fell in 2024 to its lowest level in more than 60 years, the main trade body has said, raising concerns about new risks from US tariffs.

The International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) said on Tuesday that 2024 sales fell 3.3% from the previous year to 214.2m hectolitres.

The OIV, whose report was based on government figures, said this would be the lowest sales figure since 1961, when sales were 213.6m hectolitres.

Production is also at its lowest level in more than 60 years, having fallen 4.8% in 2024 to 225.8m hectolitres.

The OIV’s statistics chief, Giorgio Delgrosso, said the wine industry had been hit by a perfect storm as health concerns drive down consumption in many countries and economic factors added to troubles.

“Beyond the short-term economic and geopolitical disruptions, it is important to consider the structural, long-term factors also contributing to the observed decline in wine consumption” the IOV’s annual report said.

The OIV said the consumer was now paying about 30% more for a bottle now than in 2019-20 and overall consumption had fallen by 12% since then.

In the United States, the world’s top wine market, consumption fell 5.8% to 33.3m hectolitres.

Delgrosso said tariffs ordered by the US president, Donald Trump could become “another bomb” for the wine industry.

Sales in China remain below pre-Covid levels. In Europe, which accounts for nearly half of worldwide sales, consumption fell 2.8% last year. In France, one of the key global producers, 3.6% less wine was consumed last year. Spain and Portugal were among the rare markets where consumption increased.

The OIV said production had been hit by environmental extremes such as above-average rainfall in some regions and droughts in others.

Italy was the world’s top producer with 44m hectolitres, while France’s output fell 23% to 36.1m hectolitres, its lowest level since 1957.

Italy is also the biggest wine exporter and its trade increased because of the popularity of sparkling wines such as prosecco.

Spain produced 31m hectolitres, while US wine output fell 17.2% to 21.1m hectolitres, mainly because of extreme heat.

The OIV could not predict if consumption would take off again and industry players, such as the French chain of wine shops Nicolas, say there is a “generational” fall in drinking.

“People do not drink in a festive way any more and young people consume less than their parents,” the company said in a statement to Agence France-Presse.

However, “people drink less, but better”, Nicolas said, and so are ready to spend more.