Donald Trump has said the US is ready to “take a pass” on brokering a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine unless a settlement is reached “very shortly”, as Kyiv announced it has signed a memorandum with the US over a controversial minerals deal.

“Now if for some reason one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we’re just going to say: ‘You’re foolish. You’re fools. You’re horrible people’ – and we’re going to just take a pass,” Trump told reporters in Washington. “But hopefully we won’t have to do that.”

Trump declined to give a “specific number of days” for when the US would stop trying to negotiate a truce. “But quickly. We want to get it done.”

Asked whether he was being “played” by Putin, Trump said: “Nobody’s playing me, I’m trying to help.”

Trump’s comments came after the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio said the US was ready to abandon its efforts “within days.

Speaking in Paris on Friday after meeting European and Ukrainian leaders, Rubio said Trump was still interested in a deal. But he added that the US president had many other priorities around the world and was willing to “move on” unless there were signs of progress.

“It is not our war. We didn’t start it,” Rubio said, adding that if a deal were not possible – with both sides still far apart – the US president was “probably at a point where he’s going to say, well, we’re done”. Trump felt “very strongly” about this, he said.

Rubio’s comments were the clearest signal yet that the White House is ready to walk away from its diplomatic attempts to negotiate an end to the war. It was unclear if this would also mean an end to US military assistance to Kyiv. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said this week that deliveries had already “practically stopped”.

Last month Zelenskyy agreed to a US proposal for a 30-day ceasefire. The Kremlin, however, has rejected the plan. Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said on Friday that ending the war was “not a simple topic”. Moscow was seeking a settlement that “ensured its own interests”, he added.

In recent weeks Russia has launched a fresh military push across the 600-mile (1,000km) frontline and stepped up its air attacks on Ukrainian civilians and infrastructure. On Sunday it bombed the city of Sumy, killing 35 people and injuring 117.

Since Trump returned to the White House in January he has piled pressure on Ukraine, stopping most US military assistance and temporarily cutting off intelligence sharing. This week he falsely blamed Zelenskyy and Joe Biden for “starting” the war.

In contrast, Trump has refused to criticise the Russian president or to impose sanctions on or punish Moscow. Senior US officials – including the special envoy Steve Witkoff, who held talks last week with Putin in St Petersburg – have instead parroted Kremlin talking points.

According to Bloomberg, the latest US peace plan presented on Thursday to European leaders would in effect freeze the war along the existing frontline. Russia would keep the territory it occupies, while Kyiv would not be allowed to join Nato.

Talks are due to continue in London next week. US officials conceded that the proposal would be irrelevant if the Kremlin did not agree to stop the fighting, and said security guarantees were essential for Ukraine if the deal were to work, Bloomberg reported.

The US vice-president, JD Vance, speaking in Rome after a meeting with the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, said he was optimistic “the very brutal war” could be stopped. “Even in the past 24 hours, we think we have some interesting things to report on,” he said.

Meanwhile, significant details of the minerals deal remain unclear, including whether Kyiv has agreed to a White House demand that it “pays back” the cost of earlier military assistance.

Zelenskyy was poised in February to sign a framework agreement over a wide-ranging economic partnership. It was derailed after his disastrous encounter with Trump and Vance in the Oval Office.

Since then negotiations have continued. Overnight, Ukraine’s first deputy prime minister, Yuliia Svyrydenko, said a memorandum had been finalised. It paved the way for the setting up of an investment fund for the reconstruction of Ukraine, she indicated.

“We are happy to announce the signing with our American partners,” she said. Speaking to reporters in the White House, Trump said a deal could be signed next Thursday.

The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, added: “We’re still working on the details.” He said the latest version ran to 80 pages and was “substantially what we’d agree on previously”. “That’s what we will be signing,” he said.

According to the latest draft, seen by the Guardian, Ukraine acknowledges the “significant material and financial support” Kyiv has received from the US since Russia’s 2022 invasion and the desire from both countries for a “lasting peace”.

It says Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, will visit Washington next week to hold final “technical talks” with Bessent. They are expected to complete discussions on a “reconstruction investment fund”, the memo adds.

The deal would need to be ratified by Ukraine’s parliament, Ukraine’s deputy minister of economy said on Friday.

Zelenskyy is keen to improve relations with the Trump administration. At the same time, he has so far rejected the White House’s demand that revenue from the new joint fund is used to cover the cost of weapons deliveries provided by the Biden administration.

Trump has previously said Ukraine “owes” the US $300bn (£226bn). Zelenskyy has pointed out this assistance was given as a grant, not as a loan, with Republicans and Democrats approving it in Congress. Any future partnership has to be based on “parity”, and should benefit both countries, he says.

The deal may help US weapons manufacturers, who are facing a critical shortfall of key rare-earth minerals imported from China. Beijing has restricted its export in response to Trump’s escalating trade war.

Volodymyr Landa, a senior economist with the Centre for Economic Strategy thinktank in Kyiv, said the deal had gone through “multiple iterations”. He added: “It’s hard to say what’s inside.”

Landa said he did not expect Kyiv to accept that previous “non-refundable military aid” was now “debt”. “That’s not only unfair and unrealistic, but may also negatively affect the full global financial system,” he said.

He continued: “If it suddenly turns out that countries and organisations can demand payments for aid given unconditionally in previous years, it will make recipients more cautious, and could reopen difficult issues from previous decades around the world.”

The latest negotiations came as Russia killed one person and injured about 70 in a ballistic missile strike on a residential area of the city of Kharkiv, in the north-east of Ukraine. Five of the injured were children. There were also strikes on Dnipro, Kyiv and Mykolaiv, as well as the Donetsk region.

“This is how Russia began this Good Friday – with ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, Shaheds – maiming our people and cities,” Zelenskyy wrote on social media.

Kharkiv’s mayor, Ihor Terekhov, said the Russians used ballistic missiles equipped with cluster munitions. “That is why the affected areas are so extensive,” he said. At least 20 blocks of flats, 30 houses and an educational institution were damaged.

On Palm Sunday Russia dropped two Iskander missiles in the city centre of Sumy. One of them hit a congress centre. The other exploded between two university buildings and next to a crowded bus and cars.

One key to a successful negotiation is always being willing to walk away from the table. But it isn’t clear whether the Trump administration has threatened to give up on a Russia-Ukraine peace deal as a negotiating tactic or simply because it lacks the concentration for a complicated negotiation – a shortcoming that has dogged the administration’s foreign policy through its first three months in office.

Standing on a tarmac in Paris, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, issued a threat that the US could simply “move on” from mediating the biggest military conflict in Europe since the second world war. That would be the latest about-face for an administration that has already taken a back seat on negotiating a peace in Gaza and retreated on implementing worldwide tariffs that shook financial markets around the globe earlier this month.

Diplomacy, it turns out, is hard. The 24 hours that Donald Trump promised he would need to halt the fighting in Ukraine have long since passed. And the administration has done little of the hard diplomatic work that was required to secure landmark deals like the Dayton agreement or the Camp David accords in the past.

There have been plenty of meetings: Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff has spoken three times with Vladimir Putin, during which he has listened to the Kremlin leader’s thoughts on Ukraine for hours, and Rubio was on the phone with Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, and met with Ukrainian officials and European leaders in Paris on Thursday.

But there are few indications that new ground has been struck, that the US has exerted any pressure on the Kremlin or that the negotiations have identified what kinds of security guarantees would exist to ensure that Russia wouldn’t simply continue the war when it sees fit. One element of a “Trump deal” appears to be this: that it doesn’t take very long or involve very much effort to achieve.

“We’re not going to continue to fly all over the world and do meeting after meeting after meeting if no progress is being made,” Rubio said, noting that the US wanted to stop “thousands” of people from dying in the next year. “So if they’re serious about peace – either side, or both – we want to help. If it’s not going to happen, then we’re just going to move on. We’re going to move on to other topics that are equally if not more important in some ways to the United States.”

Rubio clearly wished to vent frustration on Friday, a day after Trump had said in the White House that he was waiting for Russia’s response to the proposed framework for a peace deal and expected to have it this week. The White House appears to be increasingly frustrated with Moscow, something that both European and Ukrainian officials had hoped would take place.

But if Trump walks away from a deal and the war altogether, the decision will still play into Putin’s hands – relieving Ukraine of a key ally and financial backer in its fight against Russia. Moscow appears to see the situation as a win-win: either taking a favourable deal with the White House or waiting for Trump to lose patience. Which he is now threatening to do.

There are more hopeful voices in the administration. JD Vance, the Ukraine-sceptic vice-president, told Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, on Friday that he felt “optimistic that we can hopefully bring this war, this very brutal war, to a close”. There had been “some things … even in the past 24 hours” that he said could indicate a chance to secure a ceasefire.

But to listen to Rubio or Witkoff, the various sides have barely moved from their opening positions. On Friday, Bloomberg reported that the United States had offered Russia some sanctions relief in exchange for a deal – something that Rubio had offered as far back as his confirmation hearings in January. And Witkoff appeared surprised on Fox News that Russia wanted “so much more” than just a ceasefire. “I mean, it’s just a lot of detail attached to it,” he said. “It’s a complicated situation from, you know – rooted in some real problematic things happening between the two countries.”

There was always an expertise gap in the difficult negotiations over a ceasefire to the Russian war in Ukraine. Now the administration appears to have a patience gap and has signaled it is ready to walk away. Ukraine does not have that option.

Australia will use “whatever avenues” it can to help Melbourne man Oscar Jenkins, who faces a 15-year jail term in Russia for fighting with Ukrainian troops.

The prime minister said on Saturday that the government would “continue to make representations to the reprehensible regime of Vladimir Putin” to release Jenkins, 33, a former teacher who fought with Ukraine’s armed forces against Russia’s invasion.

After initial reports in January that Jenkins had died in captivity, Russia then confirmed he was alive and in custody. In February video of him appeared on YouTube in which he appeared weak and said he thought he had a broken arm.

• Sign up for the Afternoon Update: Election 2025 email newsletter

According to several news reports on Saturday, the Russian prosecutor’s office in Luhansk – eastern Ukrainian territory currently occupied by Russia – has approved a criminal indictment against Jenkins. The Guardian has confirmed that a charge was laid.

Russia has indicted other foreign prisoners of war.

“We continue to hold serious concerns for Mr Jenkins and are working with Ukraine and other partners to advocate for his welfare and release.” a spokesperson for Australia’s department of foreign affairs and trade said.

The ABC reported that the indictment claimed “a citizen of Australia, on his own initiative, in order to receive material remuneration, arrived on the territory of Ukraine to participate as a mercenary in an armed conflict with the Russian Federation on the side of enemy troops”.

The ABC also cited local media claiming he was paid up to $15,000 a month to fight on Ukraine’s side against Russia.

The foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, has said Jenkins was being held as a prisoner of war, which would mean he should be afforded the protection of international humanitarian law. But Moscow referred to him as a mercenary, which would mean he is not covered by the conventions.

Anthony Albanese said on Saturday the Australian government would “stand up and use whatever avenues we have at our disposal to continue to make those representations [on behalf of Jenkins] … both to Russia, but also, of course, through our friends in Ukraine, who have also made representations as well”.

“The Russian war against the people of Ukraine is a war against international law. It’s against national sovereignty.

“The people of Ukraine are fighting for a democratic nation, for their own sovereignty, but they’re also fighting for the international rule of law, which is why we do want to see peace, but we do want to see it on the terms that are acceptable to Ukraine.”

The government is considering sending a peacekeeping force to Ukraine, a plan opposed by the Coalition.

The US will witness its second wave of protests in a fortnight on Saturday as organizers seek to turn discontent with Donald Trump’s presidency into a mass movement that will eventually translate into action at the ballot box.

More than 400 rallies are anticipated across the nation loosely organized by the group 50501, which stands for 50 protests in 50 states, one movement.

It is the fourth protest event to be staged by the group since Trump was inaugurated on 20 January. Previous events included a “No Kings Day” on President’s Day, 17 February, a theme adopted before Trump referred to himself as a king in a social media post days later.

Organizers have called for 11 million people to participate in the latest rallies, representing 3.5% of the US population.

Such a figure would likely the surpass the numbers who took part in the “Hands Off” rallies staged on 5 April, when 1,200 demonstrations were staged across the US to register opposition to Trump’s assault on government agencies and institutions, spearheaded by the president’s chief lieutenant, the tech billionaire Elon Musk and his unofficial “department of government efficiency” (Doge) unit.

Indivisible, the progressive movement behind the “Hands Off” events said it was it was seeking to send a message to opposition politicians and ordinary voters that vocal resistance to Trump’s policies was essential. It also said it was seeking to build momentum that would lead to further and larger protests.

Heather Dunn, a spokesperson for 50501, said the goal of Saturday’s protests is “to protect our democracy against the rise of authoritarianism under the Trump administration”.

She called the group a “pro-democracy, pro-constitution, anti-executive overreach, nonviolent grassroots movement” that was nonpartisan.

“We have registered Democrats, registered independents and registered Republicans all marching because they all believe in America, because they all believe in a fair government that puts people before profits,” she told the Washington Post.

Academics who have tracked the slide of democracy into authoritarianism say protests can be part of a wider of strategy to reverse the trend.

“Oppositions to authoritarian governments have to use multiple channels always,” said Steven Levitsky, a political scientist at Harvard University and co-author, with Daniel Ziblatt, of How Democracies Die. “They have to use the courts where those are available. They have to use the ballot box when that’s available, and they have to use the streets when necessary – that can shape media framing and media discourse, which is very, very important.”

In Washington DC on Saturday, protests are scheduled to take place outside vice-president JD Vance’s home, on the grounds of the Washington Naval Observatory, as well as in Lafayette Square. A march is planned starting nearby the George Washington monument that will head towards the White House in support of Kilmar Ábrego García, a Salvadoran man with US protected status wrongly deported to El Salvador from Maryland, according to court rulings.

Twenty-one humanoid robots joined thousands of runners at the Yizhuang half-marathon in Beijing on Saturday, the first time these machines have raced alongside humans over a 21-kilometre (13-mile) course.

The robots from Chinese manufacturers such as DroidVP and Noetix Robotics came in all shapes and sizes, some shorter than 120cm (3ft 9in), others as tall as 1.8m (5ft 9in). One company boasted that its robot looked almost human, with feminine features and the ability to wink and smile. Some firms tested their robots for weeks before the race. Beijing officials have described the event as more akin to a race car competition, given the need for engineering and navigation teams.

“The robots are running very well, very stable … I feel I’m witnessing the evolution of robots and AI,” said spectator He Sishu, who works in artificial intelligence.

The robots were accompanied by human trainers, some of whom had to physically support the machines during the race. A few of the robots wore running shoes, with one donning boxing gloves and another wearing a red headband with the words “Bound to Win” in Chinese.

The winning robot was Tiangong Ultra, from the Beijing Innovation Centre of Human Robotics, with a time of 2hr 40min. The men’s winner of the race had a time of 1hr 2min. The centre is 43% owned by two state-owned enterprises, while tech giant Xiaomi’s robotics arm and leading Chinese humanoid robot firm UBTech have equal share in the rest.

Tang Jian, chief technology officer for the robotics centre, said Tiangong Ultra’s performance was aided by long legs and an algorithm allowing it to imitate how humans run a marathon. “I don’t want to boast but I think no other robotics firms in the West have matched Tiangong’s sporting achievements,” Tang said, adding that the robot switched batteries just three times during the race.

Some robots, like Tiangong Ultra, completed the race, while others struggled from the beginning. One robot fell at the starting line and lay flat for a few minutes before getting up and taking off. One crashed into a railing after running a few metres, causing its human operator to fall over.

Although humanoid robots have made appearances at marathons in China over the past year, this is the first time they have raced alongside humans. China is hoping that investment in frontier industries like robotics can help create new engines of economic growth. Some analysts, though, question whether having robots enter marathons is a reliable indicator of their industrial potential.

After walking the Earth for a few hundred thousand years, humans might think they have seen it all. But not according to a team of scientists who claim to have experienced a colour no one has seen before.

The bold – and contested – assertion follows an experiment in which researchers in the US had laser pulses fired into their eyes. By stimulating individual cells in the retina, the laser pushed their perception beyond its natural limits, they say.

Their description of the colour is not too arresting – the five people who have seen it call it blue-green – but that, they say, does not fully capture the richness of the experience.

“We predicted from the beginning that it would look like an unprecedented colour signal but we didn’t know what the brain would do with it,” said Ren Ng, an electrical engineer at the University of California, Berkeley. “It was jaw-dropping. It’s incredibly saturated.”

The researchers shared an image of a turquoise square to give a sense of the colour, which they named olo, but stressed that the hue could only be experienced through laser manipulation of the retina.

“There is no way to convey that colour in an article or on a monitor,” said Austin Roorda, a vision scientist on the team. “The whole point is that this is not the colour we see, it’s just not. The colour we see is a version of it, but it absolutely pales by comparison with the experience of olo.”

Humans perceive the colours of the world when light falls on colour-sensitive cells called cones in the retina. There are three types of cones that are sensitive to long (L), medium (M) and short (S) wavelengths of light.

Natural light is a blend of multiple wavelengths that stimulate L, M and S cones to different extents. The variations are perceived as different colours. Red light primarily stimulates L cones, while blue light chiefly activates S cones. But M cones sit in the middle and there is no natural light that excites these alone.

The Berkeley team set out to overcome the limitation. They began by mapping a small part of a person’s retina to pinpoint the positions of their M cones. A laser is then used to scan the retina. When it comes to an M cone, after adjusting for movement of the eye, it fires a tiny pulse of light to stimulate the cell, before moving on to the next cone.

The result, published in Science Advances, is a patch of colour in the field of vision about twice the size of a full moon. The colour is beyond the natural range of the naked eye because the M cones are stimulated almost exclusively, a state natural light cannot achieve. The name olo comes from the binary 010, indicating that of the L, M and S cones, only the M cones are switched on.

The claim left one expert bemused. “It is not a new colour,” said John Barbur, a vision scientist at City St George’s, University of London. “It’s a more saturated green that can only be produced in a subject with normal red-green chromatic mechanism when the only input comes from M cones.” The work, he said, had “limited value”.

The researchers believe the tool, named Oz vision after the Emerald City in the L Frank Baum books, will help them probe basic science questions about how the brain creates visual perceptions of the world. But it may have other applications. Through bespoke stimulation of cells in the retina, researchers might learn more about colour blindness or diseases that affect vision such as retinitis pigmentosa.

Will the rest of the world get the chance to experience olo for themselves? “This is basic science,” said Ng. “We’re not going to see olo on any smartphone displays or any TVs any time soon. And this is very, very far beyond VR headset technology.”

Associating with the Donald Trump administration’s multibillionaire adviser Elon Musk and misusing artificial intelligence are among the most surefire ways for companies to damage their brands, a new survey of more than 100 international public affairs leaders found.

Those findings stem from an appraisal conducted by the Global Risk Advisory Council, which was chaired by the head of the US Small Business Administration during Joe Biden’s presidency, Isabel Guzman.

In a statement, Brett Bruen of the Global Situation Room, the Washington DC-based public affairs firm that commissioned the survey, said the council’s “reputation risk index” contains an “unambiguous warning” for chief executive officers. “If you squander stakeholder and consumer goodwill on these issues, it won’t be coming back anytime soon,” said Bruen, before calling on companies to “slow down” and “make a distinction between transitory and tectonic transitions”.

Nearly 30% of a 117-member group hailing from 17 different countries and 58 industries – among them former heads of state and US officials – indicated that aligning oneself with Musk, or being targeted by him, generated the strongest likelihood possible of being thrust under heightened scrutiny.

The world’s richest person – whose holdings include the aerospace company SpaceX, the electrical vehicle manufacturer Tesla and the social media platform X – donated part of his wealth to Trump’s successful run for a second presidency in November. After Trump returned to the Oval Office in January, Musk has overseen brutal federal budget and staffing cuts overseen by the president’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), giving him what Guzman has described as a “controversial omnipresence in the media landscape”.

That observation falls in line with some public opinion polling that has suggested strong disapproval of the work Musk has done for Trump. A Quinnipiac University survey released in March which showed 60% of voters look down on the way that the businessman and Doge “are dealing with workers employed by the federal government”. Stock in Tesla slumped amid the backlash. And there were subsequently reports that Musk would gradually shift away from his prominent place within the Trump administration.

“The impact of association with influential figures in today’s heavily divided environment cannot be understated, especially with a deeply polarizing leader like … Musk,” Guzman wrote in a summary of the index’s findings.

Yet an even greater threat to brands were earning stories that feature “creating deepfakes, misinformation, biased decision-making or unethical applications that cause harm or manipulate public perception”, the survey said. Attracting that kind of coverage was reportedly viewed “as the most likely to gain negative online news attention”, the survey added.

An unnamed council member reportedly said: “AI, if not understood or managed in companies, can have an incredible trickle-down effect that may not be reversible.” One of the group’s experts noted that organizations these days need to regard AI policies as equally standard to those that account for more mundane aspects of their operations.

Rolling back diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives aiming “to ensure fair treatment and full participation for all individuals” was labeled brands’ third top risk. The Trump administration has aggressively moved to eliminate such measures within the government, military and beyond, including at Harvard, where the White House recently axed more than $2bn in federal research funding after the university refused to end DEI programs, one of several demands from the president.

Anticompetitive practices and facing allegations of defamation round out the top five reputational risks flagged by the first edition of a survey planned for quarterly publication.

“This data is not just numbers; it indicates the complex communications challenges facing organizations constantly,” wrote Guzman, adding the committee’s members suspect that reputational threats are bound to only escalate in the short term.

Other members of the council that produced the survey include Iceland’s former foreign affairs minister Thórdís Kolbrún Reykfjord Gylfadóttir; Bank of Ireland public affairs head Paul O’Brien; DoorDash’s global head of public affairs Taylor Bennett; American Association of Exporters and Importers president Eugene Laney; and Maria Toler, the founder of SteelSky Ventures, a venture capital fund focused on women’s healthcare.

Associating with the Donald Trump administration’s multibillionaire adviser Elon Musk and misusing artificial intelligence are among the most surefire ways for companies to damage their brands, a new survey of more than 100 international public affairs leaders found.

Those findings stem from an appraisal conducted by the Global Risk Advisory Council, which was chaired by the head of the US Small Business Administration during Joe Biden’s presidency, Isabel Guzman.

In a statement, Brett Bruen of the Global Situation Room, the Washington DC-based public affairs firm that commissioned the survey, said the council’s “reputation risk index” contains an “unambiguous warning” for chief executive officers. “If you squander stakeholder and consumer goodwill on these issues, it won’t be coming back anytime soon,” said Bruen, before calling on companies to “slow down” and “make a distinction between transitory and tectonic transitions”.

Nearly 30% of a 117-member group hailing from 17 different countries and 58 industries – among them former heads of state and US officials – indicated that aligning oneself with Musk, or being targeted by him, generated the strongest likelihood possible of being thrust under heightened scrutiny.

The world’s richest person – whose holdings include the aerospace company SpaceX, the electrical vehicle manufacturer Tesla and the social media platform X – donated part of his wealth to Trump’s successful run for a second presidency in November. After Trump returned to the Oval Office in January, Musk has overseen brutal federal budget and staffing cuts overseen by the president’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), giving him what Guzman has described as a “controversial omnipresence in the media landscape”.

That observation falls in line with some public opinion polling that has suggested strong disapproval of the work Musk has done for Trump. A Quinnipiac University survey released in March which showed 60% of voters look down on the way that the businessman and Doge “are dealing with workers employed by the federal government”. Stock in Tesla slumped amid the backlash. And there were subsequently reports that Musk would gradually shift away from his prominent place within the Trump administration.

“The impact of association with influential figures in today’s heavily divided environment cannot be understated, especially with a deeply polarizing leader like … Musk,” Guzman wrote in a summary of the index’s findings.

Yet an even greater threat to brands were earning stories that feature “creating deepfakes, misinformation, biased decision-making or unethical applications that cause harm or manipulate public perception”, the survey said. Attracting that kind of coverage was reportedly viewed “as the most likely to gain negative online news attention”, the survey added.

An unnamed council member reportedly said: “AI, if not understood or managed in companies, can have an incredible trickle-down effect that may not be reversible.” One of the group’s experts noted that organizations these days need to regard AI policies as equally standard to those that account for more mundane aspects of their operations.

Rolling back diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives aiming “to ensure fair treatment and full participation for all individuals” was labeled brands’ third top risk. The Trump administration has aggressively moved to eliminate such measures within the government, military and beyond, including at Harvard, where the White House recently axed more than $2bn in federal research funding after the university refused to end DEI programs, one of several demands from the president.

Anticompetitive practices and facing allegations of defamation round out the top five reputational risks flagged by the first edition of a survey planned for quarterly publication.

“This data is not just numbers; it indicates the complex communications challenges facing organizations constantly,” wrote Guzman, adding the committee’s members suspect that reputational threats are bound to only escalate in the short term.

Other members of the council that produced the survey include Iceland’s former foreign affairs minister Thórdís Kolbrún Reykfjord Gylfadóttir; Bank of Ireland public affairs head Paul O’Brien; DoorDash’s global head of public affairs Taylor Bennett; American Association of Exporters and Importers president Eugene Laney; and Maria Toler, the founder of SteelSky Ventures, a venture capital fund focused on women’s healthcare.

Microplastics have been found for the first time in human ovary follicular fluid, raising a new round of questions about the ubiquitous and toxic substances’ potential impact on women’s fertility.

The new peer-reviewed research published in Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety checked for microplastics in the follicular fluid of 18 women undergoing assisted reproductive treatment at a fertility clinic in Salerno, Italy, and detected them in 14.

Follicular fluid provides essential nutrients and biochemical signals for developing eggs. Contaminating that process with bits of plastic quite likely has implications for fertility, hormonal balance and overall reproductive health, the authors wrote.

The findings represent a major step toward figuring out how and why microplastics impact women’s reproductive health, but are also “very alarming”, Luigi Montano, a researcher at the University of Rome and study lead author, said.

“This discovery should serve as an important warning signal about the invasiveness of these emerging contaminants in the female reproductive system,” the study states.

From the top of Mt Everest to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, microplastics and smaller nanoplastics have been detected throughout the environment. Food is thought to be a main exposure route: recent studies found them in all meat and produce products tested.

Microplastics are particularly dangerous because they can contain any number of 16,000 plastic chemicals. That includes highly toxic compounds like PFAS, bisphenol and phthalates that are linked to cancer, neurotoxicity, hormone disruption or developmental toxicity.

Microplastics have been found throughout the human body and can cross the brain and placental barriers.

Montano’s latest paper is part of a larger project he’s leading for which he has also detected microplastics in human urine and semen, and examines the impacts on fertility. He said he suspects microplastics are among chemicals driving plummeting sperm counts and a drop in overall sperm quality.

“We have proven this decline, especially in areas where pollution is bad,” Montano said.

Though men are more susceptible to the substance’s toxic effects, he added, women are also possibly impacted. Animal research has linked the presence of microplastics to ovarian dysfunction and health problems, like reduced oocyte maturation, and a lower capacity for fertilization. Another study on mice showed alterations to ovarian tissue.

The paper notes a “possible presence of correlation between the concentration of microplastics” and reproductive health in the women who participated in the new study.

Montano added that the bisphenol, phthalates, PFAS and other highly toxic chemicals that use microplastics as a “trojan horse” to get into the body, and into the ovaries, are “very dangerous”. The chemicals are already well-known for disrupting hormones and harming women’s reproductive health.

The follicular fluid paper offers a “very important finding”, said Xiaozhong Yu, a University of New Mexico microplastics researcher, but he added that more work is needed to determine the dose and level of exposure at which adverse effects start to happen.

“This is the work in the next phase – we need to quantify,” Yu said. His team is also attempting to answer some of those questions with broader epidemiological research.

Montano’s team is doing similar work, and he’s spearheading research that is trying to determine how much reducing the use of plastic in the kitchen and eating an organic diet, will reduce the level of microplastics in the body.

The substances’ ubiquity makes it difficult to avoid, but reducing the amount of plastic used in the kitchen – from packaging to storage to utensils – can likely reduce exposures. Pesticides can contain microplastics, or in some cases are a form of microplastics, so eating organic may help.

Experts also advise that people avoid heating plastic, or putting hot food and liquid in plastic.

Single-use paper coffee cups, for example, can shed trillions of bits of plastic when hot liquid is added. Similarly, tea bags can release billions of particles, and microwavable plastic is also a problem. Plastic utensils that briefly come into contact with hot pans can also leach chemicals, and wood and stainless steel alternatives are better.

For many Americans celebrating Easter, the holiday is incomplete without chocolate: chocolate bunnies and eggs, bars tucked into Easter baskets, candy hidden in plastic eggs for Easter egg hunts.

But the rocketing cocoa costs will mean higher prices for chocolate candy this year, and Donald Trump’s tariffs on all imports will likely keep prices high for the foreseeable future.

Every year, Americans spend billions of dollars on sweets during what the National Confectioners Association calls “the big four candy seasons”: Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween and the holidays. Last year, Americans spent $5.4bn in Easter candy, according to the association.

But the price of chocolate candy specifically has been rising over the last year, largely because of the soaring cost of cocoa, the key ingredient for chocolate. In 2023, farmers in west Africa – where 70% of the world’s cocoa is harvested – started to struggle with climate-related crises, including drought and plant disease, that decimated their cocoa production.

Estimates put the cocoa deficit at over 400,000, significantly inflating the price of cocoa over the last few years. Cocoa has cost around $2,000 a ton over the last few decades. In 2024, it peaked at over $12,000.

This has led to chocolate prices soaring across the world. Hershey, the biggest chocolate producer in the United States, raised the prices of its chocolates last year, and ultimately struggled to maintain consumer demand. The company had its worst profit in seven years in 2024.

Chocolate is particularly sensitive to price increases because it’s an item in the grocery store that doesn’t really have any substitutes, said Joseph Balagtas, a professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University. This is why the price of eggs has risen so much, and why painting potatoes instead doesn’t quite work.

“If you know you’re going to grill this weekend and chicken prices are high, maybe you’re more likely to make hamburgers or pork chops rather than chicken breast,” Balagtas said. “But chocolate-chip cookies without chocolate chips are a little tough.”

And now, with Trump’s new tariffs in place, the price of chocolate is expected to rise even more. While economists don’t know exactly what the effects of tariffs will look like, the Yale Budget Lab estimates that tariffs could cost consumers $4,900 a year, with an average price increase of 3% across all goods.

Chocolate prices will be no exception. When Trump introduced his latest slate of tariffs in early April, he had a direct message for American companies. “If you want your tariff rate to be zero,” he said, “then you build your product right here in America.”

For many businesses deeply tied to the global supply chain, shifting manufacturing to the US is complicated and costly. For chocolate manufacturers, it’s impossible.

The cacao plant, which produces cocoa, can only be grown in tropical climates, of which there are only two in the US: Hawaii and Puerto Rico. This means the vast majority of cocoa consumed in the US are imported.

“The United States produces, I’m going to generously say, 100 tons of cocoa a year,” said Greg D’Alesandre, co-owner and chocolate “sourcerer” for Dandelion Chocolate in San Francisco. “We use about 120 tons of cocoa a year, and Dandelion is considered a very, very small chocolate maker. There’s no chance that [the US] can make all the cocoa that we actually need.”

This means that chocolate makers big and small are affected by universal tariffs. Not only do chocolate producers have to worry about the high price of cocoa, but also inflation in other parts of their manufacturing process.

“I’m more concerned about packaging prices,” said Oliver Holecek, owner of Primo Chocolate based in Troy, New York. “Most paper manufacturing happens in China, and there’s just really not a lot of great resources in the US yet.”

Shipping prices could also be impacted by the tariffs, as congestion builds up at American ports as companies grapple with the new tariffs.

It all adds up to an unstable environment, particularly for smaller chocolate businesses that don’t have the leverage and resources as bigger manufacturers.

While Dandelion had to increase prices last year amid the rise in cocoa prices, D’Alesandre said it’s unclear how the company’s customer base will respond to further increases.

“I’ve known three chocolate makers that have gone out of business over the last three years because there’s too much turmoil in pricing,” D’Alesandre said. “It’s very difficult to make a plan for it … we’re doing our best to make plans, but a lot of it is wait and see.”

Iran’s top negotiator believes reaching an agreement on its nuclear programme with the US is possible as long as Washington is realistic, as the two sides prepare to resume talks in Rome on Saturday.

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araqchi, and the US Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, will begin indirect negotiations through mediators from Oman, after their first round in Muscat, which both sides described as constructive.

“If they demonstrate seriousness of intent and do not make unrealistic demands, reaching agreements is possible,” Araqchi told a news conference in Moscow on Friday after talks with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.

Tehran has, however, sought to tamp down expectations of a quick deal. The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said this week he was “neither overly optimistic nor pessimistic”.

The talks take place under the shadow of Donald Trump’s threat to attack Iran if it does not reach a deal with the US over its nuclear programme.

The US president told reporters on Friday: “I’m for stopping Iran, very simply, from having a nuclear weapon. They can’t have a nuclear weapon. I want Iran to be great and prosperous and terrific.”

Trump, who ditched a 2015 nuclear pact between Iran and six powers during his first term in 2018 and reimposed crippling sanctions on Tehran, has revived his “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran since returning to the White House in January.

Washington wants Iran to halt production of highly enriched uranium, which it believes is aimed at building an atomic bomb.

Tehran, which has always said its nuclear programme is peaceful, says it is willing to negotiate some curbs in return for the lifting of sanctions, but wants watertight guarantees that Washington will not renege again as Trump did in 2018.

Araghchi said Iran’s right to enrich uranium was “non-negotiable”, after Witkoff called for its complete halt.

Since 2019, Iran has breached and far surpassed the 2015 deal’s limits on its uranium enrichment, producing stocks far above what the west says is necessary for a civilian energy programme.

In an interview published on Wednesday by French newspaper Le Monde, the UN nuclear watchdog chief, Rafael Grossi, said Iran was “not far” from possessing a nuclear bomb.

Grossi, who held talks with Iranian officials during a visit to Tehran this week, said the US and Iran were “at a very crucial stage” in the talks and “don’t have much time” to secure a deal.

A rise in misogyny and racism is flooding UK schools as pupils ape the behaviour of figures such as Donald Trump and Andrew Tate after exposure through social media and online gaming, teachers have warned.

A survey by the NASUWT union found most teachers identified social media as “the number one cause” of pupil misbehaviour, with female staff bearing the brunt. Teachers also raised concerns about parents who refuse to accept school rules or take responsibility for their children’s behaviour.

One teacher told the union: “A lot of the students are influenced by Tate and Trump, they spout racist, homophobic, transphobic and sexist comments in every conversation and don’t believe there will be consequences.”

The NASUWT’s general secretary, Patrick Roach, told the union’s annual conference on Friday: “Two in three teachers tell us that social media is now a critical factor contributing to bullying and poor pupil behaviour.

“Pupils who believe it is their inalienable right to access their mobile phones throughout the school day – and use them to interrupt lessons, bully others, act out, or to garner respect from their peers.”

One primary teacher said: “I have had boys refuse to speak to me, and speak to a male teaching assistant instead, because I am a woman and they follow Andrew Tate and think he is amazing with all his cars and women and how women should be treated. These were 10-year-olds.”

Others reported instances of boys “barking at female staff and blocking doorways … as a direct result of Andrew Tate videos”. Another teacher said: “Pupils watch violent and extreme pornographic material. Their attention spans have dropped. They read lots of fake news and sensationalised stories that make them feel empowered and that they know better than the teacher.”

Roach said the union had “positive discussions” with ministers about tackling the problem but warned that restricting access to mobile phones during the school day did not go far enough. “We now need a plan to tackle what has become a national emergency,” he said.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We know the rise of dangerous influencers is having a damaging impact on our children, which is why we are supporting the sector in their crucial role building young people’s resilience to extremism as part of our plan for change.

“That’s why we provide a range of resources to support teachers to navigate these challenging issues, and why our curriculum review will look at the skills children need to thrive in a fast-changing online world.

“This is on top of wider protections being brought in for children with the Online Safety Act, to ensure children have an age-appropriate experience online.”

The Liberal Democrats, however, said the union’s findings showed that more needed to be done. “Toxic algorithms are pushing many children into dark corners of the internet, where sinister attitudes that cause terrible harm in the real world, including in our schools, are free to develop,” the party’s education spokesperson, Munira Wilson, said.

Delegates to the NASUWT conference in Liverpool heard that parents had become increasingly hostile, and even violent, when called in to discuss their child’s behaviour.

Lindsay Hanger, a delegate from Norwich, said unacceptable behaviour was being tolerated in many schools in England because of a need to meet attendance targets “at any cost” and avoid suspensions or exclusions.

“I think the government needs to go further, with a strategy to ensure that all parents of school-aged children are expected to uphold behaviour strategies or risk their child being denied their place in the classroom,” Hanger said.

The conference passed a motion instructing the union to oppose “no exclusion” policies being legitimised across the education sector – a reference to campaigns seeking to end or curtail the use of exclusions.

Roach also told the conference that the union wanted “a real-terms pay award for teachers this autumn that is funded fully”, warning that anything less “will be met with the response from our members it deserves”.

Roach told Schools Week newspaper that the NASUWT would hold a formal strike ballot in England if the government ignored recommendations for above-inflation pay increases by the independent pay review body.

The conference also passed a motion ordering NASUWT leaders to rule out a merger with the National Education Union (NEU) or other unions. Some members are concerned that Matt Wrack, the former leader of the Fire Brigades Union and the leading candidate to replace Roach as general secretary, supports a merger with the more leftwing NEU.

Over the past couple of years, the Oxford-educated psychologist Barbara Santini has been widely quoted as an expert. She has contributed thoughts on everything from the psychological impact of the Covid pandemic to the importance of vitamin D and how playing darts can improve your health.

However, her pronouncements have begun to disappear from articles after concerns that Santini may not be all that she appears. Major news outlets have removed entire articles featuring Santini, or comments made by her, after a series of questions were raised over her qualifications – and even whether her entire identity could be an elaborate hoax.

The case has been described as a wake-up call for newsrooms, as AI tools make it far easier for bad actors to invent supposed experts for their own purposes. Santini’s output has been prolific, with comments in Vogue, Metro, Cosmopolitan, the i newspaper, the Express, Hello!, the Telegraph, the Daily Star, the Daily Mail and the Sun in recent years. She was also quoted in an article for the BBC’s international site, BBC.com.

On closer inspection, her main online presence is as a sex and relationships adviser at an online sex toy outlet, Peaches and Screams. Some of the articles featuring her include a link to the store. Her qualifications are described there as “psychologist and sex adviser – University of Oxford”. However, the British Psychological Society (BPS) said she was not one of its members. She does not appear to have social media profiles, though she has two followers on the blogging site Medium.

Questions over Santini were first raised by the Press Gazette. Peaches and Screams did not respond to repeated requests for comment. The Guardian made several attempts to reach her through a number understood to be connected to her, asking for a meeting or conference call to confirm her identity as well as verification of her qualifications. A message was eventually received stating: “Thank you for your interest in this matter.” No further verification was provided.

Some of the reporters who have quoted her said they received comments through companies that connect journalists with experts. Some cited one such service, ResponseSource. The company has now launched an investigation and suspended the PR agency that handled Santini, and is planning a peer review system that allows journalists to rate an expert they have featured.

Santini also briefly featured on Qwoted, another platform connecting experts to journalists. Shelby Bridges, its director of user success, said the profile was removed after it found “immediate red flags pertaining to credentials and where the account was being accessed from”. She added: “Due to our inability to fully validate her credentials, we disabled the account shortly after it was created.”

Reach, which owns the Daily Mirror, Daily Express and Daily Star, is among the news outlets removing Santini from its coverage. This includes a Daily Star article in which Santini talked about how darts improved qualities such as “planning, foresight and problem-solving”.

Also removed was a Daily Mirror story in which Santini said the Covid pandemic had left some people with “difficulties establishing new relationships, heightened irritability, or a tendency to avoid social situations entirely”. The Guardian has removed her comments from an advertising feature on its website.

The BBC has removed her comments from a piece about AI by BBC Future, commissioned by BBC.com. A BBC spokesperson said: “As a widely used commentator, Barbara Santini’s quotes were used in good faith by BBC Future. While the substance of the article remains valid and her contribution was minor, given we have been unable to confirm Santini’s credentials, we have removed her quotes from the piece.”

The Independent has removed several stories that featured Santini commenting on subjects such as the differences between abuse and BDSM, as well as the importance of vitamin D. Yahoo has removed Santini’s quotes from articles, adding the clarification: “An earlier version of this story included information from a source whose expertise may not be valid. The quotes from the source have been removed.”

While the details of Santini’s case remain unclear, it has raised the issue of how journalists verify the credentials of sources in the AI age. Charlie Beckett, the leader of the journalism and AI project at the London School of Economics, said: “This is about long-running pressures on journalists to be quicker. This is not the AI itself that’s at fault here. This is unscrupulous people, it seems. It is a wake-up call to all of us, frankly.”

Roman Raczka, the president of the BPS, said: “Working with a professional membership body such as the British Psychological Society provides peace of mind to all reporters that they are speaking to a real person.”