Vladimir Putin has announced an “Easter Truce”, saying that Russian forces will stop combat operations from 6pm Moscow time on Saturday until midnight on Sunday.

In a surprise move, Russia’s president said he was ordering a temporary halt to the fighting out of “humanitarian considerations”. He said he expected Ukraine to follow suit and said this would be a test of whether the “regime” in Kyiv was interested in peace.

Putin’s made his remarks in a meeting with Russia’s commander-in-chief Valery Gerasimov, which was broadcast on state television. Ukrainians reacted sceptically, pointing out the announcement was made at the same time as an air raid alert sounded across the Kyiv region.

Russia has broken numerous ceasefire since its 2014 covert invasion of eastern Ukraine. Unlike Ukraine, it has refused to implement a 30-day pause in fighting proposed more than a month ago by the Trump administration.

Speaking on Saturday, Putin said Kyiv was guilty of violating a deal “100 times” to refrain from attacking Russian energy infrastructure. He commanded Gerasimov to prepare an “immediate response” if this were to happen again.

“Russia has already declared and violated such ceasefires before,” Anton Gerashchenko, a blogger and former Ukrainian interior ministry adviser, wrote on social media.

It came amid reports that the the Trump administration is considering recognising Crimea as a Russian territory as part of its attempt to broker a peace deal between the two sides.

According to sources cited by Bloomberg, the US may be willing to give Putin a strategic victory and to accept Russian control over the peninsula. In 2014, Russian special forces seized Crimea, which Putin annexed after a sham referendum.

US diplomatic recognition would violate the UN charter and the post-1945 consensus that countries cannot seize territory by force. Most states, including the UK, have refused to recognise Russia’s illegal takeover.

The possible concession to Moscow from the White House is likely to provoke criticism from the US’s one-time European allies and a furious backlash in Ukraine. It comes as Donald Trump said on Friday the US may “move on” if no peace deal can be agreed.

“Now if for some reason one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we’re just going to say you’re foolish. You are fools, you horrible people,” Trump declared, adding: “And we’re going to just take a pass. But, hopefully, we won’t have to do that.”

Talks over a settlement are due to continue this week in London. Leaks suggest the US is pushing for a Kremlin-friendly agreement that would see Russia keep occupied areas in the south and east of Ukraine, as well as Crimea.

It is also considering lifting sanctions on Moscow and other “carrots”, the New York Post reported. By contrast, Trump has heaped pressure on Ukraine, in effect cutting off military assistance and demanding a share of the country’s lucrative mineral wealth.

Russia’s apparent tactic is to restate its maximalist demands while stepping up its offensive on the battlefield. In talks with Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, Putin has insisted on Zelenskyy’s removal, Ukraine’s demilitarisation and its “neutral” non-Nato status.

Ukraine appears willing to accept a freeze of the conflict along the existing 1,000km-long (620 miles) frontline. But Zelenskyy has categorically rejected Witkoff’s recent comment that Crimea and four other Ukrainian provinces should be given permanently to Russia.

“I do not see any mandate for him [Witkoff] to speak about Ukrainian territories. These lands belong to our people, to our nation and to the future generations of Ukrainians,” Zelenskyy said last week.

A peace deal will only work if the Russians stop fighting, US officials told Bloomberg. “Negotiations will be fruitless if the Kremlin does not agree to cease hostilities. Providing Ukraine with security guarantees is an integral part of any agreement,” one reportedly acknowledged.

The source said no final decision over Crimea had been made. Since the US ceasefire proposal and ahead of Saturday’s “Easter truce”, Putin has stepped up attacks on Ukrainian civilians and infrastructure.

Two people died on Friday when Russia fired three ballistic missiles into a residential district of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city. The attack followed a devastating strike on the city of Sumy on Palm Sunday, in which 35 people were killed, including two children.

Russia has run Crimea for more than 11 years, transforming it from a holiday resort into a major military centre. It was used as a springboard for Putin’s full-scale 2022 invasion. Armoured columns seized large parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia provinces, as well as the city of Mariupol.

Ukraine regularly targets Russian army and naval bases in Crimea. It has bombed the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea fleet in the port of Sevastopol, using British Storm Shadow missiles. It has also targeted the bridge linking the peninsula to Russia with drones and a car bomb.

The posters are going up all over Hungary. “Let’s not allow them to decide for us,” runs the slogan alongside three classic villains of Hungarian government propaganda.

They are: Ukraine’s wartime leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy; the European Commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen; and Manfred Weber, the German politician who leads the centre-right European People’s party in the European parliament, which counts Hungary’s most potent opposition politician among its ranks.

That decision is Ukraine’s membership of the EU, a distant prospect not in the gift of any of the politicians now plastered across billboards in Hungary. Ballot papers, being sent out this week, ask a simple question: “Do you support Ukraine becoming a member of the EU?”

Despite the neutral question, Hungary’s government is not standing on the sidelines. After the launch of the campaign, the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, last week urged people to vote, claiming that Ukrainian membership would mean “we would have to spend all Hungary’s money on Ukraine”.

The government has also claimed – without offering evidence – that “cheap labour” from Ukraine would take jobs from Hungarians, while epidemics would spread because not enough Ukrainians get vaccinations.

The governing Fidesz party realised that “there is a sentiment against Hungary’s involvement in the war”, said László Andor, Hungary’s EU commissioner from 2010 to 2014. “But ever since, this has been used and abused to deny proper support to Ukraine.”

Hungary has repeatedly sought to block EU sanctions against Russia, eventually backing down. It has vetoed the release of €6bn funds to reimburse other EU countries providing military aid to Ukraine and flatly refused to sign two EU declarations in support of its invaded neighbour.

But now its attempts to stymie EU support for Ukraine could force a reckoning in its relations with the bloc at a moment when Orbán contends with his most serious political challenger in years.

EU member states are considering more seriously than ever how to use their ultimate sanction against Hungary: the removal of voting rights under the EU treaty’s article 7.

The idea remains at an early stage, but informed insiders think it will never happen because rescinding voting rights requires the unanimity of the remaining 26 members.

Under a previous government, Poland wielded the saviour veto; now Slovakia’s populist prime minister, Robert Fico, is seen as holding that card. The European parliament launched the article 7 procedure in 2018, but it has languished amid hesitancy among member states.

Now there are flickers of change. Andor said things had moved on since the Orbán government’s first “very consequential violations” against the independence of the judiciary emerged in 2010-11. “There are many more emotions [now]. Why? Because Orbán is obstructive on issues which the majority of the European Union countries consider of vital importance,” he said, referring to Ukraine.

Some think a reckoning will come if Hungary seeks to veto the extension of sanctions against Russia, a vast array of measures aimed at curtailing the war economy, including the freezing of €210bn of Russian central bank assets held in the bloc.

The profits are being used to fund Ukraine’s war effort, while the capital is seen as vital for its eventual reconstruction. But the measures need to be renewed unanimously by 31 July.

“I am pretty sure that if they felt they had the backing of the US, they would block,” said one senior EU official. “It would be huge: basically, it would put them not literally but virtually outside the union.”

Diplomats have taken comfort from the fact that Hungary has always backed down on threats to veto, possibly discouraged when Donald Trump also threatened Vladimir Putin with sanctions. “If the past is predictive for the future, we should be OK. But it would be foolish to assume that,” said one senior diplomat, who added that “work is going on” to find ways around a potential veto.

Dutch Green MEP Tineke Strik, who leads the European parliament’s work on Hungary and the rule of law, said: “Member states really are getting fed up with Orbán.” She counts 19 governments “that seem to be ready to take a step in the article 7 procedure”, which includes action that falls short of suspending voting rights. But they lack “a strategy on how to get the rest of the member states on board”, she added.

Last week, the Dutch MEP led a cross-party team of parliamentarians to investigate democratic standards in Hungary, concluding that developments were “going rapidly in the wrong direction”.

Pressure on independent voices is intensifying. In a speech last month, widely seen as marking a new low, Orbán described political opponents, journalists, judges and political activists as “bugs”, redolent of the dehumanising language used in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

A report by the MEPs is expected to elaborate on Hungary’s deep-rooted problems: government-dominated media and politicised courts, as well as increasing restrictions on the LGBTQ+ community after the approval of a constitutional change to codify the ban on Pride marches and other public gatherings.

“Everyone is fearing this stands for something bigger – the free right to assembly,” Strik said.

For analysts, the Pride ban has a different purpose: to wrongfoot opposition leader Péter Magyar, the insider turned critic whose Tisza party has extended its lead on Fidesz since the start of the year.

“In strategic terms, [the Pride ban] is a trap set for Péter Magyar,” said Daniel Hegedüs, regional director for central Europe at the German Marshall fund.

If Magyar condemns the Pride ban, Fidesz will criticise him as part of the “European gay lobby”, which could alienate him from conservative voters, said Hegedüs, using the government’s own language. “But if he stays silent, he risks alienating the more educated, more urban voters for whom it’s a question of values commitment.”

In a similar way, the government is also seeking to use the Ukraine referendum to discredit Magyar among voters who are wary of Hungary being drawn into the conflict. His Tisza party is described by government propaganda as “pro-Ukrainian”, working with Brussels to “undermine the living standards of Hungarians”.

Tisza, Hegedüs said, is such “an existential threat” to Fidesz that Orbán could resort to electoral fraud to secure victory in parliamentary elections next year.

While the last three Hungarian parliamentary elections have been rated unfair – due to media and state resources tilted to favour the government – they have always been free.

“We cannot exclude the first neither free, nor fair election in an EU member state [and] a situation where the US administration will immediately recognise the outcome,” Hegedüs said.

This raises a challenge for EU diplomats, who have long argued the best way to solve the “Orbán problem” – like the “Poland problem” before it – is to wait for change at the ballot box.

Strik thinks it is the wrong approach. The Dutch MEP wants the commission to speak out more, seek a European court suspension order on the ban of LGBTQ+ events, and redistribute Hungary’s forfeited EU funds to civil society and local government: the Hungarian government lost €1bn in EU funds in 2024 over rule-of-law noncompliance, while a further €19bn is blocked.

“He [Orbán] should be under huge pressure from the EU to change his course,” said Strik.

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 21km course.

The robots from Chinese manufacturers such as DroidVP and Noetix Robotics came in all shapes and sizes, some shorter than 1.2m, others as tall as 1.8m. 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 motor racing, 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 wearing boxing gloves and another had 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 no other robotics firms in the West have matched Tiangong’s sporting achievements,” Tang said, adding that the robot’s batteries were switched three times during the race.

Some robots struggled from the beginning. One fell at the starting line and lay flat for a few minutes before getting up and taking off. Another 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.

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.

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.

The US vice-president, JD Vance, had “an exchange of opinions” with the Vatican’s secretary of state over current international conflicts and immigration when they met on Saturday, the Vatican has said.

The Vatican issued a statement after Vance, a Catholic convert, met Cardinal Pietro Parolin and the foreign minister, Archbishop Paul Gallagher. There was no indication he met Pope Francis, who has resumed some official duties during his recovery from pneumonia.

The Holy See has responded cautiously to the Trump administration, in keeping with its tradition of diplomatic neutrality.

It has expressed alarm over Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration and cuts in international aid, and has called for peaceful resolutions to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

Those concerns were reflected in the Vatican statement, which said the talks were cordial and that the Vatican expressed satisfaction with the administration’s commitment to protecting freedom of religion and conscience.

“There was an exchange of opinions on the international situation, especially regarding countries affected by war, political tensions and difficult humanitarian situations, with particular attention to migrants, refugees, and prisoners,” the statement said.

“Finally, hope was expressed for serene collaboration between the state and the Catholic church in the United States, whose valuable service to the most vulnerable people was acknowledged.”

The reference to “serene collaboration” appeared to refer to Vance’s accusation that the US conference of Catholic bishops was resettling “illegal immigrants” in order to obtain federal funding. Top US cardinals have pushed back strongly against the claim.

Parolin told La Repubblica on the eve of Vance’s visit: “It is clear that the approach of the current US administration is very different from what we are used to and, especially in the west, from what we have relied on for many years,.”

As the US pushes to end the war in Ukraine, Parolin reaffirmed Kyiv’s right to its territorial integrity and insisted that any peace deal must not be “imposed” on Ukraine but “built patiently, day by day, with dialogue and mutual respect”.

Vance was spending Easter weekend in Rome with his family and attended Good Friday services in St Peter’s Basilica after meeting Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni. On Saturday, after the Vance family’s introduction to Parolin, they had a private tour of the Sistine Chapel.

It was not immediately clear where they would celebrate Easter. Pope Francis, for his part, according to official liturgical plans released on Saturday, indicated he hoped to attend Easter mass on Sunday, which usually draws thousands to St Peter’s Square.

The pope and Vance have tangled over immigration and the Trump administration’s plans to deport people en masse. Francis has made caring for those who migrate a hallmark of his papacy and his progressive views on social justice issues have often put him at odds with members of the more conservative US Catholic church.

The pope also changed church teaching to say that capital punishment was inadmissible in all cases. After a public appeal from Francis just weeks before Trump took office, Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row. Trump is an outspoken proponent of expanding capital punishment.

Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, identifies with a small Catholic intellectual movement that is viewed by some critics as having reactionary or authoritarian leanings and often described as “post-liberal”.

Post-liberals share some longstanding Catholic conservative views, such as opposition to abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. They envision a counter-revolution in which they take over government bureaucracy and institutions such as universities from within, replacing entrenched “elites” with their own and acting upon their vision of the “common good”.

Just days before the pope was admitted to hospital in February, Francis criticised the Trump administration’s deportation plans, warning that they would deprive people of their inherent dignity. In a letter to US bishops, he also appeared to respond to Vance directly for having claimed that Catholic doctrine justified such policies.

Vance had defended the administration’s America-first crackdown by citing a concept from medieval Catholic theology known in Latin as ordo amoris. He said the concept delineated a hierarchy of care – to family first, followed by neighbour, community, fellow citizens and, last, those elsewhere.

In his 10 February letter, Francis appeared to correct Vance’s understanding of the concept.

“Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extends to other persons and groups,” he wrote. “The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the good Samaritan, that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”

Vance has acknowledged Francis’ criticism but has said he will continue to defend his views. During an appearance on 28 February at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, Vance did not address the issue specifically but called himself a “baby Catholic” and acknowledged there are “things about the faith that I don’t know”.

The US vice-president, JD Vance, had “an exchange of opinions” with the Vatican’s secretary of state over current international conflicts and immigration when they met on Saturday, the Vatican has said.

The Vatican issued a statement after Vance, a Catholic convert, met Cardinal Pietro Parolin and the foreign minister, Archbishop Paul Gallagher. There was no indication he met Pope Francis, who has resumed some official duties during his recovery from pneumonia.

The Holy See has responded cautiously to the Trump administration, in keeping with its tradition of diplomatic neutrality.

It has expressed alarm over Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration and cuts in international aid, and has called for peaceful resolutions to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

Those concerns were reflected in the Vatican statement, which said the talks were cordial and that the Vatican expressed satisfaction with the administration’s commitment to protecting freedom of religion and conscience.

“There was an exchange of opinions on the international situation, especially regarding countries affected by war, political tensions and difficult humanitarian situations, with particular attention to migrants, refugees, and prisoners,” the statement said.

“Finally, hope was expressed for serene collaboration between the state and the Catholic church in the United States, whose valuable service to the most vulnerable people was acknowledged.”

The reference to “serene collaboration” appeared to refer to Vance’s accusation that the US conference of Catholic bishops was resettling “illegal immigrants” in order to obtain federal funding. Top US cardinals have pushed back strongly against the claim.

Parolin told La Repubblica on the eve of Vance’s visit: “It is clear that the approach of the current US administration is very different from what we are used to and, especially in the west, from what we have relied on for many years,.”

As the US pushes to end the war in Ukraine, Parolin reaffirmed Kyiv’s right to its territorial integrity and insisted that any peace deal must not be “imposed” on Ukraine but “built patiently, day by day, with dialogue and mutual respect”.

Vance was spending Easter weekend in Rome with his family and attended Good Friday services in St Peter’s Basilica after meeting Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni. On Saturday, after the Vance family’s introduction to Parolin, they had a private tour of the Sistine Chapel.

It was not immediately clear where they would celebrate Easter. Pope Francis, for his part, according to official liturgical plans released on Saturday, indicated he hoped to attend Easter mass on Sunday, which usually draws thousands to St Peter’s Square.

The pope and Vance have tangled over immigration and the Trump administration’s plans to deport people en masse. Francis has made caring for those who migrate a hallmark of his papacy and his progressive views on social justice issues have often put him at odds with members of the more conservative US Catholic church.

The pope also changed church teaching to say that capital punishment was inadmissible in all cases. After a public appeal from Francis just weeks before Trump took office, Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row. Trump is an outspoken proponent of expanding capital punishment.

Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, identifies with a small Catholic intellectual movement that is viewed by some critics as having reactionary or authoritarian leanings and often described as “post-liberal”.

Post-liberals share some longstanding Catholic conservative views, such as opposition to abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. They envision a counter-revolution in which they take over government bureaucracy and institutions such as universities from within, replacing entrenched “elites” with their own and acting upon their vision of the “common good”.

Just days before the pope was admitted to hospital in February, Francis criticised the Trump administration’s deportation plans, warning that they would deprive people of their inherent dignity. In a letter to US bishops, he also appeared to respond to Vance directly for having claimed that Catholic doctrine justified such policies.

Vance had defended the administration’s America-first crackdown by citing a concept from medieval Catholic theology known in Latin as ordo amoris. He said the concept delineated a hierarchy of care – to family first, followed by neighbour, community, fellow citizens and, last, those elsewhere.

In his 10 February letter, Francis appeared to correct Vance’s understanding of the concept.

“Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extends to other persons and groups,” he wrote. “The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the good Samaritan, that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”

Vance has acknowledged Francis’ criticism but has said he will continue to defend his views. During an appearance on 28 February at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, Vance did not address the issue specifically but called himself a “baby Catholic” and acknowledged there are “things about the faith that I don’t know”.

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.

Product promotion on TikTok is now powerful enough to influence the vast agricultural economies of the US and Iran – at least when it comes to the consumption of high-end confectionery.

A chocolate bar stuffed with a creamy green pistachio filling has become incredibly popular after a series of video clips shared on the social media site. The first bit of footage praising the taste of the expensive so-called “Dubai chocolate” was posted at the end of 2023 and has now been viewed more than 120m times, to say nothing of the many follow-up videos.

The result has been an international shortage of the vital ingredient, pistachio ­kernels, which are largely grown in either the US or Iran. In a year, prices have surged from $7.65 to $10.30 a pound, Giles Hacking, from nut trader CG Hacking, told the Financial Times.

The nut was already becoming scarce due to last year’s poor harvest in the US, the world’s leading exporter. Although that crop was smaller than usual, it was of higher quality and so was largely sold as whole nuts, still in their shells. This has created a further shortage of the basic kernels used in the chocolate bars.

Iranian producers, meanwhile, had exported 40% more nuts to the UAE in the six months to March than they had in the 12 months prior to that.

Dubai chocolate mania can be sourced to the creation of a bar that combined milk chocolate, the shredded pastry known as kataifi, and a pistachio cream filling. Made by the swish Emirati chocolatier Fix, which only sells in the UAE, it was prophetically given the punning name Can’t Get Knafeh of It, in reference to a traditional Arab dessert.

Other leading chocolate makers, such as Läderach and Lindt, quickly created their own pistachio ­chocolate products, but are now struggling to meet international demand. Charles Jandreau, the general manager for Prestat Group, which owns several luxury British chocolate brands, told the FT that the demand for the bars has surprised the industry. “It feels like it came out of nowhere,” he said. “Suddenly you see it in every corner shop.”

Some stores are reportedly rationing the number of bars sold at one time. Testament, then, either to the power of TikTok influencers, or the rather more established appeal of tasty chocolate.

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.”

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.”