Pressure was mounting on the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, on Monday following reports of a second Signal chatroom used to discuss sensitive military operations, while a former top Pentagon spokesperson slammed the US’s top military official’s leadership of the Department of Defense.

John Ullyot, who resigned last week after initially serving as Pentagon spokesperson, said in a opinion essay published by Politico on Sunday that the Pentagon has been overwhelmed by staff drama and turnover in the initial months of the second Trump administration.

Ullyot called the situation a “full-blown meltdown” that could cost Hegseth, a 44-year-old former Fox News host and national guard officer, his job as defense secretary.

“It’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon. From leaks of sensitive operational plans to mass firings, the dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president – who deserves better from his senior leadership,” Ullyot wrote.

Donald Trump Jr pushed back on the opinion piece, saying the author is “officially exiled” from Trump’s political movement. “This guy is not America First,” Trump Jr wrote on X. “I’ve been hearing for years that he works his ass off to subvert my father’s agenda. That ends today.”

The warning came as the New York Times reported that Hegseth shared details of a US attack on Yemeni Houthi rebels last month in a second Signal chat that he created himself and included his wife, his brother and about a dozen other people.

The Guardian has independently confirmed the existence of Hegseth’s own private group chat.

According to unnamed sources familiar with the chat who spoke to the Times, Hegseth sent the private group of his personal associates some of the same information, including the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets that would strike Houthi rebel targets in Yemen, that he also shared with another Signal group of top officials that was created by Mike Waltz, the national security adviser.

The existence of the Signal group chat created by Waltz, in which detailed attack plans were divulged by Hegseth to other Trump administration officials on the private messaging app, were made public by the Atlantic magazine’s Jeffrey Goldberg, who had been accidentally added to the group.

The existence of a second Signal chat, coupled with Ullyot’s devastating portrait of the Pentagon under Hegseth, is likely to increase pressure on the White House to take action.

Trump defended Hegseth at the annual Easter egg roll event at the White House.

“Pete’s doing a great job,” the president said. “Just ask the Houthis how he’s doing. It’s just fake news. They just bring up stories. It sounds like disgruntled employees. He was put there to get rid of a lot of bad people and that’s what he’s doing. You don’t always have friends when you do that.”

Hegseth himself blamed “disgruntled former employees” in remarks to reporters at the same event.

“What a big surprise that a few leakers get fired and suddenly a bunch of hit pieces come out from the same media that peddled the Russia hoax,” Hegseth said. “This is what the media does. They take anonymous sources from disgruntled former employees, and then they try to slash and burn people and ruin their reputations.”

He continued: “Not going to work with me, because we’re changing the defense department, putting the Pentagon back in the hands of war-fighters. And anonymous smears from disgruntled former employees on old news doesn’t matter.”

The Pentagon’s chief spokesperson, Sean Parnell, issued a statement in a post on X on Sunday night following the New York Times report.

“Another day, another old story – back from the dead,” Parnell said. “The Trump-hating media continues to be obsessed with destroying anyone committed to President Trump’s agenda. This time, the New York Times – and all other Fake News that repeat their garbage – are enthusiastically taking the grievances of disgruntled former employees as the sole sources for their article.

“There was no classified information in any Signal chat, no matter how many ways they try to write the story. What is true is that the Office of the Secretary of Defense is continuing to become stronger and more efficient in executing President Trump’s agenda. We’ve already achieved so much for the American warfighter, and will never back down.”

Tammy Duckworth, a Democratic senator from Illinois and combat veteran, said in a statement that the second Signal chat put the lives of US men and women in uniform at greater risk:

“How many times does Pete Hegseth need to leak classified intelligence before Donald Trump and Republicans understand that he isn’t only a f*cking liar, he is a threat to our national security?

“Every day he stays in his job is another day our troops’ lives are endangered by his singular stupidity,” Duckworth said. “He must resign in disgrace.”

Jack Reed, a Democratic senator from Rhode Island and a senior member of the Senate armed services committee, said the report, if true, “is another troubling example of Secretary Hegseth’s reckless disregard for the laws and protocols that every other military service member is required to follow”.

Reed called on Hegseth to “immediately explain why he reportedly texted classified information that could endanger American service members’ lives on a commercial app that included his wife, brother, and personal lawyer”.

Reed said he had “warned that Mr Hegseth lacks the experience, competence, and character to run the Department of Defense. In light of the ongoing chaos, dysfunction, and mass firings under Mr Hegseth’s leadership, it seems that those objections were well-founded.”

Ullyot warned that under Hegseth “the Pentagon focus is no longer on warfighting, but on endless drama” and said “the president deserves better than the current mishegoss at the Pentagon.”

Harvard University has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration in a bid to halt a freeze of $2.2m in funding, as a battle between Trump and the Ivy League institution escalates.

In a damning legal complaint filed with the Massachusetts district court, Harvard’s president, Alan M Garber, accused the Trump administration of trying to “gain control of academic decision making at Harvard”, adding that no government “should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue”.

The Trump administration has sought to force changes at multiple Ivy League institutions after months of student activism centered around the war in Gaza. The administration has painted the campus protests as anti-American, and the institutions as liberal and antisemitic, a claim that Garber refutes.

Here are the key stories at a glance:

Catching up? Here’s what happened on 20 April 2025.

Before the US launched military strikes on Yemen in March, Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, sent detailed information about the planned attacks to a private Signal group chat that he created himself, which included his wife, his brother and about a dozen other people, the New York Times reported on Sunday.

The Guardian has independently confirmed the existence of Hegseth’s own private group chat.

According to unnamed sources familiar with the chat who spoke to the Times, Hegseth sent the private group of his personal associates some of the same information, including the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets that would strike Houthi rebel targets in Yemen, that he also shared with another Signal group of top officials that was created by Mike Waltz, the national security adviser.

The existence of the Signal group chat created by Waltz, in which detailed attack plans were divulged by Hegseth to other Trump administration officials on the private messaging app, was made public last month by Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, who had been accidentally added to the group by Waltz.

The fact that Hegseth also shared the plans in a second Signal group chat, according to “people familiar with the matter” who spoke to the Times, is likely to add to growing criticism of the former Fox weekend anchor’s ability to manage the Pentagon, a huge organization which operates in matters of life and death around the globe.

According to the Times, the private chat also included two senior advisers to Hegseth – Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick – who were fired last week after being accused of leaking unauthorized information.

Hegseth has previously been criticized for including his wife, Jennifer, a former Fox News producer, in sensitive meetings with foreign leaders, including a discussion of the war in Ukraine with Britain’s most senior defense officials at the Pentagon last month, during which she was pictured sitting directly behind her husband. Phil Hegseth, the secretary’s younger brother, is a podcast producer who was recently hired as a Department of Homeland Security liaison to the Pentagon. It is unclear why either would need to know the details of strike plans in advance.

According to the Times, Hegseth used his private phone, rather than a government device, to access the Signal chat with his family and friends.

CNN reported later on Sunday that three sources familiar with Hegseth’s private Signal group confirmed to the broadcaster that he had used it to share Yemen attack plans before the strikes were launched.

The same information was also confirmed to the Associated Press by a source familiar with the group chat who said that it included 13 people.

Shortly after the news of the second Signal chat broke, Politico published an opinion article by Hegseth’s former press secretary, John Ullyot, which began: “It’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon. From leaks of sensitive operational plans to mass firings, the dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president – who deserves better from his senior leadership.”

Venezuela’s chief prosecutor has accused El Salvador’s president of being a “tyrannical” human trafficker after Nayib Bukele offered to exchange the 252 Venezuelan migrants deported to his country’s prisons by Donald Trump for the same number of political prisoners in Venezuela.

Bukele made the offer on Sunday night in a message addressed directly to his authoritarian counterpart Nicolás Maduro. “I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that includes the repatriation of 100% of the 252 Venezuelans who were deported, in exchange for the release and delivery of an identical number … of the thousands of political prisoners that you hold,” El Salvador’s leader posted.

Hours later the proposal was rebuffed by one of Maduro’s top allies, the attorney general Tarek William Saab. In a televised address, Saab claimed the Salvadorian’s “cynical” offer exposed him as a narcissistic “neo-Nazi” who had “kidnapped” more than 250 Venezuelan migrants sent to a maximum-security jail in El Salvador by the Trump administration since mid-March.

“Bukele is a serial human rights violator,” Saab said, pointing to the politician’s “horrifying” three-year anti-gang crackdown, which has seen at least 85,000 Salvadorians thrown in jail, largely without due process. Human rights activists say more than 360 prisoners have died.

Some members of Venezuela’s opposition – reeling from its failure to dislodge Maduro, despite seemingly beating him in last July’s presidential election – welcomed Bukele’s offer. Leopoldo López, an exiled opposition leader who lives in Spain, said the idea had his “full support”. The opposition’s most important leader, María Corina Machado, made no immediate comment.

However, many political and human rights activists have voiced perplexity and shock that the Venezuelan migrants being held in El Salvador – having been denied due process in the US and deported to an authoritarian foreign land – had become embroiled in the political tussle between strongman populists such as Trump, Bukele and Maduro.

“The idea that there would be a [prisoner] trade should be loathsome to anyone who actually cares about human rights,” said Christopher Sabatini, a senior fellow for Latin America at Chatham House.

Geoff Ramsey, a Venezuela expert from the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, suspected the plight of the Venezuelans being held in El Salvador and Bukele’s prisoner swap “PR stunt” had potential benefits for both Bukele and Maduro.

“Maduro’s quite happy to feud with Bukele and point to human rights abuses in El Salvador as a way of distracting from the brutal repression and violence of his own regime,” Ramsey said. According to the human rights group Foro Penal, Maduro’s jails currently house about 900 political prisoners. Thousands were imprisoned after last year’s election when Maduro, who has ruled since 2013, ordered a crackdown to stop his apparent victor, Edmundo González, from taking power.

From Bukele’s perspective, offer was “a smart way of shifting the conversation away from concerns around the deportees being held in El Salvador back to the existence of political prisoners in Venezuela”, Ramsay said.

For the migrants caught up in the geopolitical jailings, the consequences are calamitous. Many have not been convicted of any crime and it is unclear how long they will be held.

In an interview last week, the wife of one Venezuelan prisoner, a singer called Arturo Suárez Trejo, lamented how the Venezuelan detainees seemed to have become part of a high-stakes game of chess. “And they are the pawns,” said Nathali Sánchez, rejecting claims that the father of her child was involved in crime. “It’s evil,” she added.

The Trump administration’s targeting of Venezuelan migrants – who it has accused, largely without evidence, of being gang members and terrorists – has put Venezuela’s opposition in a difficult spot.

Seemingly fearful of alienating Trump’s administration, its key leaders – including including Machado – have said little about the migration crackdown or the deportation of Venezuelan citizens to El Salvador. “[The opposition has] largely held its tongue on issues of the treatment of fellow citizens because of its larger goal of gaining the White House’s support for its preferred strategy [to defeat Maduro] and that also is reprehensible,” Sabatini said.

Among the friends and families of the incarcerated migrants – many of them opposition supporters who fled Venezuela to escape Maduro’s regime – the opposition’s failure to defend them is causing anger and frustration.

“The reality is that the Venezuelan opposition needs to have a good relationship with the White House, and they understand that they can’t be perceived as criticizing Trump,” said Ramsey. “But on the other hand, the general public in Venezuela is outraged at the situation faced by those who’ve been deported and sent to this maximum security jail in El Salvador. So it really puts the opposition in between a rock and a hard place.”

A delegation of four House Democrats has arrived in El Salvador to push for the release of Kilmar Ábrego García, part of a mission to challenge the Trump administration’s refusal to comply with a supreme court order to facilitate the return of the immigrant to the United States.

Representatives Yassamin Ansari of Arizona, Maxine Dexter of Oregon, Maxwell Frost of Florida and Robert Garcia of California touched down in Central America on Sunday, following a visit by the Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen last week. The lawmakers are seeking to meet with Ábrego García, who had lived in the US for more than a decade before being swept up in a 15 March operation.

“Even with all of the illegal actions we’ve seen over the last couple of months, I think this is the one that terrifies me the most when it comes to the future of our democracy,” Ansari told the Associated Press in an interview.

According to a congressional aide familiar with the arrangements, the delegation will meet with officials at the US embassy on Tuesday morning to advocate for Ábrego García’s release and ask about other individuals transferred from the US who are currently detained in El Salvador. The lawmakers will also receive classified briefings during their visit.

The case has become a flashpoint in the ongoing tensions between the Trump administration and the supreme court, which ruled that the government had a duty to help return Ábrego García. Justice department lawyers have argued that they lack the power to secure his release from foreign custody.

Garcia, the representative from California, said that Ábrego García deserved due process.

“They’re trying to demonize him, and we’re not here to defend him. He deserves due process, and everyone deserves due process,” Garcia told the AP. “What he did or may have done, that has to be decided by a judge.”

Ábrego García, who had protected legal status that should have prevented his deportation, was sent to El Salvador on a plane carrying alleged immigrant gang members. He is currently being held in a prison in El Salvador after being moved from the country’s Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot), which has drawn praise from Republican lawmakers but criticism from human rights advocates for inhumane conditions.

The Trump administration admitted in court filings that “an administrative error” led to Ábrego García’s deportation to El Salvador – despite a 2019 immigration judge’s order protecting him – but the same officials say they will not return him to his American wife and disabled child in Maryland.

The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt has defended the deportation, claiming Ábrego García was involved in human trafficking and terrorism, and said that if he were to return to the US, “he would immediately be deported again”.

But the controversy has even drawn criticism from some Republicans, with Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana acknowledging on NBC’s Meet the Press that “the administration won’t admit it. But this was a screw-up.”

As minority party members in both chambers of Congress, Democrats have limited leverage over the administration but are still determined on maintaining public pressure. Ansari indicated that more Democratic lawmakers plan to visit El Salvador in the coming weeks, saying: “This is about the future of our democracy and the future of due process as American citizens.”

Ábrego GarcÍa’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, said in a statement on Monday that the lawmakers’ visit “sends a powerful message”.

“We’re deeply grateful to the members of Congress and advocates for justice now on the ground in El Salvador, building on the leadership of Senator Van Hollen,” she said in the statement, according to NBC News.

During a news conference from El Salvador on Monday afternoon, Frost told reporters that “due process applies to all people in our country”.

“We demand the release of Ábrego García,” Frost said. “We’re also worried about our own constituents.”

Frost added that the representatives had requested to see Ábrego García on Monday but that the request was denied by the Salvadorian government as it was not an official trip.

Ansari added that the delegation met with the US embassy in El Salvador on Monday morning, and that they didn’t hear anything that gave her reason “to believe that the Trump administration is doing anything to facilitate his safe return home”.

“And that is simply unacceptable,” she said, noting that they had just sent a letter to the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, “demanding daily proof of life” from Ábrego García, that he has access to counsel, and that the administration return him to the US.

Ansari said that this “isn’t just about Kilmar, it is the fact that our government is relentlessly going after any immigrants trying to come to the US, or in in US, without any regard for due process”.

“They have not been convicted of a crime, they should not be imprisoned here,” she said.

• This article was amended on 21 April 2025 to say that Kilmar Ábrego García is now being held in a Salvadorian prison and no longer in Cecot.

Harvard University has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, alleging it is trying to “gain control of academic decision-making at Harvard”.

The university is fighting back against the administration’s threat to review about $9bn in federal funding after Harvard officials refused to comply with a list of demands that included appointing an outside overseer to ensure that the viewpoints being taught at the university were “diverse”. Harvard is specifically looking to halt a freeze on $2.2bn in grants.

The lawsuit comes as the Trump administration has sought to force changes at multiple Ivy League institutions after months of student activism centered around the war in Gaza. The administration has painted the campus protests are anti-American, and the institutions as liberal and antisemitic, which Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, refuted.

White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in a statement that the “gravy train of federal assistance” to institutions like Harvard was coming to an end.

“Taxpayer funds are a privilege, and Harvard fails to meet the basic conditions required to access that privilege,” Fields said.

In a letter announcing the university’s decision to reject Trump’s demands, Garber wrote: “No government – regardless of which party is in power – should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”

Garber, in a statement published on Monday, reiterated that the Trump administration had doubled down on its response to the university’s refusal to comply with the administration’s demands, despite claims that the letter indicating Harvard’s federal research funding was at risk was sent by mistake.

“The government has, in addition to the initial freeze of $2.2bn in funding, considered taking steps to freeze an additional $1bn in grants, initiated numerous investigations of Harvard’s operations, threatened the education of international students, and announced that it is considering a revocation of Harvard’s 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status,” Garber wrote.

“These actions have stark real-life consequences for patients, students, faculty, staff, researchers, and the standing of American higher education in the world.”

Harvard is the first university to file a lawsuit in response to Trump’s crackdown on top US universities that is says mishandled last year’s pro-Palestinian protests and allowed antisemitism to fester on campuses. But protesters, including some Jewish groups, say their criticism of Israel’s military actions in Gaza is wrongly conflated with antisemitism.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration had sent a letter to Harvard with the list of demands, which included changes to its admissions policies, removing recognition of some student clubs, and hiring some new faculty.

Last Tuesday, Trump had called for Harvard, the US’s oldest and wealthiest university and one of the most prestigious in the world, to lose its tax-exempt status, CNN first reported.

“Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’ Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!” the US president said in a post on his Truth Social platform.

Humans have gathered to feast and enjoy a tipple together for thousands of years, but research suggests chimpanzees may also bond over a boozy treat.

Wild chimpanzees in west Africa have been observed sharing fruit containing alcohol – not in quantities to get roaring drunk but, possibly, enough for a fuzzy beer buzz feeling.

The researchers, led by scientists from the University of Exeter in the UK, caught chimpanzees on film sharing fermented African breadfruit in Guinea-Bissau’s Cantanhez national park.

“For humans, we know that drinking alcohol leads to a release of dopamine and endorphins, and resulting feelings of happiness and relaxation,” said Anna Bowland, from the Centre for Ecology and Conservation at Exeter’s Penryn campus in Cornwall.

“We also know that sharing alcohol, including through traditions such as feasting, helps to form and strengthen social bonds.

“Now we know that wild chimpanzees are eating and sharing ethanolic fruits, the question is: could they be getting similar benefits?”

Using motion-activated cameras, the researchers filmed chimpanzees sharing the large, dense and fibrous fermented fruit on 10 occasions. The fruit shared was tested for alcohol content. The highest level found was the equivalent of 0.61% alcohol by volume (ABV).

“Chimps don’t share food all the time, so this behaviour with fermented fruit might be important,” said Kimberley Hockings, also from the University of Exeter.

Though the alcohol level is relatively low, the chimpanzees ate a lot of fruit every day so might ingest a fair quantity of alcohol, she said. “They can feed on kilograms of the stuff every day. It’s probably analogous to us sipping on a light beer.”

Hockings and her colleagues published a paper in 2015 describing how chimpanzees in west Africa stole and consumed palm sap alcohol created by humans. Some of them appeared to become troublesome, causing mischief such as not letting others build their night nests.

The researchers behind the latest study, however, said chimpanzees were unlikely to get “drunk” on the breadfruit because it would not improve their survival chances.

The sharing seemed to take place between all ages and sexes. Two adult females, nicknamed Chip and Até, were seen ignoring a larger hunk of breadfruit in favour of a smaller but fermented piece.

Two adult males, Mandjambé and Gary, were observed approaching ripe breadfruit with aggressive stances. Mandjambé claimed a piece and began to feed, while another adult male, Bobby, kept Gary at bay. They all had a taste of the ripe breadfruit in the vicinity in the end.

The paper, which appears in the journal Current Biology with the title “Wild chimpanzees share fermented fruits”, asks the question: “Do the origins of feasting behaviour derive from a shared common ancestor?”

Hockings said: “We need to find out more about whether the chimpanzees deliberately seek out ethanolic fruits and how they metabolise it, but this behaviour could be the early evolutionary stages of feasting. If so, it suggests the human tradition of feasting may have its origins deep in our evolutionary history.”

She said the number of observations was small but they could lead to “an explosion” of research into the topic.

Haiti, where rampant gang violence has surged in recent weeks, is approaching a “point of no return” leading to “total chaos”, the UN special representative to the troubled Caribbean nation has warned.

“As gang violence continues to spread to new areas of the country, Haitians experience growing levels of vulnerability and increasing skepticism about the ability of the state to respond to their needs,” María Isabel Salvador told the UN securitycouncil.

“Haiti could face total chaos,” she said, adding that international aid was desperately needed to avoid that fate. “I urge you to remain engaged and answer the urgent needs of the country and its people.”

Salvador cited cholera outbreaks and gender-based violence alongside a deteriorating security situation, particularly in the capital, Port-au-Prince, with authorities struggling to cope.

The poorest country in the western hemisphere, Haiti faces severe political instability, while swaths of the country are under the control of rival armed gangs who carry out widespread murders, rapes and kidnappings.

The armed groups have been battling for control of Port-au-Prince and clashes have intensified as the rival gangs attempt to establish new territories.

A Kenyan-led force authorized by the United Nations has failed to push back the gangs. The mission has around 1,000 police officers from six countries but was intended to have 2,500.

In a report seen by AFP, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, warned that further international support was “required immediately to allow the national police to prevent the capital slipping closer to the brink”.

Haiti’s ambassador to the UN, Ericq Pierre, said his country was “slowly dying”.

“The Republic of Haiti is slowly dying under the combined action of armed gangs, drug traffickers and arms dealers,” he said, calling on his partners to “help rid the country of the gangs that are terrorizing the population”.

The report detailed the upsurge in violence, with the UN recording 2,660 homicides in the three months from December 2024 – a 41.3% increase over the previous quarter.

Anti-gang operations resulted in 702 people killed in that time, of which 21% were estimated to be innocent civilians, the report said.

Gender-based violence also recorded an alarming increase, with 347 incidents reported in the five months to February 2025, according to UN data.

Collective rape was the most common violation, accounting for 61% of cases.

Haiti, where rampant gang violence has surged in recent weeks, is approaching a “point of no return” leading to “total chaos”, the UN special representative to the troubled Caribbean nation has warned.

“As gang violence continues to spread to new areas of the country, Haitians experience growing levels of vulnerability and increasing skepticism about the ability of the state to respond to their needs,” María Isabel Salvador told the UN securitycouncil.

“Haiti could face total chaos,” she said, adding that international aid was desperately needed to avoid that fate. “I urge you to remain engaged and answer the urgent needs of the country and its people.”

Salvador cited cholera outbreaks and gender-based violence alongside a deteriorating security situation, particularly in the capital, Port-au-Prince, with authorities struggling to cope.

The poorest country in the western hemisphere, Haiti faces severe political instability, while swaths of the country are under the control of rival armed gangs who carry out widespread murders, rapes and kidnappings.

The armed groups have been battling for control of Port-au-Prince and clashes have intensified as the rival gangs attempt to establish new territories.

A Kenyan-led force authorized by the United Nations has failed to push back the gangs. The mission has around 1,000 police officers from six countries but was intended to have 2,500.

In a report seen by AFP, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, warned that further international support was “required immediately to allow the national police to prevent the capital slipping closer to the brink”.

Haiti’s ambassador to the UN, Ericq Pierre, said his country was “slowly dying”.

“The Republic of Haiti is slowly dying under the combined action of armed gangs, drug traffickers and arms dealers,” he said, calling on his partners to “help rid the country of the gangs that are terrorizing the population”.

The report detailed the upsurge in violence, with the UN recording 2,660 homicides in the three months from December 2024 – a 41.3% increase over the previous quarter.

Anti-gang operations resulted in 702 people killed in that time, of which 21% were estimated to be innocent civilians, the report said.

Gender-based violence also recorded an alarming increase, with 347 incidents reported in the five months to February 2025, according to UN data.

Collective rape was the most common violation, accounting for 61% of cases.

• Vladimir Putin has said for the first time in years that he is open to bilateral talks with Ukraine – having previously demanded Volodymyr Zelenskyy be replaced before it could happen. Zelenskyy, whom Putin has falsely called an illegitimate president, meanwhile said Kyiv was prepared for any discussion to halt attacks on civilian targets. The Ukrainian president, in his nightly video address, said: “Ukraine maintains its proposal not to strike at the very least civilian targets. And we are expecting a clear response from Moscow. We are ready for any conversation about how to achieve this.”

• Putin, speaking to Russian state TV, said: “We have always talked about this, that we have a positive attitude towards any peace initiatives. We hope that representatives of the Kyiv regime will feel the same way.” However, Putin has previously stipulated that elections must be held in Ukraine to elect a new president who would be his interlocutor. Elections are not permitted under the Ukrainian constitution while the country is, unavoidably, in a state of martial law.

• Putin and Zelenskyy face pressure from the Trump administration in the US which has threatened to walk away from its peace efforts unless some progress is achieved. There have been no direct talks between the two sides since the early weeks after Russia’s February 2022 invasion.

• Luke Harding writes from Kyiv that Moscow appears to be deliberately stalling the peace talks, betting that continued battlefield gains will bolster its position and enable it to demand greater concessions at the negotiating table. Russian attacks on Monday killed at least three people in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, after an informal 30-hour Easter ceasefire declared by Putin that Kyiv said Moscow’s armed forces repeatedly violated. Zelenskyy said Russia had launched numerous attacks using artillery and drones, as well as infantry. The most active part of the Easter frontline was near the city of Pokrovsk, in the eastern Donetsk region, he said, while enemy forces also continued combat operations in Russia’s Kursk region where Ukrainian units hold a small amount of territory. Russia claimed Ukraine broke the ceasefire.

• A Ukrainian delegation is due in London on Wednesday for talks with Britain, France and the US. Zelenskyy said on Monday: “We are ready to move forward as constructively as possible.” The talks are a follow-up to a Paris meeting last week where the US and European states discussed ways to end the war and the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, reportedly presented Washington’s plan for ending the war. Zelenskyy said the London talks “have a primary task: to push for an unconditional ceasefire. This must be the starting point.”

• Leaks suggest the Trump administration is now pushing for a “peace deal” that heavily favours Russia. It would include a pause to the conflict along the existing 1,000km frontline; recognition that Crimea belongs to Moscow; and a veto on Ukraine’s Nato membership. There are also unconfirmed reports that the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station – which Russia seized in 2022 – would be part of a “neutral” zone. Russia has maintained its maximalist demands, that Ukraine cede all the land Putin claims to have annexed and accept permanent neutrality. Ukraine says that would amount to surrender and leave it undefended if Moscow attacks again.

• Because of Viktor Orbán’s intransigence and siding with Putin over the Ukraine war, Brussels is considering its “nuclear” option of removing Hungary’s voting rights under the European Union treaty, writes Jennifer Rankin. Under Orbán’s prime ministership, Hungary has repeatedly sought to block EU sanctions against Russia, though eventually backed down. It has vetoed the release of €6bn to reimburse EU countries providing military aid to Ukraine and refused to sign declarations in support of its invaded neighbour. The removal of voting rights from Hungary under the EU treaty’s article 7 would deliver a reckoning for Orbán just as he faces his toughest political challenger in years: Péter Magyar, whose Tisza party has extended its lead on Orbán’s Fidesz, with elections due next year.

• A Russian journalist who faced up to 10 years in prison for criticising the army has escaped house arrest and is wanted by police, Russian state media has reported. Ekaterina Barabash, 63, was arrested in February. She had been an outspoken critic of Moscow’s war on Ukraine, writing on Facebook that Russia had “bombed the country” and “razed whole cities to the ground”. Putin has made it illegal to criticise the army and the “special military operation” against Ukraine. Former Russian state TV journalist Marina Ovsyannikova, who protested against the Ukraine war during a live broadcast, escaped Russia in 2022 after fleeing house arrest.

US stock markets fell again on Monday as Donald Trump continued attacks against the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, who the US president called “a major loser” for not lowering interest rates.

“There can be a slowing of the economy unless Mr. Too Late, a major loser, lowers interest rates, NOW,” Trump wrote on social media.

In recent days, Trump has amped up attacks against the Fed chair, pushing Powell to lower interest rates to offset the inflationary impacts of the new tariffs.

Trump is pressuring the Fed to cut rates, likely to appease the stock market, which plummeted after he announced his newest slate of tariffs. But Wall Street isn’t taking the bait and appears to be reacting in opposition to Trump’s attacks against Powell and the independence of the US central bank.

The Dow ended the day down 2.5%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell over 2.5% down and the S&P 500 fell 2.4%. Former tech stocks favorites including Tesla and Nvidia lost ground, while the value of the dollar fell to multiyear lows against most major currencies.

Stock markets had recovered the losses they endured after Trump rolled out his “liberation day” tariffs proposals, which would have imposed huge levies on all of the US’s trading partners. But almost all the gains made in the stock market following Trump’s announcement of a 90-day pause of his so-called reciprocal tariffs have been erased amid these new jabs against Powell.

Powell, known to be extremely measured in his public remarks, has in recent weeks spoken out about Trump’s tariffs and warned that they may lead to a “challenging scenario” for the Fed, implying that the Fed has no plans to cut interest rates anytime soon.

“Tariffs are highly likely to generate at least a temporary rise in inflation. The inflation effects could also be more persistent,” Powell told reporters on 16 April.

US inflation peaked at 9% in June 2022 but has slowly come down over the last few years, largely due to the Fed’s careful adjustment of interest rates. The Fed has set its inflation rate target at 2%.

Powell often refers to the central bank’s “dual mandate” – to keep inflation in check while maximising employment. Higher interest rates can bring down prices, though it can come at the risk of higher unemployment. Over the last few years, the Fed has been able to bring down inflation while keeping the unemployment rate relatively low, around 4%. Last month, inflation cooled to 2.4%, though the most recent government figures do not account for the Trump tariffs.

The Fed has long been treated as a nonpartisan, nonpolitical federal agency, though Trump has recently floated the idea of terminating Powell, whose term is up in May 2026. “Powell’s termination cannot come fast enough!” Trump wrote on social media last week.

Such a move would be unprecedented and would likely put Wall Street into a further tailspin. In an interview with CNBC, Krishna Guha, the vice-chair of Evercore ISI, an equity research firm, said that there would be a “severe reaction” from markets if Trump fires Powell.

“I can’t believe that’s what the administration is trying to achieve,” Guha said.

It’s also unclear whether Trump has the authority to remove Powell from his post. The supreme court is currently hearing a case that could give Trump more power to fire federal officials before their terms are up, though it’s unclear whether that could reach the Fed.

Last week, Powell emphasized the importance of the Fed’s independence from political forces.

“Our independence is a matter of law,” Powell said. “We serve very long terms, seemingly endless terms, so we’re protected by the law.”

But that doesn’t mean the Trump administration isn’t trying. On Friday, White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett told reporters that the administration “will continue to study” if they can legally fire Powell.

Fed officials meet monthly to discuss potential changes to the interest rate. The next meeting between officials will take place 6 and 7 May.

Noor Abdalla, the wife of detained Columbia university graduate and Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, has announced the birth of their son.

In a statement released on Monday evening, Abdalla wrote: “I welcomed our son into the world earlier today without Mahmoud by my side. Despite our request for ICE to allow Mahmoud to attend the birth, they denied his temporary release to meet our son. This was a purposeful decision by ICE to make me, Mahmoud, and our son suffer.”

The Department of Homeland Security denied Khalil the opportunity to attend the birth of his first child, which he was only able to experience via a telephone call. Khalil is being held in a Louisiana detention facility more than 1,000 miles away from the New York hospital where his son was delivered.

Abdalla, a 28-year-old dentist who lives in New York, and her son, who was born early Monday morning, are both in good health.

Abdalla is a US citizen who was born and raised in Michigan. Her parents immigrated to the US from Syria about 40 years ago.

According to emails reviewed by the New York Times, Khalil’s lawyers suggested several ways in which he could have attended the birth, including allowing him a two-week furlough while wearing an ankle monitor and requiring scheduled check-ins.

“A two-week furlough in this civil detention matter would be both reasonable and humane so that both parents can be present for the birth of their first child,” the lawyers wrote.

The request was denied by the New Orleans field office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Khalil was arrested on 8 March on grounds that he is considered to be a threat to US foreign policy. Earlier this month, an immigration judge ruled that Khalil is eligible to be deported from the United States.

Abdalla has fought for her husband’s release since the day of his arrest, maintaining that the Trump administration is “trying to silence” anyone who speaks up for Palestinian rights.

“We will not be silenced. We will persist, with even greater resolve, and we will pass that strength on to our children and our children’s children – until Palestine is free,” she wrote on 8 April.

In her statement shortly after her son’s birth, Abdalla vowed to continue to fight for Khalil’s release. “I will continue to fight every day for Mahmoud to come home to us. I know when Mahmoud is freed, he will show our son how to be brave, thoughtful, and compassionate, just like his dad.”

Investors in Boeing are braced to learn the full impact of Donald Trump’s trade war, amid fears the US planemaker could be hit harder than first expected after jets intended for a Chinese airline were returned to the US.

A Boeing 737 Max 8 plane intended for use by a Chinese airline returned to the US on Monday from Boeing’s China finishing centre, according to flight data cited by Reuters. It followed the arrival in the US on Sunday of another 737 Max painted in the livery of China’s Xiamen Airlines at Boeing’s US production hub in Seattle.

Boeing’s share price fell by nearly 3% on Monday, in line with a sell-off across Wall Street. US stock markets have been hit with much higher volatility this month as investors have tried to work out the effects of Trump’s tariffs.

The aviation industry has been caught up in the trade war. Trump’s tariffs on goods from almost all countries have caused disruption across the world, but trade in goods between the US and China has been most affected, with levies of 145% on US imports and 125% on goods going the other way.

A new 737 Max has a market value of about $55m (£41.4m), according to IBA, an aviation consultancy. That makes a 125% tariff prohibitive without significantly changing the business model of the airline business.

The return of the Boeing jets underlines the vulnerability to tariffs of the US’s biggest manufacturing exporter. It adds to Boeing’s problems just as it was trying to recover from a mid-air door panel blowout in January 2024 that prompted the company to replace its chief executive.

Kelly Ortberg, who took over Boeing after the safety crisis, will reveal the company’s first-quarter financial results on Wednesday. Analysts expect a significant improvement in sales compared with a year earlier, with revenues forecast to have risen 20% to $19.8bn, although they still expect losses of $466m for the quarter.

However, the results are likely to be overshadowed by questions over the effect of tariffs on the business.

Douglas Harned, an analyst at Bernstein, a research company, said he did not expect “definitive answers” on the tariff hit but was “concerned that risks are larger than expected” given airlines’ discomfort with paying tariffs, and possible delays to production to try to avoid levies.

Harned said the pause on Chinese deliveries could hit cash generation in 2025, although he added that he expected the planes to be delivered eventually.

Yet investors are having to contend with huge uncertainty over the White House’s intentions. Trump’s current policy is to raise tariffs on many countries after the end of a 90-day “pause” on higher rates that excluded China, announced by the US president after market turmoil spread to the bond market.

Richard Aboulafia, the managing director of AeroDynamic Advisory, a consultancy, said the Trump administration had showed a “profound and hard-earned level of ignorance” of how the aerospace industry works, and that long-term tariffs would be damaging for Boeing.

Aboulafia said the short-term hit to Boeing’s cash should be relatively limited but added that the company should push back hard against Trump’s tariffs, particularly to avoid a “catastrophic trade war with the rest of the world”.

For the Chinese market, “in the long term it starts to matter”, Aboulafia said. Chinese airlines are expected to account for as much as a fifth of new aircraft sales in one of the key markets for Boeing and its European rival Airbus. “You can’t just leave that to Airbus,” Aboulafia said.

In a sign that the trade war could intensify beyond the US-China relationship, on Monday, Beijing warned it would take “resolute and reciprocal” countermeasures against other countries negotiating with the US if they made a deal at China’s expense.

However, the rest of the world’s aviation industry may be less likely to be affected by countermeasures, given China’s reliance on US and European planes.

Reuters reported that the 737 Max 8 landed in the US territory of Guam on Monday, after leaving Boeing’s Zhoushan completion centre near Shanghai, data from the flight-tracking website AirNav Radar showed.

A spokesperson for Xiamen Airlines on Monday confirmed to Reuters that two planes marked for the carrier had gone to the US but declined to provide a reason.

Boeing was approached for comment.

People given intensive help to reduce their high blood pressure such as medication and coaching have a lower risk of dementia, researchers have found.

According to the World Health Organization, 57 million people around the world had dementia in 2021.

However, experts have long stressed dementia is not an inevitable consequence of ageing. Researchers found about half of cases could be prevented or delayed by addressing 14 risk factors including hearing impairment, smoking, obesity, excessive alcohol consumption and social isolation – as well as high blood pressure.

Now researchers say tackling the last of these could reduce the risk of dementia by 15%.

“Antihypertensive treatment can prevent dementia in patients with uncontrolled hypertension,” said Prof Jiang He, the co-author of the study, from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. “Given the high prevalence of uncontrolled hypertension worldwide, this effective intervention should be widely adopted and scaled up to reduce the global burden of dementia.”

Writing in the journal Nature Medicine, the researchers in China and the US reported how the trial involved 33,995 people aged 40 years and over with uncontrolled high blood pressure, spread across 326 villages in rural China.

The team randomly selected 163 of these villages, with the 17,407 participants who lived there given intensive blood pressure management from non-physician community healthcare providers, often called “village doctors”.

This included free or cheap medications to lower blood pressure, given at tailored doses, health coaching to help them stick to medications and lifestyle modifications – such as weight loss, alcohol reduction and reducing salt intake – and equipment and instructions to monitor blood pressure at home.

The other 163 villages – encompassing 16,588 participants – received “usual care” – meaning participants’ blood pressure was managed in their normal clinical settings. While lifestyle changes were recommended and some took blood pressure-lowering drugs, this group did not receive free at-home blood pressure monitors or medications, or coaching.

When the researchers followed up with the participants after four years, they found 668 of those in the intensive blood pressure management group had dementia, compared with 734 in the usual care group – with analyses suggesting the former group had a 15% lower risk of dementia. Further work revealed this group had a 16% lower risk of cognitive impairment without dementia.

While the team noted that the cognitive function of participants was not assessed at the start of the study, they said the similarity of participants in the two groups means this is unlikely to skew the findings.

However, Prof Joanna Wardlaw, of the University of Edinburgh, who was not involved in the work, said the study could not unpick the relative contribution of optimal blood-pressure control and lifestyle changes on the reduction in dementia risk, suggesting the results reflected a combined effect.

Others said similar research should now be carried out with longer follow-up periods, and added that the approach also needed to be trialled in other countries.

Prof Tara Spires-Jones, the director of the Centre for Discovery Brain Sciences at the University of Edinburgh, said the research “provides further strong evidence supporting the importance of managing blood pressure and other cardiovascular risks to protect the brain during ageing”.

But, she added: “It is important to note that treating high blood pressure was not a foolproof guarantee as some people receiving treatment still developed dementia.”