Donald Trump has celebrated his 100th day in office with a campaign-style rally in Michigan and an attack on “communist radical left judges” for trying to seize his power, warning: “Nothing will stop me.”

The president also served up the chilling spectacle of a video of Venezuelan immigrants sent from the US to a notorious prison in El Salvador, accompanied by Hollywood-style music and roars of approval from the crowd.

Trump’s choice of Michigan was a recognition not only of how the battleground state helped propel him to victory over Vice-President Kamala Harris in last November’s election, but its status as a potential beneficiary of a tariffs policy which, he claims, will revive US manufacturing.

But the cavernous sports and expo centre in the city of Warren, near Detroit, was only half full for the rally, and a steady stream of people left before the end of his disjointed and meandering 89-minute address.

“We’re here tonight in the heartland of our nation to celebrate the most successful first 100 days of any administration in the history of our country!” Trump declared. “In 100 days, we have delivered the most profound change in Washington in nearly 100 years.”

The 45th and 47th president falsely accused the previous administration of engineering massive border invasion and allowing gangs, cartels and terrorists to infiltrate communities. “Democrats have vowed mass invasion and mass migration,” he said. “We are delivering mass deportation.”

Trump defended his use of the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 wartime authority that allows the president to detain or deport the citizens of an enemy nation, to expel foreign terrorist from the US as quickly as possible. Then he took aim at that courts that have blocked many of his moves during the first 100 days.

“We cannot allow a handful of communist, radical-left judges to obstruct the enforcement of our laws and assume the duties that belong solely to the president of the United States,” Trump said, with evident frustration. “Judges are trying to take away the power given to the president to keep our country safe.

“It’s not a good thing, but I hope for the sake of our country that the supreme court is going to save this, because we have to do something. These people are just looking to destroy our country. Nothing will stop me in the mission to keep America safe again.”

In a darkly theatrical touch, Trump encouraged the crowd to watch big screens that showed mainly Venezuelan alleged gang members deported from the US arriving last month in El Salvador and having their heads shaved or being manhandled by guards.

The video, originally shared by El Salvador’s authoritarian president Nayib Bukele, was accompanied by moody music reminiscent of a thriller. Once it was over the big screens offered the simple message, “100 days of greatness”, while the crowd cheered raucously and broke into chants of: “USA! USA! USA!”

The arena was surrounded by banners that read, “Investing in America”, “Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!”, “The Golden Age”, “Buy American, Hire American” and “The American Dream is Back”. Trump’s supporters held signs with slogans such as: “Make America Great Again” and “Golden Age of America”. Michigan’s unemployment rate has risen for three straight months.

One person behind the president waved a “Trump 2028”, banner even though he is constitutionally barred from serving a third term. At one point Margo Martin, a White House aide, joined the president on stage and asked: “Trump 2028, anybody?” The crowd roared.

Before the rally, warm-up tracks included It’s A Man’s World by James Brown and Luciano Pavarotti, Nothing Compares 2 U by Sinéad O’Connor and YMCA by Village People. There were video clips of Elton John and the Who singing Pinball Wizard in the movie Tommy, and factory worker turned country singer Oliver Anthony performing Rich Men North of Richmond.

Yet despite the ostensible celebration of his election win and hugely consequential first 100 days, Trump spent much of the rally in campaign mode, fixated on past grudges and grievances.

He mocked Biden’s mental acuity and even how he appears in a bathing suit, repeated the lie that he won the 2020 election and sought to discredit polling and news coverage unflattering to him. “When you watch the fake news you see fake polls,” he said, without evidence. “In legitimate polls I think we’re in the 60s, the 70s.”

Trump defended his administration’s steep tariffs on cars and auto parts, hours after the White House announced it was softening them. He boasted of ending diversity, equity and inclusion “bullshit” across the federal government and private sector, and of making it official government policy that there are only two genders.

He reiterated support for the beleaguered defence secretary Pete Hegseth, telling the crowd: “I have so much confidence in him. The fake news is after him, but he’s a tough cookie. They don’t know how tough he is.”

Trump also heaped praise on his billionaire ally Elon Musk and his “department of government efficiency”, or Doge, and condemned the backlash against the Tesla and SpaceX entrepreneur: “It’s not fair what they’ve done to him. That is a disgrace.”

The rally featured guest speeches by Brian Pannebecker, a retired car worker who pitched a book he is writing about his support of Trump, and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who said earnestly: “Thank you, President Trump, for being the greatest president in American history.”

Democrats take a different view. Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee, said: “Trump’s pathetic display tonight will do nothing to help the families he started screwing over 100 days ago.

“Michiganders and the rest of the country see right through Trump, and as a result, he has the lowest 100-day approval rating in generations. If he’s not already terrified of what the ballot box will bring between now and the midterm elections, he should be.”

Norway’s state energy company may take Donald Trump’s administration to court after it ordered an “unprecedented” halt to a $2.5bn (£1.87bn) windfarm project off the coast of New York.

Equinor is considering its legal options after the US interior secretary, Doug Burgum, ordered the company to “immediately halt all construction activities” on an offshore windfarm last month.

Equinor is understood to have spent almost $2bn on the Empire windfarm project, which is almost a third complete and was expected to power the equivalent of 500,000 US homes once operating in 2027.

Anders Opedal, the chief executive of Equinor, said: “We have invested in Empire Wind after obtaining all necessary approvals, and the order to halt work now is unprecedented and in our view unlawful. We seek to engage directly with the US administration to clarify the matter and are considering our legal options.”

The company, which is majority-owned by the Norwegian government, has a 35-year history of developing energy projects in the US. It estimates it has invested more than $60bn in US oil, gas and renewables projects.

The Empire project was approved under the Biden administration in 2023 as part of a major package of support from the former president to accelerate plans to decarbonise the power grid and cut carbon emissions.

However, Trump on his first day back in office in January ordered a review of offshore wind permitting and leasing, accusing the previous administration of rushed and insufficient analysis of the plans

The review was seen as a blow to the burgeoning industry and wiped billions from the market value of Equinor as well as the Danish offshore wind company Ørsted, which also planned to build in US waters.

Within months of opening the review, the administration issued an order for Equinor to halt construction of the project, which had begun last year and employs about 1,500 workers.

The stop-work order came as a shock to many industry commentators who had believed that projects that had already secured their approvals would be safe from Trump’s industry review.

In total there are four offshore wind projects under development off the US coast. In addition to the Empire project, Ørsted plans to build the Sunrise Wind project off the coast of New York and the Revolution Wind project off Rhode Island. The US energy company Dominion Energy is planning a windfarm off the Virginia coast.

The New York state energy authority said the decision was fuelled by “a shortsighted, political agenda”. Vincent Alvarez, the president of the New York City Central Labor Council, said: “The reckless and overreaching move to halt construction that is already under way on Empire Wind threatens thousands of good union jobs and jeopardises the progress New York has made toward cleaner, more affordable energy.”

British fighter jets joined their US counterparts in airstrikes against Yemen’s Houthi rebels overnight, the first military action authorised by the Labour government and the first UK participation in an aggressive American bombing campaign against the group.

RAF Typhoons, refuelled by Voyager air tankers, targeted a cluster of buildings 15 miles south of the capital, Sana’a, which the UK said were used by the Houthis to manufacture drones that had targeted shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

The British defence secretary, John Healey, said the attack was launched in response to “a persistent threat from the Houthis to freedom of navigation”. The Iran-backed group has attacked merchant shipping and western warships, leading to a sharp drop in trade flows.

“A 55% drop in shipping through the Red Sea has already cost billions, fuelling regional instability and risking economic security for families in the UK,” Healey added in a social media post shortly after midnight.

Further updates were expected from the UK later on Wednesday.

Britain had joined with the US to conduct five rounds of airstrikes against the Houthis between January and May 2024, part of a campaign authorised by the Biden administration, but has not been involved in a fresh and more intense US effort until now.

Since the launch on 15 March of Operation Rough Rider under the Trump administration, 800 targets have been struck resulting in the deaths of “hundreds of Houthi fighters and numerous Houthi leaders”, according to the US military’s Central Command.

There have also been reports of higher civilian casualties. This week, the Houthis said 68 people were killed when a detention centre holding African migrants was struck in Saada, north-west Yemen, while 80 civilians were reported to have died in an attack on the port of Ras Isa on 18 April.

Annie Shiel, the US director at the Center for Civilians in Conflict (Civic), said the “US strikes continue to raise significant questions about the precautions taken to prevent civilian harm, as required by both international law and US policy”, and noted that there appeared to have been a shift in policy under Donald Trump.

Overnight on Tuesday, the UK said it had taken steps to minimise the risk of civilian casualties. The Houthi buildings were targeted with Paveway IV missiles once, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said, “very careful planning had been completed to allow the targets to be prosecuted with minimal risk to civilians or non-military infrastructure”.

The MoD also emphasised that “as a further precaution, the strike was conducted after dark, when the likelihood of any civilians being in the area was reduced yet further”, though no damage assessment was offered.

There was little immediate comment from the US, though the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, has emphasised that the American military must emphasise “lethality, lethality, lethality” and has cut programmes intended to minimise civilian harm.

News agencies said the Houthis reported several strikes around Sana’a, which the group has held since 2014, but there were few other details immediately available. Other strikes hit the area around Saada.

The Houthis are targeting shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden in support of Hamas and the Palestinians in Gaza, subject of a renewed offensive by Israel. Though the US boasts considerably more firepower than the group, a $60m (£45m) US navy F-18 Super Hornet jet was lost at sea on Tuesday.

US officials said initial reports from the scene indicated the USS Harry S Truman aircraft carrier, on to which the F-18 was being towed, made a hard turn to evade Houthi fire. That contributed to the fighter jet falling overboard and sinking.

The start of Operation Rough Rider caused controversy in the US over Hegseth’s use of the unclassified Signal messaging app to post sensitive details about the attacks, including a group containing a journalist.

Erin Patterson panicked and lied to police about having never foraged for mushrooms or owning a food hydrator because she was overwhelmed that her lunch guests died after eating food she had cooked, her lawyer has told a Victorian court.

Patterson, 50, faces three charges of murder and one charge of attempted murder relating to a beef wellington lunch she served at her house in South Gippsland in 2023.

Patterson has pleaded not guilty to murdering or attempting to murder the relatives of her estranged husband, Simon Patterson.

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She is accused of murdering Simon’s parents, Don and Gail Patterson, his aunt Heather Wilkinson, and attempting to murder Ian Wilkinson, Simon’s uncle and Heather’s husband.

Patterson’s lawyer, Colin Mandy SC, told the court on Wednesday during his opening submission that it was also not in dispute that Patterson had never been diagnosed with cancer.

The court previously heard Patterson told her lunch guests she had ovarian cancer.

But Mandy said an issue in the trial would be how Patterson acted after her lunch guests fell ill, and whether that was reasonable in the circumstances, especially given the “extreme” public health, media, and police scrutiny.

“Three people died because of the food Erin Patterson served that day,” Mandy said.

“How did she feel [about that] … and how might that have impacted on the way she behaved?

“Is it possible that people might do and say things that are not well thought out, and might in the end make them look bad … is it possible a person might lie when they find out people are gravely ill because of food they served up.”

Patterson, who cried a number of times during Wednesday’s hearing, again became emotional when Mandy started speaking about her relationship with her children, and their closeness to the grandparents who died after eating the lunch.

Mandy said it was not in issue that death cap mushrooms caused the deaths; rather, the main issue was that Patterson did not deliberately serve poisoned food to her guests.

“She did not intend to cause any harm to anyone on that day. The defence case is this was a tragedy and terrible accident,” Mandy said.

Mandy said that Patterson had also become sick from eating the same meal as her other guests, but was not as unwell.

He said she lied to police about never foraging mushrooms, but denied ever having deliberately sought out death cap mushrooms.

The court earlier heard that the prosecution will allege Patterson’s phone records suggest that she twice visited areas where death cap mushrooms had been reportedly discovered.

Her visits corresponded with public posts on the iNaturalist website, which contained images of the mushrooms and information about their respective locations in the towns of Loch and Outtrim.

Mandy also said Patterson lied about the dehydrator.

Nanette Rogers SC, the prosecutor, said in her opening submissions that Patterson told police she had never owned a food dehydrator nor dehydrated food, but then said she may have owned one years ago.

She had, in fact, been sharing photos of the dehydrator and her habit of using it to dehydrate mushrooms with Facebook friends she met on a group dedicated to discussing the case of convicted baby killer Keli Lane.

CCTV footage later showed her dumping a dehydrator at a local tip. Forensic analysis later revealed it had her fingerprints on it and contained traces of death cap mushrooms.

The disposal of the dehydrator had been done to conceal her actions, Rogers said.

Rogers also said that police never recovered a phone used by Patterson at the time of the deadly mushroom lunch, and another phone seized during their investigation was subject to a “remote factory reset” while they were searching her house.

Rogers said Patterson concocted the story regarding medical issues and her cancer to ensure the children were not present for the lunch.

Simon was also invited to the lunch at Leongatha on 29 July 2023.

Patterson served individual beef wellingtons to her lunch guests, three of whom died from death cap mushroom poisoning, the court has heard.

Rogers said the prosecution also alleged that Patterson had not eaten the same lunch as her guests, but pretended she had the same type of illness to cover this up, had not fed the leftovers to her children and lied about where she had sourced the mushrooms.

The prosecution “will not be suggesting there was not a particular motive” for the alleged murders and attempted murder, Rogers said.

“You might be wondering, now, ‘why would the accused do this, what is the motive?’

“You might still be wondering this at the end of the trial.

“But motive is not something that has to be proven by the prosecution … you do not have to be satisfied what the motive was, or even if there was one.”

Rogers said in her opening submissions in the case that Patterson had invited Simon and his relatives to her house to discuss “medical issues” she had, and how to break the news to her and Simon’s two children.

She invited the group to her lunch during a service at the Korumburra baptist church, where Ian was the pastor, on 16 July 2023.

The night before the lunch, Simon texted Patterson that he “felt uncomfortable” attending, but that he would be happy to discuss her health with her another time.

Rogers said Patterson responded five minutes later saying she was disappointed, and emphasising the effort she had put into the lunch, which was a “special meal” of the kind she may not be able to have for “some time”.

The Wilkinsons had been puzzled about the lunch invite, Rogers said, as they had never visited Patterson’s home before.

When they arrived, they were shown around the property, before being taken into the dining area.

Rogers showed a photo of the dining table, which had six seats and ran parallel to a kitchen island bench, to the jury during her opening.

Patterson served individual beef wellingtons, consisting of a piece of steak covered in mushrooms and encased in pastry, with mashed potato and green beans on four large grey plates to her guests.

Her meal was served on a smaller, lighter-coloured plate, Rogers said.

They said grace and started the meal. The Wilkinsons ate their meal, with Gail finishing half of hers and Don eating all his and the rest of Gail’s, Rogers said.

After the meal, Patterson announced she had cancer, and asked whether she should tell the children. Patterson had earlier discussed with Gail that she had a biopsy and other tests taken regarding a lump she had found on her elbow.

The group agreed she should be honest with them and they prayed together about Patterson telling the children, Rogers said.

All the lunch guests started to fall unwell about 11 or 12 hours later, Rogers said, before being transferred to local hospitals and then to intensive care at hospitals in Melbourne.

Rogers said Patterson had an amicable relationship with her husband, despite their 2015 separation, until November 2022. Simon had maintained hope that the couple would reconcile, Rogers said.

She said at that time Patterson asked why Simon had referred to himself as “separated” on his tax return and although he said he was willing to amend it she said she would instead be seeking child support payments.

About four weeks before the beef wellington lunch, Patterson invited Simon and his parents, Don and Gail, to lunch.

Simon texted to say he could not come, and the meal passed without incident.

After the subsequent beef wellington lunch, when all the guests became increasingly unwell, medical experts eventually came to the conclusion the symptoms were in line with death cap mushroom poisoning, Rogers said.

Patterson also went to Leongatha hospital, saying she was suffering diarrhoea.

Rogers said Patterson was asked on multiple occasions by medical professionals and others, including Don and Gail’s son Matthew, where the mushrooms for the meal had been sourced. She said half were fresh from Woolworths and the other half were dried mushrooms bought from an Asian grocer in the Melbourne suburb of Oakleigh or Glen Waverley.

She further specified in these conversations that she had bought a 500g pack of pre-sliced fresh mushrooms from Woolworths and that the dried mushrooms had been removed from their packaging and placed in a plastic container after they were bought in April 2023.

Patterson said she made a paste with these mushrooms for the meal, and that she had used all the dried mushrooms and not cooked with them previously, Rogers said.

Rogers said Patterson initially resisted treatment at Leongatha hospital and signed a “discharge against medical advice form” before leaving. The jury was shown a still from CCTV footage of Patterson leaving the hospital.

Rogers said a doctor at the hospital, Dr Christopher Webster, was so concerned she had left that he called the police, asking if they could attend her house to force her to return.

Patterson returned about 45 minutes later.

Patterson told Webster her children, aged 9 and 14, had eaten the leftovers, but that she had scraped the mushroom off. When he insisted they be taken from school and assessed, she became upset, Rogers said.

Patterson asked Webster “is this really necessary, they don’t have symptoms, they didn’t eat the mushrooms, I don’t want them to be scared or panicked”, to which Webster replied: “They can be scared and alive, or dead”.

Soon after, Rogers said, the police who had been called by Webster to check on Patterson arrived at her house.

One officer spoke to Patterson via mobile phone, and she directed him to where he could find the leftovers of the meal, in a brown Woolworths bag in an outside bin.

Beale said in his instructions to the jury on Tuesday that Patterson was no longer accused of attempting to murder her estranged husband.

The trial in Morwell continues.

At least 11 civilians and security officials were killed in clashes in a town near Damascus on Wednesday, state media reported, the second consecutive day of fighting in Druze-majority areas around Syria’s capital.

Reports said fighting had started overnight in the town of Ashrafiah Sahnaya, south-west of Damascus, after unknown gunmen attacked a security checkpoint. An attack on the Druze-majority Damascus suburb of Jaramana a day earlier left at least 10 people dead, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Residents reported hearing gunfire, explosions and shelling throughout Wednesday morning. The security forces closed off roads leading to the area and sent reinforcements in an attempt to stop the fighting.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, also announced that Israeli forces had struck an “extremist group that was preparing to attack the Druze population south of Damascus”. He said: “Israel will not allow harm to the Druze community in Syria.”

Israel has said it will protect the Druze population in southern Syria, an offer that Syrian Druze have said they did not ask for.

The fighting comes as Syria’s authorities grapple with rising tensions a month after an attack by remnants of the deposed regime of Bashar al-Assad on security forces led to sectarian massacres in the coastal Latakia governorate that left at least 1,000 people dead.

This week’s clashes are likely to strain the already frosty relationship between the Syrian government and Druze communities, which are engaged in negotiations over their areas’ inclusion in the Syrian state.

The Druze are an Arab religious minority of about 500,000 people in Syria, mainly concentrated in Suwayda governorate and small towns south of Damascus. Since rebels toppled Assad on 8 December, the new authorities and the group’s leaders have been discussing how to fully integrate Suwayda into the Syrian state.

Negotiations have been slow, however, because Druze leaders have asked for some measure of autonomy from Damascus, wary of the background of the new government, which is headed by Ahmad al-Sharaa, the former leader of the Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

Tuesday’s fighting was sparked by a fake audio recording attributed to a Druze cleric insulting Islam’s prophet, Mohammad, which was circulated on social media. Unknown gunmen launched their attack on Jaramana seemingly in connection with the audio clip.

The cleric supposedly speaking in the clip posted a video on social media later on Tuesday clarifying that he had no connection to the Islamophobic recording.

“I did not say that, and whoever made it is evil and wants to incite strife between components of the Syrian people,” said Marwan Kiwan. Syria’s interior ministry confirmed that the recording was falsely attributed to a Druze official, and stressed that people should abide by the law and not engage in acts of vigilantism.

Community leaders and government representatives managed to broker a deal to end the fighting in Jaramana on Tuesday with stipulations that victims’ families would receive compensation and attackers would be brought to justice.

Fighting quickly reignited several hours later in Ashrafiah Sahnaya, but it is unclear if the attackers were related to those in Jaramana.

The clashes inflamed anger in Suwayda, whose inhabitants have been reluctant to allow the Syrian government full access to the area.

“In Jaramana there was a massacre, Ashrafieh Sahnaya is surrounded and is being attacked by terrorists. General security is preventing Druze and the military council from helping them,” the head of the Suwayda military council, Tarek el-Shoufi, said by phone.

Syria’s cash-strapped authorities suffer from a lack of capacity. Though the nascent state has launched training courses to bolster the ranks of its security forces, it has struggled to disarm and prevent sporadic attacks by the myriad armed factions which roam the vast countryside.

Syria’s minister of interior put out a statement on Wednesday saying that “it will not hesitate to deal with these criminals and will strike with an iron fist anyone who seeks to destabilise Syria’s security and target its people”.

At least 11 civilians and security officials were killed in clashes in a town near Damascus on Wednesday, state media reported, the second consecutive day of fighting in Druze-majority areas around Syria’s capital.

Reports said fighting had started overnight in the town of Ashrafiah Sahnaya, south-west of Damascus, after unknown gunmen attacked a security checkpoint. An attack on the Druze-majority Damascus suburb of Jaramana a day earlier left at least 10 people dead, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Residents reported hearing gunfire, explosions and shelling throughout Wednesday morning. The security forces closed off roads leading to the area and sent reinforcements in an attempt to stop the fighting.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, also announced that Israeli forces had struck an “extremist group that was preparing to attack the Druze population south of Damascus”. He said: “Israel will not allow harm to the Druze community in Syria.”

Israel has said it will protect the Druze population in southern Syria, an offer that Syrian Druze have said they did not ask for.

The fighting comes as Syria’s authorities grapple with rising tensions a month after an attack by remnants of the deposed regime of Bashar al-Assad on security forces led to sectarian massacres in the coastal Latakia governorate that left at least 1,000 people dead.

This week’s clashes are likely to strain the already frosty relationship between the Syrian government and Druze communities, which are engaged in negotiations over their areas’ inclusion in the Syrian state.

The Druze are an Arab religious minority of about 500,000 people in Syria, mainly concentrated in Suwayda governorate and small towns south of Damascus. Since rebels toppled Assad on 8 December, the new authorities and the group’s leaders have been discussing how to fully integrate Suwayda into the Syrian state.

Negotiations have been slow, however, because Druze leaders have asked for some measure of autonomy from Damascus, wary of the background of the new government, which is headed by Ahmad al-Sharaa, the former leader of the Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

Tuesday’s fighting was sparked by a fake audio recording attributed to a Druze cleric insulting Islam’s prophet, Mohammad, which was circulated on social media. Unknown gunmen launched their attack on Jaramana seemingly in connection with the audio clip.

The cleric supposedly speaking in the clip posted a video on social media later on Tuesday clarifying that he had no connection to the Islamophobic recording.

“I did not say that, and whoever made it is evil and wants to incite strife between components of the Syrian people,” said Marwan Kiwan. Syria’s interior ministry confirmed that the recording was falsely attributed to a Druze official, and stressed that people should abide by the law and not engage in acts of vigilantism.

Community leaders and government representatives managed to broker a deal to end the fighting in Jaramana on Tuesday with stipulations that victims’ families would receive compensation and attackers would be brought to justice.

Fighting quickly reignited several hours later in Ashrafiah Sahnaya, but it is unclear if the attackers were related to those in Jaramana.

The clashes inflamed anger in Suwayda, whose inhabitants have been reluctant to allow the Syrian government full access to the area.

“In Jaramana there was a massacre, Ashrafieh Sahnaya is surrounded and is being attacked by terrorists. General security is preventing Druze and the military council from helping them,” the head of the Suwayda military council, Tarek el-Shoufi, said by phone.

Syria’s cash-strapped authorities suffer from a lack of capacity. Though the nascent state has launched training courses to bolster the ranks of its security forces, it has struggled to disarm and prevent sporadic attacks by the myriad armed factions which roam the vast countryside.

Syria’s minister of interior put out a statement on Wednesday saying that “it will not hesitate to deal with these criminals and will strike with an iron fist anyone who seeks to destabilise Syria’s security and target its people”.

Finland has passed legislation to restrict the use of phones and other mobile devices during the school day amid fears over their impact on student wellbeing and learning.

Under the changes, which were approved by the Finnish parliament on Tuesday and will come into effect on 1 August, mobile devices will be heavily restricted during lesson times. Pupils will be allowed to use them only with the teacher’s permission for healthcare or learning purposes.

Finland is the latest European country to impose legal restrictions on the use of phones and other mobile devices in schools amid growing evidence of their impact on children and young people, including attention and self-esteem.

Earlier this year, Denmark said it would ban mobile phones from all schools. The chair of the country’s wellbeing commission, Rasmus Meyer, told the Guardian the measure was necessary to stop schools from being “colonised by digital platforms” and urged the rest of Europe to follow suit.

The Danish commission found that 94% of young people in the country had a social media profile before they turned 13 – despite that being the minimum age on many social media platforms – and that nine-to-14-year-olds spent an average of three hours a day on TikTok and YouTube.

Other countries that have introduced mobile phone restrictions include France, which banned primary and secondary pupils from using their phones on school premises in 2018 and has been trialling a “digital pause” for children up to the age of 15, and Norway, which recently announced a strict minimum age limit of 15 on social media. Tech companies, the Norwegian government said, were being “pitted against small children’s brains”.

In the UK, a recent survey showed that 99.8% of primary schools and 90% of secondary schools had some form of ban on phones, although there is no national statutory ban.

The Finnish parliament has ordered the department of education and culture to carry out a study on the effects of restrictions on the use of mobile devices in Finland and internationally due to be completed by the end of next year. After this, if deemed necessary, the department for education will take further measures.

Under the new rules, students will only be able to use their mobiles during class “for learning purposes or to take care of their own health”. If a student disrupts teaching or learning with their mobile device, the principal or teacher will have the right to remove it. Schools will also be required to establish rules for the use and storage of mobile devices during lessons, meals and breaks.

MPs who objected to the bill when it was voted on argued that the restrictions on phone use should have been extended to apply also to breaks and mealtimes.

The Finnish education minister, Anders Adlercreutz, said in December that the job of schools was “not only to teach knowledge, but also, for example, social skills”. He told the broadcaster YLE: “I hope that through this, maybe we would play more during recess and talk more face-to-face, not just via mobile phone.”

Scientists have used living human brain tissue to mimic the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, in a breakthrough that will accelerate the hunt for a cure.

In a world first, a British team successfully exposed healthy brain tissue from living NHS patients to a toxic form of a protein linked to Alzheimer’s – taken from patients who died from the disease – to show how it damages connections between brain cells in real time.

The groundbreaking move offered a rare and powerful opportunity to see dementia developing in human brain cells. Experts said the new way of studying the disease could make it easier to test new drugs and boost the chances of finding ones that work.

Dementia presents a big threat to health and social care systems across the world. The number of people affected is forecast to triple to nearly 153 million by 2050, which underlines why finding new ways to study the disease and speed up the search for treatments is a health priority.

In the study, scientists and neurosurgeons in Edinburgh teamed up to show for the first time how a toxic form of a protein linked to Alzheimer’s, amyloid beta, can stick to and destroy vital connections between brain cells.

Tiny fragments of healthy brain tissue were collected from cancer patients while they were undergoing routine surgery to remove tumours at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.

Scientists dressed in scrubs were stationed in operating theatres alongside surgical teams, ready to receive the healthy brain tissue, which would otherwise have been discarded.

Once the pieces of brain were retrieved, scientists put them in glass bottles filled with oxygenated artificial spinal fluid before jumping into taxis to transport the samples to their lab a few minutes away.

“We pretty much ran back to the lab,” said Dr Claire Durrant, a Race Against Dementia fellow and UK Dementia Research Institute emerging leader at the Centre for Discovery Brain Sciences at the University of Edinburgh.

There, samples were sliced into thin pieces, less than a third of a millimetre thick, and laid out in small dishes. Each piece of living brain tissue was kept in a nutrient-rich liquid, inside an incubator at 37C to mimic body temperature. “And then we start experiments almost straight away,” Durrant said.

Fragments of human brain were kept alive in dishes for up to a fortnight, with the patient’s permission.

Researchers extracted the toxic form of amyloid beta from people who died from Alzheimer’s disease and then applied it to the healthy living brain tissue in their dishes. “We’re trying to mimic Alzheimer’s disease,” said Durrant.

Unlike when exposed to a normal form of the protein, the brain did not attempt to repair damage caused by the toxic form of amyloid beta, her team found.

Even small changes in natural levels of amyloid beta – increasing or decreasing – were enough to disrupt brain cells. This suggests that the brain requires a finely tuned sweet spot of the protein to function properly, Durrant said.

“Working alongside the neurosurgical team at the University of Edinburgh, we have shown that living human brain slices can be used to explore fundamental questions relating to Alzheimer’s disease,” she said.

“We believe this tool could help accelerate findings from the lab into patients, bringing us one step closer to a world free from the heartbreak of dementia.”

The breakthrough will enable scientists to home in on drugs with the best chance of preventing the loss of synapses – connections that allow the flow of messages between brain cells and are vital to healthy brain function. Alzheimer’s attacks synapses and their loss strongly predicts reduced memory and thinking abilities.

Durrant’s team also found that brain slices taken from the temporal lobe, a region known to be affected early in Alzheimer’s, released higher levels of tau, another key disease protein.

This may explain why this part of the brain is particularly vulnerable in early Alzheimer’s, as increased tau release may enable toxic forms of this protein to spread faster between cells.

The research was backed by Race Against Dementia, a charity formed by Sir Jackie Stewart after his wife’s dementia diagnosis, and a £1m donation from the James Dyson Foundation, a charity supporting medical research and engineering education.

Dyson said the breakthrough represented progress “towards solving one of the most devastating problems of our time”.

“Working with brain surgeons and their consenting patients to collect samples of living human brain and keep them alive in the lab is a groundbreaking method,” he said. “It allows researchers to better examine Alzheimer’s disease on real human brain cells rather than relying on animal substitutes, such as mice.”

Prof Tara Spires-Jones, group leader at the UK Dementia Research Institute, hailed the important development. Seeing early Alzheimer’s in real-time provided a new tool for scientists to better understand the disease and how to treat it, she said.

She said: “The use of living human tissue samples generously donated by people undergoing surgery to remove brain tumours allows scientists to probe how living human brain reacts to toxic proteins produced in Alzheimer’s, and in future will allow testing of whether new treatments are effective in human brain.”

The media world is undergoing a “sea change” in which some traditional titles disappear, Piers Morgan has predicted, as he said some YouTube channels would soon have as much power as traditional network television.

The presenter and former newspaper editor, who is holding funding talks to expand his YouTube business, predicted more established media figures would soon follow him to the increasingly influential streaming service as audience habits continue to shift.

“It’ll be like when vinyl music moves to digital,” he said. “People thought it would take a long time. Actually, it was like that.

“Certain newspapers just won’t exist in the UK. Which newspapers will still have a print edition in 10 years’ time? Look at what young people do. I don’t see anyone under 45 buying a print newspaper. So there’s a ticking clock. If people don’t listen to that ticking clock beating loudly in their ears, they’re going to get a very nasty surprise. This is the wake-up moment.”

Morgan now owns the rights to his YouTube channel, Piers Morgan Uncensored, which he secured from Rupert Murdoch’s empire after the expiry of a News UK deal that paid him a reported £50m over three years. After just turning 60, he admits the transition has been a “learning curve”, but he is now an evangelist for YouTube and its combination of flexibility and low costs.

He said his decision to go “full fledged” into the streaming service was driven by his four children. “All of them watch YouTube,” he said. “None of them watch actual television, other than for live sport. Until a year ago, I was trudging into an old-fashioned, structured, 8pm live news show, when in fact there was no need to do that. It was a very expensive way of disseminating something I can do to a global audience, a lot cheaper – but also much faster and much longer.”

While Morgan is a figure who divides opinion, his move into YouTube is part of a wider trend that has seen media figures – particularly on the US political right – forge channels with millions of subscribers. Morgan is aiming to replicate the success of The Daily Wire, a US conservative media company co-founded by the rightwing political commentator Ben Shapiro. Its roster includes the Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson.

YouTube is becoming hugely influential right across the media, with broadcasters such as ITV and Channel 4 now placing some content on it. Podcasters also increasingly stream their shows there. It has led to significant financial muscle. In the first three months of 2025 alone, YouTube’s advertising revenue was $8.9bn (£6.64bn), an increase on the previous year of more than 10%. Meanwhile, revenue at Channel 4 for the whole of 2023 was about £1bn, the latest year available.

Morgan pointed to the US election last year. YouTube said more than 45 million people in the US watched election-related content on polling day. Meanwhile, an average of 42.3 million viewers watched across 18 cable and broadcast networks that evening. While the figures are not directly comparable, Morgan said: “If that doesn’t tell you where the eyeballs are going, I don’t know what will.”

He said some “big, big names” in journalism have been in touch to ask if they could make the switch. “I also think that legacy media companies have to look at people like me and others and think, why are they going off on their own and into this world,” he said. “A lot more people will do what I’m doing. I’m getting a lot of very interesting calls from journalists.”

Morgan is now drawing up plans to attempt something similar to Gary Lineker’s Goalhanger Productions, which has created a series of successful podcasts in the UK. Morgan wants to create channels under the Uncensored brand covering genres like true crime, history and sport. However, he is aiming squarely and unapologetically at the US and a global audience, not Britain – whose audience he describes as “pretty well irrelevant” to his plans.

“You’ve seen what Gary Lineker has done, he’s a good friend of mine, with Goalhanger in the UK, but he would be the first to tell you that the most successful [podcast for Goalhanger] in terms of revenue is The Rest is History, because it’s big in America,” he said. “It’s not the football one with him on it. It’s the history one. Those guys go over to America and do big live shows, and it’s huge over there.

“I hardly ever cover UK news. We didn’t even touch the last election, because my whole prism is through the lens of: ‘Will an American want to watch this? Will somebody in the Middle East want to watch this? Will someone in Australia want to watch this?.’”

Morgan said his expansion plans were in part to lower the reliance on him personally and build something that could stand on its own – a much harder task than building a following around an established figure. He said it was “early days”, but was being bullish with potential investors as the business was already profitable.

“I don’t need the money,” he said. “We’ve got nearly 4 million subscribers … My question to investors is not so much, ‘Give me your money.’ It’s ‘Why should I take your money and what are you going to bring to the party?’”

A 16-year-old has been detained on suspicion of shooting and killing three people in the city of Uppsala, according to Sweden’s prosecution authority.

Police had earlier confirmed in a press conference that a detained person was suspected of murder and was one of several people being interrogated as part of the investigation, although they did not provide an age.

The shooting took place at a hair salon in Uppsala, a university city 45 miles north of Stockholm, on Tuesday. Police said the incident was believed to be an isolated event and not linked to the annual Valborg celebrations expected in the city on Wednesday evening. Valborg is a Swedish bonfire festival marking the arrival of spring.

Swedish media reported that one of the deceased had connections to organised gang crime, although police would not confirm those reports.

Authorities in Sweden have been struggling to deal with gang violence, which remains at the forefront of a national debate, including growing concerns over the young age of children being caught up in the bloodshed. Guns and explosives are regularly used by rival gangs.

Police have appealed to the public for information after a masked person was seen fleeing the crime scene on an electric scooter on Tuesday.

The minister of justice, Gunnar Strömmer, condemned the killings as a “brutal act of violence”.

Police were first alerted to the incident shortly after 5pm on Tuesday, when they received several phone calls from members of the public about loud bangs. Officials later confirmed that three people were dead.

“Quite soon we encountered three people who appeared to have been shot. They did not need to be taken to hospital,” Magnus Jansson Klarin, a spokesperson for Uppsala police, told the Svenska Dagbladet daily newspaper.

The Swedish government announced in February that it planned to strengthen its weapons laws after the country’s worst mass shooting, when a gunman killed 10 people at an education centre in Örebro, west of Stockholm, before shooting himself. The man’s motives are still under investigation.

Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

Following criticism of her latest tour, new music and her trip to the edge of space on Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin craft, Katy Perry has written an emotional message explaining how the public opprobrium has affected her.

Perry wrote the message under an Instagram post by a fan group, who booked a billboard in Times Square to congratulate her on the opening week of her Lifetimes tour.

Describing herself as a “human piñata” and the internet as “a dumping ground for unhinged and unhealed” people, Perry told her supportive fans: “I can continue to remain true to myself, heart open and honest especially because of our bond.

“Please know I am OK, I have done a lot [of] work around knowing who I am, what is real and what is important to me. My therapist said something years ago that has been a gamechanger, ‘no one can make you believe something about yourself that you don’t already believe about yourself’ and if I ever do have any feelings about it then it’s an opportunity to investigate the feeling underneath it. When the ‘online’ world tries to make me a human piñata, I take it with grace and send them love, cause I know so many people are hurting in so many ways and the internet is very much so a dumping ground for unhinged and unhealed.”

She added: “I’m not perfect, and I actually have omitted that word from my vocabulary, I’m on a human journey playing the game of life with an audience of many and sometimes I fall but … I get back up and go on and continue to play the game and somehow through my battered and bruised adventure I keep looking to the light and in that light a new level unlocks.”

Perry is currently on her Lifetimes tour, which began in Mexico on 23 April. Short clips from the tour have been mocked in some quarters online, for the choreography and staging.

Perry was also castigated – arguably more than anyone else – for taking part in Blue Origin’s flight on 14 April, along with an all-female crew including TV presenter Gayle King and Bezos’s fiancee Lauren Sanchez. A Guardian op-ed described the flight as “the utter defeat of American feminism … indulgent and morally hollow”. Celebrities including Joe Rogan and Emily Ratajkowski criticised it, with actor Olivia Munn saying: “There are so many other things that are so important in the world right now.”

Lily Allen was another of the critics, though this week she apologised to Perry. “There was actually no need for me to bring her name into it, and it was my own internalised misogyny,” she said on her podcast Miss Me. “It was just completely unnecessary to pile on with her. I mean, I disagree with what it was that they did, but she wasn’t the only person that did it.”

Perry’s most recent album 143 underperformed, with none of its singles reaching the UK Top 40.

The US leg of the Lifetimes tour begins on 7 May in Houston, followed by stints in Australia, Canada and countries across South America. A European tour begins on 7 October in Glasgow.