The US economy shrank in the first three months of Donald Trump’s second term as the president sought to roll out an aggressive trade strategy, claiming that sweeping tariffs on the world would strengthen the US economy.

Gross domestic product (GDP), a key measure of overall growth in the US economy, fell by 0.3% in the first quarter of the year, down from 2.4% in the last quarter of 2024. The contraction – the first since the start of 2022 – puts the US on the brink of a technical recession, defined by two quarters of negative growth.

The drop in activity comes amid a huge fall in consumer sentiment, which in April dropped 32% to its lowest level since the 1990 recession.

Trump spent much of the first quarter threatening, and fleetingly implementing, sweeping tariffs on Canada and Mexico, and targeting China with higher duties on its exports.

Days into the second quarter, which was not covered by today’s GDP reading, he ordered even higher tariffs on goods from much of the world, before pulling back the tariffs on all countries but China. As it stands, Trump is charging a 10% universal tariff on imported goods from much of the world, along with a 145% tariff on imports from China.

Seemingly responding to deep fluctuations in the US stock market, Trump has shelved a wave of so-called “reciprocal tariffs” of up to 49% on specific countries, which he halted for 90 days.

He offered some relief to US automakers, who were facing a 25% tariff on all auto imports on Tuesday, signing an executive order that would allow them to receive a credit if they import auto parts but assemble the cars in the US.

Last week, stocks rallied on news that Trump said tariffs against China – which already has exemptions for some electronics – will be reduced “substantially” as the White House negotiates a deal with China, though Trump said that the tariff will not be eliminated completely. China has placed a 125% tariff on American goods in retaliation for Trump’s tariffs.

While the White House has said in recent weeks that Trump’s tariffs are meant to be a negotiating tactic, leaders around the world have said they will retaliate if Trump continues to try to bully them into negotiations.

“If one chooses to remain silent, compromise and cower, it will only make the bully want to push his luck more,” said the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, on Monday.

Trump has been sensitive to criticism of his tariffs and the impact they are having on the economy. At one point over the last month, Trump threatened to remove Jerome Powell from his role as chair of the US Federal Reserve after Powell said that Trump’s tariffs could lead to permanent price hikes.

After markets fell, Trump eventually backed down, telling reporters that he had “no intention” of firing Powell.

Donald Trump lashed out at an ABC journalist in a tense TV interview to mark 100 days of his second term in office, in which among other confrontations he angrily pushed correspondent Terry Moran to agree with him that a doctored photo was actually real, telling him: “Why don’t you just say yes.”

The 40-minute interview in the Oval Office veered off course when Moran pressed Trump on the case of Kilmar Ábrego García, a Salvadoran man living in Maryland who was deported despite a protective court order. When Moran pointed out that the supreme court had ordered García’s return to the US, and suggested Trump had the power to comply by making a single phone call, the president bristled.

“I could,” Trump said – contradicting weeks of his administration’s insistence that he could not – but added: “I’m not the one making this decision. We have lawyers that don’t want to do this.”

“You’re the president,” Moran said, then after talking over each other, Trump said: “No, no, no, no. I follow the law. You want me to follow the law. If I were the president that just wanted to do anything, I’d probably keep him right where he is.”

“The supreme court says what the law is,” Moran pointed out.

The exchange deteriorated further when Trump insisted García has MS-13 tattoos on his knuckles, while Moran – after several times gently disagreeing and trying to move to a new topic – eventually pointed out that the image Trump was referring to had obviously been digitally altered.

“Why don’t you just say, ‘Yes, he does’ [have a gang tattoo] and, you know, go on to something else,” Trump said.

The US president added: “You do such a disservice… This is why people no longer believe the news, because it’s fake news.”

He then claimed he picked Moran to do the milestone interview “because frankly, I never heard of you”, and added: “Hey, they’re giving you the big break of a lifetime, you know – you’re doing the interview.”

Throughout, Trump stood by his controversial economic and immigration policies, even as Moran pressed him on potential consequences.

On his steep tariffs against China – which reached 145% on some goods – Trump dismissed widespread economic concerns about price increases for American consumers. “Everybody’s gonna be just fine,” the president insisted, despite analyses from Moody’s and other financial institutions projecting thousands of dollars in additional costs for American families.

“It’ll raise prices on everything from electronics to clothing to building houses,” Moran said.

“You don’t know that. You don’t know whether or not China’s gonna eat it,” Trump countered, claiming his tariffs were necessary to address trade imbalances that made the US economy “not sustainable”.

When it came to his proudest achievement in the first 100 days, Trump pointed to his border policies, claiming his adminstration had reduced illegal crossings by “99.9%”.

But, when questioned on whether he recognizes the legal procedures for deportations, Trump appeared to challenge established due process requirements. Asked if he acknowledged that under US law every person facing deportation is entitled to a hearing, Trump responded: “If people come into our country illegally, there’s a different standard,” contradicting decades of supreme court precedent establishing that constitutional protections extend to all persons on US soil.

Even when Moran cited concerns from podcaster and Trump supporter Joe Rogan, who warned that deportations without due process might mean “we become monsters while we’re fighting monsters”, the president offered only vague assurances about being “careful” while doing “something that has to be done”.

On Ukraine, Trump described the ongoing conflict as “Biden’s war” while recounting his recent meeting with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, at St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Though he condemned Russia’s missile strikes on civilian areas, he also expressed belief that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, “wants peace” – a claim at odds with Russia’s continued offensive operations.

When asked directly if he trusted Putin, Trump deflected: “I don’t trust you. I don’t trust a lot of people. I don’t trust you,” before adding that Putin “respects me”.

Trump also declined to clarify whether the US would continue military aid to Ukraine if peace negotiations fail, saying: “I want to leave that as a big, fat secret, because I don’t want to ruin a negotiation.”

When challenged about his use of presidential powers – including revoking security clearances and targeting law firms with regulatory threats – Trump defended his actions by claiming he had been “persecuted like no other president”.

And as the interview wrapped, Moran asked Trump directly about concerns he was becoming authoritarian, to which the president responded: “I would hate them to think that. I’m doing one thing: I’m making America great again.”

Exports to the US from Chinese online shops such as Temu and Shein have plunged in the face of Donald Trump’s trade war, as shipping from China to the EU has increased.

Official Chinese data showed its total e-commerce shipping dropped 65% by volume in the first three months of the year, but rose 28% in Europe.

The sharp fall comes amid reports that the fast-fashion discount platform Shein is considering a restructuring in the US to circumnavigate tariffs.

According to the Financial Times, one workaround would be for Shein to move production from China to countries not hit by US tariffs. Such a move could put its upcoming London stock exchange listing on hold.

The figures predate Trump’s April announcement that he was scrapping the tariff exemption on parcel imports worth up to $800 (£598) from 2 May. But they highlight how China’s e-commerce platforms have diverted marketing efforts to Europe in anticipation of US tariffs to come.

From May, US consumers may experience something akin to the Brexit effect that made many low-value imports prohibitively expensive for UK online shoppers, because of the overnight change in trading rules with the EU.

Punishing US tariffs of 145% on Chinese goods have already come into force, sending prices rocketing on both Temu and Shein.

Temu is passing on nearly all its import taxes to the consumer, with the average price of 100 products in two categories – toys and games and health and beauty – jumping by more than 40% in the last two weeks, according to analysis by Bloomberg.

CNBC reported that a summer dress listed on Temu for $18.47 (£13.83) will cost $44.68 after $26.21 in import charges are added to the bill – a 142% surcharge.

Meanwhile, the cost of a child’s swimsuit almost triples from $12.44 to $31.12 when the $18.68 import charge is taken into account. A handheld vacuum cleaner listed at $16.93 now costs $40.11 when factoring in the additional fee.

On Tuesday, the Chinese government sent a defiant video message to Trump, warning it would not “kneel down” in the face of the punitive tariffs.

“Bowing to a bully is like drinking poison to quench thirst,” it said in the English-language statement.

The tariffs are intended to revive US manufacturing, but look set to hit businesses and consumers hard. Walmart is among the US companies trying to hold on to market share by telling its Chinese suppliers it will shoulder the import taxes, according to the South China Morning Post.

Even the US-based Amazon, which hosts many Chinese third-party sellers, has been scathed by rumours of how it planned to respond to the tariffs. After a report said it would break down prices for consumers to show the tariff cost, the company was called “hostile and political” by a White House spokesperson, before Trump called Jeff Bezos personally.

Amid fears that such a move could directly illustrate the impact of the trade war on consumers’ pockets, Trump said: “Jeff Bezos was very nice. He was terrific. He solved the problem very quickly. Good guy.”

Amazon said it had “considered the idea” of listing import charges but that the plan had been misreported, as it was never approved.

Temu and Shein were approached for comment.

Detainees at the Bluebonnet immigrant detention center in the small city of Anson, Texas, sent the outside world a message this week: SOS.

With a Reuters drone flying nearby, 31 men formed the letters in the dirt yard of the facility on Monday.

Ten days earlier, dozens of Venezuelan detainees at the center were given notices by immigration officials that alleged they were members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and subject to deportation under a wartime law, according to documents shown to Reuters, recorded video calls and court proceedings.

The families of seven detainees interviewed by Reuters said they were not gang members and that they refused to sign the document.

Nevertheless, hours later on 18 April, they were loaded onto a bus bound for nearby Abilene Regional airport, according to the American Civil Liberties Union and family members, before the bus was turned around and sent back to the detention center.

That night, the supreme court temporarily blocked their deportations. The Department of Homeland Security declined to comment on the halted deportations.

It was a reprieve for the group of Venezuelans detained at Bluebonnet, who still face being potentially sent to Cecot, the notorious maximum security prison in El Salvador where the Trump administration has sent at least 137 Venezuelans under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, if the supreme court lifts the block.

The Bluebonnet facility, located 200 miles (322km) west of Dallas, is privately run by the Management and Training Corporation under a contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Named after the state flower of Texas, it has held an average of 846 detainees a day in fiscal year 2025, according to Ice detention data.

Denied access to the Bluebonnet facility by Ice, Reuters flew a small plane over the center last week as well as a drone nearby on 28 April to gather aerial images of the detainees being held there. Some of the detainees photographed by Reuters were wearing red jumpsuits designating them as high risk.

Millan was moved to Bluebonnet in mid-April from the Stewart detention center in Lumpkin, Georgia, where he had been held since he was arrested by immigration agents in the Atlanta suburbs on 12 March, according to a senior Department of Homeland Security official. Reuters could not find a criminal record for Millan, who had been working in construction. The DHS official said Millan was a “documented” member of Tren de Aragua, but provided no evidence.

The DHS official said Ice detained Escalona in January 2025, after he was arrested by local Texas police for evading arrest in a vehicle. He arrived at Bluebonnet after he was returned from the US migrant detention facility in Guantánamo Bay in February.

The DHS official said Escalona was a “self-admitted” Tren de Aragua member but did not provide evidence of the claim.

During a phone interview from Bluebonnet, Escalona said he had no ties to Tren de Aragua or any gang. He was a police officer in Venezuela, he said. When they detained him, US authorities took his phone and he suspects they saw photos of him making hand gestures that he said were common in Venezuela.

“They’re making false accusations about me,” he said. “I don’t belong to any gang.”

Escalona said that he has asked to return voluntarily to Venezuela but was denied.

“I fear for my life here,” he said. “I want to go to Venezuela.”

Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have come to the United States over the past few years, fleeing economic collapse and what critics call an authoritarian crackdown under President Nicolás Maduro.

Under the administration of Joe Biden, many were given temporary humanitarian protections that the Trump administration is trying to revoke.

‘He is desperate’

Since their aborted deportation, the men have been on edge, their families say.

In Millan’s dorm, he and some of the other Venezuelan men take turns sleeping so that they can alert family members if immigration officers come to deport them, according to Millan’s wife, who asked not to be named for fear of being targeted by immigration officials.

One day last week, he told her the men in the dorm refused to go out into the yard because they were worried they would be put on another bus and sent to El Salvador.

“He is desperate,” Millan’s wife said. “He told me that when he walked out onto the field, he sat down and looked at the sky and asked God to get him out of there soon.”

In one recent video call, Millan told his wife that they have not been given much food, and he tries to sleep more so that he is not so hungry, she said, something that other detainees’ relatives echoed.

A spokesperson for Management and Training Corporation, which runs the facility, said: “All detainees housed at Bluebonnet receive meals based on a menu that has been approved by a certified dietitian, ensuring the recommended daily caloric intake is met.”

In a statement, DHS said it “uses multiple strategies to manage capacity while maintaining compliance with federal standards and our commitment to humane treatment”.

On Saturday, an immigration official visited Escalona’s dorm and answered some of the detainees’ questions, according to an audio recording of the visit obtained by Reuters.

The men, talking over each other frantically, wanted to know why the government was trying to send them to El Salvador and what was happening with their immigration court dates.

The official explained that the US had tried to remove them under the Alien Enemies Act, which was a separate process from their scheduled immigration court hearings.

“If he gets removed under the Alien Enemies Act, then that court date doesn’t exist, he’ll never have that court date,” the official said in English to someone who was translating.

Several of the men wanted to know how it was possible for them to be classified as “alien enemies” when they were not gang members and had committed no crime.

“If I don’t have a criminal record in the three countries in which I have lived in, how are they going to send me to El Salvador?” one of the men in the recording asked. Reuters was not immediately able to establish his identity.

The official said he was not involved in the intelligence gathering.

Several of the men had court hearings in their immigration cases last week and advocates scrambled to find lawyers for them.

Millan has a pending asylum case and his next hearing is scheduled for May 1, unless he is sent to El Salvador before then.

“Our flag will never be red!” rightwing Brazilians took to chanting during the heyday of the left-bashing former president Jair Bolsonaro.

But their football shirts soon might be, amid incendiary reports that the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) is considering introducing a crimson jersey for the national team ahead of the 2026 World Cup.

Those claims have sparked predictable outrage among hardcore rightwingers who consider red the anti-patriotic colour of Brazil’s leftwing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, his Workers’ party (PT) and the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST).

“Our team’s shirt will never be red – and neither will our country!” thundered Romeu Zema, a conservative governor hoping to claim the mantle of Bolsonaro, who faces jail for allegedly masterminding a failed rightwing coup after losing the 2022 election. In a social media video, Zema hurled a mock-up of the red shirt on to the ground in theatrical disgust.

Bolsonaro’s politician son, Flávio Bolsonaro, said the supposed plans needed “vehemently repudiating”, insisting: “Our flag isn’t red – and it never will be.”

But Bolsonaristas are not the only ones up in arms about the reported attempt to swap Brazil’s blue away shirt – in use since the country won the first of its five World Cup, in 1958 – for a red one.

Football purists of all political stripes have clobbered the “leaked” plans since they surfaced on Monday in a viral report by the football website Footy Headlines.

The idea has proved so controversial that the CBF was forced to deny it on Tuesday insisting online images of the red jersey were not official and that it remained committed to yellow and blue shirts. The kit for next year’s World Cup had yet to be designed in partnership with Brazil’s official kit supplier Nike, the CBF claimed.

Walter Casagrande, a Lula-voting former player and commentator who is associated with Brazil’s left and pro-democracy movement, called the scheme “idiocy”.

Sports writer Paulo Vinícius Coelho said the move showed “a complete lack of sense” and was almost certainly commercially driven.

Galvão Bueno, Brazil’s most famous TV commentator, called the idea “a crime” and a “gigantic insult” to the glorious history of a national team which has won more World Cups than any other country.

Some leftwing Brazilians were more receptive to the idea of a crimson kit. Over the past decade the country’s iconic yellow jersey has become a symbol of the far right and is regularly worn at pro-Bolsonaro rallies. Many progressives now refuse to wear it.

In a pro-red shirt manifesto, columnist Milly Lacombe declared that she would wear the jersey with pride and rejected the outbreak of “collective hysteria” over the mooted shirt. “Red is a strong colour that stands for revolution, change, transformation, blood, struggle, life, death, rebirth,” she wrote.

Juca Kfouri, a left-leaning football writer who is among those who shun the yellow shirt, also rejected the “bad taste” change, arguing that a red shirt would further fuel the toxic politics swirling around the national team’s attire and divide supporters.

“Red doesn’t have anything to do with Brazil,” Kfouri said, although he noted that Brazil took its name from a redwood tree called pau-brasil (brazilwood in English) and, in the early 19th century, had red in its first flag.

Kfouri suspected the red shirt story was “a trial balloon” devised to see how the money-making ruse went down with fans. “Just like politicians sometimes leak a policy, wait to see how the social networks react and, depending on that reaction, give up or move ahead,” he said.

For the CBF, the hoo-ha was also a helpful diversion as it sought to shift attention away from its apparent failure to recruit the Real Madrid manager, Carlo Ancelotti, as Brazil’s next manager and a compromising exposé in a Brazilian magazine. “It distracts from the things that really matter,” Kfouri said.

At least 16 civilians and security officials have been killed in clashes in a town near Damascus, Syria’s interior ministry reported, the second consecutive day of fighting in Druze-majority areas around Syria’s capital.

Reports on Wednesday 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”.

A second Israeli strike killed a member of Syria’s security forces outside Damascus and Israel’s military chief of staff ordered preparations to attack Syrian government targets “if the violence against the Druze did not stop”.

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

Syria’s authorities are still grappling 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 Ashrafieh 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.

Videos on social media showed armed Arab tribesmen stopping a convoy of cars originating from Suwayda from reaching Ashrafieh Sahnaya.

El-Shoufi said: “The Druze men that are in Sahnaya are running out of ammunition. The road has been cut off and a group of Druze that wanted to help came under fire, killing one of them.”

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

Syria’s minister of interior put out a statement on Wednesday saying “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 16 civilians and security officials have been killed in clashes in a town near Damascus, Syria’s interior ministry reported, the second consecutive day of fighting in Druze-majority areas around Syria’s capital.

Reports on Wednesday 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”.

A second Israeli strike killed a member of Syria’s security forces outside Damascus and Israel’s military chief of staff ordered preparations to attack Syrian government targets “if the violence against the Druze did not stop”.

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

Syria’s authorities are still grappling 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 Ashrafieh 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.

Videos on social media showed armed Arab tribesmen stopping a convoy of cars originating from Suwayda from reaching Ashrafieh Sahnaya.

El-Shoufi said: “The Druze men that are in Sahnaya are running out of ammunition. The road has been cut off and a group of Druze that wanted to help came under fire, killing one of them.”

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

Syria’s minister of interior put out a statement on Wednesday saying “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”.

Iran has executed a 36-year-old man it accused of helping the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, kill a senior officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in Tehran in 2022.

Iranian state media said Mohsen Langarneshin was hanged, the usual method of execution in Iran, at Ghezel Hesar prison early on Wednesday morning.

Langarneshin’s family and human rights groups insisted the former IT consultant was innocent of the charges against him and that any reported confessions were obtained by torture or blackmail.

On Tuesday, Langarneshin’s mother made an emotional appeal for his life to be spared. “Please pray for my child … I do not know if he will see the sunrise tomorrow or not,” she said in a post on social media.

“I don’t know why the court refuses to accept any of the documents and evidence we bring. We have so many pieces of evidence that prove his innocence, but nothing is accepted.”

According to Iran’s state news agency IRNA, Langarneshin was a “senior spy” for the Mossad who provided critical “technical support” for the assassination of Hassan Sayyad Khodaei, a colonel in the Revolutionary Guards who was shot five times by gunmen on a motorbike outside his home in Tehran, as well as for other alleged operations.

The IRNA report said the Mossad recruited Langarneshin in 2020 and that he met with Israeli intelligence officers in Georgia and Nepal. He was arrested in July 2023.

Activists fear that Iran scapegoats innocent people after failing to catch the actual agents, who have often escaped overseas by the time investigators identify them.

Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of the Norway-based Iran Human Rights monitor, said: “Mohsen Langarneshin, who was sentenced to death in an unfair judicial process based on confessions obtained under torture and charged with espionage for Israel, was hanged at dawn today.”

“The Iranian authorities’ execution machine is accelerating every day, taking the lives of more people,” he added, describing the executions as “extrajudicial killings”.

At least 335 people have been hanged in Iran so far this year alone, campaigners say. Iran executed more than 900 people in 2024. A man was executed in December 2023 after he was found guilty of collaborating with the Mossad. Four others were hanged a year earlier over alleged ties to Israel.

The US-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, which had campaigned over Langarneshin’s case, said he had been convicted at a revolutionary court presided over by a judge, Abolghasem Salavati, who has been put under US and EU sanctions and is notorious for handing out death sentences.

“He denied all charges, stating that his confessions were extracted under torture,” the group said.

The revolutionary courts were set up after the 1979 revolution and deliver often summary justice in closed hearings.

Israel and Iran have been engaged in a shadow war of assassinations and bombings for decades. A series of attacks attributed to the Mossad has targeted Iranian scientists, experts and academics, many connected to Iran’s nuclear programme. Last year, Israel is thought to have killed Ismail Haniyeh, the most senior political leader of Hamas, with a bomb in a bedroom of a government guesthouse in Tehran

In Israel, a 72-year-old man was sentenced on Tuesday to 10 years in prison accused of discussing plots with Iranian intelligence services to assassinate senior government officials, including the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

The US president, Donald Trump, is seeking a new deal with the Iranian leadership on its nuclear programme, with both Israel and its ally the US long refusing to rule out a military strike on Iran.

The Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said on Wednesday that Iran expected the next round of negotiations with the US to be held in Rome on Saturday, adding that Iran also anticipated having a meeting on Friday with France, Germany and the UK to discuss the talks.

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 on Tuesday: “Through this law, we give students better opportunities to concentrate on their studies and teachers the tools they need to create a calm working environment that supports learning.”

The new legislation, he said, would enable “better opportunities for meaningful interaction.”

“School is not just a place for acquiring knowledge. It’s also a place where social skills are developed. With eyes fixed on screens, it becomes harder to interact with others. That’s why we want to give students better opportunities for meaningful interaction during the school day.”

Starbucks is planning to hire more baristas, get them to work more hours at its coffee shops and roll back its embrace of automation, as the company’s new leadership battles to turn the chain around.

Brian Niccol, who joined Starbucks as chief executive last September, has vowed to “fundamentally change” the company’s strategy in order to win back customers.

In a call with investors on Wednesday, he acknowledged that reducing the number of staff members in outlets had backfired.

“Over the last couple of years, we’ve actually been removing labour from the stores, I think with the hope that equipment could offset the removal of the labour,” Niccol said. “What we’re finding is that wasn’t an accurate assumption with what played out.”

The company had been trialling increasing staff numbers in a handful of its stores around the time Niccol joined the company in summer 2024, when he was poached from the Chipotle Mexican Grill chain, amid a surprise management shake-up. He has since expanded that pilot to about 3,000 of its 36,000 coffee shops worldwide.

Niccol told investors: “Equipment doesn’t solve the customer experience that we need to provide, but rather staffing the stores and deploying with this technology behind it does.”

The company will also scale back the rollout of its siren craft system – technology designed to help employees streamline the drinks-making process.

Niccol’s arrival at Starbucks was one of the largest executive deals in US corporate history, putting him in line for a sign-on pay package worth up to $113m (£88m), four times larger than that of his predecessor.

The fourth boss of Starbucks in less than three years, Niccol has already pledged to shake up its “overly complex menu” and change its pricing strategy.

Customers have been turning their backs on Starbucks, where some drinks can cost more than £6, as they rein in their spending. At the same time, the company has faced rising costs.

Niccol told investors the chain was looking at ways to bake fresh and assemble some items at scale in stores, after trials of freshly baked products in the UK.

He said that other changes, including “handwritten notes on cups”, the use of ceramic cups, and “the return of great seats” had led to more customers choosing “to sit and stay in our cafes, demonstrating that small details and hospitality drive satisfaction”.

However, Niccol’s turnaround plans appear to have had limited success on Starbucks’ bottom line.

His announcements came as the company reported worse-than-expected results for the first three months of the year, with a 1% fall in global sales – the fifth consecutive quarterly decline.

Niccol called the results “disappointing”, but added that despite weakness in the US, which is its biggest market, sales rose over the period in China and Canada.

A jury has been shown footage of what prosecutors say is the moment the Sycamore Gap tree crashed to the ground after being felled by a shadowy figure wielding a loud, revving chainsaw.

A court heard that the video was taken on the Apple iPhone 13 of Daniel Graham, one of two men accused of illegally cutting down the tree on Hadrian’s Wall, described by one witness as “totemic”.

The video lasts 2 minutes and 40 seconds. It shows a silhouetted figure with a chainsaw cutting into a tree. Loud chainsaw noise can be heard as well as the sound and sight of the tree toppling to the ground.

Graham, 39, and Adam Carruthers, 32, have denied being responsible for cutting down the tree, which had stood in a dip on the wall since the late 19th century. They also deny criminally damaging Hadrian’s Wall.

On Wednesday Amy Sutherland, an intelligence analyst for Northumbria police, was asked about the evidence she had collated in order to produce a timeline of events.

Sutherland told the court the tree-felling video was in the downloads on Graham’s phone and she had been able to get the coordinates of where it was filmed from the metadata. She said the coordinates were for Sycamore Gap.

The jury was shown two sets of footage, said to have been filmed in the early hours of 28 September 2023. The first was almost completely black, raw footage. The second had been enhanced by police to change the brightness and contrast.

Jurors at Newcastle crown court were also shown CCTV footage of a car, said by the prosecution to be Graham’s black Range Rover, being driven towards a car park near the Sycamore Gap tree. They were also shown footage of it being driven away from the car park.

Earlier the court was read a written statement from an inspector of ancient monuments, Lee McFarlane, who said some of the stones on Hadrian’s Wall were damaged by the falling tree.

She said it was fortunate the tree was still in full leaf as the crown of the tree appeared to have acted as a kind of “cushion”. The damage could have been “catastrophic” otherwise, she added.

A statement by Tony Wilmott, a senior archaeologist with Historic England, said the Sycamore Gap name was coined in the 1980s and over the decades it had become one of Northumberland’s most appreciated features.

“Its unmistakable profile has been repeated in many media and because of this it has become totemic,” he said.

“It has become a place of marriage proposals, family visits and even the location of ashes to be spread. The place is much loved by many thousands of people.”

Also read out was evidence from Alice Whysall Price, a walker who took pictures of the tree at 5.20pm on 27 September, some of the last to be taken when the tree was still standing.

Opening the case on Tuesday, Richard Wright KC said Carruthers and Graham embarked on a “moronic mission” to cut down in minutes a tree that had stood for more than 100 years.

He said the two men appeared to revel in the news coverage, which soon began once it was known the tree was felled. Messages talked about it going “wild” and “viral”.

Wright told jurors: “They are loving it, they’re revelling in it. This is the reaction of the people that did it. They still think it’s funny, or clever, or big.”

Graham, of Carlisle, and Carruthers, of Wigton, are jointly charged with causing criminal damage worth £622,191 to the tree. They are also charged with causing £1,144 of damage to Hadrian’s Wall, a Unesco world heritage site. The wall and the tree belong to the National Trust.

Graham and Carruthers deny all the charges against them.

The trial continues.

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.