Keir Starmer has called for the “guns to fall silent in Ukraine” and said military powers will meet next week as plans to secure a peace deal move to an “operational phase”.

The UK prime minister said Vladimir Putin’s “yes, but” approach to a proposed ceasefire was not good enough, and the Russian president would have to negotiate “sooner or later”.

He accused Putin of trying to delay peace, and said it must become a reality after more than three years of war.

Starmer was speaking at a press conference in Downing Street after a virtual meeting of the “coalition of the willing”, including the European Commission, European nations, Nato, Canada, Ukraine, Australia and New Zealand on Saturday morning.

The meeting was addressed by Starmer, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte.

Starmer told journalists: “Sooner or later Putin will have to come to the table. So this is the moment. Let the guns fall silent, let the barbaric attacks on Ukraine once and for all stop, and agree to a ceasefire now.”

He added: “Now is the time to engage in discussion on a mechanism to manage and monitor a full ceasefire, and agree to serious negotiations towards not just a pause, but a lasting peace, backed by strong security arrangements through our coalition of the willing.”

He said the meeting had led to “new commitments”, including on the wider defence and security of Europe.

“We won’t sit back and wait for Putin to act,” he said. “Instead we will keep pushing forward, so the group I convened today is more important than ever.”

He added: “We agreed we will keep increasing the pressure on Russia, keep the military aid flowing to Ukraine, and keep tightening the restrictions on Russia’s economy to weaken Putin’s war machine and bring him to the table.

“And we agreed to accelerate our practical work to support a potential deal. So we will now move into an operational phase.”

Of the military meeting on Thursday, he said it would lead to “strong and robust plans … to swing in behind a peace deal and guarantee Ukraine’s future security”.

Starmer had earlier called Ukraine and Zelenskyy the “party of peace”.

He said Donald Trump was “absolutely committed to the lasting peace that is needed in Ukraine, and everything he’s doing is geared towards that end”.

He told journalists Europe needed to improve its own defence and security, and said the UK was talking to the US on a daily basis about the war.

Kyiv has already accepted plans for an immediate 30-day ceasefire but, on Thursday, Putin set out sweeping conditions that he wanted to be met before Russia would agree. They include a guarantee that Ukraine would not rearm or mobilise during the truce.

Starmer said: “Volodymyr had committed to a 30-day unconditional ceasefire, but Putin is trying to delay, saying there must be a painstaking study before a ceasefire can take place. Well the world needs action, not a study, not empty words and conditions.”

On Saturday, Zelenskyy posted on X that Russian forces were building up along the eastern border of Ukraine, which could signal an attack on the Sumy region.

He said: “The buildup of Russian forces indicates that Moscow intends to keep ignoring diplomacy. It is clear that Russia is prolonging the war.”

The Ukrainian president said his forces were still fighting in Russia’s Kursk region, and were not facing an encirclement, despite claims by his Russian and US counterparts.

Starmer said: “President Trump has offered Putin the way forward to a lasting peace. Now we must make this a reality. So this is the moment to keep driving towards the outcome that we want to see, to end the killing, a just and lasting peace in Ukraine, and lasting security for all of us.”

A retired US general charged with helping sell the Trump administration’s Ukraine peace plan wrote a string of op-eds and reports for a rightwing thinktank in which he repeatedly questioned whether Ukraine had a legitimate part to play in peace negotiations.

Keith Kellogg also blamed the war on the machinations of a US “military-industrial complex” and “[Joe] Biden’s national security incompetence” rather than Russia’s 2022 invasion, which has been condemned across the globe and resulted in a war that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

Kellogg has been seen as a hawk on Russia, but he also wrote that “the US should consider leveraging its military aid to Ukraine to make it contingent on Ukrainian officials agreeing to join peace talks with Russia”. Earlier this month, after a disastrous Washington DC meeting with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on 28 February, US aid to Ukraine was paused, as was intelligence sharing.

Kellogg is also surrounded by some key staff who share a rightwing nationalist world view or have links to far-right populist figures.

After spending the Biden years at the rightwing and Trumpist America First Policy Institute (AFPI), Kellogg took at least two young AFPI staffers with him to assist him as Trump’s presidential special envoy to Russia and Ukraine.

One, Gloria McDonald, is a senior policy adviser to Kellogg after co-authoring several of his AFPI publications, according to her LinkedIn profile. McDonald’s résumé contains no foreign policy experience besides her AFPI policy analyst work and two short Trump-era internships at the US embassy in Kyiv, with her second four-month stint coming after Donald Trump fired then ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.

Another ex-AFPI staffer, Zach Bauder, is employed as a special assistant to Kellogg, according to a LinkedIn profile reviewed by the Guardian. He was also a field operative for the chaotic 2022 congressional campaign of the far-right Republican Joe Kent, now Trump’s pick for the National Counterterrorism Center chief.

The Guardian sought to confirm their appointments with the state department. In response, a state department spokesperson wrote that they do not comment on personnel. Emails were also sent to Bauder and McDonald’s presumed state department email addresses requesting comment.

Foreign Agents Registration Act (Fara) documents show that another Kent operative, Matt Braynard, approached Bauder while acting as a lobbyist for the Japanese rightwing populist party Sanseitō, whose leader’s “conspiracist, anti-globalist worldview” has included promoting antisemitic and pro-Russian positions.

Braynard’s Fara declaration says that Bauder shared his “interest in meeting with organization leadership”.

The revelations about the special envoy’s pro-Russia writings and the far-right connections of his staff come at a time when the Trump administration has been accused of seeking to hand Russia victory in its war at the expense of Ukraine and other European allies, and when the employment of young, ideological staffers across government agencies has drawn scrutiny.

However, over the last week Russia has reportedly criticized Kellogg and he was recently excluded from high-level talks on ending the war after Moscow said it didn’t want him involved, NBC News reported. Kellogg was absent from two recent diplomatic summits about the war in Saudi Arabia even though the talks came under his remit.

Kellogg’s op-eds

Kellogg retired from the US army in 2003 as a lieutenant general. He was a prominent figure in the national security hierarchy of the first Trump administration. In 2017 he was the acting national security adviser in the wake of the departure of Michael Flynn. He was chief of staff for the national security council from Trump’s inauguration until April 2018, and then replaced HR McMaster as the national security adviser, a position he held until the inauguration of Joe Biden.

From 2021 until his recall into the second Trump administration, Kellogg became the chair of the Center for a New American Security at AFPI, a rightwing thinktank founded after Trump’s defeat by prominent figures in his first administration including the policy adviser Brooke Rollins and economic adviser Larry Kudlow.

Described as a “White House in waiting” for Trump’s second term, AFPI has supplied at least 11 Trump cabinet secretaries and agency heads, reportedly more than any other organization.

Senior Trump appointments with AFPI ties include the FBI director, Kash Patel, the education secretary, Linda McMahon, and the attorney general, Pam Bondi.

At AFPI, Kellogg articulated what he called an “America first” foreign policy. Since 2022, that took the form of increasingly strident criticism of US efforts to assist in the defense of Ukraine against Russia’s invasion.

Before the Russian invasion had even commenced, Kellogg wrote that “Ukraine is primarily a European issue to solve”, and empathized with Russia’s point of view: “To Russia, the issue of Ukraine is deeper and more personal. To Russia, it is about their security.”

Before the invasion, he urged that Ukraine be “armed to the teeth” as a deterrent, but opposed “a no-fly zone and other ways to engage American military forces in the Ukraine conflict”.

After the invasion, Kellogg increasingly reserved his criticisms for the Biden administration, Nato allies and Ukraine, with sympathy withheld from all except Putin and Russia.

In June 2022, in a statement co-written with Fred Fleitz, Kellogg wrote of Biden’s announcement of $1.2bn in aid to Ukraine: “This newest call for additional aid is a nonstarter and is not in the best interest of the American people.”

His turn against the administration and US allies was most evident from late 2023, including in reports and opinion articles Kellogg wrote with McDonald, then a senior policy analyst at AFPI.

McDonald was given the AFPI role with scant previous experience, according to her biography at AFPI’s website, her LinkedIn profile, and information from public records and data brokers.

In 2018 and 2019, McDonald did summer internships at the US embassy in Kyiv, per her LinkedIn page. In 2017, she did another internship with a Republican congressman, Dave Brat. Her time at AFPI is the only full-time work experience she takes into her apparent appointment as Kellogg’s most senior adviser in his efforts to implement Trump’s mooted peace deal.

In one co-written report, the pair argue that the best course of action for the US is to concede any possibility of Ukraine’s membership in Nato in advance of peace negotiations.

“In the case of granting Ukraine NATO membership,” they write, “the US eliminates the very incentive that would bring Russia to the negotiating table. By taking this issue off the table in the near term, however, the US offers an incentive for Russia to join peace talks and agree to an end-state.”

They also specifically criticize the Biden administration’s guarantee that Ukraine would be involved in any negotiations.

“The Biden Administration’s policy of ‘nothing about Ukraine, without Ukraine’ and arming Ukraine ‘as long as it takes’ has, therefore, only served to remove the urgency of reaching a negotiated end-state to the war.”

They further recommend withholding arms from Ukraine in order to force it to the negotiating table: “The US should consider leveraging its military aid to Ukraine to make it contingent on Ukrainian officials agreeing to join peace talks with Russia to negotiate an end state to this conflict.”

In a co-written opinion article for the rightwing Washington Times website in December 2023, the pair focused on a recent Zelenskyy visit to the US that included meetings with defense contractors.

The pair claimed that this was evidence “our national security policy is being unduly influenced by the interests of the military-industrial complex.”

In the piece, they elaborate on this conspiracy narrative about Ukraine and the military-industrial complex: “The US withdrawal from Afghanistan significantly reduced defense contractors’ profits,” they write, adding that “the proxy war in Ukraine, however, not only reignited these defense contracting revenue but also spurred global military spending, which was raised to a historic $2.24 trillion after Russia invaded.”

In an April 2024 AFPI report written with Fleitz, Kellogg placed the blame for the war largely on Biden, suggesting that his attitude towards Russia was provocative.

“Biden’s hostile policy toward Russia not only needlessly made it an enemy of the United States,” they wrote, “but it also drove Russia into the arms of China and led to the development of a new Russia-China-Iran-North Korea axis.”

They wrote: “It was in America’s best interests to maintain peace with Putin and not provoke and alienate him with aggressive globalist human rights and pro-democracy campaigns or an effort to promote Ukrainian membership in NATO.”

They also wrote that Putin’s sabre-rattling at the beginning of 2022 should have induced the US to make a deal, writing: “It was in America’s interest to make a deal with Putin on Ukraine joining NATO, especially by January 2022 when there were signs that a Russian invasion was imminent.”

They describe ongoing support of the Ukraine war effort as “expensive virtue signaling and not a constructive policy to promote peace and global stability”.

Kellogg and Fleitz appear to recommend that Russia be allowed to keep any territorial gains, arguing that the US should “continue to arm Ukraine and strengthen its defenses to ensure Russia will make no further advances and will not attack again after a cease-fire or peace agreement”.

Again, Kellogg signs off on excluding Ukraine from EU membership, writing: “President Biden and other NATO leaders should offer to put off NATO membership for Ukraine for an extended period in exchange for a comprehensive and verifiable peace deal”.

Zach Bauder’s role

Along with Kellogg and McDonald, the policy adviser, another staffer, Bauder, has come via the AFPI pipeline.

And although Bauder has less apparent experience in foreign affairs than even McDonald, he does have international connections that appear related to his 2022 field work for a far-right candidate’s congressional campaign.

Bauder – who only graduated from rightwing Hillsdale College last year – is employed as a special assistant to Kellogg, according to his LinkedIn page.

Besides internships at AFPI and the Austrian Economics Center in Vienna, Bauder’s only work experience besides working as an operations coordinator at AFPI in 2023 was field organizing for the failed 2022 congressional campaign of Kent.

The Guardian has previously reported on Kent’s far-right political positions and unanswered questions about his campaign finances and employment.

Daily Beast reporting in January 2024 implicated Braynard, a “former top aide” of Kent’s who had “white nationalist ties” in campaign finance issues. A significant proportion of 2022 campaign disbursements went to a company belonging to Braynard’s wife.

After being connected with Bauder on Kent’s campaign, Braynard apparently tapped the relationship in his lobbying work for Sanseitō, the far-right populist party in Japan.

Fara rules require lobbyists for foreign entities to lodge declarations that specify not only who they are working for, and how much they are paying, but who they make contact with in the course of pursuing their client’s aims.

A September 2024 Fara filing from Braynard indicates that he had worked as a paid lobbyist for Sanseitō.

Rob Fahey is an assistant professor in the Waseda Institute for Advanced Study in Shinjuku, Japan, who has written some of the scarce English language research on the far-right party.

In a telephone conversation, he said the party had grown out of “the anti-vaccine, anti-masking social movement” touched off in Japan by the Covid-19 pandemic. He said that party members were “terminally online, and they are very, very deeply involved in the conspiracy framework that is a core part of the Maga movement as well”.

Fahey said Sanseitō was part of the “new conspiratorial hard right in Japan” whose “media diet comes from the American conspiratorial ecosystem”.

Fahey added that Sanseitō largely “see the war in Ukraine as through the same lens as American conspiracy theorists: it’s Nato’s fault, and Nato is part of the new world order”.

Braynard’s filing says that the aim of his lobbying for the group is for them to “win Japanese elections”.

On Braynard’s account in the Fara declaration, “the principal, party leader Sohei Kamiya, had planned a trip to the US”.

He continues: “The principal was interested in appearing on Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson’s podcast, so I texted the producers of those shows. I also contacted Americans for Tax Reform, Heritage Foundation, and America First Policy Center to ask if they would be interested in meeting with the principal to discuss common, populist conservative policies.”

In his list of the people he contacted, along with producers for Carlson and Bannon and a Heritage Foundation staffer, Braynard lists Bauder.

The filing said he texted Bauder, described as “formerly and then again more recently staff of America First Policy Institute, but not employed by them at the time I contacted him”.

Following the Oval Office meltdown with Zelenskyy, it has seemed that Trump himself has been calling the shots on a cooling relationship with Ukraine and the other western allies. But he apparently still has the support of his special envoy.

This week, the Guardian reported that Kellogg told a Council on Foreign Relations meeting of the suspension of intelligence sharing that “they brought it on themselves, the Ukrainians,” and that it was a punishment akin to “hitting a mule with a two-by-four across the nose”.

A retired US general charged with helping sell the Trump administration’s Ukraine peace plan wrote a string of op-eds and reports for a rightwing thinktank in which he repeatedly questioned whether Ukraine had a legitimate part to play in peace negotiations.

Keith Kellogg also blamed the war on the machinations of a US “military-industrial complex” and “[Joe] Biden’s national security incompetence” rather than Russia’s 2022 invasion, which has been condemned across the globe and resulted in a war that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

Kellogg has been seen as a hawk on Russia, but he also wrote that “the US should consider leveraging its military aid to Ukraine to make it contingent on Ukrainian officials agreeing to join peace talks with Russia”. Earlier this month, after a disastrous Washington DC meeting with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on 28 February, US aid to Ukraine was paused, as was intelligence sharing.

Kellogg is also surrounded by some key staff who share a rightwing nationalist world view or have links to far-right populist figures.

After spending the Biden years at the rightwing and Trumpist America First Policy Institute (AFPI), Kellogg took at least two young AFPI staffers with him to assist him as Trump’s presidential special envoy to Russia and Ukraine.

One, Gloria McDonald, is a senior policy adviser to Kellogg after co-authoring several of his AFPI publications, according to her LinkedIn profile. McDonald’s résumé contains no foreign policy experience besides her AFPI policy analyst work and two short Trump-era internships at the US embassy in Kyiv, with her second four-month stint coming after Donald Trump fired then ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.

Another ex-AFPI staffer, Zach Bauder, is employed as a special assistant to Kellogg, according to a LinkedIn profile reviewed by the Guardian. He was also a field operative for the chaotic 2022 congressional campaign of the far-right Republican Joe Kent, now Trump’s pick for the National Counterterrorism Center chief.

The Guardian sought to confirm their appointments with the state department. In response, a state department spokesperson wrote that they do not comment on personnel. Emails were also sent to Bauder and McDonald’s presumed state department email addresses requesting comment.

Foreign Agents Registration Act (Fara) documents show that another Kent operative, Matt Braynard, approached Bauder while acting as a lobbyist for the Japanese rightwing populist party Sanseitō, whose leader’s “conspiracist, anti-globalist worldview” has included promoting antisemitic and pro-Russian positions.

Braynard’s Fara declaration says that Bauder shared his “interest in meeting with organization leadership”.

The revelations about the special envoy’s pro-Russia writings and the far-right connections of his staff come at a time when the Trump administration has been accused of seeking to hand Russia victory in its war at the expense of Ukraine and other European allies, and when the employment of young, ideological staffers across government agencies has drawn scrutiny.

However, over the last week Russia has reportedly criticized Kellogg and he was recently excluded from high-level talks on ending the war after Moscow said it didn’t want him involved, NBC News reported. Kellogg was absent from two recent diplomatic summits about the war in Saudi Arabia even though the talks came under his remit.

Kellogg’s op-eds

Kellogg retired from the US army in 2003 as a lieutenant general. He was a prominent figure in the national security hierarchy of the first Trump administration. In 2017 he was the acting national security adviser in the wake of the departure of Michael Flynn. He was chief of staff for the national security council from Trump’s inauguration until April 2018, and then replaced HR McMaster as the national security adviser, a position he held until the inauguration of Joe Biden.

From 2021 until his recall into the second Trump administration, Kellogg became the chair of the Center for a New American Security at AFPI, a rightwing thinktank founded after Trump’s defeat by prominent figures in his first administration including the policy adviser Brooke Rollins and economic adviser Larry Kudlow.

Described as a “White House in waiting” for Trump’s second term, AFPI has supplied at least 11 Trump cabinet secretaries and agency heads, reportedly more than any other organization.

Senior Trump appointments with AFPI ties include the FBI director, Kash Patel, the education secretary, Linda McMahon, and the attorney general, Pam Bondi.

At AFPI, Kellogg articulated what he called an “America first” foreign policy. Since 2022, that took the form of increasingly strident criticism of US efforts to assist in the defense of Ukraine against Russia’s invasion.

Before the Russian invasion had even commenced, Kellogg wrote that “Ukraine is primarily a European issue to solve”, and empathized with Russia’s point of view: “To Russia, the issue of Ukraine is deeper and more personal. To Russia, it is about their security.”

Before the invasion, he urged that Ukraine be “armed to the teeth” as a deterrent, but opposed “a no-fly zone and other ways to engage American military forces in the Ukraine conflict”.

After the invasion, Kellogg increasingly reserved his criticisms for the Biden administration, Nato allies and Ukraine, with sympathy withheld from all except Putin and Russia.

In June 2022, in a statement co-written with Fred Fleitz, Kellogg wrote of Biden’s announcement of $1.2bn in aid to Ukraine: “This newest call for additional aid is a nonstarter and is not in the best interest of the American people.”

His turn against the administration and US allies was most evident from late 2023, including in reports and opinion articles Kellogg wrote with McDonald, then a senior policy analyst at AFPI.

McDonald was given the AFPI role with scant previous experience, according to her biography at AFPI’s website, her LinkedIn profile, and information from public records and data brokers.

In 2018 and 2019, McDonald did summer internships at the US embassy in Kyiv, per her LinkedIn page. In 2017, she did another internship with a Republican congressman, Dave Brat. Her time at AFPI is the only full-time work experience she takes into her apparent appointment as Kellogg’s most senior adviser in his efforts to implement Trump’s mooted peace deal.

In one co-written report, the pair argue that the best course of action for the US is to concede any possibility of Ukraine’s membership in Nato in advance of peace negotiations.

“In the case of granting Ukraine NATO membership,” they write, “the US eliminates the very incentive that would bring Russia to the negotiating table. By taking this issue off the table in the near term, however, the US offers an incentive for Russia to join peace talks and agree to an end-state.”

They also specifically criticize the Biden administration’s guarantee that Ukraine would be involved in any negotiations.

“The Biden Administration’s policy of ‘nothing about Ukraine, without Ukraine’ and arming Ukraine ‘as long as it takes’ has, therefore, only served to remove the urgency of reaching a negotiated end-state to the war.”

They further recommend withholding arms from Ukraine in order to force it to the negotiating table: “The US should consider leveraging its military aid to Ukraine to make it contingent on Ukrainian officials agreeing to join peace talks with Russia to negotiate an end state to this conflict.”

In a co-written opinion article for the rightwing Washington Times website in December 2023, the pair focused on a recent Zelenskyy visit to the US that included meetings with defense contractors.

The pair claimed that this was evidence “our national security policy is being unduly influenced by the interests of the military-industrial complex.”

In the piece, they elaborate on this conspiracy narrative about Ukraine and the military-industrial complex: “The US withdrawal from Afghanistan significantly reduced defense contractors’ profits,” they write, adding that “the proxy war in Ukraine, however, not only reignited these defense contracting revenue but also spurred global military spending, which was raised to a historic $2.24 trillion after Russia invaded.”

In an April 2024 AFPI report written with Fleitz, Kellogg placed the blame for the war largely on Biden, suggesting that his attitude towards Russia was provocative.

“Biden’s hostile policy toward Russia not only needlessly made it an enemy of the United States,” they wrote, “but it also drove Russia into the arms of China and led to the development of a new Russia-China-Iran-North Korea axis.”

They wrote: “It was in America’s best interests to maintain peace with Putin and not provoke and alienate him with aggressive globalist human rights and pro-democracy campaigns or an effort to promote Ukrainian membership in NATO.”

They also wrote that Putin’s sabre-rattling at the beginning of 2022 should have induced the US to make a deal, writing: “It was in America’s interest to make a deal with Putin on Ukraine joining NATO, especially by January 2022 when there were signs that a Russian invasion was imminent.”

They describe ongoing support of the Ukraine war effort as “expensive virtue signaling and not a constructive policy to promote peace and global stability”.

Kellogg and Fleitz appear to recommend that Russia be allowed to keep any territorial gains, arguing that the US should “continue to arm Ukraine and strengthen its defenses to ensure Russia will make no further advances and will not attack again after a cease-fire or peace agreement”.

Again, Kellogg signs off on excluding Ukraine from EU membership, writing: “President Biden and other NATO leaders should offer to put off NATO membership for Ukraine for an extended period in exchange for a comprehensive and verifiable peace deal”.

Zach Bauder’s role

Along with Kellogg and McDonald, the policy adviser, another staffer, Bauder, has come via the AFPI pipeline.

And although Bauder has less apparent experience in foreign affairs than even McDonald, he does have international connections that appear related to his 2022 field work for a far-right candidate’s congressional campaign.

Bauder – who only graduated from rightwing Hillsdale College last year – is employed as a special assistant to Kellogg, according to his LinkedIn page.

Besides internships at AFPI and the Austrian Economics Center in Vienna, Bauder’s only work experience besides working as an operations coordinator at AFPI in 2023 was field organizing for the failed 2022 congressional campaign of Kent.

The Guardian has previously reported on Kent’s far-right political positions and unanswered questions about his campaign finances and employment.

Daily Beast reporting in January 2024 implicated Braynard, a “former top aide” of Kent’s who had “white nationalist ties” in campaign finance issues. A significant proportion of 2022 campaign disbursements went to a company belonging to Braynard’s wife.

After being connected with Bauder on Kent’s campaign, Braynard apparently tapped the relationship in his lobbying work for Sanseitō, the far-right populist party in Japan.

Fara rules require lobbyists for foreign entities to lodge declarations that specify not only who they are working for, and how much they are paying, but who they make contact with in the course of pursuing their client’s aims.

A September 2024 Fara filing from Braynard indicates that he had worked as a paid lobbyist for Sanseitō.

Rob Fahey is an assistant professor in the Waseda Institute for Advanced Study in Shinjuku, Japan, who has written some of the scarce English language research on the far-right party.

In a telephone conversation, he said the party had grown out of “the anti-vaccine, anti-masking social movement” touched off in Japan by the Covid-19 pandemic. He said that party members were “terminally online, and they are very, very deeply involved in the conspiracy framework that is a core part of the Maga movement as well”.

Fahey said Sanseitō was part of the “new conspiratorial hard right in Japan” whose “media diet comes from the American conspiratorial ecosystem”.

Fahey added that Sanseitō largely “see the war in Ukraine as through the same lens as American conspiracy theorists: it’s Nato’s fault, and Nato is part of the new world order”.

Braynard’s filing says that the aim of his lobbying for the group is for them to “win Japanese elections”.

On Braynard’s account in the Fara declaration, “the principal, party leader Sohei Kamiya, had planned a trip to the US”.

He continues: “The principal was interested in appearing on Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson’s podcast, so I texted the producers of those shows. I also contacted Americans for Tax Reform, Heritage Foundation, and America First Policy Center to ask if they would be interested in meeting with the principal to discuss common, populist conservative policies.”

In his list of the people he contacted, along with producers for Carlson and Bannon and a Heritage Foundation staffer, Braynard lists Bauder.

The filing said he texted Bauder, described as “formerly and then again more recently staff of America First Policy Institute, but not employed by them at the time I contacted him”.

Following the Oval Office meltdown with Zelenskyy, it has seemed that Trump himself has been calling the shots on a cooling relationship with Ukraine and the other western allies. But he apparently still has the support of his special envoy.

This week, the Guardian reported that Kellogg told a Council on Foreign Relations meeting of the suspension of intelligence sharing that “they brought it on themselves, the Ukrainians,” and that it was a punishment akin to “hitting a mule with a two-by-four across the nose”.

Tens of thousands of people from across Serbia have joined an anti-corruption rally in Belgrade, in what is regarded as the culmination of months of protest that have shaken the grip of the country’s autocratic president, Aleksandar Vučić.

The sound of whistles and vuvuzelas echoed throughout the Serbian capital, which has been on high alert since the rally was announced. Some carried banners that read “He’s finished!” Others chanted: “Pump it up,” a slogan adopted during four months of student-led protests.

The anti-government rally is likely to be the biggest ever held in the Balkan country.

One protester, Milenko Kovačević, said: “I expect that this will shake his authority and that Vučić will realise that people are no longer for him.”

Police said they had arrested a man who rammed his car into protesters in a Belgrade suburb, injuring three people.

Tensions were running high before the demonstration, after the president’s supporters began setting up a camp in a park in front of the presidential palace. Vučić warned earlier this week that the security forces would use force against people at the rally.

Belgrade city transport was cancelled on Saturday in an apparent effort to prevent people from attending the rally, while huge columns of cars jammed the roads leading into the capital. The transport company said the move was made “for security reasons”.

Vučić, who has dominated Serbian politics since becoming prime minister in 2014 and then president in 2017, said the demonstrators would never force him to stand down. “You will have to kill me if you want to replace me,” he said.

Authorities have faced near-daily protests since last November when a station roof collapsed killing 14 people in Novi Sad, Serbia’s second city. Many blamed rampant corruption for the disaster at the station, which Vučić had inaugurated in 2022 after renovations.

The leaderless protest movement has been largely peaceful, but Vučić has claimed that protesters “will try to achieve something with violence and that will be the end” and predicted that “many will end up behind bars” on Saturday.

Agence France-Presse reported that known ultranationalists, including members of a former militia linked to the assassination of then prime minister, Zoran Djindjic in 2003, have been seen among the group of activists camped near the presidential palace.

Djindjic, who led street protests that deposed Slobodan Milošević in 2000, was assassinated 22 years ago this week by a paramilitary police group known by its unofficial name, the Red Berets.

Vučić “has mobilised criminals, thugs and Red Beret members, bringing people from Kosovo and stationing them in Pionirski Park, knowing hundreds of thousands will gather there on Saturday,” Dragan Djilas, the leader of the opposition Freedom and Justice party, wrote on X.

Vučić and his Serbian Progressive party, which has successfully marginalised the official opposition, have been thrown off balance by the student protests, a movement seeking root-and-branch reform but without a clear plan for democratic change.

Protesters are demanding accountability for the disaster at Novi Sad, as well as transparent institutions based on the rule of law. More than a dozen people have been charged in relation to the canopy collapse. The then prime minister, Miloš Vučević, a former mayor of Novi Sad when renovation of the station began, resigned in January, as did the serving mayor.

Vučić, widely seen to have sacrificed his prime minister to protect his position, has ruled out forming a transitional government and holding elections in six months. Echoing Russian narratives, he has described the protests as a western-orchestrated ploy to oust him from power and destroy Serbia.

Dušan Spasojević, a professor at the University of Belgrade’s political science faculty, told AFP that the government’s use of provocative language was likely to be an attempt to discourage people from joining the demonstration.

Vučić was probably “hoping that protesters will spark some violence, giving the police justification to intervene and causing most people to withdraw from the protests”, Spasojević said.

Foreign observers are increasingly concerned about violence against demonstrators, after incidents where cars drove into protesters and some anti-corruption protesters were hospitalised. “Serbia’s response to these protests will be a decisive test of its commitment to EU standards,” a cross-party group of members of the European parliament wrote in a letter to the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, this week.

Serbia has been an EU candidate country since 2012, but progress has stalled under Vučić’s leadership and its pro-Russian stance over the war in Ukraine.

The MEPs, spanning conservatives to radical left-wingers, argue that the EU has been “too lenient and indulgent” towards Serbia’s government. The group urges von der Leyen to ensure Serbia has “free and fair elections, an independent judiciary, pluralistic media, and the rule of law” before releasing any EU funds.

Serbia is due to receive €1.5bn (£1.26bn) in grants and cheap loans under an EU “growth plan” between 2024 and 2027.

Organisers have vowed that the protests will continue after Saturday. “We are not taking the final steps – we are making tectonic changes. If our demands are not met, we will remain on the streets, in blockades, in the fight until justice is served,” they wrote on Instagram.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

The Trump administration is considering issuing travel restrictions for the citizens of dozens of countries as part of a new ban, according to sources familiar with the matter and an internal memo seen by Reuters.

The memo lists a total of 41 countries divided into three separate groups. The first group of 10 countries, including Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Cuba and North Korea, among others, would be set for a full visa suspension.

In the second group, five countries – Eritrea, Haiti, Laos, Myanmar and South Sudan – would face partial suspensions that would affect tourist and student visas as well as other immigrant visas, with some exceptions.

In the third group, a total of 26 countries including Belarus, Pakistan and Turkmenistan, among others, would be considered for a partial suspension of US visa issuance if their governments “do not make efforts to address deficiencies within 60 days”, the memo said.

The list has yet to be approved by the administration, including the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and could be amended, officials told the outlet.

The memo follows an executive order issued on 20 January that requires intensified security vetting of any foreigners seeking admission to the US to detect national security threats, and directed several cabinet members to submit a list of countries for partial or full suspension because their “vetting and screening information is so deficient”.

During the first Trump administration, in 2017, a partial ban imposed on travelers from predominantly Muslim-population nations was labeled a “Muslim ban” by Trump and his aides.

Fourteen months earlier, after an Islamic State-inspired mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, Trump had called for “a total and complete” shutdown of Muslims entering the US “until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on”.

A new set of restrictions, outlined in the memo, would follow pledges by the president to institute an immigration crackdown. In October 2023, Trump pledged to restrict people from the Gaza Strip, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and “anywhere else that threatens our security”.

Any move to ban or restrict immigration from the list of 43 countries would come in tandem with Department of Homeland Security efforts to deport undocumented migrants affiliated with newly identified terrorist crime networks, including Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua, El Salvador’s MS-13 and the Mexican-American 18th St.

At the same time, the Trump administration is moving to cancel immigration status and deport several foreign-born university graduates, including Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil, who led campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza last year.

A second student who took part in protests around the university last year was arrested by federal immigration agents last week. Leqaa Kordia was arrested by officers from the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Newark. Authorities said she had overstayed a terminated visa.

The administration also revoked the visa of Ranjani Srinivasan, an Indian citizen and doctoral student at Columbia. Srinivasan opted to “self-deport” after officials said she was “involved in activities supporting Hamas”.

In a statement on Friday, the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, said it’s a “privilege to be granted a visa to live and study in the United States of America”.

“When you advocate for violence and terrorism that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country,” Noem added.

An appeals court on Friday lifted a block on executive orders seeking to end government support for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, handing the Trump administration a win after a string of setbacks from dozens of lawsuits.

The decision from a three-judge panel allows the orders to be enforced as a lawsuit challenging them plays out. The appeals court judges halted a nationwide injunction from US district judge Adam Abelson in Baltimore.

Two of the judges on the fourth US circuit court of appeals wrote that Trump’s anti-DEI push could eventually raise concerns about first amendment rights but said the judge’s sweeping block went too far.

“My vote should not be understood as agreement with the orders’ attack on efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion,” Judge Pamela Harris wrote. Two of the panel’s members were appointed by Barack Obama, while the third was appointed by Trump.

Abelson had found the orders likely violated free speech rights and were unconstitutionally vague since they didn’t have a specific definition of DEI.

Trump signed an order his first day in office directing federal agencies to terminate all “equity-related” grants or contracts. He signed a follow-up order requiring federal contractors to certify that they don’t promote DEI.

The city of Baltimore and other groups sued the Trump administration, arguing the executive orders are an unconstitutional overreach of presidential authority.

The justice department has argued that the president was targeting only DEI programs that violate federal civil rights laws. Government attorneys said the administration should be able to align federal spending with the president’s priorities.

Abelson, who was nominated by Joe Biden, agreed with the plaintiffs that the executive orders discourage businesses, organizations, and public entities from openly supporting diversity, equity and inclusion.

Efforts to increase diversity long have been under attack by Republicans, who contend the measures threaten merit-based hiring, promotion and educational opportunities for white people. Supporters say the programs help institutions meet the needs of increasingly diverse populations while addressing the lasting impacts of systemic racism.

Their purpose was to foster equitable environments in businesses and schools, especially for historically marginalized communities. Researchers say DEI initiatives date back to the 1960s but were expanded in 2020 during increased calls for racial justice.

In addition to the mayor and the Baltimore city council, the plaintiffs include the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, the American Association of University Professors and the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, which represents restaurant workers across the country.

The red tape of government bureaucracy spans more than 4,000 years, according to new finds from the cradle of the world’s civilisations, Mesopotamia.

Hundreds of administrative tablets – the earliest physical evidence of the first empire in recorded history – have been discovered by archaeologists from the British Museum and Iraq. These texts detail the minutiae of government and reveal a complex bureaucracy – the red tape of an ancient civilisation.

These were the state archives of the ancient Sumerian site of Girsu, modern-day Tello, while the city was under the control of the Akkad dynasty from 2300 to 2150BC.

“It’s not unlike Whitehall,” said Sébastien Rey, the British Museum’s curator for ancient Mesopotamia and director of the Girsu Project. “These are the spreadsheets of empire, the very first material evidence of the very first empire in the world – the real evidence of the imperial control and how it actually worked.”

Girsu, one of the world’s oldest cities, was revered in the 3rd millennium BC as the sanctuary of the Sumerian heroic god Ningirsu. Covering hundreds of hectares at its peak, it was among independent Sumerian cities conquered around 2300BC by the Mesopotamian king Sargon. He originally came from the city of Akkad, whose location is still unknown but is thought to have been near modern Baghdad.

Rey said: “Sargon developed this new form of governance by conquering all the Sumerian cities of Mesopotamia, creating what most historians call the first empire in the world.” He added that, until these latest excavations, information on that empire was limited to fragmentary and bombastic royal inscriptions or much later copies of Akkadian inscriptions “which are not completely reliable”.

Of the new discovery, he said: “It is extremely important because, for the first time, we have concrete evidence – with artefacts in situ.” He has been astonished by the detail in those records: “They note absolutely everything down. If a sheep dies at the very edge of the empire, it will be noted. They are obsessed with bureaucracy.” The tablets, containing cuneiform symbols, an early writing system, record affairs of state, deliveries and expenditures, on everything from fish to domesticated animals, flour to barley, textiles to precious stones.

Dana Goodburn-Brown, a British-American conservator, is cleaning the tablets so that they can be transcribed. The work is both painstaking and exciting, she said: “People just think things come out of the ground and look like you see them in the museum, but they don’t.”

One tablet lists different commodities: “250 grams of gold / 500 grams of silver/ … fattened cows… / 30 litres of beer.” Even the names and professions of the citizens are recorded, Rey said: “Women, men, children – we have names for everyone.

“Women held important offices within the state. So we have high priestesses, for example, although it was a society very much led by men. But the role of the woman was at least higher than many other societies, and it’s undeniable based on the evidence that we have.”

The jobs listed range from stone-cutters to the sweeper of the temple floor. Rey said: “Being able to sweep the floor where the gods and the high priest were located was very important. The cities of ancient Mesopotamia in theory all belonged to the gods. The society worked for the temple state.”

The tablets were found at the site of a large state archive building, made of mud-brick walls and divided into rooms or offices. Some of the tablets contain architectural plans of buildings, field plans and maps of canals.

The finds were made by archaeologists at the Girsu Project, a collaboration between the British Museum and the Iraqi government’s State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, funded by Meditor Trust, a charitable foundation.

The site was originally excavated in the 19th and early 20th centuries and was targeted by looters after the two Gulf wars: “Tablets of the Akkad period were either looted or carelessly removed from their archaeological setting and thus decontextualised. So it was very difficult to understand how the administration worked.

“The key thing now is that we were able to excavate them properly within their archaeological context. The new finds were preserved in situ, so in their original context, and we can say for sure that we have indeed the very first physical evidence of imperial control in the world. This is completely new.”

The finds have been sent to the Iraq Museum in Baghdad for further study, ahead of a possible loan to the British Museum.

The Akkadian empire lasted for only about 150 years, ending with a rebellion that secured the city’s independence.

A devoted investor in Elon Musk’s Tesla – and once a close childhood friend of the US president’s eldest son and namesake – says he hopes the world’s richest man’s role in cutting federal spending for Donald Trump’s administration is “short-lived” and that he returns to managing his businesses.

Investment manager Christopher Tsai, whose firm has tens of millions of dollars tied up in Tesla, said the stock market had demonstrated clear signs of displeasure with Musk’s activities at the so-called department of government efficiency. And, in an interview with the Guardian, Tsai said: “I hope his involvement with [Doge] is short-lived so he can spend even more time on his businesses.”

The chief investment officer and president of Tsai Capital, which reportedly manages a portfolio of about $137m, made it a point to say that his stated hope does not constitute a loss of faith in Musk or his company’s earning potential, despite opinion polls establishing the Tesla boss’s unpopularity with the American public and his net worth evidently tumbling about $23bn in recent days.

Tsai said the stock markets also reacted negatively when Musk bought Twitter, the social media platform now known as X, in 2022 for $44bn. Yet he said Tsai Capital – which holds about 75,000 shares in Tesla as of its most recent quarterly filings – had made more than six times its money since first investing in the company in February 2020, even with the downturn in performance of late.

Tsai recently told his investors in a letter that his firm considers Tesla to be more of a creator of advanced electronics and software that it attaches to cars rather than a traditional automotive manufacturer and he insisted that the EV maker remained “on a path to become one of the most valuable companies on the planet”.

Nonetheless, he said “the market … reacting unfavorably to Elon Musk’s recent involvement in politics” was real. And though he said he thought Musk’s self-professed belief that government reforms are needed is genuine, Tsai expressed a hope that the Tesla boss’s role in Doge ultimately proved to be like other temporary commitments he had previously taken on.

Tsai’s comments on what is his firm’s largest holding come at a time when Musk – who prominently supported Trump’s successful run for a second presidency – has advised the White House on the widespread firings of government employees and the dismantling of various services. Those services include US humanitarian aid and development work, with experts warning that their elimination could have life-threatening consequences.

If a CNN poll conducted by the research firm SSRS is any indication, such measures have not gone over well with the public. The survey showed 53% of Americans disapproved of Musk, and 35% approved – leaving him about 18 points underwater.

Those results were released on Wednesday, two days after Tesla’s stock fell more than 15% amid public protests against the company and vandalism reported at some of the brand’s dealerships.

Tsai’s descent from a lineage of legendary investors sets his voice apart from some of the others who have weighed in on Musk, Doge and Tesla at the two-month mark of the second Trump presidency.

His paternal grandmother was Ruth Tsai, who became the first woman to trade on the floor of the stock exchange in Shanghai, China, in 1939 during the second world war. Her earnings helped her send her son – Tsai’s late father, Gerald – to college in the US, where he ultimately settled and made a name for himself as a financier and fund manager.

Gerald Tsai Jr also eventually became the chief executive officer of the financial services giant Primerica, which – along with its subsidiary Commercial Credit Group – helped build Citigroup, as the New York Times has reported.

A notable aspect of Tsai’s trajectory was his father’s acquaintance with Trump when the latter was primarily a real estate mogul in Manhattan. The families were close enough that, in his youth, Tsai considered Donald Trump Jr his best friend, vacationing with him and once going to a baseball game with his siblings, their mother and their father.

Tsai said the younger Trump was one of the first people to whom he came out as a gay man, doing so before he did to Gerald. “That’s cool,” Tsai recalled Trump Jr telling him, while he said Gerald took a longer time to accept it.

A registered Democrat, Tsai said he had not had “a meaningful conversation with any member of” the president’s family since a lunch with Donald Jr in January 2014 – more than two years before Trump Sr clinched the Republican White House nomination and won his first presidency. Tsai said they just “went in different directions” as the Trumps moved into politics, and their family patriarch aligned himself closely with Musk as he clinched the White House a second time in November’s election.

Meanwhile, the elder Tsai, who married and divorced four times and once survived crashing in a helicopter into New York’s Hudson River before his death in 2008, did not pass on much of his larger-than-life personality to Christopher.

The younger Tsai for instance has been married to his spouse – with whom he is raising teenaged twins – since 2005.

But, as Christopher put it, Gerald Tsai Jr did teach him to learn about – and love – trading stocks in his childhood. He began investing at 12 and started his capital firm in 1997 at age 22.

Tsai said some of the principles to which he adheres – whether as a philanthropic donor to artistic as well as environmental causes – were inherited from the first Chinese American to be CEO of a Dow Jones Industrial company.

“My father would say you have to do deep work in order to figure out where value is and to uncover great situations,” Tsai said. “Our job as investors is to figure out what’s real, what’s not real, what that’s worth, what’s priced into the stock and where the company’s valuation is going.”

A devoted investor in Elon Musk’s Tesla – and once a close childhood friend of the US president’s eldest son and namesake – says he hopes the world’s richest man’s role in cutting federal spending for Donald Trump’s administration is “short-lived” and that he returns to managing his businesses.

Investment manager Christopher Tsai, whose firm has tens of millions of dollars tied up in Tesla, said the stock market had demonstrated clear signs of displeasure with Musk’s activities at the so-called department of government efficiency. And, in an interview with the Guardian, Tsai said: “I hope his involvement with [Doge] is short-lived so he can spend even more time on his businesses.”

The chief investment officer and president of Tsai Capital, which reportedly manages a portfolio of about $137m, made it a point to say that his stated hope does not constitute a loss of faith in Musk or his company’s earning potential, despite opinion polls establishing the Tesla boss’s unpopularity with the American public and his net worth evidently tumbling about $23bn in recent days.

Tsai said the stock markets also reacted negatively when Musk bought Twitter, the social media platform now known as X, in 2022 for $44bn. Yet he said Tsai Capital – which holds about 75,000 shares in Tesla as of its most recent quarterly filings – had made more than six times its money since first investing in the company in February 2020, even with the downturn in performance of late.

Tsai recently told his investors in a letter that his firm considers Tesla to be more of a creator of advanced electronics and software that it attaches to cars rather than a traditional automotive manufacturer and he insisted that the EV maker remained “on a path to become one of the most valuable companies on the planet”.

Nonetheless, he said “the market … reacting unfavorably to Elon Musk’s recent involvement in politics” was real. And though he said he thought Musk’s self-professed belief that government reforms are needed is genuine, Tsai expressed a hope that the Tesla boss’s role in Doge ultimately proved to be like other temporary commitments he had previously taken on.

Tsai’s comments on what is his firm’s largest holding come at a time when Musk – who prominently supported Trump’s successful run for a second presidency – has advised the White House on the widespread firings of government employees and the dismantling of various services. Those services include US humanitarian aid and development work, with experts warning that their elimination could have life-threatening consequences.

If a CNN poll conducted by the research firm SSRS is any indication, such measures have not gone over well with the public. The survey showed 53% of Americans disapproved of Musk, and 35% approved – leaving him about 18 points underwater.

Those results were released on Wednesday, two days after Tesla’s stock fell more than 15% amid public protests against the company and vandalism reported at some of the brand’s dealerships.

Tsai’s descent from a lineage of legendary investors sets his voice apart from some of the others who have weighed in on Musk, Doge and Tesla at the two-month mark of the second Trump presidency.

His paternal grandmother was Ruth Tsai, who became the first woman to trade on the floor of the stock exchange in Shanghai, China, in 1939 during the second world war. Her earnings helped her send her son – Tsai’s late father, Gerald – to college in the US, where he ultimately settled and made a name for himself as a financier and fund manager.

Gerald Tsai Jr also eventually became the chief executive officer of the financial services giant Primerica, which – along with its subsidiary Commercial Credit Group – helped build Citigroup, as the New York Times has reported.

A notable aspect of Tsai’s trajectory was his father’s acquaintance with Trump when the latter was primarily a real estate mogul in Manhattan. The families were close enough that, in his youth, Tsai considered Donald Trump Jr his best friend, vacationing with him and once going to a baseball game with his siblings, their mother and their father.

Tsai said the younger Trump was one of the first people to whom he came out as a gay man, doing so before he did to Gerald. “That’s cool,” Tsai recalled Trump Jr telling him, while he said Gerald took a longer time to accept it.

A registered Democrat, Tsai said he had not had “a meaningful conversation with any member of” the president’s family since a lunch with Donald Jr in January 2014 – more than two years before Trump Sr clinched the Republican White House nomination and won his first presidency. Tsai said they just “went in different directions” as the Trumps moved into politics, and their family patriarch aligned himself closely with Musk as he clinched the White House a second time in November’s election.

Meanwhile, the elder Tsai, who married and divorced four times and once survived crashing in a helicopter into New York’s Hudson River before his death in 2008, did not pass on much of his larger-than-life personality to Christopher.

The younger Tsai for instance has been married to his spouse – with whom he is raising teenaged twins – since 2005.

But, as Christopher put it, Gerald Tsai Jr did teach him to learn about – and love – trading stocks in his childhood. He began investing at 12 and started his capital firm in 1997 at age 22.

Tsai said some of the principles to which he adheres – whether as a philanthropic donor to artistic as well as environmental causes – were inherited from the first Chinese American to be CEO of a Dow Jones Industrial company.

“My father would say you have to do deep work in order to figure out where value is and to uncover great situations,” Tsai said. “Our job as investors is to figure out what’s real, what’s not real, what that’s worth, what’s priced into the stock and where the company’s valuation is going.”

Surgeons are to put implants into the brains of alcoholics and opioid addicts in a trial aimed at testing the use of electrical impulses to combat drink and drug cravings.

The technique is already used to help patients control some of the effects of Parkinson’s disease, depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Now a group of doctors and researchers – from Cambridge and Oxford universities and King’s College London – are preparing to use deep brain stimulation to try to decrease addicts’ yearnings and to boost their self-control.

“Deep brain stimulation acts like a pacemaker,” the project’s chief investigator Prof Valerie Voon, of Cambridge University’s psychiatry department, told the Observer.

“Just as we can use a pacemaker to stabilise abnormal electrical rhythms in a person’s heart, we believe we can use a brain implant to act like a pacemaker and normalise deviant electrical brain rhythms that are linked to addiction. This trial will show if this is a practical idea.”

The use of brain implants has become popular with doctors treating brain disorders in recent years. More than a quarter of a million people are fitted with them to control symptoms of a range of conditions. In the case of Parkinson’s disease, implants deliver impulses to movement centres in patients’ brains and halt symptoms that include tremors and involuntary movements.

Several recent small proof-of-concept studies have suggested the technique could be expanded for use as a treatment for alcohol and opioid addicts. Scientists are now finalising plans for the first full clinical trial of deep brain stimulation to determine if it could be expanded to counter the growing crisis of alcohol and drug addiction in the UK and other countries.

Several hundred thousand people are dependent on alcohol in the UK and about a quarter of those require treatment for anxiety and depression and other associated health problems.

Opioid addiction is also a serious health problem. Almost half of all fatal drug poisonings now involve opiates such as heroin and morphine.

“Most people are highly disabled if they become seriously addicted to alcohol or opioids,” said Voon. “Nor does their craving affect only them. Their families, their parents, their siblings, their spouses and their children also suffer. Addiction is never just an individual disorder.

“Addicts are unable to work and also face the danger of taking overdoses. It has become a very serious issue for modern society.”

A total of six alcoholics and six opioid addicts will be picked for the trial, which is called Brain-Pacer (brain pacemaker addiction control to end relapse). To be selected, these individuals will have to have suffered at least five years of addiction and had at least three relapses. They will also have to have previously received conventional medications or psychotherapy.

Each person in the trial – which will be carried out at Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge and King’s College hospital in London – will have a slender electrode placed in precise locations in the brain.

For addicts, this will involve neural areas that are involved in reward, motivation and decision-making. The electrodes will then be connected to a pulse generator that is implanted in their bodies, most likely in their chests. This device will deliver the electrical impulses that will moderate the neural activity that is triggering their addiction, it is hoped.

“The aim is to decrease a person’s craving and increase their self-control by providing these electrical impulses,” added Voon.

Crucially, the trials will be randomised so that electrical signals will not be turned on at all times while the brain activity of addicts will be recorded. In this way, the team hopes that they will not only develop new treatments for addiction but will generate fresh understanding of the brain mechanisms that drive alcohol and opioid cravings.

Keyoumars Ashkan, professor of neurosurgery at King’s College hospital and the lead surgeon for the study, said deep brain stimulation was clearly a powerful surgical technique that could transform lives.

“It will be a major leap forward if we can show efficacy in this very difficult disease with a huge burden to the patients and society.”

The captain of the Russian container ship that crashed into a US oil tanker in the North Sea, killing a crew member, has appeared in court.

Vladimir Motin of Primorsky, St Petersburg, in Russia was charged with gross negligence manslaughter over the collision earlier this week.

Motin, 59, appeared at Hull magistrates court on Saturday morning, where he heard the charges against him and was remanded in custody.

The Crown Prosecution Service said a 38-year-od Filipino national, Mark Angelo Pernia, had died after the collision between the Solong and the Stena Immaculate off the east coast of Yorkshire.

Thirty-six people from both vessels made it ashore.

Officers received reports at 11am on Monday that two vessels had collided and one crew member was missing.

A statement from Humberside police said: “An investigation by Humberside police supported by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency into the collision between a tanker and a cargo vessel in the North Sea, off the coast of East Yorkshire, has resulted in a man being charged.”

The US-flagged Stena Immaculate is still at anchor at the point where the collision happened, about 12 miles off the East Yorkshire coast, near Withernsea.

The ship was carrying jet fuel for the US military.

The Solong drifted south, to a point where it could be seen off the Lincolnshire coast.

It was sailing from Grangemouth in Scotland to Rotterdam in the Netherlands when the crash happened.

On Friday, the chief coastguard Paddy O’Callaghan said the vessels were stable and salvors had boarded them both to continue damage assessments.

He said: “There are now only small periodic pockets of fire on the Solong which are not causing undue concern.

“Specialist tugs with firefighting capability remain at both vessels’ locations.

“Regular aerial surveillance flights continue to monitor the vessels and confirm that there continues to be no cause for concern from pollution from either the Stena Immaculate or from the Solong.”

Motin will appear next at the Old Bailey on 14 April.

Cuba’s national electrical grid collapsed late on Friday, leading to widespread blackouts in Havana and across the country and leaving millions of people in the dark.

Officials from the energy and mines ministry said an electrical substation in the capital failed about 8.15pm local time knocking out power to a large swath of western Cuba, including Havana, and causing the failure of the national electrical system, SEN.

The lights were out across all of Havana’s waterfront skyline, a Reuters witness observed, with only a scattered few tourist hotels operating on generators.

Reports on social media from outlying provinces both east and west of the capital city suggested much of the Caribbean island nation of 10 million people was without power. Internet service was also affected.

People in provinces as far away as Guantánamo, Artemisa, Santiago de Cuba and Santa Clara reported experiencing blackouts with just flickers of light.

The energy ministry said on X that it was “working on the recovery process”.

Earlier the Electric Union, the state agency that regulates the sector, said in its daily report that peak-hour demand would be about 3,250 megawatts and the deficit would reach around 1,380MW, meaning 42% of the national energy system would be shut down. This figure is not the highest in recent memory.

The grid failure follows a string of nationwide blackouts late last year that plunged Cuba’s frail and antiquated power generation system into near-total disarray, stressed by fuel shortages, natural disaster and an economic crisis.

Hours-long rolling blackouts have been the norm for months, with more than half of the country experiencing power cuts during peak hours. In many parts of the island, electricity is crucial for cooking and water pumping.

Severe shortages of food, medicine and water have made life increasingly unbearable for many Cubans, who in recent years have left the island in record-breaking numbers.

Authorities on the island have begun a program to install photovoltaic parks and promised that dozens of them will be ready this year. Blackouts previously prompted anti-government demonstrations in 2021, 2022, and 2024.

With Associated Press

The British Council has been accused of exploiting hundreds of agency teachers on zero-hour contracts forced to compete for lessons in a “feeding frenzy” every week.

An open letter from teaching staff reveals the prestigious government-funded public body does not offer regular hours to tutors on its popular English Online platform, which provides lessons to more than 45,000 students worldwide.

Instead, up to 350 teachers based in the UK, US, Canada, Australia and India have to race each other to book fluctuating numbers of classes released every week, which is referred to by staff as “the feeding frenzy”.

“Often, all available classes are gone in minutes. This means that if you’re teaching or having computer problems when hours are released, you can end up with no lessons at all,” the letter states, which has been coordinated by the Tefl Workers’ Union. “This Uberfication of teaching needs to stop.”

Teachers used to be directly employed by the British Council, which is funded by the Foreign Office to foster good cultural relations with other countries. But after the pandemic, the council’s commercial arm, which generates £700m annually, started recruiting teachers via partner agencies.

It comes as the government pushes ahead with legislation to ban “exploitative” zero-hour contracts. Ministers announced this month that firms will have to offer agency workers a contract that guarantees a minimum number of hours every week to stop employers evading restrictions.

There are growing concerns about exploitative gig economy practices spreading into new sectors of the economy and professional jobs. Unions have warned that the modern types of casualisation pioneered by Uber and Deliveroo are creeping into high street shops and education, with even Oxford University now putting academics on gig-style contracts.

The foreign secretary, David Lammy, is answerable to parliament for the “policies, operations and performance” of the British Council. The Tefl union understands that at least one parliamentarian may raise the treatment of the teachers with the government.

Teaching jobs on the platform are advertised by the British Council, but they are not directly employed by the public body, which was set up by the Foreign Office in the 1930s to improve Britain’s international standing. In the UK, teachers are employed by the Impellam Group.

A teacher, who asked not to be named, said at first the British Council gave her the option to work regular hours. “I wasn’t worried about paying bills [when I started in 2021]. It felt like a proper job.” While she was on maternity leave, the British Council stopped offering guaranteed hours. She said she was left without any income for a month when she returned to work: “I had nothing… it was absolutely abysmal.”

She added her job was less secure than her partner’s bar work. “To get this job, I had to show copies of my master’s and teaching diploma, which took years to get. But I am paid less and less predictably than my partner, who works in an entry-level bar job…it’s very insulting.”

Internal British Council staff message boards covering the last 10 months – which a whistleblower has shared with the Observer – describe the weekly releases of lessons as “10 minutes of manic button pressing, panic and expletives”, which is getting worse because “the number of teachers is growing a lot faster than the number of classes being uploaded”.

Some are left with only a couple of lessons each week, which pay £13 for an hour-long group lesson and £7.50 for a 30-minute private lesson in the UK. One teacher complains: “These days I rarely get more than a couple of lessons.” Another notes that “every other class I clicked on was already assigned” which was “demoralising” and “humiliating”. A teacher with primary school-aged children says she was forced to book late-night classes at 10pm and 11pm because they were the only slots available, but it left her “too tired to function the next day”.

Marina Goncharova, a former British Council teacher who has added her name to the letter, said teachers were living in fear of having no income. “I couldn’t sleep [when I worked for the British Council],” she says. “I couldn’t hang out with my friends. I couldn’t even have a day off because I needed to be ready to book lessons. I was so scared I would be left without work.”

Tom Liebewitz, lead organiser for Tefl Workers’ Union, said teaching shouldn’t come with constant uncertainty: “With zero-hour contracts and agencies like Impellam profiting from a gig-economy model, teachers are left scrambling for hours in a ‘feeding frenzy’, unable to plan for a future, whether that means starting a family or securing a mortgage.”

The British Council said the English Online portfolio offered flexibility to students and teachers. “Teachers benefit from the flexibility of working from home and choose their own hours by assigning themselves to the classes that suit them. During recruitment, teachers are made aware that there is no guaranteed minimum number of hours, and that they should not rely on English Online as their primary income.” A spokesperson added: “We recognise our duty of care to colleagues, are committed to their wellbeing, and comply fully with local employment laws.”

Impellam said: “We cannot comment on individual cases but as a recruitment company, Impellam and all its subsidiaries are fully compliant with UK employment law and committed to treating contingent workers fairly.”

The Foreign Office said: “The British Council is operationally independent of government and is responsible for its own employment practices, strategy and policy.”

A Eurovision contestant has reworked her song after a word in the lyrics sounded like an English swearword.

Miriana Conte’s song was originally titled Kant, the Maltese word for singing.

The song now includes the voice of the BBC economics editor Faisal Islam after he interviewed Conte on Newsnight about having only days to alter the song following a complaint.

On Friday, Eurovision released her official music video for the updated track, retitled Serving, which has similar lyrics minus the word “kant”.

The video opens in a documentary-style format featuring commentators talking about her and the song, including the voice of Islam from the Newsnight interview, suggesting how she could redo it: “Serving brunch, maybe, I don’t know.”

Conte told Newsnight she was not trying to “offend anyone”; the word meant different things to different people, and to her, it meant: “I’m serving singing.”

She made her disappointment known to the contest organisers, the European Broadcasting Union, at the time of the complaint. “We’ve just been notified that [the EBU] has decided against using the Maltese word “Kant” in our entry in the Eurovision Song Contest,” she wrote on Instagram. “While I’m shocked and disappointed, especially since we have less than a week to submit the song, I promise you this: the show will go on – Diva NOT down.”

Maltese news outlets reported that the BBC was the one to lodge a complaint with the EBU.

Islam reacted to Conte’s use of his voice in her official music video by posting a laughing emoji and “well, well, well,” on X. The video was played during the end credits of Friday’s episode of Newsnight.

The all-female trio Remember Monday will represent the UK at Eurovision 2025 with their song, What the Hell Just Happened?

Before last year’s competition, the EBU faced criticism for allowing a representative from Israel to perform while the Gaza war was ongoing. Eden Golan was asked to redo her song, Rain, which was alleged to reference Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October 2023. Instead, she entered the competition with Hurricane.

Afterwards, Eurovision announced an internal review and a code of conduct to help “protect” the wellbeing of artists in future contests.

The grand final of Eurovision will take place in Basel, Switzerland, on 17 May, with the semi-finals on 13 and 15 May.