A week of turmoil unleashed by US President Donald Trump’s tariffs showed little sign of easing on Friday, with some markets again tumbling and French president Emmanuel Macron describing the 90-day tariff pause as “fragile”.

Asian indices followed Wall Street lower on Friday with Japan’s Nikkei down nearly 5% and Hong Kong stocks heading towards the biggest weekly decline since 2008. Oil prices were also set to drop for a second straight week.

Macron wrote on X early on Friday that the partial suspension “sends out a signal and leaves the door open for talks. But this pause is a fragile one.”

He added: “This 90-day pause means 90 days of uncertainty for all our businesses, on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond.”

Battered financial markets were given a brief reprieve on Wednesday when Trump decided to pause duties on dozens of countries for 90 days. However, his escalating trade war with the world’s second-largest economy, China, has fuelled fears of recession and further retaliation.

US treasury secretary Scott Bessent tried to assuage sceptics by telling a cabinet meeting on Thursday that more than 75 countries wanted to start trade negotiations, and Trump himself expressed hope of a deal with China.

But the uncertainty in the meantime extended some of the most volatile trading since the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The S&P 500 index ended 3.5% lower on Thursday and is now down about 15% from its all-time peak in February. Some analysts believe stocks have further to fall due to the uncertainty surrounding the US tariff policy.

Bessent on Thursday shrugged off the renewed market sell-off and predicted that striking deals with other countries would bring more certainty.

The US and Vietnam agreed to begin formal trade talks after Bessent spoke with Vietnamese deputy prime minister Ho Duc Phoc, the White House said. The south-east Asian manufacturing hub is prepared to crack down on Chinese goods being shipped to the United States via its territory in the hope of avoiding tariffs, Reuters exclusively reported on Friday.

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, plans to travel to south-east Asia, including Vietnam and Cambodia, next week.

Japanese prime minister Shigeru Ishiba, meanwhile, has set up a taskforce headed by his close aide that hopes to visit Washington next week, according to local media.

As Trump suddenly paused his “reciprocal” tariffs on other countries hours after they came into effect earlier this week, he increased duties on Chinese imports as punishment for Beijing’s initial move to retaliate.

Trump has now imposed new tariffs on Chinese goods of 145% since taking office, a White House official said.

Chinese officials have been canvassing other trading partners about how to deal with the US tariffs, most recently talking to counterparts in Spain, Saudi Arabia and South Africa.

Trump told reporters at the White House he thought the US could make a deal with China, but he reiterated his argument that Beijing had “really taken advantage” of the US for a long time.

“I’m sure that we’ll be able to get along very well,” Trump said, referring to Xi. “In a true sense he’s been a friend of mine for a long period of time, and I think that we’ll end up working out something that’s very good for both countries.”

China rejected what it called threats and blackmail from Washington and pledged to follow through to the end if the US persists, commerce ministry spokesperson He Yongqian told a regular press briefing on Thursday. China’s door was open to dialogue, but this must be based on mutual respect, the ministry said.

Beijing also restricted imports of Hollywood films, targeting one of the most high-profile American exports.

The US tariff pause also does not apply to duties paid by Canada and Mexico, whose goods are still subject to 25% fentanyl-related tariffs unless they comply with the US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement’s rules of origin.

With trade hostilities persisting among the top three US trade partners, Goldman Sachs estimates the probability of a recession at 45%.

Even with the rollback, the overall average import duty rate imposed by the US is the highest in more than a century, according to Yale University researchers.

It also did little to soothe business leaders’ worries about the fallout from his trade war and its chaotic implementation: soaring costs, falling orders and snarled supply chains.

One reprieve came, however, when the European Union said it would pause its first counter-tariffs.

US stocks fell again on Thursday after a historic rally following Donald Trump’s shock retreat on Wednesday on the hefty tariffs he had just imposed on dozens of countries.

The falls came as the president blamed “transition problems” for the market reaction and the sell-off deepened after a White House clarification noted that total tariffs on China had been raised by 145% since Trump took office.

Speaking at the White House, Trump said: “We think we’re in very good shape. We think we’re doing very well. Again there will be a transition cost, transition problems, but in the end it’s going to be a beautiful thing.”

On CNN, former US treasury secretary Janet Yellen called Trump’s economic policies the “worst self-inflicted wound” an administration had ever imposed on a “well-functioning economy”.

The sell-off comes as Democrats continue to react with anger over the sudden retreat that rattled markets, while Republicans praised Trump’s “art of the deal” in action, referencing Trump’s 1987 book.

By the end of Thursday, the Dow was down 2.5% after soaring on Wednesday afternoon. The Nasdaq Composite was down more than 4%, after posting its biggest gain in more than two decades on Wednesday, and the S&P 500 down 3.4%.

The market seems to be in a state of fatigue after a rollercoaster week. Stocks were even unresponsive to news on Thursday morning that the European Union announced it will suspend 25% retaliatory tariffs against US imports and new data showed inflation in the US cooled to 2.4% in March – both would typically be cause for optimism on Wall Street.

Trump said in an abrupt announcement on Wednesday that he would be implementing a 90-day pause on his tariff plan, and that goods entering the US from most countries would now face a 10% blanket tariff until July, except for Chinese exports, which he said would face tariffs totaling 145% effective immediately – 125% in “reciprocal” tariffs plus 20% already imposed for China’s alleged role in the fentanyl crisis.

Republican lawmakers praised the decision to pause the tariffs, with the House speaker, Mike Johnson, stating on social media: “Behold the ‘Art of the Deal.’ President Trump has created leverage, brought MANY countries to the table, and will deliver for American workers, American manufacturers, and America’s future!”

Before the pause was announced, a small but growing number of Republican lawmakers and Trump supporters in the business world expressed concerns about the risks of the president’s tariff policy.

By Wednesday afternoon, many were praising Trump for the rollback as part of a purported strategy.

Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge fund manager and Trump supporter who advocated for Trump to pause his trade war over the weekend, reacted to the announcement saying that “this was brilliantly executed by @realDonaldTrump. Textbook, Art of the Deal.”

The benefit of Trump’s approach, Ackman claimed, “is that we now understand who are our preferred trading partners, and who the problems are. China has shown themselves to be a bad actor. Our counterparties also have a taste of what life is like if they don’t take down their trade barriers. This is the perfect set-up for trade negotiations over the next 90 days.”

But some industry leaders criticized the administration’s back-and-forth and tariff decisions.

On Thursday, Amazon’s CEO, Andy Jassy, said the company was still waiting to see the impact of the tariffs but warned third-party sellers may “pass that cost on” to consumers.

“The effective tariff rate is actually HIGHER with the pause than it was as announced on April 2, due to the tariffs on China,” Diane Swonk, the chief economist of the professional services firm KPMG, wrote on social media. “There will be some diversion through connector countries. However, the effective tariff rate now peaks at 30.5% during the pause. That is worse than our worst case scenarios.”

While Republicans and White House officials praised Trump’s decisions, Democratic lawmakers such as Senator Chuck Schumer pushed back. Schumer told his supporters that “this chaos is all a game to Donald Trump”.

“He thinks he’s playing Red Light, Green Light with the economy,” Schumer said. “But it is very real for American families.”

Some Democrats have made accusations of possible market manipulation.

“These constant gyrations in policy provide dangerous opportunities for insider trading,” Senator Adam Schiff said. “Who in the administration knew about Trump’s latest tariff flip-flop ahead of time? Did anyone buy or sell stocks, and profit at the public’s expense? I’m writing to the White House – the public has a right to know.”

The New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez echoed similar concerns, urging any member of Congress who purchased stocks over the last two days to disclose that.

“I’ve been hearing some interesting chatter on the floor,” she said. “Disclosure deadline is May 15th. We’re about to learn a few things. It’s time to ban insider trading in Congress.”

The Democratic House whip, Katherine Clark, wrote: “Two hours before announcing his tariff pause, Trump told his paid Truth Social subscribers it was ‘a great time to buy’ on the stock market. Corruption is the name of their game.”

The Nevada representative Steven Horsford questioned the US trade representative, Jamieson Greer, asking the representative during a committee hearing whether the climbdown was market manipulation.

“How is this not market manipulation?” Horsford asked, to which Greer responded: “No.”

“If it was always a plan, how is this not market manipulation?” Horsford asked again.

“Tariffs are a tool, they can be used in the appropriate way to protect US jobs and small businesses, but that’s not what this does,” Horsford said. “So if it’s not market manipulation, what is it? Who’s benefiting? What billionaire just got richer?”

The EU will not rip up its tech rules in an attempt to reach a trade deal with Donald Trump, the bloc’s most senior official on digital policy has said.

Henna Virkkunen, the European Commission vice-president responsible for tech sovereignty, indicated the EU was not going to compromise on its digital rulebook to reach an agreement on trade with the US – a key demand of Trump administration officials.

“We are very committed to our rules when it comes to the digital world,” Virkkunen said in an interview with European newspapers, including the Guardian. “We want to make sure that our digital environment in the European Union … that it is fair and it’s safe and it’s also democratic.”

She gently pushed back at suggestions that EU digital regulations could be considered trade barriers, saying the same rules applied to all companies, whether European, American or Chinese. “We are not specially targeting certain companies, but we have this risk-based approach in all our rules.”

In recent days, Trump’s senior trade adviser, Peter Navarro, has claimed the EU was using “lawfare” against the US’s largest tech firms, in an FT article featuring a litany of complaints against supposed “non-tariff weapons”. The Meta chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has accused the EU of “institutionalising censorship”, while Trump has attacked European decisions to impose fines and pursue anti-trust investigations into the likes of Apple and Facebook.

Referring to the EU’s digital rules, Virkkunen said US tech firms often had greater obligations, because they were among the biggest companies on the market: “When you are a bigger player, then there are more obligations, because you are posing a bigger risk.”

She was speaking the morning after Trump announced a whiplash-inducing 90-day pause on many tariffs, but before the commission announced a matching freeze in its retaliation. The EU still faces 10% tariffs, as well as 25% duties on cars and metals entering the US.

Welcoming the US decision on “reciprocal” tariffs, she said: “We want to have a good trade agreement with the USA and we don’t want to have a trade war.”

While the commission has said that all retaliatory options remain on the table if trade talks fail, Virkkunen declined to “speculate” about possible EU actions against US tech companies. France has led calls to consider measures against US tech firms in response to tariffs on European goods. Virkkunen said “different options” for retaliation had been prepared in consultation with member states.

Virkkunen, a former Finnish government minister and MEP, took up her post at the commission last December, having been given a sprawling brief covering “tech sovereignty” as well as overseeing security and border control policies, and protecting European democracy from disinformation.

One of the most highly charged issues on her plate is overseeing investigations into big tech firms under the EU’s new digital rules. The commission is investigating firms including Alphabet, Apple and Meta under the Digital Markets Act, which is intended to ensure big tech does not crowd out smaller rivals in the marketplace. Separately, via the Digital Services Act, which is designed to counter online harms, it is running investigations into firms including X and Meta.

Risking a further falling-out with the US, in March the commission pushed ahead with enforcement action against Apple and Alphabet, the owner of Google, accusing them of breaking the DMA with anti-competitive behaviour.

Asked about reports that the commission could fine X more than $1bn (£770m), she said: “Our goal in these investigations and proceedings is not to impose big fines. Our goal is to make sure that all the companies are complying with our rules.”

Virkkunen, a member of the transnational European People’s party, stressed her wish to ensure Europe’s digital rules were not too cumbersome for small businesses, amid rising concern about Europe’s anaemic economic growth in comparison with the US and China, which are also far more advanced in artificial intelligence technologies. “We are lagging very much behind because 80% of our technology is coming outside of the European Union, so there’s a lot of work ahead of us,” she said.

This week, she outlined a strategy to create up to five AI gigafactories, sites equipped with vast supercomputers to test and develop AI models in the EU. But her openness to consider revising the EU’s landmark AI legislation has also rung alarm bells among consumer groups. She said: “We want to implement the AI Act in a very innovation-friendly manner, and we really want to support our SMEs and our AI developers to comply with the rules.”

The EU’s AI Act has sparked deep concerns from writers, musicians and other creatives, who say they have no protection for their copyright from big tech’s generative AI systems, which draw on droves of books, newspapers, songs and images to feed their databases. In a tacit acknowledgment that there could be a gap, Virkkunen said: “It looks that now further steps have to be taken here.”

She added: “I think it’s important that we find a good solution … [to] support our copyright holders and all the right-holders and the creative industry to give their content for AI training and for AI purposes. At the same time, they also have to get fair compensation for that. But I see that it’s also problematic if European content is not used for training AI.”

The commission, she said, was examining “how we could support different licensing models … to make sure that we have good balance here”.

A helicopter crashed into the Hudson River in New York on Thursday, killing all six people onboard, including the pilot and a family of Spanish tourists with three children.

The sightseeing helicopter broke apart in midair and crashed upside down into the Hudson River between Manhattan and the New Jersey waterfront shortly after 3pm ET, leading to a huge response from emergency crews.

Videos posted on social media showed the aircraft mostly submerged, upside down in the water, and rescue vehicles crowding on to the streets on shore as emergency workers raced to save those onboard.

At the scene of the crash, the emergency response boats could be seen circling in the water. A crane could also be seen on a floating platform in the river, presumably trying to raise the sunken helicopter. Meanwhile on shore, fire and police personnel stopped the public and press from reaching the end of a long concrete pier on the river from downtown Manhattan, as scuba teams emerged from the water.

The New York mayor, Eric Adams, confirmed six people had been pronounced dead, including three children and three adults.

Speaking at a news conference on Thursday evening, Adams said his thoughts were with the crash victims and their families. An investigation into the cause of the accident was ongoing, he said.

Three adults and three children were on board the Bell 206 helicopter that had left from downtown Skyport, Adams said. The victims were a pilot and a family believed to be visiting from Spain, he said.

Jessica Tisch, the NYPD commissioner, said most of the passengers were already dead when they were removed from the water, but two passengers were taken to a nearby hospital, where they died soon after.

The flight lasted less than 18 minutes. Radar data showed it flew north along the Manhattan skyline and then back south toward the Statue of Liberty.

Witness Bruce Wall told the Associated Press he saw the helicopter “falling apart” in midair, with the tail and propeller coming off. The propeller was still spinning without the aircraft as it fell, he said.

Lesly Camacho, a hostess at a restaurant along the river in Hoboken, New Jersey, told the AP she saw the helicopter spinning uncontrollably before it slammed into the water.

The rescue operations took place near a site close to the Manhattan waterfront, near the end of a long maintenance pier for one of the ventilation towers for the Holland tunnel, a busy under-river road tunnel connecting the city with New Jersey.

Over the years, there have been multiple crashes in the skies over Manhattan, which are routinely filled with both planes and helicopters, including private recreational aircraft and commercial and tourist flights.

Prior incidents include a collision in 2009 when a tour helicopter and a small private airplane collided over the Hudson River, killing nine people. In 2018, a sightseeing helicopter offering “open door” flights went down into the East River, killing five people. New York City banned open-door helicopter flights following the crash.

The spot where the helicopter crashed is less than three miles (4.8km) south of where US Airways Capt Chesley Sullenberger expertly landed the passenger plane he was piloting, on the water, with no lives lost, after the engines were put out in a bird strike after takeoff from LaGuardia airport. The rare successful emergency landing on water became known as the “miracle on the Hudson”.

The crash site is close to the southern end of the island of Manhattan, within sight of the Statue of Liberty and the One World Trade skyscraper at the site of the September 11 terrorist attack.

New Yorkers were jogging and walking along the sidewalk near the Hudson as normal on Thursday evening, overlooking the scene of the crash with emergency boats still visible across the water on the New Jersey side, blue lights flashing.

Software engineers and friends Mike Jones, 37, and Omar Mohamed, 21, said they were out for a walk during a break and they had heard the news of the crash.

“It seems that helicopters crash a lot. And I’m afraid of heights anyway so helicopters are a no-go for me,” Jones said.

Mohamed said: “There was just another helicopter crash, right?” recalling the helicopter crash in Washington DC at the end of January, when a military flight collided midair with a passenger plane coming in to land. All people aboard both flights were killed.

Israel’s military is organising hiking tours for civilians in newly occupied Syrian territory during the Passover holiday, local media has reported.

The twice-daily tours in the contested Golan Heights will run for a week beginning this Sunday. Tickets sold out almost immediately.

Under a military escort in bulletproof buses, small groups will travel up to 2.5km into Syrian territory that was off limits until the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) seized the Golan buffer zone after the fall of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in December. Israel has occupied the Golan Heights since 1967 and now controls hundreds more square kilometres of Syrian land.

The itinerary includes the Syrian side of Mount Hermon, which overlooks Damascus, and Lebanon’s Shebaa Farms at the foot of the mountain. The Israeli-occupied strip of Lebanese land, reputedly the site of God’s covenant with Abraham, has been a flashpoint for violence between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah for decades.

Visitors will also be able to hike and swim in the Ruqqad river valley which flows into the Yarmouk on the border with Jordan, and see parts of the abandoned Ottoman Hejaz railway, which used to connect the empire’s capital in Istanbul to Haifa, Nablus and holy sites in present day Saudi Arabia.

The trips have been organised by the IDF’s 210th Division, the Golan regional council, the Keshet Yehonatan religious education centre, the environmentalist Golan Field School and the Israel nature and parks authority, the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported.

The tours are part of a wider initiative, “Returning to a Safer North”, after the end of last year’s Israel-Hezbollah war, which was part of the regional fallout ignited by Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel and the ensuing war in the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military said: “It’s important for us to restore heritage and tourism to the region and to tell the story of the battles fought during the war.”

Tourists sign up at their own risk and the trips may be cancelled at short notice if there are security issues. In response to questions from Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the IDF said that the tour was “inside Israel”, rather than Syria, although the visits take place in the Golan Heights demilitarised buffer zone, internationally recognised as Syrian territory.

The IDF began a heavy bombing campaign across Syria targeting the regime’s weapons stockpiles shortly after Assad fled the country, while ground troops advanced in violation of a 1974 agreement.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has demanded that forces belonging to Syria’s new Islamist-led transitional government stay away from the border area and that the IDF remain until an alternative arrangement can be found.

Given demand, organisers have said that they hope the security situation will permit additional tours to Syria after Passover.

The musician turned opposition leader Bobi Wine has said he will stand again against Uganda’s authoritarian leader, Yoweri Museveni, in next year’s presidential elections. Despite being jailed, attacked, shot, and facing threats of violence, including from Museveni’s son, Wine said he felt he had little choice but to try to advance the hope for change that was energising Ugandans, especially the young.

“We cannot just give the election to General Museveni,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian.

The leader of the National Unity Platform (NUP) party, Wine, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, said he expected the January 2026 election, in which Museveni has said he will stand for what would be his seventh term in office, to be bloody.

But, with 80% of the Ugandan population under the age of 35, Wine believes change can come.

“Young people are so hopeful because they see the possibility,” he said. “Ultimately the good will of the people is what is important for this election and for our campaign. They know if you are not given freedom, you don’t have a life.

“I think I stir a lot of hope because I don’t shut my big mouth, and that’s a big challenge to the regime.”

Museveni, now in his eighties, has held power in Uganda since 1986, one of the world’s longest standing national leaders.

In 2021, Africa Elections Watch observers said the election was conducted with “irregularities”, while the US state department called it “fundamentally flawed”. During that campaign, Wine was imprisoned and faced attacks and death threats.

“I am worried about what is ahead, of course,” said Wine. “Thinking about how brutal it is going to be, it’s going to be terrible. We are already seeing signs it will be more brutal. Last month, we had a byelection and one of my MPs died. Died after being tortured by the regime. Journalists were very badly beaten and observers from the US embassy had to leave the field.”

Among the enemies Wine and his NUP party have made is Museveni’s son, 50-year-old Muhoozi Kainerugaba. He was made chief of defence forces by his father and is also chair of the Patriotic League of Uganda, which lobbies heavily for him to succeed the presidency. Kainerugaba has made vicious public threats to Wine on his social media accounts, including saying he was keeping a bullet specially for him.

“More reason to stand up,” said Wine.

“I am convinced that if the world stands firm with us, 2026 could be a turning point. If the world leaders do not stand on the side of oppression, but help; if they criticise and distance themselves from the absence of human rights and democracy.

“I get the feeling right now that the international community is more concerned with diplomacy rather than democracy; more concerned with business than rights and freedom.”

Asked about the impact of Donald Trump’s populist presidency on Uganda, including the huge aid cuts and disinterest in peacekeeping or humanitarian concerns, he said: “We are now in a situation where there is less concern for Africa. If lifesaving aid is cut then how will aid for democracy fare?

“Aid cuts are going to impact Uganda very negatively. But also much aid is diverted to support this corrupt regime. The aid that was helping in the health sector is not there any more, so we are going to have less medicines and more bullets,” he said.

“We have always been asking for targeted sanctions on those in the regime and asking the US not to send their taxpayers’ money to be spent on things that can be used against our people. The guns that kill our people are American guns. The soldiers who torture our people are trained in America.

“So we want America and other world powers not to be partners in crime, but to call out General Museveni for the absence of human rights.

“I believe foreign aid, in many ways, is lost in patronage and corruption, only to have the burden of repayment on next generations. The aid we need is in sticking to values. If we have a good democracy and human rights, that will bring leaders who will stamp down on corruption.

“We lose two-thirds of our annual revenue to corruption – 10tn Ugandan shillings ($2.5bn) stolen every year. That figure comes from the inspector general of government, so it could be more. He could be giving us a low figure. Whichever way, it is huge,” he said.

“Our debt burden is heavy, it will take us 97 years to pay back and of course we have new predators. But I believe it is fixable. We have human resources, we have a young, energised population. We are endowed with natural wealth and resources. If corruption is stamped out, we can make every sector work that could rise us from poverty and indebtedness.”

Wine’s wife, the author Barbie Itungo Kyagulanyi, was a linchpin in Wine’s first parliamentary campaign in 2017 and joined him on the presidential campaign trail in 2020 with her own manifesto for women’s rights.

Their struggle was documented in the Oscar-nominated film Bobi Wine: The People’s President, which was released after the 2021 campaign.

Kyagulanyi was held under an illegal house arrest with her husband in 2021. But she is “energised” for 2026 he says.

“Those who are fighting for freedom, I’m afraid they don’t decide [to do it], they don’t apply. It happens to them,” he said. “For me, I would like to be making music not risking my life, but there is no choice.

“While I am here speaking to you, I don’t know if I’ll be in jail next week. If I am still alive and not in jail by the end of this year, then I’m going to run for presidency, again.”

Prosecutors in Taiwan charged, for the first time, a Chinese ship captain with intentionally damaging undersea cables off the island in February, after a rise in sea cable malfunctions alarmed Taiwan officials amid tensions with China.

Prosecutors say the man was captain of the Chinese-crewed Hong Tai 58, registered in Togo, which Taiwanese authorities detained after suspecting the ship had dropped anchor near an undersea cable off southwestern Taiwan, allegedly damaging it.

The prosecutors’ office in the southern Taiwanese city of Tainan said they had charged the ship’s Chinese captain, whom they identified only by his family name, Wang, with being responsible for the alleged damage to the cable.

Wang has said he is innocent, but refused to provide details of the ship’s owner and “had a bad attitude”, the prosecutors alleged in a statement.

Seven other Chinese nationals detained at the same time will not be charged and will be transported to China, prosecutors said, adding that the case was the island’s first prosecution relating to damage to sea cables.

Reuters was not able to determine the ship’s ownership or immediately locate a lawyer representing the captain.

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. China has previously accused Taiwan of “manipulating” possible Chinese involvement in the case, saying it was casting aspersions before the facts were clear.

Taiwan has reported five cases of sea cable malfunctions this year, compared with three each in 2024 and 2023, according to its digital ministry.

Taiwan’s coastguard has in recent months stepped up efforts to protect its sea cables, including monitoring a “blacklist” of close to 100 China-linked ships registered to a country other than that of its owner near Taiwan, officials familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Taiwan said in January it suspected a China-linked ship of damaging an undersea cable off its northern coast. The shipowner denied the accusations.

Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory, has repeatedly complained about “grey zone” Chinese activities around the island, designed to pressure it without direct confrontation, such as balloon overflights and sand dredging.

Taipei was alarmed after another Chinese-linked ship was suspected of damaging a different cable this year, prompting the navy and other agencies to step up efforts to protect the undersea communication links, which are vital to the island’s connections to the rest of the world.

Taiwan, whose government rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims, has pointed to similarities between what it has experienced and damage to undersea cables in the Baltic Sea following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Prosecutors in Taiwan charged, for the first time, a Chinese ship captain with intentionally damaging undersea cables off the island in February, after a rise in sea cable malfunctions alarmed Taiwan officials amid tensions with China.

Prosecutors say the man was captain of the Chinese-crewed Hong Tai 58, registered in Togo, which Taiwanese authorities detained after suspecting the ship had dropped anchor near an undersea cable off southwestern Taiwan, allegedly damaging it.

The prosecutors’ office in the southern Taiwanese city of Tainan said they had charged the ship’s Chinese captain, whom they identified only by his family name, Wang, with being responsible for the alleged damage to the cable.

Wang has said he is innocent, but refused to provide details of the ship’s owner and “had a bad attitude”, the prosecutors alleged in a statement.

Seven other Chinese nationals detained at the same time will not be charged and will be transported to China, prosecutors said, adding that the case was the island’s first prosecution relating to damage to sea cables.

Reuters was not able to determine the ship’s ownership or immediately locate a lawyer representing the captain.

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. China has previously accused Taiwan of “manipulating” possible Chinese involvement in the case, saying it was casting aspersions before the facts were clear.

Taiwan has reported five cases of sea cable malfunctions this year, compared with three each in 2024 and 2023, according to its digital ministry.

Taiwan’s coastguard has in recent months stepped up efforts to protect its sea cables, including monitoring a “blacklist” of close to 100 China-linked ships registered to a country other than that of its owner near Taiwan, officials familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Taiwan said in January it suspected a China-linked ship of damaging an undersea cable off its northern coast. The shipowner denied the accusations.

Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory, has repeatedly complained about “grey zone” Chinese activities around the island, designed to pressure it without direct confrontation, such as balloon overflights and sand dredging.

Taipei was alarmed after another Chinese-linked ship was suspected of damaging a different cable this year, prompting the navy and other agencies to step up efforts to protect the undersea communication links, which are vital to the island’s connections to the rest of the world.

Taiwan, whose government rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims, has pointed to similarities between what it has experienced and damage to undersea cables in the Baltic Sea following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The leader of Turkey’s largest opposition party has hit out at Keir Starmer, accusing the British prime minister of ignoring the arrest of the mayor of Istanbul and democratic backsliding in Turkey.

Speaking to the Guardian, the leader of the left-leaning Republican People’s party (CHP), Özgür Özel, said he was disappointed that Starmer had failed to speak up about attacks on a “sister party”.

Emphasising that his frustrations were with the Labour leadership and Starmer personally for failing to offer a full condemnation after leading CHP politician and Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu was detained last month, Özel said “they are making a historic mistake by seeing this as a domestic Turkish issue”.

“Starmer’s attitude is one that he will not be able to explain in future,” he added.

“I would like to send the following message: ‘After this is all over, we will remember the silence of our friends, not the loud voices and negative comments of our enemies’.”

İmamoğlu was arrested and imprisoned last month on an array of corruption charges, triggering the largest anti-government demonstrations in Turkey in over a decade as hundreds of thousands took to the streets.

The CHP have called for twice-weekly rallies across Turkey and an economic boycott of companies they say are close to president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, hoping to spur an anti-government movement that has so far seen almost 1500 people detained, including journalists and municipal politicians.

While Turkish authorities insist the charges against the Istanbul mayor are not politicised, Özel labelled it “a political trial,” adding that Erdoğan “has his lawyers imprison those who disturb him and his team politically”.

The Istanbul mayor, who had ruled a city of 16 million for six years, was widely seen as Erdoğan’s main rival. He was named the CHP’s candidate for president on the same day he was sent to a maximum security facility on the outskirts of Istanbul.

Elections in Turkey are due in 2028, although an early vote is widely predicted, and the CHP has called for snap elections after officially nominating İmamoğlu as its candidate.

Despite the mayor’s abrupt detention, the CHP leader said the party has already mapped out plans for how İmamoğlu can campaign for the presidency even if he remains behind bars. Özel labelled the upcoming election a referendum on whether “there will be autocracy or democracy in Turkey”.

Özel sat for an interview shortly before hosting a rally in Istanbul, with another rally in Erdoğan’s Black Sea heartland scheduled for this weekend. The Turkish president filed a criminal complaint against the opposition leader earlier this week, accusing him of insulting the president by saying that Turkey is “governed by a junta that is afraid of elections”.

The opposition leader dismissed the lawsuit as an attempt to cow him but said he had not ruled out that Erdoğan could still seek his arrest, “if he can’t cope politically like what happened with İmamoğlu”.

While European leaders, including French president Emmanuel Macron and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, have spoken out about the mayor’s arrest, the Turkish opposition leader said he also wanted to see Europe do more to pressure Ankara away from democratic backsliding.

İmamoğlu’s arrest came as European leaders have reportedly considered tapping Turkey, which boasts the second-largest army in Nato after the US, to provide peacekeeping forces in Ukraine.

“It is not right to make unprincipled negotiations with Erdoğan out of security concerns. Having Nato’s first largest army in the hands of Trump and Nato’s second largest army in the hands of an autocrat does not help anyone,” said Özel.

In the weeks since the mayor’s detention, there has been little comment from the British government or the Labour party regarding events in Turkey or the deportation of BBC reporter Mark Lowen, who covered the anti-government protests. Turkish authorities say they deported Lowen for working without accreditation.

Stephen Doughty, minister for Europe, North America and overseas territories, told parliament in late March that Britain was “closely monitoring the situation”.

“The UK expects Turkey to uphold its international commitments and the rule of law, including swift and transparent judicial processes,” he added.

Özel accused Starmer of prioritising issues of regional security such as events in Syria over the removal of democratic rights and the “great injustices” taking place in Turkey.

“The loser of this process, not just in my eyes but in the eyes of democratic forces worldwide, is Erdoğan in Turkey and Starmer at the international level,” he said.

A French researcher who was sentenced by Russia to three years in prison, in a case condemned by Paris, has been transferred to a transit penal colony.

Laurent Vinatier is one of several westerners jailed by Moscow since it began its Ukraine offensive. He was sentenced in October after being found guilty of violating Russia’s “foreign agent” law.

Vinatier, who works for a Swiss conflict-mediation NGO, was arrested last summer as tensions with France and other western countries soared over Ukraine.

According to a message from his family to AFP, Vinatier’s lawyer informed them that he was transferred from Moscow to Tula – about 120 miles (190km) south of the capital – to a transit penal colony.

He is to spend 15 days of quarantine in the prison. His family do not know where he will be transferred after that. Prisoner transfers in Russia’s huge penitentiary system can take weeks.

Vinatier, who speaks Russian, is a veteran researcher on Russia and post-Soviet countries.

As he lost his appeal in February, he said in court that his work always tried to “present Russia’s interests in international relations”.

France has demanded Vinatier’s release, condemning the sentence as “arbitrary”. President Emmanuel Macron has repeatedly calling on Russia to free him.

The US supreme court upheld on Thursday a judge’s order requiring Donald Trump’s administration to facilitate the return to the United States of a Salvadoran man who the government has acknowledged was deported in error to El Salvador.

US district judge Paula Xinis last week issued an order that the administration “facilitate and effectuate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, in response to a lawsuit filed by the man and his family challenging the legality of his deportation.

The supreme court, in an unsigned decision, said that the judge’s order “properly requires the government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador”.

However, the court said that the additional requirement to “effectuate” his return was unclear and may exceed the judge’s authority. The justices directed Xinis to clarify the directive “with due regard for the deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs”.

The administration, meanwhile, “should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps,” the court directed.

Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran migrant who was living in Maryland and has had a work permit since 2019, was stopped and detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He was deported on 15 March on one of three high-profile deportation flights to El Salvador that also included alleged Venezuelan gang members.

Justice department lawyers in a supreme court brief had argued that the judge’s order, by requiring the Trump administration to “effectuate” Abrego Garcia’s return, had impermissibly encroached on presidential authority on foreign relations in violation of the US constitution’s separation of powers between its judicial and executive branches.

“The United States does not control the sovereign nation of El Salvador, nor can it compel El Salvador to follow a federal judge’s bidding,” justice department lawyers wrote.

The supreme court has a 6-3 conservative majority. Its three liberal justices on Thursday issued a statement agreeing with the court’s decision, but said they would have denied the administration’s request outright.

“To this day, the government has cited no basis in law for Abrego Garcia’s warrantless arrest, his removal to El Salvador, or his confinement in a Salvadoran prison. Nor could it,” liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the statement.

Sotomayor added that the administration had requested “an order from this court permitting it to leave Abrego Garcia, a husband and father without a criminal record, in a Salvadoran prison for no reason recognized by the law”.

Abrego Garcia is married to a US citizen with whom he is raising a US citizen child in addition to his wife’s two children from a prior relationship. He had never been charged with or convicted of any crime, according to Abrego Garcia’s lawyers, who have denied the justice department’s allegation that he is a member of the criminal gang MS-13.

A leaked document shows that vested interests may have been behind a “mud-slinging” PR campaign to discredit a landmark environment study, according to an investigation.

The Eat-Lancet Commission study, published in 2019, set out to answer the question: how can we feed the world’s growing population without causing catastrophic climate breakdown?

The report recommended that if global red meat eating was cut by 50%, the “planetary health diet” would provide nutritious food to all while tackling the harms caused by animal agriculture, which accounts for over 14% of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. It suggested individuals – particularly in wealthy countries – should increase their consumption of nuts, pulses and other plant-based foods while cutting meat and sugar from their diets.

It may have seemed like a fairly straightforward proposal but the backlash was ferocious, with researchers receiving personal threats and insults. Thousands of negative posts were shared on Twitter (now X), and more than 500 articles were published criticising the report.

A leaked document seen by the climate website DeSmog reveals that helping to fuel this backlash was a PR firm, Red Flag, which represented the Animal Agriculture Alliance, a meat and dairy industry coalition set up to protect the sector against “emerging threats”, and which has staff from Cargill and Smithfield Foods – two of the world’s five largest meat companies – on its board.

DeSmog has seen a document from the PR firm which states: “In the two weeks following publication of the Eat-Lancet report, this campaign’s messages have continued to demonstrate remarkable success. Key stories returned time and again in traditional and social media to reach major online influencers, particularly highlighting the radical nature of the Eat-Lancet diet and hypocrisy criticisms levelled at the Eat founders.”

As part of the campaign’s impact, in the weeks following publication, the document states that nearly half of the 1,315 articles about the Eat-Lancet report included Red Flag’s “campaign messages and quotes” and adds that 103 articles mentioned alleged hypocrisy of the group’s founders – “sparking a Twitter conversation that received over 1 million more views” than the top tweets posted by Eat about the report.

Red Flag’s document includes, as highlights of the campaign, an article in the UK’s Spectator magazine about plans “to change your diet by force”, and a number of social media posts claiming the report was “dangerous” and told “poor people to eat dirt”. The PR firm’s precise role in seeding or amplifying these posts, if any, is unknown.

“Targeted briefings and stakeholder activation ensured” that some framed the Eat-Lancet report, plus a subsequent report, “as radical and out of touch”. Briefings included an “advance press engagement” with the Institute of Economic Affairs, a UK libertarian thinktank, with hostile articles about the Eat-Lancet study quoting the group, which dismissed the report as an elitist attack on normal people.

In the year following Eat-Lancet’s publication, scientists involved in it were targeted online. In some cases, the backlash led to them withdrawing from press appearances to discuss the research and undermined their academic careers. There is no suggestion that Red Flag was involved in or responsible for these threats.

One author, Dr Marco Springmann, said he faced serious burnout after the “media storm” that went on for a year after publication. A senior researcher at the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford and a professorial research fellow at the Institute for Global Health at University College London, he was repeatedly accused of bias for eating a plant-based diet.

“Usually I lead on two to three studies a year, but in the year following Eat-Lancet, I wasn’t able to even lead on one,” Springmann said.

Dr Line Gordon, another author of the study, said she was “overwhelmed” with “really nasty” comments in the immediate aftermath of its publication, and the backlash was “exhausting”.

“I was excited about the research we had done and how important it was and how much work we had put into it,” she said. “However, when we launched, I remember waking up in the morning and I’ve never been attacked in so many ways.”

And Dr Gunhild Stordalen, the chief executive of the environmental advocacy group Eat which, alongside the Wellcome Trust, funded the research, was one of those personally targeted, along with her husband, Petter Stordalen, a Norwegian property mogul who was pictured on Instagram eating a large burger. Other articles cited the couple’s high-carbon lifestyle, including owning a private jet.

A study of social media posts in the months after the report’s publication, published in the Lancet journal, found opponents of the research had dominated discussions and used “misinformation, conspiracy theories, and personal attacks” to discredit the work.

“Red Flag turned Eat-Lancet into a culture-war issue,” Jennifer Jacquet, a professor of environmental science and policy at the University of Miami and an expert on lobbying, told DeSmog. “Instead of having nuanced conversations about the data, Red Flag takes us back to mud slinging. This document is a portrait of what we’re up against – as people who care about the truth, about climate change, and about the future.”

Experts told DeSmog that the online backlash was one of the earliest examples of a culture war around dietary change that had become well-recognised in more recent years.

Victor Galaz, an associate professor at the Stockholm Resilience Center, Stockholm University, which was involved in shaping the Eat-Lancet report, studied the online response at the time. “Everyone was shocked by the volume and tone of the tweets: the aggressiveness and degree of lying, to put it very bluntly,” he said. “Climate change science has faced this kind of backlash for a while. But in this domain – diets and meat – that was new to people. Everyone was shocked.”

The researchers behind the report were clear that they welcomed legitimate critiques of its contents – it was not without criticisms in the academic world – but online articles and social media posts often overblew or did not engage with these nuanced debates.

“We are not perfect. It’s good to hear constructive criticism, that’s part of academic discourse,” said Springmann. “But if it gets into an ideological shouting match, we don’t get anywhere. I don’t do research to fight.”

While there is no suggestion that Red Flag was involved in personal attacks against the Eat-Lancet authors, Jacquet told DeSmog that the PR firm’s campaign had likely helped to make the report so divisive.

“The industry doesn’t make investments like this whimsically,” she said. “They know that this affects the tenor of the conversation. It’s a really illustrative example of how PR firms operate in the 21st century.”

Yet in spite of the online backlash the Eat-Lancet report has been one of the most influential studies of recent decades. It is among the papers most often cited by governments and in policy briefs across all topics, used in more than 600 such documents since its launch.

With the second Eat-Lancet report due out this year, Springmann, who joined the second research group despite having reservations, told DeSmog he hoped the new research could spark a more constructive conversation.

“It’s a big opportunity to put the debate back on a better track,” he said.