The US has demanded control of a crucial pipeline in Ukraine used to send Russian gas to Europe, according to reports, in a move described as a colonial shakedown.

US and Ukrainian officials met on Friday to discuss White House proposals for a minerals deal. Donald Trump wants Kyiv to hand over its natural resources as “payback” in return for weapons delivered by the previous Biden administration.

Talks have become increasingly acrimonious, Reuters said. The latest US draft is more “maximalist” than the original version from February, which proposed giving Washington $500bn worth of rare metals, as well as oil and gas.

Citing a source close to the talks, the news agency said the most recent document includes a demand that the US government’s International Development Finance Corporation take control of the natural gas pipeline.

It runs from the town of Sudzha in western Russia to the Ukrainian city of Uzhhorod, about 750 miles (1,200km) away, on the border with the EU and Slovakia. Built in Soviet times, the pipeline is a key piece of national infrastructure and a major energy route.

On 1 January, Ukraine cut off the supply of gas when its five-year contract with the Russian state energy company Gazprom expired. Both countries had previously earned hundreds of millions of euros in transit fees, including during the first three years of full-scale war.

Volodymyr Landa, a senior economist with the Centre for Economic Strategy, a Kyiv thinktank, said the Americans were out for “all they can get”. Their bullying “colonial-type” demands had little chance of being accepted by Kyiv, he predicted.

Last autumn, Volodymyr Zelenskyy proposed giving the US access to Ukraine’s underdeveloped mineral sector. He envisaged a deal that would see the incoming Trump administration supply Ukraine with weapons, in return for future profits from joint investments.

Instead, Trump has refused to give security commitments or military support but wants the minerals anyway. Last week he complained Zelenskyy was trying to “back out of an agreement” and said Ukraine’s president would have “big problems” if he failed to sign.

Speaking to journalists on Thursday, Zelenskyy said he was ready to do a deal to modernise his country but that Ukraine could only agree if there was “parity” between the two sides, with revenues split “50-50”.

“I am just defending what belongs to Ukraine. It should be beneficial for both the United States and Ukraine. This is the right thing to do,” Zelenskyy said. The US Treasury confirmed “technical” talks were ongoing.

Meanwhile, the US special envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, said his remarks over a possible partition of Ukraine had been misinterpreted. In an interview with the Times, Kellogg said the country could be divided “almost like the Berlin after world war two” as part of a peace deal.

Writing on X, Kellogg said he was referring to “a post-cease fire resiliency force in support of Ukraine’s sovereignty”. Under this plan, Russian troops would remain in territory already seized by Moscow, with British and French forces stationed in Kyiv and in other parts of the country.

On Friday, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff held talks with Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg. Witkoff’s reported solution to the conflict was to give Russia the four Ukrainian provinces it is demanding – including territory that Ukraine controls, and which is home to 1 million people.

Meanwhile, at a meeting of the Ukraine defence contact group on Friday, Kyiv’s allies announced a record €21bn (£18.2bn) in additional military help. They accused Putin of dragging his feet over a 30-day ceasefire deal which Ukraine has accepted.

Early on Saturday, Russia carried out further air attacks against Ukrainian civilian targets. Three warehouses were destroyed in Kyiv, with two people injured. The Kremlin has fired 70 missiles and 2,200 drones at Ukraine since the 11 March US ceasefire proposal, Ukrainian officials said.

Zelenskyy paid tribute on Saturday to a 26-year-old pilot, captain Pavlo Ivanov, who was killed during an F-16 combat mission. Ukraine’s small air force “heroically” defends the country from Russian missiles and drones, and supported ground operations, he said.

It is 11.20pm, and in an instant the emergency centre comes alive. Doctors and medics are conjured up from somewhere nearby to treat two wounded Ukrainian soldiers who have arrived together – one with serious shrapnel injuries to his right eye, the other who had a pile of bricks fall on his chest after a drone strike.

Yet it is the third, who arrives on a stretcher shortly after, who is the worst affected. The dark “panda eyes” signify a brain injury, while his back is also studded with bloody red wounds from drone or mortar fire. He has to be stabilised by half a dozen medics before being transported to a hospital in the rear.

Though the US is trying to broker a ceasefire to end the full-scale war that has run on for more than three years, there is no sign of a slackening of Russian aggression on the ground as the steady stream of night-time ­arrivals demonstrates. At around 2am, half a dozen lightly wounded appear, their hands and faces dirty and their eyes wide in an exhausted look only possessed by those who have spent days at the front.

Oleskii, who immediately prior to becoming a combat medic last spring had a spell working in the digital department of Ukraine’s public broadcaster doing “all the Facebook, YouTube shit”, says that on a typical night this facility, a mid-point on a wounded soldier’s journey to safety deep in the rear, might treat “five or seven” heavy casualties spread over the night.

If that does not sound excessively busy, consider that the centre has been relocated back and is nominally intended only to treat members of a single unit, the Da Vinci Wolves’ battalion. Its fighters have spent the past 10 months defending the strategic town of Pokrovsk in Ukraine’s east, perhaps the hottest front in the war.

A previous site, Oleskii recalls, was shared with 15 other units. There it was not uncommon to have “100 to 120 patients a night” and he says he was lucky when he got more than 15 minutes’ sleep at a stretch. The work is unrelenting, even after more than three years of full-scale war, but Oleskii says he can cope.

“I have learned that I am very OK with doing this job, because shit happens – that is war. We either fight or we are dead,” he said. It is a feeling he says has been familiar with since February 2022. At that point, he was a soldier in Ukraine’s territorial defence force. “We were thinking: ‘Probably we will be dead in two weeks,’” waiting “on a toss of a coin” in trenches to see if the artillery would hit them.

There are two beds for emergency operations, two more for normal treatment and plenty of modern equipment, including a handheld X-ray unit. After all three are stabilised and moved on, Azizbek Pakhlavonovych, the lead doctor, describes the work that has taken place. Does he need anything more for the medical facility? “Russia to fall apart,” is the unexpected reply.

There is no sign of that, however, and instead every night Ukraine is coming under attack, with several dozen drones and, often, one or two high-speed ballistic missiles. The worst attack came on 4 April, when 19 people, including nine children, were killed after a ballistic missile struck near apartments and a playground at Kryvyi Rih. The youngest was just three years old.

“People were burned alive in their cars near their homes,” a first responder from medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said. But when the US said the strike demonstrated that the war must end, ambassador Bridget Brink would not say the missile was Russian. That prompted a complaint from Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but a fortnight of US yo-yo focus on tariffs meant there has been little diplomatic progress.

A family of three was killed in their house on 21 March in Zaporizhzhia when a Shahed drone, one of a swarm that struck the city that night, smashed into the back of the property, whose large fertile garden overlooked a valley below. A next door neighbour, Larisa, said one of the noisy drones was circling overhead before it struck shortly after 9pm. “Why strike a house? Who knows what they are thinking? Maybe they think I will flee? Where would I go? This house was built by my parents.”

At a newly built subterranean school, cut two storeys below ground so children are safe from attack, Ivan Fedorov, the governor of the Zaporizhzhia region, describes a Russian attack on an electricity site south of Zaporizhzhia city on the morning of 2 April, when 2,000 homes lost power – despite the fact that the Kremlin has publicly signed up to stopping attacking energy infrastructure. Russian attacks are relentless, Fedorov says: “Every few minutes they attack our territory. Every few minutes.”

In Kyiv, Zelenskyy has started holding regular press briefings, perhaps in anticipation of a post-ceasefire election. Tired but relaxed, the leader takes multiple questions as he seeks to explain the diplomatic manoeuvrings. This week, he acknowledged he had little choice but to play a longer game. The Russians, he said, had “a deceitful approach”, targeting the power network with smaller kamikaze drones, and the grim attack in Kryvyi Rih “came as a shock to many in America”.

He told a group of reporters that his core belief was that “I think that President Trump will at some point be able to react to the fact that it is impossible to trust Putin” and said he hoped this would lead to “some decisive steps”. After the debacle of his trip to the Oval Office in early March, where he was berated by Trump, Zelenskyy has little choice but to try to demonstrate that Russia is insincere.

“Fuck Trump,” says Serhiy Filimonov, the commander of the Da Vinci battalion, in English. In Ukrainian he argues that the US appears to be acting as if “Ukraine lost the war and it’s lost the war to the Americans and we have to pay reparations” – despite the fact that, apart from in Kursk in Russia, the front lines are practically stable. Ukraine only lost a modest 133 sq km of its own territory in March, the least for nine months, according to the Deep State group that maps the front lines.

Though the Russian invaders are trying to encircle Pokrovsk, progress has stalled. Improvements to Ukrainian jamming, or electronic warfare, mean that once-deadly glide bombs are far less accurate, while Filimonov says the military high command had finally concluded that “the most powerful units have to [be defending] on the main direction of Russian attacks”, and that the best approach is to let Ukraine’s best run brigades expand rather than creating new units from recruits.

But even a seasoned commander like Filimonov, who has been fighting against Russia since 2014, acknowledged there was no prospect of a dramatic Ukrainian victory on the battlefield, as had been hoped for before the counteroffensive failed in 2023. “I’m more interested in security guarantees. We need to have a united security system with Europe,” he said, arguing that if a ceasefire were to emerge, bringing with it a European-led “reassurance force”, there would have to be a tightening of security relationships on the continent because otherwise “Russia will prepare for a bigger offensive”.

Overnight, Ukraine’s military reported that Russians engaged in 40 combat offensives around Pokrovsk, and with the war not stopping, at least yet, units like Da Vinci prepare for the future. One part of the battalion is focused on developing land drones – remotely controlled bombs that crawl forward on tracked wheels; remotely controlled guns mounted on mobile carriages, and flat trolleys to ferry the dead and wounded from the front line without others having to carry them. The systems are experimental, costing upwards of $1,000 a time, and it is uncertain how far they will be successful.

Oleksandr Yabchanka is Da Vinci’s head of robotic systems, though his background is medical – he worked as a paediatrician before 2014 and in the health ministry thereafter. Already the war in the air has been taken over by drones, causing, on western estimates, 70-80% of all casualties.

Now Yabchanka says he is aiming for a time when, for Ukraine, “robotic systems take over from people on the zero line”. The prospect may be some way off, even unachievable. But Kyiv’s military can do little more than continue developing while peace negotiations drift.

It is 11.20pm, and in an instant the emergency centre comes alive. Doctors and medics are conjured up from somewhere nearby to treat two wounded Ukrainian soldiers who have arrived together – one with serious shrapnel injuries to his right eye, the other who had a pile of bricks fall on his chest after a drone strike.

Yet it is the third, who arrives on a stretcher shortly after, who is the worst affected. The dark “panda eyes” signify a brain injury, while his back is also studded with bloody red wounds from drone or mortar fire. He has to be stabilised by half a dozen medics before being transported to a hospital in the rear.

Though the US is trying to broker a ceasefire to end the full-scale war that has run on for more than three years, there is no sign of a slackening of Russian aggression on the ground as the steady stream of night-time ­arrivals demonstrates. At around 2am, half a dozen lightly wounded appear, their hands and faces dirty and their eyes wide in an exhausted look only possessed by those who have spent days at the front.

Oleskii, who immediately prior to becoming a combat medic last spring had a spell working in the digital department of Ukraine’s public broadcaster doing “all the Facebook, YouTube shit”, says that on a typical night this facility, a mid-point on a wounded soldier’s journey to safety deep in the rear, might treat “five or seven” heavy casualties spread over the night.

If that does not sound excessively busy, consider that the centre has been relocated back and is nominally intended only to treat members of a single unit, the Da Vinci Wolves’ battalion. Its fighters have spent the past 10 months defending the strategic town of Pokrovsk in Ukraine’s east, perhaps the hottest front in the war.

A previous site, Oleskii recalls, was shared with 15 other units. There it was not uncommon to have “100 to 120 patients a night” and he says he was lucky when he got more than 15 minutes’ sleep at a stretch. The work is unrelenting, even after more than three years of full-scale war, but Oleskii says he can cope.

“I have learned that I am very OK with doing this job, because shit happens – that is war. We either fight or we are dead,” he said. It is a feeling he says has been familiar with since February 2022. At that point, he was a soldier in Ukraine’s territorial defence force. “We were thinking: ‘Probably we will be dead in two weeks,’” waiting “on a toss of a coin” in trenches to see if the artillery would hit them.

There are two beds for emergency operations, two more for normal treatment and plenty of modern equipment, including a handheld X-ray unit. After all three are stabilised and moved on, Azizbek Pakhlavonovych, the lead doctor, describes the work that has taken place. Does he need anything more for the medical facility? “Russia to fall apart,” is the unexpected reply.

There is no sign of that, however, and instead every night Ukraine is coming under attack, with several dozen drones and, often, one or two high-speed ballistic missiles. The worst attack came on 4 April, when 19 people, including nine children, were killed after a ballistic missile struck near apartments and a playground at Kryvyi Rih. The youngest was just three years old.

“People were burned alive in their cars near their homes,” a first responder from medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said. But when the US said the strike demonstrated that the war must end, ambassador Bridget Brink would not say the missile was Russian. That prompted a complaint from Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but a fortnight of US yo-yo focus on tariffs meant there has been little diplomatic progress.

A family of three was killed in their house on 21 March in Zaporizhzhia when a Shahed drone, one of a swarm that struck the city that night, smashed into the back of the property, whose large fertile garden overlooked a valley below. A next door neighbour, Larisa, said one of the noisy drones was circling overhead before it struck shortly after 9pm. “Why strike a house? Who knows what they are thinking? Maybe they think I will flee? Where would I go? This house was built by my parents.”

At a newly built subterranean school, cut two storeys below ground so children are safe from attack, Ivan Fedorov, the governor of the Zaporizhzhia region, describes a Russian attack on an electricity site south of Zaporizhzhia city on the morning of 2 April, when 2,000 homes lost power – despite the fact that the Kremlin has publicly signed up to stopping attacking energy infrastructure. Russian attacks are relentless, Fedorov says: “Every few minutes they attack our territory. Every few minutes.”

In Kyiv, Zelenskyy has started holding regular press briefings, perhaps in anticipation of a post-ceasefire election. Tired but relaxed, the leader takes multiple questions as he seeks to explain the diplomatic manoeuvrings. This week, he acknowledged he had little choice but to play a longer game. The Russians, he said, had “a deceitful approach”, targeting the power network with smaller kamikaze drones, and the grim attack in Kryvyi Rih “came as a shock to many in America”.

He told a group of reporters that his core belief was that “I think that President Trump will at some point be able to react to the fact that it is impossible to trust Putin” and said he hoped this would lead to “some decisive steps”. After the debacle of his trip to the Oval Office in early March, where he was berated by Trump, Zelenskyy has little choice but to try to demonstrate that Russia is insincere.

“Fuck Trump,” says Serhiy Filimonov, the commander of the Da Vinci battalion, in English. In Ukrainian he argues that the US appears to be acting as if “Ukraine lost the war and it’s lost the war to the Americans and we have to pay reparations” – despite the fact that, apart from in Kursk in Russia, the front lines are practically stable. Ukraine only lost a modest 133 sq km of its own territory in March, the least for nine months, according to the Deep State group that maps the front lines.

Though the Russian invaders are trying to encircle Pokrovsk, progress has stalled. Improvements to Ukrainian jamming, or electronic warfare, mean that once-deadly glide bombs are far less accurate, while Filimonov says the military high command had finally concluded that “the most powerful units have to [be defending] on the main direction of Russian attacks”, and that the best approach is to let Ukraine’s best run brigades expand rather than creating new units from recruits.

But even a seasoned commander like Filimonov, who has been fighting against Russia since 2014, acknowledged there was no prospect of a dramatic Ukrainian victory on the battlefield, as had been hoped for before the counteroffensive failed in 2023. “I’m more interested in security guarantees. We need to have a united security system with Europe,” he said, arguing that if a ceasefire were to emerge, bringing with it a European-led “reassurance force”, there would have to be a tightening of security relationships on the continent because otherwise “Russia will prepare for a bigger offensive”.

Overnight, Ukraine’s military reported that Russians engaged in 40 combat offensives around Pokrovsk, and with the war not stopping, at least yet, units like Da Vinci prepare for the future. One part of the battalion is focused on developing land drones – remotely controlled bombs that crawl forward on tracked wheels; remotely controlled guns mounted on mobile carriages, and flat trolleys to ferry the dead and wounded from the front line without others having to carry them. The systems are experimental, costing upwards of $1,000 a time, and it is uncertain how far they will be successful.

Oleksandr Yabchanka is Da Vinci’s head of robotic systems, though his background is medical – he worked as a paediatrician before 2014 and in the health ministry thereafter. Already the war in the air has been taken over by drones, causing, on western estimates, 70-80% of all casualties.

Now Yabchanka says he is aiming for a time when, for Ukraine, “robotic systems take over from people on the zero line”. The prospect may be some way off, even unachievable. But Kyiv’s military can do little more than continue developing while peace negotiations drift.

Tourists from Great Britain who travel to the continent to satisfy their epicurean desires for cured meats and fragrant cheeses will be frustrated in their attempts to bring home some of their favourite foods after a ban on meat and dairy imports from EU countries came into force this weekend.

From Saturday, holidaymakers will no longer be able to bring meat from cattle, sheep, goats or pigs, or dairy products, from EU countries into Great Britain for personal use, in a move aimed at preventing the spread of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) after a rise in cases across Europe.

Even those attempting to bring sandwiches with offending items such as cheese and ham will be stopped by customs and excise. Cured meats, raw meats and milk are off limits regardless of whether they are packed, packaged or have been bought at duty-free.

FMD does not directly affect humans, but it can be devastating to cattle, and while there are no cases in the UK at present, the government wants to keep it that way.

FMD is a highly contagious viral disease that affects cattle, sheep, pigs, and other cloven-hoofed animals such as wild boars and deer.

In a statement, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said the outbreak in Europe “presents a significant risk to farm businesses and livestock”. The disease can cause “significant economic losses due to production shortfalls in the affected animals, as well as loss of access to foreign markets for animals, meat and dairy”, it added.

Earlier this year, the government placed bans on imports of cattle, sheep, other ruminants, pig meat and dairy products from Germany, Hungary, Slovakia and Austria in response to outbreaks of FMD in those countries.

The new restrictions apply only to travellers arriving in Great Britain and will not be imposed on personal imports arriving in Northern Ireland, Jersey, Guernsey or the Isle of Man.

The minister for food security and rural affairs, Daniel Zeichner, said: “This government will do whatever it takes to protect British farmers from foot-and-mouth. That is why we are further strengthening protections by introducing restrictions on personal meat and dairy imports to prevent the spread of the disease and protect Britain’s food security.”

The UK deputy chief veterinary officer for international and trade affairs, Jorge Martin-Almagro, said: “Robust contingency plans are already in place to manage the risk of this disease to protect farmers and Britain’s food security. This biosecurity measure, combined with all others we have implemented, are critical to limit the risk of FMD incursion.”

Martin-Almagro urged livestock keepers to keep an eye out for signs of disease, maintain biosecurity, and immediately report any suspicion of disease to the Animal and Plant Health Agency.

There are exemptions from the new rules, including a limited amount of infant milk, medical foods, and certain composite products such as chocolate, confectionery, bread, cakes, biscuits and pasta.

The government said: “Those found with these items will need to either surrender them at the border or will have them seized and destroyed. In serious cases, those found with these items run the risk of incurring fines of up to £5,000 in England.”

After lighting a fuse under global financial markets, Donald Trump stepped back – all the way to a Florida golf course. A week later, having just caved to pressure to ease his trade tariffs, the US president defended the retreat while hosting racing car champions at the White House.

Trump had spent the time in between golfing, dining with donors and making insouciant declarations such as “this is a great time to get rich”, even as the US economy melted down.

It was a jolting juxtaposition that prompted comparisons with the emperor Nero, who fiddled while Rome burned, or insane monarchs who lost touch with reality. It also provided a clear illustration of how Trump governs during his volatile and extreme second presidency: erratically, with little attention to convention, and often on the hoof from one public engagement to another surrounded by courtiers who never disagree with him.

“He’s certainly living up to the caricature of being a mad king,” said Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist. “When you’re addressing a ballroom in a tuxedo, telling people to take the painful medicine, or on your umpteenth golf vacation while economic chaos is rippling throughout this country and others, at best you’re completely out of touch.

“At worst, you’re a sociopathic narcissist who doesn’t give a crap about anyone suffering. Ultimately there will be a political price to pay for that.”

Trump had swerved past April Fools’ Day to make 2 April his so-called “liberation day”. Against a backdrop of giant US flags in the White House Rose Garden, he announced sweeping tariffs – taxes on foreign imports – on dozens of countries, using a widely discredited formula to upend the decades-old order of global trade.

Trump did not decide on the final plan until less than three hours ahead of his splashy event, according to the Washington Post newspaper, but found Vice-President JD Vance and other staff constantly deferential. The Post quoted a person close to his inner circle as saying: “He’s at the peak of just not giving a fuck any more. Bad news stories? Doesn’t give a fuck. He’s going to do what he’s going to do. He’s going to do what he promised to do on the campaign trail.”

A day later, with markets suffering trillions of dollars in losses, Trump boarded Air Force One bound for Miami, Florida. He arrived at his Doral resort for a Saudi-funded LIV Golf event in a golf cart driven by his son Eric Trump.

Trump woke up on Friday at Mar-a-Lago, his gilded private club in Palm Beach, Florida, and donned a red “Make America great again” cap and white polo shirt. His limousine glided down a street lined with palm streets and cheering fans before arriving at his golf club.

He also spent the morning defending himself on his Truth Social media platform and vowing to stay the course. “TO THE MANY INVESTORS COMING INTO THE UNITED STATES AND INVESTING MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF MONEY, MY POLICIES WILL NEVER CHANGE,” he wrote.

Trump remained in Florida during the dignified transfer of four US soldiers killed during a training exercise in Lithuania, sending Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, to Dover air force base in Delaware to represent him. Instead the president attended a candlelit dinner for Maga Inc, an allied political organisation, reportedly charging $1m a plate.

Maggie Haberman, a Trump biographer and New York Times reporter, commented on CNN: “I think long ago he stopped caring about certain optics, and he’s made very clear during this presidency, he’s going to do what he wants … He is not messaging this in a way that suggests that he understands what average people might be going through right now.”

On Saturday, Trump played at another family golf course, in Jupiter, Florida, prompting an official White House announcement: “The president won his second round matchup of the senior club championship today in Jupiter, Fla., and advances to the championship round on Sunday.”

When Sunday came the president played on even as his cabinet members scrambled to political TV shows and offered conflicting signals, with some insisting that his tariffs were set in stone and others suggesting that he remained open to negotiation.

Trump returned to Washington and a growing chorus of dissent from allies, captains of industry and his own Republican loyalty, pleading with him to change course before a potential recession turned into a depression. Yet his first public event was a celebration of baseball’s World Series winners, the Los Angeles Dodgers, where he was presented with a “Trump 47” baseball shirt.

On Tuesday, in bow tie and tuxedo, Trump told a fundraising dinner in Washington: “I know what the hell I’m doing.” He claimed that the tariffs were forcing world leaders to negotiate with him, boasting: “I’m telling you, these countries are calling us up, kissing my ass. They are. They are dying to make a deal.”

But the following day, Trump blinked. He posted on Truth Social that, while escalating tariffs on China, he would pause others for 90 days to allow space for negotiation. His bubble of wealth and power had finally been punctured.

Trump has often proved impervious to the kind of scandals or gaffes that would damage another politician, but his casual attitude even as the markets were on fire suggested a man uniquely detached from the anxieties of ordinary people, including his own voters.

Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “Let them eat cake: Marie Antoinette kind of fits. He won his own golf tournament at his own club. How about that? Bill Clinton also cheated at golf a lot and people would let him win because he was president. It’s just the way they are. Rules don’t apply.”

This is not the first time that Trump, accused by critics of demanding absolute loyalty from courtiers, pursuing vengeance against perceived enemies and displaying scorn for his subjects, has been likened to a monarch.

Speaking at the Politics and Prose bookshop in Washington last weekend, Maureen Dowd, a New York Times columnist and author of the book Notorious, compared the president to William Shakespeare’s Richard III.

“Richard III comes up to the edge of the stage and wraps the audience into the bad thing he’s about to do,” Dowd told the Guardian during a question and answer session. “He tells them and he uses humour so that he’s supposed to be the villain, but the humour kind of counters it so you don’t think of him as badly.

“Trump does the same thing … He has this kind of wacky side so then when he does the very authoritarian stuff you get deflected by the crazy side he has. I think the SNL [Saturday Night Live] mimic captures this where he’s sort of being funny, so then when he turns authoritarian, you’re thinking: wait, is he really doing what I think he’s doing?”

Donald Trump’s presidential administration has exempted smartphones and computers from the 125% levies imposed on imports from China as well as other reciprocal tariffs, which experts had cautioned might cause electronic consumer prices to dramatically spike in the US.

The announcement was made late on Friday in a US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) notice that said the devices would be excluded from the 10% global tariff that Trump recently imposed on most countries, along with the much heftier import tax on China.

The CBP’s notice follows concerns from tech companies that the price of electronics for US consumers might surge with many of them manufactured in China. The notice also contained exemptions for additional electronics and components, such as memory cards, solar cells and semiconductors.

The exclusions were applied retroactively to the products under the reciprocal tariffs beginning at 12.01am ET on 5 April, according to the notice.

“Importers may request a refund by filing a post summary correction for unliquidated entries, or by filing a protest for entries that have liquidated but where the liquidation is not final because the protest period has not expired,” the CBP said.

On Saturday, Trump released a statement of “clarification of exceptions” pertaining to the previous evening’s announcement.

Speaking to CNBC, Dan Ives, the global head of technology research at the Los Angeles-based financial services firm Wedbush Securities, said on Saturday: “This is the dream scenario for tech investors … Smartphones, chips being excluded is a game-changer scenario when it comes to China tariffs.”

Ives added: “I think ultimately big tech CEOs spoke loudly, and the White House had to understand and listen to the situation that this would have been Armageddon for big tech if it were implemented.”

Similarly, Paul Ashworth, Capital Economics’ chief north America economist, said that the tariff exceptions “represent a partial de-escalation of president Trump’s trade war with China”.

“There were even bigger winners in Asia, however, since the exemptions apply to all countries – not only China. At a stroke, 64% of US imports from Taiwan are now exempt from the 10% reciprocal tariff, 44% from Malaysia, and almost 30% from both Vietnam and Thailand. Ten to 12% of imports from India, Korea and Mexico will also now be exempt,” Ashworth added.

“These exemptions will presumably not be the last either, with the success of Apple’s Tim Cook in getting its smartphones exempted likely to boost the lobbying by firms in other sectors.”

Since Trump announced his tariffs, Apple was among the hardest hit tech companies – as 90% of its iPhones are reportedly assembled in China.

Invoking imagery associated with the strongest classification for hurricanes, Ives had previously described the Chinese tariffs as a “category 5 price storm for the US consumer”. He added in a note to investors: “The reality is it would take three years and $30bn in our estimation to move even 10% of its supply chain from Asia to the US with major disruption in the process … For US consumers, the reality of a $1,000 iPhone being one of the best made consumer products on the planet would disappear.”

According to analysts at the investment bank UBS, costs of iPhones would rise exponentially under Trump’s Chinese tariffs. The price of an iPhone 16 Pro Max (with 256GB of storage) could rise by 79% from $1,199 (£915) to about $2,150 (£1,600), the Guardian reported earlier.

In attempts to mitigate the blow of Trump’s tariffs, Apple reportedly chartered cargo flights to transport iPhones from its Indian factories, with Reuters reporting the company having flown 600 tons of iPhones – or approximately 1.5m devices – to the US since March.

Meanwhile, China’s Semiconductor Industry Association (CSIA) announced that the country’s “retaliatory” tariffs on US imports were limited to chips made in the US. Chips manufactured in Taiwan and South Korea remain unaffected.

According to the CSIA, the “country of origin” for integrated circuits would be determined by the location of the manufacturing facility, not the final packaging or design location, CGTN reportsed. In other words, US chipmakers that outsource manufacturing to other parts of the world are exempt from China’s “retaliatory” tariffs.

The latest announcement from the CSIA came as China slapped 125% tariffs on US products on Friday as part of the latest trade-war escalation between the two trade giants.

A few weeks ago, Dane began stocking up on “paper products”, “cases of paper towels, toilet paper”, “piddle-pads” for their shih-tzu, and his wife upgraded from an iPhone 8 to 14.

The 73-year-old in South Carolina said the purchases – which were made to get ahead of Donald Trump’s trade policies – reminded him of the early weeks of the Covid pandemic, when he scrambled to buy masks, gloves and toilet paper.

“It’s scary,” Dane said. “Prices are going to go up because of tariffs … It’s going to be messy.”

While campaigning last year, Trump constantly touted his love of tariffs. But it was not until his so-called “liberation day” on 2 April – where the president announced sweeping duties on incoming goods, punishing competitors, allies and small and developing countries alike – that he spooked global financial markets and provoked fears of spiralling inflation and stagnant growth.

Amid a US government bond sell-off, the president paused his most eye-watering tariffs for 90 days, apart from China, whose goods are set to be hit with a 145% levy.

Hundreds of Americans got in touch with the Guardian to share how the uncertainty is affecting their consumption habits.

Dane, who is retired, worked as an entrepreneur with his wife most of his career before later becoming an English teacher. He said he was a Republican in the 1980s but is fearful about how the US is “not going the right way” under Trump, and is unhappy with his “dystopian” policies towards global allies, the economy, education, scientific research and more.

Currently, Dane is on a trip to Paris and plans to bring home consumer goods potentially hit by 10% tariffs on European Union imports.

“We’ll probably be getting tea, bringing back some cheese, some butter,” he said. “I would love to bring back eggs but that would be a disaster. I’d have scrambled eggs in my suitcase.”

Amid tariff uncertainty, Heather, a 61-year-old college professor in Texas, said she and her husband can mostly weather food cost fluctuations, but brought forward the purchase of a new car “in anticipation of price hikes”.

She said they owned a 14-year-old Mini Cooper, which ran on gas, that they planned to replace with a hybrid vehicle at some point. They decided to replace their car now to avoid potential inflation – and reduce expenditure on gas.

“The economic instability of the Trump administration certainly gives one pause,” she said. “It’s just so much instability, chaos and [the] unknown.”

It’s a similar story for Stefanie, a 56-year-old educator and former tech worker in Nevada, who bought a Toyota Tacoma to replace her old Jeep as well as converting some investments into cash.

Stefanie began strategizing about being more resilient to tariffs as soon as Trump was elected.

“The one thing I learned in the first administration is to believe him: he says bizarre things, and then he does bizarre things,” she said.

She’s cutting back on subscriptions and future travel plans, while stockpiling kitchen staples such as rice, cooking oils, vinegar and flour and replacing worn-out clothes including shoes and jeans, “before inflation hits”.

“The supply chain is so globalized that tariffs really hit everything,” Stefanie said.

But for Ishaan*, a 51-year-old engineer in Texas, the economic picture means he is abstaining from major purchases.

“Everyone I know has started tightening their belts,” he said. “I am cutting out unnecessary expenses, cancelled my gym membership, focusing on savings.”

The focus for Ishaan, who fears higher prices and an economic slowdown, is to build up his savings in cash. He feels “scared to invest in any stocks or bonds right now” amid market volatility.

Likewise for Jonathan*, a 70-year-old in New Jersey, the financial fallout from Trump’s trade wars means he has been forced to rule out planned purchases and strip consumption back to the essentials.

Jonathan said his individual retirement account (IRA) was initially “decimated” – although it ticked up slightly after Trump paused his tariffs on Wednesday. He said it was currently down about 15%.

That means cancelling plans to redo the carpet in his house and replace two old televisions, Jonathan said. “In short, we’ll buy only necessities and pay bills until this stupidity ends.”

Russ a 35-year-old physicist in New Mexico, said the Trump administration’s policies were “causing me to think about what kinds of spending behavior I could have done without this whole time”.

He has an eight-year-old phone and nine-year-old MacBook computer that still work fine, which he will not be replacing. The prospect of runaway price rises for consumer electronics, often from China, have led him to reconsider: “Do I really need this, or do I just want this?

“I see these things as being as much toys as necessities,” he said. “Maybe I’ll just go back to a dumbphone or something like that – I fantasize sometimes about not getting all these notifications all the time, like the phones we had back in 2005. But maybe that’s a Luddite fantasy.”

Russ said that he was already boycotting Amazon and Target – companies that many feel have aligned themselves with Trump’s agenda such as rolling back their own DEI schemes. He’s trying to shop more at local, independent shops rather than “everything stores”, which he notes is more expensive and time consuming but ultimately worth it.

“As an American citizen and registered voter, nobody really cares what you think until November of every other year, you feel kind of voiceless,” he said. “You think, well, if dollars are the only tools we have any more, then damn it, I’m going to cast those votes and allocate my spending accordingly.”

Likewise, small business owner Christine* said the disruption could cause a wider re-evaluation of US consumer habits.

Amid the uncertainty, Christine, 41, stocked up on supplies for her Miami acupuncture business for two years, and bought her son’s fifth birthday present – a bike – early for July. But she said she had already noticed less demand for her work.

More broadly, the prospect of inflationary tariffs is accelerating Christine’s reconsideration of how much “stuff” she needs. She’s recently attended “these lovely parties” where friends bring unwanted clothes and they “switch it all around” rather than buying fast fashion.

“I really resent being drafted into this mad trade war,” Christine said, “but if there is a silver lining, maybe it’s that at least some people like me will question their unsustainable capitalistic practices.”

*Some names have been changed.

While Donald Trump recently instituted and paused hefty tariffs, sparking a trade war and chaos in financial markets, most of the country’s conservative media either applauded the US president or critiqued the policy but not the person behind it, according to journalists and observers of conservative media.

Meanwhile, economists, business leaders, Democrats and even some Republicans warned that the tariffs, which prompted the largest American stock market drop since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, could cause a recession.

“News is what impacts the greatest number of people,” like tariffs and “the evaporation of wealth and the ripple effect on not just the US economy, but the global economy”, said Howard Polskin, president of The Righting, a newsletter and website that monitors conservative media. “By any stretch of imagination, that should be a lead story.”

But the chaos of last week posed a serious challenge to many aspects of rightwing US media, which often acts as a largely unquestioning cheerleader for Trump and his Maga movement. The story was sometimes played down, sometimes cheered but rarely seriously questioned – even amid warnings of price rises, recession and cratering investments, especially precious 401(k) retirement accounts.

The most popular conservative news source in the United States is Fox News, which has a much larger audience than CNN and the leftwing MSNBC network. Its hosts, such as Sean Hannity and Jesse Watters, consistently praise Trump and bolster his inaccurate claims.

But Fox News has faced new competition from Newsmax and One American News Network (OANN), networks that positioned themselves as even more reliable Trump supporters. The Wall Street Journal, which has the same owner as Fox News, features a right-leaning opinion section, but also has done lengthy investigations into Trump and Joe Biden and is a favorite among people in the financial sector.

Rightwing commentators such as Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro also command a large audience through podcasts and social media.

After Trump declared 2 April “liberation day” and announced that the country would on 5 April institute a 10% universal tariff on all imported goods and on 9 April start “reciprocal tariffs” on some of its largest trading partners, including a 34% tariff on imports from China and a 20% tariff on goods from the European Union, Hannity described it as “a day that will be remembered as a turning point and the start, I hope for every American, of a new golden age”.

China retaliated with a 34% tariff. Global stock markets fell sharply; the Dow Jones industrial average declined more than 2,000 points over the next two days.

Economists and leaders of financial institutions said that the tariffs increased the likelihood of a recession and inflation. Most Republican lawmakers stood behind the president; a minority, like Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, expressed opposition and said the tariffs amounted to a tax increase for Americans.

While Fox Business, a sibling network, had guests who criticized the tariffs, Fox News personalities told viewers nervous about their investments that everything would work out well. A Fox News spokesperson did not respond to the Guardian’s requests for an interview.

“I don’t really care about my 401(k) today,” Jeanine Pirro said on 3 April on the show The Five. “We’ve got to have manufacturing in this country … and Donald Trump is the only one who could do it because he’s got the biggest consumer base in the world. He’s not afraid of anybody.”

Despite the market upheaval, the Fox News commentators were “in too deep” to break with Trump, said Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a leftwing advocacy group.

“They have, for nearly a decade now, sold their audience on the sense that Donald Trump would be a good president,” Gertz said 7 April. “Now he is single-handedly causing a worldwide market collapse,” but “they can’t abandon him”.

Other conservative news organizations opted to focus on other issues. At one point on 8 April, the only story on tariffs on the OANN frontpage concerned the former speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and her comments on tariffs in 1996.

The network did interview Arthur Laffer, a conservative economist who Trump awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Laffer said that if Trump kept the tariffs, he didn’t see how the country could avoid a recession, but he still “could not think of one person on Earth that I would prefer more to be president”.

On 9 April at Newsmax, the headline of their main story read, “Trump: Tariffs Bring in $2 Billion a Day.”

The actual number this month was about $200m, Reuters reported.

“A lot of times it feels more like propaganda,” Polskin said of the cable networks’ coverage. “I find it all extremely alarming, the stock market and that consumers of rightwing media could be misled so egregiously.”

Newsmax did not respond to the Guardian’s request for an interview.

There are exceptions in the conservative media sphere. The Journal has criticized Trump and his tariff policy.

“Trump Owns the Economy Now. He can try to blame the Fed, but the tariff blunder is his alone,” was the headline of a recent editorial.

Their editorial pages have been “characterized through the years as sort of the bastion of conservatism”, said Rick Edmonds, media business analyst for the Poynter Institute. “They are not at all sympathetic to the tariff actions.”

Shapiro, the rightwing pundit and a founder of the Daily Wire, devoted much of his podcasts after “liberation day” to scrutinizing the tariffs and questioned whether they could actually bring manufacturers back to the United States.

But Shapiro reassured listeners that he supported the president.

“What exactly is this designed to do?” Shapiro said of the tariffs during a 3 April episode of his podcast. “It is predicated on a bad idea of how international trade works. I’ve said this a thousand times: this is not coming from a place of I want Trump to fail.”

Shapiro called for Trump to fire Peter Navarro, the White House trade adviser who reportedly shaped the tariffs strategy. But, of course, it was Trump who instituted them.

“In general, the rightwing media, they are like Republican politicians. They don’t want to cross Trump,” Edmonds said.

Still, Aaron Rupar, a journalist who tracks speeches and interviews Trump and his officials give to conservative media, thought their coverage of the tariffs was “a little more honest” than their coverage of events like the January 6 attack on the Capitol or the trials Trump faced when he was out of office.

“With financial data, it’s a little harder to gaslight people,” he said.

Ultimately, hours after the reciprocal tariffs took effect, Trump announced a 90-day pause on them, except for China, whose tariff he increased to 125%.

“Many of you in the media clearly missed The Art of the Deal,” the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said afterwards, referring to Trump’s book. “You clearly failed to see what President Trump is doing here.”

A day later, with stocks still down significantly from before “liberation day”, Ainsley Earhardt, a Fox News host, reiterated Leavitt’s point.

“This is the art of the deal,” she said. “This shows how strong our president is.”

The Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has lambasted Israel for undermining stability in neighbouring Syria during a diplomatic forum, days after the two countries held talks aimed at defusing an escalating conflict between them on Syrian soil.

“Turkey will not allow Syria to be dragged into a new vortex of instability,” Erdoğan told attendees at the Antalya diplomacy forum on the southern Turkish coast, accusing Israel of “trying to undermine the 8 December revolution”, in reference to the insurgency that toppled the former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad after decades in power.

“We are in close dialogue and in common understanding with all influential actors in the region, especially Mr Trump and Mr Putin, regarding the preservation of Syria’s territorial integrity and stability,” he added.

Attendees at the forum included the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov as well as Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa, who met Erdoğan on the sidelines of the conference in Antalya.

The Turkish presidency said Erdoğan reiterated Ankara’s efforts to lift sanctions on Syria, and told Sharaa that Turkey “welcomes the fact that those who want chaos in Syria to occur again are not given an opportunity”.

Tensions between Israel and Turkey have grown since Assad’s overthrow, peaking after Israeli forces pounded three military bases across Syria with airstrikes earlier this month. Reuters reported that Turkish military teams had scoped out the main airport in Hama province as well as the T4 and Palmyra air bases in Homs, assessing the runways, hangars and infrastructure to see if forces and military hardware could be deployed there as part of a planned joint defence pact between Ankara and Damascus.

The defence minister Israel Katz called airstrikes “a clear message and warning for the future”.

Israel has struck military sites in Syria hundreds of times since Assad fled to Moscow four months ago, destroying military assets including missile systems and air defences that the transitional government in Damascus had hoped to inherit.

Assad’s overthrow marked the end of over 50 years of dictatorial rule by his family, as well as a halt to a decade-long civil war that became a frozen proxy conflict. The former autocrat’s backers Russia and Iran faced off against forces supported by Ankara in northern Syria, and an American military presence in the east and south.

After an insurgency spearheaded by Sharaa’s forces took power in Damascus, Ankara emerged as the most significant regional backer of Syria’s nascent transitional government.

Turkish officials have established fast ties with Damascus, while negotiating a reported defence pact that could see Turkish forces using Syrian airspace and establishing bases on the ground. Israel meanwhile moved to expand its decades-old occupation of the Golan Heights into a designated buffer zone following Assad’s departure.

“Assad had Russia as his protector in the second half of the Syrian civil war. If Turkey comes in and begins installing air defence systems or introducing jets into Syrian airspace, that limits Israel’s freedom of action significantly,” said Aron Lund, an analyst with the New York thinktank Century International.

“For Turkey, the problem now is not just Israel objecting to their military presence but doing things that by design or default are weakening or preventing the emergence of a functioning government in Syria, such as saying the new Sharaa government can’t have forces south of Damascus,” he said.

Israeli military forces infiltrated a remote town in the Daraa countryside south of Damascus earlier this month, with Syrian state media saying nine civilians were killed in shelling during the deepest Israeli incursion into Syria.

Amid few signs that Israeli forces intend to leave the area around Mount Hermon, an Israeli tour company has reportedly begun offering twice-daily hiking tours of the area in cooperation with troops stationed there.

Less than a week after Israel struck three airbases in Syria, the two sides held talks in Azerbaijan aimed at finding ways to defuse growing tensions in Syria. The office of the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said a delegation composed of top security and diplomatic officials met their Turkish counterparts, with the two sides agreeing “to continue on the path of dialogue in order to maintain regional stability.”

The Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan told local broadcaster CNN Türk that “while we are conducting certain operations in Syria, there needs to be a deconfliction mechanism with Israel, which flies aircraft in that region, similar to mechanisms we have with the US and Russia.”

Fidan added that technical teams from both sides are in contact “when needed”, in order “to prevent combat elements from misunderstanding each other”.

Lund labelled the talks “a very positive thing”, given the risk of a clash between the two powers in Syria, amid regional conflict including Israel’s 18-month assault on Gaza.

“They will be both be military involved in Syria, and this could spiral in a number of different ways. So some form of red lines or communication channels are essential to managing that tension, and this seems to be a step in that direction,” he said.

The Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has lambasted Israel for undermining stability in neighbouring Syria during a diplomatic forum, days after the two countries held talks aimed at defusing an escalating conflict between them on Syrian soil.

“Turkey will not allow Syria to be dragged into a new vortex of instability,” Erdoğan told attendees at the Antalya diplomacy forum on the southern Turkish coast, accusing Israel of “trying to undermine the 8 December revolution”, in reference to the insurgency that toppled the former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad after decades in power.

“We are in close dialogue and in common understanding with all influential actors in the region, especially Mr Trump and Mr Putin, regarding the preservation of Syria’s territorial integrity and stability,” he added.

Attendees at the forum included the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov as well as Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa, who met Erdoğan on the sidelines of the conference in Antalya.

The Turkish presidency said Erdoğan reiterated Ankara’s efforts to lift sanctions on Syria, and told Sharaa that Turkey “welcomes the fact that those who want chaos in Syria to occur again are not given an opportunity”.

Tensions between Israel and Turkey have grown since Assad’s overthrow, peaking after Israeli forces pounded three military bases across Syria with airstrikes earlier this month. Reuters reported that Turkish military teams had scoped out the main airport in Hama province as well as the T4 and Palmyra air bases in Homs, assessing the runways, hangars and infrastructure to see if forces and military hardware could be deployed there as part of a planned joint defence pact between Ankara and Damascus.

The defence minister Israel Katz called airstrikes “a clear message and warning for the future”.

Israel has struck military sites in Syria hundreds of times since Assad fled to Moscow four months ago, destroying military assets including missile systems and air defences that the transitional government in Damascus had hoped to inherit.

Assad’s overthrow marked the end of over 50 years of dictatorial rule by his family, as well as a halt to a decade-long civil war that became a frozen proxy conflict. The former autocrat’s backers Russia and Iran faced off against forces supported by Ankara in northern Syria, and an American military presence in the east and south.

After an insurgency spearheaded by Sharaa’s forces took power in Damascus, Ankara emerged as the most significant regional backer of Syria’s nascent transitional government.

Turkish officials have established fast ties with Damascus, while negotiating a reported defence pact that could see Turkish forces using Syrian airspace and establishing bases on the ground. Israel meanwhile moved to expand its decades-old occupation of the Golan Heights into a designated buffer zone following Assad’s departure.

“Assad had Russia as his protector in the second half of the Syrian civil war. If Turkey comes in and begins installing air defence systems or introducing jets into Syrian airspace, that limits Israel’s freedom of action significantly,” said Aron Lund, an analyst with the New York thinktank Century International.

“For Turkey, the problem now is not just Israel objecting to their military presence but doing things that by design or default are weakening or preventing the emergence of a functioning government in Syria, such as saying the new Sharaa government can’t have forces south of Damascus,” he said.

Israeli military forces infiltrated a remote town in the Daraa countryside south of Damascus earlier this month, with Syrian state media saying nine civilians were killed in shelling during the deepest Israeli incursion into Syria.

Amid few signs that Israeli forces intend to leave the area around Mount Hermon, an Israeli tour company has reportedly begun offering twice-daily hiking tours of the area in cooperation with troops stationed there.

Less than a week after Israel struck three airbases in Syria, the two sides held talks in Azerbaijan aimed at finding ways to defuse growing tensions in Syria. The office of the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said a delegation composed of top security and diplomatic officials met their Turkish counterparts, with the two sides agreeing “to continue on the path of dialogue in order to maintain regional stability.”

The Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan told local broadcaster CNN Türk that “while we are conducting certain operations in Syria, there needs to be a deconfliction mechanism with Israel, which flies aircraft in that region, similar to mechanisms we have with the US and Russia.”

Fidan added that technical teams from both sides are in contact “when needed”, in order “to prevent combat elements from misunderstanding each other”.

Lund labelled the talks “a very positive thing”, given the risk of a clash between the two powers in Syria, amid regional conflict including Israel’s 18-month assault on Gaza.

“They will be both be military involved in Syria, and this could spiral in a number of different ways. So some form of red lines or communication channels are essential to managing that tension, and this seems to be a step in that direction,” he said.

Prince Harry has said he is “exhausted” by his lengthy legal battle to reinstate his police protection.

According to the Daily Telegraph, Harry believes that his UK security was removed to “force” him “back into Britain and establishment life”.

He was prompted to sue the Home Office but said he had been “overwhelmed” by the legal action, which has lasted more than three years.

The prince told the Telegraph after a two-day hearing at the court of appeal in London this week that the removal of his police protection was “difficult to swallow”, and that of all his legal cases, including his legal battles with the tabloids, “this one always mattered the most”.

Harry reportedly does not feel safe when visiting the UK with his children. Much of this week’s appeal and the original hearing about his security were heard in private because of the “highly confidential” evidence. “People would be shocked by what’s being held back,” he said, adding that his “worst fears have been confirmed by the whole legal disclosure in this case and that’s really sad”.

The prince was not required to give evidence at the hearing, but flew from his home in California to attend what has been described as the “last throw of the dice” to overturn a decision. He “comprehensively lost” his case against the Home Office in February 2024 when Mr Justice Lane ruled that the government’s decision to remove his security was not unfair.

Harry reportedly views the removal of his and Meghan’s security as “a means of trying to force them back into Britain and establishment life, by making visits to the UK as outsiders more difficult and potentially unsafe”.

The prince also believes that his father, King Charles, could have intervened to reinstate his security detail because the king’s private secretary, Sir Clive Alderton, sits on the royal and VIP executive committee, but Buckingham Palace denied it had any decision-making power.

It is understood that Alderton was not on the committee when the decision over Harry’s security was made five years ago after he and Meghan had left their royal duties.

A palace source said: “These are matters of security and government policy and, as usual, it would be inappropriate to comment or intervene on either.”

It is alleged that Harry is still not on speaking terms with his father and brother. Harry saw the king last February after Charles was diagnosed with cancer, but they have not met since.

A result of his appeal will be handed down by a panel of three judges after Easter.

Emergency legislation allowing the government to instruct companies to keep loss-making steel operations in England open, or face criminal penalties for their executives, were passed yesterday during an extraordinary sitting of parliament.

MPs and peers trooped into Westminster for a rare Saturday sitting after prime minister Keir Starmer and a small team of cabinet ministers decided on Friday morning that special powers were needed for the business secretary Jonathan Reynolds to prevent the imminent collapse of British Steel’s Scunthorpe steelworks, with the furnaces going out, and the loss of thousands of jobs.

The recall of parliament from its Easter recess, only the sixth Saturday sitting since the second world war, was ordered after negotiations with British Steel’s Chinese owners, Jingye, appeared to break down.

Opening Saturday’s debate, Reynolds said the government had been in talks with Jingye since it came to power last July and had offered “substantial” support. Most recently, Labour had offered to purchase the necessary raw materials for the blast furnaces, the last primary virgin steel-making facilities in the UK, but this had been met with a counter offer from Jingye demanding “an excessive amount” of support.

Reynolds continued: “Over the last few days, it became clear that the intention of Jingye was to refuse to purchase sufficient raw material to keep the blast furnaces running; in fact, their intention was to cancel and refuse to pay for existing orders. The company would therefore have irrevocably and unilaterally closed down primary steelmaking at British Steel.

“We could not, will not and never will stand idly by while heat seeps from the UK’s remaining blast furnaces without any planning, any due process or any respect for the consequences. And that is why I needed colleagues here today.”

Earlier, steelworkers at Scunthorpe blocked a group of Jingye executives who were trying to access parts of the plant on Saturday yesterday morning. Humberside police confirmed they attended the site and no arrests were made.

Starmer headed to Lincolnshire to meet steelworkers near Scunthorpe shortly after the bill passed the House of Commons unopposed, telling them: “You are the people who have kept this going. You and your colleagues for years have been the backbone of British Steel, and it’s really important that we recognise that.

“And I felt it was really important today, having been in parliament this morning, to come straight up here to see you face to face to have that discussion with you. This shouldn’t be a remote thing that’s happening down in Westminster, in parliament, it should be something that’s living and breathing. It’s your jobs, your lives, your communities, your families.”

Even some Conservatives spoke out in favour of the bill. Writing for the Observer online, the Tory MP for Brigg and Immingham, Martin Vickers, whose constituency includes parts of the Scunthorpe works, saidthat he and his constituents would back outright nationalisation even though his party has always opposed such a policy.

“The government must nationalise the industry, to give it breathing space, to attract new private-sector investment and to keep the jobs of those thousands of people. What we have heard from the secretary of state means that they are edging ever closer to full-scale nationalisation and if that is eventually proposed, they will have the full support of the local community and, as their representative, they can rely on my support.”

Shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith said that the government was seeking a “blank cheque”, while Tory leader Kemi Badenoch claimed Labour had “botched” a deal she had negotiated with British Steel while business secretary. She Badenoch was, however, unable to provide details of such a deal, saying negotiations were still ongoing when the last year’s election was called, but adding it “would have succeeded better” than Reynolds’s plan.

The legislation stops short of full nationalisation of British Steel, and ministers remain hopeful that they can secure private investment to save the plant. But there is currently no private company willing to invest in the firm meaning, as Reynolds conceded, that public ownership remained the “likely option”.

Richard Tice, deputy leader of Reform UK – which is hoping to win the contest for the first ever Lincolnshire mayor on 1 May – urged the government to “show your cojones” and go further by fully nationalising British Steel “this weekend”.

Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesperson Daisy Cooper said recalling parliament had been “absolutely the right thing to do”. But ministers were criticised for acting to save the Scunthorpe plant having not done the same when the Tata steelworks in Port Talbot were threatened with closure last year. Liberal Democrat Wales spokesperson David Chadwick said workers in south Wales “will be asking themselves how this unjust situation was ever allowed to occur”. Industry minister Sarah Jones said the different approach was due to Tata’s willingness to invest in Port Talbot, and the changed global circumstances making it necessary to protect the UK’s primary steel-making capacity.

Sangeeth Selvaraju, policy fellow at the Grantham Research Institute, London School of Economics, and an expert on the steel industry told the Observer that nationalisation, “while politically expedient, is not a long-term solution”.

He said: “Blast furnaces in the UK have been loss-making for the better part of a decade and been economically unviable due to competition from Chinese and Indian blast furnaces, along with rising energy costs in the UK.”

TUC general secretary Paul Nowak welcomed the bill but urged the government to go further.

He said: “Today’s announcement is the first step towards ensuring we can modernise and decarbonise steel-making in this country – reducing our reliance on foreign imports and ensuring we stay competitive on the global stage.

“But the government should not stop there. We need to ensure British Steel is used in British infrastructure projects to boost local economies up and down the country.

“That’s how you protect steelworkers’ jobs through the transition, and put UK steel-making on a firm footing for the future.”

Max Romeo, the influential Jamaican reggae artist best known for tracks such as Chase the Devil and War Ina Babylon, has died at the age of 80.

The singer, known to his family and friends as Maxie Smith, died after heart complications in Saint Andrew Parish, Jamaica, on Friday.

Romeo rose to fame in the late 1960s with his provocative hit Wet Dream. Despite being banned by the BBC, the song became a UK Top 10 single and spent 25 weeks in the charts, cementing his legacy as one of the world’s most recognisable reggae voices.

“To hear of his passing is quite shocking,” said Max Romeo’s lawyer, Errol Michael Henry. “He was a perfect gentleman, and a gentle soul. He had great love for his family, and he was a legend in his own right. You couldn’t meet a nicer person – which makes the loss more difficult.”

Romeo began his career in 1965 as the lead vocalist for the Emotions, before his music became synonymous with the Jamaican social democracy movement of the 1970s. His song Let the Power Fall on I became a ballad for Jamaica’s People’s National party during its successful 1972 election campaign.

His 1976 album War Ina Babylon, released on Island Records and backed by Jamaican band the Upsetters, is widely regarded as a classic of the roots reggae era. It featured Chase the Devil, a song that has since been sampled by artists across genres, including the Prodigy and Kanye West.

Romeo later moved to New York in 1978, where he co-wrote and starred in the musical Reggae, while he went on to perform backing vocals on the Rolling Stones’ track Dance on their Emotional Rescue album.

Max Romeo, the influential Jamaican reggae artist best known for tracks such as Chase the Devil and War Ina Babylon, has died at the age of 80.

The singer, known to his family and friends as Maxie Smith, died after heart complications in Saint Andrew Parish, Jamaica, on Friday.

Romeo rose to fame in the late 1960s with his provocative hit Wet Dream. Despite being banned by the BBC, the song became a UK Top 10 single and spent 25 weeks in the charts, cementing his legacy as one of the world’s most recognisable reggae voices.

“To hear of his passing is quite shocking,” said Max Romeo’s lawyer, Errol Michael Henry. “He was a perfect gentleman, and a gentle soul. He had great love for his family, and he was a legend in his own right. You couldn’t meet a nicer person – which makes the loss more difficult.”

Romeo began his career in 1965 as the lead vocalist for the Emotions, before his music became synonymous with the Jamaican social democracy movement of the 1970s. His song Let the Power Fall on I became a ballad for Jamaica’s People’s National party during its successful 1972 election campaign.

His 1976 album War Ina Babylon, released on Island Records and backed by Jamaican band the Upsetters, is widely regarded as a classic of the roots reggae era. It featured Chase the Devil, a song that has since been sampled by artists across genres, including the Prodigy and Kanye West.

Romeo later moved to New York in 1978, where he co-wrote and starred in the musical Reggae, while he went on to perform backing vocals on the Rolling Stones’ track Dance on their Emotional Rescue album.

Researchers have developed a simple and “cost-effective” blood test capable of detecting Parkinson’s disease long before symptoms emerge, according to a study.

About 153,000 people live with Parkinson’s in the UK, and scientists who undertook the research said the test could “revolutionise” an early diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, “paving the way for timely interventions and improved patient outcomes”.

Parkinson’s is a progressive neurological condition in which nerve cells in the brain are lost over time. This leads to a reduction of the chemical dopamine which plays an important part in controlling movement.

This new test, which the Times reports costs £80, analyses small pieces of genetic material known as transfer RNA fragments (tRFs) in the blood, focusing on a repetitive RNA sequence that accumulates in Parkinson’s patients.

It also looks at a parallel decline in mitochondrial RNA, which deteriorates as the disease progresses. Mitochondria exist inside cells and generate energy.

By measuring the ratio between these biomarkers, researchers said the test “offers a highly accurate, non-invasive, rapid and affordable diagnostic tool, providing hope for early interventions and treatments that could change the course of the disease”.

On a scale where a score of 1 indicates a perfect test while 0.5 shows the test is no better than flipping a coin, the test scored 0.86, the Times reported.

The best clinical tests presently used on patients showing early signs of the disease scored 0.73, according to the study published in the journal Nature Aging.

The test uses the same PCR technology used during the pandemic to confirm Covid cases. It works by amplifying the genetic material being targeted, which allows it to be detected.

“This discovery represents a major advancement in our understanding of Parkinson’s disease and offers a simple, minimally invasive blood test as a tool for early diagnosis,” said Prof Hermona Soreq of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who supervised the study. “By focusing on tRFs, we’ve opened a new window into the molecular changes that occur in the earliest stages of the disease.”

Prof David Dexter, director of research at Parkinson’s UK, said: “This research represents a new angle to explore in the search for a biological marker for Parkinson’s. In this case the marker can be identified and measured in the blood which makes it attractive for a future patient-friendly diagnostic test for Parkinson’s.

“More work is needed to continue to test and validate this possible test, especially understanding how it can distinguish between other conditions that have similar early signs to Parkinson’s.”

The study was led by PhD student Nimrod Madrer under the supervision of Prof Soreq at the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences and the Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences, at the Hebrew University, in collaboration with Dr Iddo Paldor from the Shaare Zedek Medical Center, and Dr Eyal Soreq from the University of Surrey and the Imperial College London.

Eddie Howe will miss Newcastle’s match with Manchester United on Sunday after being admitted to hospital for tests late on Friday night.

The 47-year-old has been told he will not be discharged until Sunday at the earliest as medical staff assess an unspecified condition that kept him at home in bed during the latter part of last week. He was understood to still have been undergoing tests on Saturday afternoon.

Howe had felt unwell for most of last week following Monday night’s win at Leicester. The previous Thursday he had undergone prolonged dental treatment and warned journalists attending the next day’s weekly press conference that they might struggle to understand him following a “day at the dentist”.

In a statement released on Saturday afternoon afternoon Newcastle said the manager who led his players to last month’s Carabao Cup win over Liverpool at Wembley – the club’s first major piece of domestic silverware since 1955 – was “conscious, talking with his family and continuing to receive expert medical care”. The statement added that “everyone at Newcastle United extends their best wishes to Eddie for a speedy recovery and further updates will follow in due course.”

It leaves Jason Tindall, Howe’s long-serving assistant, in control against Ruben Amorim’s 13th-placed side at St James’ Park as Newcastle continue their push for Champions League qualification. Tindall took charge of the first match of Howe’s tenure – a 3-3 draw with Brentford in November 2021 – from the St James’ Park technical area after the manager tested positive for Covid and was forced to watch the game on television from his Tyneside hotel room.

Tindall deputised for Howe at Friday’s press conference and expressed surprise at the absence of his workaholic friend. “It’s really unusual for Eddie not to be well enough to come to work,” he said before adding that, despite being bedridden and “really poorly”, Howe had phoned him “three or four times a day” to discuss preparations for Manchester United’s visit.

Although they have a game in hand on their rivals for a top‑five finish, Newcastle dropped to seventh on Saturday. They are one point behind fifth-placed Aston Villa and behind sixth-placed Chelsea – who face Ipswich at Stamford Bridge on Sunday – on goal difference. After the Manchester United game, Newcastle host Crystal Palace on Wednesday night before travelling to Aston Villa next Saturday.

Donald Trump has authorized the military to take control of land at the US-Mexico border as part of the president’s broader efforts to crack down on undocumented immigration.

The authorization came late on Friday in a memorandum from Trump to interior secretary Doug Burgum, defense secretary Pete Hegseth, homeland security secretary Kristi Noem and agricultural secretary Brooke Rollins, outlining new policies concerning military involvement at the US’s southern border.

The memorandum, entitled “Military Mission for Sealing the Southern Border of the United States and Repelling Invasions”, allows the US’s armed forces to “take a more direct role” when it comes to securing the boundary in question.

“Our southern border is under attack from a variety of threats,” the order claimed. “The complexity of the current situation requires that our military take a more direct role in securing our southern border than in the recent past.”

The memorandum added that the Department of Defense should be given jurisdiction to federal lands, including the Roosevelt Reservation, a 60ft-wide strip that stretches over California, Arizona and New Mexico. Doing that would give troops stationed there the legal right to detain immigrants accused of trespassing on what in effect is an elongated base – and unauthorized immigrants would be held in custody until they could be turned over to immigration agents.

Military activities that could be carried out on federal land include “border-barrier construction and emplacement of detection and monitoring equipment”, according to the memorandum.

After 45 days, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, will assess the “initial phase” of the order. But at any time, Hegseth could extend the amount of federal land included in the memorandum.

The ordered military takeover excludes Native American reservations, according to the memorandum.

Friday’s order is the latest step from Trump in his administration’s ongoing focus on immigration enforcement, which has involved declaring a national emergency on the southern border.

On Thursday, a US federal judge ruled that the Trump administration was allowed to require people who are in the country but not citizens to register with the federal government, a requirement that advocates say hasn’t been universally implemented since it was enacted as a law in the 1940s.

The ruling comes after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the new requirement on 25 February, adding that those who failed to report could face fines or possible prison time.

The DHS’s announcement was widely seen as a workaround of the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law that bars US military troops from participating in most civilian law enforcement actions.

One of the purported justifications for militarizing the US border most commonly cited by Trump and his Republican colleagues is that people crossing the border with Mexico without permission carry much of the fentanyl sold in the US. Yet official statistics show 90% of convicted fentanyl peddlers are US citizens.

A man sexually violated a corpse on a New York City subway train after stealing from the body, becoming the second of two people to rob that particular dead person, authorities said recently.

One of the more grotesque US crime stories of late unfolded on a southbound R train near the Whitehall Street station in Manhattan at about 12.20am on Wednesday, when “an unidentified individual had sexual contact with an unconscious and unresponsive adult male” in plain view of surveillance cameras, according to a police statement.

The police’s statement did not elaborate and did not identify the attacker or the victim – though they released surveillance photos of a suspect carrying a black backpack while wearing a blue baseball cap, a black hooded jacket, a yellow hooded sweatshirt, blue jeans, and red and white sneakers.

Nonetheless, a poster distributed to transit workers alleged that the man wanted in the case had engaged in sexual intercourse with “a dead human body”, as the New York City news website Gothamist reported. The poster, which was reviewed by the Guardian as well, alleged that investigators had probable cause to arrest a 51-year-old man identified as Carlos Garcia – whose last known address is in the Bronx – on a count of sexual misconduct of a dead human body.

Gothamist, citing police, also reported that the man identified in the wanted poster as Garcia could be seen on surveillance footage taking items from the pockets of the dead person before violating the corpse and fleeing.

That attack marked the second time the dead person – who was described as a man – had been stolen from in less than an hour. At about 10.48pm on Tuesday, police said a woman approached the late man, removed unspecified property from him and then left.

Police released surveillance images of a suspect in that initial robbery, which showed a woman wearing a yellow hooded sweatshirt, black pants and a black baseball cap.

A police spokesperson would not comment on the allegations of the wanted poster first reported on by Gothamist and later seen by the Guardian.

Another official on Saturday morning said there had not been any arrests made in the case. Police said anyone with useful information can submit it to New York City’s Crimestoppers website.

Police said it appeared the victim had died of natural causes before both crimes.

Wednesday morning’s case of necrophilia on the subway not only provided a graphically documented instance of a sexual disorder psychiatrists assume to be among the rarest. It also reignited a discussion about the safety of the New York City subway system that in some quarters is ongoing.

Statistics generally show violence on the subway is relatively rare, though high-profile cases have the tendency to unnerve the public.

For instance, in December, a 57-year-old woman named Debrina Kawam died after being set on fire while sleeping on a train at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station in Brooklyn. Days later, 45-year-old Joseph Lynskey was pushed in front of an oncoming train at Manhattan’s 18th Street station but survived.