Xi Jinping’s tour of South-east Asia this week is likely intended to “screw” the United States, President Donald Trump has suggested, as the Chinese leader embarks on five-day tour of some nations hardest hit by Trump’s tariffs.

China’s president arrived in Hanoi on Monday, where he met Vietnam’s top leader, To Lam, called for stronger trade ties, and signed dozens of cooperation agreements, including on enhancing supply chains.

Reacting to the meeting from the Oval Office, Trump said the discussions in Vietnam were focused on how to harm the US, even though he didn’t hold it against them.

“I don’t blame China; I don’t blame Vietnam,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “That’s a lovely meeting. Meeting like, trying to figure out, ‘how do we screw the United States of America?’”

Vietnam is among a handful of countries in South-east Asia that are reeling from some of the most punitive of Trump’s so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs, hit with a rate of 46%.

A major industrial and assembly hub, the US is Vietnam’s main export market, for which it is a crucial source of everything from footwear, apparel and electronics.

In the first three months of this year, Hanoi imported goods worth about $30bn from Beijing while its exports to Washington amounted to $31.4bn

Xi’s visit to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Malaysia this week, comes as Beijing faces tariffs of 145%, and as other countries seek to negotiate reductions in their reciprocal tariffs during the 90-day reprieve.

Xi’s trip to Hanoi offers an opportunity to consolidate relations with a neighbour that has received billions of dollars of Chinese investments in recent years as China-based manufacturers moved south to avoid tariffs imposed by the first Trump administration.

Xi had planned to travel to the region prior to Trump’s tariff announcement but the visit was fortuitously timed, with the Chinese leader positing China as a stable trading partner, in contrast to the chaotic policy backflips coming out of Washington.

In an article in Nhandan, the newspaper of Vietnam’s Communist party, Xi wrote there are “no winners in trade wars and tariff wars” and protectionism “leads nowhere”.

In a later meeting with Vietnam’s prime minister, Pham Minh Chinh, Xi said the two countries should oppose unilateral bullying.

Chinese and Vietnamese state media reported on Monday that 45 agreements were signed between the two nations, including on rail links, although details were not shared.

Under pressure from Washington, Vietnam is tightening controls on some trade with China and a Trump administration official said the president and Vietnam’s Lam had agreed to “work to reduce reciprocal tariffs”.

Vietnam, and many other south-east Asian countries, are trying to maintain a delicate balancing act between the US and China, amid fears the region could be used as a potential dumping zone for Chinese exports barred from the US.

Escalating tensions between the US and China have fuelled concerns about the “decoupling” of the world’s two largest economies, a fear treasury secretary Scott Bessent has sought to dispel on Monday.

“There’s a big deal to be done at some point” Bessent said when asked by Bloomberg TV about the possibility that the world’s largest economies would decouple. “There doesn’t have to be” decoupling, he said, “but there could be.”

The White House had appeared to dial down the pressure recently, listing tariff exemptions for smartphones, laptops, semiconductors and other electronic products for which China is a major source.

But Trump and some of his top aides said Sunday the exemptions had been misconstrued and would only be temporary.

“Nobody is getting ‘off the hook’… especially not China which, by far, treats us the worst!” he posted on his Truth Social platform.

After a two-day stop in Hanoi, Xi will continue his South-east Asian trip by visiting Malaysia and Cambodia from Tuesday to Friday.

The Trump administration is kicking off investigations into imports of pharmaceuticals and semiconductors as part of a bid to impose tariffs on both sectors on national security grounds, notices posted to the Federal Register on Monday showed.

The filings scheduled to be published on Wednesday set a 21-day deadline from that date for the submission of public comment on the issue and indicate the administration intends to pursue the levies under authority granted by the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. Such inquiries need to be completed within 270 days after being announced.

The administration of Donald Trump has started 232 investigations into imports of copper and lumber, and inquiries completed in the US president’s first term formed the basis for tariffs rolled out since his return to the White House in January on steel and aluminum and on the auto industry.

The US began collecting 10% tariffs on imports on 5 April. Pharmaceuticals and semiconductors are exempt from those duties, but Trump has said they will face separate tariffs.

Trump said on Sunday he would be announcing a tariff rate on imported semiconductors over the next week, adding that there would be flexibility with some companies in the sector.

The US relies heavily on chips imported from Taiwan, something then president Joe Biden sought to reverse by granting billions in Chips Act awards to lure chipmakers to expand production in the United States.

The investigation announced on Monday will include both pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical ingredients as well as other derivative products, the notice showed.

Drugmakers have argued that tariffs could increase the chance of shortages and reduce access for patients. Still, Trump has pushed for the fees, arguing that the US needs more drug manufacturing so it does not have to rely on other countries for its supply of medicines.

Companies in the industry have lobbied Trump to phase in tariffs on imported pharmaceutical products in hopes of reducing the sting from the charges and to allow time to shift manufacturing.

Large drugmakers have global manufacturing footprints, mainly in the US, Europe and Asia, and moving more production to the US involves a major commitment of resources and could take years.

China has played down the risk of damage to its exports from Donald Trump’s tariffs, with an official saying the “sky won’t fall”, as stock markets rose amid signs of a retreat on electronics restrictions.

The US president claimed his strategy was working on Monday, with record levels of investment. Addressing reporters at the White House, he continued to threaten new tariffs on pharmaceutical goods.

As fears of a potential downturn continue to mount, Kevin Hassett, the director of the US national economic council, pushed back against warnings that a recession could take hold this year. “100% not,” he told Fox Business.

Leading tech stocks struggled for direction amid confusion over the Trump administration’s stance on key US imports including smartphones and semiconductors.

While it emerged that such electronic goods and components were exempt from the sweeping tariffs imposed this month, Trump and his officials have signaled they may not be spared for long.

“THE BEST DEFINITION OF INTELLIGENCE IS THE ABILITY TO PREDICT THE FUTURE!!!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Monday, as firms around the world struggled to keep up with the latest developments, let alone judge what might happen next.

Consumers are starting to feel the impact of the trade tensions. Sony increased the price of its PlayStation 5 by 25% in some markets in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Oceania, citing “a challenging economic environment” as the video game industry reels from the impact of Trump’s tariffs.

China, meanwhile, has vowed to stand firm in the face of Trump’s tariffs. The world’s second-largest economy has diversified its trade away from the US in recent years, according to Lyu Daliang, a customs administration spokesperson, in comments reported by state-owned agency Xinhua.

Beijing has retaliated forcefully to Washington’s tariffs, with 125% levies on US imports against the US’s total of 145% border taxes on goods moving the other way. The trade war has prompted turmoil on financial markets since Trump first revealed tariffs on every country in the world on 2 April. Since then he has partly retreated on the highest levies on most trading partners for at least 90 days, but has doubled down in his spat with China.

The White House offered further relief over the weekend with an exemption from the steepest tariffs for electronics including smartphones, laptops and semiconductors. But Trump officials later appeared to walk that back with the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, saying such devices would be “included in the semiconductor tariffs which are coming in probably a month or two”.

Trump said on Sunday night on Truth Social that “NOBODY is getting ‘off the hook’,” highlighting that smartphones were still subject to 20% levies and suggesting they could still rise higher.

However, investors on Monday appeared unconvinced by Trump’s attempts to play down the retreat. Japan’s Nikkei gained 1.2% while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose by 2.2% and the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges climbed by 0.8% and 1.2%, respectively.

European stock market indices also jumped in opening trades, with London’s FTSE 100 up by 2.1%, Germany’s Dax up 2.6%, and France’s Cac 40 up 2.4%.

On Wall Street, the benchmark S&P 500 closed up close to 0.8% and the Dow Jones industrial average also gained 0.8%. The technology-focused Nasdaq Composite was 0.6% higher.

“The sky won’t fall” for Chinese exports, China’s Lyu said. “These efforts have not only supported our partners’ development but also enhanced our own resilience.”

The customs report also played up China’s “vast domestic market”, and said “the country will turn domestic certainty into a buffer against global volatility”. China has increasingly tried to stimulate private consumption.

China’s president, Xi Jinping, on Monday criticised the US tariffs, during a visit to Vietnam. Vietnam has in recent decades grown to become the eighth largest source of goods for US consumers, but it is facing the threat of 46% tariffs when Trump’s 90-day pause expires.

In an article in a Vietnamese newspaper, Xi said that a “trade war and tariff war will produce no winner, and protectionism will lead nowhere”.

A legal advocacy group on Monday asked the US court of international trade to block Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on foreign trading partners, arguing that the president overstepped his authority.

The lawsuit was filed by the Liberty Justice Center, a legal advocacy group, on behalf of five US businesses that import goods from countries targeted by the tariffs.

“No one person should have the power to impose taxes that have such vast global economic consequences,” Jeffrey Schwab, Liberty Justice Center’s senior counsel, said in a statement. “The Constitution gives the power to set tax rates – including tariffs – to Congress, not the President.”

The Liberty Justice Center is the litigation arm of the Illinois Policy Institute, a free market thinktank. It was instrumental in the supreme court case Janus v AFSCME in which it successfully fought to weaken public labor unions collective bargaining power.

According to the group’s statement, the tariffs case was filed on behalf of five owner-operated businesses who have been severely harmed by the tariffs. The businesses include a New York-based company specializing in the importation and distribution of wines and spirits, an e-commerce business specializing in the production and sale of sportfishing tackle, a company that manufactures ABS pipe in the United States using imported ABS resin from South Korea and Taiwan, a small business based in Virginia that makes educational electronic kits and musical instruments, and a Vermont-based brand of women’s cycling apparel.

Representatives of the White House did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

The Trump administration faces a similar lawsuit in Florida federal court, where a small business owner has asked a judge to block tariffs imposed on China.

The home-wrecking storms and floods that swept Europe last year affected 413,000 people, a report has found, as fossil fuel pollution forced the continent to suffer through its hottest year on record.

Dramatic scenes of cars piled up on inundated streets and bridges being ripped away by raging torrents were seen around the continent in 2024, with “high” floods on 30% of the European river network and 12% crossing the “severe” flood threshold, according to the European State of the Climate report.

The two most destructive examples were the deluges that tore through central Europe in September and eastern Spain in October, which accounted for more than 250 of the 335 flooding deaths recorded across the continent in 2024.

Previous studies have found the disasters were made stronger and more likely because of global heating, which lets clouds pummel the ground with more rain.

Celeste Saulo, director general of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), said “every additional fraction of a degree” of temperature rise mattered, but that societies must also adapt to a hotter world.

“We are making progress but need to go further and need to go faster,” she said. “And we need to go together.”

The report, which was published on Tuesday by the EU’s Copernicus climate change service and the WMO, found the numbers of days with “strong”, “very strong” and “extreme heat stress” were all the second-highest on record.

South-eastern Europe experienced its longest heatwave on record in July 2024, searing more than half the region for 13 days in a row, while high heat across the continent contributed to destructive wildfires that affected 42,000 people, the report found. About one-quarter of Europe’s burnt area last year came from devastating wildfires in Portugal in September, which burned about 110,000 hectares in a single week.

Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London and co-lead of World Weather Attribution, who was not involved in the study, said the report “lays bare the pain Europe’s population is already suffering from extreme weather” at 1.3C of global heating above preindustrial levels.

“We’re on track to experience 3C by 2100,” she said. “You only need to cast your mind back to the floods in Spain, the fires in Portugal, or the summer heatwaves last year to know how devastating this level of warming would be.”

The report authors highlighted an “unusual” contrast between western and eastern Europe, with the west tending to be wet and cloudy and the east warm and sunny. River flows tended to be above average in western countries and below average in eastern ones. In several months last year, the Thames in the UK and the Loire in France experienced their highest flows in a 33-year record, the report found.

Glaciers in all regions had net ice loss, with those in Scandinavia and Svalbard losing more mass than ever previously recorded, according to the report. The authors also noted high temperatures north of the Arctic Circle, and the hottest sea surface temperature recorded in the Mediterranean.

Froila Palmeiro, a climate scientist at the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change, who was not involved in the report, said the extremes “not only have a direct impact on their ecosystems, but also play a role in weather patterns affecting all of Europe”.

Europe is warming twice as fast as the global average but has cut its planet-heating pollution faster than other big economies. The EU plans to hit net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, and is expected to also announce a net 90% reduction target for 2040 later this year.

Thomas Gelin, a climate campaigner at Greenpeace EU, said the report showed that politicians had failed to hold fossil fuel companies accountable and stop the expansion of their polluting businesses.

“The only parts of Europe that aren’t being boiled dry are being washed away in floods,” he said. “The EU must urgently update its climate targets to reflect the scientific reality, and put a stop to new fossil fuel projects as a first step to a full phase-out.”

The climate crisis has tripled the length of ocean heatwaves, a study has found, supercharging deadly storms and destroying critical ecosystems such as kelp forests and coral reefs.

Half of the marine heatwaves since 2000 would not have happened without global heating, which is caused by burning fossil fuels. The heatwaves have not only become more frequent but also more intense: 1C warmer on average, but much hotter in some places, the scientists said.

The research is the first comprehensive assessment of the impact of the climate crisis on heatwaves in the world’s oceans, and it reveals profound changes. Hotter oceans also soak up fewer of the carbon dioxide emissions that are driving temperatures up.

“Here in the Mediterranean, we have some marine heatwaves that are 5C hotter,” said Dr Marta Marcos at the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies in Mallorca, Spain, who led the study. “It’s horrible when you go swimming. It looks like soup.”

As well as devastating underwater ecosystems such as sea grass meadows, Marcos said: “Warmer oceans provide more energy to the strong storms that affect people at the coast and inland.”

One disastrous example was the intense rainfall that caused catastrophic flooding in Libya in 2023, which killed 11,000 people. It was made up to 50 times more likely by global heating, which had raised temperatures in the Mediterranean by as much as 5.5C. That resulted in more water vapour and therefore more rain.

“The only solution is cutting the burning of fossil fuels. This is a very clear relationship,” said Marcos. “More than 90% of the extra heat [trapped by greenhouse gas emissions] is stored in the ocean. If you stop warming the atmosphere, you will stop warming the ocean.”

Recent major marine heatwaves include an exceptionally long event in the Pacific in 2014-15, which caused mass mortality among marine life. Intense heat hit the Tasman Sea in 2015-16 and record sea temperatures around the UK and in the Mediterranean Sea in 2023. Scientists had warned in 2019 that ocean heatwaves were increasing sharply, killing swathes of sea-life like “wildfires that take out huge areas of forest”.

Dr Zoe Jacobs at the UK’s National Oceanography Centre, who was not part of the study team, said: “Ocean heatwaves pose significant risks to society, with some individual events causing millions of dollars of losses due to impacts on the fishing, aquaculture and tourism industries. They have also been found to exacerbate heatwaves on land and have amplified extreme weather like hurricanes and storms.”

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, built a model of sea surface temperatures since 1940 that removed the heating the climate crisis has caused. They then compared that with actual measurements from the oceans to show how global heating has pushed up temperatures. They focused on summer heatwaves, because they reach the highest temperatures and are therefore the most damaging.

The analysis revealed there were about 15 days of extreme heat a year at the ocean surface in the 1940s, but the figure had jumped to a global average of nearly 50 days a year. Some regions, including the Indian Ocean, the tropical Atlantic and the western Pacific have 80 heatwave days a year, ie one day in every five.

The seas in the tropics are already warm, so the extra heat tends to increase the duration of heatwaves. In cooler seas, the extra heat also can drive up their intensity, as seen in the Mediterranean Sea and the North Sea.

Dr Xiangbo Feng at the University of Reading, who was part of the study team, said: “As global temperatures continue to rise, marine heatwaves will become even more common and severe. Human activities are fundamentally changing our oceans. Urgent climate action is needed to protect marine environments.”

Sudan is suffering from the largest humanitarian crisis globally and its civilians are continuing to pay the price for inaction by the international community, NGOs and the UN have said, as the country’s civil war enters its third year.

Two years to the day since fighting erupted in Khartoum between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, hundreds of people were feared to have died in RSF attacks on refugee camps in the western Darfur region in the latest apparent atrocity of a war marked by its brutality and wide-scale humanitarian impact.

The consequences for Sudan’s 51 million people have been devastating. Tens of thousands are reportedly dead. Hundreds of thousands face famine. Almost 13 million people have been displaced, 4 million of those to neighbouring countries.

“Sudan is now worse off than ever before,” said Elise Nalbandian, Oxfam’s regional advocacy manager. “The largest humanitarian crisis, largest displacement crisis, largest hunger crisis … It’s breaking all sorts of wrong records.”

There were “massive-scale” violations of international humanitarian law in the conflict, said Daniel O’Malley, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross delegation in Sudan. “All of the civilian population, irrespective of where they are in the country, have basically been trapped between one, two or more parties. And they have been bearing the brunt of everything. The sheer numbers are just mind-boggling.”

Last month, Sudan’s military recaptured the highly symbolic presidential palace in Khartoum and it has retaken most of the capital. But in much of the country, the conflict rages on. Sources cited by the UN reported that more than 400 people had been killed in recent attacks by the RSF in Darfur, where the group is trying to seize El Fasher, the last state capital in the region not under its control.

Since late last week, the RSF has launched ground and aerial assaults on El Fasher itself and the nearby Zamzam and Abu Shouk displacement camps. A UN spokesperson told Agence France-Presse that the UN’s rights office had verified 148 killings and received reports from “credible sources” that the total number of dead exceeded 400.

Reuters reported that data from the UN’s International Organization for Migration suggested that up to 400,000 people had been displaced from the Zamzam camp alone since the weekend.

In a statement the UN rights chief, Volker Türk, said the “large-scale attacks … made starkly clear the cost of inaction by the international community, despite my repeated warnings of heightened risk for civilians in the area”.

He added: “The attacks have exacerbated an already dire protection and humanitarian crisis in a city that has endured a devastating RSF siege since May last year.”

El Fasher is one of several areas of Darfur where a famine, affecting about 637,000 people, has been declared. Almost half the 50-million population of Sudan – 24.6 million people – do not have enough food.

The UK is hosting ministers from 20 countries in London on Tuesday in an attempt to restart stalled peace talks. However, diplomatic efforts have often been sidelined by other crises, including the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

Leni Kinzli, the World Food Programme’s head of communications for Sudan, said the other conflicts, as well as a lack of access for journalists, and Sudan’s relative international isolation since the days of the regime of the ousted dictator Omar al-Bashir all meant Sudan was not getting the attention it needed.

“We don’t see the level of international attention on Sudan as we do for other crises,” she said. “There should not be a competition between crises. But unfortunately we’re seeing with everything going on in the world, other conflicts, other humanitarian crises and other things making headlines, that unfortunately Sudan is – I wouldn’t even call it forgotten – it’s ignored.”

The origins of the war can be traced to late 2018, when popular protests broke out against the Sudanese dictator Bashir. Sudan’s army leader, Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, allied with the RSF chief, Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, a former warlord known as Hemedti, to oust Bashir in a coup in April 2019.

They then allied again in 2021 to depose a civilian government meant to transition Sudan to a democracy. However, Hemedti had long coveted ultimate power for himself, and the friction between the two spiralled into full-on war less than two years later.

The RSF, a paramilitary force that grew out of the Janjaweed Arab militias accused of committing genocide in the Darfur region in the mid-2000s, made rapid gains in the first weeks and months, as the fighting spread beyond Khartoum.

In Darfur thousands of people died in the first year of the war, in well-documented attacks by the RSF and allied militias on non-Arab Masalit and other ethnic groups. Masalit refugees who had fled west to Chad recounted women and girls being targeted for gang rapes and boys shot in the street. Militia fighters said they would force women to have “Arab babies”, according to a UN report released in November 2024.

The RSF and the army have both been accused of committing war crimes in the course of the conflict.

In January of this year the US formally declared that the RSF had committed genocide, marking the second time in less than 30 years that genocide had been perpetrated in Sudan.

The United Arab Emirates has been accused of fuelling the conflict by arming the RSF. Emirati passports allegedly found on the battlefield last year point to potential covert boots on the ground. The UAE has denied all involvement in the war.

Sudan’s civil war broke out two years ago to the day, since when it has killed tens of thousands, uprooted more than 13 million and created what the International Rescue Committee has described as “the biggest humanitarian crisis ever recorded”.

He’s long been nicknamed “God’s architect” by those who point to his piety and the religious imagery woven through his soaring spires, colourful ceramics and undulating lines.

Now it seems the Vatican may be ready to make it official. It said on Monday that Antoni Gaudí, the Catalan architect behind Barcelona’s Sagrada Família basilica, had been put on the path to sainthood.

The Vatican said in a statement that Pope Francis had recognised Gaudí’s “heroic virtues” during the 88-year-old’s first official appointment after weeks of illness with life-threatening pneumonia.

Nearly a century after Gaudí’s death, the declaration is one of the initial steps in the long and complex process towards sainthood. The architect behind several of Barcelona’s biggest tourist attractions will have to be beatified before he can pass to the last step of canonisation.

Gaudí devotees have called for him to be named a saint for more than three decades, pointing to how the fantasy spires and intricate stonework of the Sagrada Família had convinced some to convert to Catholicism.

“There are no serious obstacles,” the architect and then-president of the Gaudí Beatification Society, José Manuel Almuzara said in 2003. He described the society as a movement of 80,000 people worldwide who prayed to Gaudí, beseeching him to perform miracles.

The church began considering the request in the early 2000s.

Construction of the Sagrada Família began in 1882. More than 140 years later, it remains the largest unfinished Roman Catholic church in the world, despite Gaudí devoting the last 12 years of his life to the project.

Pope Benedict XVI consecrated the building in 2010, when he praised “the genius of Antoni Gaudí in transforming this church into a praise to God made of stone”.

Years later it was announced that the basilica would be completed in 2026, a date that coincided with the centenary of Gaudís death. The completion date, however, was postponed indefinitely after the pandemic brought construction to a halt and reduced the tourist revenues available to fund the work.

He’s long been nicknamed “God’s architect” by those who point to his piety and the religious imagery woven through his soaring spires, colourful ceramics and undulating lines.

Now it seems the Vatican may be ready to make it official. It said on Monday that Antoni Gaudí, the Catalan architect behind Barcelona’s Sagrada Família basilica, had been put on the path to sainthood.

The Vatican said in a statement that Pope Francis had recognised Gaudí’s “heroic virtues” during the 88-year-old’s first official appointment after weeks of illness with life-threatening pneumonia.

Nearly a century after Gaudí’s death, the declaration is one of the initial steps in the long and complex process towards sainthood. The architect behind several of Barcelona’s biggest tourist attractions will have to be beatified before he can pass to the last step of canonisation.

Gaudí devotees have called for him to be named a saint for more than three decades, pointing to how the fantasy spires and intricate stonework of the Sagrada Família had convinced some to convert to Catholicism.

“There are no serious obstacles,” the architect and then-president of the Gaudí Beatification Society, José Manuel Almuzara said in 2003. He described the society as a movement of 80,000 people worldwide who prayed to Gaudí, beseeching him to perform miracles.

The church began considering the request in the early 2000s.

Construction of the Sagrada Família began in 1882. More than 140 years later, it remains the largest unfinished Roman Catholic church in the world, despite Gaudí devoting the last 12 years of his life to the project.

Pope Benedict XVI consecrated the building in 2010, when he praised “the genius of Antoni Gaudí in transforming this church into a praise to God made of stone”.

Years later it was announced that the basilica would be completed in 2026, a date that coincided with the centenary of Gaudís death. The completion date, however, was postponed indefinitely after the pandemic brought construction to a halt and reduced the tourist revenues available to fund the work.

The US education department is freezing about $2.3bn in federal funds to Harvard University, the agency said on Monday.

The announcement comes after the Ivy League school has decided to fight the White House’s demands that it crack down on antisemitism and alleged civil rights violations, including shutting down diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

“Harvard’s statement today reinforces the troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges – that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws,” said a member of a department taskforce on combating antisemitism in a statement.

The education department taskforce on combating antisemitism said in a statement it was freezing $2.2bn in grants and $60m in multi-year contract value to Harvard.

In a letter to Harvard on Friday, the administration called for broad government and leadership reforms, a requirement that Harvard institute what it calls “merit-based” admissions and hiring policies as well as conduct an audit of the study body, faculty and leadership on their views about diversity.

The demands, which are an update from an earlier letter, also call for a ban on face masks, which appeared to target pro-Palestinian protesters; close its diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which it says teach students and staff “to make snap judgments about each other based on crude race and identity stereotypes”; and pressured the university to stop recognizing or funding “any student group or club that endorses or promotes criminal activity, illegal violence, or illegal harassment”.

The administration also demanded that Harvard cooperate with federal immigration authorities.

The letter from Harvard’s president said the university would not comply with the Trump administration’s demands to dismantle its diversity programming and to limit student protests in exchange for its federal funding.

“No government – regardless of which party is in power – should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” Alan Garber, the university president, wrote, adding that Harvard had taken extensive reforms to address antisemitism.

Garber said the government’s demands were a political ploy.

“It makes clear that the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a cooperative and constructive manner,” he wrote. “Although some of the demands outlined by the government are aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of the ‘intellectual conditions’ at Harvard.”

The demands from the Trump administration prompted a group of alumni to write to university leaders calling for it to “legally contest and refuse to comply with unlawful demands that threaten academic freedom and university self-governance”.

“Harvard stood up today for the integrity, values, and freedoms that serve as the foundation of higher education,” said Anurima Bhargava, one of the alumni behind the letter. “Harvard reminded the world that learning, innovation and transformative growth will not yield to bullying and authoritarian whims.”

It also sparked a protest over the weekend from members of the Harvard community and from residents of Cambridge and a lawsuit from the American Association of University Professors on Friday challenging the cuts.

In their lawsuit, plaintiffs argue that the Trump administration has failed to follow steps required under Title VI before it starts cutting funds, and giving notice of the cuts to both the university and Congress.

“These sweeping yet indeterminate demands are not remedies targeting the causes of any determination of noncompliance with federal law. Instead, they overtly seek to impose on Harvard University political views and policy preferences advanced by the Trump administration and commit the university to punishing disfavored speech,” plaintiffs wrote.

Edward Helmore contributed to this report

• Ukraine held a press conference with Chinese soldiers captured on the frontline after Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of recruiting fighters from China using social media. The men were led into a press centre handcuffed and flanked by armed Ukrainian guards and it was unclear if they were speaking of their own volition. The pair told journalists they hoped to be part of a prisoner swap.

• Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, has accused Moscow of dragging Beijing into its invasion, saying that several hundred Chinese nationals were fighting at the frontline. The Kremlin has denied it claim while Beijing has warned parties to the conflict against making “irresponsible remarks”.

• Zelenskyy accused Vladimir Putin of remaining focused on continuing the war, saying Russia had openly refused to engage in ceasefire talks. “There is only one reason for this – in Moscow, they are not afraid. If there is no strong enough pressure on Russia, they will keep doing what they are used to – they will keep waging war.”

• Republicans supporters of Ukraine are pointing to Russia’s latest strikes as evidence Donald Trump needs to take a firmer tone with Putin, the Russian president, if he wants a ceasefire deal, Andrew Roth writes. GOP lawmakers – who generally tread carefully considering Trump’s apparent affinity for the Kremlin – have become invigorated and vocal in recent days after the deadly Palm Sunday strike in the Ukrainian city of Sumy.

• Democrats in the US House introduced legislation to boost support for Ukraine after a similar move by those in the Senate, including funding for security and reconstruction. The bill would also include stiff sanctions on Russia if lawmakers deem it unwilling to engage in good-faith peace efforts.

• Trump insisted on Monday he was working “diligently to get the death and destruction to stop” in Ukraine, while falsely blaming Zelenskyy and the previous US president, Joe Biden, for allowing the invasion to take place. Trump wrote on Truth Social: “We have to get it to stop, and fast.”

• Russia has claimed the attack on Sumy, which killed at least 35 people, including two children, was targeting a gathering of Ukrainian troops, not civilians. A spokesperson for the Kremlin accused Kyiv of using civilians as shields by holding military meetings in dense city centres. Russia gave no evidence to back up its claims, and during the war there have been widespread Russian attacks killing many civilians.

• Ukrainians mourned victims of the Palm Sunday strikes at gatherings on Monday. “It was chaos. There were mountains of corpses,” a combat medic who helped the injured said. “My shoes were covered in blood. I haven’t cleaned them yet, it’s the blood of the wounded.”

• Ukraine’s air force said another Russian missile and guided bombs struck the outskirts of Sumy on Monday – no casualties were reported.

• The US held “constructive” talks with Ukraine last week about a proposed minerals deal, a senior official said on Monday. The two countries were supposed to finalise a pact in March to extract Ukraine’s mineral resources, but those plans were derailed after Trump and Zelenskyy clashed at the White House.

Six women – including the pop star Katy Perry and morning TV host Gayle King – safely completed a trip to the edge of outer space and back from a private Texas ranch on Monday morning on a rocket belonging to Jeff Bezos, the Amazon co-founder and commercial space flight entrepreneur.

The women, who also included Bezos’s fiancee, Lauren Sánchez, made the trip to the Kármán line – the internationally recognized boundary of space – to float about, weightlessly, in the rocket’s capsule for three minutes before returning to Earth.

“Yeah baby, go for launch,” a mission controller could be heard saying shortly before the single-engine New Shepard rocket blasted off on time, at 8.30am local time (9.30am ET and 13.30am GMT).

King’s longtime friend, the TV talkshow host Oprah Winfrey, was on hand in Texas for the launch. Winfrey remarked that, for King, “this is bigger than just going to space” and “more than just overcoming fear”.

“Life is about continuing into grow into the fullest expression of yourself,” Winfrey said.

The talkshow queen could later be seen rubbing her eyes as the rocket reached its maximum ascent velocity of 2,300mph – or Mach 3. A commentator remarked that the vehicle was rising into the atmosphere ahead of “a stream of steam”.

As the rocket reached its highest point, about 62 miles (100km) above the Earth, a passenger could be heard to exclaim: “Oh my goddess.” Another could be heard saying: “I love you, Jeff Bezos.”

On the way back down to Earth, more screaming could be heard. The capsule, detached from its booster, made a soft landing on the Texas plains, two miles from the launchpad.

“Congratulations, and welcome back to Earth,” the commentator said. “Everybody just as ecstatic to be back on Earth.”

Sánchez’s fiance later opened the hatch to welcome her back to Earth, followed by her crewmates. The billionaire greeted each with a hug and kiss.

Perry, holding a daisy, kissed the ground with King. In a post-flight interview, Sánchez said: “The Earth was so quiet but also really alive. We are all in this together, and some connected. It makes me just want to hug everybody.”

“I had to come back,” Sánchez, who is set to marry Bezos this summer in Venice, added tearfully. “I wanted to come back. I’m getting married.”

The alternative, she said, “would be a bummer for me”.

On her return to earth, Perry said Monday’s flight had been “the highest high”.

“It’s about surrender to the unknown, it’s trust, and this whole journey is about more than going to space,” Perry remarked. It’s up there with meditation.

“This is up there.”

She added: “What you’re doing is really finding the love for yourself. I’m really feeling that divine feminine right now.”

Perry, 40, said last week she was listening to an audiobook of Cosmos by Carl Sagan and reading a book on string theory in preparation for the ride.

“I’ve always been interested in astrophysics and interested in astronomy and astrology and the stars,” she told the Associated Press. “We are all made of stardust, and we all come from the stars.”

The pop star also said that she planned to channel “that feminine divine that I was born with” to prepare for the new experience.

Before liftoff, King – who co-hosts CBS Mornings – said she was approaching the rocket trip with trepidation. “I still get very uncomfortable when people say ‘astronaut’,” she said. “I in no means feel like an astronaut. They said: ‘But, Gayle, if you go to space, you’re an astronaut.”

The pair, along with the former Nasa rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen and film producer Kerianne Flynn, traveled as the guests of Sánchez.

The flight was the 11th human flight for the New Shepard program, which has flown 52 people, including repeat astronauts, to the Kármán line.

Some critics have questioned whether the all-female trip is a moment of feminist progress since it comes as promotion for Bezos’s space tourism business that, in turn, is the marketing arm of Blue Origin’s commercial launch program.

The US actor Olivia Munn called the trip “a bit gluttonous” during a guest hosting appearance on Today with Jenna & Friends on CBS rival NBC.

“I know this is not the cool thing to say, but there are so many other things that are so important in the world right now,” Munn said. “What are you guys going to do up in space?”

Six women – including the pop star Katy Perry and morning TV host Gayle King – safely completed a trip to the edge of outer space and back from a private Texas ranch on Monday morning on a rocket belonging to Jeff Bezos, the Amazon co-founder and commercial space flight entrepreneur.

The women, who also included Bezos’s fiancee, Lauren Sánchez, made the trip to the Kármán line – the internationally recognized boundary of space – to float about, weightlessly, in the rocket’s capsule for three minutes before returning to Earth.

“Yeah baby, go for launch,” a mission controller could be heard saying shortly before the single-engine New Shepard rocket blasted off on time, at 8.30am local time (9.30am ET and 13.30am GMT).

King’s longtime friend, the TV talkshow host Oprah Winfrey, was on hand in Texas for the launch. Winfrey remarked that, for King, “this is bigger than just going to space” and “more than just overcoming fear”.

“Life is about continuing into grow into the fullest expression of yourself,” Winfrey said.

The talkshow queen could later be seen rubbing her eyes as the rocket reached its maximum ascent velocity of 2,300mph – or Mach 3. A commentator remarked that the vehicle was rising into the atmosphere ahead of “a stream of steam”.

As the rocket reached its highest point, about 62 miles (100km) above the Earth, a passenger could be heard to exclaim: “Oh my goddess.” Another could be heard saying: “I love you, Jeff Bezos.”

On the way back down to Earth, more screaming could be heard. The capsule, detached from its booster, made a soft landing on the Texas plains, two miles from the launchpad.

“Congratulations, and welcome back to Earth,” the commentator said. “Everybody just as ecstatic to be back on Earth.”

Sánchez’s fiance later opened the hatch to welcome her back to Earth, followed by her crewmates. The billionaire greeted each with a hug and kiss.

Perry, holding a daisy, kissed the ground with King. In a post-flight interview, Sánchez said: “The Earth was so quiet but also really alive. We are all in this together, and some connected. It makes me just want to hug everybody.”

“I had to come back,” Sánchez, who is set to marry Bezos this summer in Venice, added tearfully. “I wanted to come back. I’m getting married.”

The alternative, she said, “would be a bummer for me”.

On her return to earth, Perry said Monday’s flight had been “the highest high”.

“It’s about surrender to the unknown, it’s trust, and this whole journey is about more than going to space,” Perry remarked. It’s up there with meditation.

“This is up there.”

She added: “What you’re doing is really finding the love for yourself. I’m really feeling that divine feminine right now.”

Perry, 40, said last week she was listening to an audiobook of Cosmos by Carl Sagan and reading a book on string theory in preparation for the ride.

“I’ve always been interested in astrophysics and interested in astronomy and astrology and the stars,” she told the Associated Press. “We are all made of stardust, and we all come from the stars.”

The pop star also said that she planned to channel “that feminine divine that I was born with” to prepare for the new experience.

Before liftoff, King – who co-hosts CBS Mornings – said she was approaching the rocket trip with trepidation. “I still get very uncomfortable when people say ‘astronaut’,” she said. “I in no means feel like an astronaut. They said: ‘But, Gayle, if you go to space, you’re an astronaut.”

The pair, along with the former Nasa rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen and film producer Kerianne Flynn, traveled as the guests of Sánchez.

The flight was the 11th human flight for the New Shepard program, which has flown 52 people, including repeat astronauts, to the Kármán line.

Some critics have questioned whether the all-female trip is a moment of feminist progress since it comes as promotion for Bezos’s space tourism business that, in turn, is the marketing arm of Blue Origin’s commercial launch program.

The US actor Olivia Munn called the trip “a bit gluttonous” during a guest hosting appearance on Today with Jenna & Friends on CBS rival NBC.

“I know this is not the cool thing to say, but there are so many other things that are so important in the world right now,” Munn said. “What are you guys going to do up in space?”

Pressure is mounting on the United Arab Emirates over its presence at a crucial conference in London aimed at stopping the war in Sudan after a leaked confidential UN report raised fresh questions over the UAE’s role in the devastating conflict.

The UAE has been accused of secretly supplying weapons to Sudanese paramilitaries via neighbouring Chad, a charge it has steadfastly denied.

However an internal report – marked highly confidential and seen by the Guardian – detected “multiple” flights from the UAE in which transport planes made apparently deliberate attempts to avoid detection as they flew into bases in Chad where arms smuggling across the border into Sudan has been monitored.

The allegations raise complications for the British foreign secretary, David Lammy, who controversially invited the UAE alongside 19 other states for Sudan peace talks at Lancaster House on 15 April.

The date marks the second anniversary of a civil war that has caused the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis, displacing more than 12 million people.

A senior diplomat, who is familiar with the leaked report but requested anonymity, said: “The UK needs to explain how it is responding to massacres of children and aid workers while hosting the UAE at its London conference.”

The 14-page report – completed last November and sent to the Sudan sanctions committee of the UN Security Council – was written by a panel of five UN experts who “documented a consistent pattern of Ilyushin Il-76TD cargo flights originating from the United Arab Emirates” into Chad, from where they identified at least three overland routes potentially used for transporting weapons into neighbouring Sudan.

They found that the cargo flights from airports in the UAE to Chad were so regular that, in effect, they had created a “new regional air bridge”.

They noted that flights demonstrated peculiarities, with planes often disappearing for “crucial segments” of their journey, a pattern that the experts said “raised questions of possible covert operations”.

However, the experts added that they could not identify what the planes were carrying or locate any evidence that the planes were transporting weapons.

The findings of numerous cargo flights from the UAE to Chad are not mentioned in the final report of the UN expert panel on Sudan, due to be published in a few days. No reference is made to the Emirates in the expert’s final 39-page report except in relation to peace talks.

Questions over the UAE’s alleged role in backing the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) arrive after a weekend that saw its fighters kill more than 200 civilians in a wave of violence against vulnerable ethnic groups in displacement camps and around the city of El Fasher, the last major city still held by the Sudanese army in Darfur, the vast western region of Sudan.

“It will be shameful if the conference does not deliver concrete civilian protection in the context of ongoing genocide,” said the diplomat.

In January the US formally declared that the RSF had committed genocide in Sudan.

The UAE states that it is committed to bringing “lasting peace“ to Sudan.

In their November update, the UN experts, investigating the possible smuggling of weapons from Chad into Darfur in possible violation of an arms embargo, identified at least 24 Ilyushin Il-76TD cargo flights landed at Amdjarass airport in Chad last year.

The flights, they noted, coincided with an escalation of fighting in El Fasher, in particular a “surge in drone activity primarily by the RSF for combat and intelligence” whose arrival in Sudan, said the experts, marked “a new technological phase in the conduct of hostilities”.

Some of the flights identified in the report were linked to operators previously connected to “military logistics and illicit arms transfers”. Two of them, said the experts, had previously been flagged for violations of the arms embargo.

Experts also examined “regular departures” into Chad from two UAE airports – in Ras Al-Khaimah emirate and Al Ain in Abu Dhabi emirate – and found that the flights frequently disappeared from radars during crucial moments.

On one occasion, the report describes how a flight “left Ras Al-Khaimah, vanished mid-flight, and later surfaced in N’Djamena [capital of Chad] before returning to Abu Dhabi”.

Crucially, however, the UN experts said they could not prove that the planes were carrying weapons because the “flights lacked evidence regarding the specific content being transported”.

Four of the five UN experts said that although the flights “marked an important new trend”, what they managed to uncover “failed to meet evidentiary standards regarding evidence of arms transfers”.

For instance, although residents of the South Darfur city of Nyala reported “cargo plane activity and informants attributed it to RSF logistical operations, further triangulated evidence to confirm the nature of the cargo transported was absent”.

Therefore, the experts said, it was “premature to infer that these flights were part of an arms transfer network”. They also added that the fact that several of the flights and cargo operators were linked to military logistics and past arms violations “did not provide proof of current arms transfers”.

It added: “Additionally, patterns and anomalies in flight paths, such as mid-flight radar disappearances and unrecorded take-offs, raised concerns but did not offer verified evidence directly linking these flights to arms shipments.”

It said “closing these investigative gaps was crucial”.

The revelations come days after the international court of justice (ICJ) in The Hague heard a case brought by Sudan accusing the UAE of being “complicit in the genocide” during the war. The ICJ has heard claims that the RSF is responsible for serious human rights violations including mass killings, rape and forced displacement in West Darfur.

The UAE has said the case is a cynical publicity stunt and a “platform to launch false attacks against the UAE”.

A UAE source pointed out that the confidential UN expert report contained the disclaimer that four of the five panel members felt that “allegations of an airbridge from the UAE to Sudan via Chad failed to meet the evidentiary standards required to establish a clear link between the documented flights and the alleged transfer of arms”.

A UAE statement added that the imminent final report from the Sudan expert panel did not reference the Emirates in relation to any flights “because the allegations against us failed to meet the panel’s evidentiary threshold. The record speaks for itself.”

It added that they had been told by the UN security council’s Sudan sanctions committee that the final report “did not make any negative findings” against them.

“The latest UN panel of experts report makes clear that there is not substantiated evidence that the UAE has provided any support to RSF, or has any involvement in the conflict,” said the statement.

Campaigners with Canada’s Liberal party had some very American-esque politicking over the weekend, when Liberal operatives were found to have planted “stop the steal” buttons at a conservative conference to link the Conservative party to Donald Trump.

Two Liberal party staffers infiltrated last week’s Canada Strong and Free Network Conference (CSFN) in Ottawa at which they strategically placed provocative buttons designed to create the false impression that Conservative supporters of party leader Pierre Poilievre were embracing Trump-style rhetoric, highlighting internal party divisions.

The operation was exposed when a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) politics reporter overheard staffers boasting about their actions at an Ottawa pub, where they were drinking with other Liberal war room colleagues on Friday night.

One button featured the phrase “stop the steal” – directly echoing Trump’s baseless claims about the 2020 election results being stolen from him. Another displayed the name of Conservative national campaign director, Jenni Byrne, crossed out, with “Kory Teneycke” written underneath – referring to a leading Conservative strategist who has been publicly bashing Poilievre.

The CSFN conference, Canada’s less idealistic version of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), serves as a key gathering for conservative-minded Canadians to discuss policy proposals and network.

The incident comes in the final stretch of a heated campaign only weeks away from elections, in which the Liberals who hold a polling lead have consistently sought to characterize Poilievre as Canada’s version of Trump.

Poilievre’s confrontational style with mainstream media, his “Canada First” campaign slogan, and his frequent attacks on the CBC specifically as “government-funded media” have fueled these comparisons, despite his insistence on fundamental differences between himself and the US president. Just this Sunday on Radio-Canada’s popular talkshow Tout le monde en parle, when asked if he was a “mini-Trump, medium Trump or large Trump”, Poilievre quipped about his lighter weight before emphasizing his “completely different story” as the child of middle-class teachers compared with the US president’s inherited wealth.

The Liberal party confirmed the incident on Sunday evening, saying some campaigners had “regrettably got carried away” with buttons “poking fun” at reported Conservative infighting. A party spokesperson, Kevin Lemkay, added that the Liberal leader, Mark Carney, had made it clear “this does not fit his commitment to serious and positive discourse”.

Over the years, Poilievre has proudly associated himself as a culture warrior for Canada’s right, saying he wants the country to move away from “woke” to “warrior” and appearing on rightwing media like the Canadian influencer Jordan Peterson’s show.

The Liberal party has been able to take advantage of linking Poilievre to Trump after near country-wide disappointment and disapproval that followed the US president’s targeting of Canada as the supposed “51st state” and choosing to include its previously friendly neighbor in mass tariffs. As a result, there has been a near-total plunge in Canadian tourism to the United States, and the Liberals hold a tight lead in the polls under new leader Carney.

“Despite their public claims, it’s clear that it’s the Liberals who are attempting to bring American-style politics to our country,” the Conservative party spokesperson, Sam Lilly, said in a statement to CBC.

Hungarian lawmakers have voted through a controversial constitutional amendment that campaigners described as a “significant escalation” in the government’s efforts to crack down on dissent and chip away at human rights.

Backed by the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, and his rightwing populist party, Fidesz, the amendment passed on Monday along party lines, with 140 votes for and 21 against.

It codifies the government’s recent ban on Pride events, paving the way for authorities to use facial recognition software to identify attenders and potentially fine them.

The amendment, which the government says prioritises the protection of children’s physical, mental and moral development, also enshrines the recognition of only two sexes, providing a constitutional basis for denying the gender identities of some in Hungary.

Amid Orbán’s repeated claims of foreign interference in the country’s politics, the amendment also allows the government to temporarily suspend Hungarian citizenship in the case of dual nationals deemed to pose a threat to the country’s security or sovereignty.

The Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a rights group, described the amendment as a means of “legislating fear” in the EU country. “These laws represent a significant escalation in the government’s efforts to suppress dissent, weaken human rights protection and consolidate its grip on power,” it said in a statement.

The opposition Momentum party highlighted similarities with restrictions in Russia. Much like Vladimir Putin, Orbán has sought to portray himself as a champion of traditional family values, ushering in policies that include blocking same-sex couples from adopting children and barring any mention of LGBTQ+ issues in school education programmes.

Before Monday’s vote, Momentum issued a call on social media for Hungarians to join it in a blockade of the country’s parliament, in the hope of keeping lawmakers from voting in the legislation. “Let’s collectively prevent them from leading us down the Putin road and depriving us of our freedom,” it said.

On Monday, opposition politicians and other protesters attempted to block the entrance to a parliament parking garage, with some using zip ties to bind themselves together, and were physically removed by police.

The constitutional amendment was approved almost a month after lawmakers fast-tracked a law that banned public events held by LGBTQ+ communities. Thousands of people have since taken to the streets, blocking bridges and major thoroughfares with chants of “democracy” and “assembly is a fundamental right” in weekly protests.

“This government isn’t just dismantling democracy brick by brick, it’s now going at it with a bulldozer,” Ákos Hadházy, an independent lawmaker who campaigns alongside Momentum, said at a recent rally, according to Bloomberg. “We are here because we need to act fast to get ahead and stop it.”

Orbán and his government have said their aim is to protect children from what they describe as “sexual propaganda”, but analysts have pointed to forthcoming elections to argue that the country’s LGBTQ+ minority is being scapegoated by a government intent on mobilising its conservative base.

Orbán, who has long faced criticism for weakening democratic institutions and gradually undermining the rule of law, is facing an unprecedented challenge from a former member of the Fidesz party’s elite, Péter Magyar, before next year’s elections.

As news of the Pride ban broke last month, 22 European embassies in Hungary, including those of the UK, France and Germany, issued a joint statement saying they were deeply concerned that the legislation would result in “restrictions on the right of peaceful assembly and the freedom of expression”.

The EU’s equality commissioner, Hadja Lahbib, also weighed in, writing on social media: “Everyone should be able to be who they are, live & love freely. The right to gather peacefully is a fundamental right to be championed across the European Union. We stand with the LGBTQI community – in Hungary & in all member states.”

The organisers of Budapest Pride, which regularly attracts tens of thousands of people, said they were determined to go ahead with this year’s march on 28 June. “This is not child protection, this is fascism,” they said last month.

The amendment, the 15th to Hungary’s constitution since it was unilaterally authored and approved by the ruling Fidesz-KDNP coalition in 2011, also seeks to reinforce Orbán over what he claims are foreign efforts to influence Hungary’s politics.

In a recent speech laced with conspiracy theories, Orbán pledged to “eliminate the entire shadow army” of foreign-funded “politicians, judges, journalists, pseudo-NGOs and political activists”.

Rights groups described the amendment as a step in this direction for Orbán, a self-described “illiberal” leader, because it allows for the suspension of Hungarian citizenship for up to 10 years for dual nationals deemed to pose a threat to public order or security. The suspensions would only apply to Hungarians who hold citizenship of another country that is not a member of the EU or European Economic Area.

The Hungarian Helsinki Committee, the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International and the Háttér Society have urged the European Commission to launch a procedure against Hungary’s government, arguing that the recent changes breach EU law.

The groups highlighted the “gravity and urgency of the consequences of the adopted changes” in a recent statement, noting that they would “force LGBTQ+ people completely out of the public eye”. The nationwide ban is believed to be the first of its kind in the EU’s recent history.

The groups also said the amendment went further than violating the rights of LGBTQ+ people and those who supported them, describing it as a tool to further instil fear among those who voice dissent in the country. “The changes have overarching consequences that affect fundamental rights well beyond the issue of Pride,” they said.

JD Vance, the man entrusted as America’s back-up in times of emergency, may not be the safest pair of hands if Monday’s events are anything to go by. The vice-president ended the Ohio State football team’s visit to the White House by fumbling the team’s national championship trophy.

After laudatory speeches by Donald Trump, Buckeyes coach Ryan Day and Vance on the South Lawn, the Vance – an Ohio State graduate – tried to lift the trophy. He didn’t appear to realize that the top of the trophy is detachable from its base. After a moment of struggle, the vice-president lost his grip on the two pieces. OSU running back TreVeyon Henderson, standing behind Vance, grabbed the football-shaped top of the trophy, but the base fell to the ground, forcing Vance to grasp around as it rolled away from him.

Some of the players around the vice-president winced. The United States Marine Corps Band, which performs at presidential events, had to compete with audible gasps from the players and crowd as it played We Are the Champions.

Henderson and Day helped Vance reassemble the trophy, and he later held just the top, cradling it in his arms while the players around him chuckled.

As pictures and videos of Vance’s fumble spread across the internet, the vice-president tried to explain away the gaffe with self-deprecation: “I didn’t want anyone after Ohio State to get the trophy so I decided to break it,” he wrote on X.

Teams who have won a major championship have traditionally been invited to the White House to celebrate their victory with the president. However, during Trump’s first term several teams were not invited or made it clear they would not attend if they were. Those teams included the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, and the United States women’s national team after their victory at the 2019 Women’s World Cup.

Teams have been more willing to engage with the White House during Trump’s second term though. The Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles have accepted an invitation to visit the president, while Trump praised Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani’s “movie star” looks during the Los Angeles Dodgers’ visit to the White House earlier this month to celebrate their World Series win in 2024.