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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sudan’s information blackout has left relatives of those in Sudan’s Zamzam refugee camp struggling for news of their safety after it was overrun by militiamen at the weekend.

As leaders across the globe prepared to meet for peace talks in London to pressure the backers of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese army to agree a ceasefire, the RSF launched a deadly assault, seizing Zamzam after weeks of tightening its siege.

The UN’s migration agency, the IOM, said between 60,000 and 80,000 households had been displaced from Zamzam following the attacks. The medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières said its team at Tawila, another displacement camp near El Fasher in Darfur, had seen about 10,000 people arrive in 48 hours suffering from dehydration and exhaustion.

Campaigners said the dearth of information on the violence, which has reportedly killed hundreds of civilians, highlighted the need for the London talks to prioritise restoring communications to allow communities under attack to warn each other, to give better access to healthcare and to facilitate human rights documentation.

Altahir Hashim, whose family was living in Zamzam, said: “Zamzam as an IDP [internally displaced persons] camp no longer exists. The RSF has completely overrun the camp – killing, raping, burning and committing all kinds of atrocities. The communications are really bad and I haven’t been able to speak to my family.”

On Friday, nine medical workers from the aid organisation Relief International were killed when the RSF raided Zamzam, while the Sudanese American Physicians Association (Sapa), said the manager of a children’s health centre was also killed.

For two decades Zamzam has hosted people displaced during the 2000s in attacks by the army and the Janjaweed militias – who were later formalised into the RSF – but its population has grown to about 700,000 during the current civil war as people have fled other parts of the Darfur region.

Hashim is part of a group of Darfuris abroad who have raised funds to buy and airdrop satellite phones into Darfur as well as walkie-talkies to allow local communication during emergencies.

He said the communications blackout also made it difficult for people to receive money sent from relatives abroad through mobile banking systems.

The limited information that has emerged from Zamzam has often relied on satellite communications – whether through imagery, phones or the Starlink service, which uses satellites rather than land-based communication towers to provide internet.

But these services can be unreliable and are costly, meaning that while they are used by some activists in Darfur, others remain unable to be contacted.

One video shared by the group North Darfur Observatory for Human Rights showed people fleeing Zamzam with their belongings strapped to camels and donkeys.

Often the main source of information from Darfur has come from videos recorded by RSF fighters themselves of the atrocities and some have emerged showing their fighters entering Zamzam on pickup trucks mounted with heavy machine guns with burning buildings in the background.

Shayna Lewis, from the US-based organisation Preventing & Ending Mass Atrocities (Paema).“We have reports of civilians being hunted and executed in the streets of Zamzam, but we are unable to consistently communicate with people as the networks are off and the internet can only be accessed through Starlink access points. Starlink access is sporadic, expensive and can be turned off by the belligerents at will.”

Paema said the talks in London should prioritise restoring communications as a way to quickly relieve suffering in Sudan.

Sapa, which operates medical facilities in El Fasher, said the last message it received from its teams in Zamzam on Sunday afternoon was: “Zamzam under the control of the RSF.”

Khalid Mishain, of the Sudanese human rights group Youth Citizens Observers Network, said they had lost contact with their observers in the area since the attack. He said the communications blackout had been a impediment to human rights documentation throughout the conflict.

“People have to write the information down, keep it with them and then secretly move to areas where there is communications and send it to us,” said Mishain.

“We have civilians suffering and no one knows about it, and those who report on it have to risk their life because of the communications blackout.”

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”.

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.”

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

On Tuesday, one of China’s lead officials overseeing Hong Kong hit back at the US over its trade war. Xia Baolong said in a televised speech that the dispute was “extremely shameless” and aimed to “take away Hong Kong’s life”. Hong Kong is subject to the same tariffs imposed on mainland China but has not proposed any of its own in retaliation.

China was not “afraid of trouble”, Xia said. “Let those peasants in the United States wail in front of the 5,000 years of Chinese civilisation”, possibly in reference to vice-president JD Vance’s recent criticism.

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.

Vietnam’s economy is deeply intertwined with both China and the US, relying on supplies imported from the former, as well as the US market for its exports. Many countries in the region also value the US as a counterbalance to Chinese power in the region.

Phan Xuan Dung, research officer of the Vietnam Studies Programme at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, said: “If past patterns hold, it would be reasonable to expect that Vietnam might seek to balance this significant Chinese engagement with comparable diplomatic outreach to the United States or other partners in the coming months.”

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 prospect appears to have shifted some trade war battles to other fronts. As well as conversations on his Asia tour, Xi has also sought further US-excluded cooperation with the EU.

In Latin America the US is pushing governments to reduce their financial ties with China. Bessent said he met Argentinian president Javier Milei on Monday, telling Bloomberg the Trump administration was focused on helping Latin American countries avert what he called “rapacious” agreements made with China to give up mining rights in return for aid.

Beijing’s embassy in Argentina accused Bessent of “maliciously slandering and smearing” China, and told the US to refrain from “obstructing and deliberately sabotaging” developing countries.

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.

Additional reporting by Rebecca Ratcliffe

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.

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 is optimistic it can negotiate a “great” trade deal with the UK, JD Vance has said.

Donald Trump imposed sweeping tariffs on imports to the US several weeks ago, sending the global economy into turmoil as stock prices tumbled and fears of a global recession mounted.

Since then, Trump has rowed back on many tariffs, reducing the rate paid on imports from most countries to 10% and exempting electronics such as smartphones and laptops from the levies, including the 145% charge on imports from China.

The UK government hopes it can strike a deal that would exempt the UK from Trump’s tariffs.

In an interview on Tuesday with the website UnHerd, Vance, Trump’s vice-president, said he was optimistic both sides could come to a mutually beneficial agreement.

“We’re certainly working very hard with Keir Starmer’s government” on a trade deal, he said. “The president really loves the United Kingdom. He loved the queen. He admires and loves the king. It is a very important relationship. And he’s a businessman and has a number of important business relationships in [Britain]. But I think it’s much deeper than that.

“There’s a real cultural affinity. And, of course, fundamentally, America is an Anglo country. I think there’s a good chance that, yes, we’ll come to a great agreement that’s in the best interest of both countries.”

The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, will aim to continue negotiations for an economic deal with the US later this month when she travels to Washington to attend the International Monetary Fund’s spring meetings with other finance ministers.

Vance said the “reciprocal relationship” between the US and UK gave Britain a more advantageous position than other European countries when it came to negotiating new trade arrangements.

“While we love the Germans, they are heavily dependent on exporting to the United States but are pretty tough on a lot of American businesses that would like to export into Germany,” he said.

He added that he wanted to see European leaders strengthen their immigration and defence policies. “European populations keep on crying out for more sensible economic and migration policies, and the leaders of Europe keep on going through these elections, and keep on offering the European peoples the opposite of what they seem to have voted for.”

He said it was “not in Europe’s interest, and it’s not in America’s interest, for Europe to be a permanent security vassal of the United States,” noting that a strong Europe was “good for the United States” to challenge and rein in its foreign policy mistakes, such as the Suez crisis and the Iraq war.

He added: “I love Europe. I love European people. I’ve said repeatedly that I think that you can’t separate American culture from European culture. We’re very much a product of philosophies, theologies, and of course the migration patterns that came out of Europe that launched the United States of America.”

The US is optimistic it can negotiate a “great” trade deal with the UK, JD Vance has said.

Donald Trump imposed sweeping tariffs on imports to the US several weeks ago, sending the global economy into turmoil as stock prices tumbled and fears of a global recession mounted.

Since then, Trump has rowed back on many tariffs, reducing the rate paid on imports from most countries to 10% and exempting electronics such as smartphones and laptops from the levies, including the 145% charge on imports from China.

The UK government hopes it can strike a deal that would exempt the UK from Trump’s tariffs.

In an interview on Tuesday with the website UnHerd, Vance, Trump’s vice-president, said he was optimistic both sides could come to a mutually beneficial agreement.

“We’re certainly working very hard with Keir Starmer’s government” on a trade deal, he said. “The president really loves the United Kingdom. He loved the queen. He admires and loves the king. It is a very important relationship. And he’s a businessman and has a number of important business relationships in [Britain]. But I think it’s much deeper than that.

“There’s a real cultural affinity. And, of course, fundamentally, America is an Anglo country. I think there’s a good chance that, yes, we’ll come to a great agreement that’s in the best interest of both countries.”

The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, will aim to continue negotiations for an economic deal with the US later this month when she travels to Washington to attend the International Monetary Fund’s spring meetings with other finance ministers.

Vance said the “reciprocal relationship” between the US and UK gave Britain a more advantageous position than other European countries when it came to negotiating new trade arrangements.

“While we love the Germans, they are heavily dependent on exporting to the United States but are pretty tough on a lot of American businesses that would like to export into Germany,” he said.

He added that he wanted to see European leaders strengthen their immigration and defence policies. “European populations keep on crying out for more sensible economic and migration policies, and the leaders of Europe keep on going through these elections, and keep on offering the European peoples the opposite of what they seem to have voted for.”

He said it was “not in Europe’s interest, and it’s not in America’s interest, for Europe to be a permanent security vassal of the United States,” noting that a strong Europe was “good for the United States” to challenge and rein in its foreign policy mistakes, such as the Suez crisis and the Iraq war.

He added: “I love Europe. I love European people. I’ve said repeatedly that I think that you can’t separate American culture from European culture. We’re very much a product of philosophies, theologies, and of course the migration patterns that came out of Europe that launched the United States of America.”

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

The announcement comes as 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.

Harvard’s president said in a letter that 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.”

On Monday, Barack Obama posted in support of the university: “Harvard has set an example for other higher-ed institutions – rejecting an unlawful and ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom, while taking concrete steps to make sure all students at Harvard can benefit from an environment of intellectual inquiry, rigorous debate and mutual respect. Let’s hope other institutions follow suit.”

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

The president of El Salvador said in a meeting with Donald Trump in the White House on Monday that he would not order the return of a Maryland man who was deported in error to a Salvadorian mega-prison.

“The question is preposterous,” Nayib Bukele said in the Oval Office on Monday, where he was welcomed by Trump and spoke with the president and members of his cabinet. “How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I’m not going to do it.”

He added: “I don’t have the power to return him to the United States,” and said he would not release the man, Kilmar Abrego García, into El Salvador either. “I’m not very fond of releasing terrorists into the country.”

The comments came a day after the Trump administration claimed it was not legally obligated to secure the return of Abrego García, despite the US supreme court ruling that the administration should “facilitate” bringing him back.

Lawyers for the justice department argued in court filings on Sunday that asking El Salvador to returnAbrego García from a notorious mega-prison should be considered “foreign relations”, and was therefore outside the scope of the courts.

The filing said “the federal courts have no authority to direct the Executive Branch to conduct foreign relations in a particular way, or engage with a foreign sovereign in a given manner,” adding: “That is the exclusive power of the president as the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations.”

Earlier this month, the Trump administration acknowledged that Abrego García, an immigrant from El Salvador who was living in Maryland with protected status, was deported to a prison in El Salvador on 15 March as a result of an “administrative error”. In 2019 an immigration judge had prohibited the federal government from deporting him.

When he was deported anyway, swept up in Trump’s effort to send hundreds of supposed gang members to El Salvador without due process, Abrego García’s wife and relatives filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration.

On 4 April a district judge, Paula Xinis, directed the administration to “facilitate and effectuate” his return. The supreme court upheld the directive on Thursday, and also instructed Xinis to clarify the order “with due regard for the deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs”.

On Friday, Xinis said in a hearing that it was “extremely troubling” that the administration had failed to comply with a court order to provide details about Abrego García’s whereabouts and status. She ordered that it provide daily updates on efforts to facilitate his return.

On Saturday, the Trump administration confirmed Abrego García was alive and confined in El Salvador’s mega-prison, Cecot.

Then, on Sunday, the justice department said it interpreted the court’s order to “facilitate” Albrego García’s return as only requiring them to “remove any domestic obstacles that would otherwise impede the alien’s ability to return here”.

It added: “No other reading of ‘facilitate’ is tenable – or constitutional – here.”

In a separate court filing on Sunday, an official from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) said that the 2019 order preventing Abrego García’s removal to El Salvador was no longer valid, as a result of the administration’s allegation that he was a member of the MS-13 gang, “which is now a designated foreign terrorist organization”, the court filing states.

On Monday, during the Oval Office meeting between Trump and Bukele, Stephen Miller, White House homeland security adviser, repeated the claim that the 2019 order was no longer valid when Abrego García was deported, and said that bringing him back to the US would be “to kidnap a citizen of El Salvador and fly him back here”.

The attorney general, Pam Bondi, echoed that it was up to El Salvador “whether they want to return him”, not the US. Bondi also claimed the supreme court ruling meant that “if El Salvador wants to return him, we would ‘facilitate’ it, meaning provide a plane”.

But Miller also said: “No version of this ends with him living here.”

Iran is expected to resist a US proposal to transfer its stockpile of highly enriched uranium to a third country – such as Russia – as part of Washington’s effort to scale back Tehran’s civil nuclear programme and prevent it from being used to develop a nuclear weapon.

The issue, seen as one of the key stumbling blocks to a future agreement, was raised in the initial, largely indirect, talks held in Muscat, Oman, between Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, and Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff.

Iran is arguing the stockpile, amassed over the past four years, should remain in Iran under the strict supervision of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency. Tehran sees this as a precaution, or a form of insurance in case a future US administration withdraws from the agreement, as Donald Trump did in 2018 when he rejected the 2015 deal brokered by Barack Obama.

Tehran says that if the stockpile was to leave Iran and the US pulled out of the deal, it would have to start from scratch in enriching uranium to higher purity – effectively punishing Iran for a breach committed by Washington.

Although the bulk of the exchanges in Muscat were held indirectly between the Iranian and US delegations, with Oman acting as the intermediary, direct meetings between Witkoff and Araghchi also took place.

Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, has agreed to host the next round of talks on Saturday in Rome, in a move seen as a political gesture by Trump towards Italy. It also serves to marginalise the main European powers in the Iran negotiations, with Oman continuing to act as the mediator. The US vice-president, JD Vance, will also be in Rome over the Easter weekend.

During the initial nuclear talks in 2015, Italy felt it was excluded from the process, with France, Germany and the UK – the so-called “E3” – representing European interests at the talks.

Mohamed Amersi, of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said: “Meloni is an interesting choice since Meloni seems to be the European leader that has the best personal line to Trump, more than France, Germany and the UK. If Italy hosts the meeting it begs the question of the future role of the E3 in the US-Iran dialogue.”

Iran is negotiating under the threat of not just further sanctions but a potential military attack on its nuclear sites by the US.

With the Iranian economy in decline, Tehran is eager to attract direct investment by lifting US sanctions. Discussions have already started on potential insurance options for companies looking to invest in Iran, in case of a further breakdown in US relations. After the 2018 withdrawal and the imposition of sanctions on foreign companies trading with Iran, the EU was unable to devise a viable way of protecting businesses that wanted to invest in Iran.

Trump has so far excluded other aspects of the US-Iran relationship from the talks, such as Tehran’s “destabilising regional behaviour”, a decision that has confounded both Israel and anti-regime hawks in Washington. The US may seek some form of Iranian assurance that it will not use its influence to interfere in the sovereignty of other states. Iran, however, argues it is Israel making land grabs in Syria, Lebanon and Palestine.

Iran’s influence in the region has been weakened by the fall of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, Israel’s assaults on Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and US attacks on Yemen. Iran’s oil export fleet is also facing increasing sanctions pressure from the US president.

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.

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.