Barack Obama, Yale and other academic institutions have come out in support of Harvard after the Trump administration elected to cut $2bn of its federal grants after the Ivy League school in Massachusetts rejected what it said was an attempt at “government regulation” 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,” said a statement from Obama, the US president from 2009 to 2017. “Let’s hope other institutions follow suit.”

The standoff between some of the US’s most prestigious universities and the federal government deepened overnight on Monday after Harvard rejected elevated demands by Donald Trump’s administration, which the president has called an effort to curb antisemitism on campus. Many educators, however, see the demands as a thinly veiled effort to more broadly curb academic freedoms.

“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,” Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, said.

The Trump administration, through the multi-federal agency joint task force to combat anti-semitism, responded by freezing $2.2bn in multi-year grants and $60m in multi-year contract value to Harvard.

On Tuesday, Trump himself published a post on his Truth Social platform saying “perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity”.

The intervention by Obama came after 876 faculty members at Yale University, Harvard’s fellow Ivy League institution, published a letter to their leadership expressing support for standing up to the Trump administration.

“We stand together at a crossroads,” the letter read. “American universities are facing extraordinary attacks that threaten the bedrock principles of a democratic society, including rights of free expression, association, and academic freedom. We write as one faculty, to ask you to stand with us now.”

Princeton in New Jersey and Columbia in New York, both sites of pro-Palestinian protests in 2024, have agreed to comply with a series of demands from the Trump administration about how they will handle such demonstrations, academic departments and antisemitism after both received warnings they would lose federal funding.

“The Trump administration is using the threat of funding cuts as a tactic to force universities to yield to government control over research, teaching, and speech on private campuses. It is flagrantly unlawful,” said a statement from Rachel Goodman, counsel of the American Association of University Professors.

Columbia agreed to a ban on face masks for the purposes of concealing one’s identity, to bar protests inside academic buildings and to review of how regional Middle East studies programs are administered. It also acquiesced to expanding “intellectual diversity”, including by appointing new faculty members to its Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies department.

The stated goal of the Trump administration’s antisemitism taskforce is to “root out antisemitic harassment in schools and on college campuses”. But many believe that is a cover for a range of conservative goals, including eliminating racial quotas in admissions – and resetting what the administration sees as a far-left bias in academia.

“We are going to choke off the money to schools that aid the Marxist assault on our American heritage and on western civilization itself,” Trump said in 2023. “The days of subsidizing communist indoctrination in our colleges will soon be over.”

In March, the taskforce leader, Leo Terrell, a former Fox News commentator, said: “We’re going to bankrupt these universities” if they do not “play ball”.

The administration, in total, has frozen or canceled more than $11bn in funding from at least seven universities as part of its effort to end what it calls “ideological capture”. At least 300 students, recent graduates and postdoctoral students have had their visas and legal immigration statuses revoked as part of the crackdown.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology president, Sally Kornbluth, said on Monday that nine MIT students had seen their visas revoked over the previous week – revocations that she said would have a chilling effect on “top talent” worldwide and would “damage American competitiveness and scientific leadership for years to come”.

But Trump’s education secretary, Linda McMahon, told the Wall Street Journal that it was within the federal government’s power to ask universities to make changes to campus policies.

“If you’re taking federal funds, then we want to make sure that you’re abiding by federal law,” McMahon said, though she rejected that the administration was attempting to curb academic freedom and the right to peacefully protest or disagree.

A White House spokesperson, Kush Desai, told the outlet that the taskforce “is motivated by one thing and one thing only: tackling antisemitism”.

Desai said: “Antisemitic protesters inflicting violence and taking over entire college campus buildings is not only a crude display of bigotry against Jewish Americans, but entirely disruptive to the intellectual inquiry and research that federal funding of colleges is meant to support.”

Barack Obama, Yale and other academic institutions have come out in support of Harvard after the Trump administration elected to cut $2bn of its federal grants after the Ivy League school in Massachusetts rejected what it said was an attempt at “government regulation” 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,” said a statement from Obama, the US president from 2009 to 2017. “Let’s hope other institutions follow suit.”

The standoff between some of the US’s most prestigious universities and the federal government deepened overnight on Monday after Harvard rejected elevated demands by Donald Trump’s administration, which the president has called an effort to curb antisemitism on campus. Many educators, however, see the demands as a thinly veiled effort to more broadly curb academic freedoms.

“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,” Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, said.

The Trump administration, through the multi-federal agency joint task force to combat anti-semitism, responded by freezing $2.2bn in multi-year grants and $60m in multi-year contract value to Harvard.

On Tuesday, Trump himself published a post on his Truth Social platform saying “perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity”.

The intervention by Obama came after 876 faculty members at Yale University, Harvard’s fellow Ivy League institution, published a letter to their leadership expressing support for standing up to the Trump administration.

“We stand together at a crossroads,” the letter read. “American universities are facing extraordinary attacks that threaten the bedrock principles of a democratic society, including rights of free expression, association, and academic freedom. We write as one faculty, to ask you to stand with us now.”

Princeton in New Jersey and Columbia in New York, both sites of pro-Palestinian protests in 2024, have agreed to comply with a series of demands from the Trump administration about how they will handle such demonstrations, academic departments and antisemitism after both received warnings they would lose federal funding.

“The Trump administration is using the threat of funding cuts as a tactic to force universities to yield to government control over research, teaching, and speech on private campuses. It is flagrantly unlawful,” said a statement from Rachel Goodman, counsel of the American Association of University Professors.

Columbia agreed to a ban on face masks for the purposes of concealing one’s identity, to bar protests inside academic buildings and to review of how regional Middle East studies programs are administered. It also acquiesced to expanding “intellectual diversity”, including by appointing new faculty members to its Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies department.

The stated goal of the Trump administration’s antisemitism taskforce is to “root out antisemitic harassment in schools and on college campuses”. But many believe that is a cover for a range of conservative goals, including eliminating racial quotas in admissions – and resetting what the administration sees as a far-left bias in academia.

“We are going to choke off the money to schools that aid the Marxist assault on our American heritage and on western civilization itself,” Trump said in 2023. “The days of subsidizing communist indoctrination in our colleges will soon be over.”

In March, the taskforce leader, Leo Terrell, a former Fox News commentator, said: “We’re going to bankrupt these universities” if they do not “play ball”.

The administration, in total, has frozen or canceled more than $11bn in funding from at least seven universities as part of its effort to end what it calls “ideological capture”. At least 300 students, recent graduates and postdoctoral students have had their visas and legal immigration statuses revoked as part of the crackdown.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology president, Sally Kornbluth, said on Monday that nine MIT students had seen their visas revoked over the previous week – revocations that she said would have a chilling effect on “top talent” worldwide and would “damage American competitiveness and scientific leadership for years to come”.

But Trump’s education secretary, Linda McMahon, told the Wall Street Journal that it was within the federal government’s power to ask universities to make changes to campus policies.

“If you’re taking federal funds, then we want to make sure that you’re abiding by federal law,” McMahon said, though she rejected that the administration was attempting to curb academic freedom and the right to peacefully protest or disagree.

A White House spokesperson, Kush Desai, told the outlet that the taskforce “is motivated by one thing and one thing only: tackling antisemitism”.

Desai said: “Antisemitic protesters inflicting violence and taking over entire college campus buildings is not only a crude display of bigotry against Jewish Americans, but entirely disruptive to the intellectual inquiry and research that federal funding of colleges is meant to support.”

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.

A conference convened by the UK in London on the second anniversary of Sudan’s civil war must map out a “pathway to end the suffering and the appalling disregard for human life” in the country, the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, has said.

The one-day conference is being co-hosted by the UK, France, Germany, the EU and the African Union, and attended by ministers from 14 other countries, as well as representatives from bodies including the UN. Officials have said it does not constitute an attempt at mediation or aid-pledging, but instead intends to build greater political coherence about Sudan’s future among the many countries that have claimed a stake in the country.

In a measure of the expanding, intractable and externally fuelled nature of the war, Lammy chose not to invite any of the principal Sudanese actors or members of civilian society. The conference’s objectives are set modestly at seeking agreement on an African Union-led international contact group, and renewed commitments to end restrictions on aid.

The war, which erupted in April 2023, stemmed from a power struggle between the army – led by Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan – and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti.

The aim in the communique to set up a contact group is intended to persuade Middle Eastern states to focus on diplomacy rather than strengthening the warring factions. Behind-the-scenes talks at the conference between diplomats from Egypt and the United Arab Emirates were under way to agree neutral wording that satisfied both parties.

The UAE has long been accused by Sudan and others of arming the RSF – which it strenuously denies – while Egypt has maintained close ties with the Sudanese army.

Sudan’s government has criticised the conference organisers for excluding it from the meeting while inviting the UAE.

The UAE minister for political affairs, Lana Nusseibeh, who is attending the conference, said atrocities were being committed by both sides, and condemned the recent RSF attacks on refugee camps. She called for an unconditional ceasefire, the end to unconscionable obstruction of humanitarian aid, and a transition to an independent civilian-led government.

Both the army and the RSF have been accused of committing atrocities in the course of the war, which has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced 13 million, and pushed large parts of the country into famine.

Two refugee camps in Darfur, the site of a genocide in the 2000s, were captured in the past few days by the RSF as it seeks to take El Fasher, the only major population centre in Darfur out of its control.

Lammy also announced an extra £120m in humanitarian aid from the depleted UK Foreign Office aid budget, enough to help deliver food to 650,000 Sudanese people. The German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, released a further €125m (£105m) for Sudan and neighbouring states.

At a separate event on Tuesday morning, aid and human rights groups called on the international community to punish the vast array of countries accused of either directly or indirectly sending arms to the warring parties in breach of a UN arms embargo.

“The international community will have utterly failed if we have a conference today including those actively involved in the conflict and nothing comes from it again,” said Yasmine Ahmed, the UK director of Human Rights Watch. “We need a coalition of states with the UK and the co-hosts at the front ready to say we are galvanising the necessary political momentum to protect civilians on the ground.

“It is necessary that it is made clear that this cannot continue. The international community cannot sleepwalk into another genocide. They have international obligations to protect and respect international law.”

Kate Ferguson, a co-director of Protection Approaches, said: “The conference is a test of the kind of foreign secretary Lammy will be in a world full of chaos, crisis and violence, and where the US leadership is lacking.” She added: “Lammy needs to be unambiguous about the UK’s position, and unapologetic. The conference must confront and seek immediately to halt the unfolding genocide in Darfur.”

Lammy’s desire to raise Sudan’s profile is genuine, officials insisted, pointing out that he has visited the region and finds more time in his diary for the issue than any of his predecessors. However, such is the diplomatic sensitivity in the UK around its relations with some of the key regional actors that no press conference is being held, foregoing the chance to highlight what is routinely described as the world’s forgotten war.

Officials argue that if the meeting brings greater coherence of policy between western powers, and the multilateral institutions, that in turn could put some pressure on the regional bloc of actors with the real leverage to do more for peace.

However, neither side seems interested in discussing peace, and some fear the country is heading for a form of partition based around the current areas of control.

The meeting comes against the backdrop of US cuts to its aid programme.

Kate Phillips-Barrasso, a vice-president of global policy at the aid group Mercy Corps, said the nature of the US cuts meant it was hard to know how badly Sudan had been affected, but in her agency’s case, a lifeline for 220,000 people had been cut.

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

China’s president visited Hanoi on Monday, where he met the leader of Vietman’s Communist party, Tô Lâm, called for stronger trade ties and signed dozens of cooperation agreements, including on enhancing supply chains, before heading to Malaysia.

Reacting to the Vietnam meeting, Trump said the discussions were focused on how to harm the US, but he didn’t hold it against the two countries.

“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, a major industrial and assembly hub, is among 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%. The US is Vietnam’s main export market, for which it is a crucial source of everything from footwear and apparel to electronics.

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

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 tariffs during a 90-day reprieve.

Xi’s trip to Hanoi offered 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.

In Malaysia on Tuesday, the Chinese leader said he was looking forward to “further deepening the traditional friendship” between the two countries.

“China will work with Malaysia … to combat the undercurrents of geopolitical and camp-based confrontation, as well as the countercurrents of unilateralism and protectionism,” Xi wrote in an article for Malaysia’s The Star newspaper.

Xi had planned to travel to the region before 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 Nhân Dân, the newspaper of Vietnam’s Communist party, Xi wrote that there were “no winners in trade wars and tariff wars” and that protectionism “leads nowhere”.

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

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.

Phan Xuan Dung, a research officer in the Vietnam studies programme at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, 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 a decoupling of the world’s two largest economies, a fear the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, sought to dispel on Monday.

“There’s a big deal to be done at some point,” Bessent said when asked by Bloomberg TV. There did not “have to be” decoupling, he said, “but there could be.”

One of China’s lead officials overseeing Hong Kong hit out at the US on Tuesday 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.

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

China-US tensions appear to have shifted some trade war battles to other fronts. Xi has sought further US-excluded cooperation with the EU, and in Latin America the US is pushing governments to reduce their financial ties with China.

Bessent said he had met the 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 on 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!” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.

Additional reporting by Rebecca Ratcliffe

China has reportedly ordered its airlines not to take any further deliveries of Boeing jets, the latest move in its tit-for-tat trade war with the US.

The Chinese government has asked carriers to stop purchases of aircraft-related equipment and parts from American companies, according to a Bloomberg News article, which cited people familiar with the matter.

The order was reported to have come after the country raised its retaliatory tariffs on US goods to 125% on Friday in response to Donald Trump’s levies on Chinese imports totalling 145%. Beijing was also said to be considering ways to support airlines that lease Boeing jets and are facing higher costs.

About 10 Boeing 737 Max jets are being prepared to join Chinese airlines, and if delivery paperwork and payment on some of them were completed before Chinese ”reciprocal” tariffs came into effect, the planes may be allowed to enter the country, sources told Bloomberg.

The restriction marks a serious blow for Boeing and other manufacturers trying to navigate the escalating trade war between the world’s two biggest economies.

The group chief executive of the budget airline Ryanair, Michael O’Leary, has said his company could delay taking deliveries of Boeing aircraft if they become more expensive. He told the Financial Times that Ryanair was due to receive a further 25 aircraft from Boeing from August but would not need the planes until around March or April 2026. “We might delay them and hope that common sense will prevail,” O’Leary said.

Shares in Boeing have been buffeted by worries about the impact of trade tariffs, as well as complaints from some shareholders that the company has underinvested in its engineering.

The company has lost 7% of its market value since the start of the year, and in March its chief financial officer, Brian West, said tariffs could hit availability of parts from its suppliers.

The rival European plane manufacturer Airbus said on Tuesday that it was watching the evolving situation on trade tariffs. Its chief executive, Guillaume Faury, told shareholders the company was having problems receiving components from the American supplier Spirit AeroSystems, which was weighing on the production of its A350 and A220 jetliners.

The chaotic introduction of Donald Trump’s tariffs has triggered volatility in the stock market since 2 April, although there has been a tentative recovery this week after the US president announced he was temporarily suspending planned tariffs on imports of smartphones and laptops.

The S&P 500, the American blue-chip index of stocks, ticked up 0.7% in early trading on Tuesday, but was still down about 7% so far this year.

There remains a great deal of uncertainty around possible tariffs on computer chips and pharmaceutical imports, with the Trump administration initiating an investigation into the impact of trade in these areas on American national security. Meanwhile, the chip designer Nvidia has announced it will build up to $500bn (£378bn) worth of artificial intelligence infrastructure in the US over the next four years.

In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei index rose by 0.8% on Tuesday and South Korea’s Kospi by 0.9%, with strong gains for carmakers such as Honda, Suzuki and Hyundai, after Trump signalled there would be help for the industry.

On Monday the president told reporters in Washington he was “looking at something to help some of the car companies”, and added that carmakers “need a little bit of time” before they can start to build parts in the US rather than in countries such as Canada and Mexico.

The US administration previously announced a 25% tariff on all imports of foreign cars, excluding some exemptions for Mexico and Canada. Analysts at the advisory firm Telemetry predicted the move could result in 1.8m fewer car sales in the US and Canada this year.

Shares also rose in Europe, with London’s benchmark FTSE 100 index and the more domestic-focused FTSE 250 rising by 0.8% and 1% respectively after optimistic comments from the US vice-president, JD Vance, about a possible trade deal with the UK. In an interview on Tuesday with the website Unherd, Vance said he believed 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.

“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.”

Boeing was approached for comment.

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.

A judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to terminate a Biden-era program that granted legal status to migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti.

The ruling, in federal district court in Boston, prevents the wholesale shutdown of the program, which was set to expire on 24 April.

It has allowed more than 500,000 people to legally enter and work in the US since its inception.

“[Migrants] would be forced to choose between two injurious options: continue following the law and leave the country on their own, or await removal proceedings,” the judge, Indira Talwani, wrote in her ruling.

The program, established under the previous administration, allowed migrants from those four countries to legally enter and work in the US for up to two years if they had a financial sponsor and passed security checks.

The Biden administration had framed it as a strategic measure to reduce illegal border crossings by creating legitimate pathways to entry.

The administration had moved aggressively in March to end the program, giving participants less than a month’s notice before their legal status expired. It argued the plan exacerbated issues with immigration by granting protections to “a substantial population of aliens in the interior of the United States without a clear path to a durable status”.

The latest legal setback for the Trump team comes amid broader efforts to roll back other immigration protections, including those for thousands of Cameroonian and Afghan migrants – who would face being sent back to the Taliban after siding with the Americans – by either May or June, and a separate attempt to revoke Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans, which has been blocked for now by a federal court.

A judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to terminate a Biden-era program that granted legal status to migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti.

The ruling, in federal district court in Boston, prevents the wholesale shutdown of the program, which was set to expire on 24 April.

It has allowed more than 500,000 people to legally enter and work in the US since its inception.

“[Migrants] would be forced to choose between two injurious options: continue following the law and leave the country on their own, or await removal proceedings,” the judge, Indira Talwani, wrote in her ruling.

The program, established under the previous administration, allowed migrants from those four countries to legally enter and work in the US for up to two years if they had a financial sponsor and passed security checks.

The Biden administration had framed it as a strategic measure to reduce illegal border crossings by creating legitimate pathways to entry.

The administration had moved aggressively in March to end the program, giving participants less than a month’s notice before their legal status expired. It argued the plan exacerbated issues with immigration by granting protections to “a substantial population of aliens in the interior of the United States without a clear path to a durable status”.

The latest legal setback for the Trump team comes amid broader efforts to roll back other immigration protections, including those for thousands of Cameroonian and Afghan migrants – who would face being sent back to the Taliban after siding with the Americans – by either May or June, and a separate attempt to revoke Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans, which has been blocked for now by a federal court.

A medic has been killed in an Israeli missile strike on a hospital in Gaza.

The attack on Tuesday came two days after another major hospital was targeted, fuelling warnings from the UN that the humanitarian crisis in the territory is now the worst it has been since conflict began.

According to medical staff, the latest strike hit the entrance to the Kuwaiti field hospital in al-Muwasi, near the city of Khan Younis. One medic died and nine others were wounded.

Hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are living in the area, mostly in ragged makeshift tents alongside sand dunes. They left their homes after Israeli forces resumed offensive operations and seized swathes of southern Gaza, including Rafah city, which Palestinians are banned from entering.

On Sunday, an Israeli missile partially destroyed al-Ahli hospital, which was the only facility still providing critical care in northern Gaza. Doctors said the blasts had left the hospital barely operational and unable to accept any patients.

António Guterres, the UN secretary general, said he was “deeply alarmed” by the incident, stressing that hospitals were protected under international humanitarian law.

Israel has repeatedly targeted hospitals in Gaza over the past 18 months, alleging that they are used by Hamas to conceal terrorist activities. Israeli forces claimed al-Ahli was being used as a “command and control” centre by Hamas, an allegation the group denied. Paramedics carrying out rescue operations in Gaza have also been targeted.

Doctors working in Gaza warned provision of medical care was at breaking point. “The repeated targeting of the healthcare system has instilled fear and shaken the confidence of medical teams, especially after seeing the torture, abuse, and continuous targeting they endure. Enough is enough,” said Dr Moataz Harara, head of the emergency department at al-Ahli.

The UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs said the situation in Gaza was “likely the worst it has been in the 18 months since the outbreak of hostilities”.

Since the collapse of the ceasefire with Hamas in March, Israel has blocked all aid to the territory, resulting in critical shortages of food, water, fuel and medicine. It is the longest period that Israel has denied aid to Gaza and human rights groups said the tactic – meant to pressure Hamas into releasing the remaining hostages it holds – amounted to a war crime.

Israel has also resumed its airstrikes and ground operations in Gaza, displacing about 400,000 people and leading to a surge in civilian casualties, with 1,600 killed since March alone.

Speaking to Yedioth Ahronoth, an Israeli newspaper, an unnamed security official claimed the strategy was working and would force Hamas to agree to a deal on the hostages.

“The military pressure is having an impact,” said the official. “They have a shortage of gas and the food and the fuel will run out in a few weeks. The big achievement of the residents’ return to the northern Gaza Strip has been erased. That’s rattled them.”

Israeli’s offensive in response to the attacks by Hamas on southern Israel on 7 October 2023 has now claimed 51,000 lives, according to the Gaza health ministry. The count does not differentiate between civilians or combatants but women and children make up more than half of the dead.

Earlier this month, a group of UN experts said Israel’s actions in Gaza were leading to the “destruction of Palestinian life”.

“If they are not killed by bombs or bullets, they slowly suffocate for lack of basic means of survival,” they said. “The only difference is the means and speed of death.”

Some of Donald Trump’s biggest campaign donors and investors, who collectively have hundreds of millions of dollars in financial ties to the US president, are positioned to potentially profit from any American takeover of Greenland, raising even more ethical questions around Trump’s controversial pursuit of the Arctic territory.

The administration is in part aiming to secure rare minerals that are essential for the US tech industry and national security, and to potentially reopen oil and gas exploration: “This is about critical minerals, this is about natural resources,” Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, recently said.

A Guardian analysis of campaign finance records and corporate filings show US tech moguls who invested in mining companies operating in Greenland, fossil fuel executives and crypto tycoons with their own set of plans for the country collectively gave at least $243m to the president’s 2024 campaign.

Meanwhile institutional investors bankrolling Greenland mining interests also amassed $314m worth of shares in Trump Media, most just ahead of the election.

“There’s a closed loop among these investors, billionaires, Trump and the crypto projects,” said Emily DiVito, a senior adviser for economic policy with the Groundwork Collaborative economic thinktank. Greenland is an example of that in action, she added.

“These donations are investments, and they were made with particular outcomes in mind, and even if they weren’t stated at the time, the money changed hands,” DiVito said.

Vice-President JD Vance recently visited Greenland, which is an autonomous territory of Denmark, in the latest installment of the unfolding dispute between the countries. Trump has vowed to acquire Greenland “one way or another”.

Among those who have invested millions in KoBold Metals, a mining company at the leading edge of Greenland’s “modern gold rush” for rare minerals essential to tech companies, are major Trump donors such as Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and other Silicon Valley moguls.

The top investor in Critical Metals Corp, which has a mining permit in Greenland, is the hedge fund Cantor Fitzgerald, which Trump’s commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, led until January. Critical Metals’ other top institutional investors include Vanguard, BlackRock, Geode Capital and State Street – companies that have amassed $314m in Trump Media stock, much of it purchased just ahead of the election.

Among the Greenland bids’ loudest supporters are crypto tycoons who poured unparalleled sums of money into 2024 Trump and Republican campaigns while labeling Greenland an “investment frontier” where data centers essential to the US artificial intelligence and crypto currency industries could be built. Some of the same donors also want to establish a largely autonomous libertarian utopian “post state” for the tech elite in Greenland that could be used to practice “terraforming” for a Mars colony.

The group behind the “state”, Praxis, labels its members “optimistic pioneers”, but critics say it is a colonialist operation aimed at plundering wealth and resources from a weak nation still linked to Denmark – its colonial power. Regardless, Praxis is already backed by $525m and includes members of or donors to the Trump administration, such as the PayPal co-founder Ken Howery, who was nominated for ambassador to Denmark.

What’s unfolding in Greenland represents the “circle of grift”, said Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, a government transparency non-profit.

“Put money into the Trump family bank and the money comes back to you in the form of some government policy,” Weissman said. “That even includes the deployment of the empire in service of libertarians who favor a stateless society.”

The minerals found in Greenland are used in laptops, smartphones, weapons, clean energy technology, electric vehicles and elsewhere across the economy. China so far controls 70% of the rare earth market, and vital trade and military routes run through Greenland’s waters, so the administration portrays its interest as buttressing US security and industry. But Greenlanders are largely opposed to the idea.

Moreover, Greenland is a largely frozen, dark country with very little infrastructure, and it’s prone to rock slides, tsunamis and a shifting ground, said Paul Bierman, a natural resources researcher at the University of Vermont who spent four seasons working there. It is extremely difficult and expensive to extract resources, and the idea that a “gold rush” is possible is “almost completely pie in the sky”, Bierman said.

Mining industry donors and investors

The opposition from Greenlanders and unforgiving terrain has done little to tamp the tech, mining and Trump administration donor enthusiasm for a takeover.

KoBold holds permits to extract cobalt, nickel and platinum, and is now valued at $3bn. Its largest backer is the tech investment firm Andreessen Horowitz – Marc Andreessen, who has assisted the unofficial “department of government efficiency” (Doge), and Ben Horowitz each donated $2.5m to a pro-Donald Trump Super Pac, according to FEC filings, in addition to contributing or helping raise tens of millions of dollars more via other channels.

Bezos, Altman, Zuckerberg and Microsoft’s Bill Gates each donated $1m to Trump’s inauguration. Also among KoBold backers is Patrice Motsepe, a South African mining mogul who generated controversy in 2020 when he told Trump “Africa loves you!”

Lutnick, Trump’s commerce secretary, who gave $5m to the president ahead of the election, just stepped down from his position at Cantor Fitzgerald, but other Trump donors lead the company. A spokesperson pointed to a press release stating that Lutnick had divested and “does not expect any arrangement that involves selling shares on the open market”.

BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street – who are Critical Metals’ other top shareholders – are generally considered to be passive investors who have their fingers in pots across the economy. Still, the three became Trump Media’s top investors when they purchased over $175m worth of stock just ahead of the election, which was widely viewed as an investment in the president. The companies did not respond to a request for comment.

DiVito said Greenland was “littered with the corpses of mineral investors”, but some industry players including consultant Drew Horn, a former senior adviser in the previous Trump administration’s energy department, are regularly in the media cheerleading the administration’s Greenland policy and touting the riches that lie in the nation’s ground.

Horn’s company, GreenMet, leverages his administration relationships to secure political and financial backing for mining companies. GreenMet “advance[s] private sector investments and sound legislative and regulatory action to develop a resilient domestic supply chain”, the company states.

On Fox News, Horn touted the “significant opportunity for US investment in mining and energy production”, but industry observers with no financial stake remain skeptical. In the event that a mining startup doesn’t strike it rich in Greenland, Horn still receives fees for his consulting.

Bierman did not comment on Horn, but said other reports that promote Greenland mining opportunities trace back to the mining industry, not independent or Danish government sources.

“It makes me wonder: is it just self-promotion to get investment money?” Bierman said.

Cryptocurrency industry donors

Ahead of the election, the crypto tycoon Tyler Winklevoss summed up the industry’s mood: Biden had “openly declared war against crypto”, he insisted. He and his twin, Cameron Winklevoss, would each donate $1m to Trump, who would “put an end to the Biden administration’s war on crypto.”

The industry followed suit, fervently backing Trump and the Republicans. The largest crypto Pac, Fairshake, reported spending $195m in the last election cycle, with at least $148m going to the president and Republicans. Top firms reportedly poured another $10m into the president’s inaugural fund.

The crypto industry’s aims in Greenland are slightly more nebulous than mining’s, but it has fixated on the region. In part, the cold climate and easy access to renewable energy is attractive for bitcoin mining operations – Horn said it “literally is the best place in the world for data centers”. The crypto industry startup Lympid just tokenized the first property in Greenland, meaning the real estate asset is converted into coins that people can buy, giving them a stake in the company. Lympid’s co-founder Joao Lages laid out why in revealing terms.

“This isn’t just about real estate; it’s about democratizing access to one of the world’s most unique and promising investment frontiers,” Lages said. “We’re creating a bridge for global investors to participate in the region’s growth story.”

Praxis’s deep roster of tech elite includes folks such as Joe Lonsdale, a venture capitalist who co-founded the AI, drone and weapons producer Palantir and gave millions to Trump, while the company gave another $2.5m. Vance and Trump ally Peter Thiel, and Dryden Brown, a 28-year-old tech entrepreneur who “went to Greenland to try to buy it” several years ago, are also part of the group.

When Trump nominated the Praxis member and PayPal co-founder Howery as ambassador to Denmark, Praxis responded on X: “According to plan.”

Soon after Trump’s announcement, Brown tweeted that Praxis would like to “extract critical resources, terraform the land with advanced technology to make it more habitable, and build a mythical city in the North”.

Failed oil exploration

After 50 years of allowing industry to figure out – largely unsuccessfully – how to efficiently pull oil from Greenland, its government banned exploration in 2021, citing the challenges and climate change.

The Trump administration, which benefited from at least $75m in donations from industry executives ahead of the election, has regularly repeated that oil and gas exploration could be reopened if the US took over Greenland.

But some suspect this is merely an attempt to drum up support for and justify a Greenland takeover. Bierman said drilling was risky, costly and had failed to turn up the huge reserves that some speculate exist.

“The Trump administration is not always grounded in science and reality, and I think this is an example of that,” Bierman said.

The European Commission is considering plans that would allow European companies to break long-term Russian gas contracts without paying penalties to Moscow, it has been reported.

Citing three officials with knowledge of the plan, the Financial Times reported that the commission was studying the possibility of allowing companies to declare force majeure, which would absolve importers of their obligations to pay penalty fees for ending contracts.

The plans are said to be part of a roadmap on how the EU will rid itself of Russian fossil fuels by 2027, a document scheduled to be published on 6 May, following repeated delays.

A commission spokesperson declined to comment.

The commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said last month at a press conference, when asked about the delays, that she was committed to phasing out Russian gas, saying it was “an absolute must”.

EU leaders promised to end dependency on Russian oil and gas in 2022, amid widespread concern that these revenues were funding Russia’s war against Ukraine.

The EU imported just under 52bn cubic metres of Russian gas in 2024, compared with 150bn cubic metres in 2021, according to EU statistics. Last year, however, Europe bought a record amount of Russian liquified natural gas, and Russian gas imports increased by 18%, according to energy thinktank Ember.

Pipeline imports have also continued, despite the end of gas flows through Ukraine on 1 January 2025 when a transit deal expired. In February 2025, the EU received 56m cubic metres a day via the TurkStream pipeline, an 11% monthly increase. “These increases could threaten the 2027 Russian gas phaseout pathway,” Ember said, also referring to liquified natural gas (LNG).

The US is Europe’s biggest supplier of LNG and officials have expressed interest in buying even more of the ultra-cold shipped fuel since Donald Trump returned to the White House.

Energy executives are openly talking about resuming Russian gas imports. “If there is a reasonable peace in Ukraine, we could go back to flows of 60bn cubic metres, maybe 70, annually, including LNG,” Didier Holleaux, the executive vice-president at France’s Engie, told Reuters in an interview. The French government partly owns Engie, which used to be among the biggest buyers of Gazprom’s gas.

In Germany, businesses are also said to be interested in restarting Russian gas imports, which used to provide 55% of its supply and helped factories run at competitive prices. “Reopening pipelines would reduce prices more than any current subsidy programmes,” Christof Guenther, the managing director of InfraLeuna chemical park, home to Dow Chemical and Shell, told Reuters. He added that many colleagues agreed on the need to go back to Russian gas but said it was a “taboo topic”.

However, the market volatility in the wake of the US tariff moves has hit Russia’s oil exports and earnings in recent weeks.

According to Bloomberg, crude flows from Russian ports in the four weeks to 13 April fell to 3.13m barrels a day, their lowest since February, while the gross value of shipments dropped by about $80m (£60.5m) to $1.29bn a week, the lowest since mid-July 2023.

Italian police have arrested 24 suspected members of the Camorra – the notorious Neapolitan mafia – on charges of drug trafficking, arms possession and running an illegal parking attendant scheme.

According to investigators, several of those arrested on Monday were reportedly affiliated with well-known Camorra families operating in the Fuorigrotta and Chiaia districts of Naples. Some were already serving jail sentences.

Investigators said the Troncone and Frizziero clans, in addition to involvement in the drug trade and cigarette smuggling, were behind a parking scheme in which drivers felt compelled by “attendants” to pay extra fees in order to ensure their vehicles remained untouched when parked.

The practice is widespread in southern Italy and, according to a report by the Greens and Left Alliance political grouping, there are approximately 2,400 illegal parking attendants operating in Naples alone. Many of them are thought to be affiliated with Camorra clans, and the illicit trade allegedly generates more than €100m (£86m) a year.

In other areas, unauthorised attendants are forced to pay protection money to mobsters in order to be allowed to operate within territories controlled by the mafia.

“Illegal parking attendants essentially demand a protection fee, a pizzo, from drivers,” said Francesco Emilio Borrelli, an MP for the Greens and Left Alliance.

“They even ask you to pay when you park in areas that are already marked for payment. If you refuse, you are threatened, your car can be damaged or, even worse, you can be physically assaulted.”

Borrelli himself has been beaten and threatened on several occasions by illegal attendants in Naples. In one instance, he says, they even attempted to run him over with a car.

Borrelli said the problem was that, under the law, acting as an unauthorised parking attendant was not considered a criminal offence. “Offenders merely receive a token fine,” he added. “If we don’t change the law, these clans will continue to exploit citizens for their own profit.”

Last year, the police discovered that during Napoli football matches, or for concerts at the Stadio Maradona, prices for parking in lots managed by unauthorised attendants fluctuated between €15 and €20, climbing as high as €30 during Champions League or high-profile league matches.

Film-maker Chris Columbus says he has come to regard Donald Trump’s cameo in his movie Home Alone 2: Lost in New York as “an albatross” that he wishes to remove.

But, Columbus added, he fears the president’s administration would deport him if he followed through with nixing the scene from more than 30 years ago.

“It’s become this curse,” Columbus told the San Francisco Chronicle in an interview published on Monday. “It’s become an albatross for me. I just wish it was gone.”

Though born and raised in the US, the San Francisco resident of Italian ancestry said he worried he would “have to go back to Italy or something” if he erased the cameo.

Columbus’s comments – made in advance of a tribute he is scheduled to receive at the 68th San Francisco international film festival on 26 April – revisited a controversy that began in 2020, toward the conclusion of Trump’s first presidency. The director of the first two Home Alone films told Business Insider that Trump’s cameo in the 1992 sequel was a condition of being able to film inside New York’s Plaza hotel, which Trump owned at the time.

Trump, best known at that time as a real-estate development tycoon, “did bully his way into the movie”, Columbus told Business Insider, describing how the cameo was on top of a fee. He claimed Trump told him: “The only way you can use the Plaza is if I’m in the movie.”

In late 2023, less than a year before he became president for the second time, Trump went on his Truth Social platform and accused Columbus of lying. He said Columbus’s team was “begging” him to make a cameo and that it ended up being “great for the movie”.

Columbus opted against immediately responding to those claims from Trump. Yet in Monday’s interview, the director made it a point to say: “I’m not lying … There’s no world I would ever beg a non-actor to be in a movie. But we were desperate to get the Plaza hotel.”

According to Columbus, his instinct was to cut the cameo and regrets that he changed his mind after viewers at a screening in Chicago “cheered … and cheered and … thought it was hilarious”.

“I never thought that was going to be considered hilarious,” Columbus said, referring to the seven-second scene in which Trump gives star Macaulay Culkin’s character directions on the Plaza hotel. “It’s become this thing that I wish … was not there.”

The idea of removing Trump from Home Alone 2, which made $359m (£280m) to become 1992’s third highest-grossing film, has been tested before.

Trump supporters complained in 2019 when a version of Home Alone 2 screened on Canadian television removed his cameo. Then, in early 2021, Culkin himself said he was “sold” on the concept of digitally removing Trump from the film.

Columbus’s remark to the Chronicle that he fretted being ousted from the US if he did trash Trump’s cameo alluded to prominent deportation cases being pursued by the White House.

In one instance since he retook the Oval Office, Trump’s administration erroneously deported a man living in Maryland to a mega-prison in El Salvador. And immigration officials under his command have detained academic scholars around the US for deportation proceedings after their support of pro-Palestine protests.

The Trump administration has also sought to punish media figures which it considers to have crossed the president. Trump has demanded $20bn from CBS News in a lawsuit over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with his opponent in the 2024 election, former vice-president Kamala Harris. He also sued the Des Moines Register over an Iowa election poll that turned out to be inaccurate.

ABC News recently settled a lawsuit with Trump for $15m over incorrectly saying the president had been found civilly liable for raping E Jean Carroll. A jury had actually found Trump “sexually abused” Carroll but had not raped her.

“I can’t cut it,” Columbus – whose other blockbusters include Mrs Doubtfire and the first two Harry Potter films – reportedly said of Trump’s cameo.

“If I cut it, I’ll probably be sent out of this country. I’ll be considered sort of not fit to live in the United States.”