Gold has risen above $3,500 an ounce for the first time while many stock markets are in the red and the US dollar hit a three-year low, after Donald Trump’s blistering attack on the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, caused alarm among investors.

Spot gold reached the record price on Tuesday morning, extending a rally that has pushed bullion up from $2,623 an ounce at the start of this year. Analysts now predict the metal could even reach $4,000 only a matter of weeks after the price moved through $3,000 for the first time.

The US currency and its government debt are usually seen as a safe haven during times of market turmoil, but as America itself has caused much of the recent volatility investors have been turning to another “port in the storm”, gold, in large numbers.

An ongoing exodus from US assets has led to stocks on Wall Street suffering further heavy losses on Monday. The Dow Jones – which lost close to 1,000 points, a 2.5% drop – is headed for its worst April since 1932.

Traders are anxious after the US president intensified his attacks on America’s top central banker, calling Powell “Mr Too Late” and “a major loser” for not lowering interest rates.

This pushed the dollar down against a basket of currencies to its lowest level since March 2022 on Tuesday morning, although it was later trading slightly higher.

Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, said: “Persistent comments from President Donald Trump, which put the independence of the US Federal Reserve in question, resulted in weakness in the dollar, US Treasuries and Wall Street overnight.

“If the administration is able or willing to follow through on its threat to fire Fed chair Jerome Powell before his term is up next year, it could provoke an even stronger reaction amid fears about the implications for inflation.”

The pound hit a seven-month high of $1.3423 on Tuesday and is on track for its longest winning streak against the dollar in more than 50 years. Sterling has risen against the dollar for 10 days, gaining 3.5% since “liberation day” on 2 April, when Trump announced sweeping global tariffs.

Stephen Innes, managing partner at the Swiss wealth management firm SPI Asset Management, said: “This is about more than Trump vs Powell. It’s about every corner of fiscal and monetary policy flashing one big red warning: confidence erosion.”

Many Asian stock markets followed Wall Street lower; in Europe, the German, French and Italian indices lost between 0.2% and 0.6%. The UK’s FTSE 100 and Spain’s Ibex were up slightly, by 0.2% and 0.3%.

Stock futures are pointing to modest gains on Wall Street when US markets open, after Monday’s sell-off.

US trade officials are preparing to impose tariffs of up to 3,521% on imports of solar panels from four south-east Asian countries, while the International Energy Agency has said lessons from the energy crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had not been fully learned.

The US commerce department has announced the new tariffs, targeting companies in Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam, after an investigation begun a year ago when American manufacturers of solar panels accused Chinese companies of flooding the market with subsidised, cheap goods.

Products from Cambodia would face the highest tariffs, of 3,521%, because its companies did not cooperate with the US investigation, while products made in Malaysia by the Chinese manufacturer Jinko Solar face duties of just over 41%; rival Trina Solar’s products from Thailand will incur tariffs of 375%.

A separate US government agency, the International Trade Commission, is due to make a final decision on the tariffs in June.

The case was brought last year by the Korean company Hanwha Qcells, Arizona-based First Solar and several smaller solar panel makers in the US. They accused Chinese companies with factories in Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam of shipping panels priced below their cost of production, owing to unfair state subsidies.

However, critics, including the Solar Energy Industries Association trade group, have said tariffs would harm US solar producers because they would raise prices on the imported cells that are assembled into panels at American factories.

Separately, the head of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, outlined concerns about the future of energy security ahead of a 60-country summit in London on Thursday and Friday that he is hosting with the UK energy secretary, Ed Miliband.

It will be attended by ministers from the US, Japan, France, Germany and India, and oil-producing states including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, along with the bosses of big oil and gas companies and renewable energy companies. Russia is excluded, and China will be absent because of a diary clash, in a blow to the summit.

Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 sparked international sanctions, the loss of Russian gas from Europe, a spike in wholesale energy costs and a rush to secure alternative energy supplies.

Birol told the Financial Times he thought the “lessons from Ukraine have not yet been fully understood”, adding that there were three golden rules for energy security: diversification of supplies, sufficient political predictability to allow companies to make long-term investments, and global cooperation.

Europe remains heavily reliant on imported gas and markets have been volatile, amid changes to energy subsidies and regulations, and the trade war unleashed by Donald Trump’s frequent tariff announcements.

Birol said the trade war had caused “uncertainty which will affect demand for oil and gas for some time to come”.

There are growing risks surrounding energy supplies, including the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, the climate crisis, attacks on undersea cables and cyber-attacks. “There are traditional risks and emerging risks and these have to be more in the international debate,” he said.

The oil and gas producers Shell, BP, ExxonMobil, TotalEnergies, Eni and Equinor are due to attend, alongside the wind energy companies Ørsted and Vestas, and utilities EDF, Enel, Octopus and Iberdrola.

“We invited China, but unfortunately they were not able to accept due to calendar reasons,” said Birol. “We wish everybody was at the table, but the countries attending the meeting make up three-quarters of the world’s GDP, which in my view is not bad at all.”

The London summit will be preceded by a meeting on Wednesday between UK ministers and industry experts with technical workshops to discuss gas security, critical minerals and Ukraine’s energy system.

US stock markets fell again on Monday as Donald Trump continued attacks against the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, who the US president called “a major loser” for not lowering interest rates.

“There can be a slowing of the economy unless Mr. Too Late, a major loser, lowers interest rates, NOW,” Trump wrote on social media.

In recent days, Trump has amped up attacks against the Fed chair, pushing Powell to lower interest rates to offset the inflationary impacts of the new tariffs.

Trump is pressuring the Fed to cut rates, likely to appease the stock market, which plummeted after he announced his newest slate of tariffs. But Wall Street isn’t taking the bait and appears to be reacting in opposition to Trump’s attacks against Powell and the independence of the US central bank.

The Dow ended the day down 2.5%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell over 2.5% down and the S&P 500 fell 2.4%. Former tech stocks favorites including Tesla and Nvidia lost ground, while the value of the dollar fell to multiyear lows against most major currencies.

Stock markets had recovered the losses they endured after Trump rolled out his “liberation day” tariffs proposals, which would have imposed huge levies on all of the US’s trading partners. But almost all the gains made in the stock market following Trump’s announcement of a 90-day pause of his so-called reciprocal tariffs have been erased amid these new jabs against Powell.

Powell, known to be extremely measured in his public remarks, has in recent weeks spoken out about Trump’s tariffs and warned that they may lead to a “challenging scenario” for the Fed, implying that the Fed has no plans to cut interest rates anytime soon.

“Tariffs are highly likely to generate at least a temporary rise in inflation. The inflation effects could also be more persistent,” Powell told reporters on 16 April.

US inflation peaked at 9% in June 2022 but has slowly come down over the last few years, largely due to the Fed’s careful adjustment of interest rates. The Fed has set its inflation rate target at 2%.

Powell often refers to the central bank’s “dual mandate” – to keep inflation in check while maximising employment. Higher interest rates can bring down prices, though it can come at the risk of higher unemployment. Over the last few years, the Fed has been able to bring down inflation while keeping the unemployment rate relatively low, around 4%. Last month, inflation cooled to 2.4%, though the most recent government figures do not account for the Trump tariffs.

The Fed has long been treated as a nonpartisan, nonpolitical federal agency, though Trump has recently floated the idea of terminating Powell, whose term is up in May 2026. “Powell’s termination cannot come fast enough!” Trump wrote on social media last week.

Such a move would be unprecedented and would likely put Wall Street into a further tailspin. In an interview with CNBC, Krishna Guha, the vice-chair of Evercore ISI, an equity research firm, said that there would be a “severe reaction” from markets if Trump fires Powell.

“I can’t believe that’s what the administration is trying to achieve,” Guha said.

It’s also unclear whether Trump has the authority to remove Powell from his post. The supreme court is currently hearing a case that could give Trump more power to fire federal officials before their terms are up, though it’s unclear whether that could reach the Fed.

Last week, Powell emphasized the importance of the Fed’s independence from political forces.

“Our independence is a matter of law,” Powell said. “We serve very long terms, seemingly endless terms, so we’re protected by the law.”

But that doesn’t mean the Trump administration isn’t trying. On Friday, White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett told reporters that the administration “will continue to study” if they can legally fire Powell.

Fed officials meet monthly to discuss potential changes to the interest rate. The next meeting between officials will take place 6 and 7 May.

The funeral of Pope Francis will be held on Saturday at St Peter’s Basilica, the Vatican has said.

The pope, the head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, died at his home in the Vatican on Monday aged 88 after a stroke. He had been recovering from double pneumonia for which he was hospitalised for five weeks.

The mass will begin at 10am local time and will be led by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the dean of the college of cardinals.

The Vatican also said the pope’s coffin would be taken to St Peter’s Basilica on Wednesday at 9am, where it will remain until the night before the funeral, to allow the public to pay their respects.

Francis will be buried at the Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica in Rome’s Esquilino neighbourhood, breaking with longstanding Vatican tradition.

Popes are usually buried with much fanfare in the grottoes beneath St Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, but Francis – loved by many Catholics for his humility – simplified rites for papal funerals last year.

The procession of his coffin from the Vatican to Esquilino, a journey of two or three miles through central Rome, would require the Vatican’s Swiss Guards.

Heads of state who have so far confirmed their attendance at the funeral include Emmanuel Macron, Donald Trump, and Javier Milei, president of Francis’ native Argentina.

Macron said at a press conference during a visit to Réunion: “We will be present at the pope’s funeral, as is only right.”

Trump said on Monday that he would be attending with his wife. “Melania and I will be going to the funeral of Pope Francis, in Rome. We look forward to being there!” he wrote on Truth Social.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy will also attend the funeral, AFP reported, citing a source in Kyiv, while Vladimir Putin, said the Kremlin, will not.

Traditional papal funerals involved three coffins, one made out of cypress wood, one of lead and one of elm, which were placed one inside the other before the body was placed inside and then buried beneath St Peter’s.

But Francis shunned these rituals when he approved the simplified rules in April 2024. People will still be able to see his body in the basilica, but his remains will be placed in one simple coffin made of wood and lined with zinc, and will not be raised on a platform.

The pontiff’s death is likely to exacerbate sharp divisions within the curia, with conservatives seeking to wrest control of the church away from reformers. A conclave – the secretive process by which Francis’s successor will be chosen – should begin no fewer than 15 and no more than 20 days after the death of the pope.

Some of the potential contenders mooted before Francis’s death were Matteo Zuppi, a progressive Italian cardinal, Pietro Parolin, who serves as the Vatican’s secretary of state, and Luis Antonio Tagle, from the Philippines.

During his 12-year papacy, Francis – the first Jesuit pope – was a vocal champion of poor, dispossessed and disadvantaged people, and a blunt critic of corporate greed and social and economic inequality. Within the Vatican he criticised extravagance and privilege, calling on church leaders to show humility.

His views riled significant numbers of cardinals and powerful Vatican officials, who often sought to frustrate Francis’s efforts to overhaul the ancient institutions of the church. But his compassion and humanity endeared him to millions.

His death certificate, released by the Vatican, said Francis died from a stroke causing a coma and “irreversible” heart failure. He had been discharged from Rome’s Gemelli hospital on 23 March and been ordered to spend at least two months resting.

Pressure was mounting on the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, on Monday following reports of a second Signal chatroom used to discuss sensitive military operations, while a former top Pentagon spokesperson slammed the US’s top military official’s leadership of the Department of Defense.

John Ullyot, who resigned last week after initially serving as Pentagon spokesperson, said in a opinion essay published by Politico on Sunday that the Pentagon has been overwhelmed by staff drama and turnover in the initial months of the second Trump administration.

Ullyot called the situation a “full-blown meltdown” that could cost Hegseth, a 44-year-old former Fox News host and national guard officer, his job as defense secretary.

“It’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon. From leaks of sensitive operational plans to mass firings, the dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president – who deserves better from his senior leadership,” Ullyot wrote.

Donald Trump Jr pushed back on the opinion piece, saying the author is “officially exiled” from Trump’s political movement. “This guy is not America First,” Trump Jr wrote on X. “I’ve been hearing for years that he works his ass off to subvert my father’s agenda. That ends today.”

The warning came as the New York Times reported that Hegseth shared details of a US attack on Yemeni Houthi rebels last month in a second Signal chat that he created himself and included his wife, his brother and about a dozen other people.

The Guardian has independently confirmed the existence of Hegseth’s own private group chat.

According to unnamed sources familiar with the chat who spoke to the Times, Hegseth sent the private group of his personal associates some of the same information, including the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets that would strike Houthi rebel targets in Yemen, that he also shared with another Signal group of top officials that was created by Mike Waltz, the national security adviser.

The existence of the Signal group chat created by Waltz, in which detailed attack plans were divulged by Hegseth to other Trump administration officials on the private messaging app, were made public by the Atlantic magazine’s Jeffrey Goldberg, who had been accidentally added to the group.

The existence of a second Signal chat, coupled with Ullyot’s devastating portrait of the Pentagon under Hegseth, is likely to increase pressure on the White House to take action.

Trump defended Hegseth at the annual Easter egg roll event at the White House.

“Pete’s doing a great job,” the president said. “Just ask the Houthis how he’s doing. It’s just fake news. They just bring up stories. It sounds like disgruntled employees. He was put there to get rid of a lot of bad people and that’s what he’s doing. You don’t always have friends when you do that.”

Hegseth himself blamed “disgruntled former employees” in remarks to reporters at the same event.

“What a big surprise that a few leakers get fired and suddenly a bunch of hit pieces come out from the same media that peddled the Russia hoax,” Hegseth said. “This is what the media does. They take anonymous sources from disgruntled former employees, and then they try to slash and burn people and ruin their reputations.”

He continued: “Not going to work with me, because we’re changing the defense department, putting the Pentagon back in the hands of war-fighters. And anonymous smears from disgruntled former employees on old news doesn’t matter.”

The Pentagon’s chief spokesperson, Sean Parnell, issued a statement in a post on X on Sunday night following the New York Times report.

“Another day, another old story – back from the dead,” Parnell said. “The Trump-hating media continues to be obsessed with destroying anyone committed to President Trump’s agenda. This time, the New York Times – and all other Fake News that repeat their garbage – are enthusiastically taking the grievances of disgruntled former employees as the sole sources for their article.

“There was no classified information in any Signal chat, no matter how many ways they try to write the story. What is true is that the Office of the Secretary of Defense is continuing to become stronger and more efficient in executing President Trump’s agenda. We’ve already achieved so much for the American warfighter, and will never back down.”

Tammy Duckworth, a Democratic senator from Illinois and combat veteran, said in a statement that the second Signal chat put the lives of US men and women in uniform at greater risk:

“How many times does Pete Hegseth need to leak classified intelligence before Donald Trump and Republicans understand that he isn’t only a f*cking liar, he is a threat to our national security?

“Every day he stays in his job is another day our troops’ lives are endangered by his singular stupidity,” Duckworth said. “He must resign in disgrace.”

Jack Reed, a Democratic senator from Rhode Island and a senior member of the Senate armed services committee, said the report, if true, “is another troubling example of Secretary Hegseth’s reckless disregard for the laws and protocols that every other military service member is required to follow”.

Reed called on Hegseth to “immediately explain why he reportedly texted classified information that could endanger American service members’ lives on a commercial app that included his wife, brother, and personal lawyer”.

Reed said he had “warned that Mr Hegseth lacks the experience, competence, and character to run the Department of Defense. In light of the ongoing chaos, dysfunction, and mass firings under Mr Hegseth’s leadership, it seems that those objections were well-founded.”

Ullyot warned that under Hegseth “the Pentagon focus is no longer on warfighting, but on endless drama” and said “the president deserves better than the current mishegoss at the Pentagon.”

Oxford academics drank from a chalice made from a human skull for decades, a book that explores the violent colonial history of looted human remains has revealed.

The skull-cup, fashioned from a sawn-off and polished braincase adorned with a silver rim and stand, was used regularly at formal dinners at Worcester College, Oxford, until 2015, according to Prof Dan Hicks, the curator of world archaeology at the university’s Pitt Rivers Museum.

Hicks, whose forthcoming book, Every Monument Will Fall, traces the “shameful history of the skull”, said the cup was also used to serve chocolates after it began to leak wine.

The archaeologist said mounting disquiet among fellows and guests put an end to the senior common room ritual and, in 2019, the college invited Hicks to investigate the skull’s origins, and how it became what he calls “some sick variety of tableware”.

Hicks said debates about the legacy of colonialism usually focused on how the prominent Britons who profited from it, such as Cecil Rhodes or Edward Colston, had been memorialised by statues, objects or institutions bearing their names.

But he wanted to show how the identities of the victims of colonial rule had often been erased from history because, due to racist ideas of British cultural and white supremacy, they were not considered noteworthy. “The dehumanisation and destruction of identities was part of the violence,” the archaeologist added.

Hicks found no record of the person whose remains the skull-cup was made from, although carbon dating showed the skull is about 225 years old. Its size and circumstantial evidence suggest it came from the Caribbean and possibly belonged to an enslaved woman, he added.

In contrast, the chalice’s British owners were well-documented. The cup was donated to Worcester College in 1946 by a former student, George Pitt-Rivers, whose name is inscribed on its silver rim. A eugenicist, he was interned by the British government during the second world war due to his support for the fascist leader Oswald Mosley.

The cup was part of the lesser-known private second collection of his grandfather, the Victorian British soldier and archaeologist Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers, who founded the Pitt Rivers Museum in 1884.

The elder Pitt Rivers bought the skull-cup at a Sotheby’s auction that same year. The listing shows it then had a wooden stand with a Queen Victoria shilling inlaid underneath. Silver hallmarks indicate it was made in 1838, the year of her coronation.

The seller was Bernhard Smith, a lawyer and graduate of Oriel College, Oxford, who mainly collected weaponry and armour. Hicks speculated that he received it as a gift from his father, who served with the Royal Navy in the Caribbean.

The Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy, chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Afrikan reparations, said: “It is sickening to think of Oxford dons, sitting in this bastion of privilege, itself enriched by the proceeds of centuries of colonial violence and extraction, swilling drink out of a human skull that may have belonged to an enslaved person and has been so little valued that it has been turned into an object.”

A Worcester College spokesperson said: “In the 20th century, the vessel was sometimes on display with the college’s silver collection and used as tableware. The college does not hold records of how often this was the case, but it was severely limited after 2011 and the vessel was completely removed 10 years ago.

After taking scientific and legal advice, the college’s governing body decided the skull-cup should be stored in its archive “in a respectful manner, where access to it is permanently denied”, the spokesperson added. “As Dr Hicks acknowledges in his book, the college has dealt with the issue ethically and thoughtfully.”

The book also details other skulls looted from colonial battlefields by prominent Victorians, which were displayed in their homes or donated to museums. These include Field Marshal Lord Grenfell, after whom the tower in Kensington is named, who dug up the skull of a Zulu commander two years after he was killed by the British army in the battle of Ulundi in 1879.

Oxford academics drank from a chalice made from a human skull for decades, a book that explores the violent colonial history of looted human remains has revealed.

The skull-cup, fashioned from a sawn-off and polished braincase adorned with a silver rim and stand, was used regularly at formal dinners at Worcester College, Oxford, until 2015, according to Prof Dan Hicks, the curator of world archaeology at the university’s Pitt Rivers Museum.

Hicks, whose forthcoming book, Every Monument Will Fall, traces the “shameful history of the skull”, said the cup was also used to serve chocolates after it began to leak wine.

The archaeologist said mounting disquiet among fellows and guests put an end to the senior common room ritual and, in 2019, the college invited Hicks to investigate the skull’s origins, and how it became what he calls “some sick variety of tableware”.

Hicks said debates about the legacy of colonialism usually focused on how the prominent Britons who profited from it, such as Cecil Rhodes or Edward Colston, had been memorialised by statues, objects or institutions bearing their names.

But he wanted to show how the identities of the victims of colonial rule had often been erased from history because, due to racist ideas of British cultural and white supremacy, they were not considered noteworthy. “The dehumanisation and destruction of identities was part of the violence,” the archaeologist added.

Hicks found no record of the person whose remains the skull-cup was made from, although carbon dating showed the skull is about 225 years old. Its size and circumstantial evidence suggest it came from the Caribbean and possibly belonged to an enslaved woman, he added.

In contrast, the chalice’s British owners were well-documented. The cup was donated to Worcester College in 1946 by a former student, George Pitt-Rivers, whose name is inscribed on its silver rim. A eugenicist, he was interned by the British government during the second world war due to his support for the fascist leader Oswald Mosley.

The cup was part of the lesser-known private second collection of his grandfather, the Victorian British soldier and archaeologist Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers, who founded the Pitt Rivers Museum in 1884.

The elder Pitt Rivers bought the skull-cup at a Sotheby’s auction that same year. The listing shows it then had a wooden stand with a Queen Victoria shilling inlaid underneath. Silver hallmarks indicate it was made in 1838, the year of her coronation.

The seller was Bernhard Smith, a lawyer and graduate of Oriel College, Oxford, who mainly collected weaponry and armour. Hicks speculated that he received it as a gift from his father, who served with the Royal Navy in the Caribbean.

The Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy, chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Afrikan reparations, said: “It is sickening to think of Oxford dons, sitting in this bastion of privilege, itself enriched by the proceeds of centuries of colonial violence and extraction, swilling drink out of a human skull that may have belonged to an enslaved person and has been so little valued that it has been turned into an object.”

A Worcester College spokesperson said: “In the 20th century, the vessel was sometimes on display with the college’s silver collection and used as tableware. The college does not hold records of how often this was the case, but it was severely limited after 2011 and the vessel was completely removed 10 years ago.

After taking scientific and legal advice, the college’s governing body decided the skull-cup should be stored in its archive “in a respectful manner, where access to it is permanently denied”, the spokesperson added. “As Dr Hicks acknowledges in his book, the college has dealt with the issue ethically and thoughtfully.”

The book also details other skulls looted from colonial battlefields by prominent Victorians, which were displayed in their homes or donated to museums. These include Field Marshal Lord Grenfell, after whom the tower in Kensington is named, who dug up the skull of a Zulu commander two years after he was killed by the British army in the battle of Ulundi in 1879.

A huge 89% majority of the world’s people want stronger action to fight the climate crisis but feel they are trapped in a self-fulfilling “spiral of silence” because they mistakenly believe they are in a minority, research suggests.

Making people aware that their pro-climate view is, in fact, by far the majority could unlock a social tipping point and push leaders into the climate action so urgently needed, experts say.

The data comes from a global survey that interviewed 130,000 people across 125 countries and found 89% thought their national government “should do more to fight global warming”.

It also asked people if they would “contribute 1% of their household income every month to fight global warming” and what proportion of their fellow citizens they thought would do the same. In almost all countries, people believed only a minority of their fellow citizens would be willing to contribute. In reality, the opposite was true: more than 50% of citizens were willing to contribute in all but a few nations.

The global average of those willing to contribute was 69%. But the percentage that people thought would be willing was 43%. The gap between perception and reality was as high as 40 percentage points in some countries, from Greece to Gabon.

Further analysis of the survey data for the Guardian showed that public backing for climate action was as strong among the G20 member countries as in the rest of the world. These states, including the US, China, Saudi Arabia, UK and Australia, are responsible for 77% of global carbon emissions.

“One of the most powerful forms of climate communication is just telling people that a majority of other people think climate change is happening, human-caused, a serious problem and a priority for action,” said Prof Anthony Leiserowitz at Yale University in the US.

Prof Cynthia Frantz, at Oberlin College in the US, said. “Currently, worrying about climate change is something people are largely doing in the privacy of their own minds – we are locked in a self-fulfilling spiral of silence.”

Dr Niall McLoughlin, at the Climate Barometer research group in the UK, said: “If you were to unlock the perception gaps, that could move us closer to a social tipping point amongst the public on climate issues.”

The existence of a silent climate majority across the planet is supported by several separate analyses. Other studies demonstrate a clear global appetite for action, from citizens of rich nations strongly supporting financial support (pdf) for poorer vulnerable countries and even those in petrostates backing a phase-out of coal, oil and gas. A decades-long campaign of misinformation by the fossil fuel industry is a key reason the climate majority has been suppressed, researchers said.

Prof Teodora Boneva, at the University of Bonn, Germany, who was part of the team behind the 125-nation survey, said: “The world is united in its judgment about climate change and the need to act. Our results suggest a concerted effort to correct these misperceptions could be powerful intervention, yielding large, positive effects.”

The 125 countries in the survey account for 96% of the world’s carbon emissions, and the results were published in the journal Nature Climate Change. People in China, the world’s biggest polluter, were among the most concerned, with 97% saying its government should do more to fight climate change and four out of five willing to give 1% of their income. Brazil, Portugal, and Sri Lanka also ranked highly.

The world’s second biggest polluter, the US, was near the bottom, but 74% of its citizens still said its government should do more, while 48% were willing to contribute. New Zealand, Norway and Russia were also relatively low-scoring.

Research has also found that politicians suffer from serious misperceptions. In the UK, MPs vastly underestimated public support for onshore windfarms. In the US, almost 80% of congressional staffers underestimated people’s support for limits on carbon emissions, sometimes by more than 50 percentage points.

“Perception gaps can have real consequences – they could mean that climate policies are not as ambitious as the public sentiment,” said McLoughlin.

Substantial evidence exists that correcting mistaken beliefs about the views of others can change people’s views on many subjects, from opinions on immigrants and violence against women, to environmental topics such as saving energy. This is because people are instinctively drawn to majority views and are also more likely to do something if they think others are doing it too.

“People deeply understand we are in a climate emergency,” said Cassie Flynn, at the UN Development Programme, whose People’s Climate Vote in 2024 found 80% of people wanted stronger climate action from their countries. “They want world leaders to be bold, because they are living it day to day. World leaders should look at this data as a resounding call for them to rise to the challenge.”

This story is part of The 89 Percent Project, an initiative of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now

Harvard University has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, alleging it is trying to “gain control of academic decision-making at Harvard”.

The university is fighting back against the administration’s threat to review about $9bn in federal funding after Harvard officials refused to comply with a list of demands that included appointing an outside overseer to ensure that the viewpoints being taught at the university were “diverse”. Harvard is specifically looking to halt a freeze on $2.2bn in grants.

The lawsuit comes as the Trump administration has sought to force changes at multiple Ivy League institutions after months of student activism centered around the war in Gaza. The administration has painted the campus protests as anti-American, and the institutions as liberal and antisemitic, which Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, refuted.

White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in a statement that the “gravy train of federal assistance” to institutions like Harvard was coming to an end.

“Taxpayer funds are a privilege, and Harvard fails to meet the basic conditions required to access that privilege,” Fields said.

In a letter announcing the university’s decision to reject Trump’s demands, Garber wrote: “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.”

Garber, in a statement published on Monday, reiterated that the Trump administration had doubled down on its response to the university’s refusal to comply with the administration’s demands, despite claims that the letter indicating Harvard’s federal research funding was at risk was sent by mistake.

“The government has, in addition to the initial freeze of $2.2bn in funding, considered taking steps to freeze an additional $1bn in grants, initiated numerous investigations of Harvard’s operations, threatened the education of international students, and announced that it is considering a revocation of Harvard’s 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status,” Garber wrote.

“These actions have stark real-life consequences for patients, students, faculty, staff, researchers, and the standing of American higher education in the world.”

Harvard is the first university to file a lawsuit in response to Trump’s crackdown on top US universities that is says mishandled last year’s pro-Palestinian protests and allowed antisemitism to fester on campuses. But protesters, including some Jewish groups, say their criticism of Israel’s military actions in Gaza is wrongly conflated with antisemitism.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration had sent a letter to Harvard with the list of demands, which included changes to its admissions policies, removing recognition of some student clubs, and hiring some new faculty.

Last Tuesday, Trump had called for Harvard, the US’s oldest and wealthiest university and one of the most prestigious in the world, to lose its tax-exempt status, CNN first reported.

“Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’ Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!” the US president said in a post on his Truth Social platform.

Japan has imported rice from South Korea for the first time in a quarter of a century in an attempt to address soaring prices and growing consumer anger.

South Korean rice arrived in Japan last month for the first time since 1999, according to media reports, as the price of domestically produced grain continued to rise, despite government attempts to relieve the pressure on shoppers.

The price of Japan-grown rice has more than doubled since this time last year, fuelling demand for cheaper foreign grain, despite the heavy tariffs imposed on imports.

The quantity of South Korean rice, which was sold online and at supermarkets, is still relatively low at just two tonnes, but there are plans to ship a further 20 tonnes in the coming days, the public broadcaster NHK said.

While Japanese consumers have traditionally been sceptical about the quality and taste of foreign rice – Thai rice imported after an unusually cool summer in 1993 largely went unsold – the current crisis has forced Japanese consumers to develop a taste for foreign rice.

South Korea’s rice exports to Japan are expected to reach their highest since 1990, according to the Yonhap news agency, while the crisis has also opened up potential export opportunities for producers in the US.

Arata Hirano, who runs a restaurant in Tokyo, switched from Japanese to American rice last year when a shortage of the domestic grain triggered a steep rise in prices.

Hirano told Reuters that the price of the Californian product he now served had doubled since his first purchase last summer, but was still cheaper than homegrown rice.

And he has had no complaints from diners, including Miki Nihei, who was surprised to find out the rice she had eaten wasn’t grown in Japan. “I had no idea,” she said. “I have no qualms about eating imported rice. Prices have gone up, so I’m always looking for cheaper options.”

In the week to 6 April, Japanese supermarket rice prices reached an average of ¥4,214 ($30/£22) for 5kg – more than double the same period a year earlier.

The trend has forced the Japanese government to take the unusual step of dipping into its vast rice reserves. In March it began releasing 210,000 tonnes of stockpiled rice in an attempt to arrest price rises caused by a combination of record summer heat, panic buying and distribution problems.

Japan had previously dipped into its rice reserves in the aftermath of natural disasters or crop failures, but this was the first time it had intervened over distribution issues.

The measure has had little impact, however.

Last week the agriculture ministry said “logistical problems” meant only a tiny quantity of the released rice had reached shops.

About 142,000 tonnes of stockpiled rice were released in the first auction held in mid-March, but as of the end of the month just 426 tonnes, or 0.3% of the total, had reached supermarkets and other outlets, the ministry said, blaming the bottleneck on a shortage of delivery vehicles and the time needed to prepare the grain for sale.

Japan’s rice stockpiles had already depleted after record-breaking temperatures affected the 2023 crop. Stockpiles shrank again last year, partly due to a rise in consumption caused by record numbers of tourists. Supplies were also hit by panic buying in the wake of typhoon and earthquake warnings, forcing some retailers to restrict sales.

An ancient English oak believed to be Berlin’s oldest tree is suffering the effects of a prolonged dry spell in the German capital, local authorities have said, compounding already significant damage to its once lush canopy and branches.

“Dicke Marie” (Fat Marie), as Berliners affectionately call the tree located in the northern Tegel Forest, has been deprived of essential moisture in recent years as a result of extended periods of sparse rainfall blamed on the climate crisis, according to natural resource officials.

“But we hope that she’ll still be with us for another couple decades or even centuries,” Marc Franusch, the head of the Tegel Forestry Office, told the newswire DPA.

Franusch said the remainder of spring could bring relief in the form of more precipitation but that pruning the gnarled Marie, whose age is estimated at 500-600 years, was not an option.

“We want to be very gentle and prudent in stabilising the tree and its situation to do our best to support its vitality,” he said. The ancient oak stands about 18.5 metres tall, with a trunk about 2 metres in diameter.

Dicke Marie has long been a popular attraction for nature lovers, particularly in the years of Berlin’s cold war division by the Wall, when protected forests offered West Berliners a cherished refuge while the surrounding countryside lay beyond the border in communist East Germany.

But the tree’s remote location at the northern end of Lake Tegel and its diminished, increasingly knotty profile as neighbouring trees overshadowed it have meant ever fewer visitors seek it out, forestry officials say.

Dicke Marie nevertheless was granted National Heritage Tree status by the German Dendrological Society in 2021, the first awarded to a tree in a forest.

Its remarkable longevity had been attributed to its lakeside home, with its roots soaking up the available moisture even during drought periods. But increasingly arid conditions in the region now appear to be taking their toll.

This March was the driest ever recorded in Germany, according to the German Weather Service, and April has seen little improvement.

The vast rural Brandenburg state surrounding Berlin reported only 10-20% of the expected precipitation in February and March, Raimund Engel, a regional forest fire protection officer, told the broadcaster RBB.

Many traditional Easter weekend bonfires in Berlin and Brandenburg were called off this year owing to parched conditions in the region, to prevent uncontrolled blazes. The festivities trace their roots to pagan rituals to banish evil winter spirits.

The Berlin oak’s nickname Dicke Marie is believed to have come from the aristocratic brothers Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt, who grew up in nearby Tegel Palace, after their beloved cook.

The Humboldts gave their own name to Berlin’s “fattest” tree, a 350-year-old oak in the same forest with a circumference of nearly 8 metres.

Germany is believed to have about 100 trees that are at least 400 years old.

Larry David has written a long spoof essay in the New York Times in response to Bill Maher’s recent glowing account of his dinner with President Trump in the White House.

The essay, entitled My Dinner With Adolf, purports to be written by someone who was “a vocal critic of his on the radio from the beginning, pretty much predicting everything he was going to do on the road to dictatorship”. But he agrees to dine with the Führer because he “concluded that hate gets us nowhere. I knew I couldn’t change his views, but we need to talk to the other side”.

The dinner proves an eye-opening success, with the author much tickled by Hitler’s jokes, struck by his warmth and humanity and impressed by his skills as an agony uncle. As he leaves, he tells Hitler he’s pleased he came. “‘Although we disagree on many issues, it doesn’t mean that we have to hate each other.’ And with that, I gave him a Nazi salute and walked out into the night.”

The late-night pundit Bill Maher had dinner with the president on 31 March, and many predicted it would have been a combative meeting. Both men have been frank about this dislike of each other, with Trump calling Maher a “lowlife” and his show “dead”.

But on the 11 April episode of his show, Real Time, Maher described the president as “gracious” and “much more self-aware than he lets on”.

“Everything I’ve ever not liked about him was – I swear to God – absent, at least on this night with this guy,” said Maher. “He mostly steered the conversation to, ‘What do you think about this?’ I know: your mind is blown. So is mine.”

He added: “A crazy person doesn’t live in the White House. A person who plays a crazy person on TV a lot lives there, which I know is fucked up. It’s just not as fucked up as I thought it was.”

In his essay, David closely mirrors Maher’s tone, saying that one of his own jokes “amused him to no end, and I realised I’d never seen him laugh before. Suddenly he seemed so human. Here I was, prepared to meet Hitler, the one I’d seen and heard – the public Hitler. But this private Hitler was a completely different animal. And oddly enough, this one seemed more authentic, like this was the real Hitler. The whole thing had my head spinning.”

He details a joke Hitler makes about his dog having diarrhoea, as well as an even more amusing follow-up: “Then a beaming Hitler said, ‘Hey, if I can kill Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals, I can certainly kill a dog!” That perhaps got the biggest laugh of the night – and believe me, there were plenty.

“But it wasn’t just a one-way street, with the Führer dominating the conversation. He was quite inquisitive and asked me a lot of questions about myself.”

David’s essay was accompanied by an article by New York Times deputy opinion editor Patrick Healy, who confirmed the origins of the spoof.

“Larry listened to Bill Maher talk about his recent dinner with Trump,” Healy wrote. “Bill, a comedian Larry respects, said in a monologue on his Max show that he found the president to be ‘gracious and measured’ compared with the man who attacks him on Truth Social. Larry’s piece is not equating Trump with Hitler. It is about seeing people for who they really are and not losing sight of that.”

David has previously written several spoof articles concerning Trump for the New York Times, including an account of his meeting with Russian agents in June 2016, and a 3am conversation between Trump and his wife, Melania, about the future of Ukraine.

David has also made multiple guest appearances on Saturday Night Live as the Democratic senator and one-time presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, to whom it emerged he was distantly related.