Donald Trump’s paper fortune dropped by hundreds of millions of dollars on Friday as shares in his media firm came under pressure in the wake of his conviction in his New York hush-money trial.

Trump Media & Technology Group’s stock finished the day down 5.3% on Wall Street, denting the value of the former president’s vast stake in the business.

By the time markets closed for the day, Trump’s stake stood at about $5.6bn. The previous day, it was closer to $6bn.

An extraordinary market debut in March by Trump Media, the owner of Truth Social, bolstered Trump’s paper fortune by billions of dollars – and propelled him, for the first time, into the ranks of the world’s 500 wealthiest people – as he grapples with hefty legal costs.

But shares in Trump Media are prone to volatile fluctuations, and Trump is unable to start offloading his stake until September, due to a lock-up agreement.

When New York’s Nasdaq stock exchange closed on Thursday, about an hour before Trump was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in a criminal hush-money scheme, his stake in Trump Media was worth more than $5.9bn. At one point on Friday, as the company’s stock fell, his stake was worth less than $5.5bn. His fortune recovered some ground near the end of the day.

Trading in Trump Media has been prone to fluctuation since its listing. While the stock stumbled on Friday, it rose over the course of the week. The company’s financial returns have yet to match its success on the market. Net losses at Trump Media widened from $210m to $328m in the first three months of this year. Revenue dropped 31% to $770,500 over the same period.

The company has become a so-called meme stock, boosted by chatter and enthusiasm on social media – posted, in its case, on platforms including Truth Social – urging retail investors to buy into it. Some Trump supporters called for others to buy shares the day after his conviction.

The ex-president will need Trump Media to continue to trade at the levels to which it has surged in recent months if he is to raise billions of dollars by selling his majority stake in the firm.

The British ambassador to Mexico was quietly removed from his post earlier this year after he pointed an assault rifle at a local embassy employee, it emerged when footage of the incident was posted on social media.

The Financial Times reported that Jon Benjamin was on an official trip to Durango and Sinaloa, two states with strong organised crime groups, when he looked down the gun’s sights at a colleague, who gestures uncomfortably in the five-second clip.

The firearm presumably belonged to the security detail accompanying the diplomat, who was sacked soon after the incident in April.

The video was released by an anonymous account on X, formerly known as Twitter. “In a context of daily killings in Mexico by drug dealers, he dares to joke,” wrote the account.

Mexico has seen more than 30,000 homicides a year for the last six years – one of the highest homicide rates in Latin America – as organised crime groups fight to control territory and businesses across the country.

Benjamin, 61, is no longer listed as the ambassador on the UK government website.

Benjamin became UK ambassador to Mexico in 2021, having previously held posts in Chile, Turkey, Ghana, Indonesia and the US over a career of almost four decades.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment by the Guardian, but told the FT: “We are aware of this incident and have taken appropriate action. Where internal issues do arise, the FCDO has robust HR processes to address them.”

Diplomatic relations between the UK and Mexico, Latin America’s second-largest economy, have tended to be cordial and uncontroversial. They have been negotiating a new free trade agreement since 2022.

This Sunday Mexican voters appear all but certain to elect Claudia Sheinbaum as their first female president, taking over from her popular predecessor of the same party, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The campaign trail has been blighted by violence, with more than 30 candidates killed and hundreds more dropping out as organised crime groups vie to install friendly leaders.

On Wednesday – the final day of the campaign – a gunman filmed himself shooting dead the opposition mayoral candidate José Alfredo Cabrera in the town of Coyuca de Benítez, Guerrero, before in turn being gunned down by bodyguards.

Neighbors of Samuel Alito and his wife described how a disagreement over political lawn signs put up in the wake of the 2020 presidential election quickly devolved into “unhinged behavior towards a complete stranger” by the supreme court justice’s wife.

Emily Baden says she never intended to get into a fight with Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann, her powerful neighbors who live on the same suburban cul-de-sac as her mother outside Washington DC.

Then a large black car, part of the Alitos’ security detail, started parking in front of her mother’s house instead of theirs, and Baden understood the perils of being an ordinary citizen going up against one of the most powerful men in the country.

The two sides do not agree on much, but Baden, a staunch liberal, and Martha-Ann Alito, a staunch conservative, concur that they began exchanging words in late 2020, almost two months after Joe Biden’s election victory over Donald Trump. Soon after, according to Baden, the Alitos’ security detail began parking a car directly in front of her mother’s house – several houses down from its usual spots either directly in front of the Alitos or across the street from them.

“This happened a handful of times,” Baden now recalls. “I took that as directly threatening.”

Baden and her husband both say that the security detail’s car showed up in front of her mother’s house again two weeks ago, after the New York Times broke the story about an upside-down American flag hanging on the Alitos’ flagpole in the days before Biden’s inauguration – a symbol associated with the January 6 insurrection that sought to prevent Biden from taking office at all.

Baden was no longer living with her mother by that point – she is now a mother herself and living on the west coast. Neither she nor her mother were mentioned by name in the initial Times story. Still, she found the message that this sent disturbing.

“I couldn’t say who was in the car because of the tinted glass, and nobody ever said anything. I took it as a general threat,” she said. “The message was, we could do terrible things to you, and nobody would be able to do anything about it. When it comes to justices at the supreme court, they make the laws, but the laws don’t apply to them.”

Baden’s husband, who did not want to be identified by name, said he, too, remembered a large black security SUV parking in front of their house, most memorably after Martha-Ann Alito confronted the couple in February 2021 and Baden let an expletive fly at the justice’s wife.

“Right after, a security vehicle moved in front of our house and stayed for the remainder of the night,” he recalled.

The Alitos did not immediately respond to a request from the Guardian for comment.

Baden is an unusual witness to the Alito flag controversy and furore it has unleashed, because she never saw the upside-down flag flying outside the Alitos’ house and did not hear about it until the story hit the headlines two weeks ago.

When the Times first contacted her, she said she didn’t want to be in any story because she had nothing to add. That changed when Alito put out a statement saying that his wife had briefly hung the flag in response to a neighbor’s use of “objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs”.

Baden realised this was a reference to her. It both incensed and frightened her.

“He’s lying about many, many things in that statement,” she claims. Contrary to Alito’s assertions, she alleged, it was not true that she had initiated any confrontation. She said it was also untrue that her lawn signs were directed personally at the justice or his wife.

In Baden’s version of events, Martha-Ann Alito first approached her to complain about a home-made cardboard sign that said “Bye Don” on one side and “Fuck Trump” on the other – sentiments found on many similar signs around their neighborhood in Alexandria, Virginia, and in the rest of the country.

Alito took further umbrage after January 6 when Baden erected signs that read “Trump Is a Fascist” and “You Are Complicit” – the latter intended, Baden says, as a condemnation of all Trump supporters, not as a message to the Alitos, who had no direct view of it from their house.

The next day, according to Baden, Martha-Ann Alito pulled up in front of their house in her car and glared at her and her partner (now her husband). The security detail started parking outside the house around the same time, and the dispute continued for more than a month, culminating in the swearing incident in mid-February and a police report that the Badens filed right after.

“This was unhinged behavior towards a complete stranger, who had done nothing except put up a yard sign,” Baden charged. “I became truly afraid of what they might do.”

That fear also made her hesitate about agreeing to be named publicly. She knows how quickly people can be vilified when stepping into a high-profile political controversy, and she has thought of Anita Hill, who tried in vain to stop Clarence Thomas being named to the supreme court in the early 1990s, and of Christine Blasey Ford, who testified against Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings in 2018, also to no avail.

“I was scared for myself, for my mother, for my family, for anyone who shares my last name,” Baden said.

Then news broke of a second flag affiliated with the “Stop the Steal” movement being flown at a second Alito home, and she felt she had no choice but to speak out.

“That other flag sealed the deal for me,” she said. “I thought, if I don’t use my name, I will not be true to myself and my lifelong convictions. I believe in resistance to fascism. My grandpa fought in world war two … he was a person who quite literally fought against fascism.”

Her view of Alito was further coloured by the fact that he wrote the majority opinion in the 2022 Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization – the decision that overturned Roe v Wade and ended a constitutional right to an abortion. She happened to be in Virginia when the news broke, and participated in street protests outside the Alitos’ home, at which point her signs (and almost everyone else’s) were indeed personally directed at the justice.

Now, she feels compelled to add her voice to the growing calls for Alito to recuse himself from Trump-related cases before the supreme court and is willing to testify before Congress, as Hill and Blasey Ford did before her.

“This story is not about me. I didn’t do anything except put a sign in my front yard,” she said. “The story is that one of the most powerful men in the country showed allegiance to an insurrection … I’m horrified by this behaviour, and want to see at least a modicum of accountability.

“If I’m coming forward, it is to encourage other people to resist. I want to galvanise people and let them know they have the power. It truly gives me chills to think how close we came to a coup, and Christian fascists taking over our country. [But] this is still a democracy.”

Juan Merchan, the judge who oversaw the New York hush-money trial of Donald Trump, is facing fresh threats to his safety after false reports about jury instructions have circulated online.

Several rightwing pundits, including a Fox News anchor, have incorrectly reported that Merchan told jurors they did not need to be unanimous in finding Trump guilty in order to convict him, NBC News reported.

“Judge Merchan just told the jury that they do not need unanimity to convict,” Fox News anchor John Roberts posted to X on Wednesday. “4 could agree on one crime, 4 on a different one, and the other 4 on another. He said he would treat 4-4-4 as a unanimous verdict.”

Roberts’s post has been viewed almost 6m times.

Misinformation on Merchan’s instructions have drawn threats of violence, especially after Trump was found guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records in the hush-money trial on Thursday.

On Gab, a social media site popular among far-right users, one person said it was “time to find out where that judge lives and protest as the left calls it”, NBC reported.

Others in pro-Trump forums accused Merchan of treason, and suggested that he should be hanged for his participation in the trial, an echo of rioters at the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by extremist Trump supporters who called for Mike Pence, then the vice-president, to be hanged for refusing to block the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.

In actuality, Merchan repeatedly told jurors that they had to reach a unanimous decision on whether Trump was guilty in order to convict him, but “need not be unanimous as to what those unlawful means were” in the perpetration of any crime.

Trump trial coverage: read more

Prosecutors had alleged that Trump falsified reimbursement records to his former lawyer Michael Cohen, who paid adult film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to bury her claim of having sex with Trump when he was married to Melania.

Prosecutors argued that the hush-money cover-up was apart of a scheme to sway the 2016 election and an attempt to hide Trump’s violation of New York state election law, which bans the promotion of any person’s election to office through unlawful means.

Merchan told jurors that they did not have to be unanimous on what “unlawful means” Trump used, meaning jurors could choose which of the three laws Trump violated in his attempts to win the 2016 election.

In a Thursday interview, Roberts sought to clarify his comments and said that he never meant to suggest that jurors were told they did not need to unanimously convict Trump, the New York Times reported.

Doctors are hailing “off the chart” trial results that show a new drug stopped lung cancer advancing for longer than any other treatment in medical history.

Lung cancer is the world’s leading cause of cancer death, accounting for about 1.8m deaths every year. Survival rates in those with advanced forms of the disease, where tumours have spread, are particularly poor.

More than half of patients (60%) diagnosed with advanced forms of lung cancer who took lorlatinib were still alive five years later with no progression in their disease, data presented at the world’s largest cancer conference showed. The rate was 8% in patients treated with a standard drug, the trial found.

The results are the longest progression-free survival (PFS) outcomes ever recorded in patients with non-small cell lung cancer, the world’s most common form of the disease. They were presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (Asco) in Chicago on Friday.

“To our knowledge these results are unprecedented,” said the study’s lead author, Dr Benjamin Solomon, a medical oncologist at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, Australia.

In the phase 3 trial, 296 patients with advanced forms of non-small cell lung cancer were randomly assigned to receive either lorlatinib (149 patients) or crizotinib (147 patients, of whom 142 ultimately received treatment).

Just over half of the patients were women. In about 25% of them their lung cancer had already spread to the brain when the study began.

The participants all had ALK-positive non-small cell lung cancer. Lorlatinib and crizotinib are both ALK tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs). ALK TKIs are targeted treatments that bind to the ALK protein found in ALK-positive non-small cell lung cancer and stop the growth of tumour cells.

“Despite significant advancements with newer generation ALK TKIs, the majority of patients treated with second-generation ALK TKIs will have progression of their disease within three years,” said Solomon.

“Lorlatinib is the only ALK TKI that has reported five-year progression-free survival, and even after this time, the majority of patients continue to have their disease controlled, including control of disease in the brain.”

The five-year progression-free survival (PFS) rate was 60% in patients who took lorlatinib and 8% in the crizotinib group.

“You don’t need a magnifying glass to see the difference between these two drugs,” said Dr Julie Gralow, Asco’s chief medical officer. “Sixty per cent five-year progression-free survival in non-small cell lung cancer is just unheard of.”

Dr David Spigel, the chief scientific officer of the Sarah Cannon Research Institute in London, a world-leading clinical trials facility specialising in new therapies for cancer patients, welcomed the findings. “These long-term data results are off the chart,” he said.

Most of the patients experienced some side-effects. Treatment-related issues occurred in 77% of patients on lorlatinib and in 57% of patients on crizotinib. The most common side-effects reported in the trial that was funded by Pfizer were swelling, high cholesterol and elevated lipid levels.

Cancer Research UK’s chief clinician, Prof Charles Swanton, who was not involved with the study, said the “groundbreaking” results would offer fresh hope for patients with advanced lung cancer.

“Despite progress in our understanding of the disease, it can be incredibly challenging to control cancers that have spread and there are limited treatment options for lung cancer,” he said.

“Showcasing the power of cancer-growth blocker drugs, this study could present us with an effective way of stopping cancer in its tracks and preventing it from spreading to the brain.

“The groundbreaking results show that over half of the patients who took lorlatinib did not suffer a progression in their disease after five years. In contrast, over half of the patients who took crizotinib experienced disease progression after just nine months.

“Research like this is vital to find new ways to treat lung cancer and help more people survive for longer.”

Donald Trump’s good fortune with his criminal cases ended in dramatic fashion on Thursday afternoon, when a New York jury convicted him of concealing a criminal hush-money scheme to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.

The former president for months had extraordinary luck with his legal problems: one by one, the other three criminal cases became bogged down with intermediate appeals, and none is currently set for trial before the election in November.

In the federal criminal case over his retention of classified documents, Trump drew a judge who has been so slow to make rulings on straightforward issues that it is running four months behind schedule.

In the federal criminal case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, Trump succeeded in getting the US supreme court to hear his claim of presidential immunity, so it is nowhere near ready to go to trial.

And in the Georgia case brought by the Fulton county district attorney, Trump lucked out with the revelation that the top prosecutor had had an affair with her deputy, so there is not even a trial date on the docket.

Such was Trump’s success in playing the judicial system, people close to him joked he had lived up to the “Teflon Don” nickname – nothing seemed to stick – and that there should be a rule where delaying three cases past an election should result in them all being dismissed.

That run of good luck came to a sticky end on Thursday.

Around 4.15pm, Trump strode into the courtroom at 100 Centre Street, cheerful that the jury had not returned a verdict. He chatted with his lead lawyer, Todd Blanche, and the pair giggled together at the defense table.

The mood dramatically shifted 10 minutes later, when the judge told the room he would not be sending the jury home at 4:30pm as he had planned because they had reached a verdict and needed just a bit more time to fill out the verdict forms.

Trump’s demeanor darkened: his brow suddenly furrowed, his eyes narrowed and he frowned as quiet descended on the courtroom. When the jury returned guilty verdicts on all 34 counts, Trump looked miserable.

In some ways, the outcome was not surprising. With echoes of Al Capone, the judicial system in New York has a history of catching up with politically powerful figures who believe they might be insulated from the law.

Trump and his advisers for years had thought there was no way the Manhattan district attorney’s office would even bring a case tied to his hush-money payment to the adult film star Stormy Daniels.

Trump almost forgot about the case even after he was indicted last March, people close to him said. The general belief was that it was the weakest of the cases and would likely be put on hold while the federal cases went first.

The Trump legal team – which broadly consists of the same lawyers across all four cases – were concerned most about the federal cases because they were brought by the special counsel Jack Smith, who carried the weight of the US justice department.

If they had to try one of the cases before the election, the Trump lawyers’ preference was always the documents case, having drawn a judge that Trump had appointed, and the ruby-red leanings of the jury pool of Fort Pierce, Florida.

Rather, they were far more concerned about the 2020 election interference case, because of the difficulty in defending against the core conspiracy charges and their nature might more readily suggest to voters Trump was a threat to democracy.

To that end, Trump’s lawyers mounted a full-court press to have that trial pushed until after the November election. In January, the US supreme court agreed to hear his claim of presidential immunity, and indefinitely paused the case.

That left the schedule open for the New York criminal trial to proceed – and the “zombie case”, as prosecutors inside the Manhattan district attorney’s office termed it, abruptly became the trial with the potential to sink Trump’s 2024 campaign.

Still, even when the case was set for trial six weeks ago, Trump and his advisers thought there was an even chance that it would end with a hung jury and a mistrial. In such an event, Trump had planned to declare that a victory, people familiar with the situation said.

Trump’s advisers believed that a mistrial might even be the political equivalent of an acquittal, and all but guarantee Trump the presidency. Instead, Trump now finds himself forced to grapple with the politically perilous situation of what damage the conviction does to his campaign.

In internal and public polling, Trump has remained notably constant even after particularly damaging testimony during the trial from star witnesses like Daniels and his infamous former lawyer Michael Cohen.

Trump currently leads Joe Biden in five crucial battleground states that are expected to decide the election, according to a New York Times/Sienna poll in May. And Trump had the advantage that voters found the hush-money case the least serious of the four.

But Trump’s advisers concede the polls may be deceptive: voters could turn against Trump now that he is formally convicted, voters could turn against Trump when he is sentenced on 11 July, and voters may not have been well surveyed.

As recently as the day before the verdict, senior officials at the Trump 2024 campaign and his Super PAC were concerned Trump could lose support – and they were in the blind because of the difficulty of accurately polling the effect of a guilty verdict.

The Trump campaign and the Super PAC have internally read little into their own polls after realizing the difficulty in assessing voters’ perceptions without knowing the severity of the conviction and how Trump would react.

Trump’s advisers suggested that ultimately, the conviction could have little effect on voters when they cast their ballots in around six months, an eternity in politics. But Trump was clearly concerned about perception on Thursday, and quickly scheduled a press conference for the morning after.

Madonna has been sued by a concertgoer at her Celebration world tour, who alleges that Madonna produced “pornography without warning” and he “was forced to watch topless women on stage simulating sex acts”.

In the lawsuit filed on Wednesday in Los Angeles and seen by the Guardian, the plaintiff, Justen Lipeles, makes a series of allegations regarding her 7 March concert at the Kia Forum venue in the city. The concert’s promoter, Live Nation, is named alongside Madonna as a defendant.

Lipeles bought four tickets at $500 (£390) each, which stated that the concert would start at 8.30pm. Lipeles’ lawsuit complains that the concert actually began at 10pm, claiming: “Defendants did not provide any notice to plaintiff that the concert will start at a later time.”

The lawsuit continues: “The temperature inside the Kia Forum was uncomfortably hot as required by Madonna who refused to allow the air conditioning to be turned on.” Lipeles was duly “profusely sweating and became physically ill as a result of the heat. When fans complained about the heat, Madonna unreasonably told them to take their clothes off.

“Further, during most of the performance it was apparent to plaintiff that Madonna was lip-syncing.

“During the performance plaintiff was forced to watch topless women on stage simulating sex acts. Plaintiff felt like he was watching a pornographic film being made.”

Lipeles is suing for breach of contract, negligent misrepresentation, unfair competition, false advertising and emotional distress.

Regarding the latter, the lawsuit says Madonna’s actions were “intentional, extreme and outrageous”, and “such actions were done with the intent to cause serious emotional distress or with reckless disregard of the probability of causing … serious emotional distress”.

Lipeles is calling for compensatory damages, along with his legal costs and a refund for the concert tickets.

Madonna and Live Nation have not commented on the lawsuit. The Guardian has contacted representatives of each for comment.

The case has echoes of another lawsuit from earlier in the Celebration tour run.

In January, New Yorkers Michael Fellows and Jonathan Hadden sued Madonna for a late start – but not any alleged pornography – at her 13 December concert at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. After Madonna began the concert at 10.30pm, the pair said they were “left stranded” after leaving at 1am, and the lateness interfered with the following day when they “had to get up early to go to work”.

A statement by Madonna and Live Nation said they would “defend this case vigorously”, saying that the late start was due to a technical issue.

Madonna previously faced lawsuits in 2019 and 2020 complaining of her lateness during the Madame X tour, both of which were dismissed.

Despite the disgruntlement of Lipeles, Fellows and Hadden, the Celebration tour has been well-received by critics and audiences, with the Guardian’s Alexis Petridis writing in a four-star review that her “strengths seem very strong indeed”.

After 80 dates and $225m in ticket revenue, the tour concluded with a free concert on Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro for an estimated 1.6 million people.

Joe Biden’s delay in sanctioning the use of western weapons against targets in Russia has left the Kremlin’s forces laughing at Ukraine and able to “hunt” its people, Volodymyr Zelenskiy has told the Guardian.

In a wide-ranging interview in Kyiv, the Ukrainian president said that the White House’s equivocation had cost lives and he urged the US president to overcome his perennial worries about possible nuclear “escalation” with Moscow.

On Thursday night it emerged that, after months of lobbying, the US had taken a small but symbolic step – and for the first time would permit some American-made weapons to be used by Kyiv’s military to fire inside Russia in its defence of the city of Kharkiv.

But in his Guardian interview, Zelenskiy made clear he needed to be able to use “powerful” long-range weapons that could hit targets inside deep Russian territory – a red line the White House has refused to lift.

The US, he said, needed to “believe in us more”.

Without this green light, Zelenskiy said other allies, such as the UK, may not allow Ukraine to use their long-range weapons either. “Believe us, we have to respond. They don’t understand anything but force. We are not the first and not the last target,” he said of Russia.

“I think it is absolutely illogical to have [western] weapons and see the murderers, terrorists, who are killing us from the Russian side. I think sometimes they are just laughing at this situation,” he said. “It’s like going hunting for them. Hunting for people. They understand that we can see them, but we cannot reach them.”

Zelenskiy also said:

• New US weapons had still not arrived in sufficient quantities to equip additional Ukrainian brigades in the north-east, where Russia is advancing.

• Vladimir Putin was similar to Adolf Hitler, saying: “Putin is not crazy. He’s dangerous, which is much scarier.”

• He had asked the former British prime minister Boris Johnson to lobby Donald Trump in the run-up to a vote in the US Congress in April to approve $61bn in aid to Ukraine, which hard-right Republicans had opposed.

• The UK Labour leader, Keir Starmer, whom he met in Kyiv last year, was a “good guy”. He added, after a pause: “Rishi [Sunak] is also a good guy.”

Zelenskiy’s remarks came as the Biden administration on Thursday relaxed its longstanding policy forbidding Ukraine from using US weapons against targets inside Russia. It gave permission for Ukraine to fire back – but only near Kharkiv, where Moscow has been waging a fresh offensive.

The decision allows Ukraine to use US-supplied Himars artillery to strike Russian soldiers and command and control centres. Zelenskiy’s press spokesperson, Serhii Nykyforov, welcomed the US move. He told the Guardian: “It will significantly boost our ability to counter Russian attempts to mass across the border.”

But the White House insisted its policy prohibiting deeper strikes had not changed. Ukraine would still not be able to use the long-range Atacms system within Russia, it said.

Speaking inside his presidential headquarters, Zelenskiy made clear he wanted to use long-range weapons such as the UK-made Storm Shadow missiles. He said that, despite reports to the contrary, the UK had not given “100% permission” to do so. Thursday’s shift is unlikely to change the position either.

In reality, Downing Street waits on the Americans, Zelenskiy suggested. “We raised this issue twice. We did not get confirmation from him [David Cameron, the foreign secretary],” he said.

A final decision by the UK and other partners depended on “consensus”, with the position in Washington being crucial, he suggested. “You know how it works,” he said.

Biden has long been concerned about the risks of a direct nuclear conflict with Moscow. The US president is likely to skip a peace summit in Switzerland next month, which Zelenskiy has organised. Asked if he felt let down by the US and its leadership, he replied: “I think they need to believe in us more.”

Ten countries had indicated support for the scrapping of “red lines”. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, indicated his backing on Wednesday, saying Ukraine could use long-range French Scalp missiles against hostile Russian military sites.

In the past week Russia has used guided bombs to kill at least 25 civilians in Kharkiv. Yet Ukraine had not been allowed to fire into Russia, Zelenskiy said. Nor did it have enough conventional weapons to equip reserve brigades, which might be deployed to push the Russians out.

“No one is accusing anyone,” he said. “We are where we are. We are fighting, and we are at war, and not at the beginning. That’s why we need to find a way out of the situation every day.”

Zelenskiy noted that western countries at peace had “different priorities” and, understandably, did not share Ukraine’s sense of existential urgency. This meant that “dialogue” rather than action could be frustrating. “For us, time is our life,” he said. “If you don’t go down in a minute [to a bomb shelter] you can be dead. Therefore the attitude to time is completely different.”

He said Russia was “moving faster” than the west in terms of making and supplying weapons for its armed forces. Zelenskiy likened Ukraine to a ship – “not a sinking one” – that had to get to its destination “fairly” and in one piece, saving “as many lives as possible”.

He spoke, too, about the emotional and personal toll the war was taking on the people of his country. “You don’t know what war is until it comes to your house, to your street, to a friend of yours, to someone you studied with or to someone you love,” he said. “Until you have this, the war is somewhere afar.”

During his one-hour interview with the Guardian, Zelenskiy appeared relaxed and positive despite the bleak military situation and a gruelling schedule that saw him visit four EU countries this week. He described Johnson as a “good friend” who “really helped Ukraine”. Asked if he missed the former prime minister, Zelenskiy joked: “He does not give me the opportunity to miss him. He is always here.”

Zelenskiy said he had used Johnson as an “instrument” to reach Trump, after Republicans in Congress spent six months obstructing aid to Ukraine. Johnson had a productive “conversation” with Trump, Zelenskiy said. It was one of several initiatives to get through to Republicans, including to the House speaker, Mike Johnson.

On Britain, Zelenskiy said good relations would continue, whatever the result of the 4 July general election. “He [Keir Starmer] is a good guy … Rishi is also a good guy,” he said.

“It seems to me that the policy of Great Britain has never changed in relation to Ukraine. And it seems to me so important, because the leaders can be changed in different countries, but the most important is to never change the values … We will be working with the choice of the British people, with the prime minister who will be elected by the people of Britain.”

With no end to the war in sight, Zelenskiy said negotiations with Russia were unrealistic. He said a peace deal would be a “trap” since Putin would violate any agreement and “could not be believed”.

Russia’s president launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 because the west had responded weakly to his annexation of Crimea and takeover of parts of eastern Ukraine in 2014, Zelenskiy said.

Russia insists Ukraine has to accept new territorial realities. Zelenskiy said Moscow would exploit any pause in the fighting to “strengthen its muscles on the battlefield” and would strike again, sooner or later. He said the conflict in Ukraine was similar to the second world war, though on a smaller scale, because of the “ideology of Russian fascism”. Putin’s brutal “methodology” was the same as in Nazi Germany, he stated. It featured “mass executions, burials and rapes”.

Russian soldiers even used the “same routes” as Hitler’s army in their campaign to overrun Kyiv and to dominate the country, he said. If Russia won in Ukraine, Putin would seek to further reshape the boundaries of Europe by attacking other nations, , Zelenskiy said. “This is the real third world war.” He emphasised: “I don’t think Putin is crazy. He’s dangerous. It’s much scarier. You see, he will not stop.”

Zelenskiy revealed he reads books about 20th-century history, a few pages before bed, that explore the “mentalities” of cold war figures, such as Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, and relations between the two superpowers, plus Cuba.

There is little prospect that Europe’s biggest war since 1945 will end soon. Zelenskiy was elected in 2019. Elections that were due to take place this month have been postponed because of the conflict. Did he, at the age of 46, have the stamina to carry on? Zelenskiy said that when he became president he promised to be with the people “until the end” and to defend the constitution. It would therefore be unfair to show any weakness, he said.

“I just don’t have the right. It is not worthy of me. And then you are a liar. I definitely wouldn’t want to be a liar, especially for my children.”

The market for carbon offsets shrank dramatically last year, falling from $1.9bn (£1.5bn) in 2022 to $723m in 2023, a new report has found. The drop came after a series of scientific and media reports found many offsetting schemes do nothing to mitigate the climate crisis and biodiversity loss.

The research by Ecosystem Marketplace, a nonprofit initiative that collects data about the carbon market from brokers and traders, found the market had shrunk 61%.

It attributed the contraction to a flurry of scientific studies and media reports that concluded millions of offsets were “worthless”, with some projects linked to human rights concerns.

Each carbon credit is meant to represent the reduction or removal of one tonne of CO₂ emissions removals or reductions, and they have been used by leading companies to label their products “carbon neutral”, or to tell consumers they can fly, buy new clothes or eat certain foods without making the climate and biodiversity crises worse.

Offsets generated by schemes protecting rainforests, the most popular type, lost 62% of their value between 2022 and 2023. These schemes were the focus of a joint investigation by the Guardian, which found more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets from a large sample of projects from Verra – the world’s leading certifier – are worthless, and uncovered potential human rights abuses at a flagship project. Verra disputed the findings.

Julia Jones, a co-author on one of the studies in the investigation and a professor at Bangor University, said urgent reforms were necessary so carbon markets could work as intended.

“The media scrutiny revealing that many projects issuing Redd+ credits to the voluntary carbon market have sold more credits than justified is important,” she said.

“However, I am deeply concerned that some of the recent coverage of the issue gives the impression that the very idea of tackling climate change by slowing tropical deforestation is a scam – this is not true and the idea could harm forests.

“Dramatically more finance is urgently needed to stop the ongoing loss of forests and the vital services they provide – a reformed voluntary carbon market could play a key role in providing that finance,” she said.

On Tuesday, the White House held an event to support industry-led efforts to reform carbon markets, backing initiatives to help companies avoid greenwashing and ensure credits represent actual environmental impact.

The US treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, said companies should be prioritising cuts to emissions, but the Biden administration still wanted carbon credits “to succeed”.

The move comes amid deep divisions between environmental groups about the role of carbon credits in helping companies meet net zero targets.

Stephen Lezak, a programme manager at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford, said people should not turn away from carbon markets.

“The current market for carbon offsets is a bit like a burning building. We need folks to be firefighters and run toward it, rather than walk away and let it burn to the ground. Limiting global warming to 1.5C simply isn’t feasible without having a functioning market for this sort of climate finance,” he said.

Kaya Axelsson, a research fellow at Oxford Net Zero, said: “This is a critical transition moment. Carbon markets will lose relevance unless they radically reform in line with net zero aims.”

Rene Velasquez, managing partner at the carbon markets consultancy Valitera, disputed the size of the fall reported by Ecosystem Marketplace and said there were problems with the methodology.

“As with previous years, their report is incomplete and relies on a survey of market participants to provide confidential trade data,” he said. “The reality is fewer and fewer institutional respondents participate. While I will concede the market retreated, this skews the numbers.”

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The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has threatened to discipline and withhold degrees from at least 55 students involved in pro-Palestinian demonstrations, according to faculty members supporting the students.

Students who were arrested on 2 May when police forcefully raided the Gaza solidarity encampment received letters on Friday from administrators accusing them of violating the student code of conduct and warning them of a range of potentially serious sanctions. In the letters, copies of which have been reviewed by the Guardian, assistant deans write that the students failed to respond to police’s dispersal orders and engaged in “disorderly behavior”, “disturbing the peace” and “failure to comply”.

The students are required to attend a meeting to discuss the “allegations” against them, according to the letters, and “no degree may be conferred until any pending allegations and any assigned sanctions and conditions have been completed”.

The letters further warn that if students do not schedule their meetings by 5 June or miss their appointments, the administration will place a “hold” on their records, preventing them from registering for future classes, obtaining grades or graduating. Some students said “active holds” were already placed on their online accounts, with a “you are prevented from graduating” warning.

The letters also said the university had not made a “final decision” about their cases: “Please note that during our meeting, you will be given the opportunity to explain this situation from your perspective.”

UCLA spokesperson Eddie North-Hager declined to comment, citing confidentiality policies. He pointed to the university’s disciplinary procedures, which lay out a wide range of possible sanctions for code violations, including forced apologies, housing exclusion and suspension.

The threats come as university administrations and law enforcement across the US continue to crack down on student demonstrators who set up encampments in the past two months calling for their institutions to divest from military-weapons-production companies and firms supporting Israel’s attacks on Gaza. New York University recently faced backlash for requiring student protesters to write an apologetic “reflection paper” as punishment.

UCLA, one of the nation’s most prominent public universities, has faced particularly intense scrutiny after counter-protesters physically attacked pro-Palestinian protesters in the solidarity encampment on then night of 30 April. Police stood by for hours as the attacks escalated.

Later that week, police cleared the encampment and arrested members and organizers. The militarized response sparked criticism from faculty across the campus, some calling for the chancellor’s resignation. This week, UCLA graduate student workers also went on strike in protest of the university’s response to protests.

In congressional testimony last week, UCLA chancellor Gene Block declined to answer questions about potential disciplinary measures, but said he wished he had dismantled the encampment sooner: “With the benefit of hindsight, we should have been prepared to immediately remove the encampment if and when the safety of our community was put at risk.”

Graeme Blair, a UCLA political science professor who is part of a group of faculty supporting the students facing discipline, said his group was, as of Thursday afternoon, aware of 55 students who had received the letters, but expected many more could be called into meetings, since more than 200 people were arrested on campus on 2 May.

“These are students who were standing up for something they believe in, and they are now subject to potential life-altering consequences,” Blair said.

Arrested students have not yet been arraigned on criminal charges, and it’s unclear if local prosecutors will be moving forward. Faculty assisting the students have expressed concerns that the disciplinary meetings could place the students in legal jeopardy – that if they admit to certain conduct to administrators, their comments could be used against them by prosecutors.

Vincent Doehr, a PhD student in political science who received one of the letters, said the communications from administrators have caused significant anxiety: “These are students already suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder from having been attacked and subjected to the violence of the state on behalf of the UCLA administration, and now they have to go through another disciplinary process.”

Doehr said he believed the administration’s response not to be grounded in concerns over student safety, but in a desire to discourage pro-Palestinian activism. “The university wants to silence students speaking about a genocide,” he said.

Marie Salem, a graduate student and media liaison for the encampment, who also received one of the letters, described the disciplinary process as an “intimidation tactic” and said targeted students felt a “sense of abandonment”. She said: “It’s the same abandonment that students felt when the camp was being attacked by counter-protesters and then police.”

Salem reiterated protesters’ demands that the university issue disclosures about its financial ties: “This shows us that the university again would rather hurt their students than even consider divesting.”

The process was particularly stressful for graduating seniors, students on scholarships and international students with visas, said Nour Joudah, professor in Asian American studies, who is part of a UCLA Faculty for Justice in Palestine group and is supporting students facing discipline. The Palestinian professor, who has lost family in Gaza, urged the administration to engage with students’ divestment demands, which they have continued to push despite risk of discipline.

“Even when their physical safety is under threat, when they are being arrested and subjected to code-of-conduct meetings, they continue to not center themselves and to recenter Gaza – to insist that the most and only important things is the end to genocide and that the university not be complicit in the Israeli occupation.”