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Middle East crisis live: Trump says he is ‘pausing’ planned destruction of Iranian energy sites as he claims talks are ‘ongoing’

Donald Trump said he will extend – once again – his pause on his threat to attack Iran’s energy infrastructure for 10 days until 6 April, claiming that the request came from Tehran and that talks were going “very well”. The US president threatened last Saturday to would strike Iranian energy infrastructure if Tehran did not reopen the strait of Hormuz. Then, on Monday he postponed his threat for five days (until Friday), citing “very good and productive conversations” with Iran on ending the war (which Tehran dismissed as “fake news” designed to “manipulate” the oil markets). Now, he’s pushing that deadline back, again. The price of Brent crude also dropped following Trump’s latest announcement. Oil prices rose to their highest level this week, with Brent crude trading at roughly $108 a barrel after Trump’s cabinet meeting earlier on Thursday. A day after Tehran dismissed Trump’s 15-point ceasefire plan, the US president claimed that Iran was “begging to make a deal,” and that he wasn’t the one pushing for negotiations. Earlier, he told Tehran to “get serious soon” on negotiating a deal to end the war. Trump rejected reports that he was looking for an exit ramp, as oil prices soar and political pressure mounts to avoid the kind of drawn-out Middle East war he once spurned. “I read a story today that I’m desperate to make a deal,” Trump told reporters. “I’m the opposite of desperate. I don’t care.” A US proposal for ending nearly four weeks of fighting is “one-sided and unfair”, a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Thursday. However, Trump said Iran is allowing some oil tankers through strait of Hormuz as a sign of good faith for talks. He said that Iran allowed 10 oil tankers to pass through the strategic strait as a “present” to show it was serious about negotiations to end the war.

Venezuelans deported by US detail fresh claims of torture and abuse at El Salvador mega-prison

A group of 18 Venezuelan men whom the US expelled a notorious Salvadorian mega-prison are demanding that Salvadorian authorities be held internationally accountable for violation of human rights – detailing new allegations of torture, sexual assault and medical neglect. A new petition, filed on Thursday before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, alleges that El Salvador violated the human rights of these men, who were expelled to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot) last year without charge. Human rights groups filed the petition on behalf of the 18 men, who were among 288 Venezuelans and Salvadorians that the US transferred to Cecot in March 2025. The detainees detail a “pattern of abuse, including beatings, humiliation, and sexual assault” while they were incarcerated. “One year later, these men are still waiting for justice,” said Bella Mosselmans, co-counsel on the petition and Director of the Global Strategic Litigation Council (GSLC). “We are demanding accountability for them, for their families and to ensure it never happens again.” In new testimony, the men, who were released from Cecot and returned to Venezuela in July last year, also recount the lasting mental and physical toll of their incarceration. One man testified that he still has scars from the shackles that the detainees were forced to wear for extended periods of time, writing that they “are a constant reminder of the horror I lived”. The former detainee said he is also triggered by loud noises, including the clanking of keys – “because the officials used to bang their keys on the cells to torture us and keep us awake at all hours. The sound of keys puts me into a panic state.” The human rights organizations and advocates who filed the petition have requested that the individuals’ names remain anonymous, given that some of them fled persecution and danger in Venezuela, and remain vulnerable now that they have returned to their home countries. Another of the men said that officials beat him from the moment he disembarked from the flight to El Salvador. “When I got off the plane, I fell, and two riot police from El Salvador picked me up with blows to the ribs,” he said. “They lifted me up by the handcuffs. This was an unimaginable pain.” He was beaten dozens of times during his four months of incarceration. “After each beating I was in severe pain for about seven days, to the point where I couldn’t move or walk properly,” he said. But in neighboring cells, he said, detainees were beaten more than 100 out of the 125 days that they were incarcerated. “We could hear them screaming in pain. “Several times,” he added, “The guards told us that human rights did not exist in Cecot.” The petition echoes abuses that several of the men released from Cecot have recounted to the Guardian and other media outlets, noting that detainees were held in windowless cells with no air conditioning and were made to sleep under the glare of bright lights that remained on 24/7. The detainees staged a hunger strike – which they said they kept up until one of their fellow detainees was beaten and dragged out of his cell “half dead’. Other detainees also staged a “blood strike”, cutting their wrists, “but neither the guards nor the doctors cared”, one of the men said in his testimony. The men also testified that they were deprived of basic necessities including food, water and sleep. Sometimes there was only one tank of water for bathing and drinking provided for a cell with 10 people, the men said – and sometimes there were worms and mosquitoes in the tank. One individual said he had stomach issues and diarrhoea three out of the four months he spent in Cecot. “I don’t know if it was because of the water or the food. I always had diarrhea. The food hurt my stomach so much that I still have a stomach aches,” he said. The men were detained in windowless rooms, without air conditioning, and were made to sleep on metal bunks. Bright lights remained on at all hours. “This was torture,” one of the former detainees wrote. “At first, we did not know if it was day or night. I felt like a chicken raised in a cage with constant light.” Many of the other Venezuelan migrants who were expelled from the US to El Salvador note that they have no criminal records. The US spuriously accused them of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang, the men have alleged, based on scant evidence including innocuous tattoos. After four months at Cecot, 252 Venezuelan men were released and returned to their home countries – where many were forced to confront the same danger and persecution they had fled. In an interview with the Guardian last winter, Andry Hernández Romero – a gay makeup artist who had fled persecution in Venezuela due to his sexuality and his political views – said that after he returned to his home country, it was difficult to navigate daily life back in Venezuela. It had been difficult to find work, he said, because some employers believed the US government’s claims that he was a gang member. The whereabouts of 36 Salvadorians the US sent to Cecot remain “unconfirmed”, the petition states, and their families remain unable to contact them. The petition was filed to the IACHR, a regional body within the Organization for American States tasked with protecting and promoting human rights across the region. It asks the commission to declare that the agreement between the United States and the Republic of El Salvador for the transfer of deportees to Cecot violates El Salvador’s obligations under the American convention on human rights. It also asks the commission to require El Salvador to make reparations to the former detainees, make a public apology and provide resources for psychiatric and psychological rehabilitation. It includes testimony not only by men incarcerated at Cecot, but also from medical workers who corroborated their accounts, from former US officials who attest that the Trump administration knowingly sent deportees to a country with a record of human rights abuses and from former UN special rapporteurs on the human rights of migrants. Most American states, including El Salvador under prior administrations, have complied with orders of the inter-American human rights system. But it is unclear how the current administration in El Salvador, under the autocratic leadership of President Nayib Bukele, will respond to this international pressure. Since 2022, El Salvador has operated under a “state of exception”, an emergency security policy that Bukele implemented as part of his government’s campaign against organized crime. Under the policy, authorities have also incarcerated about 1.4% of the Salvadorian population without due process. “We still feel that there’s fundamental importance in trying to hold the regime to account and in supporting the victims of Cecot and their families and their fight for justice,” she said. Human rights groups within the US have also filed claims and lawsuits on behalf of the deportees sent to Cecot. Last year, the ACLU and Democracy forward filed suit arguing that the Trump administration unlawfully invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act – which grants the president the wartime authority to expel nations of foreign countries engaged in a “declared war” against the US – to remove Venezuelan migrants. Declaring that Tren de Aragua was at “war” with the US, Trump invoked the act to swiftly expel Venezuelan men – many of them asylum seekers with no criminal records – to Cecot. Earlier this month, the legal aid group ImmDef filed claims against the Department of Homeland Security on behalf of six deportees including Hernández. And on Tuesday Neiyerver Adrián León Rengel, 28, filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking at least $1.3m in compensation, alleging false imprisonment and intentional infliction of emotional distress. “The men who disappeared to Cecot are beloved fathers, sons, husbands and neighbors,” said Julie Bourdoiseau, an attorney at the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies. “US and Salvadorian authorities colluded to rip them from their homes and communities without warning, and without any semblance of due process … One year later, these families have received no redress for the unimaginable pain our governments inflicted upon them. That is unacceptable.” The petition to the IACHR is part of a broader series of cases challenging US deporting migrants to third countries – not only El Salvador but also Costa Rica, Panama and Eswatini.

Dolphins, stingers and ‘salt tongue’: an epic ocean swim around New Zealand’s east coast

First he hears a faint chatter coming from the ocean depths, then clicks and squeaks as the creatures draw closer. From the murky edges of his goggles they appear, swift and agile, darting within 10cm of his bare outstretched arms and following him for a time, as he swims hundreds of metres off the coast of New Zealand. Jono Ridler, an ultra-distance swimmer who is 1,254km (779 miles) into his world record attempt for the longest-ever unassisted staged swim, has learned to hear dolphins more than 15 minutes before they reach him and long before his support boats can see them. It is the type of knowledge of another species one can only achieve through spending hundreds of hours in their habitat. Ridler says he can now tell a small pod from a super pod at distance and can sense when they are about to reveal themselves. “Then they are just rushing beneath me, huge amounts of energy,” says the 36-year-old as he takes a break on the Wairarapa coast, three hours drive north of Wellington. “You can really sense their intelligence when you’re in the water with them … there is a lot of value and connection that we can draw from the ocean.” That connection, and Ridler’s desire to raise awareness about the threats facing the ocean, has driven him to attempt this unprecedented feat of the longest-ever unassisted staged swim. An “unassisted” swim means he must only wear swimming shorts, a cap and goggles, and “staged” means he takes breaks on land but returns to swim from where he left off. Two assist boats follow him, providing food and water, and tracking his progress. Ridler began his roughly 1,350km Swim4TheOcean campaign at the northern tip of New Zealand’s North Island on 5 January and aims to swim the length of the east coast. Depending on the conditions, he swims two six-hour stints a day, five days in a row before taking a rest day. He has clocked 428 hours in the water and swum the equivalent of 49 Cook Strait crossings, or39 English Channel crossings. Ridler has battled swarms of stinging jellyfish, sunburn, salt tongue, fatigue and hypothermia. He says it is physically gruelling as much as it is isolating and monotonous. “It can be quite lonely being in your own head for a long period of time – it’s an important thing to try and manage,” he says, adding he has developed meditative coping methods. “I do a lot of counting and following my breath, creating a pattern with my breathing. It almost becomes kind of musical.” It is also difficult being away from his wife, Sarah, and two-year-old daughter Georgie, who live in Auckland. “[Sarah] has made a big personal sacrifice to make it all happen – it wouldn’t be possible without what she is doing,” he says. Ridler is working with Live Ocean, a marine conservation charity founded by sailors Peter Burling and Blair Tuke. The charity is live-tracking his progress. He swims between 18km and 30km a day. Tuke says the scale of Ridler’s efforts are “hard to fully grasp”. “He’s just there, stroke after stroke, minute after minute, hour after hour. It’s relentless,” Tuke said. “But there’s something pretty special about it too. The power of what he’s doing, and the message he’s carrying with him. When you see that in person, it’s pretty hard to put into words,” Tuke said. It is an astonishingly taxing endeavour to sign oneself up for, but for Ridler, it was decades in the making. ‘Drawing people into the story of the ocean’ Ridler was born and raised in Auckland, where he spent his childhoods swimming, snorkelling and “getting dumped by waves”. His early experiences with the ocean were formative. When he attempted ocean swimming in his early 20s he “caught the bug” and his distances grew from 5km to 10km marathon swims. In 2019 he swam the Cook Strait, which separates New Zealand’s North and South Islands. Spending time in the water meant he could observe the changes he was seeing beneath the surface, particularly in the Hauraki Gulf near Auckland. In 2023, he became the first person to swim the 99km from Aotea/Great Barrier Island to Auckland, to raise awareness about the state of the gulf, which has suffered species decline from pollution, sediment buildup and overfishing. “There was this passion for the ocean and desire to want to create change – and feeling a tugging in me to do that – that’s really how this current adventure has come about,” Ridler says. “It’s drawing people into the story of the ocean and getting people to really care about the ocean in a new way.” His swim comes with a specific call to action – a petition to ban bottom trawling, in which heavy nets are dragged along the seabed. “These very fragile ecosystems can take a very long time to grow and if they are wiped through a trawl, it could take centuries for them to recover. It is devastating to see the damage caused for short-term return.” Ridler’s efforts have caught attention – the petition has more than 40,000 signatures, with numbers growing daily. He also managed to secure himself a spot in New Zealand’s fish of the year competition (he came fifth, losing out to a little-known Northland mudfish). In late April, Ridler intends to deliver the petition to parliament in Wellington. But he will need to make the final arduous 111km swim first. “This is going to be the hardest part – the water temperature is dropping every day as we go further south, the conditions get more exposed and the weather is unsettled,” Ridler says. “But it’s doable. It’s very doable. And in the next week, we can have it all wrapped up.”

A smile and a handshake as Maduro case drags Venezuela crisis to New York court

The deposed Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro had a smile on his face as he walked into a Manhattan court with shackles around his ankles and affably shook hands with attorneys at the defense table. But though he appeared at ease on Thursday, Maduro, who was captured in Caracas by US special forces on 3 January, faces a “narco-terrorism” indictment that could land him in federal prison for life. Cilia Flores, Maduro’s wife, who is charged alongside him, was also present at the defense table and both wore khaki jail scrubs. The former strongman had also slimmed down since his last court appearance. Maduro had a neon T-shirt underneath his prison garb and Flores a grey long-sleeve shirt; they both had black-framed glasses. She wore hers throughout the proceeding while he seemed to treat his as readers. While this once-powerful couple’s appearance was at times visually humdrum, it was also a stark reminder of how quickly events in Venezuela moved when the couple involuntarily swapped life in a presidential palace for sparse Brooklyn jail cells. Their presence also touched on an overlap between domestic US law enforcement and Trump’s aggressive foreign policy that has become increasingly confusing during his second term. Maduro and Flores’s arrest came after months of US pressure against him, including attacks on alleged “narco boats” that resulted in more than 100 deaths. The Trump administration also seized oil tankers in keeping with US sanctions against Venezuela. With Maduro gone, the US got to work trying to rebuild links to the country’s oil industry and forging ties with the now Maduro-less Venezuelan government – not its exiled opposition. Before court proceedings kicked off this morning, demonstrators for and against Maduro’s capture shouted on their respective sides of metal barricades. One sign stated: “Free President Maduro.” A man with an amplifier shouted: “This is not a trial! This is a judicial farce!” But several dozen Maduro opponents sang Venezuela’s national anthem, briefly drowning out the pro-Maduro camp’s claims about injustice. Some sported Venezuela’s flag around their shoulders. Others donned caps with Venezuela’s logo. “I’m a Venezuelan. I was raised and born in Venezuela, and I’m representing my community that wants justice for our country,” Adriana Malave said. “They have so many people that still need to be arrested in our country, and they are still in the government. “I hope they’re in jail for ever,” Malave said. “I know that for some people, it’s hard to understand that another country has to go to your country and take the people,” Malave added. “It sounds crazy, right? But for us, it’s the only hope that we have.” In an unexpected twist, Trump’s recent efforts for regime change elsewhere in the world could help Maduro and Flores. The US-Israel bombing campaign against Iran has roiled global oil markets – heightening demand for petroleum outside the region. Judge Alvin Hellerstein, who is overseeing Maduro’s case, pointed to the unfolding oil crisis as prosecutors fight to keep Venezuelan government money from funding Maduro’s legal defense, with the prosecution claiming national security and foreign policy concerns. “We are doing business with Venezuela,” Hellerstein said. “The oil interest in Venezuela has become vital particularly because of the shortages arising from the strait of Hormuz.” While Hellerstein did not make a decision related to debate over the Venezuelan government funding his defense, the ex-head of state remained seemingly upbeat at the hearing’s end. Maduro smiled as he whispered to his lawyers and tucked papers into an envelope. He bid them adieu with a breezy “hasta mañana” (see you tomorrow) while US marshals escorted him out of court.

Trump extends deadline for Iran to open strait of Hormuz by 10 days

Donald Trump has extended his deadline for Iran to open the strait of Hormuz by 10 days to 6 April after saying talks are “going very well”. The president made the statement on Thursday in a social media post, saying: “As per Iranian Government request, please let this statement serve to represent that I am pausing the period of Energy Plant destruction by 10 Days to Monday, April 6, 2026, at 8 P.M., Eastern Time,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform. “Talks are ongoing and, despite erroneous statements to the contrary by the Fake News Media, and others, they are going very well.” Later Trump told Fox News: “I gave them a 10-day period, they asked for seven.” He also continued to declare victory in the war, adding: “In a certain sense, we have already won.” Earlier, the US president had urged Iranian leaders to negotiate an end to the near-month-long war or face further assassinations of senior officials amid intensified action by the US and Israel. That threat came as Israel said it had had “blown up and eliminated” the Revolutionary Guards’ naval commander, Alireza Tangsiri, and several senior officers in a strike on the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas. Heavy strikes by Israeli or US warplanes were also reported around Isfahan, home to a major Iranian airbase and other military sites, as well as one of the nuclear sites bombed by the US during the 12-day war in June. Iran has strenuously denied it is “begging to make a deal”, as Trump claimed, and continued its retaliatory strikes across a swathe of the Middle East on Thursday. Loud booms were reported in Tel Aviv, the central Israeli city of Modi’in and Jerusalem throughout the day as Israel’s air defences worked to bring down incoming missiles. In the Gulf, Iranian attacks were also intercepted. Trump’s new threat was among a series of statements made by the US president in Washington and on social media on Thursday in which he again criticised Nato allies, described Iran as producing “great negotiators” but “lousy fighters”, and repeated his claim that the war he launched last month had already been won. “They now have the chance, that is, to permanently abandon their nuclear ambitions and to join a new path forward,” Trump said during a cabinet meeting at the White House. “We’ll see if they want to do it. If they don’t, we’re their worst nightmare.” He claimed Tehran had let 10 oil tankers sail through the strait of Hormuz as a goodwill gesture in negotiations, including some Pakistan-flagged vessels. Since the war began with an Israeli airstrike that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, dozens of senior Iranian security and military officials have been killed by the US and Israel, as well as political leaders such as Ali Larijani, the veteran head of the national security council. The new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is thought to have been injured, possibly severely, in the attack that killed his father. Adm Brad Cooper, head of US Central Command, said Thursday’s killing of Tangsiri put Iran’s navy on a path toward “irreversible decline” and said the US would keep striking naval targets. Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, said Tangsiri had been “directly responsible for the terror operation of mining and blocking the strait of Hormuz to maritime traffic”. Though the US claims to have destroyed most of Iran’s naval capabilities, Tehran has smaller boats capable of laying mines and anti-ship cruise missiles that can be launched from ashore. Either weapon could render the strait impassable to shipping. On Sunday, Trump threated Iran with a massive escalation of the US-Israeli offensive if it did not reopen the strait within 48 hours. Iran retaliated with a threat to launch broad attacks on energy infrastructure in the Gulf and Israel. Trump then extended his ultimatum until Friday or Saturday. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, accused the US of “double standards” and said international law was “not a tool of convenience”. He wrote on X: “The US backed Israel’s Gaza blockade … yet condemns Iran for defending itself in the Strait of Hormuz. Double standard: Israel’s crimes are OK while Iran’s defense against aggressors is condemned.” Israel reportedly removed Araghchi and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, a regime veteran who is the speaker of Iran’s parliament, from its hitlist after Pakistan, which is emerging as a key mediator in the conflict, asked Washington to ensure they were not harmed, a Pakistani official said. Ghalibaf is reportedly the “top man” with whom Trump said on Monday he has been indirectly negotiating on terms for ending the conflict. Trump said on Thursday he was seeking an agreement that opened the strait of Hormuz and shut down Tehran’s military and nuclear ambitions but suggested that a deal might not ultimately come together. “I don’t know if we’ll be able to do that,” he said of the prospects for a deal. “I don’t know if we’re willing to do that.” On Thursday, Steve Witkoff, Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, said the US had presented a 15-point “action list” to Iran via Pakistan as a framework for a possible peace deal. Speaking at a cabinet meeting in Washington, Witkoff said there were “strong signs” that Tehran was ready to negotiate an end to the fighting A senior Iranian official told Reuters on Thursday that Washington’s proposal for ending nearly four weeks of fighting was “one-sided and unfair” but that diplomacy continued. Iran’s Tasnim news agency, citing an unnamed official, said Iran’s demands included an end to US and Israeli attacks on Iran but also on Tehran-backed groups elsewhere in the region – an implicit reference to Lebanon’s Hezbollah, among others. War reparations should be paid, it said, and Iran’s “sovereignty” over the strait of Hormuz be respected. Analysts said it was very difficult to see any immediate pathway to an agreement given the gap between the two sides and the continuing widening of the conflict, which has directly involved more than a dozen countries from Azerbaijan to Oman. Thousands of US marines and airborne troops have been sent to the region and could be used to seize Kharg Island, Iran’s principal hub for oil exports, or other strategic points in the Gulf. Such a move would mark a significant escalation in the conflict. Ali Bahreini, Iran’s top envoy to UN institutions in Geneva, warned Thursday that any US and Israeli attempt to mount a ground invasion of Iran would be a “big” mistake. The death toll from the war has risen to more than 1,900 people in Iran, according to authorities, and nearly 1,100 people in Lebanon, where more than a million have been displaced. Israeli strikes in Lebanon have killed another 22 people and wounded 110 in the past 24 hours, Lebanese officials said. Israel says its invasion of southern Lebanon is aimed at protecting its northern border towns from attacks by Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant Islamist movement, and establishing a defensive buffer zone. Eighteen people have been killed in Israel in the new conflict. There are fears that if Trump follows through on threats to deploy troops to seize Kharg Island or elsewhere, Tehran may ask the Yemen-based Houthis, who have close ties with Iran, to strike shipping in the Red Sea, through which about $1tn (£750bn) worth of goods passed each year before the war. Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, the Houthis’ leader, did not say whether the armed rebel group would fight alongside Iran if asked to join the conflict.

YouGov withdraws survey said to show rising church attendance in England and Wales

A YouGov survey showing a significant rise in church attendance in parts of the UK has been withdrawn after some respondents were found to be fraudulent. The poll was central to a Quiet Revival report, published by the Bible Society last year, which prompted news stories about an apparent resurgence in Christianity, particularly among young people. But YouGov, which carried out the research in 2024, said on Thursday that the data sample was flawed, with “a number of respondents who we can now identify as fraudulent”. The pollster’s chief executive, Stephan Shakespeare, said: “YouGov takes full responsibility for the outputs of the original 2024 research, and we apologise for what has happened. “We would like to stress that Bible Society have at all times accurately and responsibly reported the data we supplied to them. We are running the survey again with Bible Society to get robust data on this topic.” The report had claimed 12% of adults in England and Wales were attending church once a month or more in 2024, which YouGov described as “a significant increase from 8% in a previous 2018 study”. The data also purported to show a rise in young people’s attendance, from 4% of 18- to 24-year-olds attending monthly in 2018 to 16% in 2024. The Bible Society said it had “repeatedly sought and received assurances from YouGov, regarding both the robustness of the methodology and the reliability of the report’s conclusions” and was “deeply disappointed that YouGov not only made an error but also that it only discovered this so recently”. The organisation said it was only told earlier this month that YouGov “confirmed that it failed to activate key quality control technologies that protect the sample from a wide range of errors and this undermines the reliability of the results”. The Bible Society insisted there remained “a very positive story to tell”. It said in the past year, “we have seen an unprecedented public conversation about Christianity, with countless stories of a spiritual awakening among Gen Z”. The chief executive of Humanists UK, Andrew Copson, said the withdrawal of the data was “both validation and vindication”. “We need to be absolutely clear: there is no revival of Christianity in Britain,” he said. “For almost a year, Humanists UK has taken a rational, evidence-based approach, repeatedly and rigorously explaining why the Bible Society’s claims do not stand up.” David Voas, a quantitative social scientist and emeritus professor at University College London, said YouGov had used a model of online opt-in surveys that was “self-selecting”. “YouGov will say to all, if you would be interested in doing social surveys or polls, please sign up, and once you do a certain number of these polls, we will reward you,” he said. Voas said this led to “bogus respondents” as people can claim to be and do whatever they want. Additionally, he said, the method was susceptible to “survey farmers”; people in the global south could complete these surveys en masse for a small monetary reward. AI also posed a significant issue, Voas said. “AI chatbots are able to do online questionnaires and to pass themselves off as genuine respondents. This is a serious weakness of the opt-in online panel approach.” He said: “The numbers simply didn’t add up. They continued to stick to their guns and YouGov backed them up. So it really is quite an astonishing turnaround that today they’ve admitted basically it was without foundation. “It is extraordinary that here we don’t even have to rely on surveys. We can rely on attendance counts done by the denominations themselves. “This sort of information, misinformation, is just very, very difficult to correct once it starts spreading. And the amount of effort required to correct it is an order of magnitude higher than the effort needed to disseminate it in the first place.” A snapshot of the Church of England’s latest annual Statistics for Mission report, showing attendances for 2025, is due to be published in coming weeks. The most recent report, published last year, showed congregations had grown slightly in recent years although numbers were still below pre-pandemic levels. There were an estimated 1.02 million regular worshippers across the church in 2024, up from 1.01 million in 2023.

IRGC naval commander killed in Israeli strike was hardliner who understood power of strait of Hormuz

Alireza Tangsiri, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) naval commander who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Thursday, was a veteran hardliner with a taste for fiery rhetoric who grasped better than many the strategic importance of the strait of Hormuz, which carries a fifth of the world’s oil and gas. During naval exercises in the Gulf in January, Tangsiri said the Iranian revolution of 1979 represented “a turning point in the history of the Iranian nation and a new dawn for the awakening of the oppressed nations of the world”. Like many senior officials of the IRGC, Tangsiri won his regime credentials as a young man during the bloody 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. He then received a series of promotions, eventually becoming the commander of the IRGC’s maritime force in 2018, where he pioneered the unconventional weapons that would allow Iran to project power and influence in the Persian Gulf and beyond. According to the US Treasury, which sanctioned him in 2019 and in 2023, Tangsiri oversaw the IRGC Navy’s testing of cruise missiles and sat on the board of a company that developed armed drones. Both weapons could now be used to maintain the current blockade of the strait. A third weapon strongly supported by Tangsiri was fast boats – light, manoeuvrable craft that can threaten civilian shipping but also, he hoped, evade the defence systems of modern warships. Last week, Tangsiri dared the US to launch a ground assault on Kharg Island, Iran’s principal hub for oil exports, pointing out the effect such a move would have on oil prices. On Monday, said in a media post that Iran had “prepared the graves of child-killing aggressors”. The head of the IRGC Navy intelligence directorate, Behnam Rezaei, was killed in the same strike on the port city of Bandar Abbas. The commander of US central command, Adm Brad Cooper, said on Thursday that the killing of Tangsiri by Israel “makes the region safer”. Israel Katz, Israel’s defence minister, said Tangsiri was responsible for the attacks that have blocked ships from crossing the strait of Hormuz and described the strike as a “message” to the IRGC: “[Israel] will hunt you down and eliminate you one by one.”

Hungary charges journalist after claims minister was in touch with Moscow

The Hungarian government has filed charges against one of the country’s most prominent investigative journalists, accusing him of spying for Ukraine, as officials grapple with the fallout of allegations that Budapest shared confidential EU information with Moscow. The claims of espionage cap off a tumultuous week in Hungarian politics, in which relations with the EU plummeted to new lows and polls suggested that Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party is still lagging behind in support before next month’s election. At the heart of the latest row were allegations that Hungary’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, had routinely dialled up his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, to pass on the details of confidential EU meetings. Szijjártó first dismissed the allegation, but later acknowledged that he had conferred with Lavrov before and after EU foreign minister meetings about their agenda and decisions, describing such conversations as “diplomacy”. After the leading opposition candidate, Péter Magyar, said that, on the contrary, the allegations, could amount to treason if confirmed, Orbán ordered an investigation into what he called the “wire-tapping” of Szijjártó. The announcement came after a pro-government publication published an article claiming that foreign intelligence agencies had eavesdropped on Szijjártó with the help of a Hungarian journalist, Szabolcs Panyi. The report included an edited recording, made without Panyi’s knowledge, in which Panyi appeared to speak to a source about a phone number used by Szijjártó as part of an investigation into the Hungarian minister’s communications with his Russian counterpart. On Thursday, Orbán’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyás, said charges would be filed against Panyi, who he alleged had “spied against his own country in cooperation with a foreign state”. “More and more Ukrainian spies are being exposed in Hungary,” said Gulyás, echoing Orbán’s campaign strategy to convince voters that Hungary’s greatest threat lies in the war next door in Ukraine. Writing on social media on Thursday, Panyi denied any wrongdoing. “Accusing investigative journalists of espionage is virtually unprecedented in the 21st century for a member state of the European Union,” he wrote. “This is really something more typical of Putin’s Russia, Belarus, and similar regimes.” He rejected the allegation that he had collaborated with any foreign intelligence service in the wiretapping or surveillance of Szijjártó. “On the contrary, I tried to collect and verify, after the fact, information and fragments of information that had emerged years earlier regarding the communication between Szijjártó and Lavrov,” he wrote. “Since 2023, I have been specifically investigating the suspicion that the relationship between Péter Szijjártó and Russian officials may have crossed legal boundaries.” The accusations of espionage come as Orbán and his Fidesz party, who have long faced criticism for weakening democratic institutions, eroding media freedom and undermining the rule of law, face an unprecedented challenge from Magyar, a former top member of Fidesz. As Hungarians grapple with economic stagnation, the rising cost of living and fraying social services, polls have suggested that Orbán and Fidesz are trailing behind Magyar’s opposition Tisza party. The hard-fought campaign is being closely watched around the world, as it could have deep implications for Europe as well as rightwing political forces. Foreign interference has seemingly been rife. Several media outlets have alleged that Russian intelligence agencies as well as disinformation networks with links to Russia are seeking to sway the election in Orbán’s favour while, across the Atlantic, Donald Trump has repeatedly endorsed Orbán and the US vice-president, JD Vance, is preparing to visit the country before the 12 April election. Earlier this week, as it became clear that the Hungarian government was targeting Panyi, one of the outlets that he works for, VSquare, said Hungary’s government was “resorting to authoritarian tactics to target a journalist whose reporting exposes truths inconvenient to the regime”. In a statement, it added: “This is the Kremlin’s modus operandi: a playbook straight out of Soviet manuals written at Lubyanka.” It is not the first time that Panyi, who also works for the Hungarian non-profit investigative outlet Direkt36, has ended up in the government’s sights. In 2021, an investigation found that Panyi’s phone had been infected with Pegasus spyware, along with at least 10 lawyers, an opposition politician and at least four other journalists. A senior government official in Orbán’s party later acknowledged that the Hungarian government had acquired the software.