Donald Trump’s administration has offered fossil fuel companies an extraordinary opportunity to evade air pollution rules by simply emailing the US president to ask him to exempt them.

Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has set up a new email address where what it calls the “regulated community” can request a presidential exemption from their requirements under the Clean Air Act, which is used to regulate dangerous toxins emitted from polluting sources.

Operators of power plants that burn coal or oil, linked to tens of thousands of deaths each year in the US via the mercury, arsenic and other carcinogens emitted through their air pollution, have until Monday to ask Trump to allow them to bypass clean air laws.

“The president will make a decision on the merits” of each request, which can be for up to two years and be renewed, according to the EPA website. Helpfully, the EPA’s site provides a template for these requests, including pointers as to how to successfully ask for an exemption.

Trump pledged as a presidential candidate to repeal environmental laws if he got $1bn in campaign donations from oil and gas companies. While he didn’t reach that figure, Trump did receive tens of millions of dollars from the industry and has said that the US needs to “drill, baby, drill” through unfettered fossil fuel expansion, rejecting the scientific consensus that burning coal, oil and gas is causing a worsening climate crisis.

As president, Trump has set about dismantling pollution rules. Dozens of rollbacks by the EPA have targeted regulations that were intended to save nearly 200,000 lives in the US by 2050, as well as prevent millions of asthma attacks, heart and respiratory problems and other public health harms.

Rewriting these rules will take time, however, meaning that Trump has turned to an obscure and rarely used corner of the Clean Air Act to suspend pollution rules in the meantime. Under the act, presidents can exempt a business from pollution requirements if the technology necessary to meet the standard is not available and that this is in the US’s national security interests.

Environmental groups said that power plants had used technology to lower pollutants for years and that the new emailed exemption was an outrageous attempt to side-step clean air laws. “These safeguards protect the health and wellbeing of our communities and there is no legitimate basis to suspend them,” said Laurie Williams, director of the Sierra Club’s beyond coal campaign.

“The EPA must abandon this ridiculous proposal now, and do its job of holding fossil fuel companies to current air pollution standards.”

The decision to set up the email by Lee Zeldin, administrator of the EPA, was “an extreme and improper abuse of Clean Air Act authorities that only allow for exemptions from vital pollution protections in very narrow circumstances,” said Vickie Patton, general counsel for the green advocacy group Environmental Defense Fund.

“This is a Trump EPA-led effort to evade established limits on toxic pollution that protect millions of people across the US.”

Patton’s organization on Thursday filed a Freedom of Information Act request for all submissions to the portal, including the names of all entities requesting the exemptions. The group has pledged to “go to court if necessary” to obtain the records, and to make them public.

“[T]he American public deserves to know what the Trump EPA and polluters are doing to the air they breathe,” said Patton.

Reached for comment, an EPA spokesperson said: “Section 112(i)(4) specifically states that the president may exempt any stationary source ‘if the president determines that the technology to implement such standard is not available and that it is in the national security interests of the United States to do so’.”

Since the arrest earlier this month of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s main political rival, Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, on what are clearly trumped-up charges of corruption and terrorism, Taksim Square, the city’s biggest tourist site and hub of political protest, has been lying empty, cordoned off by police. In my 50 years living in Istanbul, I have not seen as many so-called security measures on the streets as I have over the past few days.

Taksim’s metro station and many of the city’s other busiest stations have been closed. The regional government has restricted car and intercity bus access to Istanbul. The police are checking incoming vehicles, and anyone suspected of travelling to the city to protest is turned away. Here and all over the country, televisions are permanently switched on so people can follow the latest distressing political developments. For the past week, the Istanbul governor’s office has banned public protests and political demonstrations – rights enshrined in the constitution. Yet spontaneous unauthorised protests and clashes with the police have continued unabated, even though internet access has been restricted in an attempt to prevent gatherings. The police use teargas ruthlessly and have arrested countless people.

We wonder how such outrageous things could happen in a country that is a member of Nato and angling for EU membership. While the world is preoccupied with Donald Trump, with the wars between Palestine and Israel, Ukraine and Russia, what little remains of Turkish democracy now fights for its life.

The jailing of the president’s chief rival, a politician capable of gaining mass support, brings Erdoğan’s strong-fisted, autocratic rule to a level we have not seen before. İmamoğlu’s arrest came a mere few days before Turkey’s main opposition party was expected to formally nominate him as its presidential candidate during a primary. People for or against the government now largely agree on one thing: Erdoğan sees İmamoğlu as a political threat and wants to get rid of him.

İmamoğlu has won more votes than Erdoğan’s own party, the Justice and Development party, in Istanbul’s last three mayoral elections. When İmamoğlu defeated the party’s candidate in the April 2019 election, Erdoğan had the result annulled, citing technical irregularities. The elections were repeated two months later. İmamoğlu won again. Even more, he increased his margin. At the next round of local elections in 2024, after five years in office, İmamoğlu once again defeated Erdoğan’s party candidate and was elected mayor of Istanbul for the third time. İmamoğlu’s electoral track record and his growing popularity have made him the main opposition candidate who could successfully challenge Erdoğan at the next presidential election.

The flip side to all this is that Erdoğan seems to be using the same playbook on his opponent as the one used on him 27 years ago. In 1998, Erdoğan was Istanbul’s elected mayor and a popular figure. The secular and military establishment deemed his brand of political Islam dangerous. He was also imprisoned and charged (in his case it was for inciting religious hatred after reciting a political poem at a rally). Erdoğan was removed as mayor and spent four months in prison.

But his imprisonment and his defiant refusal to collaborate with the establishment and bow down to the repressive demands of the army helped further raise his political profile. As some commentators have pointed out, the jailing of İmamoğlu, who has denied the charges and is also promising not “to bow down”, might actually have the same unintended outcome. It could very well be helping to make the mayor all the more popular.

Yet the situation isn’t quite the same. İmamoğlu is facing a deliberate and determined attempt to remove him from the running. The day before police were dispatched to İmamoğlu’s house, the pro-Erdoğan press and the Erdoğan-appointed rector of the University of Istanbul declared İmamoğlu’s college degree invalid, citing alleged irregularities in his transfer from a private university. Since only university graduates are allowed to run for president in Turkey, this would disqualify İmamoğlu, who has said he planned to challenge the decision. The accusations of corruption and terrorism followed.

The labelling of political opponents as terrorists is a tendency the Erdoğan government acquired after the failed military coup of 2016, when a faction of the Turkish armed forces tried to take over. In 2019, when the Austrian author Peter Handke, who had been criticised for backing the late Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, was awarded the Nobel prize in literature, Erdoğan sternly opposed the decision. Caught unprepared and without a teleprompter, he declared that they gave the same prize to “a terrorist from Turkey!”, in apparent reference to my Nobel win in 2006. I had been due to fly back from New York to Istanbul that day, and I was just about to cancel my return when the president’s spokesperson announced that it wasn’t me the president had been referring to.

A court steered by Erdoğan has now jailed İmamoğlu under corruption charges, but it did not press “terror” charges. Such a charge would have allowed President Erdoğan to install his preferred candidate in the role of mayor of Istanbul – a position his party has failed to win for three consecutive elections – and thus, some fear, he would be able to redirect some of the city’s endless stream of tax income into publicity and propaganda activities for his own party.

In jailing İmamoğlu, Erdoğan doesn’t just sideline a more popular political rival – he also seeks to get his hands back on a wealth of resources he hasn’t been able to touch for seven years. Should he succeed, the next presidential election will feature only Erdoğan and his candidates’ faces plastered over the city’s walls and illuminated municipal billboards.

This is not a surprise for anybody who’s following Turkish politics closely. For the past decade, Turkey hasn’t been a real democracy – merely an electoral democracy, one where you can vote for your preferred candidate but have no freedom of speech or thought. Indeed, the Turkish state has strived to coerce its people into uniformity. Nobody is even talking about the many journalists and civil servants who have been arbitrarily jailed over the past few days, either in an attempt to add heft and credibility to the corruption charges against İmamoğlu or on the assumption that no one will pay attention with everything else going on.

Now, with the arrest of the country’s most popular politician – the candidate who would have won a majority of votes at the next round of national elections – even this limited form of democracy is coming to an end. This is unacceptable and distressing, and that’s why more and more people are joining the latest protests. For the time being, no one can foresee what will happen next.

King Charles required hospital observation on Thursday after experiencing “temporary side-effects” as part of his continuing medical treatment for cancer, Buckingham Palace has said.

The 76-year-old monarch underwent scheduled treatment for cancer on Thursday morning, which required “a short period of observation in hospital”, according to a palace statement.

“His majesty’s afternoon engagements were therefore postponed,” a spokesperson said.

“His majesty has now returned to Clarence House and as a precautionary measure, acting on medical advice, tomorrow’s diary programme will also be rescheduled.”

The king sent his apologies to “all those who may be inconvenienced or disappointed” as a result of his decision to postpone his engagements and reschedule his diary, the statement added.

A source described it as a “most minor bump in a road that is very much heading in the right direction”.

Charles was diagnosed with an undisclosed form of cancer in February 2024 and returned to public-facing duties in April while still undergoing weekly treatment.

He has had a busy week of engagements, including a reception for media and a visit to a soil exhibition, and he is due to make a historic state visit to Italy in 10 days’ time. It is understood that this visit, where the king plans to become the first British sovereign to address both houses of the Italian parliament, is expected to go ahead as planned.

The king had been due to meet ambassadors in audiences at Buckingham Palace on Thursday afternoon and to travel to Birmingham on Friday, but these were postponed.

The king visited the London Clinic, the same hospital where he was treated for an enlarged prostate in January 2024, on Thursday morning.

It is understood the side-effects, the specifics of which have not been disclosed, were temporary and not uncommon with many medical treatments.

He was not joined by the queen during his brief stay, and travelled to and from the hospital by car.

After he returned home to Clarence House, the king was said to be on good form, and was reported to be working on state papers and making calls from his study.

A Buckingham Palace spokesperson said: “His majesty was due to receive credentials from the ambassadors of three different nations this afternoon.

“Tomorrow he was due to undertake four public engagements in Birmingham, and is greatly disappointed to be missing them on this occasion.

“He very much hopes that they can [be] rescheduled in due course and offers his deepest apologies to all those who had worked so hard to make the planned visit possible.”

The announcement from the palace was made late on Thursday evening because the king needed time to consult his staff and medical team after he returned to Clarence House.

Since his diagnosis last year, the king’s diary of engagements is understood to have been developed in full consultation with his medical team at all stages to protect his recovery.

It was decided on balance that it was wiser to cancel the visit to Birmingham, which involved four back-to-back engagements, as a precautionary measure.

Sources told PA Media the hospital visit was not a major development and no further updates were expected on the king’s health, with any minor alterations to his diary that may be required next week being announced in due course.

Charles became king on 8 September 2022 after the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II.

When announcing his cancer diagnosis last February, the palace asked for privacy and only confirmed it was a “form of cancer”.

The king was diagnosed after a “separate issue of concern was noted” and investigated while he was being treated for a benign prostate condition.

In December 2024, the palace said the king’s “treatment has been moving in a positive direction and as a managed condition the treatment cycle will continue into next year”.

When asked how he was that month during a visit with the queen to Walthamstow in north-east London, the king smiled as he replied: “I’m still alive.”

Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa has appointed a new army chief ahead of planned protests on Monday, called by a group of war veterans who want to force the president to resign.

The former major general, Emmanuel Matutu, takes over with immediate effect.

President Mnangagwa has faced calls from his former supporters to step down citing mismanagement and corruption.

Earlier this week Mnangagwa abruptly retired his army chief, Lt Gen Anselem Sanyatwe, appointing him sports, arts and culture minister.

Due to his ruthless reputation, Emmerson Mnangagwa goes by the nickname “The Crocodile”.

He became president in 2017 following a coup against long-time leader Robert Mugabe, and is currently serving his second and final term, which expires in 2028.

Trouble began brewing during rallies of the governing Zanu-PF party last year after reports that Mnangagwa wanted to stay in office.

Despite a recent assurance from Mnangagwa that he did intend to step down in three years, many remain unconvinced.

The criticism about his leadership from within his party and accusations that he intends to cling to power evoked memories of the lead-up to the coup that toppled Mugabe.

While it’s not clear how much public support the veterans have for their planned protests, the security minister has warned Zimbabweans against taking part in the demonstrations.

The police have announced a four-day ban around the capital on the carrying of weapons or any instruments that can be used to cause violence.