Joe Biden will announce plans to reform the US supreme court on Monday, Politico reported, citing two people familiar with the matter, adding that the US president was likely to back term limits for justices and an enforceable code of ethics.

Biden said earlier this week during an Oval Office address that he would call for reform of the court.

He is also expected to seek a constitutional amendment to limit immunity for presidents and some other officeholders, Politico reported, in the aftermath of a July supreme court ruling that presidents have broad immunity from prosecution.

Biden will make the announcement in Texas on Monday and the specific proposals could change, the report added.

Justice Elena Kagan on Thursday became the first member of the supreme court to call publicly for beefing up its new ethics code by adding a way to enforce it.

“The thing that can be criticized is, you know, rules usually have enforcement mechanisms attached to them, and this one – this set of rules – does not,” Kagan said at an annual judicial conference held by the ninth circuit. More than 150 judges, attorneys, court personnel and others attended.

The court had been considering adopting an ethics code for several years, but the effort took on added urgency after it was reported last year that Justice Clarence Thomas did not disclose luxury trips he accepted from a major Republican donor.

Public confidence in the court has slipped sharply in recent years. In June, a survey for the Associated Press-Norc Center for Public Affairs Research found that four in 10 US adults have hardly any confidence in the justices and 70% believe they are more likely to be guided by their own ideology rather than serving as neutral arbiters.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

Donald Trump has called Kamala Harris’s statement on the Gaza war “disrespectful” before a meeting with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in Florida to discuss the conflict.

Harris, the US vice-president and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, had seemed to mark a change of tone on the Israel-Gaza war on Thursday after her own meeting with Netanyahu, when she declared she would “not be silent” about the suffering of Palestinians.

Trump criticised Harris on Friday before his meeting at his Mar-a-Lago home, calling her remarks “disrespectful” as he targeted her over an issue that has split the Democratic party.

“They weren’t very nice pertaining to Israel,” Trump said. “I actually don’t know how a person who is Jewish could vote for her, but that’s up to them.”

Right-wing Israeli politicians attacked Harris and anonymous officials have suggested the remarks could make it more difficult to conclude a ceasefire deal.

“I think to the extent that Hamas understands there’s no daylight between Israel and the United States, that expedites the deal,” said Netanyahu to reporters at his meeting with Trump. “And I would hope that those comments don’t change that.”

A Harris aide rejected a report in the Times of Israel that a senior official had said that Harris’ criticism would hinder the conclusion of a deal.

“I don’t know what they’re talking about,” a Harris aide told CNN.

Photographs showed Trump warmly greeting Netanyahu, who is concluding a one-week visit to the US that has been marked by large protests against the war. People stood along the route used by Netanyahu’s motorcade to visit Trump, holding up signs that read: “Ceasefire now” and “Convicted fellon [sic] invites a war criminal”.

Before the meeting, Netanyahu said he believed military pressure on Hamas had created “movement” in ceasefire talks, and that he would send a team to an upcoming round of negotiations in Rome. “Time will tell if we’re closer to a ceasefire deal,” he said.

The meeting is their first since Trump left the White House in 2020. The men have had a strained relationship in the past after Netanyahu congratulated Joe Biden on his victory in the 2020 election, a vote that Trump has claimed, without evidence, was manipulated. “Bibi could have stayed quiet. He has made a terrible mistake,” Trump said at the time. “Fuck him.”

On Friday, the two appeared to have reconciled. “We’ve always had a good relationship,” Trump told reporters before the meeting.

The two were political allies in the past. Trump largely gave Netanyahu carte blanche during his first term in office, ADD moving the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. He told Fox News this week that Israel should finish the war and bring back the hostages “fast”. “They are getting decimated with this publicity, and you know Israel is not very good at public relations,” Trump told the broadcaster.

Harris has tried to thread the needle of continuing the Biden administration’s policy of support for Israel while assuaging growing anger among Democrats about the humanitarian toll of the conflict that has killed 39,000 Palestinians. Nearly half the Democrats in Congress skipped Netanyahu’s speech in the House of Representatives, and dozens openly said they were boycotting it because of the war.

Harris met Netanyahu on Thursday at the White House shortly after the prime minister had sat down with Joe Biden. The separate meetings highlighted how the presumptive Democratic nominee has become increasingly independent since launching her presidential campaign.

At the same time, aides tried to play down the potential for change between Biden and Harris on Israel. “[Biden’s] and [Harris’s] message to PM Netanyahu was the same: it’s time to get the hostage and ceasefire deal done,” wrote Phil Gordon, Harris’s national security adviser.

Harris called the meeting “frank and constructive”, and said “Israel has a right to defend itself, and how it does so matters”. She indicated that she would not halt military aid to Israel because she would “always ensure that Israel is able to defend itself”.

But she went further than other administration officials in criticising how Israel has prosecuted the war in Gaza, bolstering hopes she may, at least rhetorically, give more voice to the humanitarian concerns of Palestinians.

She said she had expressed her “serious concern about the scale of human suffering in Gaza, including the death of far too many innocent civilians, and I made clear my serious concern about the dire humanitarian situation there”.

“What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating – the images of dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third or fourth time. We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering. And I will not be silent.”

Harris did not say how Netanyahu responded to the Biden administration’s offer of a three-part ceasefire that would begin with a withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces from population centres and some hostages being released. She did not take questions from reporters following the remarks.

“There has been hopeful movement in the talks to secure an agreement on this deal,” Harris said. “And as I just told prime minister Netanyahu, it is time to get this deal done. So, to everyone who has been calling for a ceasefire and to everyone who yearns for peace, I see you and I hear you.”

The Democratic mayor of Dearborn, Abdullah Hammoud, said in an interview with Michigan public radio: “Many of us are waiting to see what policy platform Harris puts forward.” Hammoud has been outspoken on Gaza in a state where 13.2% voted “uncommitted” in this year’s Democratic primary in a protest against Biden’s policy towards Israel.

“In the conversations that we have had I have found her to be sympathetic and empathetic,” he said. “I’ve found her to be someone that wants to listen … obviously there’s much that remains to be seen.”

A senior administration official said before the meetings with Biden and Harris that the “framework of the deal is basically there” but that there are “some very serious implementation issues that still have to be resolved”.

“There are some things we need from Hamas, and there are some things we need from the Israeli side, and I think you’ll see that play out here over the course of the coming week,” the official said.

Following the success of a virtual call to mobilize Black women voters for Kamala Harris, a similar event with more than 160,000 attendees was held on Thursday aimed at white women, and appeared to break records.

White women will be a key demographic for the Democrats to win over this election.

The presidential campaign of Harris, who would become America’s first female president if she were to win for the Democrats in November, and would become the first Black woman and south Asian woman to be a major party’s presidential candidate if she is confirmed at the Democratic national convention next month, has taken off quickly since Joe Biden announced last Sunday he would step aside from his re-election campaign.

“It’s our turn to show up. So that’s what we’re doing. Hold this date and time,” read the virtual flyer for an event calling for white women – the majority of whom tend to vote Republican – to mobilize for Harris shared widely on social media.

“White Women: Answer the Call”, a Zoom call inspired by the call for Black women held earlier this week, saw 164,000 white women join, reportedly setting a world record as the largest Zoom meeting in history. Nearly $2m was raised for Harris in less than two hours on Thursday night.

The Zoom call that started it all was hosted on Sunday by Win With Black Women, a group of Black women leaders and organizers, within hours of Biden’s decision, and saw an astonishing 44,000 participants, raising more than $1.5m for Harris’s budding campaign.

The tens of thousands of those who couldn’t access that call because it was at capacity streamed it through other platforms such as Twitch, Clubhouse and YouTube.

It was just one of several calls hosted by the group since 2020, when it was founded by strategist Jotaka Eaddy.

A Win With Black Men call also inspired by the call with Black women raised more than $1.3m to support Harris from more than 17,000 donors on Monday.

Shannon Watts, a prominent gun control activist, organized Thursday’s event, which featured speakers including actor Connie Britton, former US soccer star Megan Rapinoe, the US House representative Lizzie Fletcher and the musician Pink. The group had raised more than $8.5m by Friday afternoon, Watts tweeted.

Exit polls found 52% of white women eligible to vote in 2016 cast a ballot for Donald Trump, a figure which likely helped tilt the election in Trump’s favor. At the time, he was running against Hillary Clinton, who hoped to be the first female president. In 2020, the majority of white women voted for Trump again.

“A majority of white women have voted for the Republican candidate since the 2000 presidential election when white women were almost equally split between Democrat Al Gore and Republican victor, George W Bush,” according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

“In contrast, a large majority of Black, Latinx and Asian women have supported the Democratic candidate for the entirety of the time period in which data disaggregated by gender and race has been available.”

Watts said she hopes history will not repeat itself.

“Fellow white women: we can and have to fix this, and that starts with mobilizing like Black women,” Watts wrote on Instagram ahead of the call. She linked to a Substack post she wrote, which read in part: “White women voting for Republicans, even when it appears to be against their best interests, is a complex phenomenon influenced by privilege, systemic racism and sexism, religious affiliations and, of course, the patriarchy.

“But we’re not a monolithic group; our voting patterns are typically divided along lines of religion, education and marital status, and that division makes us not only a crucial voting bloc, but an unpredictable one – even small shifts in our voting behavior can have significant impacts on election outcomes.”

Watts added: “In other words, if we start doing the work right now, we can create a shift in voting momentum that will help Black women elect Vice-President Harris as president in just 100 days.”

Members of Israel’s rightwing government have hit back at Kamala Harris over her demands for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza after she met Benjamin Netanyahu during his US visit.

After a brief meeting with the Israeli prime minister, which Harris described as “frank and constructive”, the US vice-president and presidential candidate said it was “time for this war to end, and end in a way where Israel is secure, all the hostages are released, the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can exercise their right to freedom, dignity and self-determination”.

An unnamed Israeli official accused Harris of endangering a potential deal to free Israeli and dual-national hostages in Gaza. “Hopefully the remarks Harris made in her press conference won’t be interpreted by Hamas as daylight between the US and Israel, thereby making a deal harder to secure,” the Israeli media reported the official as saying.

Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who this week endorsed Donald Trump’s candidacy, immediately joined the fray, tweeting: “There will be no truce, Madam Candidate.”

Ben-Gvir previously tweeted in support of Netanyahu’s fiery speech to Congress this week, where the prime minister avoided mention of a ceasefire, lashed out at the international criminal court and claimed “victory is in sight”.

Netanyahu’s visit, his first abroad since the 7 October attacks by Hamas and other militants that killed 1,200 people and 250 people were taken hostage, has been polarising in Washington and at home since his ministerial jet left the runway in Tel Aviv.

While his supporters lauded his speech to Congress, in particular his attacks on Iran, a growing chorus of critics as well as many of the hostages’ families expressed disappointment that Netanyahu had failed to declare a ceasefire and hostage deal while in Washington and also further delayed dispatching Israeli negotiators, due in Doha earlier this week.

Netanyahu is expected to meet Trump at his Mar-a-Lago residence on Friday, amid speculation in the Israeli media that he will remain in Florida to celebrate the birthday of his son Yair, who lives in Miami.

Xavier Abu Eid, a Palestinian political analyst, said Netanyahu’s speech only deepened animosity towards him. “I don’t think anyone believed a word of what Netanyahu said … he didn’t speak about policy, it was just a combination of slogans. It was insulting not only to the Palestinian victims of this war, but to American citizens demonstrating for Palestinian rights,” he said.

Yair Lapid, a former Israeli foreign minister, also criticised Netanyahu’s speech. “We heard Netanyahu talking about October 7 as if he had no idea who was the prime minister and who was responsible for the disaster,” he said on X. “Netanyahu had the opportunity to announce that he accepts the deal and returns the kidnapped before they all die in the tunnels. He didn’t do it.”

Families and supporters of some of the 114 hostages still held in Gaza expressed outrage at the lack of a ceasefire declaration.

Israel’s Hostages Families Forum demanded an urgent meeting with hostage negotiators, calling the delays in sending Israeli mediators to Doha “deliberate sabotage of the chance to bring our loved ones back”.

The group demanded that the Mossad, the intelligence agency in charge of negotiations, “provide an honest report to the Israeli public about who is obstructing the deal and why”.

Speaking at a rally in Tel Aviv this the week, the father of one hostage, Liri Elbag, addressed the prime minister. “Everyone knows the story with Mr Netanyahu … except for one thing, when there will be a deal … Even your negotiation team doesn’t know,” he said.

Einav Zanguaker, the mother of another hostage, Matan Zangauker, described Netanyahu’s visit to the US as a “public relations campaign”.

“Instead of declaring in Congress that he accepts the deal on the table, Netanyahu is preventing the implementation of the deal for personal reasons,” she told Haaretz.

Daniel Levy, a former Israeli negotiator, said the families of the hostages were divided, with some backing a deal and others agreeing with Netanyahu’s approach that military pressure was the only way to force an agreement from Hamas.

“This reflects the split in Israel between the Netanyahu echo chamber and what is outside of it, which now includes most of the military leadership – who, unlike Bibi, want a deal,” he said.

The “true purpose” of Netanyahu’s visit, Levy said, was to assess whether the Biden-Harris administration would continue to blame Hamas if talks failed, despite indications that Harris would strike a different tone on the war in Gaza.

Trump, before his meeting with Netanyahu, also demanded an immediate ceasefire, although his remarks drew no response from Netanyahu’s rightwing backers.

The former president told Fox News he wanted Netanyahu to “finish up and get it done quickly … because they are getting decimated with this publicity”. He claimed the 7 October attacks would not have happened under his presidency, adding: “Israel is not very good at public relations.”

Abu Eid said: “It’s clear for Netanyahu and those around him that they would prefer a Trump presidency, not even Republican, but Trump. But what kind of answers he will get when they meet are unclear.”

• Ukrainian missile forces struck a Russian military airfield in Crimea that had been used for long-range attacks, Ukraine said on Friday, in the latest in a series of blows to the Russian military on the occupied peninsula. Russia’s Saky airfield in western Crimea was targeted, the Ukrainian military’s general staff said, adding it was assessing the aftermath. “This is one of the operational airfields that Russia uses to control the airspace, in particular the Black Sea, and for launching airstrikes on Ukrainian territory.” There was no immediate comment from Russia’s defence ministry or local Moscow-installed officials.

• Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, implicitly acknowledged the strike in his nightly video address on Friday, commending “our soldiers who are striking Russian bases and logistics on occupied territory”. He said: “To our guys, our soldiers, I thank you for your accuracy.” Ukraine claims to have struck a string of Russian air defence systems deployed in Crimea, such as S-300 and S-400 units, in recent months.

• Russian air defences intercepted 12 Ukrainian drones in the space of an hour late on Friday over southern Russia’s border region of Bryansk, the regional governor, Alexander Bogomaz, said on Telegram. There were no casualties or serious damage reported. Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Belgorod region, also on Ukraine’s border further to the south-east, said three drone attacks and a number of shelling incidents had smashed windows and caused some other damage to buildings.

• Russia has issued sentences of up to 22 years to a string of people convicted of treason and “terrorism” charges linked to Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine. A military court in Moscow jailed two men on Friday for allegedly plotting to blow up fuel tanks at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on orders from Ukraine’s secret services. The men, Mikhail Dariy and Ilya Kovylkov, were sentenced to 22 years and 15 years respectively on “terrorism” and other charges. Dariy said he did not go through with the planned attack because he wanted to minimise civilian casualties, the independent SOTAvision media outlet reported. Prosecutors said Ukrainian intelligence officers offered the men $2,000 to carry out the attack using a drone, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported.

• Two other men were convicted in separate cases of trying to join the Freedom of Russia Legion, a unit of pro-Kyiv fighters that includes Russian citizens and has made armed border incursions into Russian territory throughout the war. A military court in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don sentenced Ivan Kovtunovsky, 23, to 11 years for plotting to commit treason and join a “terrorist organisation”. In Moscow, a military court sentenced another man, Vyacheslav Lutor, 34, to 10 years for attempting to join the same unit, the Interfax news agency reported, citing Russia’s FSB security service. It said Lutor was detained after buying an air ticket to Turkey in an attempt to travel to Ukraine and had taken photos of an “industrial facility” in St Petersburg that could have been a target “for future Ukrainian drone attacks”.

• A former senior Russian defence official has been arrested and charged with corruption in the latest high-profile incident in an ongoing purge within the country’s military top brass. Dmitry Bulgakov, who was a deputy defence minister in charge of military logistics for almost 15 years until he was dismissed in September 2022, was detained by the FSB security service on Friday and placed in the notorious Lefortovo prison in Moscow. He was widely blamed for the Russian army’s logistical failures during the early months of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which left troops severely undersupplied and stalled Moscow’s advances. Bulgakov – the recipient of several top military and civilian awards including the Hero of Russia award, the country’s highest honour – was one of the longest-serving defence officials.

• A Ukrainian court has remanded an 18-year-old man in custody over the murder of a nationalist former lawmaker, state media reported. Iryna Farion, a divisive hardline campaigner against the use of Russian language, was shot near her flat in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv on 19 July. A Lviv court on Friday ordered the suspect, who gave his name as Vyacheslav Zinchenko, to be remanded in custody for at least 60 days, the state-run Suspline media outlet reported. Zinchenko was arrested this week in Dnipro, 800km (500 miles) east of Lviv. Investigators said they were working to determine the motive behind the attack. The interior minister, Igor Klymenko, said he was inclined to believe the shooter had acted on orders.

• The US Treasury secretary said “things look good” for Group of Seven wealthy democracies to agree the terms of a $50bn loan to Ukraine backed by Russian assets by October. Janet Yellen told Reuters on Friday on the sidelines of a G20 finance leaders meeting in Brazil that talks to advance the loan were constructive, including over US demands for reassurances that the assets would stay frozen for a longer period of time. The $50bn loan, agreed in principle by G7 leaders in June, would be serviced with proceeds generated by about $300bn of Russian central bank assets frozen in the west after Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

• Slovakia said on Friday it had offered a technical solution to Ukraine to restore stopped Russian oil supplies to Slovak and Hungarian refineries, after warnings that a partial halt could lead to fuel shortages as early as September. Eastern EU members Slovakia and Hungary have been hit by a stop in flows from Russian group Lukoil via Ukraine after Kyiv imposed sanctions on the company. Slovakia’s government office said the prime minister, Robert Fico, had spoken to his Ukrainian counterpart, Denys Shmyhal, on Friday and that Fico “proposed to Ukrainian partners a technical solution in which several states including Slovakia would have to participate”, without giving more details.

• A German man sentenced to death in Belarus has appeared on state television in the country, in tears and begging the German government to intervene in his case. “Mr Scholz, please, I am still alive … it is not yet too late,” said Rico Krieger, who was pictured handcuffed inside a cell, appealing to the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz. Authorities in Belarus claim that Krieger, 30, travelled to the country last autumn on the orders of Ukrainian intelligence, with the goal of carrying out a terrorist attack on a railway line.

A Ukrainian court has remanded an 18-year-old man in custody over the murder of a nationalist former lawmaker, state media reported.

Iryna Farion – a divisive hardline campaigner against the use of Russian language – was shot near her flat in the western city of Lviv on 19 July.

A Lviv court on Friday ordered the suspect, who gave his name as Vyacheslav Zinchenko, to be remanded in custody for at least 60 days, the state-run Suspline media outlet reported.

Zinchenko was arrested this week in Dnipro, 800km (500 miles) east of Lviv.

Investigators said they are working to determine the motive behind the attack.

Interior minister Igor Klymenko said they were inclined to believe the shooter had acted on orders.

Farion, a language professor, had served in Ukraine’s parliament for the ultra-nationalist Svoboda party and became well-known for calling out public figures for speaking Russian instead of Ukrainian.

Russian was widely spoken across Ukraine, particularly in the east, before Moscow invaded in February 2022. Many people have since stopped using Russian and officials have moved to promote wider use of Ukrainian.

Farion was a professor at Lviv’s Institute of the Humanities and Social Sciences, specialising in the Ukrainian language, and taught online classes.

She was also a social media blogger and frequently appeared on television.

She was fired from her academic post last year after students protested about comments Farion made in a TV interview, when she had insulted some military brigades, including the revered Azov unit, because soldiers were speaking Russian.

A court later ordered her reinstatement.

Mourners filled the streets of Lviv on Monday for her funeral, heaping flowers at the spot where she was shot, where a blood stain was still visible.

An “egregious” refusal by successive Canadian governments to honor a key treaty signed with Indigenous nations made a “mockery” of the deal and deprived generations of fair compensation for their resources, Canada’s top court has ruled.

But while the closely watched decision will likely yield billions in payouts, First Nation chiefs say the ruling adds yet another hurdle in the multi-decade battle for justice.

In a scathing and unanimous decision released on Friday, Canada’s supreme court sharply criticized both the federal and Ontario governments for their “dishonourable” conduct around a 174-year-old agreement, which left First Nations people to struggle in poverty while surrounding communities, industry and government exploited the abundant natural resources in order to enrich themselves.

“For almost a century and a half, the Anishinaabe have been left with an empty shell of a treaty promise,” the court wrote in the landmark ruling.

The stark language reflects the enduring legacy of the colonial project first envisioned by the British government and continued after Canada gained independence and offers yet another example of major cases tilting towards Indigenous peoples. The court decision to highlight “egregious” ways in which governments have treated their agreements with nations could have far-reaching consequences, both for the affected communities and the country.

The case centered on a treaty signed in 1850 between the British Crown and a group of Anishinaabe nations on the shores of Lakes Huron and Superior. Known as the Robinson Treaties, the agreements, covering 35,700 sq miles (92,400 sq km) of land, included a rare “augmentation clause” that promised to increase annual payments “from time to time” as the land generated more wealth – “if and when” that payment could be made without the Crown incurring a loss.

Over the next 174 years, the lands and waters covered by the deal generated immense profits for companies – and substantial revenues for the province of Ontario. But in 1874, the annuities were capped in at $4 a person and never increased.

“Today, in what can only be described as a mockery of the Crown’s treaty promise to the Anishinaabe of the upper Great Lakes, the annuities are distributed to individual treaty beneficiaries by giving them $4 each,” the court wrote, singling out the “shocking” figure paid to beneficiaries. “The Crown has severely undermined both the spirit and substance of the Robinson Treaties.”

Among the key issues the court tackled was the novel “augmentation clause” in the treaty. The justices said that even though the treaty does not promise to pay a certain sum of money, “no party doubts that the Crown was able to increase the annuities beyond $4 per person without incurring loss, and that it should have exercised its discretion to do so.”

Finding the nation-to-nation agreement was an alliance of equals, the court called on the Crown to return “to the foundations of the treaty” and to “engage the honour of the Crown”, by increasing the annual payments. Failing to do so would be “patently dishonourable”, wrote justice Mahmud Jamal.

Lawrence Wanakamik, chief of Whitesand First Nation, told reporters the decision had been a “long time coming”.

“We have suffered all those years [with] no economic benefits to our community. It’s been hard over the years trying to make a whole community for Whitesand,” he said, holding back tears. “We do have other struggles to contend with, but you know, with this settlement … we’ll have a better community from this point on.”

Crucially, the ruling does not award a settlement to Superior Anishinaabe First Nations, who had previously argued they are owed C$126bn in back payments. An Ontario court ruled on this claim last year, but the supreme court ordered the ruling be held in reserve pending Friday’s decsion. The court also said the settlement ruling must remain unreleased for another six months so that both parties could come to an agreement.

But Wilfred King, chief of Gull Bay First Nation, said he was “a bit disappointed” by key parts of the ruling, namely the way in which the Crown proposes the figure it feels is fair.

“How do you negotiate when one side says, ‘Well, we think this is a fair amount?’”

Ontario has previously argued in court that far from growing rich, it has spent nearly C$4.2bn in its efforts to settle the north and open it up to industry.

For nations that have waited decades for compensation, the prospect of more legal wrangling is “unfortunate”, said King.

“Both Crowns – Canada and Ontario – were admonished by the court for making a mockery of the treaty. And it’s important that both Crowns understand why they were being criticized,” he continued.

The supreme court has given Ontario a six-month timeline to propose a new settlement with the First Nations groups on Lake Superior. The justices warned that if governments couldn’t settle fair compensation, the court would step in.

“I’m hopeful that the Crown comes to the table with clean hands this time and try to come to an amicable agreement,” said King. “We knew we were never going to come close to the C$126bn we believe we’re owed. But it just showed you the vast amount of resources that have been extracted from our territory without fair compensation.”

Videos have emerged of director Francis Ford Coppola trying to kiss female extras on the set of his new film Megalopolis.

Variety obtained footage of the film-maker taken by a crew member during a nightclub scene on set last year. The Guardian had originally reported that the 85-year-old was seen as “old school” in his behaviour around women while shooting, pulling women to sit on his lap and kissing extras to get “them in the mood”.

New sources have now come forward to call the director’s conduct unprofessional with him “leaping up to hug and kiss several women, often inadvertently inserting himself into the shot and ruining it”.

“I’ve worked with really important directors and that behavior is uncommon – the most I’ve ever seen any director do is say something like, ‘high energy, guys,’” a source said. “I’ve never seen anyone on set, and this extends to a camera operator, so much as touch an actor.”

Reportedly after multiple takes, Coppola announced on a microphone: “Sorry, if I come up to you and kiss you. Just know it’s solely for my pleasure.”

“Because Coppola funded it there was no HR department to keep things in check,” a source told Variety. “Who were they supposed to talk to? Complain to Coppola and report Coppola to himself?”

The film’s executive producer, Darren Demetre, said in a statement, originally published by the Guardian, that it was “his way to help inspire and establish the club atmosphere”. He added: “I was never aware of any complaints of harassment or ill behaviour during the course of the project.”

The film’s first assistant director, Mariela Comitini, called it “a vibrant, professional and positive environment”.

A crew member said to the Guardian earlier this year: “It was like watching a train wreck unfold day after day, week after week, and knowing that everybody there had tried their hardest to help the train wreck be avoided.”

When asked about the allegations by the New York Times in June, Coppola said: “My mother told me that if you make an advance toward a woman, it means you disrespect her, and the girls I had crushes on, I certainly didn’t disrespect them.” He added: “I’m not touchy-feely. I’m too shy.”

The self-funded epic drama, which cost Coppola a reported $120m, stars Adam Driver, Aubrey Plaza and Jon Voight and is described as “a Roman epic set in modern America”. It premiered at this year’s Cannes film festival to middling reviews, with the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw calling it “a bloated, boring and bafflingly shallow film”.

The Guardian has reached out to Coppola’s representatives for comment.

The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has called for “transparency” after the sudden and secretive arrests by US authorities of two top leaders of the Sinaloa cartel, one of Mexico’s most powerful organised crime groups.

Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García, 76, founded the Sinaloa cartel with Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, and has been a top target of US law enforcement for decades, with a $15m bounty on his head.

El Mayo was taken into custody in El Paso, Texas, along with Joaquín Guzmán López, a son of El Chapo, who is already serving a life sentence in the US.

Mexican authorities admitted this morning they had been in the dark about an operation that US officials framed as a major blow to fentanyl trafficking.

There are various versions of what took place on Thursday, none of which has been officially confirmed.

Some say that both El Mayo and Guzmán orchestrated their own arrests; others that both were deceived into flying to the US, where they were arrested; and others that Guzmán made a deal with US authorities and betrayed El Mayo.

This morning El Mayo’s lawyer said he was arrested “against his will” and had pleaded not guilty to all charges in El Paso’s federal court.

At the court appearance El Mayo, who is believed to be in his 70s and was in a wheelchair, was read his rights and charges, according to a transcript, Reuters reported. He waived his right to be present at an arraignment next Wednesday and will be required to appear in person at a status conference next Thursday before US district judge Kathleen Cardone, who will oversee the rest of the case, the records show.

The nature of the arrests will shape the fallout in Mexico, where the suggestion of a betrayal within the Sinaloa cartel could be explosive.

Though the organised crime group is often presented as vertical and unified, it is really a constellation of factions, networks and cells that may at times cooperate but at others are in conflict with one another.

Since the arrest of the elder Guzmán, the faction led by the sons of El Chapo, known as the Chapitos, has been fighting with that led by El Mayo.

“If the narrative [of betrayal] gains traction, there will be bad blood in the organisation,” said Falko Ernst, Mexico analyst for the non-profit Crisis Group. “There’s been quite a lot of violence between factions, and that might heat up as this story unfolds.”

But even without betrayal, the arrests could still destabilise the criminal world in Mexico.

In the past, the removal of leaders has caused criminal groups to splinter, provoking violent conflict between the offshoots as they compete to control territory and income streams.

Though the Sinaloa cartel and the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) are seen as the only two organised crime groups with national presence, by some counts there are now hundreds of groups operating in Mexico.

Despite reports that El Mayo had taken a backseat on account of his age and poor health, his removal from the scene could trigger another spate of conflict.

“El Mayo was the figurehead of the organisation. I don’t think his significance should be underestimated,” said Ernst. “But like any CEO of a large conglomerate, he has his lieutenants in place that know how to run the business, and how to run the paramilitary machine as well.

“The structure won’t just go away,” added Ernst. “It’s a question of how it changes without his figure lending cohesiveness.”

Rival criminal groups – not least the CJNG, which is locked in violent struggles with the Sinaloa cartel across Mexico – may also see it as a sign of weakness, and an opportunity.

North of the border, the arrests are a symbolic victory. “El Mayo has been in the crosshairs of the US government for decades, and has never seen the inside of a prison cell,” said Parker Asmann of InSight Crime.

But experts are sceptical they will dent the trafficking of fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that has fuelled a crisis of roughly 70,000 overdose deaths a year in the US.

“The fragmented nature of the synthetic drug supply chain has made it a far more decentralised operation with a relatively low barrier to entry,” said Asmann. “This has reduced the importance of single players like El Mayo, or single criminal organisations like the Sinaloa cartel.”

“This is a market that cannot be killed by taking a couple of kingpins out the picture,” said Ernst. “The profit margins, the income this provides for criminal actors and their allies, are too lush to just wither.”

The diplomatic implications of the unilateral operation – and the information that El Mayo and Guzmán may have bartered in exchange for deals – remain to be seen.

“Mayo could tell you everything about state-crime ties over the past decades,” said Ernst. “But I don’t think it’s in the interest of the US to let this sour things with Mexico as they approach a delicate point in the renegotiation of the bilateral relationship – not just in terms of security, but trade, energy, migration and so forth.”

The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has called for “transparency” after the sudden and secretive arrests by US authorities of two top leaders of the Sinaloa cartel, one of Mexico’s most powerful organised crime groups.

Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García, 76, founded the Sinaloa cartel with Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, and has been a top target of US law enforcement for decades, with a $15m bounty on his head.

El Mayo was taken into custody in El Paso, Texas, along with Joaquín Guzmán López, a son of El Chapo, who is already serving a life sentence in the US.

Mexican authorities admitted this morning they had been in the dark about an operation that US officials framed as a major blow to fentanyl trafficking.

There are various versions of what took place on Thursday, none of which has been officially confirmed.

Some say that both El Mayo and Guzmán orchestrated their own arrests; others that both were deceived into flying to the US, where they were arrested; and others that Guzmán made a deal with US authorities and betrayed El Mayo.

This morning El Mayo’s lawyer said he was arrested “against his will” and had pleaded not guilty to all charges in El Paso’s federal court.

At the court appearance El Mayo, who is believed to be in his 70s and was in a wheelchair, was read his rights and charges, according to a transcript, Reuters reported. He waived his right to be present at an arraignment next Wednesday and will be required to appear in person at a status conference next Thursday before US district judge Kathleen Cardone, who will oversee the rest of the case, the records show.

The nature of the arrests will shape the fallout in Mexico, where the suggestion of a betrayal within the Sinaloa cartel could be explosive.

Though the organised crime group is often presented as vertical and unified, it is really a constellation of factions, networks and cells that may at times cooperate but at others are in conflict with one another.

Since the arrest of the elder Guzmán, the faction led by the sons of El Chapo, known as the Chapitos, has been fighting with that led by El Mayo.

“If the narrative [of betrayal] gains traction, there will be bad blood in the organisation,” said Falko Ernst, Mexico analyst for the non-profit Crisis Group. “There’s been quite a lot of violence between factions, and that might heat up as this story unfolds.”

But even without betrayal, the arrests could still destabilise the criminal world in Mexico.

In the past, the removal of leaders has caused criminal groups to splinter, provoking violent conflict between the offshoots as they compete to control territory and income streams.

Though the Sinaloa cartel and the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) are seen as the only two organised crime groups with national presence, by some counts there are now hundreds of groups operating in Mexico.

Despite reports that El Mayo had taken a backseat on account of his age and poor health, his removal from the scene could trigger another spate of conflict.

“El Mayo was the figurehead of the organisation. I don’t think his significance should be underestimated,” said Ernst. “But like any CEO of a large conglomerate, he has his lieutenants in place that know how to run the business, and how to run the paramilitary machine as well.

“The structure won’t just go away,” added Ernst. “It’s a question of how it changes without his figure lending cohesiveness.”

Rival criminal groups – not least the CJNG, which is locked in violent struggles with the Sinaloa cartel across Mexico – may also see it as a sign of weakness, and an opportunity.

North of the border, the arrests are a symbolic victory. “El Mayo has been in the crosshairs of the US government for decades, and has never seen the inside of a prison cell,” said Parker Asmann of InSight Crime.

But experts are sceptical they will dent the trafficking of fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that has fuelled a crisis of roughly 70,000 overdose deaths a year in the US.

“The fragmented nature of the synthetic drug supply chain has made it a far more decentralised operation with a relatively low barrier to entry,” said Asmann. “This has reduced the importance of single players like El Mayo, or single criminal organisations like the Sinaloa cartel.”

“This is a market that cannot be killed by taking a couple of kingpins out the picture,” said Ernst. “The profit margins, the income this provides for criminal actors and their allies, are too lush to just wither.”

The diplomatic implications of the unilateral operation – and the information that El Mayo and Guzmán may have bartered in exchange for deals – remain to be seen.

“Mayo could tell you everything about state-crime ties over the past decades,” said Ernst. “But I don’t think it’s in the interest of the US to let this sour things with Mexico as they approach a delicate point in the renegotiation of the bilateral relationship – not just in terms of security, but trade, energy, migration and so forth.”

A German man sentenced to death in Belarus has appeared on state television in the country, in tears and begging the German government to intervene in his case.

“Mr Scholz, please, I am still alive … it is not yet too late,” said Rico Krieger, who was pictured handcuffed inside a cell, appealing to the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz.

Authorities in Belarus, a dictatorial state where torture and politicised trials are rife, claim that Krieger, 30, travelled to the country last autumn on the orders of Ukrainian intelligence, with the goal of carrying out a terrorist attack on a railway line.

“This was the biggest mistake of my life. I admit my guilt, without a doubt,” said Krieger in a section of the interview where the original German was audible below a Russian-language voiceover translation. At several moments during the 17-minute television programme he broke down crying.

The KGB, as the Belarusian secret service is still known, has a record of falsifying evidence and extracting confessions under torture, casting doubt on the reliability of the claims made in the programme. No supporting evidence for Krieger’s supposed crimes was provided.

According to a LinkedIn profile, Krieger previously worked as a medical worker for the German Red Cross and as a security officer at the US embassy in Berlin. The German Red Cross confirmed he had worked there, and the German daily newspaper Tagesspiegel on Friday quoted a former colleague from the organisation saying Krieger had told them he had been recruited to travel to Ukraine. “We all assumed that he was going as a medic,” said the colleague.

Krieger said he had been motivated to work for Ukraine after reading about Russia’s war in the country on the news, and that his curators gave him a task to carry out in Belarus before he was due to travel to Ukraine. The programme claimed he took several photographs of sensitive locations and then planted a rucksack with explosives next to a railway track. The subsequent detonation did not hurt anyone, it was claimed.

Belarus is the only European country that retains capital punishment. Sentences are carried out by a single bullet to the back of the head; the remains are buried secretly in an unmarked grave.

It is possible that Belarus, a close ally of Russia, hopes to include Krieger in a prisoner exchange between Russia and the west that has been mooted for some months. The televised confession appeared to be designed to put pressure on the German government.

“Time is against me. At any moment they could carry out the sentence. Every second I regret what I did,” said Krieger, adding that he did not know why the German government was not making greater effort to intervene in his case.

Russia has jailed a number of US citizens, including the Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich, and President Vladimir Putin has signalled he is interested in a deal whereby Russian spies and assassins jailed abroad were returned to Moscow in exchange for western prisoners in Russia. However, Russia holds no high-profile German prisoners, and Putin has hinted that his prime target in an exchange is Vadim Krasikov, a Russian assassin who shot dead a Chechen exile in a Berlin park in 2019.

German officials have not commented on the swap rumours, but the German foreign ministry said earlier they were providing consular assistance to Krieger and “working intensively with Belarusian authorities on his behalf”.

On Friday, the German government spokesperson Christiane Hoffmann said Scholz was aware of the case. “Like the entire government, [he] is worried about these events, especially in connection with the death sentence,” she said at a press conference in Berlin.

A letter has claimed that the Norwegian princess Märtha Louise was more deeply involved with a gin launched to mark her forthcoming wedding than previously stated, amid growing questions over the use of her name on the bottle.

The royal, who will marry the American businessman Durek Verrett in a four-day fjord-side wedding in Geiranger, Norway, next month, is not permitted to use her princess title in commercial contexts.

But the couple have come under heavy criticism, and are under investigation by health authorities, over the launch of a wedding gin that used their names and a monogram and referred to her title on the label.

“We created this gin for the wedding of Princess Märtha Louise and Durek Verrett in Geiranger in August 2024,” the label on the raspberry, blueberry and blackcurrant gin stated.

It comes two years after Märtha Louise renounced her official royal duties. Her father, King Harald V, decided she would keep her royal title but she pledged to make clear the difference between her business activities and role as a member of the royal family – including not using her title in connection with “commercial activity”.

A spokesperson for the princess, Carina Scheele Carlsen, previously described the inclusion of her title as a “mistake” and said it would be removed from future batches. But that claim is being called into question.

According to a letter from the gin producer Oslo Håndverksdestilleri (OHD) to the Norwegian directorate of health, seen by Aftenposten, the couple were involved in the label design process. The producer also wrote that it was the princess’s own idea to make a gin for the wedding and to sell it on the open market at the state-run Vinmonopolet alcohol retailer.

The letter, dated 15 July, says: “Both DV [Durek Verrett] and ML [Märtha Louise] have been involved in the design of the text on the bottle.”

It was also agreed, it adds, that “OHD was to make the product available for purchase at the wedding, and that OHD could launch the product at Vinmonopolet”.

Carlsen and the palace declined to comment on the latest claims and OHD did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.

The Norwegian directorate of health confirmed it was looking into the case “as part of our mandate to supervise compliance with the Norwegian prohibition against advertising of alcoholic beverages”.

Øyvind Giæver of Norwegian directorate of health said: “It is not our place to confirm claims made by Aftenposten, but I can confirm that the letter they quote is among the documents we have received as part of the process. Until we reach a conclusion in August/September, we cannot comment further.”

The wedding celebrations are due to begin on 29 August in Ålesund where the bride and groom will travel by sea with their guests to Geiranger. The wedding, two days later, will be a private event at the 197-room Hotel Union.

When Danielle Smith, premier of Alberta, began her grim update about the wildfire damage to Jasper, the famed mountain resort in the Canadian Rockies, her voice slipped and she held back tears.

Hours earlier, a fast-moving wildfire tore through the community, incinerating homes, businesses and historic buildings. She praised the “true heroism” of fire crews who had rushed in to save Jasper, only to be pulled back when confronted by a 400ft wall of flames. She spoke about the profound meaning and “magic” of the national park.

Her emotional response was shared widely online but failed to reflect her previous comments on wildfires – and her government’s relentless fight against federal policies to combat global heating, which evidence suggest has made the blazes larger and more intense.

Alberta is no stranger to wildfires, fighting thousands of blazes each summer. The biggest fire ever measured in North America broke out in Alberta in 1950.

But last summer, during a record-breaking wildfire season which scorched more than 18m hectares of land in Canada, Smith was asked about her government’s fierce opposition to federal emission reduction plans and the link between worsening fire seasons and climate change.

“It’s a real-life metaphor … happening in front of us with a historic wildfire season,” Ryan Jespersen said to Smith on an episode of his podcast, Real Talk. “Every expert that we talk to indicates the significant factor that climate change is playing on our susceptibility to wildfire and on the conditions that lead to these massive blazes that are happening earlier and earlier in the season.”

Smith responded by referring to conspiracy theories that the record-breaking fire season was the result of arson or government intervention- not climate change.

“I think you’re watching, as I am, the number of stories about arson,” she told him. “I’m very concerned that there are arsonists.”

Despite her comments, provincial fire agencies across Canada – including in Alberta – say that nearly all of the country’s major wildfires were caused by lightning striking the tinder-like condition of forests.

Last year, Smith trimmed funding to the province’s wildfire response unit. The premier said it would allow for a “more nimble” force to respond quickly to fires, but critics pointed out her decision followed a string of cuts by the United Conservative Party, including scrapping Alberta’s elite aerial fire service team and cutting the number of fire watch towers. The leftwing New Democratic party also cut funding for wildfire services, but cuts under the governing UCP have been deeper.

Smith has spent her tenure as premier casting herself as Ottawa’s greatest foe, focusing her efforts on opposition to Canada’s federal carbon tax, which she argues hurt ordinary Albertans, as well as a nationwide plan to decarbonize the electrical grid.

Experts have increasingly warned that climate change will increase the severity of wildfires in the coming years. In Canada, the Boreal forests have historically been a damp biome full of bogs, creeks and swamps. But a climate trending towards warmer, drier summers means many of those wet areas have dried up, leaving a tinder-like ecosystem. Recent research also suggests the oil industry, which dominates Alberta’s economy, has contributed to the more damaging fire season.

Residents of Alberta had a glimpse of those effects in 2016, when a wildfire, dubbed the Beast, obliterated much of the infrastructure in Fort McMurray, centre of the provinces tar-sands industry, causing more than $9bn in damages.

“Officials based their response on prior experience. But no one could quite believe how fast that fire moved,” author John Vaillant, whose book Fire Weather chronicles the shifting nature of wildfires, said. “And what climate change is promising us and showing us over and over again are things we’ve never seen before.”

Prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation after saboteurs attacked France’s high-speed railway network in a series of “malicious acts” that brought chaos to the country’s busiest rail lines hours before the Olympic opening ceremony.

The state-owned railway operator, SNCF, said arsonists targeted installations along high-speed TGV lines connecting Paris with the country’s west, north and east, and traffic would be severely disrupted across the country into the weekend.

“This is a massive attack on a large scale to paralyse the TGV network,” the SNCF said, adding that many services would have to be cancelled. The French interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, said security forces were “hoping to swiftly make arrests” and he was not aware of any threat to the ceremony.

The Paris public prosecutor, Laure Beccuau, said a formal investigation had been launched into “deliberate damage of property likely to harm the fundamental interests of the nation”, as well as criminal association.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but news agencies cited security sources as saying the same arson method had previously been used by extreme-left groups, though there was no evidence to suggest this was the case in Friday’s attacks.

In September, responsibility for near-identical attacks that caused travel disruption in northern Germany was claimed on an extreme-left website. A security expert, Jérôme Poirot, told RMC radio he thought the attacks were more likely “decided by Russia”.

The national train operator said it had been “the victim of several simultaneous malicious acts overnight” in which crucial fibre-optic cables running alongside the tracks had been cut and burned.

It urged all passengers who could to postpone their journeys. Services had resumed by mid-afternoon, although with significant delays on all affected lines. The worst affected route, to the south-west, was able to run one TGV in three.

SNCF’s chief executive, Jean-Pierre Farandou, said the attackers had set fires in conduits carrying cables that carry safety information for drivers or control points mechanisms. “There’s a huge number of bundled cables. We have to repair them one by one, it’s a manual operation” requiring hundreds of workers, he said.

Farandou said five of the TGV network’s “strategic nerve centres” had been targeted on the main high-speed lines connecting Paris to big provincial cities such as Lille in the north, Bordeaux in the south-west, Strasbourg in the east and Marseille in the south-east.

All the attacks took place between 1am and 5.30am on Friday, French media reported. Four were successful, leaving only the south-eastern line running normally after a night railway maintenance team surprised several saboteurs who fled, France Info radio reported.

“Everything leads us to believe that these were criminal actions,” the transport minister, Patrice Vergriete, told reporters. “The coordinated timing, vans found where people had fled, arsonists who were discovered on the sites.”

He said there was “little beyond the date” to link the sabotage to the Games, and that given holidaymakers were by far the worst affected it seemed likely it was “more the huge getaway weekend” that was targeted.

Valérie Pécresse, the head of the Île-de-France region that includes Paris and its surrounding area, said: “Clearly this attack is not a coincidence, it aimed to destabilise France at the moment the Olympic and Paralympic Games are launched.”

The prime minister, Gabriel Attal, said he wanted to “say to the French people that I share their anger and sadness at a time when they wanted only one thing – to rejoin their families, their friends, and, for some, to attend the Olympic Games”.

Attal said a new timetable would be drawn up as soon as possible. “This operation was coordinated,” he added. “The sites that were targeted were nerve centres. That shows a knowledge of the network.”

The prefect in charge of Paris policing, Laurent Nuñez, said more officers were being diverted to stations on Friday. “The entirety of France’s security and intelligence services have been mobilised,” he told France Télévisions.

The sports minister, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, condemned the vandalism. “It’s completely appalling,” she told BFMTV. “To target the games is to target France.”

Several Olympic fixtures, including football matches, will be taking place in stadiums outside Paris, including Nantes and Bordeaux. The travel plans of about 800,000 French holidaymakers will be disrupted this weekend. Farandou said it was a “sad day” because families would be the worst affected by attacks by “irresponsible lunatics”.

On one of the busiest holiday departure weekends of the summer, large crowds of passengers were stranded at mainline TGV stations including the Gare Montparnasse in Paris, which serves Brittany and the south-west, after their trains were cancelled.

Eurostar trains from London to Paris have also been affected. “All high-speed trains going to and coming from Paris are being diverted via the classic line,” the company said. A quarter of Eurostars between London and Paris on Friday, Saturday and Sunday have been cancelled.

In an apparently unrelated incident, the Basel-Mulhouse airport in eastern France was closed briefly and evacuated after a security alert and a bomb disposal team was deployed, local authorities said. Flights resumed in the early afternoon.

The coordinated strikes on the rail network will raise apprehension before the Olympics opening ceremony on the Seine on Friday, when more than 300,000 spectators are expected to line the riverbanks as a flotilla of barges and riverboats sail through the heart of Paris.

About 45,000 police, 10,000 soldiers and 2,000 private security agents have been deployed to secure the event, with snipers stationed on rooftops and drones patrolling from the air.

Dublin’s wax museum is withdrawing a figure of Sinéad O’Connor amid criticism from her family and members of the public that it looked “nothing like her”.

Many reacted with shock when the waxwork figure was unveiled on Thursday.

The museum’s team met on Friday morning and decided to remove the waxwork of the Irish singer, admitting that it “can do better” and pledging to create a “more accurate representation”.

Her brother, John O’Connor, said he was shocked when he first saw it online and said it did not look like her “at all”.

Speaking on RTÉ Radio’s Liveline programme on Friday, after it was announced the figure would be withdrawn, he said he had not been made aware that a waxwork of his sister was to be unveiled this week.

“When I saw it online yesterday I was shocked. I thought it looked something between a mannequin and something out of the Thunderbirds.

“I thought Sinéad would have been very fond of looking well, and she certainly did, and if it was supposed to be a representation of her in her early 20s when she did Nothing Compares 2 U, it just looked nothing like her. I thought it was hideous.”

He added: “A friend of mine said to me last night that he’d seen better in Shaws [department store], in the window.

“There’s also enough visual stuff out there, in terms of videos and photos, that show what she did look like.”

O’Connor suggested that a better way to honour his sister would be to put a statue of her in Dublin.

He said it was particularly upsetting to speak about the issue on Friday, the first anniversary of her death at the age of 56.

“I lost my sister and to me that’s important,” he told the radio station. “Since she’s not here to defend herself or to speak for herself, I just took it upon myself to contact you about it.”

Paddy Dunning, the wax museum director who said he was a longtime friend of Sinéad O’Connor, apologised to the family.

He said that the wax museum sculptor, PJ Heraghty, delivered the figure the night before it was unveiled.

He said the artist had done “fantastic work” in previous years but has not been feeling well and had retired.

“When I had a look at the statue, I walked in to launch it, and when I saw it, I didn’t get that feeling that I normally get from PJ’s fantastic work,” he told Liveline.

“My heart sunk a bit. We went ahead with the launch and I didn’t sleep last night.”

Asked by O’Connor on the radio programme if the Dublin National Wax Museum was “doing this to get publicity”, Dunning said: “No, absolutely not.”

He added: “The wax museum runs itself without publicity. We have a launch and that’s it.

“I had to take the decision to cancel the statue and we’ll go again and we’ll remodel and we have to do better on this occasion.”