Germany’s centre-right opposition leader has called for an immediate vote of confidence to be held in parliament, after Olaf Scholz’s ruling coalition collapsed.

Friedrich Merz, the chair of the former chancellor Angela Merkel’s party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), stands to profit most from the bombshell developments in Berlin, one day after Donald Trump’s election as US president upended the global political landscape.

In a hastily called news conference on Wednesday night after firing his finance minister – the leader of the liberal Free Democrats (FDP), Christian Linder – Scholz had laid out a roadmap for the coming weeks, including a formal confidence vote in January that would have led to a snap election, probably in March – six months ahead of schedule.

But on Thursday morning, Merz, who is in a strong position to become the country’s next leader, rejected that timetable out of hand, saying there was “absolutely no reason to wait to put off the confidence vote to January”.

“The end last night is the end of the traffic light,” Merz said, referring to Scholz’s three-way coalition government, “and hence the end of this mandate.”

The opposition leader told reporters his parliamentary group had agreed unanimously that Scholz should schedule the confidence vote by next week “at the latest”, after which the country’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, would have 21 days to dissolve the Bundestag lower house of parliament. That would probably pave the way to a snap election in late January.

Merz said those three weeks could be used constructively to determine whether there was common ground between his CDU and the remaining government parties, Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens, to tackle pressing issues including the next federal budget. He was to hold talks with Scholz and then Steinmeier later on Thursday.

A bitterly fought debate on Germany’s fiscal priorities triggered the ultimately fatal rift with the FDP and Scholz has expressed hope he can reach an agreement on the budget in the interim with the centre right.

“I am of course ready to have talks … and assume responsibility,” Merz said, but he implied the deal would be off if Scholz intended to drag his feet on a new political start for the country.

The Christian Social Union, the CDU’s Bavarian sister party, took a harsher tone, with its parliamentary leader, Alexander Dobrindt, saying that Germany in its current condition, with weak economic growth and a crisis in manufacturing, “simply can’t afford to be in a chancellor coma”.

He said allowing a lame-duck government without a majority in parliament to limp along until spring would be “arrogant and disrespectful” to voters.

The far-right Alternative für Deutschland party, which stands to make gains from the political upheaval and is now polling at about 17%, just ahead of Scholz’s SPD, is also pushing for a fresh elections as soon as possible.

The foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock of the Greens, on the public broadcaster ARD, defended Scholz’s designated schedule as “paving the way for an orderly transition” including time for parties to make their cases to voters in an election campaign.

“Because order is the most important thing in these insecure times,” Baerbock said, pointing to the outcome of the US presidential election and Germany’s “key responsibility” in Europe as the world’s third largest economy.

The political turmoil in Germany comes at a time of deep uncertainty in Europe, including over the future of Ukraine, and shaky leadership from Berlin and Paris. France’s weakened president, Emmanuel Macron, also called a snap election earlier this year and is under pressure from both the hard right and the far left.

Although Scholz’s loveless three-party coalition had been at loggerheads for months, deepening a sense of paralysis as the economic outlook turned bleaker and the crucial auto industry skidded into trouble, mainstream parties have feared German voters could drift further to the extremes in new elections.

The AfD and a new leftwing conservative upstart, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), both performed strongly in European parliament elections in June and again in three state polls in September in the former communist east.

All the main parties have ruled out working with the AfD. Meanwhile, the BSW is polling at about 8% nationally, behind the Greens on about 11% but ahead of the pro-business FDP with 3-4%, meaning it could serve as a spoiler in what is sure to be arduous coalition-building after the snap election.

Already this week, the BSW brought talks on forming a new government in Saxony to a halt when the incumbent CDU rejected Wagenknecht’s demand to include criticism of German weapons deliveries to Ukraine in any coalition agreement.

Merz, who is widely tipped to succeed Scholz as chancellor, has been full-throated in his support of Ukraine, particularly with the threat of diminishing US aid.

Analysts said that while the prospect of Germans turning in greater numbers to the political fringes was real, the election of Trump could also serve as a cautionary tale.

Despite the strong historical and cultural ties between Germany and the US, Germany by contrast has “70-80% of people who want a serious, stability-oriented approach”, said the political scientist Wolfgang Schroeder of the University of Kassel.

“Particularly in this crisis situation, it may be that that the 70-80% even gets stabilised and the extremes get pushed back – there’s nothing that will automatically make this moment advantageous for the AfD and BSW,” he told the rolling news channel n-tv.

The Israeli army has distanced itself from comments made by a brigadier general that ground forces are getting closer to “the complete evacuation” of the northern Gaza Strip and residents will not be allowed to return home.

In a media briefing on Tuesday night, the Israel Defense Forces’ Brig Gen Itzik Cohen told Israeli reporters that “there is no intention of allowing the residents of the northern Gaza Strip to return”. He added that humanitarian aid would be allowed to “regularly” enter the south of the territory but there were “no more civilians left” in the north.

International humanitarian law experts have said that such actions would amount to the war crimes of forcible transfer and the use of food as a weapon.

The IDF did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment on Cohen’s remarks. But on Thursday, a spokesperson said the comments had been taken out of context during a discussion about Jabaliya, and did not “reflect the IDF’s objectives and values”.

The spokesperson said the briefing on Tuesday had been on background, and the brigadier general should not have been quoted in Hebrew media reports that emerged.

A statement said that the IDF was permitting aid to enter northern Gaza, including Jabaliya. Residents say no aid has entered Jabaliya, Beit Lahiya or Beit Hanoun since a new offensive and tightened siege began on 5 October.

Israel has repeatedly denied trying to force the remaining population of northern Gaza to flee to the relative safety of the south during the offensive, now in its second month. Israel says the push is necessary to combat regrouped Hamas cells.

Rights groups and aid agencies have alleged that despite the denials, Israel appears to be carrying out a version of the so-called “generals’ plan”, which proposes giving civilians a deadline to leave and then treating anyone who remains as a combatant.

It is unclear how many people remain in northern Gaza; last month, the UN estimated there were about 400,000 civilians unable or unwilling to follow Israeli evacuation orders. Social media footage this week showed waves of displaced people carrying children and rucksacks and walking south through flattened areas of Gaza City.

Palestinian medics said on Thursday that Israeli attacks had killed 10 people in northern Gaza and seven in Rafah, near the border with Egypt, in the past 24 hours. The Israeli military said it had killed about 50 militants in the past 24 hours.

Israel cut the Palestinian territory in two earlier this year by creating what it calls the Netzarim corridor, separating what was once the densely populated Gaza City from the rest of the strip.

Permanently reoccupying Gaza is not official Israeli policy, but senior Israeli defence officials recently told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that the government was aiming to annex large parts of the strip.

European leaders have sought to project unity, calling on Donald Trump to maintain US support for Ukraine and avoid a damaging trade war when he returns to the White House for a second term likely to prove a major challenge for the continent.

Meeting in Budapest for two days of talks hosted by Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, an outspoken Trump supporter, the EU’s 27 heads of state and government were joined on Thursday by 20 other leaders from the wider European Political Community including Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

On the agenda were support for Ukraine, migration, trade and economic security. An informal summit of EU leaders alone will focus on Friday on the bloc’s declining competitiveness, laid bare in a report by the former Italian leader Mario Draghi.

Trump’s victory brings unwanted further uncertainty to the continent at a time when it is already struggling to agree on common responses to its problems, including much-needed new funding tools, such as joint borrowing, for defence and economic innovation.

The return of the former president raises the prospect of a halt to US support for Ukraine, fuels doubts over Washington’s future commitment to the Nato alliance, and could herald economically disastrous tariffs on European exports.

It is also likely to bolster Europe’s advancing far-right parties at a time when the bloc’s two biggest powers, Germany, whose coalition government collapsed on Wednesday, and France, are weakened by political crises at home.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, said Europe must assert its independence from the US and defend its interests over those of geopolitical rivals at a “decisive moment”, adding: “We must not forever delegate our security to America.”

Europe must seize control of its own history, Macron said. “Do we want to read the history written by others – the wars launched by Vladimir Putin, the US election, China’s technological or trade choices – or do we want to write our own?”

The European Council president, Charles Michel, acknowledged “differences” but said Europe aimed to be a “respected partner” for the US, adding that Washington “knows it is in its interest to show firmness when we engage with authoritarian regimes”.

The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said the bloc must maintain unity. “We have shown Europe can take responsibility by standing together – we showed it during the pandemic and the energy crisis,” she said, adding that she was looking forward to working with Trump again “in a good manner … to strengthen the transatlantic bond”.

On Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, von der Leyen said: “It is in all our interests that the autocrats of this world get a very clear message that is not the right of might – that the rule of law is important.”

Zelenskyy told Thursday’s meeting an approach of “peace through strength” was urgently needed, saying concessions to Moscow were unacceptable for Ukraine and would be suicidal for Europe.

Nato’s new secretary general, Mark Rutte, said he aimed to work closely with Trump, noting that it was pressure during the former president’s first term that had pushed alliance members to boost defence spending.

Russia was “delivering the latest [weapons] technology into North Korea in return for North Korean help with the war against Ukraine”, a threat “not only to the European part of Nato, but also to the US”, he said, adding that he was looking forward to discussing with Trump “how we face these threats collectively”.

Others, though, were more circumspect. Trump was “known sometimes for a degree of unpredictability, a degree of volatility, so we need dialogue”, Luxembourg’s prime minister, Luc Frieden, said. “We will seek dialogue, but won’t give up our principles.”

Finland’s prime minister, Petteri Orpo, said he was alarmed at the prospect of a trade war. “It should not be allowed to happen,” he said. “Let’s now try to influence the US and Trump’s future policy so that he understands the risks involved.”

Analysts have expressed significant doubts about the extent to which Europe’s often-divided leaders will be able to rise collectively to the challenge of an isolationist, “America first” presidency.

Eurointelligence analysts said: “Contrary to claims, Europe is not prepared for the economic impact of higher tariffs, the likely U-turn on Ukraine, and defence spending ultimatums – we expect the EU to divide on similar lines to the US itself.”

Some have suggested it could prove the “eletroshock” the EU needs. Sébastien Maillard, of the Jacques Delors Institute, said Europeans “really have a knife at their throat … The US election result forces the EU to open its eyes.” But perhaps, he added, “it’s in situations like these that things can actually happen”.

Mujtaba Rahman, of the Eurasia group, said: “There is some reason to believe that a Trump 2.0 presidency – a situation many EU capitals will perceive as existential to their and the EU’s interests – could galvanize EU politics to action.

“But should Trump’s attack on the EU become existential, fragmentation is one possible result that could easily spread.”

Trump’s victory comes as the EU’s traditonal power tandem, France and Germany, are both severely weakened. Moreover, Europe’s far-right parties, led by Orbàn, are likely to be further emboldened by Trump’s victory, with Orbán already finding backing from Slovakia’s populist prime minister, Robert Fico, on calls for a swift end to the war in Ukraine.

Macron is hobbled after losing snap elections in July, while Germany might be in political limbo until fresh elections in March after the collapse of chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition.

“Without those two, the rest will find it extremely difficult to really advance on anything,” said Guntram Wolff, of the Bruegel thinktank, adding that he did not think Europe was “really prepared for this”.

The US foreign policy establishment is set for one of the biggest shake-ups in years as Donald Trump has vowed to both revamp US policy abroad and to root out the so-called “deep state” by firing thousands of government workers – including those among the ranks of America’s diplomatic corps.

Trump’s electoral victory is also likely to push the Biden administration to speed up efforts to support Ukraine before Trump can cut off military aid, hamper the already-modest efforts to restrain Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu in Gaza and Lebanon and lead to a fresh effort to slash and burn through major parts of US bureaucracy including the state department.

Trump backers have said he will be more organised during his second term, often dubbed “Trump 2.0”, and on the day after election day US media reported that Trump had already chosen Brian Hook, a hawkish State Department official during the first Trump administration, to lead the transition for America’s diplomats.

And yet analysts, serving and former US diplomats and foreign officials said that it remained difficult to separate Trump’s bluster from his actual plans when he takes power in January. What is clear is that his priority is to bin many of the policies put in place by his predecessor.

“I’m skeptical that the transition process will be super-impactful since the natural instinct of the new team will be to toss all of Biden’s foreign policy in the dumpster,” one former senior diplomat said.

“If you go back to 2016, Mexico didn’t pay for the wall. And, you know, it doesn’t look like there was a secret plan to defeat Isis,” said Richard Fontaine, the CEO of the Center for a New American Security thinktank. “Some of these things didn’t turn out the way that they were talked about on that campaign trail and we go into this without really knowing what the president’s proposal will be for all of this – and what he will do.”

One clear priority, however, is to target many of those involved in crafting US foreign policy as part of a broader purge of the US government.

Trump has vowed to revive Schedule F, a designation that would strip tens of thousands of federal employees of their protections as civil servants and define them instead as political appointees, giving Trump immense powers to fire “rogue bureaucrats”, as he called them in a campaign statement.

Within the State Department, there are concerns that Trump could target the bureaus that focus specifically on issues that he has attacked during his reelection campaign such as immigration. In particular, he could slash entire bureaus of the State Department, including the bureau of population, refugees and migration (PRM, which resettled 125,000 refugees to the US in 2022 alone), as well as the bureau of democracy, human rights and labor, which has focused on the violation of the rights of Palestinians by Israel.

Project 2025, a policy memo released by the conservative Heritage Foundation, suggested that Trump would merely reassign PRM to shift resources to “challenges stemming from the current immigration situation until the crisis can be contained” and said it would demand “indefinite curtailment of the number of USRAP [United States refugee admissions program] refugee admissions”.

But the blueprint, authored by Kiron Skinner, a former director of policy planning at the State Department during the first Trump administration, went further, suggesting that Trump could simply freeze the agency’s work for a complete reevaluation of its earlier policy.

“Before inauguration, the president-elect’s department transition team should assess every aspect of State Department negotiations and funding commitments,” a section of the memo said. After inauguration, Skinner wrote, the secretary of state should “order an immediate freeze on all efforts to implement unratified treaties and international agreements, allocation of resources, foreign assistance disbursements, domestic and international contracts and payments, hiring and recruiting decisions, etc” pending a review by a political appointee.

“Everyone is bracing [themselves],” said one diplomat stationed abroad. “Some [diplomats] may choose to leave before he even arrives.”

Trump has also vowed to “overhaul federal departments and agencies, firing all of the corrupt actors in our national security and intelligence apparatus”.

As Joe Biden enters his lame duck period, the administration will focus on trying to push through $6bn in aid that has already been approved for Ukraine, as well as exerting whatever leverage remains in his administration to find an unlikely ceasefire in Gaza.

At the same time, they will have to calm a nervous world waiting to see what Trump has planned for his second term.

“I think they’re going to do everything they can to make the case that the United States needs to continue to aid Ukraine, and they’ll have to spend a lot of time, I’m sure, dealing with nervous Ukrainians and nervous Europeans,” said Fontaine. At an upcoming G20 summit in Rio, the current administration was “going to try to reassure the rest of the world that a lot of the things that they have done over the past four years are going to stick into the future rather than just be kind of undone”.

“And,” he added, “we’ll see what the reaction to that is.”

Private jet flights have soared in recent years, with the resulting climate-heating emissions rising by 50%, the most comprehensive global analysis to date has revealed.

The assessment tracked more than 25,000 private jets and almost 19m flights between 2019 and 2023. It found almost half the jets travelled less than 500km and 900,000 were used “like taxis” for trips of less than 50km. Many flights were for holidays, arriving in sunny locations in the summertime. The Fifa World Cup in Qatar in 2022 attracted more than 1,800 private flights.

Private flights, used by just 0.003% of the world’s population, are the most polluting form of transport. The researchers found that passengers in larger private jets caused more CO₂ emissions in an hour than the average person did in a year.

The US dominated private jet travel, representing 69% of flights, and Canada, the UK and Australia were all in the top 10. A private jet takes off every six minutes in the UK. The total emissions from private jet flights in 2023 was more than 15m tonnes, more than the 60 million people of Tanzania emitted.

Industry expectations are that another 8,500 business jets will enter service by 2033, far outstripping efficiency gains and indicating that private flight emissions will rise even further. The researchers said their work highlighted the vast global inequality in emissions between wealthier and poorer people, and that tackling the emissions of the wealthy minoritywas critical to ending global heating.

Prof Stefan Gösslingat Linnaeus University in Sweden, who led the research, said: “The wealthy are a very small share of the population but are increasing their emissions very quickly and by very large levels of magnitude.” He added: “The growth in global emissions that we are experiencing at this point in time is coming from the top.”

The research, published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, took data from the ADS-B Exchange platform, which records the signals sent once a minute by transponders on every plane, recording its position and altitude. This huge dataset – 1.8 terabytes – was then filtered for the 72 plane models marketed by their manufacturers as “business jets”. The emissions figures are most likely an underestimate, as smaller planes and emissions from taxiing on the ground were not included.

The analysis found the number of private jets increased by 28% and the distance flown jumped by 53% between 2019 and 2023. Fewer than a third of the flights were longer than 1000km and almost 900,000 flights were less than 50km.

“We know some people use them as taxis, really,” Gössling said. “If it’s just 50km, you could definitely do that by car.” Outside the US and Europe, Brazil, the Middle East and the Caribbean are private jet hotspots.

Much of the use is for leisure, the researchers found. For example, private jet use to Ibiza in Spain and Nice in France peaked in the summer and was concentrated around weekends. In the US, Taylor Swift, Drake, Floyd Mayweather JR, Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey are among those who have been criticised for heavy private jet use.

The researchers also looked at some business events in 2023, with the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland resulting in 660 private jet flights and the Cop28 climate summit in Dubai having 291 flights.

Gössling said the driving factors behind the large recent increase in private jet use have not been analysed, but might include an increasing reluctance to share cabins on commercial flights that began during the Covid pandemic. Industry documents describe private jet users as “ultra-high net worth”, comprising about 250,000 individuals, with an average wealth of $123m. US private jet users are increasingly using “privacy ICAO addresses”, which mask the identity of the plane and could make tracking them much harder in future.

According to Gössling passengers should pay for the climate damage resulting from each tonne of CO₂ emitted, estimated at about €200: “Very basically, it would seem fair that people paid for the damage they are causing by their behaviour.”

A second step would be to increase the landing fees for private aircraft which are currently very low, he added. A landing fee of €5,000 could be an effective deterrent, roughly doubling the cost of common private flights.

Alethea Warrington, head of aviation at the climate charity Possible, said: “Private jets, used by a tiny group of ultra-wealthy people, are an utterly unjustifiable and gratuitous waste of our scarce remaining emissions budget to avoid climate breakdown, and their emissions are soaring, even as the impacts of the climate crisis escalate.”

“It’s time for governments to act,” she said. “We need… a super-tax, rapidly arriving at an outright ban on private jets.”

The US Private Aviation Association did not respond to a request for comment.

Canada has ordered TikTok to shut down its operations in the country after conducting a security review, but users will not be barred from accessing the video app or uploading content to it.

The Canadian government said it was demanding the winding up of TikTok’s business in the country due to “specific national security risks”. It currently has offices in Vancouver and Toronto.

“The decision was based on the information and evidence collected over the course of the review and on the advice of Canada’s security and intelligence community and other government partners,” said François-Philippe Champagne, Canada’s minister of innovation, science and industry.

Champagne added that the government was not blocking citizens’ access to TikTok or their ability to post content on the platform. TikTok has been banned from government-issued phones in Canada, the US, the UK, New Zealand and Australia amid concerns about the Chinese-owned app’s access to user data.

Champagne’s statement did not give details of the security concerns behind the move but referred to risks related to ByteDance, the Beijing-based owner of the app, and its operations in Canada through TikTok Technology Canada.

“It is important for Canadians to adopt good cybersecurity practices and assess the possible risks of using social media platforms and applications, including how their information is likely to be protected, managed, used and shared by foreign actors,” said Champagne.

A TikTok spokesperson said

: “Shutting down TikTok’s Canadian offices and destroying hundreds of well-paying local jobs is not in anyone’s best interest, and today’s shutdown order will do just that. We will challenge this order in court. TikTok takes data privacy concerns very seriously.”

TikTok faces the threat of a full ban in US where the White House has introduced a law that gives ByteDance, until 19 January to sell its stake in the platform to an approved buyer, otherwise the app will be shut down. The president-elect, Donald Trump, who tried to force a sale of TikTok during his first administration, has said on the campaign trail he would “save” it.

TikTok has also launched a lawsuit against the US law, arguing that it is breaches the first amendment protecting free speech.

Canada has ordered TikTok to shut down its operations in the country after conducting a security review, but users will not be barred from accessing the video app or uploading content to it.

The Canadian government said it was demanding the winding up of TikTok’s business in the country due to “specific national security risks”. It currently has offices in Vancouver and Toronto.

“The decision was based on the information and evidence collected over the course of the review and on the advice of Canada’s security and intelligence community and other government partners,” said François-Philippe Champagne, Canada’s minister of innovation, science and industry.

Champagne added that the government was not blocking citizens’ access to TikTok or their ability to post content on the platform. TikTok has been banned from government-issued phones in Canada, the US, the UK, New Zealand and Australia amid concerns about the Chinese-owned app’s access to user data.

Champagne’s statement did not give details of the security concerns behind the move but referred to risks related to ByteDance, the Beijing-based owner of the app, and its operations in Canada through TikTok Technology Canada.

“It is important for Canadians to adopt good cybersecurity practices and assess the possible risks of using social media platforms and applications, including how their information is likely to be protected, managed, used and shared by foreign actors,” said Champagne.

A TikTok spokesperson said

: “Shutting down TikTok’s Canadian offices and destroying hundreds of well-paying local jobs is not in anyone’s best interest, and today’s shutdown order will do just that. We will challenge this order in court. TikTok takes data privacy concerns very seriously.”

TikTok faces the threat of a full ban in US where the White House has introduced a law that gives ByteDance, until 19 January to sell its stake in the platform to an approved buyer, otherwise the app will be shut down. The president-elect, Donald Trump, who tried to force a sale of TikTok during his first administration, has said on the campaign trail he would “save” it.

TikTok has also launched a lawsuit against the US law, arguing that it is breaches the first amendment protecting free speech.

Taiwan’s government says it is paying close attention to reports that Elon Musk’s SpaceX asked Taiwanese suppliers to move manufacturing to other countries because of “geopolitical” concerns.

Reuters reported on Wednesday that SpaceX’s request to suppliers in Taiwan’s multibillion-dollar industry appeared to have prompted some to shift locations to Vietnam, Thailand and other places. In response, Taiwan’s economic affairs minister, JW Kuo, said the industry was strong and “should be able to cope”, but that the government was monitoring the situation.

“There is no such information on its official website, but some foreign media are reporting it, and we are paying close attention to it. I think the supply chain in Taiwan is very strong and it should be able to cope with the situation,” Kuo said.

“Short-term political factors should not affect the supply-chain relationship between international satellite companies and Taiwan manufacturers.”

There are 46 Taiwanese companies producing components and sensitive equipment for the global satellite industry, including for around a dozen companies that then directly supply SpaceX.

One satellite component maker, Chin-Poon Industrial, told Reuters it had been asked to move its manufacturing operations to Thailand “mostly due to geopolitical considerations”. Two other SpaceX suppliers, Wistron NeWeb Corporation (WNC) and Universal Microwave Technology, expanded to Vietnam this year, the report said. Neither would comment on individual clients, but both have cited geopolitical concerns as reasons for their expansions.

A spokesperson for WNC told the Guardian that all Taiwanese businesses considered “geopolitical risks” among other factors. “But still, it mainly depends on customer demand. We are in accordance with the needs of the customer to make decisions,” she said. Other suppliers declined to comment or told the Guardian they were bound by confidentiality agreements.

China’s ruling Communist party claims Taiwan as a province of China and vows to annex it, with military force if necessary. The prospect of a war over Taiwan has global ramifications, including for supply chains. Taiwan produces the vast majority of the most advanced semiconductors, and has resisted foreign entreaties to move production overseas, maintaining what analysts have dubbed a “silicon shield” deterrent against a Chinese attack.

Musk seeking to move his supply chain ahead of potential conflict renews focus on his fractious relationship with Taiwan, and concerns over how the incoming Trump administration – in which Musk is expected to play a role – will approach the delicate situation. In 2022 he told the Financial Times that he believed a conflict over Taiwan was “inevitable”.

The reported request from SpaceX sparked anger in Taiwan. On social media, some accused him of being “ungrateful” for the local SpaceX suppliers. “Taiwanese, why aren’t you angry? We should refuse to buy Teslas,” said one person on Threads. In Taiwan Tesla was the 10th best-selling new car in 2023 and 2024, with sales rising more than 50% since 2022.

It is not the first time Musk has angered Taiwan. In September last year he asserted Taiwan was an integral part of China akin to the US state of Hawaii, and that it was only “arbitrarily” separated because of US protection. In the 2022 interview he recommended Taiwan accept a level of control similar to Hong Kong – something Taiwan’s government and people overwhelmingly reject.

A recent report by the Wall Street Journal, which said Musk had been in regular contact with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, also claimed he had kept Starlink away from Taiwan on request from Putin as a favour to China’s leader and Putin ally, Xi Jinping. Previous reporting has said Starlink is not available in Taiwan because of Taiwanese requirements for majority local ownership.

The story has also garnered significant attention in China. On Weibo it was the top trending topic on Thursday, with more than 190m engagements on one related hashtag, many praising Musk’s “foresight” regarding China’s unification goals. Some of the posts on Weibo included an old video of Musk discussing China’s claim over Taiwan.

“Although Musk’s move seems cold, it is actually a precise control of geopolitical risks,” said one.

SpaceX has been contacted for comment.

Additional reporting by Chi-hui Lin

Rudy Giuliani will appear in a New York City courtroom on Thursday to explain to a federal judge why he has not surrendered his valuables as part of a $148m defamation judgment.

Lewis Liman, a US district judge, ordered the former New York City mayor to report to court after lawyers for the two former Georgia election workers who were awarded the large judgment visited Giuliani’s Manhattan apartment last week only to discover it had been cleared out weeks earlier.

The judge had set a 29 October deadline for the longtime ally of Donald Trump to surrender many of his possessions to lawyers for Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss.

The possessions include his $5m Upper East Side apartment, a 1980 Mercedes once owned by movie star Lauren Bacall, a shirt signed by the New York Yankees legend Joe DiMaggio, dozens of luxury watches and other valuables.

Liman originally scheduled a phone conference about the situation, but he changed it to a hearing in Manhattan federal court that Giuliani must attend after the judge learned about the visit to the former mayor’s apartment.

Aaron Nathan, an attorney for the election workers, wrote in a letter to Liman that the residence was already “substantially empty” when representatives for his clients visited with a moving company official to assess the transportation and storage needs for the property Giuliani was ordered to surrender.

He said the group was told most of the apartment’s contents, including art, sports memorabilia and other valuables, had been moved out about four weeks earlier – some of it placed in storage on Long Island.

Representatives for Giuliani did not respond to an email on Wednesday seeking comment.

They have so far argued unsuccessfully that Giuliani should not be forced to turn over his belongings while he appeals the judgment.

Liman also denied a request from Giuliani’s legal team to postpone Thursday’s court appearance to next week or hold it by phone, as originally planned.

A Giuliani spokesperson, meanwhile, dismissed the legal wrangling as intimidation tactics.

“Opposing counsel, acting either negligently or deliberately in a deceptive manner, are simply attempting to further bully and intimidate Mayor Giuliani until he is rendered penniless and homeless,” Ted Goodman, his spokesperson, said earlier this week.

Giuliani was found liable for defamation for falsely accusing Freeman and Moss of ballot fraud as he pushed Trump’s unsubstantiated election fraud allegations during the 2020 campaign.

The women said they faced death threats after Giuliani accused the two of sneaking in ballots in suitcases, counting ballots multiple times and tampering with voting machines.

Two years of severe drought in the Amazon rainforest have left nearly half a million children facing shortages of water and food or limited access to school, according to a UN report.

Scant rainfall and extreme heat driven by the climate crisis have caused rivers in what is usually the wettest region on Earth to retreat so much that they can no longer be traversed by boats, cutting off communities.

The effects are being felt most by children, with more than 1,700 schools and 760 health centres in the Amazon having become inaccessible or out of reach, according to the report from the children’s agency Unicef.

“For the most remote communities it really is a life-threatening situation,” said Antonio Marro, a Unicef manager. “Children are contracting dengue fever, malaria and other serious diseases and there is no way they can reach a health centre for treatment.”

Deforestation and a warming climate in tandem with weather phenomena such as El Niño have scorched the rainforest and left vast sandbanks where rivers once flowed.

In October, the Solimões and the Rio Negro – some of the Amazon’s largest tributaries – reached their lowest levels since records began in 1902.

Riverside communities rely on travelling by boat to towns for everything from food and water to medical treatment and schools but the water levels have dropped so much that travel has been paralysed.

Half of families surveyed in 14 communities in the southern Amazon in Brazil said their children were currently out of school due to dry conditions.

Teachers have been unable to get to work, closing schools and leaving children more vulnerable to being recruited into the armed groups that rule over vast swathes of the rainforest, Unicef says.

Children aged five and under are at a higher risk of infections, malaria and malnutrition, while studies have found that babies born during extreme drought or flooding in the Amazon were more likely to be premature or underweight.

“This, the worst drought in the last century, is a clear demonstration that climate change is unfortunately already here and it’s getting stronger and stronger,” Marro said. “Rivers in the Amazon are our roads and they are drying up. Neither us nor our grandfathers have ever seen anything like this.”

The Amazon is a bulwark against the climate crisis, regulating regional weather patterns and sucking in carbon, but it is being transformed by warming temperatures and deforestation.

Local communities also say fish are dying off en masse. Hundreds of pink river dolphins have died in the extreme temperatures, concerning conservation organisations.

Gentil Gomez, a member of the Ticuna Indigenous community in Lake Tarapoto in the Colombian Amazon, said: “We rely on the river for everything, but it’s raining maybe once a month, so now it takes a long time to get to town and sometimes we just give up pushing and pulling our boats because the river is too low.

“We hope a politician or someone somewhere can help us with climate change because we are feeling it here.”

Unicef estimates that $10m is needed in the coming months to address urgent needs such as delivery of essential supplies and medicines while strengthening public services in Indigenous communities in Brazil, Colombia and Peru.

“The health of the Amazon affects the health of us all,” said the organisation’s executive director, Catherine Russell.

Books about democracy, dystopia, tyranny, feminism and far-right politics rapidly climbed bestseller charts in the wake of Donald Trump winning the US presidential election.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, set in a totalitarian society in which women are forced to reproduce, moved up more than 400 places, and is currently third in the US Amazon Best Sellers chart.

On Tyranny by historian Timothy Snyder now sits at spot eight, after climbing hundreds of places over the past day. Readers are also turning to George Orwell’s totalitarian dystopia Nineteen Eighty-Four, which has moved up to 16th place.

Democracy in Retrograde by Sami Sage and Emily Amick is near the top of the Movers and Shakers chart – which ranks the books with the largest sales increases over the past 24 hours – after the book saw a more than 30,000% boost in sales.

Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me is also among the biggest gainers, having climbed more than 40,000 places over the past day. The 2014 collection of feminist essays now sits in the mid-300s on the bestseller chart.

Writing on the election in a Guardian column published on Thursday, Solnit said that “our mistake was to think that racism and misogyny were not as bad as they are, whether it applied to who was willing to vote for a supremely qualified Black woman or who was willing to vote for an adjudicated rapist and convicted criminal who admires Hitler.”

Defectors by Paola Ramos, about the rise in far-right sentiment among Latinos, has moved up thousands of places since Trump emerged as the winner. The 2024 election saw him making significant gains with Latino voters, particularly men.

The sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments, has also experienced a spike in sales. “Despair is not an option,” Atwood wrote in a post on X following the election result. “It helps no one.”

Men Who Hate Women – a book about misogyny and the radicalisation of young men online – by British writer Laura Bates is also trending. Trump won nearly half of young men, according to exit polls.

A memoir by Kamala Harris, The Truths We Hold, has climbed nearly 2,000 places over the past day – to spot 345 in the Best Sellers chart. Meanwhile memoirs by Melania Trump and JD Vance remain popular, with the incoming first lady’s book sitting at the top of the chart, and the vice president-elect’s Hillbilly Elegy at No 7.

These monkeys went bananas: 40 monkeys escaped from a research facility in South Carolina, and local authorities on Wednesday warned residents to stay away.

“Residents are strongly advised to keep doors and windows secured to prevent these animals from entering homes,” the Yemassee police department said on Facebook this week. “If you spot any of the escaped animals, please contact 911 immediately and refrain from approaching them.”

The monkeys that absconded were from the Alpha Genesis research center, which bills itself as “primate research specialists”. Police said that they have set up traps around the area and are “utilizing thermal imaging cameras in an attempt to locate the animals”.

Alpha Genesis boasts on its website that the company “provides the highest quality nonhuman primate products and bio-research services world-wide”. The company also claims that “we are dedicated to providing only the best and most cost-effective primate research and development support to the scientific community”.

The Yemassee police department said that “multiple officers” are working Alpha Genesis personnel to catch the monkeys.

While monkey escapes are not common to the area, The Post and Courier newspaper notes that they have happened multiple times in recent history.

A Japanese macaque decamped its home in Walterboro this May. Local animal services disclosed that the macaque had been apprehended and, two days later, said that it had been found dead.

This is also not Alpha Genesis’s first rodeo with unruly animals, with 19 monkeys fleeing the facility in 2016. They were returned to Alpha Genesis after six hours.

Other notable cases of escaped monkeys can be seen in Florida; an eccentric boat captain released two groups of monkeys in the Silver Springs area nearly 100 years ago. Many of these monkeys now carry herpes.