Elon Musk and the former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy will lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, Donald Trump said on Tuesday.

Despite the name, the department will not be a government agency. Trump said in a statement that Musk and Ramaswamy will work from outside government to offer the White House “advice and guidance” and will partner with the Office of Management and Budget to “drive large scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to government never seen before”. He added that the move would shock government systems.

Trump said the duo “will pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies”.

Posting on X, the social media platform he owns, Musk pledged to document all actions of the department online for “maximum transparency”.

“Anytime the public thinks we are cutting something important or not cutting something wasteful, just let us know!” he said, while also promising to keep “a leaderboard for most insanely dumb spending of your tax dollars”.

Ramaswamy also responded to the announcement of his appointment on X. “We will not go gently, @elonmusk”, he said, adding an American flag emoji.

It is not clear how the organization will operate. It could come under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which dictates how external groups that advise the government must operate and be accountable to the public.

Federal employees are generally required to disclose their assets and entanglements to ward off any potential conflicts of interest, and to divest significant holdings relating to their work. Because Musk and Ramaswamy would not be formal federal workers, they would not face those requirements or ethical limitations.

Musk had pushed for a government efficiency department and has since relentlessly promoted it, emphasizing the acronym for the agency: Doge, a reference to a meme of an expressive Shiba Inu dog and the name of the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, which Musk promotes. Trump said the agency will be conducting a “complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government, and making recommendations for drastic reforms”.

The value of dogecoin has more than doubled since election day, tracking a surge in cryptocurrency markets on expectations of a softer regulatory ride under a Trump administration. Shares in Tesla are up about 30% since the election.

Trump said their work would conclude by 4 July 2026, adding that a smaller and more efficient government would be a “gift” to the country on the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Ramaswamy is a wealthy biotech entrepreneur whose first time running for office was for the Republican party nomination last year. After dropping out of the race, he threw his support behind Trump. He told ABC earlier this week that he was having “high-impact discussions” about possible roles in Trump’s cabinet.

He also has no government experience, but has pushed for cost-cutting in the corporate sector. After building a stake in the struggling online media firm Buzzfeed, he urged the company in May to cut staff and hire conservative commentators like Tucker Carlson.

Musk, speaking to reporters last month, stated a goal of reducing government spending by $2tn. Practically speaking, experts say those cost cuts could result in deregulation and policy changes that would directly affect Musk’s universe of companies, particularly Tesla, SpaceX, X and Neuralink.

Adding a government portfolio to Musk’s plate could benefit the market value of his companies and favored businesses such as artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency.

Equities analyst Daniel Ives of Wedbush Securities said in a research note: “It’s clear that Musk will have a massive role in the Trump White House with his increasing reach clearly across many federal agencies.”

But Musk’s appointment was criticized by Public Citizen, a progressive consumer rights NGO that challenged several of Trump’s first-term policies. “Musk not only knows nothing about government efficiency and regulation, his own businesses have regularly run afoul of the very rules he will be in position to attack,” co-president Lisa Gilbert said in a statement.

Trump had made clear that Musk would probably not hold any kind of full-time position, given his other commitments.

“I don’t think I can get him full-time because he’s a little bit busy sending rockets up and all the things he does,” Trump said at a rally in Michigan in September. “He said the waste in this country is crazy. And we’re going to get Elon Musk to be our cost-cutter.”

Donald Trump addressed Republican legislators on Wednesday in a visit to Capitol Hill, just before a meeting with Joe Biden that traditionally begins the transfer of power from one administration to another.

Addressing House Republicans on Wednesday morning, Trump celebrated his party’s victories up and down the ballot last week while suggesting he might seek a third term as president.

“I suspect I won’t be running again, unless you say, ‘He’s good, we got to figure something else,’” Trump said, sparking laughter from fellow Republicans in the room.

Trump has repeatedly floated the idea of extending his tenure, even though the US constitution bars presidents from serving a third term.

Elon Musk joined Trump at the meeting with House Republicans, sitting in the first row, according to attendees. On Tuesday, Trump named Musk and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy as co-leaders of a new Department of Government Efficiency. The announcement intensified concerns over how Trump and Musk, known for his slash-and-burn approach to cutting company expenses, might overhaul the federal workforce.

Introducing Trump on Wednesday, the Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, praised the president-elect as a “singular figure in American history”.

“They used to call Bill Clinton the comeback kid. [Trump] is the comeback king,” Johnson said.

As of Wednesday, Republicans had already won a majority in the Senate, but the House remained uncalled as ballot-counting continued in 12 races. However, House Republicans appear poised to capture a narrow majority.

Trump has been poaching Republican legislators for his cabinet, naming Marco Rubio, the Florida senator, as his intended secretary of state, the New York representative Elise Stefanik as ambassador to the United Nations and Mike Waltz, the Florida representative, to serve as his national security adviser. Republicans currently hold a razor-thin four-seat majority in the House, and if the outcome of vote counts remains as it stands today, a Republican speaker in 2025 would also have a four-seat majority.

Johnson has said he expects Republicans to end up with a larger majority. But each Republican appointment or resignation from the House – as Governor-elect Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota must do – diminishes that majority.

“We have an embarrassment of riches,” Johnson said on Tuesday. “We have a really talented Republican conference. We’ve got really competent, capable people here. Many of them could serve in really important positions in the new administration, but President Trump fully understands and appreciates the math here, and it’s just a numbers game.”

Trump’s meeting with Biden is set for 11am ET. The president said he told Trump “that I would direct my entire administration to work with his team to ensure a peaceful and orderly transition. That’s what the American people deserve.”

The traditional meeting is generally photographed with the outgoing and incoming president sitting side by side in the White House. Reflecting the acrimony of the 2020 election, Trump eschewed the meeting after being defeated by Biden.

Melania Trump was also invited to meet with first lady Jill Biden, but she declined the invitation.

Kevin Roberts, the head of the influential rightwing thinktank the Heritage Foundation, told a Guardian reporter to “go to hell” at the launch of Roberts’s new book on Tuesday night, then threw the reporter out of the venue, apparently in response to reporting on the organization.

The Guardian was invited last week to Roberts’s book events in New York and Washington DC. They were billed as an opportunity “to celebrate Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America” – Roberts’s new book, which features a foreword by the vice-president-elect, JD Vance.

Roberts, the chief architect of Project 2025, the infamous rightwing plan for Donald Trump’s presidency which would crack down on immigration, dismantle LGBTQ+ and abortion rights and diminish environmental protections, spoke briefly at the event, held in the lavish Kimberly Hotel in midtown New York City, before mingling with the crowd.

Approached by the Guardian, a staff member at the Heritage Foundation said Roberts would be available for a brief interview. The Guardian waited patiently before being introduced to Roberts, who was tidily dressed in a suit, tie and cowboy boots.

“You’ve got two minutes with our best friend Adam from the Guardian,” the Heritage Foundation employee told Roberts.

Roberts said to the Guardian: “Make it good, the first one [question], otherwise you’re going to pound sand.”

It was quite loud in the venue and the Guardian misheard the word “sand”. Asked for clarification, Roberts repeated the phrase.

The Guardian said: “I don’t know what that means,” which seemed to upset Roberts. He reacted angrily.

“It means you’re a bunch of liars, is what it means. So make it good or we’re done,” Roberts said. The Guardian asked if Roberts could elaborate on his “liars” comment, which seemed to upset the Heritage Foundation president further.

“No, we’re done, I’m not talking to you,” Roberts said.

The Guardian, overlapping Roberts slightly, had begun to ask a question about Project 2025, which provides a roadmap on how a Republican president could permanently transform the federal government into a conservative institution.

Roberts replied: “Go to hell.”

It was a surprising outburst from Roberts, seen as one of the masterminds of the conservative blueprint which could change the shape of the US government. Roberts, who said earlier this year that the US was “in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be”, is a highly influential figure on the right.

Vance, who in his foreword wrote: “Never before has a figure with Roberts’s depth and stature within the American Right tried to articulate a genuinely new future for conservatism,” was not present to witness Roberts’s conversation with the Guardian on Tuesday night.

After the initial encounter, the Guardian returned to Roberts and asked if he would like to add to his earlier comments. A staff member objected, and asked the Guardian to “please move back.” The Guardian acquiesced, and used the opportunity to go to the bathroom, but was intercepted on the way by two burly members of security.

The security members said the Guardian had to leave – no explanation was offered – and confiscated a name tag that had been handed out earlier in the evening. This reporter was then escorted down to street level by a member of security, who then returned to the event.

It was an odd end to what had been a genteel book party. Held in the Kimberly’s Upstairs bar on the 30th floor of the hotel, about 80 people, the men in sharp suits, most of the women in fashionable dresses, had spent time quietly mingling before listening to a conversation between Roberts and Brian Kilmeade, the Fox News host.

The pair discussed Roberts’s book, in which he describes how “many of America’s institutions […] need to be burned”. Included among those to be incinerated, Roberts writes, are the FBI and the New York Times, along with “every Ivy League college”, “80% of ‘Catholic’ higher education”, and the Boy Scouts of America.

The event had been billed to run from 5.30pm until 8pm, but the Guardian was ejected a full hour earlier than that. It was enough to have this reporter double-check the Heritage Foundation’s invitation, which was sent by Heritage’s senior communications manager on Thursday.

“Hey all! Heritage Foundation President Dr Kevin Roberts is launching his new book Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America next week in NYC and DC,” it said.

“The book has a forward [sic] written by Vice President-elect JD Vance and identifies institutions that conservatives need to build, others that need to [be] taken back, and more that are too corrupt to save.”

The invitation ended: “We’d love to see you attend either (or both) launch parties.”

A US intelligence official has been charged with espionage offenses following an investigation into the leak last month of highly classified documents detailing Israel’s plans for military attacks on Iran.

Asif W Rahman, who works for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), will appear in court in Guam on Thursday charged with two counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information, the New York Times reported on Wednesday.

The newspaper said FBI agents arrested Rahman in Cambodia on Tuesday following his indictment last week in federal court in Virginia.

In October, the White House said it was “deeply concerned” by the unauthorized release of the papers, attributed to the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and National Security Agency, which were published on the Telegram messaging app.

The documents related to Israel’s military planning for a retaliatory strike on Iran following the 1 October missile barrage that was Tehran’s largest-ever assault on its regional foe and an escalation of the Middle East conflict sparked by the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel in October 2023.

The first document was entitled “Israel: air force continues preparations for strike on Iran and conducts a second large-force employment exercise” and the second was “Israel: defense forces continue key munitions preparations and covert UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] activity almost certainly for a strike on Iran”.

The NGA gathers and analyzes intelligence from US spy satellites for the defense department. Rahman’s exact connection to the agency is unclear, but court documents show he held a top secret security clearance with access to sensitive compartmentalized information, which is typical for many CIA employees who handle classified materials, the Times reported.

His arrest follows the sentencing to a 15-year prison term on Tuesday of the air national guard member Jack Teixeira in a case with striking parallels.

Teixeira pleaded guilty earlier this year to six counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information, namely highly classified military documents about the war in Ukraine, which he shared on the social media platform Discord.

Prosecutors said the leak was “one of the most significant and consequential violations of the Espionage Act in American history”.

Israel’s plan to close the UN Palestinian relief agency, Unrwa, within three months is impossible and unrealistic without causing further untold suffering to the Palestinian people, its director of operations in Gaza has warned.

Just returned from Gaza, where he said he had seen levels of suffering unprecedented since the war started, Sam Rose warned that Unrwa could collapse, with severe implications for schools and hospitals not just in Gaza but in the West Bank if Israel went ahead with its plan.

He was speaking the day after the US government stepped back from taking any action against Israel for failing to meet most of its demands to improve the supply of humanitarian aid to Gaza. The Biden administration said the humanitarian aid operation into Gaza was “not pristine” but Israel was taking steps to meet the US demands, set out in a letter, including opening new crossings.

One of the requirements was for Israel to recognise that Unrwa remained the only viable means of providing services to Gaza. But since that letter was sent, the Israeli parliament in October passed two new laws requiring the Israeli government to end cooperation and contact with Unrwa. The plan is due to be imposed within three months.

Unrwa operates in Gaza, the West Bank and in surrounding countries such as Jordan and Lebanon, where large numbers of Palestinian refugees live. It provides schools, hospitals and waste disposal services, as well as being the central organisation for the distribution of aid.

Elise Stefanik, Donald Trump’s choice as his administration’s ambassador to the UN, has described Unrwa as a “terrorist front” and “Hamas infiltrated”, suggesting US funding for Unrwa, currently suspended until next year, will soon be ended permanently. More importantly, the future Trump administration is not expected to urge Israel to pull back from ending cooperation with Unrwa.

Rose said he feared the full implications of Unrwa’s potential collapse had not been understood, warning the closure of such a large UN agency without any plan was unrealistic and impossible.

Rose said that, under a previous order by the international court of justice (ICJ): “Israel has got to do everything it can to facilitate aid reaching the people, so if they are banning Unrwa they are banning not just the single largest actor on aid but on services. This is not just about averting famine; it is about health services, schools, sanitation and creating the conditions in which children become much more vulnerable to disease. The people of Gaza have already endured so much suffering.

“We have some 15,000 children back in education – it’s a drop in the ocean but our schools are being used as more than 100 shelters with management teams of about 20 people. If those shelters collapse, that is the end of the organising principle behind the assistance we provide.

“We are the only functioning part of the primary health system, representing two-thirds of the health provided including through mobile teams. If you take away the only functioning health system in Gaza with children already suffering from degraded health services, weakened immune systems and massively stressed, living in absolute squalor, the risk is that Gaza becomes a disease factory like a Victorian slum 150 years ago.

“In those circumstances, to close Unrwa, including 9,000 teachers, is senseless. In the West Bank, we educate 50,000 people. Let us face it, they are going to have to hire exactly the same people.

“We are not perfect, of course. We’re not, given the environment in which we’re working and the tools that we have at our disposal, but the independent review of Unrwa [conducted by the former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna] found Unrwa had the most robust system for neutrality of any comparable aid organisation.

“There is a question whether Unrwa simply collapses if the plug is pulled on it by Israel and 13,000 staff have to be made redundant.”

He said that redundancies on that scale would require pension and severance payments running into hundreds of millions of dollars that had not been addressed.

“Unrwa has 75 years of experience of providing services in emergencies, but also in recovery phases. So as well as this being legally reprehensible, it’s in the best interest of the Palestinian population that Unrwa be allowed to continue when this ends.”

Rose said: “The testimonies we are receiving from staff in the north of Gaza are simply horrific,” adding he understood if people felt the plan was to drive Palestinians from Gaza.

“It feels as if Israel has recognised that it can recreate the deterrent and they have reimposed the fear in the people, in the sense they have the power and know they are unaccountable.

“There have been all sorts of ICJ rulings and UN resolutions already, going back 30 years. So it’s hard to see any of this changing in the absence of pressure from the US.”

Yet he admitted: “It’s very likely that the US will continue the policy under the previous Trump administration in relation to support for Israel and opposition to Unrwa, but I guess we have just got to be ready to be shocked by anything that happens.”

Speaking at the UN security council on Tuesday, Israel’s ambassador, Danny Danon, said there was no imminent famine in Gaza and a UN agency report on Gaza’s food security, known as an IPC report, did not contain correct analysis. “The obsession with vilifying Israel is detached from reality,” Danon said.

Israel continued to facilitate the delivery of aid and had established multiple access points, with dozens of trucks entering Gaza daily, Danon added. Aid routes remained operational, including the Ashdod port, and a new crossing had also just opened.

The US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, told the security council that there should be no “forcible displacement” of people nor a “policy of starvation”, which would have grave implications under international law.

Authorities in eastern and southern Spain have closed schools and begun evacuating some residents as the country is pounded by further torrential rains two weeks after the catastrophic floods that killed at least 215 people and unleashed a bitter political blame game.

By Wednesday morning, the state meteorological agency, Aemet, had put large parts of eastern and southern Spain on amber alert and issued the highest level of warning for the provinces of Tarragona in Catalonia and Málaga in Andalucía.

The Andalucían government closed schools in the provinces of Málaga and Granada, and 3,000 people were evacuated from neighbourhoods near the Guadalhorce river, which runs through Málaga province. High-speed rail services between Málaga and Madrid were suspended on Wednesday afternoon.

The authorities in Catalonia called on people to take “maximum care”, while Valencia’s regional government – which has been criticised for its handling of the disaster – advised councils in affected areas to close schools and to recommend that people worked from home.

“We’re closely monitoring the new arrival of intense rains that have reached our country as the consequence of a new isolated depression at high levels,” said Rubén del Campo, an Aemet spoksesperson.

“There could be torrential rains on Wednesday in Mediterranean areas, especially in the provinces of Tarragona and Málaga, where red warnings have been issued, which mean the danger is extreme. Those areas could see more than 180 litres of water a square metre fall in fewer than 12 hours. But there could be very intense storms that could bring floods, so be very careful.”

Del Campo also said that yellow and amber alerts were in force for many parts of Valencia that are still recovering from the deadly floods on 29 October. The weather warnings are expected to remain in force until at least Friday.

While the current storm is not expected to be as powerful as the last one, the impact of the rains could be severe because of the huge quantities of mud already on the ground and the compromised condition of the sewage system.

Almost 20,000 military personnel and police officers are still engaged in the clean-up operation in Valencia, which was the region hit hardest by the floods a fortnight ago.

The town council of Chiva, one of the worst-hit sites, cancelled classes and sports activities, while in nearby Aldaia workers piled up sandbags to protect the town.

“We are placing sandbags to replace the floodgates that the previous floods tore down,” Antonio Ojeda, a municipal worker, told Reuters. He said the idea was to prevent the Saleta ravine, which runs through the town, from overflowing again.

The search continues for the bodies of the 23 people still missing after the October floods. On Wednesday morning, emergency workers recovered the bodies of two young brothers who were carried away by the waters in the Valencian town of Torrent. Rubén Matías Calatayud, who was three, and Izan Matías Calatayud, who was five, were swept out of their father’s arms.

The floods, which are the worst natural disaster in Spain’s recent history, have led to confrontations between the regional and local authorities, as well as a huge protest over the weekend.

Growing public anger over the authorities’ handling of the emergency brought 130,000 people on to the streets of the city of Valencia on Saturday evening to call for the resignation of the regional president, Carlos Mazón, who is overseeing the relief effort.

Mazón, a member of the conservative People’s party (PP), is under mounting pressure after it emerged he had a three-hour lunch with a journalist on 29 October, the day the torrential rains hit the region, and did not arrive at the emergency command centre until 7.30pm that evening.

Much of the anger also stems from the fact that Mazón’s administration waited almost 14 hours before sending emergency civil protection messages to people’s mobile phones on 29 October, despite the series of weather warnings issued by Aemet early that morning and the previous evening.

Mazón himself has tried to blame Spain’s socialist-led government, and even the armed forces’ military emergencies unit (UME), whose personnel have been deployed to the region in huge numbers.

The PP, meanwhile, is attempting to point the finger at Spain’s environment minister, Teresa Ribera, who has been designated as the European Commission’s executive vice-president for the clean, just and competitive transition. The party used her EU confirmation hearing in Brussels on Tuesday to accuse her of failing in her duties as a minister.

“This test is totally unnecessary,” said Dolors Montserrat, the PP’s European parliament spokesperson. “Two weeks ago, you were subjected to the test of your life in Valencia … You are responsible for the prevention, preparation and response on climate disasters and that’s why I’m sure that history – and perhaps judges – will judge you for your inaction and your incompetence.”

Ribera replied that the central government had fulfilled its responsibilities when it came to sounding the alert – Aemet falls under the control of her ministry – and had offered help in responding to the emergency, which remains under the control of Mazón’s administration. She also pointed out that many local authorities in Valencia had heeded the Aemet warning and taken appropriate action such as closing schools on 29 October.

“It might be good to think about how undermining the credibility of the meteorological agency, and not taking seriously the risk warnings that were sent, may have catastrophic consequences for the people,” she added.

The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has called on opposition parties to support key legislation after last week losing his majority in parliament, urging them to prevent his country from becoming as polarised as the US.

“There is no democracy without compromises,” Scholz said in a speech to the lower house of parliament on Wednesday. “Let us, for the good of the country, work together until the new election,” he said in an unusually fiery appeal to members of the Bundestag.

A week after his three-party “traffic light” coalition government collapsed just as Europe was digesting the results of the US presidential election, Scholz confirmed that he would ask for a vote of confidence to take place on 16 December. That would pave the way for early parliamentary elections in February.

Germany has been governed since 2021 by a coalition led by Scholz’s left-leaning Social Democrats with the smaller pro-business Free Democrats and the Greens. It was an uneasy and fractious alliance, and it collapsed last week when Scholz fired the finance minister, Christian Lindner, of the Free Democrats, in a late-night move after disagreements over how to revive the shrinking economy.

“The date at the end of February has now been set and I am very grateful for that,” the chancellor said on Wednesday.

He had initially wanted to have an early election by late March, bringing forward a vote that had been scheduled for September 2025. However, the centre-right opposition pushed for a quicker vote in the parliament to speed up the process.

During his speech, Scholz shifted into campaign mode – though the heated part of campaigning usually only begins about six weeks before an election in Germany.

Four candidates are expected to make their pitch for the chancellery to voters in February. Scholz has said he wants to run as chancellor candidate again, though his party has not yet announced his candidacy.

Friedrich Merz, the head of the main opposition party in parliament, the Christian Democrats, which is leading in the polls, was officially nominated as candidate by his party in September.

On Wednesday he tore into Scholz’s record, saying Germany urgently needed a “completely different type of politics”. Under the leadership of a CDU-led government, he said, that would include backtracking on the government’s climate policies and immigration reform.

Also speaking in the packed Bundestag, Lindner said Scholz did not appear to be listening to the German people. “If you only go round in a circle, you can’t expect to lead a coalition of progress,” he said. Of his sacking, he said: “Sometimes being relieved of something is freeing.”

For the Greens, Robert Habeck, the economy minister and vice-chancellor, will lead his party as candidate for chancellor.

The Greens are a small party that lost popularity in recent elections and whose support hovers at about 10%, which means it is unlikely he would end up as the country’s leader.

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), has said it would nominate its leader, Alice Weidel, next month as its candidate.

Merz’s Christian Democrats have been polling at about 30% or more for the past year. Scholz’s Social Democrats, the strongest governing party, are in third place with about 16%, behind the AfD which is polling at about 19%.

The main campaign issues are likely to be the ailing economy, which led to the collapse of the government in the first place, more efficient control of migration, and the foreign policy issues of Russia’s war on Ukraine and the next presidency of Donald Trump.

Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has called on opposition parties to support key legislation after last week losing his majority in parliament, urging them to prevent his country from becoming as polarised as the US.

“There is no democracy without compromises,” Scholz said in a speech to the lower house of parliament on Wednesday. “Let us, for the good of the country, work together until the new election,” he said in an unusually fiery appeal to members of the Bundestag.

A week after his three-party “traffic light” coalition government collapsed just as Europe was digesting the results of the US presidential election, Scholz confirmed that he would ask for a vote of confidence to take place on 16 December. That would pave the way for early parliamentary elections in February.

Germany has been governed since 2021 by a coalition led by Scholz’s left-leaning Social Democrats with the smaller pro-business Free Democrats and the Greens. It was an uneasy and fractious alliance, and it collapsed last week when Scholz fired the finance minister, Christian Lindner, of the Free Democrats, in a late-night move after disagreements over how to revive the shrinking economy.

“The date at the end of February has now been set and I am very grateful for that,” the chancellor said on Wednesday.

He had initially wanted to have an early election by late March, bringing forward a vote that had been scheduled for September 2025. However, the centre-right opposition pushed for a quicker vote in the parliament to speed up the process.

During his speech, Scholz shifted into campaign mode – though the heated part of campaigning usually only begins about six weeks before an election in Germany.

Four candidates are expected to make their pitch for the chancellery to voters in February. Scholz has said he wants to run as chancellor candidate again, though his party has not yet announced his candidacy.

Friedrich Merz, the head of the main opposition party in parliament, the Christian Democrats, which is leading in the polls, was officially nominated as candidate by his party in September.

On Wednesday he tore into Scholz’s record, saying Germany urgently needed a “completely different type of politics”. Under the leadership of a CDU-led government, he said, that would include backtracking on the government’s climate policies and immigration reform.

Also speaking in the packed Bundestag, Lindner said Scholz did not appear to be listening to the German people. “If you only go round in a circle, you can’t expect to lead a coalition of progress,” he said. Of his sacking, he said: “Sometimes being relieved of something is freeing.”

For the Greens, Robert Habeck, the economy minister and vice-chancellor, will lead his party as candidate for chancellor.

The Greens are a small party that lost popularity in recent elections and whose support hovers at about 10%, which means it is unlikely he would end up as the country’s leader.

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), has said it would nominate its leader, Alice Weidel, next month as its candidate.

Merz’s Christian Democrats have been polling at about 30% or more for the past year. Scholz’s Social Democrats, the strongest governing party, are in third place with about 16%, behind the AfD which is polling at about 19%.

The main campaign issues are likely to be the ailing economy, which led to the collapse of the government in the first place, more efficient control of migration, and the foreign policy issues of Russia’s war on Ukraine and the next presidency of Donald Trump.

Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

A bishop and a cabinet minister have said more senior clergy in the Church of England may need to resign after a damning report into a sadistic abuser.

Julie Conalty, the bishop of Birkenhead and deputy lead bishop for safeguarding, said Justin Welby had “done the right thing” on Tuesday by resigning as archbishop of Canterbury.

Conalty told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Just the archbishop of Canterbury resigning is not going to solve the problem. This is about institutional changes, our culture and a systemic failure so there must be more that we need to do. Very possibly some of the people should go.”

Wes Streeting, the health secretary and a practising Anglican, said it was right that Welby had taken responsibility for the C of E’s failures on abuse.

But, in a warning to other church leaders, he added: “Don’t think one head rolling solves the problem”.

“There are deep and fundamental issues of practice and culture on safeguarding that need to be taken seriously … The culture of cover-up has been part of the problem on serious abuse allegations for far too long,” he told the BBC.

The independent Makin report had said Welby, the spiritual leader of 85 million Anglicans worldwide, was “insufficiently curious” about allegations of abuse by John Smyth, a barrister who ran Christian summer camps in the 1970s and 80s.

Survivors have said that other senior clergy who failed to take effective action when told of Smyth’s abuse should also resign.

The review of the Smyth case names several serving and retired bishops as people who were told of allegations. They include Stephen Conway, the bishop of Lincoln, and formerly the bishop of Ely.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, Conway said he was “deeply sorry” for not “rigorously pursuing” the matter with the archbishop of Canterbury.

He insisted that he did all he could within his authority by making a detailed disclosure to Lambeth Palace, and contacting the diocese in South Africa to which Smith had moved.

“I am clear that I did all within my authority as a bishop of the Church of England, bearing in mind that I had no authority over an entirely independent province on another continent.

“I acknowledge fully that my fault was in not rigorously pursuing Lambeth about that province-to-province communication, and for this I am deeply sorry.”

The independent report said Conway and others had been complacent and that “serious abuse and crimes [were] being covered up at the time”.

Mark Stibbe, a former vicar and survivor of abuse, said senior church figures should step down. Survivors wanted “more resignations because that means more accountability, people taking responsibility for having been silent when they should have spoken,” he told Channel 4 News.

Andrew Morse, another victim of Smyth, said Welby was “just the leader and there are countless other Anglican churchmen who equally bear responsibility”.

Welby had provided “an example for them whether they follow it or not”.

Stephen Cottrell, the archbishop of York, said “some people pretty systematically covered this up, and those people do need to be brought to account”.

However, he declined to be drawn on individuals such as Conway. Those who had actively covered up Smyth’s abuse were not bishops, he said.

Welby had resigned as a way of taking “personal responsibility for institutional failings”, Cottrell told the BBC.

The C of E was taking steps to put effective safeguarding measures in place, but it was “frustrating” that it was taking so long.

Cottrell, who is expected to step up to the top position in the church until a new archbishop of Canterbury is appointed, said: “I now find I have additional responsibilities to change the culture and to change the way the church is safeguarded.”

Conalty also said she could not guarantee the C of E was a safe institution.

“It is frustrating for me because in many ways we have been working really hard at making churches safer places,” she said. “No institution, nothing, can ever be totally safe but there has been loads of really good work going on.

“We still have this institutional problem where we are not putting victims and survivors at the centre. In some ways, we are not a safe institution.”

A senior Russian naval officer was killed in a car bombing in Crimea on Wednesday, the latest in a series of targeted attacks on Russian military personnel and pro-Kremlin figures in occupied Ukrainian territories as well as inside Russia.

An official in Ukraine’s security services told the Ukrainian Pravda outlet that the agency had orchestrated the car bomb attack in the Russian-controlled port city of Sevastopol that killed Valery Trankovsky, the chief of staff of the 41st Missile Brigade of the Russian navy’s Black Sea fleet.

The official said Trankovsky was “a war criminal” who had ordered missile strikes from the Black Sea at civilian targets in Ukraine. Russia has used warships from its Black Sea fleet, as well as strategic bombers, to conduct missile strikes on targets across Ukraine that have led to hundreds of civilian casualties.

Without naming Trankovsky, Russia’s Investigative Committee confirmed the attack.

“As a result of an improvised explosive device fixed to the bottom of the car exploding, a Russian armed forces serviceman was killed,” the committee said, adding that it had opened an investigation into “the fact of committing a terrorist attack”.

Russian media reported that the explosion tore off Trankovsky’s legs and he died from blood loss. Trankovsky had reportedly been under surveillance for about a week, and the homemade explosive device was detonated remotely.

Ukraine has targeted dozens of Russian military officers and Russian-installed officials whom Kyiv has accused of committing war crimes in the country. Little is known about the clandestine Ukrainian resistance cells involved in assassinations and attacks on military infrastructure in Russian-controlled areas.

In October, a high-ranking officer in the GRU military intelligence service who had recently returned from fighting in Ukraine was assassinated outside his house in a village in the Moscow region. The same month, Ukraine claimed responsibility for a car bomb attack that killed an official at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

Kyiv is also believed to have been behind the killing of a former Russian submarine captain who was shot dead while jogging in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar and may have been tracked through his profile on the fitness app Strava.

Apart from military figures, Ukraine has targeted prominent Russian pro-war propagandists, including Darya Dugina, the daughter of an ultra-nationalist Russian ideologue, who was killed in 2023 when a bomb blew up the Toyota Land Cruiser she was driving.

Russia’s Federal Security Service, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said last December it had cracked a network of Ukrainian agents in Crimea who were involved in attempts to assassinate pro-Russian figures.

The Guardian has announced it will no longer post content on Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, from its official accounts.

In an announcement to readers, the news organisation said it considered the benefits of being on the platform formerly called Twitter were now outweighed by the negatives, citing the “often disturbing content” found on it.

“We wanted to let readers know that we will no longer post on any official Guardian editorial accounts on the social media site X,” the Guardian said.

The Guardian has more than 80 accounts on X with approximately 27 million followers.

The Guardian said content on the platform about which it had longstanding concerns included far-right conspiracy theories and racism. It added that the site’s coverage of the US presidential election had crystallised its decision.

“This is something we have been considering for a while given the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism,” it said.

It added: “The US presidential election campaign served only to underline what we have considered for a long time: that X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse.”

Anti-hate speech campaign groups and the EU have criticised Musk, the world’s richest person, over content standards on the platform since he bought it for $44bn in 2022. A self-declared “free speech absolutist”, the Tesla chief executive has reinstated banned accounts including those of the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, the misogynist influencer Andrew Tate and the British far-right activist Tommy Robinson.

The Guardian said X users would still be able to share its articles across the platform and that posts on X would occasionally be embedded in its work as part of its live news reporting. Reporters would also be able to continue using the platform for newsgathering purposes, the Guardian said.

Although the Guardian’s official accounts are withdrawing from X, there will be no restrictions on individual reporters using the site beyond the organisation’s existing social media guidelines.

“Social media can be an important tool for news organisations and help us to reach new audiences but, at this point, X now plays a diminished role in promoting our work. Our journalism is available and open to all on our website and we would prefer people to come to theguardian.com and support our work there,” said the Guardian.

Last year, National Public Radio [NPR], the non-profit US media organisation, stopped posting on X after the social media platform labelled it as “state-affiliated media”. PBS, a US public TV broadcaster, also suspended its posts for the same reason.

This month, the Berlin film festival said it was quitting X, without citing an official reason, while last month, the North Wales police force said it had stopped using X because it was “no longer consistent with our values”. In August, the Royal National orthopaedic hospital said it was leaving X, citing an “increased volume of hate speech and abusive commentary” on the platform.

X has been contacted for comment.

It is a common complaint in the produce aisle: tomatoes today might be big, but they are tasteless. Now researchers say they can remedy the problem by tweaking genes that affect sugar levels in the fruit.

While their wild relatives produce small, sweet fruit, domesticated tomatoes grown industrially have been bred for high yields, resulting in varieties that are 10-100 times bigger.

Now scientists in China say they have identified two genes that put a brake on sugar production in tomatoes during ripening, and created gene-edited versions of domesticated varieties to result in fruit that is large but also sweet.

Prof Sanwen Huang, the director general of the agricultural genomics institute at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science, Shenzhen, said it was necessary to balance the needs of consumers with those of producers and farmers.

“As farmers want larger tomatoes and higher yield, the consumers want sweeter tomatoes,” he said. “Our discovery of the sugar brake genes leads to [breeding of a] sweeter tomato without sacrificing fruit size and yield, breaking the negative relationship between yield and quality.”

Writing in the journal Nature, the researchers describe how they first explored the genomes of wild and cultivated tomato plants, identifying two similar genes associated with the sugar content of the fruit. They say the versions of these genes associated with high sweetness are prevalent in wild tomato plants, but have largely been lost in modern varieties.

Further work revealed the versions of the genes found in domesticated tomato plants enabled the production of an enzyme that labelled another sugar-making enzyme for destruction within cells. By contrast, the versions of these genes found in wild plants limited the production of this enzyme, resulting in sweeter tomatoes.

When the team used the gene-editing tool Crispr-Cas9 to make precise changes to the DNA of domesticated tomato plants, preventing these genes from working properly, they found the resulting fruit had up to 30% higher sugar content than those of unmodified plants. Unexpectedly, however, there was no significant difference in fruit weight or yield. While the gene-edited tomatoes had fewer, lighter seeds, they germinated as normal.

The researchers say their work suggests the two genes work as sugar brakes during fruit ripening, probably to ensure there is enough energy for the development of seeds.

Huang said the new tomatoes could end up in supermarkets within three to five years; the team noted other gene-edited tomatoes were already available in Japan.

However, it might be a while before others can taste the fruits of such science: while new laws support growing of gene-edited crops in England and Wales, secondary legalisation needed to implement the law has not yet been passed.

The United States Congress will hold a hearing on Wednesday to discuss the topic of UFOs that some lawmakers are hopeful will lead to new information on a subject that is the focus of many conspiracy theorists but has also recently attracted serious attention from government officials.

The House oversight committee’s hearing will be titled Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth. The title refers to UAPs, the new preferred acronym for UFOs, which has become an increasingly popular term among believers – and US officials – to describe mysterious airborne objects.

The hearing will be the second congressional hearing the US Congress has put together in order to “further pull back the curtain on secret UAP research programs conducted by the US government, and undisclosed findings they have yielded”, according to a House statement.

The hearing will be led by Republican representatives Nancy Mace and Glenn Grothman. The representatives argue in the House’s statement that Americans are frustrated with the lack of transparency by the US government on the topic of UAPs.

“Americans deserve to understand what the government has learned about UAP sightings, and the nature of any potential threats these phenomena pose. We can only ensure that understanding by providing consistent, systemic transparency. We look forward to hearing from expert witnesses on ways to shed more light and bring greater accountability to this issue,” Mace and Grothman said in the statement.

Luis Elizondo, a decorated former counterintelligence officer who has claimed for years that the US government is hiding knowledge of UAPs, will be an expert witness at the hearing.

Wednesday’s hearing comes more than a year after the Pentagon was accused of running a secret UFO retrieval program by whistleblower David Grusch, though no evidence has ever emerged to back up these claims.

Many advocates for the disclosure of classified UAPs are optimistic that Donald Trump’s administration will choose to release more government documents.

Republican representative Tim Burchett of Tennessee told the Hill: “I’m convinced that that’s what he wants, and that he trusts the American public. President Trump will move towards total disclosure.”