The confirmation prospects of two of Donald Trump’s most controversial cabinet choices were in jeopardy over sexual misconduct allegations on Friday in developments mirroring the president-elect’s own history of abusive behavior towards women.

Uncertainty surrounded the nomination of Pete Hegseth, Trump’s choice as defense secretary – whose path to Senate confirmation was already complicated over concerns about his inexperience and extreme views – following revelations that police in California investigated a sexual assault allegation against him in 2017.

No charges were pressed. But the allegations were sufficiently serious for Trump’s newly appointed chief of staff, Susie Wiles, to reportedly speak to Hegseth after she learned of them on Wednesday evening, the day after his nomination.

According to Vanity Fair, which initially reported the story, the incoming president’s own lawyers also talked to Hegseth, a 44-year-old Fox News host and army veteran who has railed against – among other things – women serving in military combat roles.

The disclosure compounded the controversy over Matt Gaetz, the far-right Florida congressman nominated as attorney general despite having faced a two-year Department of Justice investigation over sex-trafficking allegations. They included allegations that he had sex with a 17-year-old minor.

Republican and Democratic senators pressed on Friday to see a House of Representatives ethic committee report into Gaetz’s conduct that was commissioned despite the criminal investigation ending without charges.

Gaetz forestalled Friday’s scheduled publication of the report – the contents of which were widely expected to be damaging to him – by resigning from the House immediately after Trump announced his nomination on Wednesday. The House speaker, Mike Johnson, has also said he would “strongly request” the report not be published.

But the report’s existence could still in effect torpedo his nomination after senior senators – including Republican John Cornyn of Texas, a member of the Senate judiciary committee – demanded that it be preserved for use in Senate confirmation hearings.

The inquiry was originally launched in 2021 to investigate whether the congressman “may have engaged in sexual misconduct and/or illicit drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, and/or accepted a bribe, improper gratuity, or impermissible gift, in violation of House rules, laws, or other standards of conduct”.

Trump is believed to have picked Gaetz as the ideal candidate to conduct a wholesale purge of the justice department, against which he harbors bitter grievances for pressing criminal investigations into his conduct during his first presidency.

Hegseth, likewise, has been selected with a view to purging the armed forces, which he has accused of being hampered by “woke leadership”.

His prospects of doing so seemed to be clouded by disclosure of the 2017 investigation, which stemmed from an alleged incident at the Hyatt Regency hotel and spa in Monterey, California, which was hosting a Republican women’s conference.

The Monterey city manager’s office confirmed the investigation in a brief statement, adding that the alleged incident occurred between midnight on 7 October 2017 and 7am the following morning.

Hegseth reportedly told Wiles and the Trump legal team that it stemmed from a consensual encounter and described the allegation as “he said, she said”, Vanity Fair reported.

The magazine’s website also quoted a source as saying Hegseth had not been vetted. This was countered by a source in Trump’s transition team, who said: “Hegseth was vetted, but this alleged incident didn’t come up.”

The dispute over vetting followed separate reports that standard FBI background checks on some of Trump’s most controversial nominees – designed to uncover past criminal activity and other potentially disqualifying liabilities – had been set aside.

The questions over the sexual behavior of his nominees echo Trump’s own past. The president-elect was ordered to pay $83m damages to the writer E Jean Carroll last year after a New York jury in a civil trial found him liable for sexual assault and defamation. Carroll alleged Trump raped her in 1996, which Trump denied.

His candidacy in the 2016 presidential election was almost derailed following the emergence of an Access Hollywood tape from more than a decade earlier in which he boasted of using his celebrity status to grab women’s genitals.

Sexual misconduct allegations have also dogged Robert F Kennedy Jr, Trump’s selection as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. A former babysitter for his children alleged that Kennedy groped her in his home in 1998. Kennedy responded to the accusation, again reported in Vanity Fair, by saying: “I’m not a church boy.”

Donald Trump named his White House press secretary on Friday, placing Karoline Leavitt, a 27-year-old firebrand from his inner circle, in position to aggressively defend him.

The job of the White House press secretary typically is to help inform the American people about presidential activities without betraying the confidence of the boss.

“Karoline is smart, tough, and has proven to be a highly effective communicator. I have the utmost confidence she will excel at the podium …, ” the statement read.

The challenge for Leavitt will be to impart reliable information and gain credibility with reporters, while maintaining strong loyalty to Trump. Leavitt has been seen as a staunch and camera-ready advocate for Trump who is quick on her feet and delivers aggressive defenses of the president-elect in television interviews.

In a June interview on CNN’s This Morning, Leavitt became embroiled in a heated exchange with host Kasie Hunt, bashing Dana Bash and Jake Tapper for their “biased coverage” of Trump before the highly anticipated debate between him and Joe Biden. Bash and Tapper had been moderators for that debate. Hunt abruptly ended that interview after Leavitt refused to be deflected.

Leavitt will be the youngest person ever to hold the title of White House press secretary. Ron Ziegler was previously the youngest press secretary at age 29 when Richard Nixon gave him the position in 1969.

Leavitt, a New Hampshire native, was an assistant press secretary during the latter part of Trump’s first term, from 2017 to 2021.

When Trump was defeated by Joe Biden in 2020, Leavitt became communications director for Elise Stefanik, the Republican US representative, who has been tapped by Trump as his US ambassador to the United Nations.

Leavitt ran for a seat in the US House of Representatives from New Hampshire in 2022, winning the Republican primary. She lost the general election to Democrat Chris Pappas, but the experience appeared to give her valuable experience with public speaking.

She joined Trump’s 2024 campaign and has been the chief spokesperson for the president-elect’s transition team.

Trump had four press secretaries during his 2017-2021 term: Sean Spicer, Sarah Sanders, Stephanie Grisham and Kayleigh McEnany. Spicer got off on the wrong foot with the White House press corps at his first appearance in 2017 after falsely claiming that the crowd gathered in Washington DC for Trump’s inauguration had been “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe”.

Spicer was replaced after just sixth months in the role, making his tenure the sixth-shortest since the position was created in 1929, according to data from the White House Transition Project. The average term is just under three years.

Sanders, who is now the Republican governor of Arkansas, got praise from Trump for her parrying with the press corps.

After Sanders left, Trump turned to Grisham, who never held a briefing, which she said was at Trump’s direction. Grisham resigned after the events of 6 January 2021, and is now a sharp Trump critic.

Trump’s last chief spokesperson at the White House was McEnany, who sparred with reporters during the pandemic year of 2020 and is now an on-air personality at Fox News.

The FBI confirmed it is “aware” of bomb threats that targeted election offices in several Oregon counties. Local clerks in Deschutes, Crook, and Jefferson reported receiving threatening emails last week, just days after election day.

The FBI said that none of the threats were deemed credible.

“Election integrity is among the FBI’s highest priorities,” the FBI said in a statement. “We will continue to work closely with our state and local law enforcement partners to respond to any threats to election officials and to protect our communities.”

The Deschutes county clerk, Steve Dennison, told Central Oregon Daily News: “We’ve referred these threats to our partners in law enforcement as well as the secretary of state’s office.”

The Crook county clerk, Cheryl Seely, told KTVZ that the county had received “the email bomb threat just before closing last Friday”.

“We followed all necessary procedures for this type of situation. I have since learned that most Oregon counties reported receiving a bomb threat via email that same day. There is an ongoing investigation in this matter,” Seely added.

The Jefferson county clerk, Kate Zemke, also told the news outlet that her office had received the email and addressed the threat in similar fashion.

The news comes amid a series of hostile election-related incidents. Last month, ballot boxes in Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, Washington, were set on fire with incendiary devices. Federal authorities said they were offering a $25,000 reward in connection with the incidents.

The devices used were marked with the words “free Gaza”, but it’s not yet clear to authorities if the person who set the devices had grievances related to the Gaza war or if it was a tactic to sow confusion, 12 News Now reported.

On Tuesday, an area near the Deschutes county courthouse in Bend was closed off while the Oregon state police bomb squad and police responded to a suspicious package that turned out to be hygiene products.

In 2020, a Bend, Oregon, man was sentenced to federal prison for making a hoax bomb and threatening to blow up a courthouse. Kellie Kent Cameron, 32, was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison.

Mike Pence, the former vice-president, urged Senate Republicans on Friday to reject Donald Trump’s choice of Robert F Kennedy Jr as health secretary – although he cited Kennedy’s support for abortion rights, while other critics are most outraged at his stance against vaccines.

Pence’s comments came as public alarm mounted among Democrats and in health circles about Kennedy, while there were bipartisan warnings that another of Trump’s choices, the far-right congressman Matt Gaetz for attorney general, faces “an uphill battle” to win confirmation in the US Senate, despite Republicans winning the majority in the upper congressional chamber.

Pence cited his conservative views on abortion for his opposition to Kennedy’s elevation to secretary of health and human services (HHS).

“The Trump-Pence administration was unapologetically pro-life for our four years in office. There are hundreds of decisions made at HHS every day that either lead our nation toward a respect for life or away from it, and HHS under our administration always stood for life,” Pence said in a statement released by his conservative non-profit, Advancing American Freedom.

“I believe the nomination of RFK Jr to serve as Secretary of HHS is an abrupt departure from the pro-life record of our administration and should be deeply concerning to millions of Pro-Life Americans who have supported the Republican Party and our nominees for decades.”

Prominent medical professionals have joined leading Democrats in speaking out against Kennedy, who has embraced a multitude of debunked health-related conspiracy theories, and whose proposed elevation to the government’s top health job represents “a clear and present danger to the nation’s health” and “a catastrophe”, according to some critics.

“I think this is an extraordinarily bad choice. He does not plan to lean on evidence and rigorous analysis to make decisions but instead to use his own ideas,” Dr Ashish Jha, Covid-19 coordinator for the Biden White House and dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, told CNN.

Dr Richard Besser, former acting director of the powerful US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told the network that Kennedy’s views criticizing childhood vaccines, including the false claim that they cause autism, were “dangerous”.

“Frankly, I find it chilling. He has done so much to undermine the confidence that people have in that incredible intervention,” he said.

Trump has been assembling a cabinet for his second term in office, making announcements this week from his residence in Florida, and on Thursday named Kennedy to lead HHS and its associated agencies.

He praised the politician, a former independent presidential candidate and outcast from the Democratic Kennedy political dynasty, at a black-tie gala at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday night.

“If you like health and if you like people that live a long time, it’s the most important position,” he said. Directly addressing Kennedy, who was in the ballroom of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and private resort club, he added: “We want you to come up with things and ideas, and what you’ve been talking about for a long time.”

Democrats were quick to express outrage. The California representative Robert Garcia called it “fucking insane” and described Kennedy as “a tin foil hat conspiracy theorist”.

The Massachusetts representative Jake Auchincloss promised to “fight back in Washington to protect the integrity” of federal public health agencies if Kennedy is confirmed by the Senate.

“RFK Jr is a conspiracist & quack who threatens the health of Americans. He’s not simply angling for more sunshine & exercise (no one disagrees with that). He seeks to overturn evidence-driven, peer-reviewed research on medicines & more,” Auchincloss posted to X.

Shares in several of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies and vaccine manufacturers, including Moderna, AstraZeneca and GSK, plummeted on Friday in reaction to the news.

Kennedy has previously said “there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective” but told NBC in a post-election interview that he “won’t take away anybody’s vaccines”.

Trump on Thursday nominated a vocal ally of his to be interior secretary – Doug Burgum, the Republican North Dakota governor. The role would put him in charge of national parks and public lands, and he has strong links to the fossil fuel industry, where many companies have strong appetites for government permits to drill and mine on federal land.

Republicans will have a majority of at least 53-47 seats in the chamber during the next Congress, but even so, two other of Trump’s picks are already receiving bipartisan pushback: Gaetz and the former Democratic congresswoman turned Republican Tulsi Gabbard, named for director of national intelligence. Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton once described her as a “favorite of the Russians”.

Gaetz resigned as a US representative for Florida on Wednesday, in effect suspending the planned release on Friday of a report by the House of Representatives ethics committee into allegations of sexual misconduct, including that he had sex with a 17-year-old girl, which he has denied. His nomination as the nation’s leading law enforcement officer was seen by some as a direct challenge by Trump to the incoming Republican Senate majority to defy his authority.

“For me the message to the administration is simply that Matt Gaetz has a very long, steep hill to get across the finish line and it will require the spending of a lot of capital,” North Dakota’s Republican senator Kevin Cramer told the Washington Post.

“That ethics report is clearly going to become a part of the record.”

On Friday, Joni Ernst, Republican senator for Iowa, also said the report was expected to feature prominently in a confirmation hearing. “We’ll talk about it for certain, but I know he’s going to have an uphill battle [for confirmation],” she told NBC News.

Other Republicans demanded the release of the report, including Washington congressman Dan Newhouse and Texas senator John Cornyn.

Meanwhile former defense secretary and Republican US senator Chuck Hagel published an opinion piece in the New York Times challenging Trump’s controversial nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, as a potential “danger” to political independence, good ethics and progress towards equality in the US military. He also questioned the potential for Trump to sidestep Senate confirmations.

Trump has signaled he could resort to rare recess appointments, the archaic process allowing a president to install his nominees while Congress is not in session.

A young vineyard worker accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot on six occasions over four years when she had been drugged by her husband also proposed drugging and raping his own mother, a court has heard.

Charly A, 30, is one of 51 men on trial over the rape of Gisèle Pelicot, whose then husband, Dominique Pelicot, crushed sleeping tablets and anti-anxiety medication into her food and invited dozens of men to rape her while she was unconscious over a nine-year period from 2011 to 2020 in the village of Mazan in Provence. Dominique Pelicot has admitted the charges, telling the court: “I am a rapist.”

Gisèle Pelicot, 72, a former logistics manager, has become a feminist hero after insisting that the rape trial of her ex-husband and the other men be held in public to raise awareness of the use of drugs and sedation to rape women, having said: “It’s not for us to have shame, it’s for them.”

Charly A, a vineyard worker who later packed lorries for a cement company, is accused of driving to the Pelicots’ home on six occasions between 2016 and 2020 to rape Gisèle Pelicot in her bedroom alongside Dominique Pelicot, who had drugged her into a comatose state.

On the first occasion, Charly A was aged 22 and Gisèle Pelicot was aged 64. Charly A and Dominique Pelicot are also accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot in her bed on the night of her 66th birthday.

Charly A denied rape, saying: “I never had the intention to rape.” He said Dominique Pelicot, whom he had met online, had invited him to the couple’s home and told him that Gisèle Pelicot would be “pretending to be asleep”. He said: “I was told it was a scenario in which she was asleep. In that scenario, she was consenting. For me, I didn’t intend to rape. I didn’t want to rape her, I didn’t want to do something bad to that family.”

Charly A had spent part of his childhood in Mazan and lived a 30-minute drive away.

Video evidence showed a whispered conversation in Gisèle Pelicot’s bedroom between the two men, in which they discuss a plan to drug and rape Charly A’s mother in the same way. In the footage, Charly A says he will give an address and date for this to take place. Both men told the court this conversation took place, but said they did not rape Charly A’s mother.

Charly A’s mother, a personal care assistant and mother of three, had lived in Mazan and in different parts of the Vaucluse area of southern France.

Charly A was asked in court why he had suggested he and Dominique Pelicot rape his mother. He said he was afraid of Dominique Pelicot, who had asked him if there was another woman in his family or entourage who he would like to rape or see raped.

Charly A said he suggested his own mother “because it was the only woman who came to mind”. He said Dominique Pelicot was “insistent”, so he gave him a photo of his mother. Charly A told the court he had never intended to go through with it and kept making excuses. He said: “I gave the excuse that my little brother was home and my mother had to look after him, so he couldn’t come. Because I wasn’t OK with it.”

Dominique Pelicot gave Charly A three sedative tablets wrapped in silver foil in order for him to sedate his mother, explaining that he should crush them into her food. Charly A told the court that he threw the pills out of his car window that night and never used them. Dominique Pelicot contradicted this, saying that Charly A had instead returned the drugs to him.

Asked in court if he was angry with his mother or hated her, Charly A said he was not. He told the court: “I love my mum as any son loves their mum, nothing special.”

Police testing on a hair sample from Charly A’s mother showed a very low presence of sedatives consistent with a sporadic or single use of sedatives. She told police she had never used that type of medication. “I don’t know how it could be in my body. I don’t understand,” she said.

A court psychiatrist who interviewed Charly A said his “very intense use of pornography” from his early teenage years – including what the psychiatrist called pornographic cliches about mothers and older women – had played a role in his objectification of women.

The psychiatrist said the fact that Charly A regularly went to the Pelicots’ home in December, around Christmas time and in January, could have been related to his depression at having a dysfunctional family, affected by divorce and separation, around the holiday period.

Other accused men have said they were lonely at Christmas. One 63-year-old who is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot but denied it, said he was “lonely” as “Christmas was approaching and I was going to be on my own again”. Another man, 37, who is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot one New Year’s Eve and also denies it, said he “had nothing else to do” because his brothers hadn’t invited him to their New Year’s party.

The trial in Avignon continues until 20 December.

The West Side Story and Snow White actor Rachel Zegler has apologised after criticising Donald Trump and his supporters.

The 23-year-old, currently starring in Broadway’s re-imagined Romeo + Juliet, had posted a lengthy response to the re-election of Trump and the “four years of hatred” he would bring about in America.

She wrote about a “deep, deep sickness” in the US and said she was terrified to see how many people still support someone who “threatens our democracy”. She also echoed a recent statement made by the singer Ethel Cain, writing: “May Trump supporters and Trump voters and Trump himself never know peace.”

Zegler ended the statement, writing: “Fuck Donald Trump.”

After backlash within conservative corners of the internet, with rightwing pundit Megyn Kelly calling her “a pig”, Zegler released a new statement, writing that she wanted to “sincerely apologise” for what had been said.

“Hatred and anger have caused us to move further and further away from peace and understanding, and I am sorry I contributed to the negative discourse,” she wrote in an Instagram story. “This week has been emotional for so many of us, but I firmly believe that everyone has the right to their opinion, even when it differs from my own. I am committed to contributing positively towards a better tomorrow.”

Zegler is the lead of Disney’s $200m-budgeted live-action take on Snow White starring opposite Gal Gadot, co-written by Greta Gerwig.

The actor, who also led last year’s Hunger Games prequel, previously angered conservatives online by criticising the animated original. In a red carpet interview with Extra, she joked that the original had a “weird” dynamic and was about “a guy who literally stalks” Snow White.

“People are making these jokes about ours being the PC Snow White, where it’s like, yeah, it is – because it needed that,” she also said in a Vanity Fair interview. She said the new film would be less about “dreaming about true love” and more about becoming a leader.

In an interview with the Telegraph, David Hand, whose father was one of the directors of the 1937 version, called the new “woke” take “a disgrace” and “insulting”.

After experiencing delays due to the pandemic and the 2023 actors strike, it is now set to be released in March 2025.

Zegler is one of many celebrities who has expressed dismay with the re-election of Trump. Cardi B said she was “really sad” over the result, while John Cusack wrote that “voting in a convicted felon rapist and Nazi is a sign of deep nihilism”.

Elon Musk has expanded his lawsuit against the ChatGPT maker OpenAI, adding federal antitrust and other claims and adding OpenAI’s largest financial backer, Microsoft, as a defendant.

Musk’s amended lawsuit, filed on Thursday night in federal court in Oakland, California, said Microsoft and OpenAI illegally sought to monopolize the market for generative artificial intelligence and sideline competitors.

Like Musk’s original August complaint, it accused OpenAI and its chief executive, Samuel Altman, of violating contract provisions by putting profits ahead of the public good in the push to advance AI.

“Never before has a corporation gone from tax-exempt charity to a $157bn for-profit, market-paralyzing gorgon – and in just eight years,” the complaint said. It seeks to void OpenAI’s license with Microsoft and force them to divest “ill-gotten” gains.

OpenAI in a statement said the latest lawsuit “is even more baseless and overreaching than the previous ones”. Microsoft declined to comment.

“Microsoft’s anticompetitive practices have escalated,” Musk’s attorney Marc Toberoff said in a statement. “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”

Musk has a long-simmering opposition to OpenAI, a startup he co-founded and that has since become the face of generative AI through billions of dollars in funding from Microsoft.

Musk has gained new prominence as a key force in Donald Trump’s incoming administration. Trump named Musk to a new role designed to cut government waste, after he donated millions of dollars to Trump’s Republican campaign.

The expanded lawsuit said OpenAI and Microsoft violated antitrust law by conditioning investment opportunities on agreements not to deal with the companies’ rivals. It said the companies’ exclusive licensing agreement amounted to a merger lacking regulatory approvals.

In a court filing last month, OpenAI accused Musk of pursuing the lawsuit as part of an “increasingly blusterous campaign to harass OpenAI for his own competitive advantage”.

Elon Musk has expanded his lawsuit against the ChatGPT maker OpenAI, adding federal antitrust and other claims and adding OpenAI’s largest financial backer, Microsoft, as a defendant.

Musk’s amended lawsuit, filed on Thursday night in federal court in Oakland, California, said Microsoft and OpenAI illegally sought to monopolize the market for generative artificial intelligence and sideline competitors.

Like Musk’s original August complaint, it accused OpenAI and its chief executive, Samuel Altman, of violating contract provisions by putting profits ahead of the public good in the push to advance AI.

“Never before has a corporation gone from tax-exempt charity to a $157bn for-profit, market-paralyzing gorgon – and in just eight years,” the complaint said. It seeks to void OpenAI’s license with Microsoft and force them to divest “ill-gotten” gains.

OpenAI in a statement said the latest lawsuit “is even more baseless and overreaching than the previous ones”. Microsoft declined to comment.

“Microsoft’s anticompetitive practices have escalated,” Musk’s attorney Marc Toberoff said in a statement. “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”

Musk has a long-simmering opposition to OpenAI, a startup he co-founded and that has since become the face of generative AI through billions of dollars in funding from Microsoft.

Musk has gained new prominence as a key force in Donald Trump’s incoming administration. Trump named Musk to a new role designed to cut government waste, after he donated millions of dollars to Trump’s Republican campaign.

The expanded lawsuit said OpenAI and Microsoft violated antitrust law by conditioning investment opportunities on agreements not to deal with the companies’ rivals. It said the companies’ exclusive licensing agreement amounted to a merger lacking regulatory approvals.

In a court filing last month, OpenAI accused Musk of pursuing the lawsuit as part of an “increasingly blusterous campaign to harass OpenAI for his own competitive advantage”.

• Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Russia’s war against his country will “end sooner” than it otherwise would have once Donald Trump becomes US president next year. “It is certain that the war will end sooner with the policies of the team that will now lead the White House. This is their approach, their promise to their citizens,” the Ukrainian president said in an interview with media outlet Suspilne on Friday. Zelensky said he had a “constructive exchange” with Trump during their phone conversation after his victory in the US presidential election. “I didn’t hear anything that goes against our position,” he added. Speaking at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Friday, Trump said: “We’re going to work very hard on Russia and Ukraine. It’s got to stop.”

• The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has said Donald Trump privately held “a more nuanced position than is often assumed” on Ukraine. Trump’s reelection in last week’s US presidential vote has raised concerns he could withdraw Washington’s significant support for Ukraine once back in the White House. Scholz, who spoke with Trump by phone on Sunday, told the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspapper on Friday his call with the president-elect was “perhaps surprisingly, a very detailed and good conversation”. Asked by the paper whether Trump would make a deal over the head of the Ukrainians, Scholz said Trump gave “no indication” that he would. Germany, for its part, would not accept a “peace by diktat”, Scholz said.

• Olaf Scholz urged Vladimir Putin to pull Russian forces out of Ukraine and begin talks with Kyiv that would open the way for a “just and lasting peace”, in the first phone conversation between the two leaders in nearly two years. The Kremlin said the conversation on Friday had come at Berlin’s request, and that Putin had told Scholz any agreement to end the war in Ukraine must take Russian security interests into account and reflect “new territorial realities”. A German government spokesperson said Scholz “stressed Germany’s unbroken determination to back Ukraine in its defence against Russian aggression for as long as necessary”.

• The phone call between Olaf Scholz and Vladimir Putin was swiftly criticised by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who said it opened a “Pandora’s box” by undermining efforts to isolate the Russian leader. “Now there may be other conversations, other calls. Just a lot of words,” Zelenskyy said in his evening address. “And this is exactly what Putin has long wanted: it is extremely important for him to weaken his isolation and to conduct ordinary negotiations.” According to Reuters, Zelenskyy and other European officials had cautioned Scholz against the move.

• Russian air defence units intercepted a series of Ukrainian drones in several Russian regions, officials said, many of them in Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops launched a major incursion in August. Russia’s defence ministry said air defences downed 15 drones in Kursk region on the Ukrainian border. It said units downed one drone each in Bryansk region, also on the border, and in Lipetsk region, further north. The ministry said one drone was downed in central Oryol region. And the governor of Belgorod region, a frequent target on the Ukrainian border, said a series of attacks had smashed windows in an apartment building and caused other damage, but no casualties were reported.

• Russia will suspend gas deliveries to Austria via Ukraine on Saturday. Russia’s gas export route to Europe via Ukraine is set to shut at the end of this year. Ukraine has said it will not extend the transit agreement with Russian state-owned Gazprom in order to deprive Russia of profits that Kyiv says help to finance the war against it. The Austrian chancellor, Karl Nehammer, said Gazprom’s notice of ending supplies was long expected and Austria has made preparations, but the Ukrainian foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said Russia’s action showed it “once again uses energy as a weapon”.

• Russia’s leading tanker group Sovcomflot said on Friday that western sanctions on Russian oil tankers were limiting its financial performance, as it reported falling revenues and core earnings. The US imposed sanctions on Sovcomflot in February, part of Washington’s efforts to reduce Russia’s revenues from oil sales that it can use to finance its war in Ukraine. Sovcomflot reported a 22.2% year-on-year drop in nine-month revenue to $1.22bn and said its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation slumped by 31.5% to $861m.

The Dutch prime minister Dick Schoof’s rightwing government averted a crisis on Friday when a junior minister resigned over alleged racist comments by cabinet colleagues, but the coalition government will remain in place.

The deputy finance minister, Nora Achahbar, handed in her resignation late on Friday as the Netherlands grapples with the political fallout of last week’s attacks on Israeli football fans.

Her departure prompted speculation that other members of NSC party – a junior partner in the four-party Dutch coalition government – would follow suit.

But late Friday, Schoof told journalists at a press conference that party leaders decided to continue to work together, averting the potential fall of his not yet five-month-old government.

“Nora Achahbar has decided not to continue as deputy minister. But as the cabinet we decided to continue together,” Schoof said after a five-hour emergency meeting with his coalition partners at his official residence in The Hague.

Achahbar, who is of Moroccan descent, decided to exit the government after a heated cabinet meeting discussing last week’s violence on the streets of Amsterdam after a football match between local club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv.

“The polarising interactions of the past weeks made such an impact on me that I am no longer able to effectively carry out my duties as deputy minister,” Achahbar said in her resignation letter to parliament on Friday.

The junior minister’s resignation came “unexpectedly and impacted me and other cabinet members”, Schoof said, adding “there has never been any racism in my government or in the coalition parties”.

The Dutch government officially announced Achahbar’s resignation in a statement late on Friday.

“The king, on the recommendation of the prime minister, granted this resignation in the most honourable manner,” the government statement said.

On Monday, during the cabinet meeting to discuss the attacks, “things reportedly got heated, and in Achahbar’s opinion racist statements were made,” the NOS public broadcaster said.

“Achahbar reportedly indicated then that she, as a minister, had objections to certain language used by her colleagues,” NOS added.

Coalition party leaders gathered in The Hague for an emergency session on Friday evening to discuss the current crisis, with the NSC acting leader, Nicolien van Vroonhoven, saying beforehand “we will see” if her party wanted to continue in the government coalition.

Far-right leader Geert Wilders’s Freedom party (PVV) won the most seats in Dutch elections a year ago, but the coalition it formed would lose its majority if the NSC pulled out of the government.

The ruling coalition led by Schoof has 88 seats in parliament between the NSC, the PVV, the Liberal VVD and farmer-friendly BBB party.

The political turbulence was set in motion after Maccabi fans were chased and beaten on 7 November in attacks that Schoof said were prompted by “unadulterated antisemitism”.

Wilders said during a debate on Wednesday that the perpetrators of the violence were “all Muslims” and “for the most part Moroccans”.

He called for the attackers to be prosecuted “for terrorism”.

Dutch authorities however also reported that Maccabi fans set fire to a Palestinian flag before the match, chanted anti-Arab slurs and vandalised a taxi.

Police launched a massive investigation into the incident, which the Dutch justice minister, David van Weel, said was “racing ahead”, although much still remained unclear about the night’s events.

The violence struck amid heightened tensions and polarisation in Europe after a rise in antisemitic, anti-Israeli and Islamophobic attacks since the start of the war in Gaza.

But the Dutch government late Thursday said it needed “more time” to flesh out a strategy to fight antisemitism.

The newly elected premier of New Brunswick has called on Canada’s federal government to aid in a “full, open scientific investigation” into the mysterious brain illness that has plagued the province for years, in a move that those suffering from the condition hope could finally bring answers.

“We need to conduct a thorough investigation into what is making people sick,” the premier, Susan Holt, told the National Post.

Health officials first warned in 2012 that more than 40 residents of the province were suffering from a possible unknown neurological syndrome, with symptoms similar to those of the degenerative brain disorder Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. A year later, however, an independent oversight committee created by the province determined that the group of patients had most likely been misdiagnosed and were suffering from known illnesses such as cancer and dementia. A final report from the committee, which concluded there was no “cluster” of people suffering from an unknown brain syndrome, signalled the end of the province’s investigation.

But earlier that year, the Guardian reported that a top federal scientist worried there was “something real going on” in New Brunswick. Another said the investigation “was shut down” and that caseloads were higher than officially acknowledged. “I don’t think it is helpful to suggest or point to who or why – suffice to say that we were prepared to marshal both financial and human scientific resources to tackle the mystery, but they were declined,” the scientist wrote.

More than 450 people in the province – many living on the Acadian peninsula – are believed to be suffering from the illness, including several under the age of 45. At least 40 people have died, according to the premier.

Holt said the initial funding of C$5m (US$3.5m) from the federal government, which the previous provincial government turned down, was still on offer.

“It’s devastating in how it comes on and how it debilitates people,” Holt said. “The inexplicability of it is agony. Not knowing what’s caused it, what’s going to happen next, what the treatment path is. But knowing that it doesn’t seem to be treatable and people around you have died from this is terrifying. So, I think we need to be doing everything we can to shed some light on this and find a way to stop what’s making people sick.”

Terriline Porelle has suffered from the illness for four years, but so rapid has her deterioration been that she is unable to cook because her hands are too hard to control. She now relies nearly exclusively on frozen meals, and as her memory deteriorates she requires constant reminders from her smart speaker to take medications, shower and eat.

Hold’s comments made her hopeful for “full transparency and a real investigation into what is making us sick”, she said.

“Hopefully with a new leader that seems to have integrity and a heart and soul, things will not just be swept under the rug,” she said. “I am hopeful that Premier Holt will do the right thing by us patients and the people of New Brunswick.”

Porelle also said families wanted an internal investigation into why the province turned down help from the federal government and also to hold “politicians accountable for their actions or inactions”.

The Pentagon’s latest report on UFOs has revealed hundreds of new sightings of unidentified and unexplained aerial phenomena but no indications suggesting an extraterrestrial origin.

The review includes hundreds of cases of misidentified balloons, birds and satellites as well as some that defy easy explanation, such as a near-miss between a commercial airliner and a mysterious object off the coast of New York.

While it isn’t likely to settle any debates over the existence of alien life, the report reflects heightened public interest in the topic and the government’s efforts to provide some answers. Its publication comes a day after House lawmakers called for greater government transparency during a hearing on unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs – the government’s preferred term for UFOs.

Federal efforts to study and identify UAPs have focused on potential threats to national security or air safety and not their science fiction aspects. Officials at the Pentagon office created in 2022 to track UAPs, known as the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, have said there is no indication that any of the cases they looked into have unearthly origins.

“It is important to underscore that, to date, AARO has discovered no evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity or technology,” the authors of the report wrote.

The Pentagon’s review covered 757 cases from around the world that were reported to US authorities from 1 May 2023 to 1 June 2024. The total includes 272 incidents that occurred before that time period but had not been previously reported.

The great majority of the reported incidents occurred in airspace, but 49 occurred at altitudes estimated to be at least 62 miles, which is considered space. None occurred underwater. Reporting witnesses included commercial and military pilots as well as ground-based observers.

Investigators found explanations for nearly 300 of the incidents. In many of them, the unknown objects were found to be balloons, birds, aircraft, drones or satellites. According to the report, Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite system is one increasingly common source as people mistake chains of satellites for UFOs.

Hundreds of other cases remain unexplained, though the report’s authors stressed that is often because there is not enough information to draw firm conclusions.

No injuries or crashes were reported in any of the incidents, though a commercial flight crew reported one near miss with a “cylindrical object” while flying over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of New York. That incident remains under investigation.

In three other cases, military aircrews reported being followed or shadowed by unidentified aircraft, though investigators could find no evidence to link the activity to a foreign power.

During Wednesday’s hearing on UAPs, lawmakers heard testimony from several expert witnesses who have studied the phenomena, including two former military officers.

A judge has intervened and ordered a hearing to review the purchase of the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s InfoWars site by the satirical news site the Onion.

On Thursday morning, it was announced that the Onion had bought InfoWars at Jones’s bankruptcy auction.

But later that day, the judge overseeing Jones’s bankruptcy case held an emergency hearing, during which lawyers representing Jones and a company affiliated with him expressed concerns about the auction process. The judge has ordered an evidentiary hearing for next week to determine if the auction was conducted fairly, which could delay the process.

“We’re all going to an evidentiary hearing and I’m going to figure out exactly what happened,” the judge, Christopher Lopez, said in an emergency hearing on Thursday afternoon. “No one should feel comfortable with the results of this auction.”

The only other bidder was First United American Companies, a company that is affiliated with one of Jones’s product-selling websites.

At the emergency hearing on Thursday, a lawyer for First United American Companies took issue with the auction process, noting that no bidding round was held on Wednesday for rival parties, and that only sealed bids submitted the previous week were considered.

But the trustee who oversaw the auction said he followed the judge’s rules laid out in a September order, which made the overbidding round optional.

The exact bid amount offered by the Onion for InfoWars remains unknown, but it has been reported it was lower than First United American’s bid of $3.5m. The Onion’s offer was seen as a better deal because some of the related Sandy Hook families agreed to forgo a portion of the sale proceeds to help pay off Jones’s other creditors.

It was reported on Thursday that the Onion’s purchase of InfoWars received support from families of Sandy Hook shooting victims, to whom Jones owes $1.4bn in defamation judgments after he falsely claimed the 2012 school massacre was a hoax.

In a statement on Friday to Variety, Ben Collins, the CEO of the Onion’s parent company, said: “the joint bid from Global Tetrahedron and the Connecticut families has been selected as the winning bid for Infowars”, adding “the sale is currently underway, pending standard processes.”

On Thursday, after the Onion was announced as a winning bidder, the InfoWars site appeared to be down, and the site displayed a message stating that it was “unavailable until further notice”. But by Friday afternoon it was back online and running in its usual style with Jones claiming that the auction was a “hoax”.

In a post, InfoWars wrote: “We are back”. Soon after, Jones posted: “The InfoWars site has been RESTORED in a massive blow to the Deep State.”

If the sale goes through the Onion has said that it plans to rebuild the InfoWars website to feature internet humor writers and content creators.

Jones said in his live stream: “InfoWars is back up for now, it’s being given back to the rightful owner – yours truly.”

The Associated Press contributed reporting