The integrity of an inquiry into sexual misconduct allegations against the chief prosecutor of the international criminal court could be jeopardised by his ties to the body tasked with the investigation, court staff have said.

The Guardian understands a number of court officials have raised concerns about Karim Khan’s links to the UN watchdog being lined up to investigate the claims.

Some of the concerns, which have been raised at the highest levels of the court, relate to the prosecutor’s wife, a human rights lawyer who previously worked as an investigator at the UN watchdog, the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS). Dato Shyamala Alagendra is also alleged to have acted inappropriately after the claims against her husband had been made, including contacting the alleged victim.

Several ICC sources said the concerns about potential conflicts of interest also related to the chief prosecutor’s links with the OIOS’s head of investigations, whom Khan is understood to have hired as one of his top officials when they worked at the UN.

On Monday, the court’s governing body, the assembly of state parties, announced an external inquiry into the allegations after relieving an internal body of re-examining the matter due in part to “perceptions of possible and future conflicts of interest”.

The assembly did not disclose who would conduct the investigation, but diplomatic sources said it has asked the OIOS to do so and was finalising an agreement.

The scope and formation of the inquiry has been the subject of protracted closed-door negotiations between the ICC’s member states as they grapple with a deepening crisis for the court amid acute geopolitical sensitivities.

The external inquiry will examine the allegations against Khan, which, the Guardian reported last month, include claims of unwanted sexual touching and “abuse” over an extended period, as well as coercive behaviour and abuse of authority.

Lawyers for Khan, 54, have said he denies all the allegations and that he “looks forward to engaging fully” with the inquiry. The alleged victim, an ICC staff member in her 30s who worked directly for the chief prosecutor, has declined to comment.

According to several ICC sources, the woman has told court authorities she would be willing to cooperate with the investigation provided it was sufficiently independent, but is said to have expressed concerns about the OIOS.

Khan is facing a backlash among many of his staff over his decision to ignore advice from senior officials that he should take a leave of absence until the inquiry is resolved, four sources in the prosecutor’s office said.

“Staff are boiling that he has unilaterally decided to stay on,” one source said. Khan’s senior staff, they added, had conveyed to his two deputy prosecutors that he should temporarily step aside “to prevent a chilling effect on witnesses and protect the integrity of the inquiry”.

Claims about Alagendra’s actions

As some of Khan’s senior staff began to press for an external inquiry into the allegations last month, it emerged internally that the OIOS – a watchdog responsible for internal investigations, audits and inspections of UN agencies – was in the running to carry out the investigation.

Within days, concerns began to be raised among senior ICC officials, the staff union, and with the presidency of the assembly about Khan and his wife’s connections to the OIOS, sources familiar with the discussions said.

Alagendra, a high-profile international lawyer who specialises in sexual and gender-based crimes, worked at the OIOS from 2019-20 as a senior investigator focused on sexual harassment and abuse.

One former UN official said Alagendra has “deep connections” at the watchdog. “She was an investigator and knows many of [its] investigators,” they said.

Alagendra’s OIOS ties have raised concerns among a group of Khan’s staff who learned in recent weeks of how she is alleged to have responded to the claims against her husband.

According to four sources aware of the situation, within days of Khan being informed of the allegations against him in early May, Alagendra contacted and spoke to the alleged victim and an ICC staff member, a longstanding adviser to the prosecutor who had reported the allegations internally days earlier.

The sources said the timing and nature of her contacts with both people were regarded as unusual and highly inappropriate.

At the time, an internal oversight body at the court was conducting an initial inquiry to assess the allegations. Within five days of learning of the claims, internal investigators decided against opening a full investigation.

Alagendra contacted the alleged victim shortly after Khan had been told the allegations would be formally reported, according to several ICC sources. She suggested they meet the following day when she would be in the court for a previously arranged official meeting with her husband.

Sources briefed on the situation said the alleged victim subsequently told colleagues she found the situation involving Khan’s wife, which included two further approaches, to be alarming.

In a statement, Alagendra said: “I have never discussed these allegations or any related inquiry with an alleged victim or with anyone from OIOS. Nor have I ever attempted to discourage, threaten or intimidate anyone at all, let alone an alleged victim or an OTP [office of the prosecutor] staff member, from pursuing or reporting any complaint.”

She added: “These allegations are extremely hurtful to me because all spheres of my life have been devoted to defending and upholding the rights of the vulnerable and disadvantaged. This includes my work in prioritising the prosecution of sexual and gender-based crimes as well as crimes against children. My commitment in this regard has always been, and continues to be, unwavering.”

Khan’s ties with senior watchdog investigator

The second concern among Khan’s staff about his ties to the UN watchdog surfaced when it became known that the director of its investigations division previously worked closely with Khan at the UN.

It is understood the senior investigator served as one of Khan’s top officials from 2018-21 when he ran a UN body that investigated crimes committed by Islamic State militants.

It is unclear whether the official, who did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment, will recuse herself from any involvement in the inquiry into Khan. There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing by her.

Lawyers for Khan said he had not discussed the allegations with the UN watchdog or its investigations chief and “he has had no communication with that official or for that matter the OIOS itself for some years”.

The president of the assembly of state parties declined to comment when asked what steps it was taking to ensure the independence of the OIOS investigation. A diplomat familiar with the plan to appoint the OIOS suggested it had “inbuilt mechanisms to deal with any potential conflicts”.

The assembly is understood to be working with the watchdog to establish how the inquiry will operate.

The investigation comes at a sensitive moment for Khan as a panel of ICC judges continues to consider his applications for arrest warrants against the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Khan has suggested the sexual misconduct allegations may be part of a campaign against him, referring to “a wide range of attacks and threats”, however the Guardian reported on Monday that officials close to him do not believe the allegations are connected to any kind of plot by hostile external actors.

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.

In a radio interview aired on Saturday, the Ukrainian president conceded that the battlefield situation in eastern Ukraine was difficult and Russia was making advances. He said his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, was not interested in agreeing to a peace deal.

Zelenskyy said US legislation prevented him from meeting Trump before his inauguration next January. The Ukrainian leader said he would only talk with Trump rather than an emissary or adviser.

“I, as the president of Ukraine, will only take seriously a conversation with the president of the United States of America, with all due respect to any entourage, to any people.

“From our side, we must do everything so that this war ends next year, ends through diplomatic means,” Zelenskyy said.

Zelenskyy said on Friday that 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.”

In other developments:

• Zelenskyy criticised a phone call between the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and Putin, saying 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 on Friday. “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.

• Scholz said Donald Trump privately held “a more nuanced position than is often assumed” on Ukraine. Trump’s re-election 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 to Trump by phone on Sunday, told the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper 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.

• Scholz urged 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”.

• Russian air defence units intercepted a series of Ukrainian drones in several Russian regions, officials said, many of them in the 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, farther 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 a block of flats 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.

A Russian spy ship has been escorted out of the Irish Sea after it entered Irish-controlled waters and patrolled an area containing critical energy and internet submarine pipelines and cables.

It was spotted on Thursday east of Dublin and south-west of the Isle of Man but Norwegian, US, French and British navy and air defence services initially observed it accompanying a Russian warship, the Admiral Golovko, through the English channel last weekend.

The Irish navy ship the LÉ James Joyce escorted it out of the Irish exclusive economic zone (EEZ) at about 3am on Friday with the air corps continuing to monitor its movements as it headed south.

Its presence has raised fresh concerns about the security of the interconnector cables that run between Ireland and the UK carrying global internet traffic from huge datacentres operated by tech companies including Google and Microsoft, which have their EU headquarters sited in Ireland.

The sighting of the Russian intelligence ship came as British defence forces monitored other Russian vessels near its eastern coastal waters. On Thursday, British jets were also scrambled to monitor a Russian reconnaissance aircraft flying close to UK airspace, the Ministry of Defence said.

The ship was also spotted on Monday and Tuesday west of Cork, where there are another set of connectors between Ireland and France, some offering transatlantic interconnection.

At one point it was positioned just inside the Irish EEZ, 5-7km (3.1 to 4.3 miles) north of the cables connecting Ireland and the UK.

Edward Burke, an assistant professor in the history of war at University College Dublin, told the Examiner the situation was alarming.

“Once again we see the Russian navy probing the defences of western Europe. It’s yet another wake-up call – one that we shouldn’t need – that Ireland needs to bolster its naval capabilities and deepen its maritime security partnerships in Europe,” he said.

It is understood defence forces in Ireland observed the ship operating three drones over Irish waters, raising fears it was conducting surveillance.

Concerns over critical infrastructure around Europe have been raised on multiple occasions this year after the alleged sabotage of the Baltic gas pipeline and undersea internet cables between Finland and Estonia. In August, China admitted that a Hong Kong-flagged ship damaged the pipeline but said it was accidental.

The Yantar is officially classed as an auxiliary general oceanographic research vessel with underwater rescue capabilities. It is tasked by an arm of the Russian defence ministry and is separate from its navy.

It can deploy deep-diving submersibles and has been seen operating close to seabed infrastructure on a number of occasions by open source intelligence analysts, according to Navy Lookout intelligence analysts. The analysts said the ship’s mission was “probably more about strategic signalling and intelligence gathering” than sabotage.

Irish and British defence forces have worked together since the vessels entered waters off the coast of the UK with a significant multinational operation put in place.

The Yantar was travelling with Golovko and a tanker, Vyazma, and both vessels were monitored throughout their journey in the English channel by RFA Tideforce and HMS Iron Duke.

They then handed over surveillance to the French as it headed out of the English channel with the British navy also shadowing another Russian vessel heading north towards the Baltics.

When the Yantar broke away from the Golovko and headed north into the Irish sea, it was shadowed by HMS Cattistock, with the operation becoming public when the ship activated its automatic identification for about four minutes on Thursday when it was south of the Isle of Man.

According to reports, it switched off its transponders transmitting its position after entering the Irish EEZ but the Irish vessel continued to shadow it.

They tried to make contact with the ship but Russian personnel did not respond and at about 3am on Friday it left the waters and headed south.

He has trained would-be assassins and marshalled invading hordes, Napoleonic forces and Roman regiments, but movie military adviser Paul Biddiss found himself in the midst of his biggest Hollywood skirmish last month when the actor Saoirse Ronan made a powerful intervention about women’s personal safety.

Ronan, a guest on Graham Norton’s BBC chatshow sofa, sparked a nationwide debate about women’s security fears when she interrupted fellow actors as they discussed techniques that Biddiss had taught the casts of both Gladiator II and the new drama series The Day of the Jackal.

Paul Mescal, who opens in cinemas this weekend in the lead role in Ridley Scott’s epic Gladiator sequel, swapped details of his new combat skills with Eddie Redmayne, star of the Sky Atlantic show based on Frederick Forsyth’s thriller, when Ronan unexpectedly made her intervention.

Mescal asked: “Who’s actually going to think about that?” when discussing using his phone as a weapon, then Ronan pointed out that women do – they think about how to physically protect themselves daily.

“That’s what girls have to think about all the time,” she said. “Am I right, ladies?”

Within 24 hours, Ronan’s words had been repeated across the airwaves and social media thousands of times.

“Saoirse was absolutely right,” said Biddiss, a Parachute Regiment veteran, this weekend, in his first interview since the viral incident. “It was a bit of a shock to suddenly be at the centre of such an important moment. Paul and Eddie were just enjoying a bit of banter about whether anyone would ever think to use their mobile phone as a weapon, as I’d suggested.

“But, as Saoirse then said, phones, along with everything else inside a handbag, are always on the mind of a woman who is walking alone. All these items can be used, and particularly a mobile phone, which is carried in the hand a lot.”

Redmayne, Mescal and his Gladiator co-star Denzel Washington, also a guest that night, accepted her intervention with good grace. Speaking this weekend on RTE’s The Late Late Show, Mescal backed Ronan’s view, saying: “Saoirse was spot on, hit the nail on the head, and it’s also good that … messages like that are gaining traction, like that’s a conversation that we should absolutely be having on a daily basis.” The actor added that Ronan is “quite often the most intelligent person in the room”.

Biddiss was picked to work with Scott on the long-awaited second Gladiator film after working with him on Napoleon. He was hired because of his experience at handling large numbers of supporting artists, and training film “extras” to behave like military forces from different historic eras.

He spent eight months on the project. Sometimes it was necessary to work while a desert sand storm raged around ranks of new recruits who had been provided with masks and goggles to cover their faces. But Biddiss said the most difficult challenge on Gladiator II, filmed in Malta, Britain and Morocco, was reproducing a particular battle scene with the Praetorian Guard.

“It was very hard to choreograph this drill because Ridley wanted the men to move together in a coordinated way that was very hard to achieve,” he said.

While the adviser has often worked on location, reproducing large military encounters, his expertise also covers creating the illusion of proficient gun handling and espionage practice. “I find, as do the secret services, that females are much more surveillance aware and much more situationally aware. They need to be,” Biddiss said.

“Men are generally not like that. Their initial instincts, when you train them, are more predatory, and so they miss things. As a result, women are much harder for professionals to follow.”

Playing the role of a hired assassin for The Day of the Jackal, Redmayne needed to learn covert techniques and, in training, was told to follow a fictional agent called Zara, a role taken by Biddiss’s wife, Debbie. “He found it hard. It is proof that women are so much more aware and harder to track on the street,” Bidiss said.

“Even with my knowledge of the techniques,” he added, “I would find it more difficult to follow a female agent.”

Biddiss also trained the British actor Lashana Lynch, who starred in the latest James Bond film and plays Bianca in The Day of the Jackal. She was instructed in surveillance, lock picking, close-quarters weapons training and the kind of “dirty fighting” that was once practised by Special Operations Executive agents during the second world war.

“During world war two, the women working for SOE were among the very top performing agents. There are many stories that are not widely known yet, and I would like them to come out so these women could get the credit they deserve,” Biddiss said.

“And today it’s true that using a mobile phone as a weapon, which is what Eddie was talking about with Graham Norton, is a real thing. You can gain enough time to get away from an assailant like that. You can also use the screen as a mirror to watch someone who’s following you.”

A bullet struck a Southwest Airlines airplane preparing for departure from a Dallas airport, forcing the cancellation of the Friday evening flight, the airline said.

No injuries were reported and law enforcement was contacted after the bullet struck the right side of the aircraft just under the flight deck. At the time, the crew of Flight 2494 was preparing the plane for departure from Dallas Love Field airport, Southwest said in a statement.

The Boeing 737-800 aircraft was “struck by gunfire near the cockpit” at about 8.30pm while taxiing before the flight to Indianapolis international airport. The plane returned to the gate and the passengers exited, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.

The aircraft was removed from service, according to the airline, which said it would provide another flight for the passengers.

Dallas Love Field airport said in a social media post that the Dallas police department responded and runway 13R/31L was closed, but reopened later on Friday night with “minimal impact” on the facility’s operations.

After the November elections ushered in a new era of unified Republican governance in Washington, Democratic leaders across the country are once again preparing to lead the resistance to Donald Trump’s second-term agenda.

California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, said he would convene a special legislative session next month to “safeguard California values and fundamental rights”.

Washington state’s governor-elect, Bob Ferguson, who is currently the state’s attorney general, said his legal team has been preparing for months for the possibility of a second Trump term – an endeavor that included a “line-by-line” review of Project 2025, the 900+ page policy blueprint drafted by the president-elect’s conservative allies.

And the governors of Illinois and Colorado this week unveiled a new coalition designed to protect state-level institutions against the threat of authoritarianism, as the nation prepares for a president who has vowed to seek retribution against his political enemies and to only govern as a dictator on “day one”.

“We know that simple hope alone won’t save our democracy,” the Colorado governor, Jared Polis, said on a conference call announcing the group, called Governors Safeguarding Democracy. “We need to work together, especially at the state level, to protect and strengthen it.”

With Democrats locked out of control in Washington, many in the party will turn to blue state leaders – governors, attorneys general and mayors – as a bulwark against a second Trump administration. For these ambitious Democrats, it is also an opportunity to step into the leadership void left by Kamala Harris’s defeat.

Progressives such as Newsom and the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, are viewed as potential presidential contenders in 2028, while Democratic governors in states that voted for Trump such as Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Andy Beshear of Kentucky and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan are seen as models for how the party can begin to rebuild their coalition. And Tim Walz, Harris’s vice-presidential running mate, returned home to Minnesota with a national profile and two years left of his gubernatorial term.

Leaders of the nascent blue state resistance are pre-emptively “Trump-proofing” against a conservative governing agenda, which they have cast as a threat to the values and safety of their constituents. As a candidate, Trump promised to carry out the “largest deportation operation in American history”. In statements and public remarks, several Democrats say they fear the Trump administration will seek to limit access to medication abortion or seek to undermine efforts to provide reproductive care to women from states with abortion bans. They also anticipate actions by the Trump administration to roll back environmental regulations and expand gun rights.

“To anyone who intends to come take away the freedom, opportunity and dignity of Illinoisans, I would remind you that a happy warrior is still a warrior. You come for my people – you come through me,” Pritzker said last week.

Unlike in 2016, when Trump’s victory shocked the nation, blue state leaders say they have a tested – and updated – playbook to draw upon. But they also acknowledge that Trump 2.0 may present new and more difficult challenges.

Ferguson said Trump’s first-term executive actions were “often sloppy”, which created an opening for states to successfully challenge them in court. Eight years later, and after studying Project 2025 and Trump’s Agenda 47, he anticipates the next Trump White House will be “better prepared” this time around.

Pritzker said Trump was surrounding himself with “absolute loyalists to his cult of personality and not necessarily to the law”. “Last time, he didn’t really know where the levers of government were,” the governor said on a call with reporters this week. “I think he probably does now.”

The courts have also become more conservative than they were when Trump took office eight years ago, a direct result of his first-term appointments to the federal bench, which included many powerful federal appeals court judges and three supreme court justices.

The political landscape has also changed. In 2016, Trump won the electoral college but lost the popular vote. Despite Republican control of Congress, there were a number of Trump skeptics willing – at least initially – to buck the president during his first two years in office.

This time around, Trump is all but certain to win the popular vote, and he made surprising gains in some of the bluest corners of the country.

Though the former president came nowhere close to winning his home state of New York, he made significant inroads, especially on Long Island. At a post-election conference last week, New York’s Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, struck a more neutral tone. Hochul, who faces a potentially tough re-election in 2026, vowed to protect constituents against federal overreach, while declaring that she was prepared to work with “him or anybody regardless of party”.

In New Jersey, where Trump narrowed his loss from 16 percentage points in 2020 to five percentage points in 2024, the Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, acknowledged the result was a “sobering moment” for the party and country. Outlining his approach to the incoming administration, Murphy said: “If it’s contrary to our values, we will fight to the death. If there’s an opportunity for common ground, we will seize that as fast as anybody.”

Progressives and activists say they are looking to Democratic leaders to lead the charge against Trump’s most extreme proposals, particularly on immigration.

“Trump may be re-elected but he does not have a mandate to come into and rip apart our communities,” said Greisa Martínez Rosas, the executive director of United We Dream Action, a network of groups that advocate for young people brought to the US as children, known as Dreamers.

She called on state and local officials, as well as university heads and business leaders, to “use every tool at their disposal” to resist Trump’s mass deportation campaign, stressing: “There is a lot we can do to ensure Trump and his cabinet are not successful in their plans.”

State attorneys general are again poised to play a pivotal role in curbing the next administration’s policy ambitions.

“The quantity of litigation since the first Trump administration has been really off the charts – it’s at a new level,” said Paul Nolette, a political scientist at Marquette University in Wisconsin. “I fully expect that to continue in Trump 2.0.”

There were 160 multi-state filings against the Trump administration during his four years in office, twice as many as were filed against Barack Obama during his entire eight-year presidency, according to a database maintained by Nolette.

Many of the Democratic lawsuits succeeded – at least initially – in delaying or striking down Trump administration policies or regulations, Nolette said. Attorneys general can also leverage their state’s influence and economic power by entering legal settlements with companies. States have used this approach in the past to “advance their own regulatory goals”, Nolette said, for example, forcing the auto industry to adopt stricter environmental regulations.

In a proclamation calling for a special session next month, Newsom asked the legislature to bolster the state’s legal funding to challenge – and defend California against – the Trump administration. Among his concerns, the California Democrat identified civil rights, climate action, LGBTQ+ rights, reproductive rights, as well as Trump’s threats to withhold disaster funding from the state and the potential for his administration to repeal protections shielding undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children from deportation.

Trump responded on Truth Social, using a derisive nickname for the Democratic governor: “Governor Gavin Newscum is trying to KILL our Nation’s beautiful California. He is using the term ‘Trump-Proof’ as a way of stopping all of the GREAT things that can be done to ‘Make California Great Again,’ but I just overwhelmingly won the Election.”

Democratic leaders in battleground states that Trump won are also calibrating their responses – and not all are eager to join the resistance.

“I don’t think that’s the most productive way to govern Arizona,” the state’s Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, told reporters this week, according to the Arizona Capitol Times. Hobbs, who faces a potentially difficult re-election fight in 2026, said she would “stand up against actions that hurt our communities” but declined to say how she would respond if Trump sought to deport Dreamers or to nationalize the Arizona national guard as part of his mass deportation campaign.

The state’s Democratic attorney general, Kris Mayes, who also faces re-election in two years, drew a harder line against Trump, vowing to fight “unconstitutional behavior” and protect abortion access, according to Axios. In an interview on MSNBC, Mayes said she had “no intention” of dropping the criminal case against allies of the former president who attempted to help Trump overturn Biden’s victory in the state.

Yet she insisted there would be areas of common ground. She urged Trump to revive a bipartisan border deal that he had previously tanked and called on the next administration to send more federal resources and agents to help combat the flow of fentanyl into the US.

With Democrats locked out of power in Washington, the new Indivisible Guide, a manual developed by former Democratic congressional staffers after Trump’s election in 2016 and recently updated to confront a new era of Maga politics, envisions a major role for blue states.

“Over the next two years, your Democratic elected officials will make choices every single day about whether to stand up to Maga or whether to go along with it,” the Indivisible guide states. “Your spirited, determined advocacy will ensure that the good ones know they’ve got a movement behind them as they fight back – and the bad ones know they’re on notice.”

Among the examples of actions blue state activists can demand their leaders consider, it suggests establishing protections for out-of-state residents seeking abortion access or gender-affirming care; refusing to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement and forging regional compacts to safeguard environmental initiatives, data privacy and healthcare.

Democratic leaders at every level and across the country – even those in purple or red states – can serve as “backstops for protecting the democratic space”, said Mary Small, chief strategy officer at Indivisible.

“The important things are to be proactive and bold, to be innovative and to work with each other,” she said. “I don’t think everybody has to have all of the answers right now, but to have that intention and that commitment and to not shrink down in anticipation of a more oppressive federal government.”

The head of Georgia’s election commission was splashed with paint as the body confirmed the ruling party’s victory in the parliamentary elections.

David Kirtadze, a member of the former president Mikheil Saakashvili’s United National Movement (UNM), splashed black paint on the central election commission chair, Giorgi Kalandarishvili, on Saturday, resulting in an eye injury, a video broadcast on local TV channels showed. Hundreds of opposition supporters staged a rally outside the commission’s headquarters during the session.

The ministry of internal affairs said it had launched an investigation into the incident.

Kalandarishvili came back to the meeting with a plaster on his left eye, having signed a protocol that confirmed the ruling pro-Russian Georgian Dream party as the winner of the 26 October election.

The party received 53.9% of the vote, winning 89 seats in a 150-seat parliament, Georgian media reported. After the ballot, supporters of opposition parties staged several protests in Tbilisi, alleging election fraud.

The Caucasus country’s pro-western opposition has denounced the 26 October vote as “fraudulent”, while the EU and the US have called for an investigation into alleged electoral “irregularities”.

The Georgian president, Salome Zourabichvili, who is at loggerheads with the governing party, has also described the vote as illegitimate and accused Russia of interference. Moscow has denied meddling. She joined the opposition’s calls for a fresh vote, saying she would not issue a decree to convene the new parliament.

Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets in Tbilisi to protest against alleged electoral fraud. Universities in big cities across Georgia were gripped by student protests on Friday evening.

The prime minister, Irakli Kobakhidze, has insisted the elections were free and fair and said parliament would convene within 10 days after the release of the final results – even without a presidential summons from Zourabichvili.

Last week, Kobakhidze threatened to ban all the main opposition parties – “if they persist in actions that violate the constitution” – despite his party’s failure to secure the 113-seat constitutional majority it had sought in order to enact such a ban.

A group of Georgia’s leading election monitors has said they had uncovered evidence of a complex scheme of large-scale electoral fraud that swayed results in Georgian Dream’s favour.

The US pollster Edison Research, whose exit poll had predicted victory for opposition forces, has said the discrepancy between its forecast and official results “cannot be explained by normal variation” and “suggests local-level manipulation of the vote”. All of Edison’s previous exit polls conducted since 2012 in Georgia were in line with official results, and its exit poll models used in Georgia this year were the same ones used in US presidential election exit polls for ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC.

Earlier this month, the EU Council chief, Charles Michel, said “there are serious suspicions of fraud, which require a serious investigation”. Georgia is an EU candidate country, and before the election, Brussels had warned the vote would determine its chances of joining the bloc.

An NGO has called for an investigation into five far-right members of the European parliament, warning of a potential failure to declare expenses for a trip to attend a gala dinner in New York headlined by Donald Trump.

Transparency International’s EU office has written to the parliament’s watchdog on MEP conduct requesting an inquiry into five politicians over a potential failure to declare travel and tickets to the black-tie gala hosted by the New York Young Republican Club (NYYRC) in December 2023.

According to the NGO, two of the MEPs may also have failed to declare expenses for attending the NYYRC gala in 2022, and one may have breached the rules over a discussion panel organised by the same group in New York.

The complaint concerns two Hungarian lawmakers who are key members of the country’s ruling Fidesz party, Kinga Gál and Ernő Schaller-Baross; the Alternative für Deutschland MEP Maximilian Krah, who stood down as his party’s lead candidate after saying the SS were “not all criminals”; a former mayor in Italy’s far-right League party, Susanna Ceccardi; and a leading figure in Austria’s anti-migrant, anti-Islam Freedom party, Harald Vilimsky.

In responses to the Guardian, four of the five lawmakers – Gál, Schaller-Baross, Krah and Ceccardi – rejected any suggestion of breaking rules and said variously that their travel had been funded by their government, political party, European parliament group, or their own funds, which is in line with the rules. Vilimsky did not respond to questions.

The complaint highlights the links between Trump’s Maga universe and Europe’s far right, who share hostility towards liberal rules-based institutions, climate action, and refugees and migrants.

Two of the MEPs, Ceccardi and Vilimsky, are listed as members of the NYYRC. It is understood this does not breach European parliament rules.

All five MEPs were photographed at the NYYRC gala in 2023, where delegates paid between $699 and $1,399 to be addressed by Trump over a “multi-course French-service” dinner with an open bar featuring “top-shelf liquor”.

In a rambling speech over 80 minutes, Trump told diners he wanted to be “a dictator for one day because I want a wall, and I want to drill, drill, drill”. Other guests of honour included the far-right former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who was jailed for defying multiple congressional subpoenas related to the 6 January attack on the US Capitol; the Trump acolyte Rudy Giuliani, who was ordered to pay $148.1m in damages for lies about the 2020 US presidential elections; and the extremist commentator and conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec.

Gál, a veteran MEP who co-leads Viktor Orbán’s far-right Patriots for Europe group in the European parliament, also attracted scrutiny from Transparency International over who paid for her to attend an NYYRC panel event called Viktor Orbán – Defender of Europe on 15 November 2023 in New York.

Transparency International, an NGO dedicated to integrity in public life, called on the European parliament’s advisory committee, which vets potential breaches of the code of conduct, to investigate how the MEPs funded their attendance, “to exclude any wrongdoing”.

Shari Hinds, a policy officer at Transparency International, said: “For us it’s very important that there should be complete and full transparency regarding the funding source [of any travel].”

The group made the appeal to the advisory committee after it became aware that the MEPs had attended the 2023 gala and other events but failed to find any reference to how their travel was funded in their public declarations.

Under the European parliament’s code of conduct, which was tightened up in 2023 after the Qatargate scandal, MEPs are obliged to declare when a third party pays for them to attend an event, including travel, accommodation and other expenses. There are exemptions for attending events funded by a long list of third parties, such as EU national and regional governments and European political parties. Nor are MEPs expected to declare trips made at their own expense.

Gál said the costs of her attendance at both events was paid for by Fidesz and her participation was “in no way related” to her MEP duties.

Schaller-Baross said he was invited and attended the 2023 gala as the Hungarian government’s ministerial commissioner for foreign relations at the prime minister’s office. He said his travel, accommodation and related expenses “were covered by the prime minister’s office”.

Ceccardi said her attendance at the gala was paid for by the far-right Identity and Democracy group, a European parliament group superseded by the Patriots alliance.

The MEP, a member of the parliament’s US relations delegation, said her trip to the US from 8 to 10 December 2023 was covered by the European parliament’s additional travel allowance, which allows MEPs to claim for reimbursement of foreign travel that is not part of official parliament meetings. The allowance is worth €5,500 a year.

Transparency International said it had made a freedom of information request to the parliament that found “Susanna Ceccardi had not used the additional travel allowance in the period from October to December 2023”.

Asked about the discrepancy, Ceccardi’s office said it stood by its earlier statement, while Transparency International said: “We were clear in our request that we were seeking documents for travel that took place during those dates, not documents submitted on those dates.”

Asked about the discrepancy, a European parliament spokesperson said: “The EP cannot not comment on individual cases and the ongoing work of the advisory committee, as it is strictly confidential.”

Ceccardi’s office said: “Any insinuation that MEP Ceccardi received financial contributions or other benefits from third parties is factually incorrect. Such allegations are defamatory and risk causing significant damage to her reputation and personal integrity, making them prosecutable in the appropriate judicial offices.”

Krah’s office said he had paid to attend the NYRRC gala, plus travel expenses, for two years running “out of his own pocket”. A source close to Krah said one of his assistants had to lend him cash to pay for his gala ticket in 2023 because he had left his credit card in Strasbourg. The money was subsequently repaid, it is understood.

The complaints have been sent to the European parliament’s advisory committee, a cross-party group of eight MEPs that assesses rule breaking and recommends action. The committee is expected to meet in the coming days. It works in secret and has no fixed timetable for addressing complaints.

Jake Paul, a 27-year-old social media huckster, beat a 58-year-old man with a long history of health ­problems, both physically and mentally, in a ­boxing ring late on Friday night. The fact that Mike Tyson was defeated so ­comprehensively on points was meant to give Paul a semblance of authenticity in the unforgiving ­business of boxing. But it didn’t mean much in the end.

Tyson is the former world ­champion who, in the mid-to-late 1980s, spread awe and terror as he tore through the heavyweight ranks. But, in the dog days of 2024, Tyson was trying to overcome years of abuse, after far too many drugs and far too much ­drinking, as well as recent ­troubling issues with a ­bleeding ­stomach ulcer and acute sciatica. Two years ago Tyson was in such pain that he had to be pushed around in a ­wheelchair and, this May, he threw up so much blood on a flight that this ­manufactured scrap with Paul had to be postponed for six months. He now looks like he also has a bad right knee.

This was Paul’s opponent in a sad and abject bout. The fight had been reduced to eight rounds, ­lasting just two minutes each, and that ­relative brevity offered a ­modicum of relief. Paul received the ­unanimous verdict by two scores of 79-73 and a shutout 80-72.

The near sold-out crowd at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas was fiercely partisan in their early support of Tyson. Ninety minutes before the ring-walks, footage of Paul’s arrival was greeted with a muted hum. But we then saw Tyson walking slowly to his locker room. His jacket was emblazoned with his famous old ­boxing alias: “Iron Mike”. The huge and ­sustained roar was strangely moving.

Jake Paul and his brother Logan were driven to the ring in a customised Chevy low-rider, instead of making the traditional fighter’s walk, to a stale old Phil Collins track. Tyson made a sombre, brooding trudge, wearing a stark black top in a ­deliberate attempt to echo the menace which once defined him. It was the high point of a long night for the once formidable Tyson. He looked weathered and aged as he was introduced in the middle of the ring.

Tyson came out with a modicum of intent and he soon caught the retreating Paul with a clipping left and a glancing right. He ducked under a few swinging punches but Tyson was then tagged by a much sharper right to the head. It was already plain that any vague hope of Tyson being able to summon his once trademark ­ferocity belonged to a forlorn fantasy. The two-minute round ended with Tyson, wearing a brace on his dodgy knee, trying slowly and unsuccessfully to close the distance between him and a cheerfully backpedalling Paul.

The second round was dulled by pedestrian exchanges, with Tyson looking bereft of ideas and energy while Paul landed a few decent punches. But the former world champion was soon in trouble when he was rocked to the soles of his black boots by a stream of left hands. Decades ago, Tyson would have been far too fast and elusive for such a telegraphed series of blows. He would have slipped under them and then punished and dropped a boxing novice for his audacity. But Tyson’s speed and ring savvy is long gone and he took his shots with bleak stoicism.

Paul cruised through the ­remaining rounds, winning them with little ­obvious effort. If he really did make $40m (£32m) it must have felt ­easier than some of his ­teenage YouTube stunts which made his name and early fortune.

A muted, almost resigned atmosphere settled around the stadium. It was in stark contrast to the deep engagement the crowd had felt during the magnificent fight Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano had produced. The two women showed the meaning of elite boxing while Paul and Tyson plodded on through their tedious exhibition of fisticuffs.

Booing resounded in the last two rounds as if the crowd finally accepted the bitter truth that this had never been a real fight. People headed for the exits even before the predictable scorecards were read out.

Tyson had already put the result, as well as the protracted and ridiculous hype surrounding the circus, into bleak context the previous night. Dragooned into an interview with Jazlyn Guerra, a 14-year-old social media personality who tags herself as Jazzy’s World TV, Tyson was withering in the way he dismissed the fight and his historical reputation. His words carried a dark meaning which ridiculed his contest with a YouTuber.

Guerra, who appears to be an accomplished teenager, was initially gushing in her enthusiasm for the bout after the weigh-in on Thursday night. She said it would provide “a monumental opportunity for kids my age to see the legend Mike Tyson in the ring for the first time. So after such a successful career what type of legacy would you like to leave behind when it’s all said and done?”

Tyson paused. It wasn’t a ­terrible question but he was in the mood to dole out a grim truth. “Well, I don’t believe in the word ‘legacy’,” Tyson said. “I think that’s just another word for ‘ego’. Legacy means absolutely ­nothing to me. I’m just passing through. I’m gonna die and it’s gonna be over. Who cares about legacy after that? We’re nothing. We’re dead. We’re dust.”

Guerra, to her considerable credit, was gracious. “Well, thank you so much for sharing that,” she said. “That’s something I’ve not heard before.”

Tyson wasn’t done. “Can you really imagine someone saying I want my legacy to be this way or that?” he ­continued bluntly. “You’re dead. What audacity is that – to want people to think about me when I am gone? Who the fuck cares about me?”

It was hard to care about anything in regard to this stunted show – apart from a sincere hope that Tyson did not suffer much damage from the blows he took. Walking out into the black Texas night, and away from such a contrived and cynical ­business, it felt like freedom to escape the ­madness and the sadness.