Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said his country could face 100,000 North Korean troops, as he urged European nations to intensify their military aid in a speech marking 1,000 days since Russia launched its full-scale invasion.

Speaking to the European parliament, the Ukrainian president said Vladimir Putin had brought 11,000 North Korean troops to Ukraine’s borders and “this contingent may grow to 100,000”.

Zelenskyy did not elaborate further, but his remarks appear to endorse a Bloomberg report citing unnamed sources saying that North Korea could deploy 100,000 troops to assist Russia against Ukraine.

Zelenskyy’s short speech, delivered by video link, was a rallying call to EU nations at a critical moment for Ukraine, as Russia continues to make advances, amid fears that the incoming US president, Donald Trump, will cut military aid and force a peace settlement that would require Kyiv to cede large amounts of territory.

Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, said the largest EU countries were ready “to assume the burden of military and financial support for Ukraine in the context of a possible reduction in US involvement”. He was speaking after a meeting of EU foreign and defence ministers in Brussels, which included the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, via video link.

Estonia’s foreign minister said European nations should be ready to send troops to Ukraine to underpin any peace deal between Kyiv and Moscow engineered by Trump. In an interview with the Financial Times, Margus Tsahkna said the best security guarantee for Ukraine was Nato membership, but if the US opposed Kyiv joining the military alliance, then Europe would have to put “boots on the ground”.

Analysts have suggested a coalition of the willing could consist of Poland and the UK-led Joint Expeditionary Force, a defence group that includes the Nordic and Baltic states and the Netherlands.

Zelenskyy urged European countries to ensure Russia was pushed towards a “just peace”.

He also appeared to make a dig at the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who recently triggered snap elections, and has long frustrated Kyiv with Germany’s slow pace of military support and refusal to supply German-made long-range Taurus missiles.

“While some European leaders think about some elections or something like this … Putin is focused on winning this war. He will not stop on his own. The more time he has, the worse the conditions become,” Zelenskyy said.

In a veiled appeal for long-range weapons, Zelenskyy said that without “certain key factors, Russia will lack real motivation to engage in meaningful negotiations”. He outlined those factors as fires in ammunition depots on Russian territory, disrupting military logistics, destroying Russian airbases, lost capabilities to produce missiles and drones, and confiscated assets – a list that largely depends on the ability to strike into Russian territory.

Joe Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to use US long-range missiles to fire into Russia’s Kursk region has raised pressure on European allies to follow.

Britain is expected to supply Ukraine with Storm Shadow missiles for use inside Russia after the US president’s move. The prime minister, Keir Starmer, said the UK recognised it needed to “double down” support for Ukraine.

Scholz, however, continues to rule out the use of Taurus missiles and is not expected to change his mind. The French foreign minister, Jean-Nöel Barrot, on Monday said that allowing the use of its long-range missiles in Russia remained “an option” for France.

Zelenskyy’s speech was book-ended by two standing ovations from MEPs, but some of the parliament’s members were missing. The 25 MEPs who make up the far-right Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN) group were absent because they had scheduled an “external group meeting”, a spokesperson said.

The ESN’s largest continent is Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland party, which wants to end military aid for Ukraine and whose senior leaders have spoken approvingly of the Russian president.

The Ukrainian leader also appealed for strong sanctions, especially measures to clamp down on “shadow tankers”, the fleet of poorly maintained and underinsured vessels that is keeping Russia’s oil trade afloat. Zelenskyy said oil was “the lifeblood of Putin’s regime” and “as long as these tankers operate, Putin continues to kill”.

MEPs last week passed a non-binding resolution calling on the G7 to better enforce and reduce the oil price cap on Russian seaborne oil, as well as crack down on loopholes that allow Russian oil to be sold at market prices.

Western allies led by the G7 imposed a price cap of $60 a barrel in 2022 to restrict western companies from transporting, servicing or brokering Russian crude oil cargoes in order to undermine Russia’s oil trade. The deal was a compromise as it was feared a full embargo would send oil prices rocketing, but Russia has since invested heavily in a shadow fleet that allows it to sell oil above the price cap.

Ukraine has fired US-made long-range missiles into Russia for the first time since the Biden administration lifted restrictions on their use, drawing a warning from Moscow that it would respond “accordingly”.

Russia’s defence ministry reported that Ukraine launched six US-made Atacms missiles targeting the south-western Bryansk region overnight. The ministry claimed that five of the missiles were shot down and another was damaged. The ministry added that debris from the rockets caused a fire at an unnamed military facility.

The Ukrainian attack struck an ammunition warehouse in Bryansk region, the New York Times reported, citing US and Ukrainian officials. The region lies north-west of the Kursk region where a Ukrainian incursion has been under way since early August.

Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelenskyy did not directly confirm the Bryansk attack but said: “We now have Atacms, Ukrainian long-range capabilities, and we will use them.”

The reports emerged hours after Vladimir Putin signed a revised nuclear doctrine lowering the threshold for using nuclear weapons, as the Kremlin intensified its rhetoric over Biden’s decision to permit Kyiv to use US-made long-range missiles for strikes inside Russia.

Ukraine’s general staff did not confirm the use of the missiles but said in a statement on Facebook that it hit a military arsenal of the 1046th logistics centre outside the city of Karachev.

“The destruction of ammunition depots will continue for the army of the Russian occupiers in order to stop the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine,” it said.

Russian independent media reported that residents of Karachev heard explosions overnight.

Several videos circulating online, purportedly from the Karachev district, featured the sound of detonations and visible flashes.

Russia’s longtime foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said that his country would respond “accordingly” to the attack on the Bryansk region. Lavrov, who is in Rio de Janeiro for the G20 summit, said the Ukrainian use of Atacms was a clear signal that the west wanted to escalate the conflict. “Without the Americans, it is impossible to use these hi-tech missiles, as Putin has repeatedly said,” Lavrov said.

Russia’s revised nuclear doctrine declares that a conventional attack on Russia by any nation that is supported by a nuclear power will be considered a joint attack on his country. The doctrine, which outlines the conditions under which Russia’s leadership might consider launching a nuclear strike, also states that an attack using conventional missiles, drones or other aircraft could be seen as justification for a nuclear response.

While Russia has been planning to update its nuclear doctrine for months, the timing of Putin’s signature will be seen as a clear reaction to Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to conduct strikes with the 190-mile range army tactical missile system, known by the acronym Atacms, deep into sovereign Russian domain.

Shortly after Putin signed the decree, the Kremlin said the purpose of the updated nuclear doctrine was to make potential enemies understand the inevitability of retaliation for an attack on Russia or its allies.

The Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov appeared to directly suggest that Russia might respond with nuclear weapons if Ukraine used western-supplied missiles to strike targets inside Russia.

“The use of western non-nuclear missiles by Kyiv against Russia, under the new doctrine, could provoke a nuclear response,” he said.

Peskov also stressed that any attack on Russia by a non-nuclear state with the participation of a nuclear state would be considered a joint attack. “Russia has always viewed nuclear weapons as a deterrent, the use of which is an extreme, forced measure,” Peskov said.

Lavrov said he hoped Moscow’s new nuclear doctrine would be “attentively read” in the west.

As both Moscow and Kyiv mark the 1,000th day of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Peskov also said that Russia would defeat Ukraine.

Putin frequently invoked Moscow’s nuclear arsenal, the world’s biggest, in the early days of its invasion of Ukraine, pledging repeatedly to use all means necessary to defend Russia. He later appeared to moderate his rhetoric, but officials close to the Russian president recently told Nato countries they risked provoking nuclear war if they were to give the green light for Ukraine to use long-range weapons.

Britain is also expected to supply its own Storm Shadow missiles for use by Ukraine on targets inside Russia, after the US approval.

While Moscow has vowed retaliation, analysts suggest its options are limited, with the country unlikely to resort to the nuclear option.

“The most predictable and obvious will be an increase in strikes on Ukrainian cities and civilian infrastructure facilities in anticipation of the winter cold,” said political analyst Anton Barbashin.

He added that the use of western-supplied long-range weapons is unlikely to serve as a definitive red line for Moscow.

“Strikes with long-range Atacms missiles on the territory of Russia … are more likely to fall into the list of red lines that will be crossed and will cease to be red lines,” Barbashin said.

Western officials also believe Russia may escalate its ongoing campaign of arson and sabotage targeting Europe.

Intelligence agencies are currently investigating recent damage to two undersea fibre-optic communication cables in the Baltic Sea, severed in rapid succession earlier this week. Some officials have already suggested Kremlin involvement.

Global stock markets fell and bond prices have jumped after reports that Ukraine has fired a US-made long-range missile into Russia for the first time and Vladimir Putin approved changes to Moscow’s nuclear doctrine.

Investors dashed into safe-haven currencies such as the US dollar, the Japanese yen and the Swiss franc on Tuesday, after the RBC-Ukraine news outlet reported that Kyiv had carried out its first strike on Russian territory using western-supplied missiles.

Moscow later said that Ukraine had fired six US-made Atacms missiles at Russia’s Bryansk region, after Joe Biden’s decision last weekend to relax restrictions on their use. Senior US and Ukrainian officials confirmed that US-made Atacms missiles had been fired into Russian territory.

Earlier on Tuesday, Putin signed a decree lowering the threshold for using nuclear weapons. The revised doctrine declares that a conventional attack on Russia by any nation that is supported by a nuclear power will be considered a joint attack.

Concerns that the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which has now passed its 1,000th day, was escalating hit stock markets in Europe. The Stoxx 600 share index dropped over 1% to its lowest since August.

Britain’s FTSE 100 index was down 0.5% in afternoon trading, towards the three-month low hit last week, at 8,070 points.

New York opened in the red, with the Dow Jones industrial average of 30 large US companies dropping by 0.8%, and the broader S&P 500 losing 0.4%. Wall Street’s fear index, the Chicago Board Options Exchange’s CBOE Volatility Index, jumped by almost 10%.

Markets were “rattled” that Ukraine had fired US-supplied long-range missiles into Russia, hurting the euro, said Fawad Razaqzada, a market analyst at City Index and FOREX.com.

Razaqzada said: “The big worry here is how Russia is going to respond now. President Vladimir Putin’s approval of an updated nuclear doctrine [broadens] the conditions under which Russia might deploy nuclear weapons, including in response to a large-scale conventional attack on its territory.

“Use of atomic weapons is unthinkable, but we are getting close to very dangerous territories.”

In the foreign exchange markets, the pound slipped by a third of a cent against the US dollar, to $1.265, while the euro lost 0.25% against the Swiss franc and the dollar.

“Geopolitical does not matter for financial markets until it does,” said Brad Bechtel, global head of FX at Jefferies. “When US equipment is striking Russia and Russia mentions nuclear, you have to pay attention.”

UK, US and eurozone governments were also a popular safe-haven, which pushed down the yield, or interest rate, on the debt.

Investors were also unsettled that two undersea cables in the Baltic have been mysteriously severed. The German defence minister, Boris Pistorius, said on Tuesday that sabotage was suspected.

There are also signs that the market rally prompted by Donald Trump’s election win two weeks ago has fizzled out, leading to a drop in share prices at the end of last week.

Analysts have said that the president-elect’s policies on trade tariffs and mass deportations of illegal immigrants would cause disruption to some industries and also push up prices.

Governments and human rights groups have expressed concern and outrage at the sentencing of 45 pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong after the city’s largest national security trial.

On Tuesday, a court handed down sentences, ranging from four years and two months to 10 years, to activists, former legislators, councillors and academics, who with two people acquitted in May made up a group known as the Hong Kong 47.

The activists had been arrested in 2021 under the city’s national security law (NSL) for their participation in an unofficial primary election that was held in July 2020, weeks after the NSL had been imposed by Beijing in response to months of pro-democracy protests. More than 600,000 people participated in the unofficial vote.

A spokesperson for the US consulate in Hong Kong said that the US “strongly condemns” the sentences, adding that the defendants were “aggressively prosecuted and jailed for peacefully participating in normal political activity”.

Benny Tai, a legal academic and activist who pleaded guilty, was sentenced to 10 years in jail for his role as an organiser of the primaries. Tai’s is the longest sentence handed out so far under the NSL, which was introduced by Beijing on 30 June 2020.

Tai was accused of being the “mastermind” behind a plan for the city’s pro-democracy camp to win a majority in the upcoming legislative council election, and then block bills and eventually force the dissolution of the legislature and resignation of the chief executive.

Joshua Wong, a student leader of the 2014 umbrella movement who was once the most recognisable face of the pro-democracy camp, was sentenced to four years and eight months in prison. He received a sentence reduction for pleading guilty. The court said he was an “active participant” in the primaries plan, and “not of good character” because of his previous protest-related convictions. The 28-year-old reportedly shouted “I love Hong Kong” as he left the dock on Tuesday.

Western governments, human rights organisations and legal groups have criticised the prosecution since it began, characterising it as a politically motivated attack on the pro-democracy opposition. Maya Wang, associate China director at Human Rights Watch, said the sentences “reflect just how fast Hong Kong’s civil liberties and judicial independence have nosedived in the past four years”, while Hong Kong’s last British governor, Chris Patten, called them a “sham”.

“The sentencing of 45 of the 47 Hong Kong democrats is not only an affront to the people of Hong Kong, but those who value rights and freedoms around the world,” Patten said. “These brave individuals were an integral part of defining the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, and were peacefully supported by thousands through votes.”

Catherine West, the UK’s minister for the Indo-Pacific, said: “Today’s sentencing is a clear demonstration of the Hong Kong authorities’ use of the NSL to criminalise political dissent. Those sentenced today were exercising their right to freedom of speech, of assembly and of political participation.”

The trial was overseen by three government-picked judges without a jury – one of the many provisions of the NSL that critics have described as punitive and antithetical to the rule of law in Hong Kong.

Anna Kwok, the executive director of the US-based Hong Kong Democracy Council, condemned the sentencing as “a hostile demonstration of determined repression against Hongkongers who dare to stand up and speak out for their rights”.

The Australian-Hong Kong dual-national Gordon Ng, among 16 of the 47 defendants to plead not guilty, was sentenced to more than seven years.

Australia’s foreign minister, Penny Wong, said her government was “gravely concerned” about Ng’s sentence, and had expressed its “strong objections to the Chinese and Hong Kong authorities on the continuing broad application of national security legislation”.

Jonathan Sumption, a leading British judge who in June quit Hong Kong’s judiciary in protest at the activists’ convictions, said the sentences were “not surprising”.

“The real outrage is their conviction in the first place,” Lord Sumption said. “These people were respectable politicians, journalists, academics and trade unionists, lawfully campaigning for a majority of the elective seats in the legislative council with a view to obtaining faster progress towards universal suffrage, something which is stated in the basic law to be the ultimate aim.” The basic law is Hong Kong’s mini-constitution.

Beijing rejected western criticism, which it said “seriously desecrates and tramples on the spirit of the rule of law”. The Chinese foreign ministry said that it supported Hong Kong, was safeguarding national security and that “no one should be allowed to use democracy as a pretext to escape law and break justice”.

Of the 47, 31 had pleaded guilty, and two were acquitted at trial. Most have spent more than three years in jail already. Those who pleaded not guilty were given harsher sentences.

The former Stand News journalist Gwyneth Ho, who pleaded not guilty, was sentenced to seven years in jail. She ran as a candidate in the 2020 unofficial primary.

Shortly after the sentencing, Ho published a statement on social media, saying she had been prosecuted for participating in “the last free and fair election in Hong Kong”.

She said: “Behind the rhetoric of secession, collusion with foreign forces, etc, our true crime for Beijing is that we were not content with playing along in manipulated elections.”

Ho said the case marked a “turning point” when Hong Kong was seen as a lost cause, but she urged supporters to push back against authoritarianism. “Prove to the world at every possible moment, no matter how small, that democracy is worth fighting for,” she said.

Additional reporting and research by Jason Lu

Hong Kong court has sentenced 45 pro-democracy figures to jail terms of between four and 10 years, in the city’s largest national security prosecution since the law’s introduction in 2020.

The jailed are among the so called “Hong Kong 47” pro-democracy group, who were arrested and charged in 2021 over their involvement in an informal pre-election primary vote the year before.

They include some of the most public faces of the resistance to the Beijing-led crackdown on the pro-democracy camp of Hong Kong’s once-vibrant political scene. Some have been jailed before on activism charges. For many it is their first offence. Those involved in the primaries included activists, politicians, campaigners, social workers and community leaders who had been drawn to the pro-democracy movement after months of protest.

The 2020 primaries came just days after the introduction of the national security law (NSL) a sweeping piece of legislation imposed by the Chinese government to criminalise acts of dissent, sedition, and foreign collusion. Hong Kong minister Erick Tsang had warned that the primaries could violate it. But the organisers went ahead, taking a gamble that the pro-democracy movement could still find a way.

The group aimed to win a majority in Hong Kong’s parliament, the Legislative Council or LegCo, and then use it to block bills and force the dissolution of LegCo and the eventual resignation of the chief executive. National security judges found this to be an act of subversion.

Here are some of the most prominent members of the Hong Kong 47:

Benny Tai was accused by prosecutors of being a primary instigator of the primaries plan, and by Beijing of being a “vicious traitor”. A law professor and activist, Tai had previously been jailed over his involvement in the 2014 “umbrella movement”. He had published a manifesto outlining a plan to force the governments in Hong Kong and China to restore Hong Kong’s autonomy and democracy. The primaries, and winning at least 35 seats in the 70-seat LegCo, were part one of that plan. Tai pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 years in jail.

Joshua Wong is a high-profile student activist and politician. The 28-year-old is in jail serving other protest-related sentences. Wong was among a group of young activists who gained prominence during the 79-day “umbrella movement” protests in 2014 that demanded universal suffrage for Hongkongers. They went on to co-found the pro-democracy Demosisto political party, and four candidates were elected to the Legislative Council but were disqualified for modifying the oath of office when they tried to take their seats. The party was formally disbanded after the introduction of the national security law in June. Wong pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four years and eight months.

Claudia Mo was one of Hong Kong’s most outspoken democratic legislators, and founder of the Civic party. She is a fierce advocate for the pro-democracy movement and protesters. She resigned from parliament in November 2020, alongside the entire pro-democracy bloc, in protest against the Beijing-ordered disqualification of four colleagues. In a message on Facebook soon after she was charged, Mo told supporters “I maybe physically feeble, but I’m mentally sturdy … No worries. We all love Hong Kong yah.” She was denied bail in part because of WhatsApp conversations she’d had with foreign media. In jail, the 67-year-old has reportedly run language lessons for other prisoners. She was denied permission to visit her husband, British journalist Philip Bowring, when he was ill. Mo pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four years and two months.

Gordon Ng is a Hong Kong-Australian dual national, accused of being an organiser of the primaries, which he denies. In an August 2022 statement posted online by an intermediary, Ng had said: “Do I think I have committed a crime? I don’t, I absolutely don’t. I am ready to face the largest battle of my life in the battlefield of court. I fear, but I don’t retreat.” Ng pleaded not guilty, and was sentenced to seven years and three months.

Gwyneth Ho Kwai-lam, 34, intended to run in the elections. The former reporter for Stand News grew to prominence during the 2019 protests, which she covered from the frontlines, livestreaming her reporting from Yuen Long station as gangs attacked protesters and commuters and then the reporter herself. She has previously said that she would not leave Hong Kong because “the cost of exile was more unbearable for me than anything else”. Ho, who pleaded not guilty, was sentenced to seven years in jail.

Leung Kwok-hung, also known by his nickname “Long Hair”, is a well-known activist and former politician. The 68-year-old was hosting a radio show before his arrest. In 2017 he was disqualified from LegCo after he and three other pro-democracy politicians modified their oaths of allegiance to China during a swearing-in ceremony. Leung had held a yellow umbrella – a symbol of pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong – while reading his oath. Leung pleaded not guilty to the national security charge. On Tuesday he was sentenced to six years and nine months.

Eddie Chu Hoi-Dick is a former LegCo member and social activist, who intended to run as a candidate. The 47-year-old was a prominent environmental and housing rights activist. In 2020 he was involved in several of Hong Kong LegCo’s frequent scuffles, and was later arrested over one of them. He had also been arrested over alleged involvement in organising one of the large protest marches in July 2020. In December that year he and a colleague resigned from LegCo in protest at Beijing’s one-year extension of the current legislative term. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced on Tuesday to four years and five months.

Carol Ng Man-yee, 54, is a former flight attendant and former president of the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (HKCTU) and Labour party member. She was an active labor advocate and was involved in the establishment of the British Airways union in Hong Kong. Ng had no criminal record, and had not run for election until the primaries, which she lost. On Tuesday the court noted that she had no criminal record, had lost the primary vote in which she ran, and had not attended any coordination meeting or press conference for the primary. It also noted that after her loss she didn’t say or do anything “in furtherance” of the group’s plan. She pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to four years and five months.

Helena Wong is a retired university lecturer and former LegCo member. In 1989 Wong co-founded one of Hong Kong’s first pro-democracy parties, the United Democrats, which later became the Democratic party. She was elected to represent Kowloon West in 2012. Wong was among seven Democrats (including Eddie Chu Hoi-dick) arrested over the LegCo fracas in 2020. She had run as a candidate in the primaries, but lost, saying afterwards that she would retire from LegCo and not contest her seat. Wong pleaded not guilty. She was sentenced to six years and six months.

Gisèle Pelicot, who was drugged by her husband and allegedly raped by dozens of men he invited into her bedroom for more than a decade, has told a court that “macho” society must change its attitude on rape.

In her final statement to the criminal court in Avignon, she said: “It’s time that the macho, patriarchal society that trivialises rape changes … It’s time we changed the way we look at rape.”

A total of 51 men are on trial over the rape of 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.”

Some of the other men accused admit rape but others have denied it, saying they did not know Gisèle Pelicot had been drugged, despite video evidence showing her unconscious and snoring loudly.

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. “It’s not for us to have shame, it’s for them,” she has said.

She told the French court on Tuesday that she had heard it being implied in court that it was “almost banal” to rape her. “I’ve seen people take the stand who deny rape, and some who admit it. I want to say to these men: when you entered that bedroom, at what point did Madame Pelicot give you her consent?” she said, speaking about herself in the third person.

“At what point did you become aware of this inert body? At what point did you realise there was something happening that was not normal? Did you leave straight away? At what point did you not report it to the police?”

She said she had had to sit through friends of the accused coming to court to argue that the defendants had always been “respectful” people in their daily lives. “At what moment were they respectful [to me]?” asked Gisèle Pelicot.

She said this was a trial of “cowardice” – implying that society needed to be braver when facing up to the reality of rape. Of the 51 men on trial, she said: “For me they are all guilty. It’s not for me to judge, the court will do its work.”

She said: “I’ve lost 10 years of my life that I’ll never make up for … This scar will never heal.” She would never “find peace” over what had happened, she said, adding the 51 men had “sullied” her. “I’ll have to live with it all my life,” she said.

Asked about Dominique Pelicot telling the court he had a difficult childhood and was raped at the age of nine, she said she believed him. But Gisèle Pelicot, whose mother died when she was very young, said: “Whatever trauma you go through in childhood – and I have, though maybe not the same ones – there’s a point when you choose the way you are going to be in life. You go right or left, become a criminal or not. We all make our choices.”

Dominique Pelicot had told the court that he raped Gisèle Pelicot about two to three times a week. Asked to comment on this, she said: “I think that must have been at the end [of the decade of abuse]. Because my body would not have lasted.” She said that she had learned that, just before his arrest in October 2020, he had brought in men to rape her three times in just over two weeks. “I think it was time this stopped.”

Asked whether Dominique Pelicot, 71, had felt frustrated in their marriage, she said he “had a lot of fantasies that I couldn’t fulfil”, but this did not mean he should have drugged and raped her.

“Why did it come to this? I think what he wanted was Madame Pelicot and not someone else,” she added. “As I didn’t want to go to a swingers’ club, he thought he’d found the solution by putting me to sleep.”

The trial continues until 20 December.

Donald Trump has reportedly told associates that Matt Gaetz, his nominee for attorney general, has a less than 50-50 chance of being confirmed by the Senate, even while pushing forward with his nomination amid damaging sexual misconduct allegations.

The president-elect has continued making calls in support of his beleaguered nominee despite resistance from Republican senators because he is confident his insistence will alter the standard for acceptable cabinet choices even if Gaetz fails, the New York Times reported.

Trump’s landscape-changing tactics have become evident following his nomination of three other controversial picks – Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F Kennedy Jr – for the positions of defense secretary, director of national intelligence and secretary for health and human services respectively. All face potential obstacles in winning Senate approval.

Gaetz’s nomination has been widely viewed as inappropriate because the far-right ex-Florida congressman underwent a two-year FBI investigation over sex-trafficking allegations that have also been the subject of an inquiry by the House of Representatives’ ethics committee.

No charges resulted from the criminal investigation. But two women who said Gaetz paid them to have sex with him in 2017 have given testimony to House investigators, which has been recorded in an as-yet-unpublished report.

The New York Times also reported on Tuesday that an unidentified hacker had gained access to a computer file shared in a secure link among lawyers whose clients have given damaging testimony about Gaetz. The Times said the material accessed was a file of 24 exhibits, including sworn testimony from someone who claimed she had sex with Gaetz when she was 17. The file also reportedly contained corroborating testimony by a second woman who said she was a witness to the encounter.

Amid the damaging revelations, numerous senators have privately indicated that Gaetz – who has vowed to purge the justice department in line with the future president’s wishes if he become attorney general – has little chance of being confirmed, a reality that Trump appears to recognise.

The Republicans will have a majority of 53-47 in the Senate following this month’s election when the new Congress is sworn in on 3 January. More than three Republican senators have indicated they are unwilling to confirm Gaetz, who is unlikely to win the backing of any Democrats in confirmation hearings.

Some Republicans are privately hoping that the incoming president withdraws the nomination, fearing that they might face a primary challenge as a punishment for blocking his chosen nominee.

“[Senators] are privately hoping Trump doesn’t make them walk the plank,” Politico reported .

“Knowing how toxic a character they are dealing with [in Gaetz], Senate Republicans are worried about getting tarnished by the process. They fear that senators up for re-election in 2026 … could face a Maga primary challenge if they oppose his nomination – while possibly kissing their seats goodbye in a general election if they back him.”

Instead, the incoming president has indicated that he is determined to press ahead regardless – apparently determined to nominate so many extreme choices that they cannot all be rejected.

But Trump’s senior aides have also privately voiced concerns that he is squandering vital political capital when he could be promoting more feasible nominees and pushing his governing agenda. That message was said to have been delivered to Trump and the vice-president-elect, JD Vance, by Susie Wiles, the incoming White House chief of staff.

Support has come from Trump’s richest surrogate, the entrepreneur Elon Musk, who posted on his own X platform that Gaetz “is the JUDGE DREDD America needs to clean up a corrupt system and put powerful bad actors in prison”.

If Trump continues to insist, Gaetz could end up facing his two female accusers at Senate hearings on Capitol Hill.

Senators have called for the release of the House ethics report, the publication of which was in effect suspended when Gaetz peremptorily resigned his seat after being nominated last week. The House speaker, Mike Johnson – a close Trump ally – has resisted calls to publish nonetheless.

John Cornyn, a Republican senator for Texas, said releasing the report would not be necessary because the details of allegations against Gaetz could be revealed by the witnesses, who would be called before the Senate judiciary committee.

“The truth is, the information is going to come out one way or the other,” he told the Washington Post. “It’s not critical that they release a report, because we know roughly who the witnesses are.”

The teenager hospitalized with bird flu in British Columbia, Canada, may have a variation of the virus that has a mutation making it more transmissible among people, early data shows – a warning of what the virus can do that is especially worrisome in countries such as the US where some H5N1 cases are not being detected.

The US “absolutely” is not testing and monitoring bird flu cases enough, which means scientists could miss mutated cases like these, said Richard Webby, a virologist at St Jude children’s research hospital’s department of infectious diseases.

“We need to be following this as closely as we can. Any advanced warning we can get that there’s more viruses making these types of changes, that’s going to give us the heads-up,” Webby continued.

The Canadian teen first developed symptoms on 2 November and was hospitalized at the British Columbia children’s hospital on 8 November. The child is still in critical condition with acute respiratory distress – a serious lung condition that can be fatal.

Preliminary sequencing of the H5N1 variant sickening the teenager showed a potential mutation on the genomic spot known to make people more susceptible to the virus.

That could indicate that H5N1 has the capability to become more like a human virus, rather than an avian virus, but it is also not clear yet whether this change is meaningful and more dangerous to people, experts said.

The virus may have mutated over the course of the teen’s illness; additional sequencing could reveal more about its evolution.

“Often it’s not just one thing that is going to confer that ability” to infect humans more effectively, said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan.

“It’s not quite clear what the real-world implications are going to be, but certainly all of these things are a warning sign,” Rasmussen said. “We really do need to pay attention to this, and we really do need to try to reduce more human infections as much as we possibly can.”

The particular variant of H5N1 circulating among birds in British Columbia and the north-western US appeared over the past few months, several years after bird flu was first found in North America, Webby said. The variant also sickened 11 workers in Washington state who were killing infected poultry, though those workers did not have the possible mutation detected in the teenager.

“It seems to be pretty active in terms of infecting animals, infecting people, so I think it’s one to keep an eye on,” Webby said. “It has some unique properties we just need to watch.”

There have been no additional cases detected among the Canadian teen’s contacts, including family, friends and healthcare workers. The teen’s case was detected through disease surveillance – the regular examination of positive flu cases – at the hospital, and no other cases in the area have been discovered through that system.

“We have strong influenza surveillance in BC and have had an increase in testing requests for H5 and all negative to date,” said Bonnie Henry, an epidemiologist, physician and the provincial health officer at the British Columbia ministry of health.

Canadian officials have been conducting blood tests among the teen’s contacts, and they expect results later this week. They are also awaiting the results of other tests done over the weekend.

Officials are “still hopeful on the exposure side to find how the young person was infected but nothing yet new to report”, Henry said.

Though there have been outbreaks of H5N1 among poultry in British Columbia, the teen did not have exposure to them – but he or she did have contact with several pets, including dogs, cats and reptiles.

It is possible one of these animals encountered a dead bird or animal and passed the virus on to the teen, Rasmussen said, adding: “I don’t think that people realize how often we can come into contact with wild animals, including birds.”

Canadian officials have worked to detect cases like these quickly, Rasmussen said.

“There’s always more surveillance you could do. It is not, however, like the US, where they seem to be actively resisting testing animals and people,” Rasmussen said.

“It, to me, is absolutely stunning that they don’t test every animal on a farm after it’s been found to be infected,” she said. Farm owners and workers have been resistant to testing for social, financial and legal reasons, and workers have often been kept in the dark about outbreaks – putting them at greater risk of getting sick.

In Canada, experts hope the mutated virus will die out without being passed on to anyone else. “If there are any additional human cases, those will be isolated as well, and that means that this virus has hit a dead end, evolutionarily,” Rasmussen said,

But if the mutation happened once, it could happen again – a particular concern among less-well monitored populations, she said.

“If we have human cases that are undetected, that increases the risk that some of these viruses could be passed on, and by the time we do detect them it might have spread further,” Rasmussen said. “That’s why we do need to remain very vigilant about this.”

The possibility of a more-transmissible virus was a warning sign, Webby said. It “stresses the need that we’ve got to do something about this virus. We’ve got to get it under control.”

The teenager hospitalized with bird flu in British Columbia, Canada, may have a variation of the virus that has a mutation making it more transmissible among people, early data shows – a warning of what the virus can do that is especially worrisome in countries such as the US where some H5N1 cases are not being detected.

The US “absolutely” is not testing and monitoring bird flu cases enough, which means scientists could miss mutated cases like these, said Richard Webby, a virologist at St Jude children’s research hospital’s department of infectious diseases.

“We need to be following this as closely as we can. Any advanced warning we can get that there’s more viruses making these types of changes, that’s going to give us the heads-up,” Webby continued.

The Canadian teen first developed symptoms on 2 November and was hospitalized at the British Columbia children’s hospital on 8 November. The child is still in critical condition with acute respiratory distress – a serious lung condition that can be fatal.

Preliminary sequencing of the H5N1 variant sickening the teenager showed a potential mutation on the genomic spot known to make people more susceptible to the virus.

That could indicate that H5N1 has the capability to become more like a human virus, rather than an avian virus, but it is also not clear yet whether this change is meaningful and more dangerous to people, experts said.

The virus may have mutated over the course of the teen’s illness; additional sequencing could reveal more about its evolution.

“Often it’s not just one thing that is going to confer that ability” to infect humans more effectively, said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan.

“It’s not quite clear what the real-world implications are going to be, but certainly all of these things are a warning sign,” Rasmussen said. “We really do need to pay attention to this, and we really do need to try to reduce more human infections as much as we possibly can.”

The particular variant of H5N1 circulating among birds in British Columbia and the north-western US appeared over the past few months, several years after bird flu was first found in North America, Webby said. The variant also sickened 11 workers in Washington state who were killing infected poultry, though those workers did not have the possible mutation detected in the teenager.

“It seems to be pretty active in terms of infecting animals, infecting people, so I think it’s one to keep an eye on,” Webby said. “It has some unique properties we just need to watch.”

There have been no additional cases detected among the Canadian teen’s contacts, including family, friends and healthcare workers. The teen’s case was detected through disease surveillance – the regular examination of positive flu cases – at the hospital, and no other cases in the area have been discovered through that system.

“We have strong influenza surveillance in BC and have had an increase in testing requests for H5 and all negative to date,” said Bonnie Henry, an epidemiologist, physician and the provincial health officer at the British Columbia ministry of health.

Canadian officials have been conducting blood tests among the teen’s contacts, and they expect results later this week. They are also awaiting the results of other tests done over the weekend.

Officials are “still hopeful on the exposure side to find how the young person was infected but nothing yet new to report”, Henry said.

Though there have been outbreaks of H5N1 among poultry in British Columbia, the teen did not have exposure to them – but he or she did have contact with several pets, including dogs, cats and reptiles.

It is possible one of these animals encountered a dead bird or animal and passed the virus on to the teen, Rasmussen said, adding: “I don’t think that people realize how often we can come into contact with wild animals, including birds.”

Canadian officials have worked to detect cases like these quickly, Rasmussen said.

“There’s always more surveillance you could do. It is not, however, like the US, where they seem to be actively resisting testing animals and people,” Rasmussen said.

“It, to me, is absolutely stunning that they don’t test every animal on a farm after it’s been found to be infected,” she said. Farm owners and workers have been resistant to testing for social, financial and legal reasons, and workers have often been kept in the dark about outbreaks – putting them at greater risk of getting sick.

In Canada, experts hope the mutated virus will die out without being passed on to anyone else. “If there are any additional human cases, those will be isolated as well, and that means that this virus has hit a dead end, evolutionarily,” Rasmussen said,

But if the mutation happened once, it could happen again – a particular concern among less-well monitored populations, she said.

“If we have human cases that are undetected, that increases the risk that some of these viruses could be passed on, and by the time we do detect them it might have spread further,” Rasmussen said. “That’s why we do need to remain very vigilant about this.”

The possibility of a more-transmissible virus was a warning sign, Webby said. It “stresses the need that we’ve got to do something about this virus. We’ve got to get it under control.”

US justice department officials plan to ask a judge to force Google to sell off its Chrome browser to dismantle the monopoly it has over the internet search market, in a major intervention against one of the world’s biggest tech companies.

The Department of Justice (DoJ) last month filed court papers saying it was considering enforcing “structural remedies” to prevent Google from using some its products.

The DoJ will reportedly push for Google, which is owned by Alphabet, to sell the browser and also ask a judge to require new measures related to artificial intelligence as well as its Android smartphone operating system, according to Bloomberg.

Competition officials, along with a number of US states that have joined the case against the Silicon Valley company, also plan to recommend that the federal judge Amit Mehta imposes data licensing requirements.

Google has said it will challenge any case by the DoJ and said the proposals marked an “overreach” by the government that would harm consumers.

If Mehta accepts the proposals, they could drastically reshape the global online search market, of which Google controls 90%, as well as the company’s role in the fast-growing AI sector.

In the UK, the competition watchdog has dropped an investigation into Google’s partnership with Anthropic, the US company that makes the Claude series of AI models.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) decided that the arrangement, which involved a $2bn investment by Google, did not amount to it acquiring material control of Anthropic. The investigation had been launched amid concerns about the concentration of AI power in the big tech companies.

The action against Google in the US follows a court ruling in August in favour of the DoJ that found that the company had violated antitrust laws and spent billions building up an illegal monopoly.

The DoJ’s filing last month said Google’s conduct had resulted in “pernicious harms” to users, and that the importance of restoring competition to a market that was “indispensable” could not be overstated.

The case against Google was filed under the first Donald Trump administration and continued under Joe Biden.

Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice-president of regulatory affairs, said the DoJ continued to push a “radical agenda that goes far beyond the legal issues in this case”.

“The government putting its thumb on the scale in these ways would harm consumers, developers and American technological leadership at precisely the moment it is most needed.”

The case has echoes of the US government’s attempt to break up Microsoft in the 1990s in an effort to challenge its dominance over the software market.

In 2000, a judge ruled in favour of the DoJ and said the company would have to be split in two but this was successfully appealed against by Microsoft a year later and the justice department eventually dropped its case.

Google is to submit its proposed remedies in response to the DoJ by 20 December.

On its examination of Google’s partnership with Anthropic, the CMA said it had found that Google had not acquired the ability to materially influence Anthropic’s commercial policy and therefore the partnership did not meet the threshold for UK merger control to apply.

Joel Bamford, the CMA’s executive director of mergers, said: “This is another decision by the CMA which provides greater clarity for businesses and their investors.

“We know fair, open and effective competition unlocks opportunities for investment and supports innovation in important markets like these, and it’s through merger reviews that we can appropriately assess the nature and impact of complex partnerships such as the one between Google and Anthropic.”

The watchdog also said its so-called turnover test was not met, as Anthropic UK’s turnover does not exceed £70m.

Anthropic said last month that its Claude AI model can now perform computing tasks including filling out forms, planning an outing and building a website.

The 27-year-old son of the Norwegian crown princess, Mette-Marit, has been arrested on suspicion of rape, according to police.

Police said in a statement that Marius Borg Høiby, who was born from a relationship prior to Mette-Marit’s 2001 marriage to Crown Prince Haakon, the heir apparent to the Norwegian throne, was arrested on Monday evening.

He was suspected of violating the criminal code “which concerns sexual intercourse with someone who is unconscious or for other reasons unable to resist the act”, the statement said.

“What police can say about the rape is that it concerns a sexual act without intercourse. The victim is said to have been unable to resist the act,” police said.

Borg Høiby was detained on 4 August after a night-time incident at a woman’s apartment in Oslo and accused of causing bodily harm to the resident, with whom he was having a relationship, police said.

Norwegian media reports said police found a knife stuck into one of the walls of the woman’s bedroom at the time. He was arrested again in September for allegedly violating a restraining order.

According to police, when he was arrested on Monday, Borg Høiby was in a car with the alleged victim from the August incident.

Police also said the suspicions relating to the August incident included domestic abuse. They said they had yet to decide whether he would be remanded in custody.

Borg Høiby and his half-siblings – Princess Ingrid Alexandra, 20, and Prince Sverre Magnus, 18 – were raised together by Mette-Marit and Haakon. Unlike them, he has no official public role.

A newborn baby girl will have to go through life with the wrong sex on her birth certificate after a registrar’s error, which her parents have been told they cannot change.

Grace Bingham and her partner, Ewan Murray, were excited to register their first child at the Mansfield Registration Office in Nottinghamshire last week. But, after nights of broken sleep, they failed to notice the registrar had written the wrong sex on the birth certificate until after it had been submitted.

“We were horrified but assumed that, as we saw the mistake just a few seconds after it had happened, correcting it would be an easy matter,” said Murray. “But although the registrar apologised for her mistake – and the area manager also apologised – it turns out that birth certificates can’t be changed.”

The General Register Office (GRO), which is responsible for administering all civil registration in England and Wales, and the Home Office have both confirmed that Lilah’s birth certificate cannot be reissued, although an amendment can be made in the margin of the original document.

But Bingham said this is not enough. “People reading a birth certificate might easily miss a tiny note in the margin – which means that Lilah could be regarded as male when she applies for school, her passport, for jobs – for everything that she needs a full birth certificate for.”

“Even if people do notice the correction, they’ll assume our daughter is transgender – which isn’t an issue if that’s what she wants to be when she’s older, but it’s not the case now,” she added.

“Lilah might also not believe she was born a girl, but that there was a strange, biological thing that went on when she was born,” Bingham said. “I just feel so guilty. I’m in tears all the time. I’m completely torn up over it.”

The family complained to the GRO but was told the mistake was their responsibility and could not be fully rectified.

“The duty to ensure that information recorded in any particular entry is true is the responsibility of the person providing the information and not of the registrar general or the registrar recording the birth,” the GRO said.

“By law, a full certificate must be an exact duplicate of the registration to which it relates.

“There is currently no facility in law that allows for correct certificates to be issued that show the correct information only, without reproduction of the marginal note,” they added.

The Home Office also confirmed that there was no flexibility under the law. “Legal advice has confirmed that issuing a certificate without including the marginal note following a correction to the entry in the birth register is not compliant with the law,” they stated.

Murray is furious. “I just don’t think a correction in the margin is good enough,” he said. “It’s horrifying that my daughter’s got to have male on her birth certificate when she’s a biological female. I can’t believe this accident is irreversible.”

Lee Anderson is the couple’s MP. He has written to the children’s minister, Janet Daby, to request a meeting to discuss changing the law.

“There’s obviously something wrong with the system,” he said. “Where’s the common sense in this? I can’t think of any other form you can fill out anywhere in this country that can’t be changed. This little girl is going to have male on her birth certificate for the rest of her life under the law as it stands and that’s just ridiculous.”

Daby’s office has confirmed that she is open to meeting with Anderson to discuss the issue.

In a twist to the tale, Sarah Power, who registered her baby daughter at the same register office – with the same registrar – in October last year, had a similar experience.

“The registrar read back all the details correctly – including that our daughter was female – and then asked us to check the spellings of the name,” she said. “We checked the spelling but not the gender, because the registrar had already said it to us correctly.”

“It was only when we got outside the office door that we looked at the certificate and realised that our daughter had been registered as male.”

Power, however, was able to get a new, corrected birth certificate for her daughter after the registrar directed her to a GPO form. The Home Office, however, say this is no longer an option. ‘The local registration service was advised earlier this year not to issue [corrected] certificates in this way,” they said.

Colin Petersen, the original drummer for Bee Gees, has died aged 78.

Petersen joined the band in 1966 alongside brothers Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb. He performed on their second studio album Spicks and Specks, released that same year, and played on early hits such as To Love Somebody, I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You and I Started a Joke.

Born in Kingaroy, Queensland in 1946, Petersen found early fame as a child actor starring in the title role of the 1956 Australian film Smiley. He drummed with Bee Gees until 1969, when disagreements with the band’s manager Robert Stigwood led him to leave and form the short-lived band Humpy Bong with singer-songwriter Jonathan Kelly and Tim Staffell.

Petersen was later replaced by Geoff Bridgford, although the band soon decided to employ touring drummers instead of full-time members, settling on Dennis Bryon, who would drum during the band’s imperial phase from 1973 until 1980.

In a strange twist of fate, Bryon is also reported to have died within four days of Petersen. Despite not being listed as an official member of the band, he contributed percussion to their recordings including the smash hit Saturday Night Fever soundtrack and hits such as How Deep Is Your Love and More Than a Woman.

Born in Cardiff, Wales, Bryon began playing drums at the age of 14. In 2015 he published the memoir You Should Be Dancing: My Life With the Bee Gees which captured the band’s ubiquity during their peak – one time, while flipping through radio stations during a drive to his Miami home, Bryon claims to have landed on five that were playing songs from Saturday Night Fever album.

Both Bryon and Petersen would play with Bee Gees tribute bands in later life. The former with the Italian Bee Gees, formed by three Italian brothers, and the latter with the Best of the Bee Gees tribute show. Petersen was reportedly playing live as recently as last week.

Barry Gibb is the last surviving member of Bee Gees. His brother Maurice died in 2003 whereas Robin died in 2012.