A report from Amnesty International alleges that Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip constitutes the crime of genocide under international law, the first such determination by a major human rights organisation in the 14-month-old conflict.

The 32-page report examining events in Gaza between October 2023 to July 2024, published on Thursday, found that Israel had “brazenly, continuously and with total impunity … unleashed hell” on the strip’s 2.3 million population, noting that the “atrocity crimes” against Israelis by Hamas on 7 October 2023, which triggered the war, “do not justify genocide”.

Israel has “committed prohibited acts under the Genocide Convention, namely killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction” with the “specific intent to destroy Palestinians” in the territory, the report said.

It marks the first time Amnesty has alleged the crime of genocide during an ongoing conflict, and builds on a March report by the UN special rapporteur for Palestine that concluded “there are reasonable grounds to believe” Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians.

“Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call: this is genocide and it must stop now,” Agnès Callamard, the group’s secretary general, said in a news conference on Wednesday.

Amnesty cited the deliberate obstruction of aid and power supplies together with “massive damage, destruction and displacement”, leading to the collapse of water, sanitation, food and healthcare systems, in what it called a “pattern of conduct” within the context of the occupation and blockade of Gaza.

“We did not necessarily start out thinking we would come to this conclusion. We knew there was a risk of genocide, as the international court of justice said,” Budour Hassan, Amnesty’s Israel and occupied Palestinian territories researcher, told the Guardian. “When you join the dots together, the totality of the evidence, it is not just violations of international law. This is something deeper.”

The main allegations in the report are:

• The unprecedented scale and magnitude of the military offensive, which has caused death and destruction at a speed and level unmatched in any other 21st-century conflict;

• Intent to destroy, after considering and discounting arguments such as Israeli recklessness and callous disregard for civilian life in the pursuit of Hamas;

• Killing and causing serious bodily or mental harm in repeated direct attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, or deliberately indiscriminate attacks; and

• Inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction, such as destroying medical infrastructure, the obstruction of aid, and repeated use of arbitrary and sweeping “evacuation orders” for 90% of the population to unsuitable areas.

As an occupying power, Israel is legally obliged to provide for the needs of the occupied population, Kristine Beckerle, an adviser to Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa team, said on Wednesday. She described Israel’s May offensive on Rafah, until then the last place of relative safety in the strip, as a major turning point when it came to establishing intent.

“[Israel] had made Rafah the main aid point, and it knew civilians would go there. The ICJ ordered them to stop and they went ahead anyway,” she said. “Rafah was key.”

At least 47 people including four children were killed in air strikes across Gaza on Tuesday, according to health officials in the territory, including at least 21 who were sheltering in tent camp housing displaced people near the city of Khan Younis. The Israeli military said it had targeted Hamas militants.

Amnesty has called on the UN to enforce a ceasefire, impose targeted sanctions on Israeli and top Hamas officials, and for western governments such as the US, the UK and Germany to stop providing security assistance and selling arms to Israel.

The rights group has also urged the international criminal court, which last month issued arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the former defence minister Yoav Gallant, to add genocide to the list of war crimes it is investigating.

Finally, it called for the unconditional release of civilian hostages and for “Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups responsible for the crimes committed on 7 October to be held to account”.

The report, You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza, is likely to be met with outrage in Israel and generate accusations of antisemitism. Several legal experts and genocide studies scholars contend that the 7 October attack was also genocidal.

The Holocaust led to the creation of the Jewish state and the Geneva conventions, which codified and outlawed genocide as a punishable crime. Both initiatives were the international community’s “never again” response to the horrors inflicted on European Jews by the Nazis in world war two.

In its conclusion, the report says that Amnesty “recognises that there is resistance and hesitancy among many in finding genocidal intent when it comes to Israel’s conduct in Gaza”, which has “impeded justice and accountability”.

“Amnesty International concedes that identifying genocide in armed conflict is complex and challenging, because of the multiple objectives that may exist simultaneously. Nonetheless, it is critical to recognise genocide, and to insist that war can never excuse it,” it states.

Amnesty said the report was based on fieldwork, interviews with 212 people, including victims, witnesses and healthcare workers in Gaza, analysis of extensive visual and digital evidence, and more than 100 statements from Israeli government and military actors it said amounted to “dehumanising discourse”. It also used video and photo evidence of soldiers committing or celebrating war crimes.

Israel’s acts in Gaza were examined “in their totality, taking into account their recurrence and simultaneous occurrence, and both their immediate impact and their cumulative and mutually reinforcing consequences”, it said. Findings were shared “extensively” on multiple occasions with Israeli authorities, the group added, but were not met with responses.

Thursday’s publication builds on the London-based rights group’s previous bold positions on Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories. In 2022, Amnesty joined Human Rights Watch and the respected Israeli NGO B’Tselem in issuing a major report accusing Israel of apartheid, as part of a growing movement to redefine the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a struggle for equal rights rather than a territorial dispute. Israeli politicians called for the report to be withdrawn, alleging antisemitism.

South Korea’s ruling party says it will rally behind the beleaguered president, Yoon Suk Yeol, to block a move by the opposition to impeach him over his botched and controversial attempt to impose martial law.

The floor leader of the People Power party vowed on Thursday that its lawmakers would “unite” to defeat the opposition-led motion to impeach the deeply unpopular president.

“All 108 lawmakers of the People Power party will stay united to reject the president’s impeachment,” Choo Kyung-ho told a livestreamed party meeting.

Opposition lawmakers need eight ruling party lawmakers to vote with them for the impeachment bill to pass. The opposition says the vote is expected on Saturday.

The political turmoil comes after Yoon’s surprise, late-night declaration of martial law on Tuesday, which was met with widespread condemnation and street protests, and alarmed international allies. Within a few hours Yoon was forced to rescind the order when parliamentarians defied an attempted military blockade and assembled to vote it down.

On Thursday morning, Yoon accepted the resignation of his defence minister Kim Yong-hyun and nominated his ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Choi Byung-hyuk, as the new defence minister.

Kim, who had also been facing an impeachment motion, reportedly advised Yoon to declare martial law on Tuesday.

The US deputy secretary of state, Kurt Campbell, said Yoon had “badly misjudged” the martial law decision, which took the White House by surprise.

At an event organised by the Aspen Strategy Forum, Campbell said the fact that both political sides in South Korea could agree his decision was “deeply problematic” despite deep political polarisation and division was a reassuring tribute to the strength of South Korean democracy.

He said South Korea would be “in a challenging place” in the next few months and the US goal would be to make clear its alliance with Seoul is “absolutely rock solid.”

While Yoon’s ruling People Power party said it would oppose the impeachment motion introduced by the opposition on Thursday, the party has been divided over the crisis.

The opposition Democratic party has a majority in parliament but still needs at least eight ruling party lawmakers to back the bill in order for it to pass.

“The Yoon Suk Yeol regime’s declaration of emergency martial law caused great confusion and fear among our people,” Democratic Party lawmaker Kim Seung-won told a session of South Korea’s National Assembly held in the early hours of Thursday.

The martial law declaration late on Tuesday attempted to ban political activity and censor the media in South Korea, which is Asia’s fourth-largest economy and a key US ally. The shock move divided Yoon’s ministers and unleashed six hours of chaos.

None of the 108 ruling party lawmakers were present for the introduction of the impeachment motion. The motion paves the way for a vote to be held in the following 24 to 72 hours.

The impeachment vote follows a night of chaos after Yoon declared martial law and armed troops attempted to force their way into the National Assembly building in Seoul, only to stand back when parliamentary aides sprayed them with fire extinguishers.

“The people and the aides who protected parliament protected us with their bodies. The people won, and it’s now time for us to protect the people,” said Kim.

“We need to immediately suspend the authority of President Yoon. He has committed an indelible, historic crime against the people, whose anxiety needs to be soothed so that they can return to their daily lives“.

Opposition parties need a two-thirds majority to pass the impeachment bill. If it passes, South Korea’s constitutional court will then decide whether to uphold the motion – a process that could take up to 180 days.

If Yoon were to be suspended from exercising power, prime minister Han Duck-soo would fill in as leader.

If the embattled president resigned or was removed from office, a new election would be held within 60 days.

Yoon told the nation in a television speech late on Tuesday that martial law was needed to defend the country from pro-North Korean anti-state forces, and protect the free constitutional order, although he cited no specific threats.

Within hours, South Korea’s parliament, with 190 of its 300 members present, unanimously passed a motion for martial law to be lifted, with 18 members of Yoon’s party present.

The president then rescinded the declaration of martial law, around six hours after its proclamation.

“There are opinions that it was too much to go to emergency martial law, and that we did not follow the procedures for emergency martial law, but it was done strictly within the constitutional framework,” a South Korean presidential official told Reuters by telephone.

There was no immediate reaction from North Korea to the drama in the South.

Yoon had been embraced by leaders in the west as a partner in the US-led effort to unify democracies against growing authoritarianism in China, Russia and elsewhere.

But he caused unease among South Koreans by branding his critics as “communist totalitarian and anti-state forces”. In November, he denied wrongdoing in response to influence-peddling allegations against him and his wife, and he has taken a hard line against labour unions.

Reuters contributed to this report

The CEO of UnitedHealthcare, one of the US’s largest health insurers, was shot dead on Wednesday in midtown Manhattan, police confirmed in a press conference.

Brian Thompson, 50, was shot outside the Hilton hotel at 1335 Avenue of the Americas just after 6.45am after arriving early for the company’s annual investor conference. A man wearing a mask approached him and fired at him repeatedly, police said.

Police said they believe Thompson was targeted in the attack. This was a “brazen, targeted attack”, New York’s police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, said, adding that this “does not appear to be a random act of violence”.

“I want to be clear at this time, every indication is that this was a premeditated, pre-planned targeted attack,” she added.

The New York police department chief of detectives, Joseph Kenny, said Thompson was found by police on the sidewalk in front of the Hilton with gunshot wounds to his back and his leg. He was rushed to Mount Sinai hospital in critical condition, and was pronounced dead at 7.12am.

The gunman arrived at the location on foot about five minutes before Thompson’s arrival, police said. From surveillance video, police said Thompson was seen at 6.44am walking alone towards the Hilton.

Police said video showed the gunman appearing to ignore other pedestrians. Officials said he approached Thompson from behind and shot him in the back before moving toward the victim and continuing to shoot.

Authorities said the gun appeared to malfunction, and the gunman cleared the jam before firing again and fleeing northbound into an alleyway between 54th Street and 55th Street. The shooter then continued to walk westbound on the Avenue of the Americas, where he got on to an electric Citi Bike and rode northbound towards Central Park.

Police say they recovered three live 9mm rounds and three discharged 9mm shell casings. Authorities also recovered a cellphone.

The shooter appeared to be a light-skinned male, authorities said, wearing a light-brown or cream-colored jacket, a black face mask, black and white sneakers, and a distinctive grey backpack.

Police are searching for the gunman and are offering up to $10,000 for information about Thompson’s death, as stated on a newly released flyer with two surveillance photos. The flyer shows a photo of a suspect, all in black with a grey backpack, holding a firearm, and another of the suspect on a bicycle.

An image released later by the NYPD showed a suspect in a dark jacket, reportedly while in a Starbucks coffee shop minutes before the shooting.

The New York Times also reported that the suspect reportedly knew which door Thompson was going to enter and shot him several times from mere feet away before fleeing.

Officials have said that no arrests have been made yet and that the investigation is continuing. The motive is currently unknown.

Thompson’s wife, Paulette Thompson, told NBC News her husband had received threats.

“There had been some threats,” she said. “Basically, I don’t know, a lack of coverage? I don’t know details. I just know that he said there were some people that had been threatening him.”

She also told the outlet that the police had told her it appeared the shooting was “a planned attack”.

“I can’t really give a thoughtful response right now. I just found this out and I’m trying to console my children,” she added.

UnitedHealthcare released a statement on the incident shortly after noon ET.

“We are deeply saddened and shocked at the passing of our dear friend and colleague Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare,” the statement read.

“Brian was a highly respected colleague and friend to all who worked with him. We are working closely with the New York police department and ask for your patience and understanding during this difficult time. Our hearts go out to Brian’s family and all who were close to him.”

The UnitedHealth Group, which owns United Healthcare, was scheduled to host its annual investor conference on Wednesday, beginning at 8am local time.

Two buildings associated with the company had their flags – US flags, Minnesota flags and company flags – at half-mast. There was a police officer outside one building, but otherwise the buildings were quiet.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the New York Hilton Midtown said: “We are deeply saddened by this morning’s events in the area and our thoughts are with all affected by the tragedy.” It directed further questions the New York police department.

Amar Abdelmula, a driver who witnessed the incident, told ABC News he heard “the shot”. He said: “It was silent gun, black gun.” He said he saw the shooter running across the street and tried to take a picture, but was too far away.

“I was shocked,” Abdelmula said. He said he was afraid of being shot too: “I saw everything.”

The New York mayor, Eric Adams, said it did not appear to be a random attack and that police were reviewing evidence from the scene, including video.

“This was not what appears to be a just random act of violence” Adams said. “It seems to be clearly targeted by an individual and we will apprehend that individual.”

Thompson was named chief executive officer for UnitedHealthcare in April 2021, according to the company. Prior to this role, he served as chief executive of UnitedHealthcare government programs including Medicare and retirement and community and state. Before leading government programs, Thompson served as CEO of UnitedHealthcare medicare and retirement.

Thompson, who lives in Minnesota, joined UnitedHealth Group in 2004.

Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, called the shooting “horrifying news and a terrible loss for the business and healthcare community in Minnesota”.

“Minnesota is sending our prayers to Brian’s family and the UnitedHealthcare team,” Walz added.

The police department in the city where Thompson lives – Maple Grove, Minnesota – said it had notified Thompson’s family of his murder this morning, at the request of the New York City police department.“We extend our deepest condolences to the Thompson family during this difficult time,” the department said in a statement.

US senator Amy Klobuchar, who represents Minnesota, called the shooting a “horrifying and shocking act of violence”, adding: “My thoughts are with Brian Thompson’s family and loved ones and all those working at UnitedHealthcare in Minnesota.”

Brian Thompson’s sister-in-law Elena Reveiz told the New York Times she was still processing the news of Thompson’s death.

“He was a good person, and I am so sad,” Reveiz said, adding that Thompson was a good father to his two children. Reveiz said she was on her way to be with their family.

Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, one of the the US’s largest health insurers, was fatally shot on Wednesday in midtown Manhattan by an unidentified man.

Here’s everything we know about the shooting.

• This article was amended on 4 December 2024 to correct that Brian Thompson was shot in the back and the calf, not in the chest.

For 20 years Brian Thompson, the healthcare executive killed in a Manhattan shooting on Wednesday, climbed to the top of UnitedHealthcare.

The 50-year-old chief executive of the main division of the conglomerate UnitedHealth Group, the US’s largest health insurer, was gunned down in midtown Manhattan on Wednesday morning by a masked assailant in what police are calling a “brazen targeted attack.”

An alumnus of the University of Iowa, Thompson joined the company in 2004 from accountancy giant PricewaterhouseCoopers. He was named chief executive officer for UnitedHealthcare in April 2021 after serving in several other roles, most recently as chief executive officer of UnitedHealthcare’s government programs business.

UnitedHealth Group is the fourth-largest public company in the US behind Walmart, Amazon and Apple.

A father of two, Thompson lived in a suburb of Minneapolis, about a 20-minute drive from the company’s headquarters.

His wife, Paulette Thompson, told NBC News that her husband had been receiving threats.

“There had been some threats,” she said. “I don’t know details. I just know that he said there were some people that had been threatening him.” She said police had told her the shooting was “a planned attack”.

“He was a good person and I am so sad,” Elena Reveiz, Thompson’s sister-in-law, told the New York Times.

Thompson, who managed a division employing about 140,000 people, had been attending the company’s investor conference at the Hilton Hotel in midtown Manhattan. He was shot outside the hotel and died later in hospital. Police are still searching for his killer.

“We are deeply saddened and shocked at the passing of our dear friend and colleague Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare,” the company said in a statement.

The firm added: “Brian was a highly respected colleague and friend to all who worked with him. We are working closely with the New York police department and ask for your patience and understanding during this difficult time. Our hearts go out to Brian’s family and all who were close to him.”

France has been plunged into political crisis after a no-confidence vote brought down the government, ending the beleaguered minority coalition of the rightwing prime minister Michel Barnier after only three months.

The no-confidence motion brought by an alliance of left-wing parties was supported by MPs from Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration, far-right, National Rally. A total of 331 lawmakers — a clear majority — voted on Wednesday night to bring down the government.

Barnier will resign as prime minister on Thursday morning, having warned before the vote that France would be “plunged into the unknown”.

Macron will then address the nation in a televised address on Thursday evening, his office said after the vote.

The toppling of the government leaves the president, Emmanuel Macron, facing the worst political crisis of his two terms as president. There is uncertainty over how a 2025 budget can be decided as France faces a growing public deficit, and over whom Macron could appoint as prime minister.

Macron, whose second term as president runs until spring 2027, is not obliged to stand down himself. He has ruled out resigning, calling such a scenario “political fiction”. But part of the left and far right called for his exit.

Wednesday’s vote was the country’s first successful no-confidence vote since a defeat for Georges Pompidou’s government in 1962, when Charles de Gaulle was president. The lifespan of Barnier’s government became the shortest of any administration of France’s Fifth Republic, which began in 1958.

No new parliament elections can be called before July 2025, narrowing Macron’s options faced with a deeply divided national assembly.

Since Macron called a sudden and inconclusive snap election in June, the French parliament has been divided between three groups with no absolute majority. A left alliance took the largest number of votes but fell short of an absolute majority; Macron’s centrist grouping suffered losses but is still standing and Le Pen far-right National Rally gained seats but was held back from power by tactical voting from the left and centre.

Barnier, the EU’s former Brexit negotiator, was appointed by Macron in September after two months of political paralysis this summer.

Barnier’s key task, which proved his downfall, was to vote through a budget for 2025 in which he said he would begin to tackle France’s deficit with €60bn in tax increases and spending cuts. But after weeks of standoff over the budget, Barnier on Monday pushed through a social security financing bill, using article 49.3 of the constitution, which allows a government to force through legislation without a vote in parliament. This sparked a no-confidence motion brought by the left alliance, and another brought by the far right.

Barnier’s minority coalition had been essentially propped up by Le Pen, who, although outside government, had an unprecedentedly powerful role as Barnier attempted to placate her to avoid her party joining a no-confidence vote. Barnier had negotiated with her directly, tapering the budget to her demands.

But Le Pen pulled rank, saying Barnier’s budget was a danger to the country. She said French people had expected Barnier’s appointment to calm government institutions and provide a “vision for the country”. Instead, she said, the budget was a disaster.

Le Pen wrote on social media that, by following the “catastrophic continuity of Emmanuel Macron”, Barnier, who led a coalition dominated by the right and centre, “could only fail”. She said she was “protecting and defending” her party’s 11 million voters, who she said were deeply concerned about the cost of living. Jean-Philippe Tanguy, a National Rally MP, said: “[Having] no budget is better than the actual budget, which says a lot about how bad it is.”

If parliament does not pass a budget by 20 December, the government can propose emergency legislation that would roll over spending limits and tax provisions from 2024, pending the arrival of a new government and a new 2025 budget bill.

The savings through spending cuts, and tax rises planned by the Barnier government would be shelved.

Le Pen’s party has said households would be better off in this scenario. Barnier had fiercely contested this, saying that the government’s collapse would bring “extremely serious and turbulent conditions on financial markets”. Barnier’s ministers said more people would end up paying tax or additional tax if thresholds could not be adjusted for inflation. The labour minister, Astrid Panosyan-Bouvet, said there would be “sadness and worry” after a government collapse.

The head of the parliament’s finances commission, Éric Coquerel, a member of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s leftwing La France Insoumise party, said the no-confidence vote was a sign of “hope” and he felt the “vast majority of French people backed it”. He said Barnier was being “alarmist” when he said that “financial and economic chaos” would be the result if the government fell. Mélenchon, who is not currently an MP, was in parliament, to witness what he called a “historic day”.

The left alliance’s no-confidence motion contained wording that attacked the far right. It noted that despite a large number of French citizens choosing to block the far right in June’s parliament snap election, Barnier had still “ceded to their most vile obsessions” – a reference to their anti-immigration stance. But Le Pen’s party said it would still vote for the no-confidence text as the key issue was to overthrow the government.

The Socialist party leader, Olivier Faure, who said there should now be a prime minister from the left, said Macron must speak to the French people. “How can he leave the French people in this uncertainty just before Christmas?” Faure told Le Monde.

France has been plunged into political crisis after a no-confidence vote brought down the government, ending the beleaguered minority coalition of the rightwing prime minister Michel Barnier after only three months.

The no-confidence motion brought by an alliance of left-wing parties was supported by MPs from Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration, far-right, National Rally. A total of 331 lawmakers — a clear majority — voted on Wednesday night to bring down the government.

Barnier will resign as prime minister on Thursday morning, having warned before the vote that France would be “plunged into the unknown”.

Macron will then address the nation in a televised address on Thursday evening, his office said after the vote.

The toppling of the government leaves the president, Emmanuel Macron, facing the worst political crisis of his two terms as president. There is uncertainty over how a 2025 budget can be decided as France faces a growing public deficit, and over whom Macron could appoint as prime minister.

Macron, whose second term as president runs until spring 2027, is not obliged to stand down himself. He has ruled out resigning, calling such a scenario “political fiction”. But part of the left and far right called for his exit.

Wednesday’s vote was the country’s first successful no-confidence vote since a defeat for Georges Pompidou’s government in 1962, when Charles de Gaulle was president. The lifespan of Barnier’s government became the shortest of any administration of France’s Fifth Republic, which began in 1958.

No new parliament elections can be called before July 2025, narrowing Macron’s options faced with a deeply divided national assembly.

Since Macron called a sudden and inconclusive snap election in June, the French parliament has been divided between three groups with no absolute majority. A left alliance took the largest number of votes but fell short of an absolute majority; Macron’s centrist grouping suffered losses but is still standing and Le Pen far-right National Rally gained seats but was held back from power by tactical voting from the left and centre.

Barnier, the EU’s former Brexit negotiator, was appointed by Macron in September after two months of political paralysis this summer.

Barnier’s key task, which proved his downfall, was to vote through a budget for 2025 in which he said he would begin to tackle France’s deficit with €60bn in tax increases and spending cuts. But after weeks of standoff over the budget, Barnier on Monday pushed through a social security financing bill, using article 49.3 of the constitution, which allows a government to force through legislation without a vote in parliament. This sparked a no-confidence motion brought by the left alliance, and another brought by the far right.

Barnier’s minority coalition had been essentially propped up by Le Pen, who, although outside government, had an unprecedentedly powerful role as Barnier attempted to placate her to avoid her party joining a no-confidence vote. Barnier had negotiated with her directly, tapering the budget to her demands.

But Le Pen pulled rank, saying Barnier’s budget was a danger to the country. She said French people had expected Barnier’s appointment to calm government institutions and provide a “vision for the country”. Instead, she said, the budget was a disaster.

Le Pen wrote on social media that, by following the “catastrophic continuity of Emmanuel Macron”, Barnier, who led a coalition dominated by the right and centre, “could only fail”. She said she was “protecting and defending” her party’s 11 million voters, who she said were deeply concerned about the cost of living. Jean-Philippe Tanguy, a National Rally MP, said: “[Having] no budget is better than the actual budget, which says a lot about how bad it is.”

If parliament does not pass a budget by 20 December, the government can propose emergency legislation that would roll over spending limits and tax provisions from 2024, pending the arrival of a new government and a new 2025 budget bill.

The savings through spending cuts, and tax rises planned by the Barnier government would be shelved.

Le Pen’s party has said households would be better off in this scenario. Barnier had fiercely contested this, saying that the government’s collapse would bring “extremely serious and turbulent conditions on financial markets”. Barnier’s ministers said more people would end up paying tax or additional tax if thresholds could not be adjusted for inflation. The labour minister, Astrid Panosyan-Bouvet, said there would be “sadness and worry” after a government collapse.

The head of the parliament’s finances commission, Éric Coquerel, a member of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s leftwing La France Insoumise party, said the no-confidence vote was a sign of “hope” and he felt the “vast majority of French people backed it”. He said Barnier was being “alarmist” when he said that “financial and economic chaos” would be the result if the government fell. Mélenchon, who is not currently an MP, was in parliament, to witness what he called a “historic day”.

The left alliance’s no-confidence motion contained wording that attacked the far right. It noted that despite a large number of French citizens choosing to block the far right in June’s parliament snap election, Barnier had still “ceded to their most vile obsessions” – a reference to their anti-immigration stance. But Le Pen’s party said it would still vote for the no-confidence text as the key issue was to overthrow the government.

The Socialist party leader, Olivier Faure, who said there should now be a prime minister from the left, said Macron must speak to the French people. “How can he leave the French people in this uncertainty just before Christmas?” Faure told Le Monde.

The British army would be wiped out in as little as six months if it was forced to fight a war on the scale of the Ukraine conflict, a defence minister has warned.

Alistair Carns said a rate of casualties similar to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would lead to the army being “expended” within six to 12 months.

He said it illustrated the need to “generate depth and mass rapidly in the event of a crisis”.

In comments reported by Sky News, Carns, a former Royal Marines colonel, said Russia was suffering losses of about 1,500 soldiers killed or injured a day.

“In a war of scale – not a limited intervention, but one similar to Ukraine – our army for example on the current casualty rates would be expended – as part of a broader multinational coalition – in six months to a year,” he said in a speech at a conference on reserves at the Royal United Services Institute thinktank in London.

He added: “That doesn’t mean we need a bigger army, but it does mean you need to generate depth and mass rapidly in the event of a crisis.”

Official figures show the army had 109,245 personnel on 1 October, including 25,814 volunteer reservists.

Carns said: “The reserves are critical, absolutely central, to that process. Without them we cannot generate mass, we cannot meet the plethora of defence tasks.”

Carns, the minister for veterans and people, said the UK needed to “catch up with Nato allies” to place a greater emphasis on the reserves.

The prime minister’s official spokesperson said the defence secretary, John Healey, had spoken previously about “the state of the armed forces that were inherited from the previous government”.

The spokes person said: “It’s why the budget invested billions of pounds into defence, it’s why we’re undertaking a strategic defence review to ensure that we have the capabilities and the investment needed to defend this country.”

The armed forces’ numbers have dropped steadily over the past 14 years, a decline that was seized on by Labour when it was in opposition.

Shortly before the election, Keir Starmer accused the Conservatives of cutting the army to its smallest size “since Napoleon”.

In 2021, the then-defence secretary, Ben Wallace, justified planned reductions by saying: “When the threat changes, we change with it … It’s really important we’re driven by the threat not sentimentality.”

However, the ongoing war in Ukraine, and Donald Trump’s re-election as president of the US, has led to fresh calls for substantial investment in the military.

Trump has indicated he will end America’s military and financial support for Ukraine – leaving Nato allies in Europe to potentially fill the gap.

Mexican security forces have impounded more than a ton of fentanyl pills in what officials have called the biggest seizure of the synthetic opioid in the country’s history.

Soldiers and marines found the fentanyl at two properties in the northern state of Sinaloa, late on Tuesday – exactly a week after Donald Trump threatened to impose 25% tariffs on products from Canada and Mexico unless the two neighbouring countries cracked down on the flow of immigrants and drugs across their borders with the US.

Mexican authorities also said they had apprehended more than 5,200 migrants across the country on Tuesday, signaling a further ramp-up in enforcement aimed at stopping people from reaching the US border.

Fentanyl seizures in Mexico have dropped this year, and experts said the timing of the announcement of the drug raids may not be a coincidence.

“It is clear that the Mexican government has been managing the timing of fentanyl seizures,” said security analyst David Saucedo. “But under the pressure by Donald Trump, it appears President Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration is willing to increase the capture of drug traffickers and drug seizures that Washington is demanding.”

Saucedo said it’s clear the Mexican government “doesn’t see fentanyl as one of its own problems, and fighting it isn’t its priority”. He added there would only be big busts “when there is pressure from Washington”.

Mexico’s top security official said the raids had been launched after soldiers and marines late Tuesday spotted two men carrying guns, who ran into two houses when security forces gave chase.

In one house, soldiers found about 660lbs (300kg) of fentanyl, and in the other, a truck packed with about 1,750lbs (800kg) of the drug, mostly in pill form.

“In Sinaloa, we achieved the biggest seizure in history of fentanyl,” Omar Garcia Harfuch, the public safety secretary, wrote on his social media accounts. Several guns were also seized and two men were arrested.

Sheinbaum said Wednesday that “this is an investigation that had been going on for some time, and yesterday it bore fruit”.

That claim appeared to contrast with the seemingly random nature of the bust as described by Harfuch.

In the past, Mexican security forces have sometimes used the story of following armed men running into houses as a pretext to enter homes without search warrants.

The latest haul was also striking because fentanyl seizures in Mexico had fallen dramatically in the first half of the year.

Figures for the first half of 2024 show that Mexican federal forces seized only 286lbs (130kg) of fentanyl nationwide between January and June, down 94% from the 5,135lbs (2,329kg) seized in 2023.

The synthetic opioid has been blamed for about 70,000 overdose deaths annually in the United States, and US officials have tried to step up efforts to seize it as it comes over the border, often in the form of pills made in Mexico from precursor chemicals largely imported from China.

“It’s a very, very big seizure,” Saucedo said. “But if they don’t dismantle the labs, this kind of production will continue.”

Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s embattled nominee for secretary of defense, shared an impassioned post saying he will “never back down” amid a flurry of rumors that the president-elect is contemplating replacing him with Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis.

“I’m doing this for the warfighters, not the warmongers. The Left is afraid of disrupters and change agents. They are afraid of [Donald Trump] – and me. So they smear w/ fake, anonymous sources & BS stories. They don’t want truth. Our warriors never back down, & neither will I,” Hegseth wrote on X on Wednesday morning.

The post went viral in the aftermath of reports on Tuesday night that Trump may swap out Hegseth with DeSantis. One source told NBC News that DeSantis is “very much in contention” while another said: “Trump talked to the governor and wants him to do it.” The Wall Street Journal and CBS News also reported the rumours, citing unnamed sources.

Despite the rumours, Hegseth, 44, told reporters on Wednesday morning that Trump encouraged him to “keep fighting”.

“I spoke to the president-elect this morning. He said, keep going, keep fighting,” he said. “Why would I back down? I’ve always been a fighter.”

Later on Wednesday, Hegseth sat down with Megyn Kelly for an interview on her SiriusXM show and lambasted the criticism he’s received.

“We’re going to fight like hell. There’s no reason to back down. Why would we back down?” Hegseth said.

Asked if he’s being “Kavanaughed”, a reference to the 2018 supreme court nomination of and backlash to Brett Kavanaugh, Hegseth emphasized that people are making things up about him.

But, he said: “Kavanaugh stood up and he fought and he won and hopefully Republicans have learned that lesson.”

Hegseth has been embroiled with controversy since he was named. Earlier this week, the New Yorker reported whistleblower accusations that he was forced out of leadership roles in two military veteran organisations following allegations of financial mismanagement, aggressive drunkenness and sexist behaviour.

The former Fox News host told reporters on Tuesday, in response as to whether he has an alcohol problem, that he wouldn’t “dignify that with a response”.

Last week, a 2018 email from Penelope Hegseth, his mother, obtained by the New York Times made headlines as it saw Penelope accusing her son of routinely mistreating women and displaying a lack of character.

“You are an abuser of women – that is the ugly truth and I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego,” she wrote.

Penelope Hegseth walked back the remarks she made six years ago and also made a plea for Hegseth’s supporters to stand by his side in a Wednesday morning interview with Fox & Friends.

“We all believe in him. We really believe that he is not that man he was seven years ago. I’m not that mother and I hope people will hear that story today and truth of that story,” she told viewers.

She continued: “I am here to tell the truth. To tell the truth to the American people and tell the truth to senators on the Hill, especially female senators. I really hope that you will not listen to the media and you will listen to Pete.”

Penelope emphasized that who she and her son were in her 2018 email are “not the people we are today”.

“They were going through – Pete, and his wife – were going through a difficult divorce, a very emotional time and I’m sure many of you across the country understand how difficult divorce is on a family. There is emotion. We say things and I wrote that in haste, with deep emotion, as a parent,” she explained.

She added: “Pete and I are both very passionate people. I wrote that out of love, two hours later I retracted it with an apology and nobody has seen that. It was a difficult time.”

JD Vance, the vice-president-elect, also came to Hegseth’s defense on Wednesday morning, noting Penelope Hegseth’s appearance on Fox & Friends and telling followers on X that “the media never talks about the apology because they’re trying to destroy him, not tell the truth”. At press time, multiple news outlets had reported on her apology.

Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s embattled nominee for secretary of defense, shared an impassioned post saying he will “never back down” amid a flurry of rumors that the president-elect is contemplating replacing him with Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis.

“I’m doing this for the warfighters, not the warmongers. The Left is afraid of disrupters and change agents. They are afraid of [Donald Trump] – and me. So they smear w/ fake, anonymous sources & BS stories. They don’t want truth. Our warriors never back down, & neither will I,” Hegseth wrote on X on Wednesday morning.

The post went viral in the aftermath of reports on Tuesday night that Trump may swap out Hegseth with DeSantis. One source told NBC News that DeSantis is “very much in contention” while another said: “Trump talked to the governor and wants him to do it.” The Wall Street Journal and CBS News also reported the rumours, citing unnamed sources.

Despite the rumours, Hegseth, 44, told reporters on Wednesday morning that Trump encouraged him to “keep fighting”.

“I spoke to the president-elect this morning. He said, keep going, keep fighting,” he said. “Why would I back down? I’ve always been a fighter.”

Later on Wednesday, Hegseth sat down with Megyn Kelly for an interview on her SiriusXM show and lambasted the criticism he’s received.

“We’re going to fight like hell. There’s no reason to back down. Why would we back down?” Hegseth said.

Asked if he’s being “Kavanaughed”, a reference to the 2018 supreme court nomination of and backlash to Brett Kavanaugh, Hegseth emphasized that people are making things up about him.

But, he said: “Kavanaugh stood up and he fought and he won and hopefully Republicans have learned that lesson.”

Hegseth has been embroiled with controversy since he was named. Earlier this week, the New Yorker reported whistleblower accusations that he was forced out of leadership roles in two military veteran organisations following allegations of financial mismanagement, aggressive drunkenness and sexist behaviour.

The former Fox News host told reporters on Tuesday, in response as to whether he has an alcohol problem, that he wouldn’t “dignify that with a response”.

Last week, a 2018 email from Penelope Hegseth, his mother, obtained by the New York Times made headlines as it saw Penelope accusing her son of routinely mistreating women and displaying a lack of character.

“You are an abuser of women – that is the ugly truth and I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego,” she wrote.

Penelope Hegseth walked back the remarks she made six years ago and also made a plea for Hegseth’s supporters to stand by his side in a Wednesday morning interview with Fox & Friends.

“We all believe in him. We really believe that he is not that man he was seven years ago. I’m not that mother and I hope people will hear that story today and truth of that story,” she told viewers.

She continued: “I am here to tell the truth. To tell the truth to the American people and tell the truth to senators on the Hill, especially female senators. I really hope that you will not listen to the media and you will listen to Pete.”

Penelope emphasized that who she and her son were in her 2018 email are “not the people we are today”.

“They were going through – Pete, and his wife – were going through a difficult divorce, a very emotional time and I’m sure many of you across the country understand how difficult divorce is on a family. There is emotion. We say things and I wrote that in haste, with deep emotion, as a parent,” she explained.

She added: “Pete and I are both very passionate people. I wrote that out of love, two hours later I retracted it with an apology and nobody has seen that. It was a difficult time.”

JD Vance, the vice-president-elect, also came to Hegseth’s defense on Wednesday morning, noting Penelope Hegseth’s appearance on Fox & Friends and telling followers on X that “the media never talks about the apology because they’re trying to destroy him, not tell the truth”. At press time, multiple news outlets had reported on her apology.

Two students were injured in a school shooting in northern California, officials said on Wednesday afternoon, and the suspected shooter is dead.

The injured students, five- and six-year-old boys, are in “extremely critical” condition and being treated at a Sacramento-area trauma center, the Butte county sheriff, Kory Honea, told reporters on Wednesday evening.

“The fact that they are being treated by medical staff currently is great,” Honea said. “It’s good that they’re still in a position to be treated. But we’re not out of the woods yet.”

He added that law enforcement is confident that they know who the shooter was and that they found a handgun at the scene, but declined to identify him or discuss a possible motive.

Reports of a gunman at the Feather River School of Seventh-Day Adventists in Oroville, a city of 20,000 people in the state’s far north, came in around 1pm. Minutes later, a California highway patrol officer arrived at the school to find a man dead by a self-inflicted gunshot wound and two severely injured kindergarteners.

While details on the shooter remain scant, Honea said that investigators believe the shooter targeted the school – which serves about 35 students ranging from kindergarten to eighth grade – because of its affiliation with the Seventh-Day Adventist church. Honea said that the shooter had been dropped off at the campus via a rideshare service. Days before, he’d made an appointment with an administrator to discuss enrolling a family member at the school.

The appointment appeared normal, Honea adds, but investigators are looking into whether the meeting was set up as a ruse to get into the school.

Butte county’s district attorney and the head of the FBI’s Sacramento field office joined Honea at the press conference to highlight the investigative help they plan to offer local law enforcement and the victim services they say they will deliver to the families of the injured students and the other children affected by the shooting.

Buses arrived at the school on Wednesday afternoon to transport students and reunite them with their parents. Chaplains and crisis counselors would be available to help those affected, Honea said.

Oroville was the site of a high-profile shooting in 2022 when a man opened fire on a Greyhound bus bound for Los Angeles, killing one person, a 43-year old traveling with her two children, and injuring four others, including a pregnant woman.

“Here we are again in Butte county dealing with another major incident, major tragedy,” Honea said. “This community has endured so much in the last three years, it’s hard to believe we’re back here again.”

The region has found itself in the national spotlight repeatedly in recent years, largely because of highly destructive and often deadly wildfires, including the 2018 Camp fire that killed 85 people, which Honea gestured to in his remarks to reporters outside the Feather River School.

“This is another tragedy that has been visited upon our community,” he said. “I hope people can appreciate how tough this is for the students of this school, the faculty of the school, the members of this community, all the first responders.”

The French navy rescued 85 migrants trying to cross the Channel from France to England on Wednesday, maritime authorities said, the latest in a deadly series of dangerous crossings.

One of “numerous” migrant boats that set out to sea called for help after hitting a sandbank off the Pas-de-Calais region, France’s Channel and North Sea maritime prefecture said in a statement.

A navy tugboat saved 80 passengers from that boat and five more from a second migrant vessel at another location, it said.

The migrants were brought back to land at Boulogne-sur-Mer and attended to by emergency services and border police.

More than 70 migrants have died trying to cross the Channel to Britain this year, according to the Pas-de-Calais authorities.

Tens of thousands more have reached Britain, whose government has vowed to crack down on people-smuggling gangs.

In Germany on Wednesday, police carried out pre-dawn raids targeting an alleged Syrian and Iraqi-Kurdish criminal network accused of smuggling migrants by boat from France to Britain.

A large number of Americans’ metadata has been stolen in the sweeping cyber-espionage campaign carried out by a Chinese hacking group dubbed “Salt Typhoon”, a senior US official told journalists on Wednesday.

The official declined to provide specific figures but noted that China’s access to America’s telecommunications infrastructure was broad and that the hacking was ongoing.

“We believe a large number of Americans’ metadata was taken,” said the official, who spoke to reporters on condition that their name be withheld. Pushed on whether that might include every American’s cellphone records, the official said: “We do not believe it’s every cellphone in the country, but we believe it’s potentially a large number of individuals that the Chinese government was focused on.”

Dozens of companies across the world were hit by the hackers, the official said, including “at least” eight telecommunications and telecom infrastructure firms in the United States.

US officials previously alleged the hackers targeted Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Lumen and others. T-Mobile has said none of its customer data was compromised, and Lumen said there is no evidence customer data was accessed on its network, but, in at least some other cases, the hackers are alleged to have stolen telephone audio intercepts along with a large tranche of call record data.

Call record metadata is sometimes described as the who, what, when and where of phone calls. It does not include the content of a call but can include whom a call was placed to, how long it lasted and where it was made from. Even without the content, call record metadata – especially when captured in bulk – can reveal extraordinarily granular details about a person’s life, work and intimate relationships.

The official said the White House had made tackling the Salt Typhoon hackers a priority for the federal government and that Joe Biden had been briefed several times on the intrusions.

The press call occurred as US government agencies held a separate, classified briefing for all senators on Salt Typhoon’s efforts to compromise American telecommunications companies.

Avril Haines, the FBI’s director of national intelligence; Jessica Rosenworcel, chair of the Federal Communications Commission; the National Security Council; and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency were among the participants in the closed-door briefing, officials told Reuters.

Galaxies crashing together 12bn years ago could have caused the universe’s biggest galaxies to form, according to research.

A study by astronomers at the University of Southampton is hoping to solve what they are calling an “intergalactic mystery” of how elliptical galaxies were created.

How these galaxies, which look similar to bulging footballs compared with the flat disc of the Milky Way, emerged, has been at the centre of research for decades.

In a paper published in the journal Nature, Dr Annagrazia Puglisi said the team were close to coming to an answer.

“Two disc galaxies smashing together caused gas, the fuel from which stars are formed, to sink towards their centre, generating trillions of new stars,” she wrote.

“These cosmic collisions happened some eight to 12bn years ago, when the universe was in a much more active phase of its evolution. Our findings take us closer to solving a long-standing mystery in astronomy that will redefine our understanding of how galaxies were created in the early universe.”

Working with the Purple Mountain Observatory in China and the Chinese Academy of Science, the team has analysed more than 100 star-forming galaxies in the distant universe using the world’s largest radio telescope, known as Alma, in Chile’s Atacama desert.

Study lead Dr Qing-Hua Tan, from the Purple Mountain Observatory, said the research used a new technique that looked at the distribution of light emitted by distant and highly luminous galaxies.

She said: “This is the first real evidence that spheroids form directly through intense episodes of star formation located in the cores of distant galaxies. Astrophysicists have sought to understand this process for decades.

“These galaxies form quickly – gas is sucked inwards to feed black holes and triggers bursts of stars, which are created at rates 10 to 100 times faster than our Milky Way.”

The scientists will combine their findings with data taken from telescopes onboard the James Webb and Euclid satellites, and the Chinese Space Station, to map the stellar components of galaxies.

Puglisi said: “This will give us a more complete picture of early galaxy formation and deepen our understanding of how the universe has evolved since the beginning of time.”