Syria’s rebel forces, led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group (HTS), have entered the capital Damascus, capping a stunning advance across the country.

Here is everything we know so far:

• Rebel forces say they have captured Damascus. Video circulating online shows Syrian army forces removing their uniforms in the streets of the capital. The insurgents announced that they have begun freeing detainees from Sednaya prison, a notorious detention facility near Damascus. Shooting has been heard across the capital.

• There was no immediate official statement from the Syrian government. The pro-government Sham FM radio reported that Damascus airport was evacuated and all flights halted. The insurgents also announced they had entered the notorious Saydnaya military prison north of the capital and “liberated our prisoners” there.

• Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has reportedly left Damascus. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor says he has left the country. Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said “Assad left Syria via Damascus international airport before the army security forces left” the facility. The Syrian president has not been seen publicly for days. The Guardian was unable to independently confirm the reports.

• Should Damascus fall to the opposition forces, the government would have control of only two of 14 provincial capitals: Latakia and Tartus.

• Syrian rebel commander Hassan Abdul-Ghani said early on Sunday that insurgent forces had “fully liberated” Syria’s central city of Homs. There were reports of celebrations in the city and of images of president Bashar al-Assad being removed. A statue of Hafez al-Assad, the father of Bashar al-Assad, has also been torn down by a large crowd in the city. Earlier, government forces withdrew from Homs.

• The loss of Homs was a crippling blow for Assad. It stands at an important intersection between Damascus, the capital, and Syria’s coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartus – the Syrian leader’s base of support and home to a Russian strategic naval base.

• Donald Trump said the US should avoid engaging militarily in Syria, according to the Associated Press. The president-elect’s first extensive comments on the dramatic rebel push came on Saturday via his social media website. “THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT”, he wrote in a social media post.

• The UN’s special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, called Saturday for urgent talks in Geneva to ensure an “orderly political transition.” Speaking to reporters at the annual Doha Forum in Qatar, he said the situation in Syria was changing by the minute. Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, whose country is Assad’s chief international backer, said he feels “sorry for the Syrian people.”

Syrian rebels have said they are entering the capital Damascus without any sign of army deployments, arriving at the doorstep of President Bashar-al Assad after a lightning offensive in which they have swept across the country in just over a week.

“Our forces started entering Damascus,” Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) said on Telegram. In a second post, the rebel group said it had begun freeing prisoners from the city’s notorious Sednaya prison, regarded as a symbol of the Assad regime’s brutality.

Intense sounds of shooting were heard in the centre of the Damascus, two residents told Reuters on Sunday, although it was not immediately clear what was the source of the shooting. Video circulating online showed Syrian army forces removing their uniforms in the streets of the capital.

The whereabouts of Assad, who has not been seen publicly for days, were unclear. Syrian state media earlier denied he had fled the capital but two senior Syrian officers told Reuters early on Sunday he had left the capital for an unknown destination.

The rebels’ advance into Damascus came just hours after they announced they had seized the key city of Homs, cutting the capital off from al-Assad’s coastal strongholds of Tartus and Latakia where he has traditionally enjoyed strong support.

Videos showed Syrian forces withdrawing from security branches in Homs as insurgents led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) entered city limits. The rebel commander Hassan Abdul-Ghani said that its forces were conducting “combing operations” in the city neighbourhoods to find any Syrian soldiers that remained.

HTS commander Abu Mohammed al-Golani, the main rebel leader, called the capture of Homs a historic moment and urged fighters not to harm “those who drop their arms”.

Thousands of Homs residents poured on to the streets after the army withdrew, dancing and chanting “Assad is gone, Homs is free” and “Long live Syria and down with Bashar al-Assad”. Security forces left in haste after burning their documents and rebels freed thousands of detainees from the city’s prison.

The advance came just a week after Islamist insurgents led by HTS retook Aleppo in northern Syria, inspiring rebel factions all across the country to rise up against the Syrian army which offered little resistance.

Earlier on Saturday, opposition factions in the southern provinces of Daraa and Sweida routed government forces and took control of wide swathes of the districts. By night, opposition fighters had entered Daraya, just 5 miles (8km) from the centre of the capital. Meanwhile, east of Damascus, members of the Free Syrian Army took control of the ancient city of Palmyra.

With the fall of Homs to rebels, the Syrian regime had been encircled in Damascus. Opposition forces were advancing towards the capital city from the north, south and east of the country. The highway that linked Damascus to Tartus and Latakia ran through Homs – and has now been cut off by rebel forces.

The government in neighbouring Iraq said that 2,000 Syrian soldiers had fled across the border. Al Jazeera showed footage of Syrian tanks and other military vehicles packed with troops crossing into Iraq.

Russia and Iran, which provided the bulk of military and financial support to the Assad government during the course of Syria’s 2011 revolution-turned-civil war, have seemed unwilling to lend support to their ally since the beginning of the rebel operation last week.

Hezbollah, the pro-Iran group whose fighters used to bolster the ranks of the Syrian army, has been unable to send a significant number of fighters to help after the heavy defeats it has recently incurred against Israel.

In an interview with Iraqi media on Friday, the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said that, while the “resistance would do its duty”, it was impossible to predict the fate of Assad. Similarly, the secretary general of Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, said in a speech on Thursday that the group would stand with Assad, but it has yet to provide tangible support to the isolated leader. Without significant Russian air support and Hezbollah’s reinforcements, Syrian forces have seemingly melted away in the face of advancing rebels.

Leaders of the rebels have called on government forces to defect instead of fighting. “The clashes have been limited to just a few points to pressure regime forces to surrender, with assurances that they would be safe and with emphasis that in the end, we are all sons of one country,” said Yasser al-Mikdad, a commander in the operations room of the Liberation of Damascus, an umbrella organisation for opposition forces in southern Syria.

He described the taking of the town of Moadamiya on Saturday in the western countryside of Damascus – about four miles from the Republican Palace – where he said most government forces withdrew before advancing rebels, leaving only 70 Syrian army soldiers. “Instructions were issued to our groups not to engage them and to try to convince them to surrender to avoid bloodshed,” Mikdad said.

In newly-seized areas, rebels rejoiced in their victory, with videos showing statues of late Syrian president Hafez al-Assad being toppled, and a statue’s head tied to a motorcycle and dragged along the road.

In videos the Observer was unable to independently verify, regime police officers took off their uniforms in the middle of the street and walked away in civilian clothing.

As rebels swept through towns and cities, they opened the doors to government prisons, notorious for their use of torture. Crowds met dazed-looking detainees, some of whom had been imprisoned for decades, as they stepped outside for the first time in years.

In Damascus, residents described scenes of panic amid the uncertainty that reigned over the fate of the Syrian government as rebels beat on the capital’s door. Jana, a resident of Damascus who spoke under a pseudonym, said: “Those who have residencies in Lebanon are leaving, lots are fleeing. We ourselves, we could leave, but things are happening so quickly. Maybe we start to get ready and gather our things and leave, and maybe something happens and we get stuck, nothing is clear.”

The dizzying pace of events in Syria and the uncertainty over the fate of its government has left international powers reeling and prompted questions over the geopolitical ramifications. Assad was a key ally of Hezbollah and a vital supplier of the group, which receives much of its resources from Iran via Iraq and Syria.

Participants of the Astana process – a peace initiative focused on solving the Syrian crisis – urged a cessation of conflict in Syria at the conclusion of the group’s meeting in Doha on Saturday night. In a joint statement, the conference called for “all parties to seek a political solution to the Syrian crisis”.

Millions of Syrians who fled the violence of the civil war and the government’s bloody crackdown on protests in 2011 also watched the rebels’ advance anxiously, waiting to see if they may be able to safely return to the country after more than 13 years in exile.

The three key external national actors in the Syrian crisis tried to regain control of the rebellion on Saturday by calling for renewed direct dialogue between the country’s President Bashar al-Assad and opposition groups, adding that it would be “inadmissible” to use terrorists to gain control of the country.

Meeting on the margins of the Doha Forum, in Qatar, Turkey, Russia, and Iran urged the Syrian opposition to heed the call to end the fighting and to preserve Syria as an integrated and united country.

Amid reports that Russian diplomats are fleeing Damascus in the face of the lightning opposition advance, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said Russia “was trying to do everything possible to prevent terrorists from prevailing even if they claim not to be terrorists”.

He also suggested fresh efforts would be made to persuade Assad to normalise relations with Turkey, including over Ankara’s demand that it can intervene to prevent Kurdish forces using northern Syria to mount attacks inside Turkey.

Earlier this year, Assad had refused to speak to Turkey so long as Turkish forces remained in Syria. This refusal led the President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to give the implicit green light to militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) last month to mount its stunningly successful attacks on Aleppo, and more recently into the city of Homs.

With Assad’s 24-year grip on power faltering, the Syrian leader will have no option but to make concessions to Turkey on the Kurdish issue. Ankara is convinced that the Syrian YPG, fighting under the flag of the Syrian Defence Forces and backed by the US, is the same as the Turkish Kurdish group, the PKK.

But there is no guarantee that Turkey can control the Islamist HTS, or simply order the group to end an offensive that has proved far more effective than even the HTS expected.

Lavrov repeatedly pointed out that HTS is listed as a terrorist group by both the UN and the US. He questioned whether the group had moderated from its al-Qaida roots as its leadership claimed, saying “the proof of the pudding is in the eating”.

Without naming the US, he said the opposition groups were being used for geopolitical purposes, and that the offensive “was geared to undermine everything we have been doing”.

He added: “If the opposition is responsible and if they care about their country, they would not allow this altercation to continue.” If a political vacuum was created, he said he feared that Syrians might suffer a repeat of the chaos seen in Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011.

Admitting that he could not forecast the outcome of the fighting, Lavrov said: “Russia helps with the Syrian army with its air force to counter the attacks of terrorists.”

Russia has one of its largest military bases outside the former Soviet Union in Hmeimim, and a prized naval port in Tartus, two assets it will be desperate to retain.

US administration officials, also wary of the speed with which Islamist groups were seizing land, had initially said they still expected Assad to remain part of the process.

However, the past fortnight has repeatedly shown military events on the ground have left diplomats confounded and struggling to keep abreast.

With opposition forces still making progress, and Assad trying to hold the line in the city of Homs, Syrian civil society present at the Doha Forum also demanded to be included in whatever form of transition foreign actors endorse. They argued that not just Assad, but his entire intelligence apparatus, must be dismantled and replaced with a transitional government representing all groups in Syria, leading to national elections, the demand that Assad has repeatedly blocked.

Turkey, Russia and Iran took hold of the Syrian peace talks in 2017 through the Astana Process, but the outcome of their 21 meetings has been a political deadlock and divided country in which different factions held sway in different areas, until two weeks ago.

Expectations of the Doha tripartite meeting had been low partly because Turkey has made it clear it is happy to see the mix of rebel, Islamist and pro-Turkish groups march on to the Syrian capital, Damascus, while Iran and Russia regards the HTS as terrorists.

In a flurry of diplomatic meetings before the Doha summit, the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, was unable to convince Turkey that it is helping to create a dangerous power vacuum that will be filled by terrorists.

Iran also sees the hand of Israel and the US in the HTS advance, claiming Israel is using the conflict to shut down Iran’s ammunition supply routes through Syria into Lebanon.

In talks on Friday, Araghchi also failed to convince Iraqi leaders to intervene militarily to save Assad, leaving Iran and Russia largely alone in deciding how much to invest in saving Assad.

Araghchi insisted: “There should be no distinction between terrorist groups. We do not have good terrorists or bad terrorists.”

It remains unclear whether Erdoğan has any real influence over the HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, and whether the recent HTS rebranding was genuine. Speaking in Doha, Charles Lister from the Middle East Institute said HTS rebranding away from international jihadism predates the current crisis by as much as eight years, but the organisation remained “politically dictatorial using arbitrary arrest of critics, torture and imprisonment.”

Lister said the writing was on the wall for Assad. “It’s a question of time and how that end comes.” He added: “if Homs were to fall, Damascus would be cut off from the coast where Assad’s Alawite heartland lies.”

Russia was trying to hold the line in Homs, but he said “neither Russia, Iran or Hezbollah have had a significant ground presence, and the Syrian military, a conscript army, has fragmented and corroded from the inside”. Amos Hochstein, the US envoy to Lebanon said it seemed as if the weakening of Hezbolllah, the Iranian-backed militia in Lebanon but also active in Syria, was critical to the defeats of Assad and Iran.

Turkey will ignore Iranian accusations of a betrayal, but is under pressure to explain its future vision for Syria, and whether it also regards HTS as a viable Syrian national leadership. Its proxy army, the Syrian Defence Forces, could not aspire to rule the whole of Syria. Ankara craves political stability inside Syria since the 3 million Syrian refugees in Turkey will not return to their former homes unless Assad is crushed. Erdoğan is facing domestic criticism for failing to secure the refugees’ return, and running a one man foreign policy.

A motion to impeach the South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, over his ill-fated declaration of martial law this week has failed after members of his party boycotted the vote.

The walkout on Saturday meant the national assembly did not have the 200 votes needed to begin the process of forcing out the embattled Yoon.

“With a total of 195 votes, the number of members who voted did not reach the required two-thirds majority of the total members,” the national assembly speaker, Woo Won-shik, said. “Therefore, I declare that the vote on this matter is not valid.”

The dramatic walkout meant uncertainty surrounds Yoon’s fate.

Having indicated on Friday that some members of Yoon’s People Power party (PPP) could join opposition lawmakers and support impeachment, the mood had changed by Saturday, with MPs rallying around their embattled president.

Opposition parties, led by the Democrats, hold 192 seats in the 300-seat assembly and needed just eight PPP lawmakers to join them for the impeachment motion to succeed.

But the plan unravelled when members of the PPP filed out of the chamber just before the televised vote, leaving the assembly without enough MPs for the motion to pass unless they returned.

The lawmakers left to angry protests from some of those still in the chamber, while an estimated 150,000 people demonstrated outside.

Three PPP lawmakers returned to the chamber, but the assembly’s speaker, Woo Won-shik, stopped short of calling the result and appealed to other absent lawmakers to return “to protect the Republic of Korea and its democracy”.

Yoon is less than three years into his five-year single term. His declaration of martial law, which lasted six hours before it was overturned by MPs in the early hours of Wednesday, has drawn widespread condemnation across the South Korean political spectrum and triggered mass protests in Seoul and other cities.

Demonstrators booed, and some wept in frustration, as the lawmakers walked out on Saturday. “Even though we didn’t get the outcome we wanted today, I am neither discouraged nor disappointed because we will get it eventually,” said Jo Ah-gyeong, who was among the protesters.

Given their failure to start the legislative and legal process that could have led to the end of Yoon’s presidency, opposition parties could introduce a second impeachment motion, possibly as early as Wednesday.

There is speculation that PPP lawmakers wanted to avoid the drama of impeachment – a move that could hand the political advantage to the main opposition Democratic party when the country elects a new president – and try instead to arrange a more orderly exit.

Hours before MPs gathered at the national assembly, Yoon apologised for his short-lived attempt to impose martial law, promising to face any legal or political consequences.

In a two-minute televised address, his first public appearance since he rescinded the martial law order, Yoon said he was “very sorry” for the decision, which he said was born of desperation, and promised not to attempt to impose martial law again.

“I am very sorry and would like to sincerely apologise to the people who were shocked,” Yoon said, before bowing. “I leave it up to my party to take steps to stabilise the political situation in the future, including the issue of my term in office.”

Lee Jae-myung, the leader of the main opposition Democratic party, said Yoon’s apology was “very disappointing” and had only increased public anger and the sense of betrayal.

“The president’s very existence is the biggest risk to South Korea right now,” Lee said, maintaining that there was “no other solution” than his immediate resignation or removal through impeachment.

The leader of Yoon’s own party, Han Dong-hun, said the president’s early resignation was unavoidable and that he was no longer in a position to fulfil his duty, according to Yonhap.

The turmoil resulting from Yoon’s stunt has sparked alarm among key diplomatic partners, including neighbouring Japan and Seoul’s biggest ally, the US, as one of the strongest democracies in Asia faces a political crisis.

Opposition lawmakers claim Yoon’s martial law declaration amounted to a self-coup and drafted their impeachment motion around rebellion charges.

The Democratic party lawmaker Soyoung Lee sought to reassure the international community on Friday night.

“If President Yoon is impeached today or tomorrow, there is no need to be alarmed; the international community can continue to invest with confidence in Korea’s strong democracy and resilience,” she said.

The PPP decided to oppose impeachment at a lawmakers’ meeting, despite pleas by Han, who isn’t a lawmaker and has no vote.

A recent poll showed 73.6% of South Koreans support impeachment, with majority support even in traditional conservative strongholds.

Han said on Friday he had received intelligence that during martial law, Yoon ordered the country’s defence counterintelligence commander to arrest and detain unspecified politicians based on accusations of “anti-state activities”.

Hong Jang-won, the first deputy director of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, later told lawmakers that Yoon called after imposing martial law and had ordered him to help the defence counterintelligence unit to detain key politicians.

The targeted politicians included Han, Lee Jae-myung and the national assembly speaker Woo, according to Kim Byung-kee, one of the lawmakers who attended the meeting.

Yoon’s presidency has been plagued by policy failures, mounting economic problems and controversial appointments, as well as scandals involving his wife, Kim Keon-hee, who has proved to be his greatest political liability.

These include allegations of stock price manipulation, unlawful involvement in party candidate nominations, and accepting a 3m won (£1,675) Dior bag as a gift from a pastor.

Yoon has vetoed three separate bills seeking to establish a special counsel to investigate his wife, leading opposition lawmakers to include the alleged attempts to shield his family from investigation among their reasons for impeachment.

On Saturday, MPs voted down a fourth attempt to establish a special counsel to investigate Kim immediately before the impeachment motion. The back-to-back vote was designed to ensure ruling party lawmakers took part in both motions, but PPP lawmakers began leaving as soon as the first vote concluded.

Agencies contributed to this report

James Woodbine was woken up by Storm Darragh at 5am, roughly the time the power cut began. His 300-year-old cottage is at the top of a hill in Trofarth in north Wales where yesterday’s winds were fiercest, measured at 93mph nearby in Capel Curig.

“The noise was the strangest thing,” Woodbine said. “There was a thrum coming from the ground, a rumble going through the building whenever there was a gust. I’ve never heard that before. I’ve been here for 30 years, and we had Storm Doris come through in 2017. But this is far worse. I’ve never seen a storm like it.”

Woodbine is one of the hundreds of thousands of people across Britain and Ireland who were affected by Storm Darragh, which was so serious that the Met Office issued a red wind warning, alerting people of the threat to life – only the 19th since 2011.

One man in his 40s died after a tree fell on his van as he was driving along a dual carriageway section of the A59 in Longton, near Preston. Another man died when a tree fell and hit his car in Birmingham yesterday afternoon. At 3am, as winds were gathering pace, a Translink airport express bus left the road and hit a wall near Antrim in Northern Ireland, and the driver was taken to hospital.

The government reinforced the warning with a siren alert sent to 3m phones in Wales and south-west England on Friday evening, and on Saturday Dyfed-Powys police declared a major incident over the volume of calls about uprooted trees and other hazards.

As the winds subsided, the rain poured down. Natural Resources Wales issued 27 flood warnings and there were 17 more in England. There were also more than 200 flood alerts, where flooding was possible. In Scotland, where an amber warning was in place, there were warnings in the Borders and Tayside.

Most people avoided the roads, but a few took a risk. Woodbine, who runs Woody’s Glamping, a site in the foothills of Snowdonia, said a family with four children had turned up unexpectedly, asking to stay in one of his tents. He put them up in a more secure lodge instead.

“My wife said to them: ‘there’s a warning – please, if you’re leaving, you’re going to have to take it very, very carefully’.”

Traffic cameras showed mostly empty roads yesterday. Even the M25’s “road to hell” section near Heathrow was comparatively quiet – the airport had suffered 83 cancellations by Saturday afternoon, according to Flightaware, a tracking service, with dozens more flights cancelled elsewhere and ferry crossings at Stranraer, the Western Isles, Holyhead and Fishguard also halted. Network Rail listed 14 disruptions.

People who did venture out found few places to go in the worst affected areas. Events were cancelled and businesses stayed shut after the storm knocked out power. The Energy Networks Association said 177,000 homes in mainland Britain were without electricity yesterday afternoon, and its member networks’ online incident maps showed a sea of dots stretching from Eastbourne on the south coast to Bamburgh in Northumberland.

London’s 10 royal parks were shut, including the Winter Wonderland attraction. The Merseyside derby between Everton and Liverpool was postponed, while most rugby and football in Wales, as well as football matches in Crawley, Bristol and Plymouth, were cancelled. People visiting some National Trust sites were turned away and councils closed recycling centres., and Diss in Norfolk postponed switching on its Christmas lights.

Winds will subside, the Met Office said, but Darragh is not done yet. A yellow warning is in place on Sunday across England and Wales, and Woodbine has been warned that power is unlikely to return soon.

“This is going to be 36 hours,” he said. “Normally, you get a storm coming through for seven hours or so. We’re pretty exposed.” He could already see the damage from his back window on Saturday afternoon.

“One of the glamping tents has a canvas roof – that’s shredded. I’ve got an old tree, a blackthorn, that’s been pulled out of the ground. Tiles are off the roof. All our bins are gone. We’ve got hot-tub lids, which I’ve strapped down because I’ve seen them fly off like frisbees before. They’re hanging on for dear life. But we’ve got another 12 hours of this.”

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on Saturday insisted at a meeting with US president-elect, Donald Trump, that any settlement with Russia after its invasion of Ukraine had to be “just”, as fears grow in Kyiv on the position of the incoming administration.

France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, hosted three-way talks with Zelenskyy and Trump at the Élysée palace, discussing what the incoming US president had termed a world that was a “little crazy”.

Hours after their meeting, the outgoing administration of president Joe Biden announced a new $988m (£775m) military assistance package for Ukraine.

The package features drones, ammunition for precision Himars rocket launchers, and equipment and spare parts for artillery systems, tanks and armoured vehicles, the Pentagon said in a statement.

Zelenskyy’s meeting with Trump just before the three men headed to Notre Dame for the reopening ceremony of the Paris cathedral was his first face-to-face encounter with the tycoon-turned-politician since his election victory.

The meeting was of huge importance to Zelenskyy, given fears in Kyiv that Trump, who once boasted he could end Russia’s war on Ukraine in 24 hours, may urge Ukraine to make concessions to Moscow.

It also offered a unique chance for Macron to gain insights into how a second Trump presidency will look when he takes office in January. The trip to Paris is Trump’s first international visit since his 5 November election win.

“We all want peace. But it is very important for us … that the peace is just for all of us and that Russia, (Russian president Vladimir) Putin or any other aggressor has no possibility of ever returning,” Zelenskyy said according to the presidential website.

“And this is the most important thing – a just peace and security guarantees, strong security guarantees for Ukraine,” he added.

Trump has scoffed at the billions of dollars in US military assistance to Ukraine and has spoken of forcing a quick settlement.

But Zelenskyy also thanked Trump for his “unwavering resolve” describing the talks as “good and productive”.

Trump and Macron embraced and shook hands several times on the steps of the French presidential palace, with US president-elect given a full guard of honour despite not yet being in office.

“It seems like the world is going a little crazy right now and we will be talking about that,” Trump told reporters as he prepared to sit down for the talks with Macron.

Despite tensions between the two men during his first term, Trump hailed his ties with the centrist French leader, saying: “We had a great relationship as everyone knows. We accomplished a lot.”

Macron told the US president-elect it was “a great honour for French people to welcome you” for the reopening ceremony at Notre Dame, which was devastated by a blaze in 2019 during Trump’s first term.

“You were president at that time and I remember the solidarity and the immediate reaction,” Macron added, speaking in English.

The Republican’s return to power has rung alarms in Paris and many European capitals after his promises on the campaign trail to force an end to fighting in Ukraine and levy tariffs on trading partners.

In his own reaction to the discussions, Macron wrote on social media: “Let us continue our joint efforts for peace and security.”

European allies have largely enjoyed a close working relationship with Biden on the crisis in the Middle East, but Trump is likely to distance himself and ally the US even more closely with Israel.

In a sign of the importance of Trump’s one-day trip to Paris, he was accompanied by his pick for White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, as well as his Middle East advisers, Steve Witkoff and Massad Boulos, according to a guest list issued by the Élysée palace.

Tesla tycoon and Trump adviser Elon Musk, who was also on the line during a phone call between the incoming president and Zelenskyy last month, also flew into the French capital and was present at the Notre Dame ceremony.

The notorious white supremacist Nick Fuentes is facing battery charges in Illinois because authorities say he pepper-sprayed a woman who had knocked on his front door after he enraged many on the internet by tweeting the misogynistic slogan “your body, my choice” following Donald Trump’s victory in the recent presidential election.

Fuentes, 26, was arrested on 27 November on a count of misdemeanor battery and released the same day, according to documents filed on Wednesday in the Cook county circuit court that were reported on by the Chicago Sun-Times. He is tentatively scheduled to appear in court on 19 December.

The far-right, avowedly antisemitic influencer seemingly sought to make light of his legal predicament on Friday on social media, publishing a post on X that contained a thinly disguised racial slur as well as the words “Free me”.

Meanwhile, the Jewish feminist activist pressing the case against Fuentes, 57-year-old Marla Rose, also commented on social media, writing on Facebook: “It. Is. On.” She added “civil case pending” to the post that displayed three fire emojis.

Fuentes invited the digital sphere’s fury by celebrating Trump’s return to the presidency at the expense of Kamala Harris on 6 November with a barb tweeted on X reading: “Your body, my choice. Forever.”

The post taunting the concept of women’s bodily autonomy – along with the 2022 elimination of federal abortion rights at the hands of a US supreme court dominated by judges either appointed by or aligned with Trump – had gained more than 99.7m views as of Saturday. And some of Fuentes’s political opponents retaliated by publishing his home address on social media while declaring: “Your house, our choice.”

Rose ultimately told police that she had gone to record the outside of Fuentes’s home in the Chicago-area suburb of Berwyn on 10 November. He soon allegedly pepper-sprayed her, pushed her on to the concrete and broke her cellphone.

Video of the encounter that Rose later released showed Fuentes open his front door as she reached up to ring the doorbell. He extended his left arm while holding a bottle of pepper spray, which prompted Rose to say: “Oh my God, what are you doing?” The phone was then seen falling while Fuentes could be heard saying: “Get the fuck out of here.” Fuentes then seemingly used his foot to drag the phone inside his house before closing the door and locking it.

A police report filed on 11 November said another woman driving by Fuentes’s house at the time called officers. That witness described seeing a man shove a woman outside a home, the report recounted.

Rose was still at the scene when police arrived, and officers reportedly spoke with her as well as Fuentes separately.

The report added that Fuentes claimed to police that he had received death threats as well as “people showing up to his house unannounced” after posting “a political joke online” had left him “in fear for his life”. He eventually “became uncooperative” and refused to further address the confrontation with Rose, as NBC News reported.

Rose had “watery” eyes but listed no other visible physical injuries, the report said.

Possible punishments for misdemeanor battery under Illinois law include relatively short jail sentences, probation and fines.

Some of the earliest news media headlines given to Fuentes came when he withdrew from Boston University after participating in the 2017 white supremacist rally objecting to the removal of a statue of the Confederate general Robert E Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia. A demonstrator protesting the white supremacists was murdered by a neo-Nazi sympathizer who intentionally drove a car into her as well as others.

Trump then ignited a scandal by hosting Fuentes as a dinner guest at his Mar-a-Lago resort in 2022 as he geared up to run for a second presidency. Another guest at that dinner was the rapper previously known as Kanye West, who had propagated antisemitic remarks that – among other consequences – cost him a business partnership with the sportswear company Adidas.

The notorious white supremacist Nick Fuentes is facing battery charges in Illinois because authorities say he pepper-sprayed a woman who had knocked on his front door after he enraged many on the internet by tweeting the misogynistic slogan “your body, my choice” following Donald Trump’s victory in the recent presidential election.

Fuentes, 26, was arrested on 27 November on a count of misdemeanor battery and released the same day, according to documents filed on Wednesday in the Cook county circuit court that were reported on by the Chicago Sun-Times. He is tentatively scheduled to appear in court on 19 December.

The far-right, avowedly antisemitic influencer seemingly sought to make light of his legal predicament on Friday on social media, publishing a post on X that contained a thinly disguised racial slur as well as the words “Free me”.

Meanwhile, the Jewish feminist activist pressing the case against Fuentes, 57-year-old Marla Rose, also commented on social media, writing on Facebook: “It. Is. On.” She added “civil case pending” to the post that displayed three fire emojis.

Fuentes invited the digital sphere’s fury by celebrating Trump’s return to the presidency at the expense of Kamala Harris on 6 November with a barb tweeted on X reading: “Your body, my choice. Forever.”

The post taunting the concept of women’s bodily autonomy – along with the 2022 elimination of federal abortion rights at the hands of a US supreme court dominated by judges either appointed by or aligned with Trump – had gained more than 99.7m views as of Saturday. And some of Fuentes’s political opponents retaliated by publishing his home address on social media while declaring: “Your house, our choice.”

Rose ultimately told police that she had gone to record the outside of Fuentes’s home in the Chicago-area suburb of Berwyn on 10 November. He soon allegedly pepper-sprayed her, pushed her on to the concrete and broke her cellphone.

Video of the encounter that Rose later released showed Fuentes open his front door as she reached up to ring the doorbell. He extended his left arm while holding a bottle of pepper spray, which prompted Rose to say: “Oh my God, what are you doing?” The phone was then seen falling while Fuentes could be heard saying: “Get the fuck out of here.” Fuentes then seemingly used his foot to drag the phone inside his house before closing the door and locking it.

A police report filed on 11 November said another woman driving by Fuentes’s house at the time called officers. That witness described seeing a man shove a woman outside a home, the report recounted.

Rose was still at the scene when police arrived, and officers reportedly spoke with her as well as Fuentes separately.

The report added that Fuentes claimed to police that he had received death threats as well as “people showing up to his house unannounced” after posting “a political joke online” had left him “in fear for his life”. He eventually “became uncooperative” and refused to further address the confrontation with Rose, as NBC News reported.

Rose had “watery” eyes but listed no other visible physical injuries, the report said.

Possible punishments for misdemeanor battery under Illinois law include relatively short jail sentences, probation and fines.

Some of the earliest news media headlines given to Fuentes came when he withdrew from Boston University after participating in the 2017 white supremacist rally objecting to the removal of a statue of the Confederate general Robert E Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia. A demonstrator protesting the white supremacists was murdered by a neo-Nazi sympathizer who intentionally drove a car into her as well as others.

Trump then ignited a scandal by hosting Fuentes as a dinner guest at his Mar-a-Lago resort in 2022 as he geared up to run for a second presidency. Another guest at that dinner was the rapper previously known as Kanye West, who had propagated antisemitic remarks that – among other consequences – cost him a business partnership with the sportswear company Adidas.

The Connecticut state appellate court on Friday affirmed a $965m verdict from 2022 against far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, determining there is “sufficient evidence” to support the damages awarded to relatives of the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre victims and an FBI agent.

In its unanimous opinion, the court cited the “traumatic threats and harassment” the families endured “stemming from the lies, as propagated by the defendants, that the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax”.

“Our review of the record reveals that there was sufficient evidence to support the [$965m] in compensatory damages awarded by the jury,” the court said in the 62-page decision. It marks the largest jury verdict in Connecticut history.

The appellate court did grant Jones a $150m reprieve. It determined the plaintiffs “failed to assert a legally viable” claim under the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act and that $150m in punitive damages awarded by the lower court must be vacated, noting the plaintiffs alleged injury came from false language and not from speech related to advertising, marketing or the sale of goods.

“We’re relieved that the court protected the press with its decision reversing the damages in the unfair trade practices claim, but we are otherwise disappointed,” said Norm Pattis, Jones’s attorney, in a statement. He said the jury in the case was “sold a bill of goods and led to believe” Jones made millions spreading conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook mass shooting.

“He didn’t. The jury was also encouraged to believe that all the sorrow that befell the plaintiffs was Mr Jones’s fault. It wasn’t,” Pattis said. “We had hoped the appellate court would have seen through the charade and farce that this trial became. It didn’t.”

Jones now owes a total of roughly $1.2bn, counting the $965m to the Connecticut families and nearly $50m awarded by a Texas jury to the parents of a Sandy Hook child who was killed.

Jones filed for personal bankruptcy in 2022, and the sale of his Infowars platform is part of that case. A bid by the satirical news outlet the Onion to buy Infowars is scheduled to return on Monday to a Texas courtroom, where a judge will be deciding whether a bankruptcy auction was properly run. Jones alleges collusion and fraud.

Lawyers for the Sandy Hook families hailed the Connecticut appellate court’s ruling on Friday as an overall victory.

“Today, Alex Jones’s effort to overturn the jury’s historic verdict against him and his corrupt business, Infowars, was unanimously rejected by the Connecticut appellate court,” the lawyers said in a statement. “The jury’s $965m rebuke of Jones will stand, and the families who have fought valiantly for years have brought Alex Jones yet another step closer to true justice.”

Pattis said he will ask the Connecticut state supreme court to review the appellate court decision.

Jones repeatedly told his millions of followers that the 2012 massacre that killed 20 first graders and six educators had been staged by “crisis actors” to enact more gun control.

The appellate court also determined that a lower court had “properly exercised its discretion” in finding Jones and his Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems LLC, liable for damages by default for failing to cooperate with court rules on sharing evidence.

A 77-year-old activist is facing recall to prison because her wrists are too small for an electronic tag.

Gaie Delap, from Bristol, was sent to prison in August, along with four co-defendants, for her part in a campaign of disruptive protests on the M25 in November 2022.

Several months after she was jailed for the Just Stop Oil protests, she was let out after being told she qualified to serve the rest of her sentence under a home detention curfew.

But the company contracted to fit the tag to Delap was unable to attach one to her ankle because of a health condition, and there are no devices available small enough to fit wrists her size.

Now there is a warrant for her arrest after the company contacted the prison authorities to tell them she “could not be monitored”.

The terms of Delap’s curfew prevent her speaking directly to the media so her brother, Mick, is speaking on her behalf. “This is very cruel,” he said. “Gaie is sitting at home terrified with her suitcase packed waiting for a knock on the door from police. She has been unable to eat or sleep because of this.

“She is hoping against hope that sense can prevail and that she won’t have to go back to jail.”

He said his sister had various health problems and continued to have no feeling in one finger after being handcuffed for a hospital visit during her time in prison. She could not wear an ankle tag because she was at risk of deep-vein thrombosis.

Of the five people Delap was jailed with, four have been released early and three have been successfully tagged. The tagging system is operated by Electronic Monitoring Services (EMS), managed under a Ministry of Justice contract.

On Thursday Delap was informed that a warrant for her arrest had been issued and that she was to be returned to prison due to an “inability to monitor” her. The same issue with tagging arose when she was on bail and a “doorstep curfew” was agreed from 7pm to 7am, with random checks incorporated. This alternative has not been offered this time.

Mick said: “As family and friends we are aware of failures in the tagging system, and this case appears to be a miscarriage of justice. We have been in touch with the probation service, who are supportive of Gaie. But we believe that the matter has been taken out of their hands.

“It is clear that Gaie is caught in a nightmarish triangulation of confusion and justice, involving EMS, the prison, and the probation service.”

Delap was among several dozen Just Stop Oil supporters who, during a four-day campaign, climbed gantries over the M25, which encircles London, forcing police to stop traffic and leaving an estimated 709,000 drivers stuck in tailbacks.

At the time of Delap’s sentence, her MP, Carla Denyer, said she had deep concern over the “disproportionate sentence” given to her constituent, whose actions were “entirely peaceful and non-violent and designed to draw attention to the threat posed by the climate emergency”.

Responding to news about the tag on Saturday, Denyer said: “My jaw hit the floor when I heard about this case. It’s beyond absurd. I have gone straight to the prisons minister, Lord Timpson, about this case. This is completely disproportionate and not good use of stretched resources. This is a disproportionate crackdown on climate protesters. It’s clear that Gaie poses no threat to her fellow citizens.”

The Ministry of Justice and Serco, which manages EMS, said they were looking into the issue.

South Korean prosecutors have arrested ex-defence minister Kim Yong-hyun over his alleged role in President Yoon Suk Yeol’s declaration of martial law on Tuesday, local media has reported.

Kim, who offered his resignation on Wednesday, was seen as a central figure in Tuesday’s brief martial law declaration. A senior military official and filings to impeach Yoon by opposition members said Kim had made the proposal to Yoon.

Yoon survived an impeachment vote in parliament on Saturday, prompted by his short-lived attempt to impose martial law, but the leader of his own party said the president would eventually have to step down.

The prosecution’s special investigative team has questioned Kim, who voluntarily appeared at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office at about 1.30 am on Sunday, the national news wire Yonhap reported. The office was not immediately available for comments.

Three minority opposition parties filed a complaint with the prosecution against Yoon, Kim and martial law commander Park An-su, accusing them of treason.

Kim faces a travel ban as prosecutors investigate, Yonhap said. The news wire later reported that police had also raided Kim’s official residence and office.

The national police are also investigating claims of treason against Yoon and top ministers.

Yoon shocked the nation on Tuesday night when he gave the military sweeping emergency powers to root out what he called “anti-state forces” and obstructionist political opponents. He rescinded the order six hours later, after parliament defied military and police cordons to vote unanimously against the decree.

Yoon’s martial law declaration plunged South Korea, Asia’s fourth-largest economy and a key US military ally, into its greatest political crisis in decades, threatening to shatter the country’s reputation as a democratic success story.

In 1561, a little-known charter granted the University of Cambridge the power to arrest and imprison any woman “suspected of evil”. For nearly 350 years, the ­university used this law to ­incarcerate young working-class women found walking with undergraduates after dark in Cambridge.

The women were considered prostitutes and could be forcibly taken to the university’s private prison and sentenced to weeks of confinement by the vice-chancellor. More than 5,000 were arrested in the 19th century alone.

Now, a local historian is seeking to shine a light on what happened to these women – many of whom were teenagers – and is calling on Cambridge University to apologise or publicly acknowledge the ­injustices they suffered.

“None of the women ever got a fair trial, and none of them had actually even broken the law, according to the law of the land – there was no ­evidence of wrongdoing,” said Caroline Biggs, author of The Spinning House: How Cambridge University locked women in its private prison.

“The university didn’t really care how they were treated. They wanted the women to be removed from the streets so they couldn’t tempt the undergraduates.”

When women in Cambridge fell on hard times, it was easy to make money from sex work: Cambridge dons were not allowed to marry until the 1880s, and many young undergraduates had money to spend. “Parents became very concerned that their sons would come to Cambridge and be contaminated by the local women,” said Biggs.

In 1825, an act of parliament gave the university its own police force of special constables, nicknamed bulldogs, to patrol the town at night. They worked alongside university officials called proctors.

Biggs spent five years uncovering what happened to the women by researching the university’s committal books, along with court reports and national records. “Girls were arrested at night, taken to a cell in the prison, known as the Spinning House, and in the morning the vice-chancellor would come and ask: ‘Did she come quietly? Did she come meekly?’ And if she hadn’t, if she’d kicked off, chances are she’d get a longer sentence.”

Corporal punishments were also used, Biggs discovered. In 1748, the vice-chancellor paid the town crier 10 shillings to whip “10 unruly women”, Spinning House accounts show. Prison inspectors frequently condemned the jail, which the social historian Henry Mayhew called an “abomination” in 1851, noting the keeper pulled the girls’ hair if they didn’t keep quiet and threw them into solitary confinement.

“The prison was notoriously cold and damp, and the food was just bread and sometimes gruel,” Biggs said.

In December 1846, the 17-year-old Elizabeth Howe died after spending a night in a Spinning House cell with a broken window and a damp bed.

Her only crime had been ­walking in the vicinity of a brothel with a female friend. “I was so gobsmacked when I first read the inquest of her death, I couldn’t take notes. I wanted to cry,” said Biggs, who is giving a talk to the Mill Road History Society in Cambridge this week.

In another case, a councillor’s wife and daughter were stopped by proctors because they had walked ahead of the councillor, unchaperoned. “It was a massive insult.”

The university made more than 6,000 arrests, with many women held multiple times and detained for two to three weeks at a time.

Biggs said that the Spinning House was just one method the university used to exercise “complete power and control” over the people of Cambridge for centuries. The university also controlled the sale of wine and spirits, the licensing of pubs and how much credit students were allowed. “There was a power battle between town and gown in Cambridge which still exists today, I think, in some ways.”

In her book, she focuses on four women who challenged the university in court over their arrests.

In 1891, accused women were finally allowed legal representation after a national outcry about the university’s powers and treatment of women. When Daisy Hopkins, 17, was arrested on the charge of “walking with a member of the university”, she was illegally tried for a different offence – immoral conduct.

Her case established an important habeas corpus precedent still cited today. The ensuing scandal led ­parliament in 1894 to revoke the university’s Elizabethan charter and remove the vice-chancellor’s power to arrest and imprison suspected sex workers. The Spinning House was demolished soon afterwards.

Biggs would like the university to work with the city to erect a memorial plaque for the women, and hold a public exhibition about the Spinning House and its inhabitants. “I’d like the university to acknowledge that they did wrong,” she said.

The University of Cambridge did not respond to requests for comment.

An aspiring author who went viral after selling two books at an event has described seeing her novel climb up Amazon’s bestseller charts as “amazing” and “unbelievable”.

Vicky Ball, a 48-year-old from Colchester, showcased her two novels, one titled Powerless and the other Abandoned, at an authors’ event on Tuesday at Galleywood Heritage Centre in Chelmsford.

“Sold 2 books 😁😁,” she wrote on X afterwards, which she described as positive because: “I’ve done some events where I haven’t sold any.”

Ball’s X post has now had more than 24m views and 745,000 likes. Her novel Powerless, a thriller with “lots of twists”, shot up the Amazon bestsellers charts in subsequent days – and is now No 3 in its “teen and young adult fiction on sexual abuse” list.

Speaking to the Guardian about her newfound success, she said: “I’ve been getting messages on Instagram of people saying: ‘I’m in Colombia and just bought your book’; ‘I’m in Salt Lake City’; ‘I’m in Belgium.’ It’s amazing really – it’s just unbelievable.”

Ball, who works at the University of Essex and is also studying for a masters in creative writing, said she wrote Powerless during the Covid lockdown in 2020. She wrote mostly at weekends – because she was then working as a teacher – in her lounge, with the laptop on her knees, in the home she shares with her husband and two daughters.

“It was so helpful having a purpose and something to keep my mind off the stress and worry” of the pandemic, Ball said, with the writing helping fill a need at a time she was yearning for connection with friends and family.

Virality has catapulted other undiscovered authors to public attention in recent years, with posts on platforms such as TikTok and X wielding the power to boost sales and interest. In 2023, a struggling YA (young adult) author Shawn Warner topped the Amazon bestseller list after a TikTok video of the Texas-based writer at a quiet event went viral.

Ball’s simple advice to other aspiring authors was: “Just write!” She doesn’t wait until her novels are completely plotted before putting words on the page. “I just go with it. It’s like a journey, and I really enjoy the process,” she said. “You never know where it’s going to go.”

Powerless is about two sisters, with one returning home after going missing, while Abandoned is about a daughter with an alcoholic mother.

Ball’s novels were published by Burton Mayers Books. Richard Mayers, the director of the small publisher in Dundee, said: “She just messaged me saying: ‘I’ve gone viral! I’ve had 25 million views,’ and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s crazy.’

“Like a lot of indie authors, they do these events … and maybe you sell one or two books. So to be propelled into the limelight like this, it’s a real positive,” Mayers said. “I say to all the authors, you must be prepared to slog it out. It’s a marathon not a sprint – the message is: persevere.”

Ball wrote thanking her supporters later on X: “I am amazed and so grateful for all your likes, comments and purchases 🥰.”