South Korean lawmakers are due to convene again over whether to impeach the president, Yoon Suk Yeol, for his failed martial law bid.

A week after the first attempt to remove Yoon foundered, the National Assembly is expected to vote at about 4pm local time on Saturday on whether to impeach him for “insurrectionary acts undermining the constitutional order”.

Two hundred votes are needed for the impeachment to pass, meaning opposition lawmakers must convince eight parliamentarians from Yoon’s conservative People Power party (PPP) to switch sides. As of Friday, seven ruling party lawmakers had pledged to support impeachment – leaving the vote up in the air.

Thousands of South Koreans have taken to the streets of Seoul to demand Yoon’s resignation and jailing after his short-lived martial law declaration sent soldiers and helicopters to parliament. Lawmakers quickly responded, breaking the military cordon and assembling in parliament to vote down the declaration.

Rallies supporting impeachment are expected to gather near the parliament about midday on Saturday. Organisers have promised to distribute food and banners to the protesters to lift their spirits in the freezing December temperatures. K-pop singer Yuri of the band Girls’ Generation – whose song Into the New World has become a protest anthem – said she had prepaid for food for fans that attended the rally. “Stay safe and take care of your health!” she said online.

Yoon has vowed to fight “until the very last minute” and doubled down on unsubstantiated claims the opposition is in league with South Korea’s communist foes.

The opposition Democratic party leader, Lee Jae-myung, has implored ruling PPP lawmakers to side with the “people wailing out in the freezing streets”. Two PPP lawmakers supported the motion in last week’s vote.

“History will remember and record your choice,” Lee said.

Kim Min-seok, an opposition lawmaker, said on Friday that he was “99%” sure the impeachment motion would pass.

Should it be approved, Yoon would be suspended from office while South Korea’s constitutional court deliberates. The prime minister, Han Duck-soo, would step in as the interim president. The court would then have 180 days to rule on Yoon’s future.

If it backs his removal, Yoon would become the second president in South Korean history to be successfully impeached.

There is precedent for the court to block impeachment: in 2004, the then-president Roh Moo-hyun was removed by parliament for alleged election law violations and incompetence, but the constitutional court later reinstated him.

The court also currently only has six judges, meaning its decision would need to be unanimous.

Should the vote fail, Yoon can still face “legal responsibility” for the martial law bid, Kim Hyun-jung, a researcher at the Korea University Institute of Law, said.

“This is clearly an act of insurrection,” she said. “Even if the impeachment motion does not pass, the president’s legal responsibilities under the criminal code … cannot be avoided.”

Yoon has remained unapologetic and defiant as the fallout from his disastrous martial law declaration has deepened and an investigation into his inner circle has widened.

On Friday, prosecutors said they had arrested a military commander who headed the capital defence command.

Arrest warrants were also issued by the Seoul central district court for the national police chief and the head of the city’s police, citing the “risk of destruction of evidence”.

Yoon’s approval rating – never very high – had plummeted to 11%, according to a Gallup Korea poll released on Friday. The same poll showed 75% supported his impeachment.

Protesters calling for his ouster for more than a week run the gamut of South Korean society: from K-pop fans waving glowsticks to retirees and blue-collar workers.

“Impeachment is a must and we must fight relentlessly,” said Kim Sung-tae, a 52-year-old worker at a car parts manufacturer. “We’re fighting for the restoration of democracy.”

Teacher Kim Hwan-ii agreed. “I’m so angry that we all have to pay the price for electing this president.”

With Agence France-Presse

Syrian rebels began planning the military assault that toppled the Assad regime a year ago, in a highly disciplined operation in which a new drone unit was deployed and where there was close coordination between opposition groups around the country, the top military commander of the main rebel group has revealed.

In his first interview with foreign media since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s 54-year-rule, Abu Hassan al-Hamwi, the head of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s (HTS) military wing, spoke about how his group, which was based in the country’s north-west, communicated with rebels in the south to create a unified war room with the goal of ultimately surrounding Damascus from both directions.

He said that though the planning for the operation to oust Assad, dubbed “deterring aggression”, had started a year ago, the group had been preparing for years.

Since 2019, HTS has been developing a military doctrine that it used to turn fighters coming from disparate, disorganised opposition and jihadist groups into a disciplined fighting force.

“After the last campaign [August 2019], during which we lost significant territory, all revolutionary factions realised the critical danger – the fundamental problem was the absence of unified leadership and control over battle,” al-Hamwi, 40, who has overseen the military wing for five years, said during the interview in Jableh, a former regime stronghold.

The Syrian regime launched an operation against opposition forces in north-west Syria in 2019, successfully pushing back the loosely linked factions into Idlib province. After a final battle after which Turkey negotiated a ceasefire on behalf of opposition forces in spring 2020, rebels were confined to a small pocket of land in north-west Syria – where they would remain in a stalemate with regime forces until this month.

If it hoped to defeat the regime, HTS realised that it needed to instil order to the hodgepodge alliance of opposition factions that had been pushed into Idlib. It offered other groups the chance to merge under its auspices, and when they refused, brought them to heel. It fought against groups such as the al-Qaida affiliate Hurras al-Din, which rejected HTS’s more pragmatic Islamist approach. Soon, HTS became the dominant power in north-west Syria.

With the political command slowly unifying, al-Hamwi set to work on training the group’s fighters and to develop a comprehensive military doctrine.

Al-Hamwi said: “We studied the enemy thoroughly, analysing their tactics, both day and night, and used these insights to develop our own forces.”

The group, which was made up of insurgents, slowly became a disciplined fighting force. Military branches, units and security forces were created.

HTS also began to produce its own weaponry, vehicles and ammunition. Outgunned by the Assad regime, which had an airforce and the backing of Russia and Iran, the group knew that it needed to get creative to make the most out of limited resources.

A drone unit was created, bringing together engineers, mechanics and chemists. “We unified their knowledge and set clear objectives: we needed reconnaissance drones, attack drones and suicide drones, with a focus on range and endurance,” al-Hamwi said, adding that drone production started in 2019.

The latest iteration of HTS drones was a new model of suicide drone, named the “Shahin” drone by al-Hamwi himself, Arabic for falcon, “symbolising their precision and power”. The Shahin drone was deployed for the first time against regime forces this month, with devastating effectiveness. Artillery military vehicles were disabled by the cheap but effective aircraft.

The group sent out messages to rebels in the south a year ago and began to advise them on how to create a unified war room. Southern Syria had been under regime control since 2018, and despite on-and-off fighting, rebel groups were forced underground. Much of the southern opposition’s military leadership was in exile in Jordan, where they maintained contact with their respective groups.

With HTS’s help, an operations room was founded, bringing together the commanders of around 25 rebel groups in the south, who would each coordinate their fighters’ movements with one another and with HTS in the north. The goal was for HTS and its allies to approach from the north and the southern operation room from the south, both meeting in the capital city.

In late November, the group decided the time was right.

The group first and foremost wanted to stop the trend of regional powers, led by countries such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia, from normalising relations with the Assad regime after years of diplomatic isolation. It also wanted to stop intensifying aerial attacks on northwest Syria and its residents. Finally, HTS saw that Assad’s international allies were preoccupied, creating a strategic opening.

Russia, which provided the majority of aerial support, was bogged down in Ukraine. Iran and Hezbollah, whose fighters were Assad’s fiercest ground troops, were reeling from their fight with Israel.

HTS launched the operation, entering Aleppo on 29 November. Hezbollah fighters attempted to defend the city, but soon retreated. The rapid fall of the city, the second largest in Syria that took the Assad regime four years to wrest from rebel control in 2016, astonished the group.

“We had a conviction, supported by historical precedent, that ‘Damascus cannot fall until Aleppo falls.’ The strength of the Syrian revolution was concentrated in the north, and we believed that once Aleppo was liberated, we could move southward toward Damascus,” al-Hamwi said.

After the fall of Aleppo, the rebel advance in the north was seemingly unstoppable. Four days later, the opposition took Hama, On 7 December, rebels started their offensive on Homs. They took the city within hours.

Rebels in the south were supposed to wait until Homs fell to start their own rebellion in the south, according to Abu Hamzeh, a leader of the Operations Room to Liberate Damascus, but out of excitement, they started earlier. Rebels quickly pushed the Syrian army out of Daraa and reached Damascus before HTS did.

On 8 December, Bashar al-Assad fled the country.

Al-Hamwi, originally an agricultural engineer who graduated from Damascus university and was displaced by the Assad regime along with his family to Idlib, said he would transition into a role with the new civilian government.

The prospect of building a new country is no easy task – which al-Hamwi acknowledged. There are fears from religious minorities that the Islamist group might impose its own dogma.

“We affirm that minorities in Syria are part of the nation and have the right to practice their rituals, education, and services like every other Syrian citizen. The regime planted division, and we are trying, as much as possible, to bridge these divides,” al-Hamwi said.

The governor of New Jersey has demanded that Joe Biden take control of an investigation into mysterious and more frequent appearances of multiple large drones flying over his state amid mounting frustration that federal officials are downplaying the incidents.

Democrat Phil Murphy released on Friday a letter he wrote to the White House to express his “growing concern” after representatives from the Pentagon and FBI ruled out involvement by the US military, or hostile foreign actors, in numerous sightings of unexplained flying objects above about a dozen counties since the middle of November.

“It has become apparent that more resources are needed to fully understand what is behind this activity,” he wrote in the letter, published the same day that reports emerged of multiple drones breaching airspace at Naval Weapons Station Earle in Monmouth county.

“I respectfully urge you to continue to direct the federal agencies involved to work together until they uncover answers as to what is behind the UAS [unmanned aircraft systems] sightings.”

Annoyance has been growing among politicians and law enforcement in New Jersey following proliferating reports of drone flights in recent weeks, including almost 50 on Sunday night alone, according to NJ.com, and a dismissal of them by the White House on Thursday that they were, at least mostly, “manned aircraft … being operated lawfully”.

Some of the accounts described car-sized drones, sometimes in groups, flying over sensitive military installations and critical infrastructure such as railway stations, reservoirs and power plants. In response the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) enacted a no-fly restriction over an army facility in Morris county and President-elect Donald Trump’s golf resort in Bedminster.

At the navy’s weapons station, ABC News reported, a spokesperson said no direct threat was identified, but personnel were working closely “with federal and state agencies to ensure the safety of our personnel and operations”.

The White House, Pentagon and FBI have all said they cannot fully explain the drones’ origin, but have indicated a belief they are nothing sinister.

“We have no evidence at this time that the reported drone sightings pose a national security or a public safety threat, or have a foreign nexus,” John Kirby, national security spokesman for the Biden administration, told reporters at a press briefing on Thursday.

He said an unspecified number of still images and video footage of the incidents were analyzed using “sophisticated electronic detection technologies” and were not established to have involved drones.

“To the contrary, upon review of available imagery, it appears that many of the reported sightings are actually manned aircraft that are being operated lawfully,” Kirby said.

“Importantly, there are no reported or confirmed drone sightings in any restricted airspace,” he added, appearing to contradict the account of the breach at the navy weapons station.

A joint statement by the FBI and homeland security department said inquiries “have uncovered no such malicious activity or intent at this stage” in New Jersey – but noted “the reported sightings there do … highlight the insufficiency of current authorities”.

The New Jersey sightings have parallels with incidents in Europe in recent weeks also involving unidentified aircraft and military facilities. A US airbase in Ramstein, Germany, was reportedly targeted; and several “small unmanned aerial systems” were spotted last month over three British RAF bases used by the US air force.

Kirby’s comments effectively ruling out overseas involvement echoed those of Sabrina Singh, the Pentagon’s deputy press secretary, from a day earlier. “Our initial assessment here is that these are not drones or activities coming from a foreign entity or adversary,” she said.

The government’s explanation, or lack of it, has not impressed politicians, including Murphy in New Jersey, who want more action to protect citizens. The Republican congressman Jeff Van Drew told the House aviation subcommittee on Wednesday that he believed the drones could be linked to Iran, and warned of a possible national security threat.

Andy Kim, the Democratic New Jersey senator, on Friday posted a video to X of what he said were several clusters of unidentified flying craft, moving erratically, low and at speed, each with flashing lights of red, green and white. He said he filmed them on Thursday night in the company of local police – and that the objects did not show up on a regular flight tracker.

Sightings have also extended well beyond New Jersey. Larry Hogan, the Republican former governor of Maryland, said in a tweet on Friday that he had “personally witnessed and videoed what appeared to be dozens of large drones” above his house in Davidsonville on Thursday night, adding the incident lasted about 45 minutes.

“Like many who have observed these drones, I do not know if this increasing activity over our skies is a threat to public safety or national security. But the public is growing increasingly concerned and frustrated with the complete lack of transparency and the dismissive attitude of the federal government,” he wrote.

“The government has the ability to track these from their point of origin but has mounted a negligent response. People are rightfully clamoring for answers, but aren’t getting any.”

Some areas of New York have also seen drone activity. In a tweet posted on Friday around lunchtime, Kathy Hochul, the state’s Democratic governor, repeated the government’s line about there being “no evidence that these drones pose a public safety or national security threat”, and said state officials were working with partners including the FBI and homeland security department “to protect New Yorkers”.

Republican New York politicians, meanwhile, were not so accepting. Vito Fossella, borough president of Staten Island, condemned the federal response at a Thursday afternoon press conference.

“What if there were 3,000 reports of drones or manned aircraft sightings over the US capitol, or the White House, or state house in Albany? There would be an immediate and intense response to figure out what they were and solve the problem,” he said.

“Millions of people around here are getting nothing but, ‘Don’t believe what you see’. The saying after 9/11 that if you see something, say something, has become: ‘If you see something, don’t worry about it’.

“The people of this city, this state and region deserve answers of what the heck is going on.”

Since about mid-November, hundreds of New Jersey residents have been calling law enforcement and state officials after spotting what appeared to be drones in the skies over about a dozen counties. The reports have become more frequent in recent days. In some sightings, mysterious car-sized flying objects, sometimes in groups, were seen above military installations and critical infrastructure such as energy facilities, railway stations and reservoirs. Republican state senator Jon Bramnick said it amounted to “a limited state of emergency”.

Italy’s government has granted citizenship to Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, on account of his Italian family roots, prompting outrage among opposition politicians who contrasted his treatment with that of the children born in Italy of migrant parents.

Milei is in Rome to meet the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, and to take part in her Brothers of Italy party’s annual festival on Saturday.

A source with knowledge of the matter said the government had given Italian citizenship to the Argentine leader, declining to provide further details.

The news reported by Italian media triggered an angry reaction from some politicians and on social media from people protesting the citizenship being given to Milei when it is hard to obtain for children born in Italy to migrant parents.

Italy’s citizenship laws are based on blood ties, meaning that even distant descendants of an Italian national can obtain an Italian passport. Requirements for foreigners born in Italy or who migrate there, on the other hand, are much tougher. Pro-migrant groups have proposed a referendum to ease them, but Meloni’s rightwing coalition is against any relaxation.

Riccardo Magi, a lawmaker from the small opposition +Europa party, said granting citizenship to Milei was an act of “intolerable discrimination against so many young people who will only get it after many years”.

During a previous trip to Italy in February, Milei said in a TV interview he felt “75% Italian” since three of his grandparents had Italian origins, and that he has “an incredible passion for Italian opera”.

Libertarian Milei and conservative Meloni have established a close relationship. When they met in Buenos Aires last month, the Argentine leader gave his Italian guest a statuette of himself wielding his trademark chainsaw.

A US appeals court on Friday rejected an emergency bid by TikTok to temporarily block a law that would require its Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest of the short-video app by 19 January or face a ban on the app.

TikTok and ByteDance on Monday filed the emergency motion with the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia, asking for more time to make their case to the US supreme court. Friday’s ruling means that TikTok now must quickly move to the supreme court in an attempt to halt the pending ban.

The companies had warned that without court action, the law will “shut down TikTok –> one of the nation’s most popular speech platforms –> for its more than 170 million domestic monthly users”.

“The petitioners have not identified any case in which a court, after rejecting a constitutional challenge to an Act of Congress, has enjoined the Act from going into effect while review is sought in the Supreme Court,” Friday’s court order said.

TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Under the law, TikTok will be banned unless ByteDance divests it by 19 January. The law also gives the US government sweeping powers to ban other foreign-owned apps that could raise concerns about collection of Americans’ data.

The US justice department argues “continued Chinese control of the TikTok application poses a continuing threat to national security”.

TikTok says the DoJ has misstated the social media app’s ties to China, arguing its content-recommendation engine and user data are stored in the US on cloud servers operated by Oracle while content-moderation decisions that affect US users are made in the US.

The decision – unless the supreme court reverses it – puts TikTok’s fate first in the hands of Joe Biden on whether to grant a 90-day extension of the 19 January deadline to force a sale, and then of Donald Trump, who takes office on 20 January.

The president-elect, who unsuccessfully tried to ban TikTok during his first term in 2020, said before the November presidential election he would not allow the ban on TikTok.

A US appeals court on Friday rejected an emergency bid by TikTok to temporarily block a law that would require its Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest of the short-video app by 19 January or face a ban on the app.

TikTok and ByteDance on Monday filed the emergency motion with the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia, asking for more time to make their case to the US supreme court. Friday’s ruling means that TikTok now must quickly move to the supreme court in an attempt to halt the pending ban.

The companies had warned that without court action, the law will “shut down TikTok –> one of the nation’s most popular speech platforms –> for its more than 170 million domestic monthly users”.

“The petitioners have not identified any case in which a court, after rejecting a constitutional challenge to an Act of Congress, has enjoined the Act from going into effect while review is sought in the Supreme Court,” Friday’s court order said.

TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Under the law, TikTok will be banned unless ByteDance divests it by 19 January. The law also gives the US government sweeping powers to ban other foreign-owned apps that could raise concerns about collection of Americans’ data.

The US justice department argues “continued Chinese control of the TikTok application poses a continuing threat to national security”.

TikTok says the DoJ has misstated the social media app’s ties to China, arguing its content-recommendation engine and user data are stored in the US on cloud servers operated by Oracle while content-moderation decisions that affect US users are made in the US.

The decision – unless the supreme court reverses it – puts TikTok’s fate first in the hands of Joe Biden on whether to grant a 90-day extension of the 19 January deadline to force a sale, and then of Donald Trump, who takes office on 20 January.

The president-elect, who unsuccessfully tried to ban TikTok during his first term in 2020, said before the November presidential election he would not allow the ban on TikTok.

Bob Fernandez, a 100-year-old survivor of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, died shortly after deteriorating health prompted him to skip a trip to Hawaii to attend last week’s remembrance ceremony marking the 83rd anniversary of the attack.

Fernandez died peacefully at the Lodi, California, home of his nephew, Joe Guthrie, on Wednesday. Guthrie’s daughter, Halie Torrrell, was holding his hand when he took his last breath. Fernandez had suffered a stroke about a month ago that caused him to slow down, but Guthrie said doctors attributed his condition to age.

“It was his time,” Guthrie said.

Fernandez was a 17-year-old sailor on board the USS Curtiss during the 17 December 1941 attack that propelled the US into the second world war. A mess cook, he was waiting tables and bringing sailors morning coffee and food when they heard an alarm sound. Through a porthole, Fernandez saw a plane fly by with the red ball insignia known to be painted on Japanese aircraft.

He rushed down three decks to a magazine room where he and other sailors waited for someone to unlock a door storing shells so they could pass them to the ship’s guns. He told interviewers over the years that some of his fellow sailors were praying and crying as they heard gunfire above.

“I felt kind of scared because I didn’t know what the hell was going on,” Fernandez told the Associated Press in an interview weeks before his death.

Fernandez’s ship lost 21 men, and nearly 60 of its sailors were injured. The bombing killed more than 2,300 US servicemen. Nearly half, or 1,177, were sailors and Marines on board the USS Arizona, which sank during the battle.

“We lost a lot of good people, you know. They didn’t do nothing,” Fernandez said. “But we never know what’s going to happen in a war.”

Fernandez had been planning to return to Pearl Harbor last week to attend an annual commemoration hosted by the navy and the National Park Service but became too weak to make the trip, Guthrie said.

He was “so proud” of his six years in the navy, all of it aboard the USS Curtiss, Guthrie said. Most of his casual clothes, like hats and shirts, were related to his service.

“It was just completely ingrained in him,” his nephew said.

Fernandez worked as a forklift driver at a cannery in San Leandro, California, after the war. His wife of 65 years, Mary Fernandez, died in 2014.

He enjoyed music and dancing, and until recently attended weekly music performances at a local park and a restaurant. He helped neighbors in his trailer park take care of their yards until he moved in with Guthrie last year.

“I’d do yard work and split firewood and he’d swing the axe a little bit,” Guthrie said. “We’d call it his physical therapy.”

Fernandez’s advice for living a long life included stopping eating once he was full and marching up stairs. He said it was OK to take a nap, but to do something like laundry or wash dishes before going to bed. He recommended being kind to everyone.

Guthrie said he thinks Fernandez would want to be remembered for bringing people joy.

“He would rake people’s yards if they couldn’t do it. He would paint a fence. He would help somebody,” Guthrie said. “He would give people money if they needed something. He was so generous and such a kind person. He made friends everywhere.”

Fernandez is survived by his oldest son, Robert J Fernandez, a granddaughter and several great-grandchildren.

There are 16 known survivors of Pearl Harbor who are still alive, according to a list maintained by Kathleen Farley, the California state chair of the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors. All of them are at least 100 years old.

Fernandez’s death would have brought the number to 15 but Farley recently learned of an additional survivor.

The woman who in 2006 falsely accused three Duke University lacrosse players of raping her – making national headlines that stirred tensions about race, class and the privilege of college athletes – has admitted publicly for the first time that she made up the story.

Crystal Mangum, who is Black, said in an interview with the Let’s Talk With Kat podcast that she “made up a story that wasn’t true” about the white players who had attended a party where she was hired to perform as a stripper “because I wanted validation from people and not from God”.

“I testified falsely against them by saying that they raped me when they didn’t and that was wrong,” Mangum, 46, said in the interview, which was released on Monday. The interview was recorded last month at the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women, where Mangum is incarcerated for fatally stabbing her boyfriend in 2011.

The former Duke players were declared innocent in 2007 after Mangum’s story fell apart under legal scrutiny.

The state attorney general’s office concluded there was no credible evidence an attack had ever occurred, and its investigation found no DNA, witnesses or other evidence to confirm Mangum’s story.

The Durham prosecutor who had championed Mangum’s case was disbarred for lying and misconduct. Prosecutors at the time declined to press charges against Mangum for the false accusations.

The former lacrosse players reached an undisclosed settlement with Duke University in 2007 after suing it for the handling of the rape allegations.

Mangum, who was convicted of second-degree murder in 2013 and is eligible to be released from prison as early as 2026, told the podcast interviewer that she hopes the three falsely accused men can forgive her.

“I want them to know that I love them and they didn’t deserve that,” she said.

Durham-based podcaster Kat DePasquale said she wrote to Mangum because she was curious about the case that got so much attention, and that Mangum wrote back saying she wanted to talk.

The leader of Canada’s most populous province is looking at fresh ways to ward off US tariffs, including wielding the power of Ontario’s liquor control board – the largest purchaser of alcohol in the world.

Earlier this week, Ontario’s premier, Doug Ford, said he could halt electricity exports to multiple American states in retaliation for tariffs promised by Donald Trump.

But his threat seemed not to dissuade the US president-elect, whose fixation on Canada’s border and an allegation that migrants and drugs are flowing into the United States has resulted in a panicked scramble from Canadian politicians.

“That’s OK if [Ford] does that, that’s fine,” Trump told a CNBC News. “The United States is subsidizing Canada, it’s truly a subsidy and we shouldn’t have to do that.”

Trump said he had “so many friends in Canada” but his country “shouldn’t have to subsidize” Canada for more than US$100bn a year, a figure he didn’t elaborate on.

Ford, known for his blunt speaking style, has described the threat by Canada’s closest ally as being “like a family member stabbing you right in the heart”.

Ontario’s liquor control board, established in 1927, is the main alcohol retailer in the province with revenues of more than C$7bn. The threat to use the province’s liquor control board, which has immense purchasing power in virtue of the province’s population of 15 million, would entail ordering it to halt buying American products.

Ford reiterated that the halt to electricity exports would be a “last resort” for his province, which relies heavily on trade with the United States. “We’re sending a message to the US … you come and attack Ontario, you attack the livelihoods of people in Ontario and Canadians, we are going to use every tool in our toolbox to defend Ontarians and Canadians. Let’s hope it never comes to that.”

In addition to the possibility of cutting off electricity to Michigan, New York state and Minnesota, Ford’s government is now also looking at restricting exports of Canadian critical minerals required for electric vehicle batteries and supply chain.

Ford’s plan has put him at odds with other premiers, including Danielle Smith, the Alberta premier, whose province exports vast amounts of oil and natural gas to the United States.

“Under no circumstances will Alberta agree to cut off oil and gas exports,” she said, adding she preferred a strategy of “diplomacy, not threats” for the current standoff.

Sales of energy products, including oil, gas and electricity from Canada to the United States, hit roughly C$170bn last year.

Other premiers have been tight-lipped about their strategies, but most conceded there could be retaliation if needed.

“We hope it is just bluster,” said Newfoundland and Labrador premier Andrew Furey. “We’re preparing as if it is not.”

The Duke of York has said he “ceased all contact” with the businessman accused of being a Chinese spy after receiving advice from the government.

Prince Andrew met the individual through “official channels” with “nothing of a sensitive nature ever discussed”, a statement from his office said.

The businessman – described as a “close confidant” of Andrew – lost an appeal over a decision to bar him from entering the UK on national security grounds.

The man, known only as H6, brought a case to the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) after then-home secretary, Suella Braverman, said he should be excluded from the UK in March 2023.

Judges were told that in a briefing for the home secretary in July 2023, officials claimed H6 had been in a position to generate relationships between prominent UK figures and senior Chinese officials “that could be leveraged for political interference purposes”.

They also said that H6 had downplayed his relationship with the Chinese state, which combined with his relationship with Andrew, represented a threat to national security.

“The Duke of York followed advice from His Majesty’s Government and ceased all contact with the individual after concerns were raised,” the statement said.

“The Duke met the individual through official channels with nothing of a sensitive nature ever discussed.

“He is unable to comment further on matters relating to national security.”

Democrats and Republicans have come together in a rare moment of unity to condemn an espionage-driven Chinese infiltration of the US telecommunications system that has been called the worst hack in American history.

Carried out by a group called Salt Typhoon that is believed to be linked to China’s communist regime, it has resulted in the infiltration of dozens of US telecoms companies and the data of senior political figures – including the president-elect, Donald Trump; the incoming vice-president, JD Vance; and Kamala Harris, the defeated Democratic presidential candidate – being stolen.

The US intelligence community believes the hack is ongoing and constitutes a grave national security threat.

The breach – which saw the hackers penetrate the system of major US telecoms giants, including Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T and roughly 80 other companies and internet providers – has potentially given the hackers access to the texts, emails and personal details of tens of millions of people.

However, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) say the infiltration is targeted at certain high-level figures in a highly sophisticated espionage operation.

“We have identified that [Chinese government]-affiliated actors have compromised networks at multiple telecommunications companies to enable the theft of customer call records data, the compromise of private communications of a limited number of individuals who are primarily involved in government or political activity, and the copying of certain information that was subject to US law enforcement requests pursuant to court orders,” the agencies said in a joint statement last month.

The hack was first discovered last spring but only became public in late October, less than a fortnight before the presidential election, after being reported by the New York Times, which disclosed that hackers had targeted phones used by Trump and Vance.

Officials believe the infiltration is motivated by spying and information gathering rather than a precursor to an attack on infrastructure.

About 150 targeted victims, most of them in the Washington region, have been identified by the FBI. Officials believe information procured could then be used to target others.

Mark Warner, the outgoing Democratic chair of the Senate intelligence committee, told the Washington Post that the infiltration was the “worst telecom hack in our nation’s history – by far”, adding: “The American people need to know.

“This is an ongoing effort by China to infiltrate telecom systems around the world, to exfiltrate huge amounts of data.”

So far, however, the issue has gained little public traction, being overshadowed by last month’s election and Trump’s efforts to name members of his nascent administration following his victory.

It has elicited several meetings on Capitol Hill as Congress members and senators come to terms with yet another security breach in a year that has seen two failed assassination attempts against Trump and an apparently successful hack of his campaign by Iran, which was also engaged in a separate plot to kill him, according to security officials.

Senators from both main parties were briefed about the scale of the problem by the FBI, CISA and Federal Communications Commission officials this month in a closed-door session that triggered expressions of anger.

“The extent and depth and breadth of Chinese hacking is absolutely mind-boggling – that we would permit as much as has happened in just the last year is terrifying,” said Richard Blumenthal, a Democratic senator for Connecticut.

Florida senator Marco Rubio, Trump’s nominee to be secretary of state and a noted hawk on China, said: “It’s the most disturbing and widespread incursion into our telecommunications systems in the history of the world, not just the country, because of how massive our telecommunications systems is. This is as bad as it gets.”

His fellow Florida Republican, Rick Scott, blamed the agencies for failing to prevent the hack. “There’s no accountability in anybody sitting up there,” he told reporters. “They have not told us why they didn’t catch it, what they’ve done to prevent it.”

Josh Hawley, a GOP senator for Missouri, called the hack “breathtaking”.

“I think the American people need to know the extent of the breach here. I think they will be shocked at the extent of it,” he said. “I think they need to know about their text messages, their voicemail, their phone calls. It’s very bad, it’s very, very bad, and it is ongoing.”

While the hack has yet to capture the popular imagination, news of its scale is certain to further complicate America’s tangled relationship with China, which Trump has threatened with tariffs while also signalling a wish for warmer ties with a highly unusual invitation to its president, Xi Jinping, to attend next month’s presidential inauguration.

Brendan Carr, Trump’s nominee as head of the Federal Communications Commission, has pledged to work “with national security agencies through the transition and next year in an effort to root out the threat and secure our networks”.

“Cybersecurity is going to be an incredibly important issue,” he told the Washington Post. “National security is going to be a top priority.”