Rescuers in Vanuatu’s capital of Port Vila are racing to retrieve people trapped under collapsed buildings as witnesses spoke of their escape from the powerful 7.3 magnitude earthquake that struck the Pacific nation on Tuesday, killing 14 and injuring 200 others.

At least 200 people are being treated for injuries at the capital’s main hospital and other medical centres with 14 confirmed deaths so far, a Red Cross official said on X, citing the Vanuatu government.

Of the 14 confirmed deaths, six people had died in landslides, four in the collapsed Billabong building and four at Vila Central hospital, the national disaster management office said in a report.

Two Chinese nationals were among those killed, the Chinese ambassador, Li Minggang, told state media on Wednesday.

Images from Port Vila show significant damage to parts of the capital, with some buildings flattened or collapsed on top of vehicles. The country’s caretaker prime minister, Charlot Salwai, has declared a seven-day state of emergency.

Glen Craig, the chair of the Vanuatu Business Resilience Council, said at least one person had been pulled from the rubble on Wednesday morning, while rescuers were communicating with others that remained trapped.

“They have confirmed one this morning and there is another two or three that are there and were in good spirits and know they can get out,” he told the Guardian.

Emergency requests for more search and rescue personnel, machinery, and engineers to check buildings and bridges had been sent to the governments of New Zealand and Australia, Craig said.

Craig was in the tallest building in Port Vila at the time of the first quake. “It was generational. It was awful. You normally hear things like a train coming and then you get five or six seconds,” he said.

“I was with my wife and we looked at each other as it hit us and we ran, struggled to get to the door, got outside, and we had a bit of an issue getting down the stairs. It threw us down there more than us getting down there. I don’t know how the building didn’t come down on us,” he said.

“It really was very aggressive. We were just looking at each other like ‘Oh my God.’ If it had gone on another 10 seconds or been another point 1 or 2 bigger, I wouldn’t be talking to you today.”

Ivan Oswald, who has lived in Port Vila for more than two decades, said the quake was terrifying for his family.

“I was at my house, which is pretty much in town,” he said, “My kids were there having a play date with other kids. So they were quite scared and traumatised … They were still having issues this morning.”

Footage from Oswald’s waterside Nambawan cafe showed the moment the earthquake hit, with its force throwing people to the ground, and causing heavy furniture to sway violently.

Teams such as ProMedical, an emergency services NGO, had been working around the clock and were exhausted, while unconfirmed reports from the hospital indicated a rising death toll, he said.

“It’s really sad,” he said, “It’s not looking pretty on the ground.”

Port Vila resident Michael Thompson told AFP by satellite phone that several people have called out from beneath the remains of a flattened three-storey shop in the capital.

“There’s tonnes and tonnes of rubble on top of them. And two rather significant concrete beams that have pancaked down,” he said. “Obviously they are lucky to be in a bit of a void.”

About 80 people including police, medics, trained rescuers and volunteers used excavators, jackhammers, grinders and concrete saws, “just everything we can get our hands on”, he said.

Earthquakes are not uncommon in Vanuatu, an archipelagic nation that is home to about 330,000 people, but Tuesday’s quake was the strongest felt in decades.

One building particularly affected contained the UK, French and New Zealand high commissions, and the US embassy, which was located on the ground floor and was “pancaked”, Craig said, adding that he was not aware of any fatalities from the building.

Occurring at lunchtime, many embassy staff had been outside the building, he said.

The quake was followed by at least one aftershock later on Tuesday, and another measuring 5.5 on Wednesday morning. Power and communications remained down on Wednesday, while the airport was also closed.

Katie Greenwood, who heads the Pacific delegation at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said: “Rescue ops continue to free those trapped after the quake, and attention turns to urgent needs like first aid, shelter, and water.”

Parts of the capital appeared normal, said Craig, who was able to communicate using his Starlink satellite internet connection and solar power, although long lines had formed at petrol stations.

“The majority of Port Vila is fine,” he said, “You know something is unusual by the number of people queuing for petrol. Queuing for petrol in Port Vila is the equivalent of an Australian queuing for toilet paper during covid.”

Australia and New Zealand are among countries that have pledged support, with New Zealand deputy prime minister Winston Peters saying on Wednesday that the country was on standby to provide medical, defence and humanitarian assistance to Vanuatu.

“A New Zealand military surveillance plane is due to fly above Vanuatu this morning, to help assess the damage caused by the earthquake,” Peters said. “We are also offering to send an urban search and rescue team and relief supplies to Vanuatu later today, once the airport in Port Vila has reopened.”

Penny Wong, Australia’s foreign minister, said the government was preparing to deploy immediate assistance to Vanuatu today.

Speaking in London, she said Australia would be sending emergency medical teams and urban search and rescue units to the island. A helpline has been set up to help Australians who could be caught up in the disaster.

“We will provide whatever assistance is required. I say to the people of Vanuatu, you are family and Australia is here to help,” she said.

The disaster has also occurred at a moment of political turmoil in the Melanesian country. Salwai dissolved parliament last month, setting the stage for a snap election on 14 January, only for opposition MPs to mount a constitutional challenge to his move.

Salwai has issued a state of emergency for seven days, and instituted a curfew – except for essential services – from 6pm to 6am.

On Wednesday, Craig said he hoped the beleaguered Pacific nation could have a speedy recovery, with power and communications expected to be restored later in the day, and the airport to reopen by Friday.

“Vanuatu, poor old thing, can’t catch a break at the moment. We had covid, then we had Vanuatu go broke, then three cyclones last year, and we were just looking forward to a bumper tourism season and then this happened,” he said. “So we are really trying to get past it as soon as we can.”

– With agencies

North Korean forces have suffered “several hundred” casualties fighting against Ukrainian troops in Russia’s Kursk region, according to a senior US military official.

Pyongyang has sent thousands of troops to reinforce Russia’s war effort, including to the Kursk border region, where Ukrainian forces seized territory earlier this year.

“Several hundred casualties is our latest estimate that the DPRK has suffered,” the official said on condition of anonymity, using an abbreviation for North Korea’s official name.

This “would include everything from … light wounds up to being KIA (killed in action)”, the official said, with soldiers of “all ranks” among the casualties.

“These are not battle-hardened troops. They haven’t been in combat before,” the official said, adding that this was probably contributing to “why they have been suffering the casualties that they have at the hands of the Ukrainians”.

The official’s comments on casualties came after Ukraine’s commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky said Russia has used North Korean troops at the heart of an “intensive offensive” in Kursk over several days.

North Korea and Russia have strengthened their military ties since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. A landmark defence pact between Pyongyang and Moscow signed in June came into force earlier this month.

Experts say the nuclear-armed North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, is keen to acquire advanced technology from Russia and battle experience for his troops.

US President Joe Biden’s administration has been a key supporter of Kyiv, and has been rushing to provide it with billions of dollars in already authorised aid before president-elect Donald Trump takes office next month.

Trump has repeatedly criticised US assistance for Ukraine and claimed he could secure a ceasefire within hours – comments that have triggered fears in Kyiv and Europe about the future of US aid under his administration.

A senior defence official said on Tuesday that not all of the remaining $5.6bn that can be drawn from US stocks may be used in time.

“I would certainly anticipate … there could be remaining authority that would transition and be available for the next administration to use,” the official said on condition of anonymity.

• Donald Trump’s incoming Ukraine envoy, retired Lt Gen Keith Kellogg, will travel to Kyiv and several other European capitals in early January on a fact-finding trip, according to two sources with knowledge of planning. They said he would visit senior leaders in Kyiv, and his team was working to set up meetings with leaders in other European capitals, such as Rome and Paris, though plans could change.

• North Korean forces have taken “several hundred” casualties fighting against Ukrainian troops in Russia’s Kursk region, according to a senior US military official. This “would include everything from … light wounds up to being KIA [killed in action]”, the official said, with soldiers of “all ranks” among the casualties. “These are not battle-hardened troops. They haven’t been in combat before … [that is] why they have been suffering the casualties that they have at the hands of the Ukrainians.” Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrsky, said Russia has used North Korean troops at the heart of an “intensive offensive” in Kursk over several days.

• Lt Gen Igor Kirillov, who was blown up in Moscow on Tuesday by Ukrainian intelligence, headed the Russian military’s radiological, chemical and biological defence programme – a unit blamed by Ukraine, the US and UK for involvement in the use of chemicals on the battlefield, Dan Sabbagh explains. Ukrainian soldiers report a persistent use of chemical weapons, mostly teargas, whose deployment on the battlefield is illegal. The US and UK go further in their accusations and say Russia is using another toxic agent, chloropicrin, first employed to gruesome effect in the trenches of the first world war.

• Nato has taken over as planned from the US in coordinating western military aid to Ukraine, a source said on Tuesday, in a move widely seen as aiming to safeguard the support mechanism against Donald Trump. Nato’s military headquarters, Shape, confirmed its Ukraine mission was assuming responsibilities from the US and international organisations. “The work of NSATU … is designed to place Ukraine in a position of strength, which puts Nato in a position of strength to keep safe and prosperous its one billion people in both Europe and North America,” said US army Gen Christopher G Cavoli, the supreme allied commander Europe. “This is a good day for Ukraine and a good day for Nato.”

• The headquarters of Nato’s new Ukraine mission, dubbed Nato Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine (NSATU), is located at Clay Barracks, a US base in the German town of Wiesbaden. It takes over from the US-led Ramstein group. NSATU is set to have a total strength of about 700 personnel, including troops stationed at Shape in Belgium and logistics hubs in Poland and Romania. Diplomats acknowledge that benefits of the handover to Nato could be lessened if the US under Trump slashes support. The president-elect has previously threatened to pull out of Nato and invited Vladimir Putin to attack its members if they do not contribute more funding.

• Britain on Tuesday sanctioned 20 ships it said had been carrying illicit Russian oil. “As [Russian president Vladimir] Putin’s oil revenues continue to fuel the fires of his illegal war, Ukrainian families are enduring cold, dark nights, often without heating, light or electricity, targeted by Russia’s relentless missile attacks,” said Keir Starmer, the British prime minister.

• The Ukrainian air force said on Tuesday it had downed 20 Russia-launched drones. It said on the Telegram messenger that Russia had launched a total of 31 drones and an additional 10 did not reach their targets.

The state department is facing a new lawsuit brought by Palestinians and Palestinian Americans accusing the agency of deliberately circumventing a decades-old US human rights law to continue funding Israeli military units accused of widespread atrocities in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The lawsuit, which was filed on Tuesday, marks the first time that victims of alleged human rights abuses are challenging the state department’s failure to ever sanction an Israeli security unit under the Leahy Law, a 1990s-era law that prohibits US military assistance to forces credibly implicated in gross human rights violations.

The plaintiffs include Amal Gaza, a pseudonym for a mathematics teacher from Gaza who has lost 20 family members; Shawan Jabarin, the director of the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq, who endured six years of arbitrary detention in the West Bank; and Ahmed Moor, a Palestinian American with relatives in Gaza who have been repeatedly displaced by the ongoing Israeli offensive. (Moor has written opinion pieces for the Guardian.) Along with two other plaintiffs, they are demanding judicial intervention to force the US to comply with the law.

With the death toll in Gaza since last October reportedly approaching 45,000 and humanitarian aid to the territory severely restricted, the legal challenge represents an attempt to force the administration to implement a law that has been seen as effective in helping the US to stem human rights violations by foreign military units in central America, Colombia, Nepal, and other countries.

The Leahy Law was designed to prohibit foreign governments from providing US assistance to any security forces that the US identifies as being ineligible due to a gross violation of human rights. But, as one former state official told the Guardian earlier this year: “The rules were different for Israel.”

The lawsuit was filed in Washington DC district court.

Also taking part in the suit is Said Assali, a Palestinian American who had six family members killed in airstrikes in Gaza since the bombardments and incursions from Israel began last year.

“I’ve had … immediate relatives, cousins and other family that have been murdered in Israeli airstrikes,” Assali told the Guardian. “As an American, this is a clear violation of our laws, and it is violations the state department is carrying out actively and aggressively – and it’s using our tax dollars.”

The complaint hones in on a litany of alleged violations committed by Israeli military units with US support, including torture, prolonged detention without charge, forced disappearance, and what the plaintiffs describe as actions amounting to genocide in Gaza.

It references findings by international judicial bodies like the International Criminal Court that culminated in arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the former Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant – findings that were rejected by the US. It also points to pre-7 October cases that led to investigations under the Leahy Law that were ultimately dismissed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, such as the 2022 death of 78-year-old Omar As’ad in the West Bank.

The state department declined to comment.

A Guardian investigation published in January found that top US officials had quietly reviewed more than a dozen incidents of alleged gross violations of human rights by Israeli security forces since 2020, but implemented special bureaucratic measures that have ultimately preserved access to US weapons for the allegedly responsible units. The investigation found that special mechanisms have been used over the last few years to shield Israel even as other allies’ military units who receive US support – including, sources say, Ukraine – have privately been sanctioned and faced consequences for committing human rights violations.

In April, Reuters reported that some senior US officials privately voiced their doubts to Blinken about Israel’s assurances that it was using US-supplied weapons in accordance with international humanitarian law. That same month, a coalition of 185 lawyers in both the Biden administration and private sector argued that they believe Israel’s military actions likely violate US humanitarian laws, a claim later repeated by 20 White House staffers who dissented in November.

The plaintiffs are represented by Dawn, a human rights advocacy group founded by Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post journalist murdered by Saudi Arabian agents.

“This is a historic effort to right the wrong of the state department’s decades of refusal to obey the law requiring it to restrict military aid to abusive military units in Israel,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Dawn’s executive director.

She added: “What the state department is asking the world to believe is that no Israeli unit has ever committed a gross violation of human rights. This flies in the face of mountains of human rights reports and journalistic investigations. It flies in the face of the state department’s own human rights reports.”

Despite a barrage of internal and external pressure, the Biden administration has consistently maintained its “ironclad” support for Israel. A state department panel recommended months ago that Blinken block US aid to several Israeli military and police units accused of serious human rights abuses, but the secretary of state has yet to act.

Biden for his part has long rejected calls to limit military support to Israel, other than once pausing a planned shipment of 2,000lbs bombs. Congress has also rebuffed efforts to cut off aid, including a resolution to block additional arms sales to Israel introduced by Bernie Sanders in November.

Assali himself acknowledges the uphill climb in challenging the United States government on Israel policy. He says judicial action is just part of a broader strategic effort to track human rights violations and shift public discourse.

“It may feel like a fruitless thing, but I think it is correct and right, and part of a groundswell of actions that will eventually, hopefully lead to change,” he said. “All movements for social justice took decades – whether that’s the history of slavery, women’s suffrage or opposition to wars.”

The pace of talks aimed at securing a ceasefire-for-hostages agreement in Gaza appeared to be accelerating, amid claims on both sides that a deal may be within reach, perhaps within days.

Senior Israeli officials, Hamas sources, and US and Arab officials have all expressed optimism that a deal may be close for a phased release of the surviving hostages in Gaza in exchange for a ceasefire and the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

About 60 living hostages, mainly Israeli and dual nationals, are believed to be still held in Gaza as well as the bodies of 35 others, out of more than 240 who were abducted to Gaza during Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.

On Tuesday an Israeli negotiating team travelled to Qatar while a report from Reuters – denied by his office and Egypt – said that the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was planning to travel to Cairo for talks.

Instead, Netanyahu’s office said he had toured a buffer zone inside Syria that was recently seized by Israeli forces after the fall of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, which he said would remain under Israeli control for the foreseeable future.

A UN spokesman said on Tuesday that the advance of Israeli troops, however long it lasts, violated the 1974 deal that set up the buffer zone. That agreement “needs to be respected, and occupation is occupation, whether it lasts a week, a month or a year, it remains occupation,” spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said.

Two Egyptian security sources added that Netanyahu was not in Cairo “at this moment” but that a meeting was under way to work through the remaining points – chief among them a Hamas demand for guarantees that any immediate deal would lead to a comprehensive agreement later.

Hamas said in a statement that a deal was possible if Israel stopped setting new conditions. A Palestinian official close to the mediation efforts said negotiations were serious, with discussions under way about every word.

Reinforcing the sense of optimism the White House spokesperson John Kirby said in an interview with Fox News: “We believe – and the Israelis have said this – that we’re getting closer, and no doubt about it, we believe that, but we also are cautious in our optimism.”

He added, however: “We’ve been in this position before where we weren’t able to get it over the finish line.”

A report in the Washington Post on Tuesday suggested that Hamas had softened its demands for a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip as a precondition of a deal.

Both sides have expressed optimism in recent days that a deal may be close for a phased release of the surviving hostages in Gaza in exchange for a ceasefire and the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

The incoming US president, Donald Trump, has said he wants to see the hostages released or “all hell’s going to break out” and has sent a hostage envoy to Israel for meetings with senior politicians, including Netanyahu, whom Trump spoke to over the weekend.

On Monday, the Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, briefed lawmakers that Israel and Hamas were “the closest we’ve been to a hostage deal since the last deal”, which took place in November 2023 and resulted in the release of more than 100 hostages.

He added that he expected the deal to get widespread support. “There will be a sweeping majority in the security cabinet and the cabinet for the emerging hostage deal.”

Katz has said Israel would maintain security control over Gaza after a ceasefire.

“After we defeat Hamas’s military and governing power in Gaza, Israel will maintain security control over Gaza with full freedom of action,” he said. “We will not allow a return to the reality before October 7.”

Although details of an emerging deal are being negotiated under tight secrecy, it is understood that it would involve a phased ceasefire that would see an initial cessation of hostilities for 60 days in exchange for the release of surviving hostages, including women, elderly people and those suffering illness.

Israel’s diaspora affairs minister, Amichai Chikli, told Army Radio “there’s a hierarchy, with the humanitarian cases in the first stage, and then the rest of the hostages”.

Reports in Arab media have said Hamas and other Palestinian militia appear to be open to a slower, phased end to the fighting with talks focused on the number of hostages to be released in any first phase.

Sticking points that torpedoed previous rounds of talks, including the presence of Israel troops in the so-called Philadelphi and Netzarim corridors inside Gaza, appear to have been sidelined for now, although a continuing issue is understood to be the ability of Palestinians in Gaza to return to their homes in the strip’s north.

In the past week, Trump has ramped up his direct engagement on the issue, despite not being sworn in as president until 20 January, sending his incoming special envoy for hostage affairs, Adam Boehler, who met Netanyahu on Monday evening.

Commenting on his telephone conversation with Netanyahu on Saturday, Trump said: “We had a very good talk. I’ll be very available on 20 January and we’ll see. As you know, I gave warning that if these hostages aren’t back home by that date, all hell’s going to break out.”

Despite the encouraging noises coming from both sides, negotiations have repeatedly reached an impasse before amid accusations of bad faith.

However, the ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon and the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria have created a new dynamic with a decimated Hamas isolated from any meaningful support in the rest of the region.

Hamas has also suffered major blows, such as the death in October of its leader, Yahya Sinwar, and the earlier killing of the leader of its armed wing, Mohammed Deif.

Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip killed at least 14 Palestinians on Tuesday, at least 10 of them in one house in Gaza City, medics said, as tanks pushed deeper towards the western area of Rafah in the south.

Less than a week after the deposed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad fled to Moscow, Turkish officials raised their flag over the embassy in Damascus. While many of the shutters on the palatial villa remained closed, the red and white crescent flew over the embassy rooftop for the first time in 12 years.

It was a moment preceded days before by the arrival in the Syrian capital of Turkey’s spy chief, Ibrahim Kalin. In this immediate aftermath of the end of the Assad regime, Kalin rode in a black sedan driven by the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Ahmed al-Sharaa, who wore civilian dress as he chauffeured Kalin through the crowded streets. The spy chief prayed beneath the hallowed archways of the Umayyad mosque, before emerging to stunned crowds gathered to see the first foreign dignitary to visit the new Syrian leadership.

Dareen Khalifa of the non-profit International Crisis Group describes Kalin’s visit to the Syrian capital as “a victory lap,” with Ankara emerging as a major beneficiary from the new government in Damascus. The toppling of Assad has vindicated Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s approach on Syria at home in Turkey, granted Ankara new opportunities in a power struggle across Kurdish areas in the north-east and afforded it fresh influence as Syria rebuilds.

“Relations between HTS and Turkey shouldn’t be overestimated, it’s not a proxy relationship, but Turkey was smart to wait until things were settled and then go in full force with Kalin’s visit and other senior people as well,” says Khalifa.

Ankara had for months stalled HTS and delayed the launch of the group’s offensive, analysts said, and instead attempted to use a meeting with Russian and Iranian officials in early November in the hope of finally bringing Assad to the negotiating table. Erdoğan has said that Assad rebuffed his offer to “discuss the future of Syria together”, unknowingly missing his last chance to prevent the sweeping military offensive that ended his family’s brutal 53-year rule.

Not only did Assad refuse, but his forces continued to strike the lone rebel-held pocket of Idlib controlled by HTS, fuelling the group’s desire to launch their offensive. Turkey appealed to Assad’s Russian allies, Khalifa believes, asking Moscow to speak to the Syrian leader and stop the strikes, with little result. By the time Sharaa, who was formerly known by his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, approached Ankara later in November, notifying them that his forces were ready to launch an offensive, they relented because of Moscow’s inability to stop Assad.

“Ultimately Turkey said OK, teach them a lesson, but Ankara didn’t realise that HTS would seize Aleppo, let alone the entire country,” Khalifa says. “No one thought it would become something this big. Ankara knew what kind of manoeuvre that HTS might pull, that they would give the impression they were going in one direction, east, when actually they wanted to go south. But it wasn’t more than that.”

By the time the insurgents had massed around the outskirts of Homs, pushing south on the highway leading to Damascus two days before Assad fled, Erdoğan publicly threw his support behind what he called “this march of opposition”. Turkey was monitoring the insurgency intently through its network of intelligence channels as well as public reports, he said, speaking outside a mosque in Istanbul, adding: “May this march in Syria continue without any accidents and troubles.”

Gönül Tol of the Middle East Institute thinktank says the triumph of the insurgency still surprised Turkey, resulting in what she terms “a catastrophic success” from Ankara’s perspective. “This really surprised Ankara, and of course now they are banking on it – it opens up opportunities particularly for Turkish foreign policy and for Erdoğan domestically, but obviously there are also risks,” she says.

The Turkish president has long attempted a domestic balancing act on the issue of Syrian refugees, mediating between a carefully crafted public image as a leader of the Islamic world who welcomed displaced Muslims and the desires of his nationalist coalition partners to expel many of the 3.2 million Syrians in Turkey.

Assad’s fall, says Tol, has allowed Erdoğan a way to bolster his brand as the leader who did the most to protect Syrians while thousands leave, placating his nationalist backers. Turkish officials wasted no time: the foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, said the day after Assad’s ousting that Syrians would return home, and an estimated 7,600 people had crossed the border by the end of last week.

Fidan’s pledge that Turkish companies would help to rebuild Syria caused shares in construction and cement companies to rise the day after Assad was toppled, despite their damaged reputation owing to widespread destruction after the deadly earthquakes that struck southern Turkey and northern Syria early last year.

While Ankara recently began a tentative outreach to Kurdish militant groups it has long regarded as terrorist organisations, Tol pointed to the sudden shifts inside Syria that have led to a pivot. Turkish-backed rebel groups are now routing US-backed Kurdish forces from towns across northern Syria, rapidly extending their zone of control.

“While all eyes are on Damascus it’s a free-for-all in the north-east, and Ankara is getting everything it wants,” says Khalifa. “The town of Manbij fell to Turkish-backed forces without making headlines, so they’re pushing in the north-east and getting away with it in ways that would never have happened before.”

Speaking during a conference on Syria in Jordan over the weekend, Fidan made Ankara’s strategy plain. “We support the legitimate representatives of Syrian Kurds in their efforts to advocate for their rights in Damascus,” he said, indicating that Turkey would only accept Kurdish representation in the Syrian capital, but not elsewhere.

Turkish officials showing up in Damascus, says Tol, will be using their newfound leverage over Syria’s new rulers to ensure that no autonomous Kurdish administration takes hold in the north-east.

“Post-Assad Syria grants Turkey a lot of leverage and HTS can use all the help it can get,” she says. The group is seeking to avoid isolation and will use Turkey’s input to ensure they eventually gain recognition from the international community, she adds. But in the interim, Turkey remains their gateway to the outside world.

“Turkey will play an important role, helping HTS reconstruct and rebuild, plus Syria needs investment. Turkey will play an important role every step of the way.”

Donald Trump has reportedly filed a lawsuit against the Des Moines Register newspaper and its pollster, J Ann Selzer, accusing them of consumer fraud and “election interference” over a poll from before the election that showed Kamala Harris leading Trump in Iowa.

The lawsuit was filed in Polk county late on Monday, as reported by Reuters and NBC News, which have reviewed the documents.

The lawsuit reportedly seeks “accountability for brazen election interference” they allege was committed by the newspaper and Selzer over its 2 November poll, that showed Harris ahead of Trump by three percentage points in Iowa.

Trump ultimately won the state by around 13 percentage points and also beat Harris in the election to become America’s president-elect.

The lawsuit reportedly states that “Selzer’s polling ‘miss’ was not an astonishing coincidence – it was intentional” and that “as President Trump observed: ‘She knew exactly what she was doing.’”

According to Reuters, the lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and an order barring the Des Moines Register from engaging in “ongoing deceptive and misleading acts and practices” related to polling.

Gannett, the parent company of the newspaper, is also reportedly named in the lawsuit. A spokesperson for Gannett told Reuters that the organization stands by its reporting and believes the lawsuit is without merit.

In mid-November, Selzer announced her retirement from polling in political contests, stating she is moving on to “other ventures and opportunities”.

The lawsuit in Iowa was seemingly filed just hours after Trump said that he would “probably be filing a major lawsuit” against the newspaper and Selzer during a press conference on Monday.

“I’m doing this because I feel I have an obligation to,” Trump said on Monday. “I’m going to be bringing one against the people in Iowa, their newspaper, which had a very, very good pollster who got me right all the time, and then just before the election, she said I was going to lose by three or four points and it became the biggest story all over the world.”

He continued: “In my opinion, it was fraud and it was election interference. She’s gotten me right always, she’s a very good pollster she knows what she was doing.”

He added: “It costs a lot of money to do it, but we have to straighten out the press. Our press is very corrupt, almost as corrupt as our elections.”

The suit is the latest in a slew of legal actions Trump has taken against the media. In the press conference, Trump also mentioned his lawsuit against the publisher Simon & Schuster and the journalist Bob Woodward, who he alleged “didn’t quote me properly from the tapes” and “sold the tapes, which he wasn’t allowed to do”.

Simon & Schuster and Woodward have described the lawsuit as meritless.

Trump also discussed a lawsuit he filed against CBS News in October, accusing the network of “deceitful” editing in a 60 Minutes interview with Harris.

CBS News has said that the claims in the lawsuit are “completely without merit” and has filed a motion to dismiss the suit.

This all comes as last week, ABC News, which is owned by Walt Disney, agreed to pay $15m to a foundation and museum to be established by Trump as part of a settlement in yet another defamation lawsuit that the president-elect had launched.

Donald Trump has reportedly filed a lawsuit against the Des Moines Register newspaper and its pollster, J Ann Selzer, accusing them of consumer fraud and “election interference” over a poll from before the election that showed Kamala Harris leading Trump in Iowa.

The lawsuit was filed in Polk county late on Monday, as reported by Reuters and NBC News, which have reviewed the documents.

The lawsuit reportedly seeks “accountability for brazen election interference” they allege was committed by the newspaper and Selzer over its 2 November poll, that showed Harris ahead of Trump by three percentage points in Iowa.

Trump ultimately won the state by around 13 percentage points and also beat Harris in the election to become America’s president-elect.

The lawsuit reportedly states that “Selzer’s polling ‘miss’ was not an astonishing coincidence – it was intentional” and that “as President Trump observed: ‘She knew exactly what she was doing.’”

According to Reuters, the lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and an order barring the Des Moines Register from engaging in “ongoing deceptive and misleading acts and practices” related to polling.

Gannett, the parent company of the newspaper, is also reportedly named in the lawsuit. A spokesperson for Gannett told Reuters that the organization stands by its reporting and believes the lawsuit is without merit.

In mid-November, Selzer announced her retirement from polling in political contests, stating she is moving on to “other ventures and opportunities”.

The lawsuit in Iowa was seemingly filed just hours after Trump said that he would “probably be filing a major lawsuit” against the newspaper and Selzer during a press conference on Monday.

“I’m doing this because I feel I have an obligation to,” Trump said on Monday. “I’m going to be bringing one against the people in Iowa, their newspaper, which had a very, very good pollster who got me right all the time, and then just before the election, she said I was going to lose by three or four points and it became the biggest story all over the world.”

He continued: “In my opinion, it was fraud and it was election interference. She’s gotten me right always, she’s a very good pollster she knows what she was doing.”

He added: “It costs a lot of money to do it, but we have to straighten out the press. Our press is very corrupt, almost as corrupt as our elections.”

The suit is the latest in a slew of legal actions Trump has taken against the media. In the press conference, Trump also mentioned his lawsuit against the publisher Simon & Schuster and the journalist Bob Woodward, who he alleged “didn’t quote me properly from the tapes” and “sold the tapes, which he wasn’t allowed to do”.

Simon & Schuster and Woodward have described the lawsuit as meritless.

Trump also discussed a lawsuit he filed against CBS News in October, accusing the network of “deceitful” editing in a 60 Minutes interview with Harris.

CBS News has said that the claims in the lawsuit are “completely without merit” and has filed a motion to dismiss the suit.

This all comes as last week, ABC News, which is owned by Walt Disney, agreed to pay $15m to a foundation and museum to be established by Trump as part of a settlement in yet another defamation lawsuit that the president-elect had launched.

Donald Trump won a second White House term in November’s election thanks to voters’ attaching higher priority to having an effective president than one who was trustworthy, fresh polling has suggested.

A post-election survey conducted by Schoen Cooperman Research, in conjunction with George Washington University’s graduate school of political management, has concluded that voters believe Trump’s second presidency will be more effective in getting things done – even though they trust his administration less to share accurate information. Those polled also think Trump not only failed to deliver on some of his more prominent campaign promises during his first term from 2017 to 2021, including a southern US border wall for which Mexico would pay – he also botched the federal response to the deadly Covid-19 pandemic.

The findings suggest that Kamala Harris, the defeated Democratic nominee, erred in fighting a “values-based” campaign that depicted Trump as untrustworthy and “dangerous”.

“Our poll suggests that Democrats ran the wrong campaign,” the pollsters Douglas Schoen and Carly Cooperman wrote in the Hill.

“Whereas they ran a ‘values campaign,’ focused on a government Americans could trust, what voters really wanted was an effective government, and on that, they preferred Donald Trump.”

The assertion is backed up by data. Whereas a plurality of American voters said Trump’s victory made them less trusting of government (39%) and less confident that it “will share fair and accurate information” (41%), more also felt that his second administration would be more effective than the outgoing Joe Biden’s in getting things done, 40% to 36%.

The dichotomy was even more pronounced with independent voters, among whom 39% believe Trump will be more effective against 29% who think he will be less so. At the same time, an even wider margin – 39% to 26% – say they will be less trusting of government under Trump.

The pollsters say their findings back up those of a recent CNN poll, which showed voters expressing a “cautious optimism” about prospects under Trump – with 54% “expect[ing him] to do a good job upon his return to the White House” and 55% approving of how he is handling the transition so far.

More than two-thirds, 68%, feel he will bring change to the country, according to the CNN survey. The finding is telling following a campaign in which both candidates vied to present themselves as the “change” candidate – a challenge for each of them given that Trump had been president before and Harris has been vice-president under Biden since he took office after defeating Trump in the 2020 election.

Confidence in Trump’s effectiveness might be a bitter pill for Biden, whose supporters have extolled him as the most successful president in terms of passing legislation since Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s. Both he and Harris depicted Trump’s previous presidency as a period of chaos and ineffective governance.

And historians validated their perspective, ranking Trump in February as the worst president in US history and Biden the 14th greatest.

But Biden also framed his 2020 campaign as a battle for America’s soul, a message he reprised in a 2024 re-election campaign that he aborted in July.

He cast the race as being about US democracy itself. However, Biden, now 82, stepped aside and endorsed Harris as the Democrats’ nominee following his disastrous June debate performance and concerns over his advanced age, even though Trump – now 78 – ultimately became the oldest person ever elected US president.

While Harris initially veered away from that script when she became the nominee, she returned to it late in the campaign, casting Trump as a “threat to democracy” as his rhetoric became darker and more threatening.

Trump, for his part, focused his campaign on the economy and immigration, issues that successive polls showed were top priorities for voters.

The lack of trust in government, according to Schoen and Cooperman, can be attributed to a broad recognition of the proliferation of online misinformation and disinformation. Some 69% of voters said the trend made it harder to access “fair and truthful news during the 2024 election campaign”, the poll found. A similar figure, 71%, voiced concern about the role so-called deepfakes played in the election.

Donald Trump has launched a vitriolic and factually baseless attack on a New York judge who refused to overturn his conviction on a hush money case that made him the first sitting or former US president to carry the status of a convicted felon.

The president-elect on his Truth Social platform condemned Juan Merchan as “psychotic” and “corrupt” after he rejected Trump’s plea that his conviction relating to the cover-up of a sex scandal should be thrown out on the basis of a supreme court ruling that granted him broad immunity.

“In a completely illegal, psychotic order, the deeply conflicted, corrupt, biased, and incompetent Acting Justice Juan Merchan has completely disrespected the United States Supreme Court, and its Historic Decision on Immunity,” wrote Trump, who returns to the White House on 20 January.

In a fulminating broadside, he denounced Merchan – an experienced judge who has tried multiple complex cases in 17 years on the bench – as a “radical partisan” and accused him of writing “an opinion that is knowingly unlawful, goes against our constitution and, if allowed to stand, would be the end of the presidency as we know it”.

Merchan rejected Trump’s application to have last May’s conviction – delivered by a jury in a court in Manhattan – overturned in a 41-page ruling delivered on Monday.

He wrote that Trump’s “decidedly personal acts of falsifying business records poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the executive branch”.

His decision was a blow to the legal strategy of Trump’s lawyers, who had asked him to set aside the conviction immediately after the supreme court ruled last July that presidents – including Trump – had wide immunity from prosecution for actions they took in the course of their duties, even when they broke the law.

Trump’s 34 convictions on business record falsification related to payments made in the run up to the 2016 presidential election to Stormy Daniels, an adult film star, to buy her silence about a sexual encounter she says took place but which Trump denied.

Although the offences took place before Trump was president, his lawyers cited the supreme court opinion to argue that some improper evidence had been presented at the trial, including his presidential financial disclosure form and testimony from his White House aides.

But Merchan, in his ruling, appeared to accept prosecutors’ arguments that evidence from Trump’s White House years amounted to only a “sliver” of their case. He called any mistakenly submitted testimony “harmless in light of the overwhelming evidence of guilt”.

It is not Trump’s first attack on Merchan, who he previously lambasted as “a certified Trump hater”.

During last May’s trial, Trump and his supporters unsuccessfully demanded that Merchan recuse himself from the case, citing contributions of $35 he had made to the Democrats in 2020, including $15 to Joe Biden’s campaign.

They also pointed out that his daughter, Loren Merchan, was president of a firm that worked on digital advertising and fundraising for Democratic clients, including Biden and Adam Schiff, a member of Congress and recently-elected senator who Trump branded an “enemy within” during his campaign.

Merchan slapped 10 gag orders on Trump during the trial, acts which the president-elect referenced in Tuesday’s post. “Merchan has so little respect for the Constitution that he is keeping in place an illegal gag order on me, your President and President-Elect, just so I cannot expose his and his family’s disqualifying and illegal conflicts,” he wrote.

Bolivia’s former president Evo Morales has claimed he is the victim of a “brutal judicial war” orchestrated by the current president, Luis Arce, after prosecutors issued an arrest warrant over his alleged relationship with a minor.

On Monday, public prosecutor Sandra Gutiérrez revealed that a warrant for Morales’s arrest has been active since October. He is accused of “human trafficking” involving a 15-year-old girl with whom he allegedly fathered a child in 2016.

Gutiérrez said the warrant has yet to be executed because of a “risk to the lives of police officers” attempting to enforce it since Morales has been under the protection of coca growers in the rural region of Cochabamba, where he lives.

In a post on the social media platform X, Morales, 65, who governed from 2006 to 2019, accused Arce – a former ally turned bitter rival – of engaging in “lawfare” against him in order to hand him over to the United States as a “trophy of war”.

Morales, Bolivia’s first Indigenous president, has denied the allegations, calling them a strategy by Arce to block him from running in the 2025 presidential elections.

Both politicians belong to the leftist Movimiento al Socialismo (Mas), and Arce, 61, once served as Morales’s finance minister. But the two have been at odds and are now competing for the party’s presidential nomination.

Morales is aligned with rural coca growers, while Arce’s support mainly comes from the urban middle and working classes.

“There is a deep political and economic crisis in Bolivia at the moment,” said Angus McNelly, a lecturer in international development at King’s College London and the author of a recent book on Bolivian politics.

During Morales’s presidency, Bolivia experienced a period of economic progress and poverty reduction, largely thanks to a gas commodities boom. In 2019, he successfully ran for an unconstitutional third consecutive term, prompting widespread protests.

Under pressure from the military, Morales resigned and fled the country. In what many consider a coup, the senator Jeanine Áñez declared herself interim president, standing down in 2020 when fresh elections were called.

Morales handpicked Arce as his successor, and with Mas’s victory, the former leader returned home.

But with a sharp decline in its natural gas reserves, the country has experienced steep economic deterioration, marked by a shortage of US dollars and a sharp drop in imports such as fuel and food.

“Economic crises usually lead to massive political fractures,” said McNelly. “What’s strange in Bolivia’s case is that all this political polarisation is happening within the same party.”

McNelly said one reason for this is the weakness of Bolivia’s opposition, which remains incapable of mounting a serious challenge to Mas.

In June, following a failed military uprising by a disgruntled general, Morales accused Arce of staging a fake coup to bolster his popularity.

In September, Morales led a march of thousands of supporters to the capital, La Paz, to protest against the government, sparking violent clashes that left scores injured.

The current warrant issued against Morales is valid for six months. Prosecutors claim that the alleged victim’s parents, seeking to “climb the political ladder”, sent the 15-year-old girl to Morales’s youth brigade in 2015. A year later, she gave birth to a baby of whom Morales is alleged to be the father.

Although Bolivia’s supreme court has ruled that Morales cannot run in August’s elections, he insists he will contest the presidency.

“Sadly, the political crisis isn’t going to be resolved any time soon in Bolivia,” said McNelly. “I’m really worried about what will happen in the 2025 elections. I think there is potential for more violence, more uncertainty – and I don’t believe the elections offer a clear pathway out of this crisis.”

The mother of Mary Jane Veloso, the Filipino domestic helper who spent almost 15 years on death row in Indonesia, has urged President Ferdinand Marcosto grant her daughter a pardon as she arrived back in the Philippines on Wednesday, ending a long battle by her supporters to bring her home.

“We cannot explain the joy of my husband and her children,” Veloso’s mother, Celia Veloso, 65, told the Guardian late on Tuesday. “We have been praying for my child to come home for a long time, and now she will be home.” She hopes her family can be reunited for Christmas.

Mary Jane Veloso, who was almost executed in 2015 after being sentenced to death in 2010 for drug trafficking, arrived in Manila on Wednesday morning, accompanied by heavy security, and was taken straight to a prison facility for women, where her family was able to meet and hug her.

The 39-year-old was handed over to Philippine officials in Jakarta on Tuesday, after the Indonesian and Philippine governments reached a deal to allow her to return.

Veloso has always denied the charges, saying she was tricked into carrying drugs by a woman who had recruited her for a job abroad. Her case drew sympathy across the Philippines and Indonesia, where many identified with the story of a single mother who had gone abroad seeking better opportunities to provide for her two children.

“The public knows that Mary Jane is just a victim,” her mother said.

“Dear president, I just ask you – since you have helped my daughter to come home, I hope you will do it completely. When she gets off the plane, give her clemency, pardon her. So that she can be with us for Christmas. It has been a long time without Mary Jane with us,” Celia Veloso said.

She added she was grateful to the Indonesian president, Prabowo Subianto, and his government for handling her daughter’s case so soon after taking office in October, and to the Philippine government for bringing her home.

She said she had hardly been able to sleep in recent days. The family had cooked pork adobo – a popular Filipino dish – to give to her daughter, and prepared her room, she said.

“When she was imprisoned for 15 years, I was frustrated and tired. But now, it’s just a matter of hours of waiting, and I can’t deal with the boredom and waiting any longer. I’m so eager to hug and see my daughter.

“The first thing I will say to my daughter is: child, I want you to be with me. Come with me, let’s go home.”

They had not yet made plans for Christmas, but she just wanted her daughter to be happy. “We will make her happy. We need to make her happy, she needs to be really happy for Christmas,” she said.

Mary Jane’s sons, who were young children when she was arrested, are now 16 and 22. They were able to visit their mother in prison eight times, but both feel a long time has been wasted, Celia Veloso said.

“Now, they say they won’t waste time, they say they’ll make their mom happy, they’ll take care of her, they’ll make their mom a baby, even when their mom was not able to take care of them,” she said. The eldest wants to go back to study and graduate now his mother is home, she added. Both sons were in Manila to welcome their mother.

The family, and Mary Jane’s supporters, have fought for years to free her from death row, a journey that has involved drawn-out court battles, diplomatic efforts by three different Philippine administrations, celebrity support and online campaigns.

She was almost executed by firing squad in 2015, but was saved at the 11th hour after the Philippines then president, Benigno Aquino, appealed to the Indonesian government, saying she would be needed as a witness in the case against her alleged recruiter.

Under the deal to repatriate her, it was agreed that the Philippines would respect the Indonesian court’s sentencing of Veloso and her status as a prisoner in Indonesia. However, Indonesia would also respect any decision made by the Philippines, including if she was given clemency.

Marcos thanked the Indonesian government in a statement on Wednesday, adding: “We assure the Filipino people that Ms Veloso’s safety and welfare is paramount and our agencies in the justice and law enforcement sector shall continue to ensure it, as our Indonesian counterparts have safeguarded it for so long.”

Lucas Bersamin, the executive secretary of the Philippines, told local media on Tuesday that it was “premature” to discuss clemency.

Her story has resonated with many across the Philippines and Indonesia, where many people seek jobs abroad and can be vulnerable to mistreatment.

Veloso, from the northern city of Cabanatuan, was born into an impoverished family and did not finish school. She married at 17 but later separated from her husband with whom she has two sons. She moved to Dubai in 2009 to work as a domestic helper but said she was forced to flee after she was the victim of an attempted rape.

After returning home, Veloso said Maria Kristina Sergio, the daughter of one of her godparents, offered her a different role as a domestic worker and told her to fly to Indonesia. Veloso alleges that the woman provided her with new clothes and a bag, which had 2.6kg (5.73lb) of heroin sewn into it. Sergio has disputed this account.

Veloso’s legal team had previously launched two appeals in Indonesia, arguing she did not have a competent translator, and that she was scammed, but both failed.

A former leader of the Church of England has resigned as a priest following allegations that he failed to properly handle the case of a priest accused of sexual misconduct.

George Carey, who was archbishop of Canterbury from 1991 to 2002, quit after a BBC investigation reported that he allowed a priest who had been banned over sexual abuse claims to return to priesthood.

His resignation letter, sent on 4 December, said he had been in active ministry since 1962 and is turning 90. The letter did not mention the investigation.

The BBC reported that Carey agreed to allow a priest, David Tudor, to return to working in the church in 1994 after Tudor was suspended from ministry for five years over allegations of assault against teenage girls.

Documents suggested that Carey advocated for Tudor to get a job in a diocese, the BBC reported.

In his resignation letter, Carey said: “I wish to surrender my Permission to Officiate.

“I am in my ninetieth year now and have been in active ministry since 1962 when I was made Deacon and then Priested in 1963. It has been an honour to serve in the dioceses of London, Southwell, Durham, Bristol, Bath and Wells, Canterbury and finally Oxford.”

Carey’s resignation came as another senior clergyman due to take temporary charge of the Church of England faced calls to resign over his own handling of Tudor’s case.

Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell reportedly allowed Tudor to remain in his post despite knowing he had been barred by the church from being alone with children and had paid compensation to one of his accusers.

Tudor was barred for life from the ministry in October after acknowledging he had sexual relationships with two teenage girls, aged 15 and 16, in the 1980s.

Cottrell is due to take over next month as the church’s spiritual head from archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, who resigned in November over the way he handled separate sexual abuse claims.

The BBC reported that Cottrell said he was “deeply sorry” that action had not been taken earlier but that he had “inherited” the situation. He said there were no legal grounds to take alternative action, according to the broadcaster.

Carey told the BBC that he did not remember Tudor’s name, the outlet reported.

Commenting on the Tudor case, the Church said, “We recognise these procedures were neither sufficient nor survivor-focussed, and that very different decisions would have been made today.”

The archbishop of Canterbury is spiritual leader of the global Anglican Communion, which has 85 million adherents in 165 countries. It has been riven by sharply divergent views on issues such as gay rights and the place of women in the church.

Associated Press and Press Association contributed to this report

A former leader of the Church of England has resigned as a priest following allegations that he failed to properly handle the case of a priest accused of sexual misconduct.

George Carey, who was archbishop of Canterbury from 1991 to 2002, quit after a BBC investigation reported that he allowed a priest who had been banned over sexual abuse claims to return to priesthood.

His resignation letter, sent on 4 December, said he had been in active ministry since 1962 and is turning 90. The letter did not mention the investigation.

The BBC reported that Carey agreed to allow a priest, David Tudor, to return to working in the church in 1994 after Tudor was suspended from ministry for five years over allegations of assault against teenage girls.

Documents suggested that Carey advocated for Tudor to get a job in a diocese, the BBC reported.

In his resignation letter, Carey said: “I wish to surrender my Permission to Officiate.

“I am in my ninetieth year now and have been in active ministry since 1962 when I was made Deacon and then Priested in 1963. It has been an honour to serve in the dioceses of London, Southwell, Durham, Bristol, Bath and Wells, Canterbury and finally Oxford.”

Carey’s resignation came as another senior clergyman due to take temporary charge of the Church of England faced calls to resign over his own handling of Tudor’s case.

Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell reportedly allowed Tudor to remain in his post despite knowing he had been barred by the church from being alone with children and had paid compensation to one of his accusers.

Tudor was barred for life from the ministry in October after acknowledging he had sexual relationships with two teenage girls, aged 15 and 16, in the 1980s.

Cottrell is due to take over next month as the church’s spiritual head from archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, who resigned in November over the way he handled separate sexual abuse claims.

The BBC reported that Cottrell said he was “deeply sorry” that action had not been taken earlier but that he had “inherited” the situation. He said there were no legal grounds to take alternative action, according to the broadcaster.

Carey told the BBC that he did not remember Tudor’s name, the outlet reported.

Commenting on the Tudor case, the Church said, “We recognise these procedures were neither sufficient nor survivor-focussed, and that very different decisions would have been made today.”

The archbishop of Canterbury is spiritual leader of the global Anglican Communion, which has 85 million adherents in 165 countries. It has been riven by sharply divergent views on issues such as gay rights and the place of women in the church.

Associated Press and Press Association contributed to this report

Researchers picking apart a marsupial’s faeces have warned a bacterium causing a flesh-eating ulcer is present “beyond doubt” in a NSW coastal town.

Buruli ulcer has been known to occur in Australia since the 1940s, with cases noted in Northern Territory and far-north Queensland.

But a surge in cases in Victoria, where a case is reported nearly every day, combined with its emergence in a southern NSW coastal town have intrigued researchers.

Analysis recently published suggests it has become endemic in the NSW town of Batemans Bay, about 110km south-east of Canberra.

Researchers pored over the coastal town’s only two known cases, reported in 2021 and 2023, as well as picking apart 27 samples of possum poo.

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Possums are thought to be the main reservoir of the ulcer-causing bacteria, while mosquitoes act as an important transmitter to humans.

“The new cases we report here in Batemans Bay could be a harbinger of a disease expansion in NSW similar to Victoria,” the group of Australian researchers said in peer-reviewed journal PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

“The detection of positive possum excreta samples from Batemans Bay establishes beyond doubt that (the bacteria) is present in local possums.”

The bacteria found in Batemans Bay was distinct from the lineage prevalent in the most endemic areas of Victoria, including Melbourne, Geelong and surrounds.

Initially appearing as an insect bite, the lesion typically takes weeks or months to ulcerate.

Early recognition and diagnosis is critical to prevent skin and tissue loss.

If it is left untreated, extensive ulceration and tissue loss can occur.

In one of the Batemans Bay cases, a 94-year-old man’s ring finger was amputated after a large skin lesion with the ulcer-causing bacteria spread.

Researchers said the many similarities in wildlife composition and insect presence between coastal Victoria and southern NSW made it likely NSW health authorities were facing progressive expansion of ulcer-endemic areas.

Questions remain as to why cases in humans are popping up in areas sometimes hundreds of kilometres apart.

The research was led by infectious diseases doctors, pathologists and researchers across Victoria, NSW and the ACT.

Megan Thee Stallion asked a court on Tuesday to issue a restraining order against Tory Lanez, who she says is harassing her from prison through surrogates as he serves a 10-year sentence for shooting her in the feet.

The petition filed by the hip-hop star in Los Angeles superior court asks the judge to prevent the Canadian rapper Lanez, whose legal name is Daystar Peterson, from using third parties to continue the same online harassment of Megan, whose legal name is Megan Pete, that he engaged in and encouraged before his imprisonment.

“Even now, while behind bars, Mr Peterson shows no signs of stopping,” the petition says. “Despite being sentenced to 10 years in prison for shooting Ms Pete, Mr Peterson continues to to subject her to repeated trauma and re-victimization.”

The petition says prison call logs from Lanez at the California correctional institution in Tehachapi show that he is coordinating attacks on Megan’s credibility.

An email seeking comment from Lanez’s lawyers was not immediately returned. A court hearing on the order is scheduled for 9 January.

The filing says bloggers acting on Lanez behalf continue to cast doubt on her allegations, making false claims including that the gun and bullet fragments in the case are missing.

The petition says the protective order issued to prevent the previous harassment is no longer in effect, which it calls a loophole and flaw in the criminal justice system.

In December 2022, Lanez was convicted of three felonies: assault with a semi-automatic firearm; having a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle; and discharging a firearm with gross negligence.

A judge rejected a motion for a new trial from Lanez’s lawyers, who are appealing his conviction.

In August of last year, he received the 10-year sentence, bringing what seemed to be a conclusion to a three-year legal and cultural saga that saw two careers, and lives, thrown into turmoil.

The petition says that one blogger in particular, Milagro Elizabeth Cooper, whom Megan is suing in a separate lawsuit, is acting as Lanez’s “puppet and mouthpiece”.

She alleges Cooper is spreading falsehoods on social media and YouTube, saying in one video posted to X, “Can you even prove she was shot?” and calling her a “professional victim” in another post.

Cooper’s attorney Michael Pancier declined comment on the California petition, and said in an email that a forthcoming response to the separate federal lawsuit would speak for itself.

A previous motion to dismiss Megan’s lawsuit said it makes “dubious legal claims” and “irrelevant and impertinent allegations”.

Megan testified during the trial that in July 2020, after they left a party at Kylie Jenner’s Hollywood Hills home, Lanez fired the gun at the back of her feet and shouted for her to dance as she walked away from an SUV in which they had been riding. She revealed who had fired the gun only months later.

The case created a firestorm in the hip-hop community, churning up issues including the reluctance of Black victims to speak to police, gender politics in hip-hop, online toxicity, protecting Black women and the ramifications of misogynoir, a particular brand of misogyny Black women experience.

Megan Thee Stallion, 29, was a rising star at the time of the shooting, and her music’s popularity has soared since. She won a Grammy for best new artist in 2021, and she had No 1 singles with Savage, featuring Beyoncé, and as a guest on Cardi B’s WAP.

Lanez, 32, began releasing mixtapes in 2009 and saw a steady rise in popularity, moving on to major label albums. His last two reached the top 10 on Billboard’s charts.

A Virginia man has died after a bear in a tree shot by one of his hunting partners fell on him, state wildlife officials said.

The bizarre, accidental death occurred 9 December in Lunenburg county, which is between Richmond and Danville, Virginia’s department of wildlife resources said in a statement.

A hunting group was following the bear when it ran up the tree, the department said. As the group retreated from the tree, a hunter shot the bear. The animal fell on to another hunter who was standing about 10ft (3 metres) from the bottom of the tree.

The department identified the man as Lester C Harvey, 58, of Phenix, Virginia. A member of the group rendered first aid before Harvey was rushed to two different hospitals. He died from his injuries on Friday, the wildlife department stated.

An obituary for Harvey, a married father of five with eight grandchildren, said he was a self-employed contractor and avid outdoorsman.

Similar incidents have occurred in recent years.

In 2018, a man in Alaska was critically injured after his hunting partner shot a bear on a ridge. The animal tumbled down a slope into the man, who was also struck by rocks dislodged by the bear.

Another man was injured in 2019 after his hunting partner shot a bear in a tree in North Carolina. The bear fell out of the tree and began biting the hunter. The man and the animal then tumbled off a cliff. The hunter was taken to a hospital, while the bear was later found dead.