Donald Trump suffered a humiliating setback on Thursday when Republicans in Congress failed to pass a pared-down spending bill – just one day before a potential government shutdown that could disrupt Christmas travel.

By a vote of 174-235, the House of Representatives rejected the Trump-backed package, hastily assembled by Republican leaders after the president-elect and his billionaire ally Elon Musk scuttled a prior bipartisan deal.

Critics described the breakdown as an early glimpse of the chaos to come when Trump returns to the White House on 20 January. Musk’s intervention via a volley of tweets on his social media platform X was mocked by Democrats as the work of “President Musk”.

“The Musk-Johnson proposal is not serious,” Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, told reporters. “It’s laughable. Extreme Maga Republicans are driving us to a government shutdown.”

Despite Trump’s support, 38 Republicans voted against the new package along with nearly every Democrat, ensuring that it failed to reach the two-thirds threshold needed for passage and leaving the next steps uncertain.

The defiance from within Trump’s own party caught many by surprise.

The latest bill would have extended government funding into March, when Trump will be in the White House and Republicans will control both chambers of Congress. It also would have provided $100bn in disaster relief and suspended the debt. Republicans dropped other elements that had been included in the original package, such as a pay raise for members of Congress and new rules for pharmacy benefit managers.

At Trump’s urging, the new version also would have suspended limits on the national debt for two years – a move that would make it easier to pass the dramatic tax cuts he has promised and set the stage for the federal government’s $36tn in debt to continue to climb.

Before the vote, Democrats and Republicans warned that the other party would be at fault if Congress allowed the government to shut down.

Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, told reporters that the package would avoid disruption, tie up loose ends and make it easier for Congress to cut spending by hundreds of billions of dollars when Trump takes office next year. “Government is too big, it does too many things, and it does few things well,” he said.

But Democrats dismissed the bill as a cover for a budget-busting tax cut that would largely benefit wealthy backers such as Musk, the world’s richest man, while saddling the country with trillions of dollars in additional debt.

Jeffries said during the floor debate: “How dare you lecture America about fiscal responsibility, ever?”

Jamie Raskin, a Democratic congressman, told reporters: “So who is our leader Hakeem Jeffries supposed to negotiate with? Is it Mike Johnson? Is he the speaker of the House. Or is it Donald Trump? Or is it Elon Musk? Or is it somebody else?”

Some Republicans objected that the bill would clear the way for more debt while failing to reduce spending. Congressman Chip Roy said: “I am absolutely sickened by the party that campaigns on fiscal responsibility.”

Even if the bill had passed the House, it would have faced long odds in the Senate, which is currently controlled by Democrats. The White House said Joe Biden opposed the package, adding: “Republicans are doing the bidding of their billionaire benefactors at the expense of hardworking Americans.”

Previous fights over the debt ceiling have spooked financial markets, as a US government default would send credit shocks around the world. The limit has been suspended under an agreement that technically expires on 1 January, although Congress likely will not have to tackle the issue before the spring.

The unrest also threatens to topple Johnson, who was thrust unexpectedly into the speaker’s office last year after the party’s right flank voted out then speaker Kevin McCarthy over a government funding bill. Johnson has repeatedly had to turn to Democrats for help in passing legislation when he has been unable to deliver the votes from his own party. He tried the same manoeuvre on Thursday but fell short.

Several Republicans said they would not vote for Johnson as speaker when Congress returns in January, potentially setting up another tumultuous leadership battle in the weeks before Trump takes office.

Government funding is due to expire at midnight on Friday. If Congress fails to extend that deadline, the US government will begin a partial shutdown that would interrupt funding for everything from border enforcement to national parks and cut off pay cheques for more than 2 million federal workers.

The US Transportation Security Administration has warned that travellers during the busy holiday season could face long lines at airports.

Donald Trump abruptly rejected a bipartisan plan to prevent a government shutdown before the Friday deadline and called for the outright elimination of the debt ceiling.

The US is one of the few countries with a statutory limit on how much debt the federal government can accumulate.

Here’s what to know about the US debt ceiling.

Using the power of the social media platform he owns and the threat of spending millions against Republicans in primaries, Elon Musk effectively tanked a bipartisan congressional spending bill that would have kept the government running.

After their initial failure at Musk’s hands, House Republicans on Thursday scrambled to put together another deal, which they said would provide a few months of spending and, according to reports, suspend the debt limit at Donald Trump’s request. The pared-down spending bill failed to pass the US House in a vote on Thursday evening.

The world’s richest man flexed the muscle he gained during the 2024 election, in which he spent big to help elect Trump and spread rightwing rumors on X. Since the spending bill was introduced, Musk has fired off tweet after tweet attacking it, amplifying false claims about what it includes and dooming its fate.

“‘Shutting down’ the government (which doesn’t actually shut down critical functions btw) is infinitely better than passing a horrible bill,” Musk wrote in one post.

He and the account for the “department of government efficiency” or Doge, a government body that Trump says he’ll create , claimed the bill would significantly raise pay for members of Congress – it wouldn’t. He claimed it includes funding for bioweapons – it does not. He erroneously shared that it would direct billions for a stadium in DC. He offensively used the word “retard” to joke about language changes in the bill, then joked further about his use of the word.

Trump and the vice-president-elect JD Vance opposed the bill, releasing a statement about it, but did not speak out publicly to nearly the degree Musk did. Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt responded to the Muskmania by boosting her boss as the party’s leader. “As soon as President Trump released his official stance on the CR, Republicans on Capitol Hill echoed his point of view. President Trump is the leader of the Republican party. Full stop,” she said.

Musk urged people to contact their lawmakers to kill the bill. And when the bill was effectively killed, he claimed the victory was the voice of the people: “America is for you, the beloved people.”

Musk has no formal role in the second Trump administration aside from being tapped to helm an external group, but he showed this week the extreme influence he has on the party – and on the incoming presidency.

The ordeal is a sign of what’s to come for Musk in his influential role, with a social media platform he can use to go after those he disagrees with. His tweets receive millions of impressions and signal to the rightwing online ecosystem what the lines of attack will be.

He has indicated this is just the beginning, saying no bill should be passed until Trump takes office. He also promised that his group has “no choice” but to go after public servants because “unless @DOGE ends the careers of deceitful, pork-barrel politicians, the waste and corruption will never stop”.

Congressional Republicans mostly cheered him on. Rand Paul, the senator from Texas, suggested on Thursday morning that Musk should become the speaker of the House, noting that the speaker doesn’t have to be a member of Congress, as it is traditionally.

“Nothing would disrupt the swamp more than electing Elon Musk … think about it … nothing’s impossible. (not to mention the joy at seeing the collective establishment, aka ‘uniparty,’ lose their ever-lovin’ minds),” Paul wrote on X.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia congresswoman, said she was open to the idea of Musk as speaker. “DOGE can only truly be accomplished by reigning in Congress to enact real government efficiency. The establishment needs to be shattered just like it was yesterday. This could be the way,” she wrote on X.

Democrats called Musk the president, the co-president and the fourth branch of government, saying he’s shown he’s more powerful than Trump, according to Axios. Mark Pocan, a Democratic representative from Wisconsin, created AI images of Musk controlling Trump, including one where Musk is being sworn in by the incoming president. “We just returned from the future and got this photo from the inauguration,” Pocan wrote.

One piece of misinformation Musk perpetuated about the bill is that it would have given lawmakers an eye-popping 40% raise, bringing their pay from $174,000 to $243,000. This is not true – it does include a cost-of-living raise of 3.8%, or $6,600. The Doge tweet claiming the massive increase has not been corrected.

Dan Crenshaw, a Republican Texas congressman, was caught in the rumor mill of the pay raise. Some accounts claimed he was the one pushing for the raise, which Crenshaw said was false. He responded to those accounts by calling one a “fucking lying piece of shit” and “fucking incel”, and another an “anonymous coward” who was “talking shit without any evidence”.

Musk responded to the claims of Crenshaw’s involvement by saying “Congress should only get a raise when the budget is balanced”.

Crenshaw then came back at Musk with: “I love you Elon but you need to take 5 seconds to check your sources before highlighting bottom feeders looking for clicks.”

Bernie Sanders has criticized “President Elon Musk” over the billionaire’s efforts to derail a bipartisan spending deal that would keep the government running for another three months.

“Democrats and Republicans spent months negotiating a bipartisan agreement to fund our government,” said Sanders, the independent senator for Vermont who votes with Democrats, in a statement.

“The richest man on Earth, President Elon Musk, doesn’t like it. Will Republicans kiss the ring?”

He added: “Billionaires must not be allowed to run our government.”

Sanders was referring to the deal reached by Republicans and Democrats this week to prevent a government shutdown, which would otherwise begin on Saturday. The bill would extend the deadline to 14 March.

With less than 48 hours to go, however, the bill came under attack from Donald Trump and his allies, including JD Vance, Vivek Ramaswamy and Musk, the CEO of various companies including Tesla and SpaceX.

The spending bill also includes $100bn in disaster aid, economic assistance for farmers, a commitment to rebuild Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, potential pay raises for Congress members and a stadium site for the Washington Commanders, among other things.

On Wednesday after the deal was announced, Musk, who is set to co-lead an agency Trump claims he’ll create, the “department of government efficiency” (Doge), opposed the funding bill. He called it “criminal” and said that it “must not pass”.

Musk posted about the bill more than 100 times on X on Wednesday, according to NBC News.

Among his statements, he said that “any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!”

In one post, Musk alleged the bill was “funding bioweapon labs”, even though the screenshot of the text that he linked to refers to “biocontainment laboratories” that aim to conduct biomedical research to support public health and medical preparedness to combat infectious diseases.

In another post, Musk claimed erroneously that the bill includes a 40% pay increase for members of Congress. The Associated Press reported that the bill would remove a pay-freeze provision that could allow for a maximum adjustment of 3.8% – not 40% – and noted that the last time members of Congress got a pay raise was in 2009.

Musk, who has an estimated net worth of $350bn, spent more than $200m to help elect Trump in this year’s election.

Andy Barr, a Republican member of Congress from Kentucky, said his “phone was ringing off the hook” after Musk began criticizing the bill. “The people who elected us are listening to Elon Musk.”

Maxwell Frost, a Democrat member of Congress from Florida, echoed Sanders and decried Musk’s influence, calling him “Republican Unelected Co-President Elon Musk”.

“All he had to do was make a few social media posts,” Frost said.

“The US Congress this week came to an agreement to fund our government,” Sanders said in a social media post on Wednesday. “Elon Musk, who became $200 BILLION richer since Trump was elected, objected.” He added: “This is oligarchy at work.”

Vladimir Putin said the war in Ukraine had made Russia “much stronger” and denied that the fall of his key ally Bashar al-Assad in Syria had hurt Moscow’s standing, as he held a marathon year-end press conference and television call-in seeking to project confidence at home and abroad.

Casting the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as “illegitimate”, Putin said he was ready to meet Donald Trump and discuss peace proposals to end his full-scale invasion, but he repeated his hardline stance that Moscow would keep control of Crimea, together with the four Ukrainian regions he laid claim to in 2022.

The closely orchestrated event, typically an annual cocktail of Kremlin pomp and state TV camp, lasted four and a half hours and included phone-in questions from war bloggers and pensioners, as well as regional journalists vying for the microphone in a studio in Moscow.

Putin appeared largely upbeat and confident, as his troops continued to make grinding progress in Ukraine. “The situation on the battlefield is changing drastically, with movement occurring along the entire frontline,” he boasted. “Every day our fighters are reclaiming territory by the square kilometre.”

He said the Russian military was “advancing toward achieving our goals” in what he calls the special military operation in Ukraine.

Putin said at one point that Moscow was “ready for negotiations and compromises” to end the fighting, but later he pointed to a maximalist position that would involve Ukraine not joining Nato, adopting a neutral status and undergoing some level of demilitarisation, while also demanding that the west lift its sanctions against Russia.

He indicated that the Kremlin would refuse to sign any agreements with Zelenskyy and rejected the idea of a ceasefire, instead advocating for a deal that would provide “long-term guarantees”.

With the incoming Trump administration promising to swiftly end the war in Ukraine, Moscow and Kyiv are warily considering the prospect of talks.

Keith Kellogg, the US president-elect’s nominee for special envoy for the war in Ukraine, said this week that Trump had a vision for ending the war. But a viable path to a peace deal remains elusive as Putin shows no indication of backing down from his demands, which appear to be nonstarters for Ukraine.

Despite media reports suggesting they had frequently kept in touch after Trump left office, Putin claimed he had not spoken with Trump in four years. He said he was “ready to meet with him at any time”.

Touting Russia’s new military might, he suggested a missile “duel” with the US in Ukraine that would show how Russia’s new Oreshnik hypersonic ballistic missile could defeat any American missile defence system. Putin suggested that both sides select a designated target to be protected by US missiles. “We’re ready for such an experiment,” he said.

Zelenskyy, who was in Brussels for talks with European leaders, said Ukraine’s “true guarantee” was Nato, and that European security guarantees on their own would not be sufficient. There was “some political will and understanding that Putin is dangerous … and total understanding that he will not stop in Ukraine”, he said.

On Putin’s proposed missile “duel”, he asked rhetorically: “Do you believe that a reasonable person could say that? No.”

Putin also used his annual event – designed to project power and control by answering handpicked questions – to address a series of sensitive developments that have tarnished Russia’s reputation.

Speaking for the first time about the fall of his close ally Assad, which threatens Moscow’s foothold in the Middle East, Putin rejected the idea that he had suffered a major geopolitical setback.

“The situation that has occurred in Syria is not a defeat for Russia,” Putin insisted, stressing that Moscow had achieved its goal when it intervened on Assad’s side in 2015.

Putin said he had not yet seen Assad since his arrival in Moscow but that he was planning to do so.

He claimed that the “overwhelming majority” of the rebels who had taken control of Syria were interested in Russia maintaining its military bases there, but he said Moscow was still considering whether to retain them.

When asked by a Russian refugee from the Kursk region – where Ukraine launched a surprise incursion that embarrassed Putin and his military establishment – when she could return home, the Russian leader vowed to expel Ukrainian forces from the region but refused to provide a date for when this would happen.

Putin also addressed the assassination of Lt Gen Igor Kirillov in a blast in Moscow, a bold attack widely viewed as a triumph for Ukraine’s intelligence services. Putin described the death of Kirillov as a “grave failure” of his intelligence services.

Recent polling has suggested that some people in the country are growing tired of the invasion, while the war economy has suddenly begun to show serious signs of strain.

A poll by the independent Levada Center found that the most popular questions for Putin would be when the invasion of Ukraine would end and why prices were rising so quickly.

Russia’s central bank was forced to raise its key interest rate to a historic high of 21% in October as inflation continued to weigh on the economy amid surging military spending.

Putin admitted that growing inflation in Russia – which he put at 9.3% year on year – was an “alarming signal” but wages and real disposable income had grown as well. “The situation is stable and secure as a whole,” he said.

In one of his final responses, when asked about how the three-year full-scale invasion had affected him, Putin said he had “become less inclined to joke and have almost stopped laughing”.

He said he had no regrets about his decision to launch the invasion in 2022, adding that in hindsight he would have started the war earlier and “better prepared”.

“Not only do I believe I saved [Russia], I believe that we’ve moved back from the edge of the abyss,” Putin said.

Additional reporting by Jennifer Rankin in Brussels

• Russia has been accused of carrying out a mass cyber-attack on Ukraine’s state registries. Ukrainian deputy prime minister Olha Stefanishyna said on Facebook late on Thursday: “Today the largest external cyber-attack in recent times occurred with Ukraine’s state registries. As a result of this targeted attack, the work of the unified and state registries, which are under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, was temporarily suspended.” Stefanishyna said it was clear the attack was “carried out by the Russians to disrupt the work of the country’s critically important infrastructure” and work was proceeding to restore the systems. Russia did not immediately comment on the claim.

• Vladimir Putin has said he was ready to meet Donald Trump and discuss peace proposals as he used a marathon phone-in event to claim that the war in Ukraine had made Russia “much stronger”. The Russian president said during the annual event that Moscow was “ready for negotiations and compromises” to end the fighting, but later he pointed to a maximalist position that would involve keeping Crimea and other occupied territories, Ukraine not joining Nato, and the lifting of sanctions by the west. He also denied that the fall of his key ally Bashar al-Assad in Syria had hurt Moscow’s standing.

• An Uzbek citizen has been charged over the assassination of a senior Russian general and his assistant in a bombing claimed by Ukraine’s security services, Russian state media said on Thursday. Akhmadzhon Kurbonov was ordered detained by a Moscow court until at least 17 February, Tass state news agency reported, after Tuesday’s bombing that killed Lt Gen Igor Kirillov, the chief of Russia’s chemical weapons unit. Kurbonov is accused of the killings, carrying out a terrorist act and illegally manufacturing explosives, the Russian news agency reported.

• Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Thursday he needed both Europe and the United States on board to secure a durable peace, as he huddled with EU leaders at their final summit before Donald Trump’s inauguration. “I believe that the European guarantees won’t be sufficient for Ukraine,” he said after talks with his EU counterparts. Talk has increasingly turned to ways Europe could help guarantee any ceasefire, with embryonic discussions over a possible deployment of peacekeepers one day. But there are few specifics and Zelenskyy insisted that any steps to secure peace would have to involve the might of the US. Zelenskyy said he was supportive of an initiative mooted by French president Emmanuel Macron to potentially deploy western troops, but it needed to be fleshed out. “If we are talking about a contingent, we need to be specific – how many, what they will do if there is aggression from Russia,” he said. “The main thing is that this is not some artificial story, we need effective mechanisms.” Kyiv and its European allies fear that Trump’s return means the volatile Republican could cut support for Ukraine’s military and force Zelensky to make painful concessions to Moscow.

Israel has launched widespread airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen, killing at least nine people in the port city of Hodeidah, and threatened more attacks against the group, which has launched hundreds of missiles at Israel over the past year.

According to Israeli media, dozens of combat jets along with fuelling and intelligence aircraft took part in the raids. There had been reports beforehand that Israel was planning to hit Yemen with force after a recent increase in Houthi attacks, including two in the past week.

Commenting on the latest Houthi attack, the rebels’ spokesperson Yahya Saree said they had fired hypersonic ballistic missiles at “two specific and sensitive military targets … in the occupied Yaffa area” near Tel Aviv. The claim regarding the type of missile was unverified.

The Israeli military said it was investigating whether an incomplete interception by its aerial defences had led to parts of a missile hitting a school in the area of Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv.

The Iran-backed Houthi forces have been regularly firing long-range missiles at Israel in what they say is a show of solidarity with Palestinians killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza.

Al-Masirah, a Houthi media channel, said a series of “aggressive raids” had been launched against the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, and Hodeidah. It said the airstrikes killed nine people – seven in Salif and two at the Ras Issa oil facility, both in the western province of Hodeidah.

Two sources at the port of Hodeidah told Reuters that an Israeli strike had destroyed a tugboat but the port had several others capable of towing ships to the dock. The strikes also targeted two central power stations south and north of Sana’a, which Al-Masirah said had cut electricity to thousands of families.

Israel’s military said it had “conducted precise strikes on Houthi military targets in Yemen, including ports and energy infrastructure in Sana’a, which the Houthis have been using in ways that effectively contributed to their military actions”.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said in a statement: “After Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Assad regime in Syria, the Houthis are almost the last remaining arm of Iran’s axis of evil. The Houthis are learning, and will learn the hard way, that those who strike Israel will pay a very heavy price for it.”

In comments released by the Israeli air force’s command centre, Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, said: “I warn the leaders of the Houthi terrorist organisation: Israel’s long arm will reach you too.”

The Israel Defense Forces issued a statement accusing the Houthis of “conducting attacks against Israel in contravention of international law” and adding that “the Houthi regime constitutes a threat to the region’s peace and security”.

After the Israel strikes, a Houthi official said the group would “respond to escalation with escalation”.

Muhammad al-Bukhaiti, a member of the Houthi political bureau, said: “The American-Israeli bombings of civilian facilities in Yemen expose the hypocrisy of the west. Our military operations to support Gaza will continue and we will respond to escalation with escalation until the crimes of mass extermination in Gaza stop and the possibility of bringing food, medicine and fuel into the strip is allowed.”

Iran condemned the Israeli strikes in Yemen as a “flagrant violation of the principles and norms of international law and the UN charter”.

Israel’s restriction of Gaza’s water supply to levels below minimum needs amounts to an act of genocide and extermination as a crime against humanity, a human rights report has alleged.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) investigated Israeli attacks on the water supply infrastructure in Gaza over the course of its 14-month war there.

It has accused Israeli forces of deliberate actions intended to cut the availability of clean water so drastically that the population has been forced to resort to contaminated sources, leading to the outbreak of lethal diseases, especially among children.

Israel’s actions have killed many thousands of Palestinians and constitute an act of genocide, HRW argues, citing declarations by ministers in the country’s ruling coalition that Gaza’s water supply would be cut off as evidence of intent.

The 184-page report, Extermination and Acts of Genocide, comes after an Amnesty International report this month concluded that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza.

The medical aid organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) also issued a report on Gaza on Thursday, saying there were “clear signs of ethnic cleansing” and evidence consistent with allegations of genocide.

“What our medical teams have witnessed on the ground throughout this conflict is consistent with the descriptions provided by an increasing number of legal experts and organisations concluding that genocide is taking place in Gaza,” MSF’s secretary general, Christopher Lockyear, said.

“While we don’t have legal authority to establish intentionality, the signs of ethnic cleansing and the ongoing devastation – including mass killings, severe physical and mental health injuries, forced displacement, and impossible conditions of life for Palestinians under siege and bombardment – are undeniable.”

There were provisional orders from the international court of justice earlier in the year for Israel to halt its offensive and take immediate measures to prevent genocide being committed, pending a court ruling on whether it was already committing the crime.

Israel has rejected accusations that it has committed genocide or crimes against humanity in Gaza. The country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has called them “false and outrageous”.

His government has insisted on its right to self-defence after the shock Hamas attack on communities in southern Israel on 7 October 2023 in which 1,200 people were killed and about 250 taken hostage.

The allegations put forward by HRW are not as broad as Amnesty’s, focusing specifically on the Gaza water supply, but the organisation claims the evidence is overwhelming that Israel has used water as a weapon against the Palestinian population collectively, with lethal results.

“Human Rights Watch finds that these Israeli policies have amounted to the crime against humanity of extermination and acts of genocide,” Lama Fakih, the director of HRW’s Middle East and North Africa division, said.

She said the report showed: “Israeli authorities at the most senior level were responsible for the destruction, including the deliberate destruction, of water and sanitation infrastructure, the prevention of repairs to damaged water and sanitation infrastructure and the cutting off or severe restrictions on water, electricity and fuel.

“These acts have likely caused thousands of deaths and will likely continue to cause deaths into the future, including after the cessation of hostilities.”

There have been nearly 670,000 recorded cases of acute watery diarrhoea since the war began, and more than 132,000 cases of jaundice, a sign of hepatitis. Survivable childhood diseases have also become significantly more lethal because of the destruction of Gaza’s hospitals and health clinics.

The report cites a medical source as saying that under “normal circumstances”, 1% of children who contracted hepatitis A died of it. Now it is fatal in 5% to 10% of cases. Dehydration combined with malnutrition has also weakened the population’s immunity to disease in general.

Before the war, 80% of Gaza’s water supply came from wells down to an aquifer under the coastal strip, but that water is contaminated and unfit for human consumption.

Most of Gaza’s drinkable water came from three pipelines controlled by the Israeli water authority and desalination plants.

Those pipelines were cut at the start of the war and only partially reopened. The United Arab Emirates built a water pipeline across the border from Egypt in February, but that supply was cut by damage to the pipeline caused during the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) assault on Rafah.

Gaza’s three main desalination plants halted operations soon after the start of the war and were only able to restart on a partial basis after Israel allowed the UN and other aid agencies to bring in limited quantities of fuel.

Satellite imagery that HRW examined showed that the solar panel arrays powering four of Gaza’s six wastewater treatment plants were razed by Israeli military bulldozers – in northern Gaza, the al-Bureij camp and the Sheikh Ejleen plants in central Gaza and Khan Younis in the south.

Satellite images also showed that 11 of Gaza’s 54 water reservoirs had been completely or largely destroyed, and 20 more showed signs of damage.

A video that appeared on social media in July 2024 showed IDF combat engineers filming themselves blowing up a reservoir in the Tal Sultan district of Rafah.

As evidence of intent, the HRW report points to declarations by Israeli ministers at the onset of the war. On 9 October 2023, the then defence minister, Yoav Gallant, ordered a “complete siege” of Gaza.

“There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed,” he stated. Gallant is the subject of an international criminal court arrest warrant for alleged war crimes.

Israel Katz, then energy minister and now defence minister, echoed the call for water, electricity and fuel supplies to Gaza to be cut off two days after Gallant’s comments.

Fakih said: “Human Rights Watch concludes that Israeli authorities have, over the past year, intentionally inflicted on the Palestinian population in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part.

“This amounts to an act of genocide under the convention.”

The New South Wales police commissioner, Karen Webb, says she has “grave concerns” about the safety of Sydney’s famous New Year’s Eve fireworks proceeding during a train strike – and she could recommend they be cancelled.

“Leaving the city is based on access to transport, including trains, and, if trains aren’t available, and people can’t leave the city, I have very large concerns of the risk that will create to the public, because families won’t be able to get home and they’ll be trapped in the city [with] no way out,” the commissioner told reporters on Friday.

Webb said every year NSW police patrolled the event “on the basis that 250,000 people can come into the city and then safely leave the city”.

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“So I haven’t ruled out that I will recommend to government that we cancel the fireworks. It’s that serious.”

Webb’s comments followed a federal court decision on Thursday which quashed a temporary injunction against ongoing industrial action by rail unions.

The NSW government has since vowed to “take every possible measure” to ensure Sydney’s train network runs smoothly over Christmas and New Year’s Eve, lodging a request for the Fair Work Commission to suspend or terminate industrial action “to protect New Year’s Eve and stop rail disruption”.

The government argued that the action would risk community safety and cause economic harm.

The NSW transport minister, Jo Haylen, said the uncertainty and disruption caused by industrial action at this time of the year was “intolerable”.

Fair work hearings are due next week.

The premier, Chris Minns, said the state government would take on board any advice from police.

“That’s why we’re in court [trying to stop industrial action] – the stakes are high,” he said. “We’ve got a few steps to take before a decision’s being made but, as I said, we would of course take the advice of NSW police and the police commissioner.”

Sydney’s train network was disrupted from late on Thursday after the injunction ended. Services were cancelled and delayed on numerous lines within hours of the federal court decision.

Haylen conceded on Thursday afternoon that the government had no certainty about the train services that would run until a new pay deal was struck.

Rail unions can take more than 200 approved industrial actions – including work stoppages, enforcing distance limits for drivers, orders to deactivate Opal car readers and a ban on the state changing rosters – without needing to provide an official notice period.

Haylen accused the unions of putting “a gun to our head” during negotiations, with the threat of cutting services throughout the rest of December but especially on New Year’s Eve.

“This is not a toy train set,” Haylen said. “You can’t just move it around with a click of your fingers and expect that that’s going to service the millions of people across Sydney that rely on it each and every day.”

Combined unions representing 13,000 rail workers have refused to budge from their demands for a 32% pay rise over four years. The NSW government’s starting offer to the rail unions has been a 9.5% pay rise over three years.

In November NSW police won a pay deal under which wages will rise by up to 40%.

Prosecutors in Peru are investigating a sex-for-votes scandal in the country’s Congress after uncovering an alleged prostitution ring inside the widely-loathed chamber.

The investigation began after hired killers fired more than 40 rounds into a taxi carrying Andrea Vidal, a 27-year-old lawyer who worked in Congress, earlier this month in Lima. She died of her injuries in an intensive care ward on Tuesday. The taxi driver was also killed in the attack.

The public prosecutor’s office subsequently opened an investigation into Vidal’s former boss, Congress’s former lead legal and constitutional adviser, Jorge Torres Saravia, who is accused of sexual exploitation for allegedly running a prostitution ring that hired young women to have sex with lawmakers in exchange for votes. Torres has denied any wrongdoing.

This latest scandal comes as trust and approval for the country’s Congress and its president, Dina Boluarte, have plummeted to levels never before reached, and a crime wave of racketeering and hired killing sweeps the Andean nation.

Prosecutors allege that on Torres’s behalf, Vidal hired young women to work as secretaries and in administrative jobs with different political blocs inside the chamber.

“She would have operated to get votes from parliamentarians,” said Juan Burgos, lawmaker and president of the Congress’s oversight commission.

“This clearly marks the end of any shame in the administrative exercise of power,” said Susel Paredes, an independent lawmaker. “It shows the rot inside the political parties that today have the power to hire staff in Congress.”

She said the main parties had gained “absolute power and part of the power-sharing also involves the sharing of jobs in this institution”.

Alvaro Henzler, who leads Transparencia, a Peruvian pro-democracy NGO, said recent years has seen “an accelerated loss of the minimum ethical and moral standards that any public official in authority should have”.

“Our politicians, both Congress and president, have reached their lowest approval ratings in history,” he said.

He accused lawmakers of passing laws that erode democratic standards and encourage organized crime to protect themselves and their peers from corruption investigations.

“That reflects the sorry state of our democracy,” Henzler said.

Boluarte – whose approval rating reached a record low of 3% according to a poll this month – is being investigated for alleged illicit enrichment after a raid on her home in April amid allegations swirling around her collection of Rolex watches and luxury jewellery. She has denied any wrongdoing.

Prosecutors in Peru are investigating a sex-for-votes scandal in the country’s Congress after uncovering an alleged prostitution ring inside the widely-loathed chamber.

The investigation began after hired killers fired more than 40 rounds into a taxi carrying Andrea Vidal, a 27-year-old lawyer who worked in Congress, earlier this month in Lima. She died of her injuries in an intensive care ward on Tuesday. The taxi driver was also killed in the attack.

The public prosecutor’s office subsequently opened an investigation into Vidal’s former boss, Congress’s former lead legal and constitutional adviser, Jorge Torres Saravia, who is accused of sexual exploitation for allegedly running a prostitution ring that hired young women to have sex with lawmakers in exchange for votes. Torres has denied any wrongdoing.

This latest scandal comes as trust and approval for the country’s Congress and its president, Dina Boluarte, have plummeted to levels never before reached, and a crime wave of racketeering and hired killing sweeps the Andean nation.

Prosecutors allege that on Torres’s behalf, Vidal hired young women to work as secretaries and in administrative jobs with different political blocs inside the chamber.

“She would have operated to get votes from parliamentarians,” said Juan Burgos, lawmaker and president of the Congress’s oversight commission.

“This clearly marks the end of any shame in the administrative exercise of power,” said Susel Paredes, an independent lawmaker. “It shows the rot inside the political parties that today have the power to hire staff in Congress.”

She said the main parties had gained “absolute power and part of the power-sharing also involves the sharing of jobs in this institution”.

Alvaro Henzler, who leads Transparencia, a Peruvian pro-democracy NGO, said recent years has seen “an accelerated loss of the minimum ethical and moral standards that any public official in authority should have”.

“Our politicians, both Congress and president, have reached their lowest approval ratings in history,” he said.

He accused lawmakers of passing laws that erode democratic standards and encourage organized crime to protect themselves and their peers from corruption investigations.

“That reflects the sorry state of our democracy,” Henzler said.

Boluarte – whose approval rating reached a record low of 3% according to a poll this month – is being investigated for alleged illicit enrichment after a raid on her home in April amid allegations swirling around her collection of Rolex watches and luxury jewellery. She has denied any wrongdoing.

Fifty-five US-bound migrants have died and 180 children have been abandoned this year while crossing the treacherous Darién jungle from Colombia, according to Panama’s president, José Raúl Mulino.

Despite dangers including fast-flowing rivers, wild animals and criminal gangs, the Darién is a key corridor for Venezuelan and other migrants traveling overland from South America through Central America and Mexico to the United States.

“Fifty-five people have died in 2024 on the Darién route,” Mulino said during his weekly press conference.

Panamanian authorities suspect that the death toll may be higher, as many bodies cannot be recovered from the inaccessible jungle.

The dead include 10 people who drowned in July while trying to cross a swollen river during the wet season.

So far this year, 300,000 migrants have crossed the Darien, 41% less than in 2023, when a record 520,000 people made the dangerous journey, according to Panama’s government.

Mulino said that “180 unaccompanied minors” have been abandoned in the Panamanian jungle this year and are now being looked after by child care institutions.

“It’s a very serious problem because as far as I understand they are minors of different ages,” including young children, he said.

According to international organizations, some of the children were alone because their relatives died or got lost, while others were traveling unaccompanied.

Panama and Mexico have come under increased pressure from the United States to tackle the highly contentious migration issue.

Panama has closed several routes in the Darién region and begun deporting migrants on flights funded by Washington.

The US deported more than 270,000 immigrants in a recent 12-month period, the highest amount annually in a decade, according to a government report released on Thursday.

The deportations were nearly double from 142,580 in the same period a year earlier and came as part of a broader push by Joe Biden to reduce illegal immigration.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) deported people to 192 countries in fiscal year 2024, which ended on 30 September, according to the agency’s annual enforcement report. The tally was the highest since 2014, which saw the removal of 315,943 people, and higher than any year of Donald Trump’s 2017-2021 administration, according to US government statistics.

The US was able to increase forced removals with more deportation flights, including on weekends, and streamlined travel procedures for people sent to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Although Biden took office pledging to roll back Trump’s highly restrictive immigration policies, he toughened his enforcement approach as the US saw high levels of illegal immigration. Trump won another term in the White House in November promising to deport record numbers of immigrants in the US illegally as part of a broader immigration crackdown.

Despite the large number of deportations under the Biden administration, Karoline Leavitt, Trump transition spokesperson, argued that they were insignificant compared with the high levels of illegal immigration during his presidency.

“On day one, President Trump will fix the immigration and national security nightmare that Joe Biden created by launching the largest mass deportation operation of illegal criminals in United States history,” she said in a statement.

Some 11 million immigrants lacked legal status or had temporary protections in 2022, according to government and thinktank estimates, a figure that some analysts now place at 13 million to 14 million.

The incoming Trump administration plans to tap resources across the federal government to power the planned deportation initiative, Reuters reported last month. The Biden administration has helped lay the groundwork to expand immigration jails, according to a Guardian investigation, which is expected to boost Trump’s plan for the mass deportation of undocumented people.

Trump tried to increase deportations during his first term with limited success. Ice removed 267,000 immigrants in fiscal year 2019, fewer than most years under Trump’s Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama.

When looking at both deportations by Ice and returns to Mexico by US border authorities, Biden was responsible for more in fiscal year 2023 than any Trump year.

While deportations rose in fiscal year 2024, the number of Ice arrests of immigrants living in the US illegally dropped by 33% compared with the previous year, the agency’s annual report said, attributing the falloff to more officers assisting with border security operations.

Peter Mandelson is set to become Britain’s next ambassador to the US, the first time a politician has been appointed to the role for almost half a century.

Keir Starmer is about to announce that Lord Mandelson, a former Labour minister and European commissioner for trade, has been given the role. The Guardian understands he will take over as Donald Trump begins his second term as president.

The news comes as the UK prepares for challenging changes in trade relations with the US under the president-elect. The prime minister’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeeny, travelled to Washington for talks with Trump’s incoming White House team earlier this month.

The prime minister believes that Mandelson, a former Labour MP who now sits in the House of Lords, has the trade expertise and networking abilities to bolster the UK’s interests during this “delicate period” for its relationship with the US, according to the Times.

He served as business secretary under Gordon Brown, was made president of the Board of Trade in 1998 and was the European Commissioner for Trade in 2004.

A government source told the BBC: “The fact the prime minister has chosen to make a political appointment and sent Lord Mandelson to Washington shows just how importantly we see our relationship with the Trump administration.

“We’re sending someone close to the prime minister with unrivalled political and policy experience, particularly on the crucial issue of trade. He’s the ideal candidate to represent the UK’s economic and security interests in the USA.”

Trump has promised to issue universal tariffs of up to 20%, which will hit all goods imported into the US from overseas and is likely to drive up the cost of these goods for American consumers.

In November, Stephen Moore, one of Trump’s senior economic advisers, said that if the UK moved towards the US model of “economic freedom” there would be more “willingness” by the incoming administration to agree a trade deal between the two countries.

Speaking to BBC’s Today programme, Moore said: “The UK really has to choose between the Europe economic model of more socialism and the US model, which is more based on a free enterprise system. I think the UK is kind of caught in the middle of these two forms of an economic model.

“I believe that Britain would be better off moving towards more of the American model of economic freedom.”

But Starmer recently rejected warnings that Trump could pressure the UK to, in effect, pick sides between the US and the EU. “Against the backdrop of these dangerous times, the idea that we must choose between our allies, that somehow we’re with either America or Europe, is plain wrong,” he said.

“I reject it utterly. [Clement] Attlee did not choose between allies. [Winston] Churchill did not choose. The national interest demands that we work with both.”

He added that he would “never turn away” from the UK’s special relationship with the US. “This is not about sentimentality,” he said. “It is about hard-headed realism. Time and again the best hope for the world and the surest way to serve our mutual national interest has come from our two nations working together. It still does.”

Mandelson, a Labour veteran who worked as the party’s director of communications in the 1980s, previously told the Times’s How to Win an Election podcast that Britain must find a path between the US and the EU if Donald Trump goes ahead with his pledge to introduce blanket tariffs on goods.

“We have got to navigate our way through this and have, I’m afraid, the best of both worlds,” he said. “We have got to find a way to have our cake and eat it.”

Danny Masterson has filed an appeal against his 2023 rape conviction, questioning the plaintiffs’ credibility and claiming he didn’t receive a fair trial.

In a 244-page brief submitted to the California state court of appeal on Wednesday, Masterson’s lawyers Cliff Gardner and Lazuli Whitt said: “It is true, of course, that a defendant is not entitled to a perfect trial. He is, however, still entitled to a fair one … Danny Masterson received neither. Reversal is required.”

In May 2023 Masterson, best known for his role on That ’70s Show, was convicted of two counts of rape against two women in 2003, while a third charge relating to a third plaintiff was quashed. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

During that trial, prosecutors argued that the prominent Scientologist used his role in the church – of which all three plaintiffs were also members at the time – to avoid accountability for the assaults.

Masterson has consistently insisted he is not guilty, and that sex with all three plaintiffs was consensual.

The church said in a statement after the verdict that the “testimony and descriptions of Scientology beliefs” during the trial were “uniformly false”.

“The church has no policy prohibiting or discouraging members from reporting criminal conduct of anyone – Scientologists or not – to law enforcement,” the statement said.

Gardner and Whitt claim that Masterson’s rights were violated by the inclusion of Scientology doctrine as part of the trial, and accuse the plaintiffs of giving “falsified” evidence.

They also argue that the court violated Masterson’s right to a fair trial by excluding evidence which they say proves that the plaintiffs, referred to in documents as JB and NT, had “a direct financial interest in the outcome of the trial”, as it affected a pending civil lawsuit against Masterson and the Church of Scientology in which they are seeking damages.

In 2019, JB, NT and members of their respective families filed a civil suit alleging Masterson and the church harassed them after the women went to police with their sexual assault claims in 2017. That civil suit referred to the incidents involving Masterson that became the subject of his 2023 criminal trial and conviction, but did not allege rape or seek damages, as the civil statute of limitations had expired.

Masterson’s lawyers say the 2023 trial court “excluded evidence showing that if the complaining witnesses obtained forcible rape convictions against Mr Masterson, state law would provide a new, one-year window within which they could file rape-based causes of action” in a civil suit, thus “entitling them to a dramatically greater damage award than the existing lawsuit for harassment damages”.

“And predictably, within one year of the criminal verdict, both JB and NT moved to amend their pending lawsuit to do just that,” the lawyers added.

“The trial court’s ruling is irreconcilable with more than a century of California law recognising the common-sense principle that a witness’ financial stake in the outcome of trial is plainly relevant to credibility.”

The civil case against Masterson and the Church of Scientology is set to go to trial in Los Angeles superior court in 2025.

• Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html

A ticket inspector’s bilingual greeting to a Flemish train passenger has created a political war of words – and an official complaint – in language-divided Belgium.

The country’s language watchdog is investigating after a Dutch-speaking commuter protested a conductor’s use of “bonjour” – French for “good morning” – to welcome him onboard during a rush-hour train from Mechelen, in Flanders, to the capital, Brussels, in October.

Writing on Facebook, Ilyass Alba, the French-speaking conductor, said that on the day in question he greeted passengers entering his carriage with a resounding “goeiemorgen, bonjour”.

The use of both the Dutch and French greetings was not good enough for one Dutch-speaking passenger, who told him off, saying: “We’re not in Brussels yet, you have to use Dutch only!”

The passenger was technically right, as under Belgium’s complex language rules conductors should in theory use both languages only in Brussels and a few other bilingual regions.

“The file is under review,” the Permanent Commission for Linguistic Control said, adding it would ask the national railway operator, SNCB, for more information on its enforcement of language policies.

The affair has caused a stir in Belgium, where politics largely follow a linguistic divide pitting northern Dutch-speakers against French-speaking southerners.

Georges Gilkinet, the transport minister and a French-speaking environmentalist, came to Alba’s defence, saying that in a small country such as Belgium, regional borders are crossed all the time.

SNCB conductors should prioritise giving “a quality welcome” and ensuring all passengers are “properly and fully informed”, Gilkinet said after being quizzed in parliament over the issue. “Using several languages to say hello does not shock me,” he added.

Some Dutch-speaking politicians disagreed.

“We can’t just throw our language legislation overboard like that,” said Sammy Mahdi, head of the CD&V, a party of Flemish Christian democrats.

SNCB, for its part, called for “more flexibility” in applying language rules. “Saying hello in several languages is just nice, we can only thank our conductors for that,” a spokesperson told AFP.