A major international crisis is “much more likely” in Donald Trump’s second term given the president-elect’s “inability to focus” on foreign policy, a former US ambassador to the United Nations (UN) has warned.

John Bolton, who at 17 months was Trump’s longest serving national security adviser, delivered a scathing critique of his lack of knowledge, interest in facts or coherent strategy. He described Trump’s decision-making as driven by personal relationships and “neuron flashes” rather than a deep understanding of national interests.

Bolton also dismissed Trump’s claims during this year’s election campaign that only he could prevent a third world war while bringing a swift end to the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine.

“It’s typical Trump: it’s all braggadocio,” Bolton told the Guardian. “The world is more dangerous than when he was president before. The only real crisis we had was Covid, which is a long term crisis and not against a particular foreign power but against a pandemic.

“But the risk of an international crisis of the 19th century variety is much more likely in a second Trump term. Given Trump’s inability to focus on coherent decision making, I’m very worried about about how that might look.”

Bolton, 76, is a longtime foreign policy hardliner who supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq and has called for US military action against Iran, North Korea and other countries over their attempts to build or procure nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

He was George W Bush’s UN ambassador for 16 months after serving as a state department arms negotiator and in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush. Bolton was Trump’s national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019.

Bolton recalled: “What I believed was that, like every American president before him, the weight of the responsibilities, certainly in national security, the gravity of the issues that he was confronting, the consequences of his decisions, would discipline his thinking in a way that would produce serious outcomes.

“It turned out I was wrong. By the time I got there a lot of patterns of behaviour had already been set that were never changed and it could well be, even if I had been there earlier, I couldn’t have affected it. But it was clear pretty soon after I got there that intellectual discipline wasn’t in the Trump vocabulary.”

In a sharp departure from traditional US foreign policy, Trump has campaigned under an “America first” banner advocating isolationism, non-interventionism and trade protectionism, including significant tariffs.

Bolton agreed with “a lot” of Trump’s decisions during his first term but found they had all the coherence of “a series of neuron flashes”, he said. “He doesn’t have a philosophy, doesn’t do policy as we understand that, he doesn’t have a national security strategy.

“I said in my book his decisions are like an archipelago of dots. You can try and draw lines between them but even he can’t draw lines between them. You try and incrementally get one right decision after another. At least that’s what his advisers thought: that we could string enough decisions together. But that’s not the way he looked at it.”

The 45th president “could be charming”, Bolton acknowledged, and placed an emphasis on personal relations with autocrats such as Xi Jinping of China, Kim Jong-un of North Korea and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. But he lacked the competence required for the job and showed a blatant disregard for the national security briefing that presidents receive daily.

“He doesn’t know much about foreign policy. He’s not a big reader. He reads newspapers from time to time but briefing papers are almost never read because he doesn’t think they’re important. He doesn’t think these facts are important. He thinks he looks the other guy across the table in the eye and they make a deal and that’s what’s important.”

Trump believes he has a friendship with Putin, Bolton added. “I don’t know what Putin thinks his relationship is with Trump but he believes he knows how to play Trump, that Trump’s an easy mark. Trump doesn’t see that at all.

“If you put everything on the basis of personal relations and you don’t understand how the person you’re talking about on the other side views you, that’s a real lack of situational awareness that can only cause trouble.”

Trump has repeatedly praised authoritarians such as Putin and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and not ruled out withdrawing from Nato. Asked about Trump’s now notorious affinity with strongmen, the former national security adviser replied: “I suppose a shrink would have a better a better grasp of it but I think Trump likes being a big guy, likes other big guys.

“These other big guys don’t have pesky independent legislatures and judiciaries and they do big guy things that Trump can’t do and he just wishes he could do. It’s a lot more fun if you don’t have the kinds of constraints that constitutional governments impose.”

In recent days, Trump has again rattled diplomats by threatening to take back the Panama Canal, calling for the US to buy Greenland and suggesting that Canada become the 51st state. Kim Darroch, who was Britain’s ambassador to Washington for four years from 2016, told Sky News that Trump’s second term will be “like a 24/7 bar-room brawl”.

Bolton agrees that it could be even more erratic and disruptive than the first: “He now feels more confident in his judgement having been re-elected, which will make it even harder to impose any kind of intellectual decision-making discipline.”

Trump has said he would end Russia’s war on Ukraine within a day, prompting fears of a compromise that halts US military aid and obliges Ukraine to surrender territory. Bolton commented: “I’m very concerned that he wants this off the table. He thinks this is Biden’s war.

“He said in the campaign, if he had been president, it never would have happened which, of course, is not provable or disprovable. He wants it behind him which strongly implies he doesn’t care on what terms and I suspect he doesn’t care. And that’s very dangerous for Ukraine.”

He praised Trump’s picks of Senator Marco Rubio and Congressman Mike Waltz for the positions of secretary of state and national security adviser respectively. But he described the nominations of Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence and Kash Patel for director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as “really dangerous”, arguing that Gabbard’s opinions belong on “a different planet”.

Gabbard is a longtime critic of the hawkish foreign policy and national security establishment, famously dubbed “the blob” in 2016 by Ben Rhodes, then Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser. Bolton, however, rejects the characterisation.

“I don’t think there’s a foreign policy blob,” he said. “There’s a liberal Democratic blob that’s pretty problematic but the Republican party remains essentially Reaganite in its outlook. Trump is an aberration and, when he leaves the political scene, the party will snap back. We’re in the grips, though, of Trump for four more years and a lot of damage could take place during that period.”

Toyota is reportedly donating $1m to Donald Trump’s inauguration.

The report, per Reuters citing a company spokesperson, comes one day after Ford and General Motors said they would donate $1m each to the president-elect’s inaugural fund. The two US automakers will also provide vehicles to the 20 January event, the outlet reported.

The donations follow similar $1m contributions by Amazon and Meta as large companies look to cozy up to Trump in return for favorable treatment after he is in office. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has also said he would make a personal donation of $1m.

Trump’s proposed tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada would affect many automakers and could deliver supply chain shocks across the auto industry.

The incoming president campaigned on ending what he called Joe Biden’s “electric vehicle mandate” on day one of returning to the White House.

Trump’s transition team is reportedly planning to kill a tax incentive aimed at boosting production and sales of EVs that could have grave implications for an already stalling EV transition in US.

Ford’s CEO Jim Farley told reporters earlier this month he was excited about working with the incoming administration “to make sure that we’re rewarded for our commitment to America and Michigan”.

“[Given] Ford’s employment profile and importance in the US economy and manufacturing, you can imagine the administration will be very interested in Ford’s point of view,” he said.

General Motors CEO Mary Barra also expressed cautious optimism and said she believed the company and Trump were “goal-aligned”.

“We want a strong economy. We want a strong manufacturing base in this country. We agree automotive jobs are important. I think there’s a lot that we could work on,” Barra said, according to the Detroit Free Press.

Trump is offering bonus perks to donors who give at least $1m, including tickets to activities planned around the inauguration, such as dinners with Trump, his cabinet picks and incoming vice-president JD Vance, according to the New York Times.

Toyota is reportedly donating $1m to Donald Trump’s inauguration.

The report, per Reuters citing a company spokesperson, comes one day after Ford and General Motors said they would donate $1m each to the president-elect’s inaugural fund. The two US automakers will also provide vehicles to the 20 January event, the outlet reported.

The donations follow similar $1m contributions by Amazon and Meta as large companies look to cozy up to Trump in return for favorable treatment after he is in office. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has also said he would make a personal donation of $1m.

Trump’s proposed tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada would affect many automakers and could deliver supply chain shocks across the auto industry.

The incoming president campaigned on ending what he called Joe Biden’s “electric vehicle mandate” on day one of returning to the White House.

Trump’s transition team is reportedly planning to kill a tax incentive aimed at boosting production and sales of EVs that could have grave implications for an already stalling EV transition in US.

Ford’s CEO Jim Farley told reporters earlier this month he was excited about working with the incoming administration “to make sure that we’re rewarded for our commitment to America and Michigan”.

“[Given] Ford’s employment profile and importance in the US economy and manufacturing, you can imagine the administration will be very interested in Ford’s point of view,” he said.

General Motors CEO Mary Barra also expressed cautious optimism and said she believed the company and Trump were “goal-aligned”.

“We want a strong economy. We want a strong manufacturing base in this country. We agree automotive jobs are important. I think there’s a lot that we could work on,” Barra said, according to the Detroit Free Press.

Trump is offering bonus perks to donors who give at least $1m, including tickets to activities planned around the inauguration, such as dinners with Trump, his cabinet picks and incoming vice-president JD Vance, according to the New York Times.

American Airlines on Tuesday lifted an hour-long ground stop of all its flights in the US due to an unspecified technical issue, a notice on the US aviation regulator’s website showed.

American Airlines flights arriving and departing Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky international airport showed short delays Tuesday morning, but it’s unclear if those are tied to this technical issue or something else.

The ground stop, ahead of the busy Christmas travel, had threatened the holiday plans of thousands.

“A technical issue is affecting American flights this morning. Our teams are working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible, and we apologize to our customers for the inconvenience,” the company had said in a statement following the ground stop.

American operates thousands of flights per day to more than 350 destinations in more than 60 countries.

Shares of the carrier clawed back lost ground and were marginally down before the bell.

The US Federal Aviation Administration in a statement referred Reuters to the airline, reiterating that the carrier had reported a technical issue.

American was responding to comments on X as numerous users posted there, as well as on Bluesky and Facebook.

“Hey, @AmericanAir just tell us whether we should go home or not. Please don’t make us wait in the airport for hours,” wrote one user.

The grounding comes months after airlines were hit by a global tech outage tied to Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform and a software issue at cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.

Two years ago, Southwest Airlines experienced a meltdown with its systems during the holidays that led to 16,900 flight cancellations and stranded 2 million passengers. It was eventually fined $140m in the largest-ever civil penalty for a travel disruption.

Pope Francis opened the “Holy Door” of St Peter’s Basilica on Christmas Eve, launching the jubilee year of Catholic celebrations set to draw more than 30 million pilgrims to Rome.

The 88-year-old pontiff, who has recently been suffering from a cold, was pushed in a wheelchair up to the huge, ornate bronze door and knocked on it, before the door opened.

In a ceremony watched on screens by thousands of faithful outside in St Peter’s Square, the Argentine pontiff went through the door followed by a procession, as the bells of the Vatican basilica rang out.

Over the next 12 months, Catholic pilgrims will pass through the door – which is normally bricked up – by tradition benefiting from a “plenary indulgence”, a type of forgiveness for their sins.

Pope Francis then presided over the Christmas Eve mass in St Peter’s, where he turned once again to the victims of war. “We think of wars, of machine-gunned children, of bombs on schools and hospitals,” he said in his homily.

The pope drew an angry response from Israel at the weekend for condemning the “cruelty” of Israel’s strikes in Gaza that killed children. He was due to deliver his traditional Christmas Day blessing, Urbi et Orbi (to the city and the world), at midday on Wednesday.

Some 700 security officers are being deployed around the Vatican and Rome for the jubilee celebrations, with measures further tightened following Friday’s car-ramming attack on a Christmas market in Germany.

Much of Rome has also been given a facelift in preparation, with monuments such as the Trevi Fountain and the Ponte Sant’Angelo cleaned up and roads redesigned to improve the flow of traffic.

Many residents have questioned how the Eternal City – where key sites are already overcrowded and public transport is unreliable – will cope with millions more visitors next year.

Key jubilee projects were only finished in the last few days after months of work that turned much of the city into a building site.

Inaugurating a new road tunnel at Piazza Pia next to the Vatican on Monday, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said it had taken a “little civil miracle” to get the project finished in time.

Over the course of the next few days, holy doors will be opened in Rome’s three major basilicas and in Catholic churches around the world.

On Thursday, Pope Francis will open a holy door at Rebibbia prison in Rome and preside over a mass in a show of support for the inmates.

Organised by the church every 25 years, the jubilee is intended as a period of reflection and penance, and is marked by a long list of cultural and religious events, from masses to exhibitions, conferences and concerts.

“It’s my first time in Rome and for me to be here at the Vatican, I feel already blessed,” said Lisbeth Dembele, a 52-year-old French tourist visiting St Peter’s Square earlier.

The jubilee, whose motto this year is “Pilgrims of Hope”, is aimed at the world’s almost 1.4 billion Catholics, but also aims to reach a wider audience.

Traditions have evolved since the first such event back in 1300, launched by Pope Boniface VIII. This year, the Vatican has provided pilgrims with online registration and multilingual phone apps to navigate events.

Jubilee 2025 also has a mascot named Luce (meaning Light in Latin) inspired by Japanese anime cartoons. The event will see groups from around the world come to Rome throughout 2025, from sports and business figures to migrants, artists and young people.

Among the groups registered on the official site is Italian LGBTQ group La Tenda di Gionata, reflecting the pope’s call for the church to be open to all.

In his homily, the pope said the jubilee was a time for “spiritual renewal” and hope, including for “our mother Earth, disfigured by profiteering” and “for the poorer countries burdened beneath unfair debts”.

As well as the regular jubilees every 25 years, the church has organised extraordinary jubilees, the most recent in 2016. The next is in 2033 to commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

DJ Alfredo, who had a significant influence on Ibiza becoming a global centre for dance music culture, has died aged 71.

Amnesia, the club where he held a residency during the 1980s, announced the news, writing on Instagram: “Thank you for the nights and beats we shared together. Your music and vision shaped the sound of Balearic Beat and the soul of Amnesia. So many memories were made through your energy, your legacy will live on our dancefloor forever. You will never be forgotten.”

No cause of death was given, but he had been unwell in recent years, suffering a stroke in 2021. An appeal for help with medical costs was launched in March while he lived in a retirement home.

Born Alfredo Fiorito in Argentina in 1953, he emigrated in 1976 to Paris, then Madrid, then Ibiza, living a casual existence selling candles and clothes while picking up DJ experience at a bar. “A guy I knew who had a club called Amnesia decided to go to Thailand,” he explained to the Guardian, regarding the farmhouse venue. “He gave me the keys and said I was in charge … We opened at 3am and went on until midday, so people would come down after the other clubs shut.”

His Amnesia residency was characterised by a complete lack of snobbery and an equally total embrace of heady, sensual music across the genre spectrum, from high-gloss soft rock to pop, reggae, disco, funk, electro and early house: a euphoric blend that came to define the bohemian spirit of the Balearic island. Ulises Braun, a bar owner, later described mid-80s Amnesia to the Guardian: “Everything was spontaneous and different. It was a wild time. There were no laws: people were making love on the dancefloor, drinking and dancing, taking litres of liquid ecstasy between them.”

A group of young British DJs – Danny Rampling, Paul Oakenfold, Nicky Holloway and Johnny Walker – collectively had a Damascene moment witnessing Alfredo performing at Amnesia in the late 1980s. Rampling later described it as a “free state where anything went … Alfredo had that natural flair, a very artistic Spanish way of putting records together and telling a story. And every record he played had its own distinctive sound.”

Inspired by what they’d heard, Rampling set up the club night Shoom in London, which similarly pushed the sound of house amid an open-minded music policy, and ushered in a new era of British clubbing that took house out of the illegal rave scene and into nightclubs. “In England at that time, clubs only played one type of music, and London was full of attitude,” Oakenfold later said. “But at Amnesia you had 7,000 people dancing to Cyndi Lauper. Total freedom.”

Alfredo himself explained the non-hierarchical appeal: “The people and the music made it. You’d get a young guy talking to an old person – and listening to each other.”

Ibiza continued to become a magnet for dance music, and Alfredo’s star continued to rise as he took further residences at Pacha and Space, among others, often DJing every night of the week. He also played internationally, including in east Asia throughout the 1990s, and continued to DJ regularly thereafter.

Among those paying tribute to him was Sister Bliss of the English dance group Faithless, who said: “Safe to say he changed the world of music for the better.”

Defected Records said: “Rest in peace to one of the greatest to ever do it. Ibiza would not be the same without him.”

Vocalist Rowetta said: “He was a legend when I first played [Ibiza nightclub] KU in 1990 & he always will be.”

Nigel Farage has said he would be willing to help Peter Mandelson negotiate with the Trump administration, after the Labour grandee was confirmed as Westminster’s new ambassador to the US.

Lord Mandelson has indicated he believes the Reform UK leader, a friend of Donald Trump, could serve as a link between the UK and the Republican president-elect.

But Downing Street would not be drawn on whether Keir Starmer would like the political veteran to work with Farage, saying when asked only that the prime minister had “already started to begin to build a relationship” with Trump.

Farage has previously offered to use his relationship with Trump and his team to act as a bridge between them and Downing Street. He told the Telegraph he would be willing to work with people in Labour if it was in the “national interest”.

“I am no fan of any of the people in the Labour party, but if it is in the national interest I have always thought I could be a useful asset if they want to use that – but if they don’t, more fool them,” the Clacton MP said.

Farage claimed he could help with talks on trade, tariffs, intelligence-sharing and countering terrorism. He said: “I know these people, and in terms of trade, in terms of defence and in terms of intelligence, the US is our most important relationship in the world – forget Brussels.”

He said free trade deal talks were likely to be done sector by sector. “I would help even if it is to the government’s benefit because it is in the national interest. But they are so split they might not want to take up my offer.”

Mandelson will take up the role in early 2025. As a former EU trade commissioner and UK secretary of state for trade, Mandelson’s CV is seen as a strength amid concerns over what the second Trump presidency could mean for the UK, with the Republican politician having pledged to introduce wide-ranging tariffs.

However, the Labour grandee’s past remarks about Trump – who he once described as “little short of a white nationalist and racist” – may yet plague attempts to foster close US-UK relations. At the weekend Foreign Office sources defended Mandelson after a Trump campaign adviser had called him “an absolute moron”.

Nigel Farage has said he would be willing to help Peter Mandelson negotiate with the Trump administration, after the Labour grandee was confirmed as Westminster’s new ambassador to the US.

Lord Mandelson has indicated he believes the Reform UK leader, a friend of Donald Trump, could serve as a link between the UK and the Republican president-elect.

But Downing Street would not be drawn on whether Keir Starmer would like the political veteran to work with Farage, saying when asked only that the prime minister had “already started to begin to build a relationship” with Trump.

Farage has previously offered to use his relationship with Trump and his team to act as a bridge between them and Downing Street. He told the Telegraph he would be willing to work with people in Labour if it was in the “national interest”.

“I am no fan of any of the people in the Labour party, but if it is in the national interest I have always thought I could be a useful asset if they want to use that – but if they don’t, more fool them,” the Clacton MP said.

Farage claimed he could help with talks on trade, tariffs, intelligence-sharing and countering terrorism. He said: “I know these people, and in terms of trade, in terms of defence and in terms of intelligence, the US is our most important relationship in the world – forget Brussels.”

He said free trade deal talks were likely to be done sector by sector. “I would help even if it is to the government’s benefit because it is in the national interest. But they are so split they might not want to take up my offer.”

Mandelson will take up the role in early 2025. As a former EU trade commissioner and UK secretary of state for trade, Mandelson’s CV is seen as a strength amid concerns over what the second Trump presidency could mean for the UK, with the Republican politician having pledged to introduce wide-ranging tariffs.

However, the Labour grandee’s past remarks about Trump – who he once described as “little short of a white nationalist and racist” – may yet plague attempts to foster close US-UK relations. At the weekend Foreign Office sources defended Mandelson after a Trump campaign adviser had called him “an absolute moron”.

An award recently given to actor and director Justin Baldoni, honoring him for “courage and compassion in advocating on behalf of women and girls”, was rescinded following a complaint filed by actor Blake Lively accusing him of sexual harassment and a coordinated effort to damage her reputation.

The Voices of Solidarity Award was granted to Baldoni on 9 December by the Vital Voices Global Partnership, an international non-profit organization focused on women’s empowerment.

In a statement on 23 December, the organization said Baldoni’s alleged “abhorrent conduct” detailed in Lively’s filing are “contrary to the values of Vital Voices and the spirit of the Award”.

On 21 December, Lively filed a complaint against Baldoni, who had been her director and co-star of the film It Ends With Us. The complaint alleges Baldoni sexually harassed Lively and then coordinated efforts to damage her reputation through a “social manipulation” campaign.

Baldoni has starred and directed various films and TV shows, most notably the CW’s Jane The Virgin, and he is the the co-owner of Wayfarer Studios, the film company that produced It Ends With Us, a romantic drama film released earlier this year.

Per the complaint, Baldoni and Wayfarer CEO Jamey Heath engaged in “inappropriate misconduct” with Lively and other cast members throughout the production of the film. The conditions were allegedly so bad, the complaint states, that on 4 January, Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds met with Baldoni, Heath and other producers to discuss a list of demands “to address the hostile work environment” that nearly derailed the production of the film.

The list included demands that Baldoni and Heath immediately stop engaging in non-consensual inappropriate and personal conversations about sex with Lively and other women on set. It also included requirements for filming sexual and intimate scenes for the film. All parties agreed to implement and follow what was discussed during the meeting.

However, prior to the film’s release, Baldoni and Heath reportedly hired a crisis public relations expert to go on the offensive against Lively. According to messages included in the complaint, they engaged in a coordinated push to damage Lively’s reputation by elevating negative stories about her on social media. The public relations effort was reportedly successful. “She was branded tone-deaf, difficult to work with, a bully,” the New York Times wrote.

In a statement to the Times, Baldoni’s attorney said Lively’s claims “are completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious with an intent to publicly hurt and rehash a narrative in the media”.

Baldoni had previously positioned himself as a #MeToo ally during the peak of the movement, and published a book that he said challenged notions of traditional masculinity.

Following the recent news of Lively’s complaint, Baldoni’s talent agency, WME, stopped representing him. The author of the book It Ends With Us, which the film was based on, has also spoken out in support of Lively, writing on Instagram: “Blake’s ability to refuse to sit down and ‘be buried’ has been nothing short of inspiring.”

• A ballistic missile struck an apartment building in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih on Tuesday, killing one person and injuring 15, four of them seriously, officials said. Ukrainian officials denounced the Christmas Eve attack on the city, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s home town.
  “While other countries of the world are celebrating Christmas, Ukrainians are continuing to suffer from endless Russian attacks,” Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, wrote on Telegram.

• Nearly three years into the Russian invasion, Christmas celebrations across Ukraine are shrouded in grief. “Not all of us are home, unfortunately. Sadly, not everyone has a home. And tragically, not everyone is still with us,” Zelenskyy said in an address. This will be the first Christmas that Lyubov spends without her son Taras Onyskiv, who died aged 32 in May while fighting off Russian troops on the eastern front. She brought a Christmas tree to her son’s grave in the Lychakiv cemetery in south-eastern Lviv, covered in a dusting of fresh snow. “We’ll come and spend Christmas here,” she said, after wrapping fairy lights over the tombstone. Mariya Lun lost her son Yuri in 2022. “We will bring Christmas porridge here on Christmas Eve,” Lun said. “We will pray that it will be easy for him in heaven without us.” Zelenskyy signed a law in July 2023 to move the official Christmas Day holiday to 25 December, departing from the Russian Orthodox Church tradition of celebrating on 7 January.

• The presence of North Korean soldiers alongside Russian troops in the Russian region of Kursk has not yet had a major impact on the course of the fighting, a Ukrainian military intelligence official has said. “The involvement of the North Koreans in the fighting has not had a significant impact on the situation. It is not such a significant number of personnel,” Yevgen Yerin, spokesperson for the Ukrainian military intelligence service (GUR), told AFP. “But they are also learning. And we cannot underestimate the enemy. And we can see that they are already taking some things into account in their activities,” he added.

• A Russian court has sentenced a man to 22 years in prison for two acts of sabotage on railway lines in Crimea last year. The court said Pavel Levchenko was recruited and trained by Ukraine’s SBU security service and sent to the annexed Crimea to carry out “acts of terrorism”. The court said Levchenko had carried out two explosions on railway lines while cargo trains were passing and had planned more acts of sabotage. Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in 2014.

• Ukraine said Russia attacked it with 60 drones, of which 36 were downed, 23 were jammed by electronic warfare and one was still in the air. The Ukrainian air force said drones had been shot down in eight regions across the country in a statement posted on the Telegram app on Tuesday.

The archbishop of York is expected to highlight the need for actions more than words in a Christmas sermon, as the Church of England faces criticism over failures in its handling of recent abuse scandals.

Stephen Cottrell, who will become temporary leader of the Church in England in early January in place of the outgoing archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, is expected to say the church must “kneel in penitence and adoration” this Christmas and “be changed”.

Welby will formally step down from his post as the de facto leader of the Church of England next month after resigning in November over the C of E’s failures in dealing with a serial abuser of 130 boys and young men in three countries over several decades.

The Makin report into the abuse by the barrister and church lay reader John Smyth, and the church’s failure to tackle it, concluded justice may have been brought had Welby formally reported him to police in 2013 when allegations about abuse were brought before the archbishop.

Cottrell, however, has also faced calls to resign after revelations that another priest at the centre of a sexual abuse case was twice reappointed under him while he was serving as bishop of Chelmsford. Earlier this week, Cottrell said things “could have been handled differently”.

Victims of David Tudor have branded Cottrell’s response to the case “insulting and upsetting” and suggested that his resignation or him being forced out of his leading role in the church was “inevitable”.

A spokeswoman for Cottrell said no one had advised him at the time that Tudor should not continue as an area dean and she added that even had he not continued in that role, it would not have meant he was removed as parish priest.

Cottrell’s credibility has also been called into question by the bishop of Newcastle, Helen-Ann Hartley, and the bishop of Gloucester, Rachel Treweek, who declined to publicly back him.

“Right now, this Christmas, God’s church itself needs to come to the manger and strip off her finery and kneel in penitence and adoration,” Cottrell is expected to say. “And be changed.

“At the centre of the Christmas story is a vulnerable child; a vulnerable child that Herod’s furious wrath will try and destroy, for like every tyrant he cannot abide a rival.

“The Church of England … needs to look at this vulnerable child, at this emptying out of power to demonstrate the power of love, for in this vulnerable child we see God,” he is due to add.

“This is what we learn at the manger. Put the needs of others first – those who are cold and hungry and homeless this Christmas. Those who are victims of abuse and exploitation. Those who, like the little holy family, have to flee oppression and seek refuge in a foreign land.”

Referencing a message for the world, Cottrell is expected to raise the importance of deeds over words, adding: “Don’t just talk about justice, don’t just talk about service, don’t just talk about love. Show me.”

The process to replace Welby is expected to take months, with an announcement about a new archbishop of Canterbury possible in autumn 2025.

Hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets in Christian areas of Damascus early on Tuesday to protest against the burning of a Christmas tree near Hama in central Syria.

“We demand the rights of Christians,” protesters chanted as they marched through the Syrian capital towards the headquarters of the Orthodox patriarchate in the Bab Sharqi neighbourhood.

The protests come a little more than two weeks after an armed coalition led by Islamists toppled the government of Bashar al-Assad, who had cast himself as a protector of minorities in the Sunni-majority country.

A demonstrator who gave his name as Georges told AFP he was protesting over “injustice against Christians”. “If we’re not allowed to live our Christian faith in our country, as we used to, then we don’t belong here any more,” he said.

The protests erupted after a video spread on social media showing hooded fighters setting fire to a Christmas tree in the Christian-majority town of Suqaylabiyah, near Hama. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the fighters were foreigners from the Islamist group Ansar al-Tawhid.

In another video posted to social media, a religious leader from Syria’s victorious Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) addressed local people, claiming those who had torched the tree were “not Syrian” and promising they would be punished. “The tree will be restored and lit up by tomorrow morning,” he said.

The Islamist HTS movement, rooted in al-Qaida and supported by Turkey, has promised to protect minorities since its lightning offensive toppled Assad this month after years of stalemate.

According to a statement from the new administration, Syria’s de facto leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, reached an agreement on Tuesday with former rebel faction leaders to dissolve all groups and consolidate them under the defence ministry.

The prime minister, Mohammed al-Bashir, had said last week that the ministry would be restructured using former rebel factions and officers who defected from Bashar al-Assad’s army. Sharaa will face the daunting task of trying to avoid clashes between the myriad groups.

Turkey’s interior minister said on Tuesday that more than 25,000 Syrians had returned home from Turkey since Assad was ousted. Turkey is home to nearly 3 million refugees who fled the civil war that broke out in 2011, and whose presence has been an issue for President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government.

“The number of people returning to Syria in the last 15 days has exceeded 25,000,” Ali Yerlikaya told the official Anadolu news agency. Ankara is in close touch with Syria’s new leaders and focusing on the voluntary return of Syrian refugees, hoping the shift in power in Damascus will allow many of them to head home.

The US military said on Monday it conducted an airstrike in Syria that killed two Islamic State operatives and wounded one. The IS operatives were moving a truckload of weapons in Deir ez-Zor province, an area formerly controlled by the Syrian government and Russians, when they were targeted with the airstrike, US Central Command said in a statement on X.

Detained rap mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, already facing more than 30 civil complaints alongside federal racketeering conspiracy charges, has been hit with a claim from a former “personal lackey” who claims he was forced to clean up after Comb’s “Wild King Nights” parties were finished.

Attorneys for Phillip Pines claim in a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles on Monday that between December 2019 to December 2021, Combs pressured Pines into having sex with a woman and orchestrated parties where he engaged in sex, drugs and alcohol.

Pines, who says he was given the title of senior executive assistant, was allegedly asked to set-up for Combs’ so-called “Wild King Nights”, according to the claim which was obtained by Variety.

He also claims that Combs knowingly exposed a celebrity guest to Covid-19 at his 51st birthday party, and details a disturbing incident where Combs pressured him to engage in sex with a female guest. There are also allegations he witnessed Combs violently kicking a guest in Miami.

Pines’ duties, he claims, included arranging for drugs, alcohol, and sex-related paraphernalia to be brought in and clean up after the parties concluded, including removing drug evidence and bodily stains from rooms, deleting any compromising videos from Combs’ devices, and ensuring that no one spoke about the nights.

Pines claims that he was asked on multiple occasions to set up rooms for Combs’ parties, providing “red lights, ice buckets, alcohol, marijuana joints, honey packs for male libido, baby oil, astro glide, towels, illegal drugs and power banger sex machines”.

Pines also alleges that Combs would test his loyalty, including asking him to return to work to find the TV remote, and that his party clean-up duties were assigned to avoid additional hotel cleaning fees.

Combs, who was arrested in September on racketeering and sex trafficking charges, is currently detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York after being denied bail on three separate occasions.

At his most recent bail hearing in November, trial judge Arun Subramanian cited evidence showing Combs to be a “serious risk” of witness tampering and proof he has tried to hide prohibited communications with third parties while incarcerated for the bail denial.

“There is compelling evidence of Combs’s propensity for violence,” Subramanian wrote in a five-page order. Earlier this month, Combs’ attorneys withdrew the bail appeal for their client.

In a statement to Variety on the latest civil claim, Combs’ representatives said: “No matter how many lawsuits are filed, it won’t change the fact that Mr Combs has never sexually assaulted or sex trafficked anyone – man or woman, adult or minor. We live in a world where anyone can file a lawsuit for any reason. Fortunately, a fair and impartial judicial process exists to find the truth, and Mr Combs is confident he will prevail in court.”