The aircraft involved in the Christmas Day plane crash in Kazakhstan that killed 38 people experienced “external physical and technical interference”, according to preliminary results of an investigation, Azerbaijan Airlines said on Friday.

The early findings led the carrier to suspend flights to five Russian airports, citing “potential risks to flight safety”, adding to the two routes that were suspended immediately after the crash.

The plane was flying from the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, to the Russian city of Grozny in Chechnya when it crashed in a field near Aktau in Kazakhstan, hundreds of miles off its planned route. Twenty-nine people survived.

On Friday, the head of Russia’s civil aviation agency said that the aircraft had tried to land in Grozny as the region was under attack by Ukrainian drones.

“Ukrainian military drones were carrying out terrorist attacks on civilian infrastructure … at the time,” Dmitry Yadrov said on Telegram, adding that the plane had made two unsuccessful attempts to land.

At the time there was also heavy fog over Grozny, he said. He described the conditions as “very complicated”. He added: “The pilot was offered alternative airports. He took the decision to go to Aktau airport.”

As hospitals scrambled to treat the dozens of injured passengers and Azerbaijan mourned those who lost their lives, speculation has swirled about the cause of the crash. A US official said on Thursday that there were early indications that a Russian anti-aircraft system may have struck the plane, echoing claims by Ukrainian officials and sources in Azerbaijan.

On Friday, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, declined to comment on the claims. “The air incident is being investigated and we don’t believe we have the right to make any assessments until the conclusions are made as a result of the investigation,” he told reporters.

Images of the crash appeared to show the plane plummeting to the ground where it burst into flames on impact, giving rise to thick, black plumes of smoke.

A passenger on the plane told Reuters that he had heard at least one loud bang as the aircraft approached Russia’s southern Chechnya region. “I thought the plane was going to fall apart,” Subhonkul Rakhimov said. “It was as if it was drunk – not the same plane any more.”

Rakhimov also spoke to the Russian state broadcaster, RT, and said it seemed as though the explosion had taken place outside the plane, and shrapnel had punctured the body of the aircraft.

“I grabbed a lifejacket and saw there was a hole in it – it was pierced by shrapnel,” he said. “Somewhere between my legs this piece of shrapnel flew in and went right through the lifejacket.”

In recent weeks, Ukrainian drones have targeted several sites in Chechnya, including a facility housing local police forces.

On Wednesday morning – the same day as the crash – Khamzat Kadyrov, a local security official and nephew of the Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, wrote on Instagram that “all drones were successfully shot down”.

The crash led other airlines to suspend flights through the region; Kazakhstan’s Qazaq Air said it would halt flights from Astana to the Russian city of Ekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains for one month, while the budget carrier flydubai suspended flights to the southern Russian airports of Sochi and Mineralnye Vody. Israel’s El Al also said it would suspend flights from Tel Aviv to Moscow for one week, citing “developments in Russia’s airspace”.

Hours later, a source in Azerbaijan told Reuters that early findings suggested that the plane had been mistakenly downed by a Russian Pantsir-S air defence system. One Azerbaijani lawmaker, Rasim Musabekov, called on Russia to officially apologise.

“They have to accept this, punish those to blame, promise that such a thing will not happen again, express regrets and readiness to pay compensation,” Musabekov told the news agency AFP. “We are waiting for Russia to do this.”

He said the plane “was damaged in the sky over Grozny and asked to make an emergency landing”, describing it as a standard request.

He alleged that the plane was not allowed to land at Grozny or nearby Russian airports and was instead “sent far away” across the Caspian Sea to Kazakhstan with the “GPS switched off”, Musabekov said.

If air defences were operating near Grozny airport, “they should have closed the airspace. The plane should have been turned around as it approached Grozny. Why wasn’t this done?” he added.

Reuters, Agence France-Presse and Associated Press contributed to this report

William Webster, the only man to head both the FBI and the CIA, has urged the US Senate to reject Kash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump’s nominees as directors of the bureau and national intelligence, arguing that they are unqualified.

Writing to senators, Webster, who is aged 100 and who was appointed by both Democrat and Republican presidents, called on them to “weigh the critical importance of nonpartisan leadership and experience” and suggested that Patel and Gabbard possessed neither attribute.

“The safety of the American people – and your own families – depends on it,” he wrote, emphasising the importance of Senate confirmation hearings that will scrutinise the two nominees.

Wesbster, who was appointed as FBI director by Jimmy Carter in 1978, took aim at Patel’s suitability to head the bureau, implying that he exhibited an over-zealous loyalty to Trump that could undermine the rule of law and set a “dangerous precedent”.

“While Mr Patel’s intelligence and patriotism are commendable, his close political alignment with President Trump raises serious concerns about impartiality and integrity,” he wrote.

“His record of executing the president’s directives suggest a loyalty to individuals rather than the rule of law – a dangerous precedent for an agency tasked with impartial enforcement of justice.”

Patel has publicly vowed to pursue Trump’s enemies if confirmed and has said one of his first acts as director would be to close the FBI’s Washington headquarters and open it as a museum to the “deep state” while dispersing agents across the US.

He also published a book, titled Government Gangsters, which identifies 60 individuals that critics have called an “enemies list” that could be targeted under a Trump administration.

Webster, who was appointed director of the CIA by Ronald Reagan in 1987 and subsequently served under another Republican president, George HW Bush, also questioned Gabbard’s credentials to be director of national intelligence, a role that would put her in overall charge of 18 intelligence agencies.

“Gabbard’s profound lack of intelligence experience and the daunting task of overseeing 18 disparate intelligence agencies further highlight the need for seasoned leadership,” he wrote.

“Effective management of our intelligence community requires unparalleled expertise to navigate the complexities of global threats and to maintain the trust of allied nations. Without that trust, our ability to safeguard sensitive secrets and collaborate internationally is severely diminished.”

The nomination of Gabbard, a former Democrat presidential contender turned Republican, has alarmed many members of the intelligence community, who have cited her previous friendliness towards the recently ousted former Syrian dictator, Bashar Assad. She has also been criticised for repeating pro-Kremlin talking points in Russia’s war with Ukraine, fuelling suspicions that she has been “groomed” by Russia.

Webster was among 100 Republican former national security and foreign policy officials to sign a letter endorsing Trump’s Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, before last month’s presidential election.

Republicans jubilant after winning the White House with a candidate who promised to “make America great again”. Democrats lost in the political wilderness, apparently out of touch with working people. America, apparently, shifting inexorably to the right. Not 2024 but 1984, when Ronald Reagan won the presidency in a landslide.

Al From remembers it well. The political strategist responded by launching the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) with a mission to rebuild the party and make it electable again. He succeeded in 1992 when Bill Clinton led the “New Democrats” back into power – and four decades on he has advice for how the party can rise from the ashes of another election defeat.

“If you’re going to change the definition of a party, the change has to be big enough that people recognise it, and that’s why you can’t do it incrementally,” From, 81, says by phone from his home in Annapolis, Maryland. “It’s time for a new generation of leaders to emerge to think about the Democratic brand and what can sell long term. The question for me is, how do you build a solid Democratic centre to a centre-left majority?”

The party has been plunged into painful soul-searching following Kamala Harris’s defeat by Donald Trump in November. Should Joe Biden have quit the race earlier? Was Harris a victim of global trends in inflation and immigration? Were gender, race and culture war issues in play? Have Democrats become too obsessed with identity politics and forgotten the language of working people?

According to From’s diagnosis, “the fundamentals” dominated all else. “People were terribly dissatisfied. You have two-thirds to three-quarters of the electorate saying the country’s going in the wrong direction. Joe Biden had an approval rating in the toilet – 38, 39, 40%.

“Inflation was a big issue, and I’m old enough to have been in the [Jimmy] Carter White House, so I remember what inflation did to us. The security/safety/disorder issues were big in terms of the border. The crime statistics may be going down but you didn’t get that impression from watching television. People were not happy with the way their lives were going.”

Towards the end, Harris focused her message on dire warnings about Trump posing an authoritarian danger – but in vain. From adds: “A lot of us felt that Trump was an existential threat to democracy, our way of life, and the number one thing was to beat Trump. But too many Americans around the country didn’t think that way. They just basically said our lives aren’t going the way we’d like and we want them to be better and Trump, if nothing else, will disrupt things.”

On a devastating night for Democrats, Republicans won the trifecta of White House, Senate and House of Representatives. But for From the comparisons with the 1984 wipeout only go so far. Reagan won 49 states out of 50 against Democrat Walter Mondale. It was an era before the House speaker Newt Gingrich’s brand of bareknuckle partisanship or the echo chambers of cable news, social media and podcasts.

“This country’s a lot more intensely split than it was back in the 80s,” he says. “The allegiances to both sides are much stronger. Trump is a guy who has had, for the most part, poor approval ratings. The Republicans have been almost a dysfunctional party for the last six or eight years and couldn’t even elect a speaker of the House in the last Congress when they had control.

“You’d think the Democrats would do better. I look at it from that perspective and so are we in as deep trouble as we were in 1984, 1988? Probably not. But there are trends like what’s happening among working-class voters of all colours and ethnic groups that are concerning. If they aren’t arrested, they could lead us into the wilderness again.”

Voter surveys from the Associated Press show Trump won 43% of the national Latino vote, an eight-point increase from the 2020 election, flipping one-time Democratic strongholds such as south Texas’s Rio Grande Valley and Florida’s Miami-Dade county. About three in 10 Black men under 45 voted for Trump, roughly double the share he got in 2020.

Bernie Sanders, an independent senator for Vermont and former presidential candidate, argued in a withering statement that a party that had forsaken the working class should not be surprised to “find that the working class has abandoned them”. He added: “First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well.”

From is also sounding the alarm. “We’ve lost white working-class voters for a long time. I’ve been nervous about the Hispanic vote for a while because, as immigrant groups settle in and they get the second and third generations there, they don’t necessarily stick with their original political views. There are a lot of reasons that Hispanic voters might be attracted to Republicans: they’re religious conservatives on social issues, they’re entrepreneurial.

“You look at those districts down in Texas around the border that went red for the first time in the presidential; you look at what happened in areas like the Bronx, even blue areas; you look what happened in New Jersey, Virginia, even here in Maryland, we were down by 10 points. When trends are moving away from you, the best thing to do is stop them and arrest them before they get completely out of control.”

Democrats had a similar sinking feeling when Reagan was in his pomp in the 1980s and small government, social conservatism and trickle-down economics seemed unassailable. After From set up the DLC in 1985, the New Democrats shifted to the centre by embracing pro-business policies, a tough stance on crime and welfare reform – ruffling the feathers of party leaders.

The party lost its third consecutive election in 1988. But on 6 April 1989, From went to the Arkansas state capitol building in Little Rock and recruited Governor Clinton as messenger for the DLC’s ideas, successfully recapturing the “Reagan Democrats” and styling himself as a leader for the future. Clinton beat George HW Bush to win the presidency in 1992.

America has changed profoundly since then and Clinton – though younger than Trump – has fallen out of political fashion. Still, From contends, there is a lesson to heed about leading from the front with clarity of vision. “I don’t think you can change the definition of a party incrementally or by sitting around the table and trying to negotiate it out.

“Basically what the party needs is some sort of a force – whoever it is – of people who are perceived as future leaders going out and saying: this is what we want this party to stand for. I did it in the 80s and 90s. They can decide what’s appropriate for the 20s and 30s.”

He continues: “You’ve got to define the party as being for things that the American people will support that are consistent with your values. You can’t try to get all the interest groups together and all the constituency groups and say, well, what can we do for you and what can we do for you and put it all together because it comes out mush and you wind up losing people. You can’t put together a new message or even a diverse coalition by mandate.

“You’ve got to have a flag, you’ve got plant it and you’ve got to rally people around that. If you do that, people are much more committed to it and don’t just see it as a way to protect their own interests. You can expand out beyond your core constituencies.”

From remains an unabashed centrist who believes that economic growth, not the economic populism of Sanders or Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is the answer. “It’s important the critical mass in the Democratic party show that it’s the party of opportunity, responsibility and community but not the party of the left,” he insists.

He also argues that the party should not be afraid to talk about law enforcement and developing a system of community policing rather than urging “defund the police”. Likewise it should embrace the idea of legal immigration and a border that is under control. From applauds governors who have made jobs available to people without college degrees.

“The Democratic base alone is not enough to win elections, he warns. The party needs to reach moderate voters in the suburbs who “love the compassion” of the Democrats but question whether they have the “toughness to govern” as well. From says the party should welcome them, not chase them away.

“Democrats need to start winning in places where they have not been winning. You do that by planting a flag and having a message and ideas and values that people want to support and then you grow your support and then, if you have good candidates and a good communication system, you can win.

“It’s not impossible to win without a good message but, to me, that’s the most essential thing. If you’ve got a product people want to buy, chances are, eventually they’re going to buy it. If you have a product that people don’t want to buy, you’ve got to stuff it down their throats and that’s a lot harder to do.”

Naturally there is already speculation over who might be the Democratic standard-bearer in 2028. From, now an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, says it is too early but cannot resist name-checking governors including Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Wes Moore of Maryland, Gavin Newsom of California, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan as well as Gina Raimondo, the commerce secretary and former governor of Rhode Island.

The governors have successfully built coalitions in their home states, From says, and he would love to see them cooperate on setting the party on a new national trajectory.

“The fundamental thing that I would say is – it’s probably the most naive notion of politics – but I think what you stand for matters. You’ve got to have an agenda and set of ideas and set of values that people want to support and I’d love to see the party begin to put that together. A lot of the governors are doing that. If they took six months or a year or 18 months to make that clear to the voters by working together, we’d be better off for it.”

The British-Canadian computer scientist often touted as a “godfather” of artificial intelligence has raised the odds of AI wiping out humanity over the next three decades, warning the pace of change in the technology is “much faster” than expected.

Prof Geoffrey Hinton, who this year was awarded the Nobel prize in physics for his work in AI, said there was a “10 to 20” per cent chance that AI would lead to human extinction within the next three decades.

Previously Hinton had said there was a 10% chance of the technology triggering a catastrophic outcome for humanity.

Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme if he had changed his analysis of a potential AI apocalypse and the one in 10 chance of it happening, he said: “Not really, 10 to 20 [per cent].”

Hinton’s estimate prompted Today’s guest editor, the former chancellor Sajid Javid, to say “you’re going up”, to which Hinton replied: “If anything. You see, we’ve never had to deal with things more intelligent than ourselves before.”

He added: “And how many examples do you know of a more intelligent thing being controlled by a less intelligent thing? There are very few examples. There’s a mother and baby. Evolution put a lot of work into allowing the baby to control the mother, but that’s about the only example I know of.”

London-born Hinton, a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, said humans would be like toddlers compared with the intelligence of highly powerful AI systems.

“I like to think of it as: imagine yourself and a three-year-old. We’ll be the three-year-olds,” he said.

AI can be loosely defined as computer systems performing tasks that typically require human intelligence.

Last year, Hinton made headlines after resigning from his job at Google in order to speak more openly about the risks posed by unconstrained AI development, citing concerns that“bad actors” would use the technology to harm others. A key concern of AI safety campaigners is that the creation of artificial general intelligence, or systems that are smarter than humans, could lead to the technology posing an existential threat by evading human control.

Reflecting on where he thought the development of AI would have reached when he first started his work on AI, Hinton said: “I didn’t think it would be where we [are] now. I thought at some point in the future we would get here.”

He added: “Because the situation we’re in now is that most of the experts in the field think that sometime, within probably the next 20 years, we’re going to develop AIs that are smarter than people. And that’s a very scary thought.”

Hinton said the pace of development was “very, very fast, much faster than I expected” and called for government regulation of the technology.

“My worry is that the invisible hand is not going to keep us safe. So just leaving it to the profit motive of large companies is not going to be sufficient to make sure they develop it safely,” he said. “The only thing that can force those big companies to do more research on safety is government regulation.”

Hinton is one of the three “godfathers of AI” who have won the ACM AM Turing award – the computer science equivalent of the Nobel prize – for their work. However, one of the trio, Yann LeCun, the chief AI scientist at Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, has played down the existential threat and has said AI “could actually save humanity from extinction”.

The disappearance of four boys in Ecuador after they came into contact with the armed forces is posing a severe challenge to President Daniel Noboa’s “war on drugs”.

The four – all black, aged between 11 and 15, and residents of Las Malvinas, a poor area in the country’s largest city, Guayaquil – were returning from a football game near their homes on 8 December when 16 air force soldiers approached them.

The boys were allegedly freed 26 miles (42 km) away and have not been seen since. On Christmas Eve, four incinerated bodies were found in the same region, and experts are trying to determine if they are the boys’ remains.

The case, known as Los Cuatro de Guayaquil (the Guayaquil Four), has caused national uproar and sparked protests nationwide.

Once one of the countries with the lowest crime rates in Latin America, Ecuador has, in recent years, experienced an explosion in crime; the country is a route for cocaine trafficking to Europe, primarily through the port of Guayaquil.

Since Noboa declared a state of “internal armed conflict” in January, the armed forces have been at the forefront ofthe president’s security project, with soldiers patrolling the streets, conducting anti-drug operations and controlling prisons.

The measures initially enjoyed popularity – a referendum in April endorsed them – but a change of direction might be under way. Human rights activists consider the boys’ disappearance the greatest popularity crisis for Noboa’s hardline policy, less than two months before the presidential elections in which he will seek another term.

“This case represents the straw that broke the camel’s back for the outrage that had been building up due to the way the public forces have been acting,” said Billy Navarrete, the executive director of the Permanent Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDH), based in Guayaquil, which has been following the case. “Human rights violations by state agents, particularly the military, have been quite recurrent.”

Desperate over the disappearance of their children, the families approached the armed forces the next morning, but the case began to move forward only after it caused a national uproar almost two weeks later.

Initially, the Ministry of Defence denied involvement but acknowledged that the military had approached the boys. According to the ministry, the teenagers were allegedly involved in robbing a woman, but the public prosecutor investigating the case stated that there was no evidence of that.

The ministry claimed the boys were released in the Taura region – 26 miles from their homes – near an air force base. One of the boys supposedly borrowed a phone, called his father, and told him what had happened.

Since then, there has been no further news of them, and the public prosecutor is investigating whether they may have been victims of the military or of organised crime, as the boys were abandoned late at night in an unfamiliar rural area.

“Though hopes are slim at this point, we are all praying that the children are alive,” said Uriel Castillo Nazareno, the national coordinator of the Ecuadorian National Afro-Descendant Movement, who is close to one of the families. “If the children are not alive, I don’t know what will happen in this country. The worst instincts of this society could emerge.”

As the four bodies found in a marshy area had been incinerated, a DNA test may be necessary to identify them. Meanwhile, the 16 soldiers who approached the boys have been suspended and held under military custody.

Noboa initially avoided acknowledging the state’s responsibility in the case, but later said the four boys should be considered “national heroes” and that whoever was involved, there would be “zero impunity”. In power since winning the 2023 snap election after the early departure of Guillermo Lasso, Noboa will seek re-election in the 9 February election to govern the country for a full term (2025-2029).

“These soldiers, probably murderers, are also victims of a doctrine, of a state, of a society where the elite believes that the popular sectors consist only of criminals and servants,” said Nazareno. “This must change in Ecuador.”

South Korea’s parliament has voted to impeach the acting president, Han Duck-soo, plunging the country deeper into a political crisis that has caused policy deadlock and damaged its international reputation.

On Friday, the national assembly approved an impeachment motion introduced on Thursday by the main opposition party by a 192-0 vote. The chamber has 300 MPs, but members of the ruling People Power party (PPP) boycotted Friday’s vote.

Han took over as president after his predecessor, Yoon Suk Yeol, was impeached over his short-lived imposition of martial law on 3 December. The move triggered six hours of chaos that, for many older South Koreans, brought back memories of the country’s bloody transition from military rule to democracy in the 1980s.

The main opposition Democratic party – which has a majority in the national assembly – targeted Han after accusing him of participating in Yoon’s botched imposition of martial law, which ended when MPs forced their way into the parliament building to overturn Yoon’s decree.

Yoon had claimed he had declared martial law as a legitimate “act of governance” to root out politicians from opposition parties he accused of pro-North Korean sympathies and anti-state activities.

He gave no evidence for those claims, and analysts believe he had become exasperated by his failure to get his budgets past the opposition-controlled national assembly. Had it stood for more than a few hours, the martial law order edict would have suspended all political activity, banned protests and curtailed press freedoms, while police and troops would have been responsible for enforcing the order.

The opposition parties needed a number of Yoon’s own party to vote with them to impeach the disgraced former president a fortnight ago. Other senior South Korean officials, including Han – the former prime minister – can be impeached with a simple majority.

Han angered opposition MPs this week when he refused to immediately appoint three justices to fill vacancies at the constitutional court, which will decide whether or not to approve the impeachment vote against Yoon. Han said appointing justices would exceed his powers as acting president.

In response, the Democrat party leader, Lee Jae-myung, accused Han of “acting for insurrection”.

“The only way to normalise the country is to swiftly root out all the insurrection forces,” Lee said, adding that his party was acting on behalf of the public to “eradicate” politicians who had put South Korea – Asia’s fourth-biggest economy – at risk.

Polls indicate that South Koreans, who have demonstrated against Yoon in their tens of thousands, support his removal over the martial law fiasco.

The chaotic scenes witnessed in the national assembly were repeated on Friday, when PPP lawmakers gathered around the assembly’s speaker, the opposition MP Woo Won-shik, to noisily denounce the vote against Han as invalid and call for Woo’s resignation.

Han said in a statement after the vote that he would step aside to avoid more chaos and await the constitutional court’s ruling on his impeachment.

Friday’s vote means South Korea must now reach further down the political pecking order for a leader. By law, the finance minister, Choi Sang-mok, will become interim president.

Choi had pleaded with opposition lawmakers not to go ahead with the motion. “An impeachment motion against the acting authority is no different from an impeachment motion against the entire cabinet,” he told a news conference with other cabinet members earlier on Friday.

“Our economy and people’s livelihoods, which are walking on thin ice in a national emergency, cannot bear the expansion of political uncertainty surrounding the acting authority.”

Earlier on Friday, the constitutional court held its first hearing in a case reviewing whether to overturn Yoon’s impeachment and reinstate him, or remove him permanently from office.

Police also launched a raid on a presidential safe house and collected footage from nearby security cameras as part of their investigation into the martial law declaration.

The nine-member constitutional court has just under 180 days to reach a decision, which must have a two-thirds majority to stand. If it approves the impeachment against Yoon, South Koreans must elect a new president within 60 days.

The court’s composition is complicating the process, as it is currently short of three justices. It can vote on the impeachment motion with the six sitting justices, but a single dissenting would be enough to overturn the impeachment vote and reinstate Yoon.

South Korea’s parliament has voted to impeach the acting president, Han Duck-soo, plunging the country deeper into a political crisis that has caused policy deadlock and damaged its international reputation.

On Friday, the national assembly approved an impeachment motion introduced on Thursday by the main opposition party by a 192-0 vote. The chamber has 300 MPs, but members of the ruling People Power party (PPP) boycotted Friday’s vote.

Han took over as president after his predecessor, Yoon Suk Yeol, was impeached over his short-lived imposition of martial law on 3 December. The move triggered six hours of chaos that, for many older South Koreans, brought back memories of the country’s bloody transition from military rule to democracy in the 1980s.

The main opposition Democratic party – which has a majority in the national assembly – targeted Han after accusing him of participating in Yoon’s botched imposition of martial law, which ended when MPs forced their way into the parliament building to overturn Yoon’s decree.

Yoon had claimed he had declared martial law as a legitimate “act of governance” to root out politicians from opposition parties he accused of pro-North Korean sympathies and anti-state activities.

He gave no evidence for those claims, and analysts believe he had become exasperated by his failure to get his budgets past the opposition-controlled national assembly. Had it stood for more than a few hours, the martial law order edict would have suspended all political activity, banned protests and curtailed press freedoms, while police and troops would have been responsible for enforcing the order.

The opposition parties needed a number of Yoon’s own party to vote with them to impeach the disgraced former president a fortnight ago. Other senior South Korean officials, including Han – the former prime minister – can be impeached with a simple majority.

Han angered opposition MPs this week when he refused to immediately appoint three justices to fill vacancies at the constitutional court, which will decide whether or not to approve the impeachment vote against Yoon. Han said appointing justices would exceed his powers as acting president.

In response, the Democrat party leader, Lee Jae-myung, accused Han of “acting for insurrection”.

“The only way to normalise the country is to swiftly root out all the insurrection forces,” Lee said, adding that his party was acting on behalf of the public to “eradicate” politicians who had put South Korea – Asia’s fourth-biggest economy – at risk.

Polls indicate that South Koreans, who have demonstrated against Yoon in their tens of thousands, support his removal over the martial law fiasco.

The chaotic scenes witnessed in the national assembly were repeated on Friday, when PPP lawmakers gathered around the assembly’s speaker, the opposition MP Woo Won-shik, to noisily denounce the vote against Han as invalid and call for Woo’s resignation.

Han said in a statement after the vote that he would step aside to avoid more chaos and await the constitutional court’s ruling on his impeachment.

Friday’s vote means South Korea must now reach further down the political pecking order for a leader. By law, the finance minister, Choi Sang-mok, will become interim president.

Choi had pleaded with opposition lawmakers not to go ahead with the motion. “An impeachment motion against the acting authority is no different from an impeachment motion against the entire cabinet,” he told a news conference with other cabinet members earlier on Friday.

“Our economy and people’s livelihoods, which are walking on thin ice in a national emergency, cannot bear the expansion of political uncertainty surrounding the acting authority.”

Earlier on Friday, the constitutional court held its first hearing in a case reviewing whether to overturn Yoon’s impeachment and reinstate him, or remove him permanently from office.

Police also launched a raid on a presidential safe house and collected footage from nearby security cameras as part of their investigation into the martial law declaration.

The nine-member constitutional court has just under 180 days to reach a decision, which must have a two-thirds majority to stand. If it approves the impeachment against Yoon, South Koreans must elect a new president within 60 days.

The court’s composition is complicating the process, as it is currently short of three justices. It can vote on the impeachment motion with the six sitting justices, but a single dissenting would be enough to overturn the impeachment vote and reinstate Yoon.

Houthi rebels in Yemen claim to have retaliated against Israeli airstrikes on Sana’a’s airport early on Friday with a missile aimed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport and a drone attack on Tel Aviv.

The Israel Defense Forces said their defences intercepted the ballistic missile before it reached Israeli airspace, though residents in the centre of the country were ordered into shelters for fear of falling debris. There were no reports in Israel of hostile drones over Tel Aviv.

It was the latest in a series of tit-for-tat exchanges. Thursday’s Israeli airstrikes were in retaliation for a Houthi missile and drone launch against Israel on Wednesday. The Houthis began mounting attacks aimed at Israel and Israeli shipping at the start of the Gaza war in October 2023, saying they were acting in solidarity with Palestinians.

A Houthi statement on Friday said Israel’s strikes “will only increase the determination and resolve of the great Yemeni people to continue supporting the Palestinian people”.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, vowed that Israeli strikes on Yemen would continue, saying Israel’s aim in Yemen was the elimination of the Houthi threat, which he called a “terrorist entity in Iran’s axis of evil”.

“We will persist until we complete the job,” Netanyahu said.

Netanyahu and his defence minister, Israel Katz, monitored the Israeli attacks on Yemen on Thursday from the air force command centre. According to Israeli press accounts, 25 fighter jets took part in 2,000km sorties that hit an array of targets across Yemen. The primary target was Sana’a international airport, where the attack left the top of the control tower a bombed-out shell and shattered windows in terminal buildings. Airport authorities said four people were killed and 20 injured.

An Israeli statement said the air force also struck the Hezyaz power station south of Sana’a on Thursday, as well as the port, an oil terminal and power station around Hodeidah, saying the facilities were used “to smuggle Iranian weapons into the region and for the entry of senior Iranian officials”. Houthi media said a total of six people were killed in the strikes.

Katz said after the operation: “As we have said – whoever harms Israel, we will harm them. We will hunt down all of the Houthis’ leaders and we will strike them just as we have done in other places.”

The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, was at Sana’a airport waiting to depart when the Israeli warplanes struck on Thursday. A crew member from Tedros’s plane was injured in the strike.

“When the attacks on the Sana’a airport happened, [Tedros] and several UN colleagues were having their passports stamped before heading to the UN plane,” Margaret Harris, a WHO spokesperson, said. “They were evacuated by UN security to take shelter in UN-marked vehicles. They remained in the UN-marked vehicles until the bombing stopped, at which time the UN team left the airport and went to a safer place.”

Tedros, who had been in Yemen to negotiate the release of detained UN staff and to assess the humanitarian situation, said in a social media post on Friday that the crew member had undergone surgery and had been evacuated. .

Tedros said on social media that his delegation had flown with the wounded member of the UN Humanitarian Air Service from Sana’a to Jordan, where he would receive further medical treatment.

Israel’s air force commander, Maj Gen Tomer Bar, said Israel had used only a small part of its military might against the Houthis so far. “We are capable of much more,” Bar said.

Military analysts in Israel said the IDF would find it much harder to pursue a remote enemy like the Houthis than it had been to eliminate the leadership of Hamas in Gaza or Hezbollah in Lebanon.

“In Gaza, a two-hour drive (without traffic) from the minister’s office at the Kirya [defence headquarters] in Tel Aviv, it took a long time to find the leaders of Hamas. In the north, intelligence information was systematically gathered in order to put the assassinations of the senior Hezbollah leadership into action when the order was finally given,” a military commentator, Yossi Yehoshua, wrote in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.

“Assassinating seasoned terrorist leaders who know how to hide in a faraway, chaotic country isn’t exactly a walk in the park.”

The IDF is still fighting Hamas in the wreckage of Gaza nearly 15 months after it invaded the coastal strip in October last year in response to Hamas’s surprise attack on southern Israel, which killed 1,200 Israelis. The death toll in Gaza is estimated at more than 45,000.

On Friday, Israeli troops entered Kamal Adwan hospital, one of the last functioning medical facilities in Gaza, and ordered all those inside out into the hospital compound and a nearby school, where they began searching patients and medical staff, according to witness accounts.

Hopes of a ceasefire before the Biden administration leaves office in the US on 20 January have yet to be fulfilled and winter is setting in across the strip. Several deaths from the cold have been reported, including that of a nurse from the European hospital in the south of the strip. He was found dead on Friday morning inside his tent in the Mawasi area west of Khan Younis.

A fire has broken out at one of northern Gaza’s only functioning hospitals, while medics and patients have been forced to leave by Israeli forces, who raided the hospital on Friday morning, according to staff members.

Kamal Adwan hospital and the surrounding area has been under increased attack this week, according to the hospital’s director, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, who said five medical staff were killed in a strike on Thursday.

Abu Safiya said he was threatened with arrest by Israeli forces, who ordered staff to leave and patients to be transferred to the Indonesian hospital, including those in critical care who rely on oxygen to survive.

“The occupation army is burning all the operating departments in the hospital while we are still there. The army evacuated the entire medical staff and the displaced people and arrested a number of the medical staff. There are a large number of injuries among the medical staff,” Abu Safiya posted on Instagram. He added that much of the hospital building and equipment was damaged.

“We currently don’t know what will happen to us, the patients are being forcibly evacuated to the Indonesian hospital. They cut the oxygen from them, there are patients who [could] die at any moment,” said a member of the medical staff in a voice message shared by Abu Safiya.

Unverified video footage from the hospital’s vicinity showed a group of men in their underwear walking past Israeli troops.

Kamal Adwan hospital has been working under siege since October, when Israeli forces began a third military operation in the Jabaliya refugee camp that involved the mass demolition of buildings and infrastructure.

Over the past week, Abu Safiya has described an intensified siege of the hospital, sharing videos of quadcopter drones dropping explosives in the vicinity.

He said a strike on a nearby building killed 50 people on Thursday – among them two paramedics, a paediatrician, a lab technician and a hospital maintenance worker.

Israel’s military, the Israel Defense Forces, said it is examining the claim that five medical staff were killed but said it disputed the number of reported casualties in the area.

“The IDF operates against terrorists and terrorist infrastructure in the area of Jabaliya and continued its operations over the last day. The IDF is unaware of strikes in the area of the Kamal Adwan hospital,” they said.

The Israeli military said in a statement that Kasmal Adwan hospital served as a Hamas terrorist stronghold and that it had made efforts to mitigate harm to civilians and had “facilitated the secure evacuation of civilians, patients and medical personnel prior to the operation”.

An aid convoy has reached a besieged area of Khartoum for the first time since Sudan’s civil war broke out in April 2023, bringing food and medicines in a country where half of the people are at risk of starvation.

The 28 trucks arrived in southern Khartoum on 25 December, according to the World Food Programme (WFP), which provided 22 trucks loaded with 750 tonnes of food.

Unicef sent five trucks with medicines and malnutrition kits for children, while Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) contributed one truck of medical supplies, according to the Khartoum State Emergency Response Room (ERR), a grassroots aid group that is helping to coordinate the distribution.

Sheldon Yett, Unicef’s Sudan representative, said: “Access to the area has been essentially cut off due the conflict dynamics. It took three months of often daily negotiations with government authorities at all levels and with other parties who controlled the access.

“The trucks were detained on more than one occasion and drivers were understandably reluctant given the risks involved. The difficulty we had in delivering these supplies for children is just one illustration of how difficult it can be to reach the most vulnerable populations in Sudan with lifesaving supplies.”

Sudan’s armed forces have been fighting the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia since April 2023, when a power struggle between the two factions of the military regime broke out into open conflict.

Both sides have been accused of committing war crimes, which they deny. Several rounds of attempted negotiations have so far failed to end the fighting.

More than 12 million people have been displaced by the war, while tens of thousands have been killed. Five areas of the country are suffering from famine, while almost half of Sudan’s 50 million population have so little to eat that their lives are at risk.

The aid convoy reaching Jebel Aulia, south of Khartoum, and the Al Bashayer hospital in the city was cause for hope for some humanitarian workers.

Duaa Tariq, who works with the ERR, told the BBC: “There were tears, tears of laughter and joy, and tears of a lot of effort and exhaustion from arranging this. It was quite a moment for everyone.”

Tariq said she hoped there would be more aid to come: “It was such an emotional rollercoaster.”

Others cautioned that Sudan’s needs far outstripped what one convoy could provide.

Claire San Filippo, the MSF emergency coordinator for Sudan, said: “You have staggering needs on the one hand. And, on the other hand, you have an underwhelming humanitarian response and massive obstacles [put in place] by the warring parties.

“Since the beginning of the conflict, what we’ve seen is a real pattern by the warring parties to deliberately block, divert or restrict access to life-saving aid. This is absolutely wonderful that there was a convoy, but many are more needed.”

On 18 December, RSF fighters stormed into the Al Bashayer hospital, firing weapons in the emergency ward, according to MSF. No one was injured or killed, but the incursion followed the killing by armed fighters of a patient receiving treatment on 11 November.

Food distribution to an estimated 78,000 people will start on 29 December, a spokesperson for WFP said, noting that this was the first time since the start of the conflict that Mayo and Alingaz, in the Jebel Aulia area, had received food aid.

“Both Mayo and Alingaz are ‘risk of famine’ areas. Jebel Aulia has endured intense fighting through the conflict,” the spokesperson said. “WFP has been tirelessly working to gain access to all parts of Khartoum, taking advantage of brief lulls in fighting to deliver food aid while also supporting the community-run Emergency Response Rooms to deliver daily hot meals.”

South Korea’s intelligence agency has reported that a North Korean soldier, believed to be the first captured while supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine, has died after being taken alive by Ukrainian forces.

South Korea’s spy agency earlier on Friday confirmed Ukrainian reports that an injured North Korean soldier had been captured by Ukrainian forces, in what was likely to have been the first capture of its kind since Pyongyang had sent combat forces to bolster Russian forces in the war in Ukraine.

The South Korean National Intelligence Service said in a statement on Friday: “Through real-time information sharing with an allied country’s intelligence agency, it has been confirmed that one injured North Korean soldier has been captured.”

The agency later said that the North Korean soldier who was captured alive in Ukraine had died from his injuries.

A photograph of the North Korean soldier, who looked gaunt and appeared to have been injured, circulated on the Telegram messaging app, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.

The claim emerged after the Ukraine outlet Militarnyi reported that special forces had captured the soldier in the Kursk region of Russia, where some territory has been seized and held during an incursion by Ukraine.

The outlet did not say when the incident had taken place, and there has been no confirmation from officials in Ukraine or North Korea, where the state media have not referred to the deployment of the country’s troops.

Militarnyi said that, if confirmed, the soldier would be the first North Korean combatant to have been taken by Ukrainian forces.

As many as 11,000 soldiers from North Korea have been deployed to help Russia, months after the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, signed a mutual defence pact that committed each country to come to the other’s aid if attacked.

While the North could gain valuable battlefield experience, its poorly trained soldiers, fighting in unfamiliar territory, have quickly been exposed to the dangers of combat.

Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, known as the GUR, said on Thursday that North Korean troops were suffering heavy losses in the fighting in Kursk and facing logistical difficulties as a result of Ukrainian attacks.

The GUR said Ukrainian strikes near Novoivanovka had inflicted heavy casualties on North Korean units, and that North Korean troops also faced supply issues, including shortages of drinking water.

This week, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, claimed that more than 3,000 North Korean troops had been killed or wounded in the Kursk region. It was the first significant estimate by Ukraine of North Korean casualties.

The deployment of North Korean soldiers marked a dramatic escalation in the war, which began almost three years ago, as the Kremlin turned to its ally to boost its forces. It was also seen as an attempt by Putin to broaden the conflict through the direct involvement in fighting of a third country.

LeBron James and the NBA are going to have make room for the NFL on Christmas.

That shouldn’t be a problem. Both leagues were winners on Wednesday.

Netflix set records as the most-streamed NFL games in US history while the NBA had its best holiday numbers in five years according to Nielsen.

The NFL and Nielsen said 65m US viewers tuned in for at least one minute of one of the two NFL games.

The Baltimore Ravens’ 31-2 victory over the Houston Texans averaged 24.3m while Kansas City’s 29-10 win at Pittsburgh averaged 24.1 according to early viewer figures released by Nielsen on Thursday.

The NBA’s five-game slate averaged about 5.25m viewers per game across ABC, ESPN and its platforms, according to the league and Nielsen.

“I love the NFL,” James jokingly said in his televised postgame interview Wednesday night. “But Christmas is our day.”

However, Wednesday’s ratings showed that there is room for both.

Even though the NBA had the sports calendar to itself on 25 December for many years, the NFL has made Christmas one of its tentpole events during the regular season, joining Kickoff Weekend and Thanksgiving.

Hans Schroeder, the executive vice president of NFL Media, took James’ comments in jest while also being joyful about the first season of the league’s three-year partnership with Netflix.

“The numbers speak for themselves and LeBron can have his own view, and I’m sure more people will look at that because of this,” he said. “But, you know, we’re focused on the NFL and we’re thrilled with the results this year with the Christmas on Netflix and we’re excited to continue to build that over the next couple of years.”

Both NFL games surpassed the previous mark of 23m for last season’s AFC wild-card game between the Miami Dolphins and Chiefs on Peacock.

Viewership for Ravens-Texans peaked with the Beyoncé Bowl. The nearly 13-minute halftime performance averaged over 27m viewers.

The viewer figures include the audience on Netflix, mobile viewership on NFL+ and those who tuned in on CBS stations in Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Baltimore and Houston.

Global ratings and final US numbers are expected to be available on Tuesday.

The NFL’s Christmas numbers decreased from last season, but not at the rate that usually happens when programming goes from broadcast to streaming.

Last year’s three games averaged 28.68m viewers. The early afternoon contest between the Las Vegas Raiders and Chiefs led the way, averaging 29.48m on CBS.

Once global and Netflix’s first-party data is released, both Christmas games are expected to surpass 30m.

The games were the second- and third-most popular live titles in Netflix history, surpassed only by the 14 November fight between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson. That bout averaged a worldwide audience of 60m and peaked at 65m concurrent streams, including 38m concurrent streams in the United States.

There will be at least two NFL games on Christmas next year, but with the holiday falling on a Thursday it is more likely to be three with two afternoon and one prime time. The NFL has had three Thanksgiving Day games since 2006.

One of the biggest wins for Netflix on Wednesday: fewer streaming complaints it received. It seems the only gripe from most was that the stream did not immediately go to live action if someone tuned in after the game started.

Bela Bajaria, Netflix’s chief content officer, said in statement about the Chistmas broadcasts that the streaming service is thankful for the partnership with the NFL, the on-air talent, and “let’s please not forget the electrifying Beyoncé and the brilliant Mariah Carey.”

Beyoncé’s performance was trending number one worldwide socially on X, formerly known as Twitter. The hashtag #NFLonNetflix also trended around the world, reaching a peak of second in Australia, third in the United Kingdom and Germany, fifth in Brazil and France, and sixth in the US.

The NBA felt it had a banner day, announcing Thursday that all five Christmas games on its schedule – San Antonio at New York in Victor Wembanyama’s holiday debut, Minnesota at Dallas, Philadelphia at Boston, Denver at Phoenix and Lakers-Warriors – saw year-over-year viewership increases.

The NBA’s lineup saw an 84% rise over 2023. One reason for the increase is that all five games were on ABC, compared to two last year.

The Lakers’ 115-113 victory over the Warriors – a game pitting Olympic team-mates James and Stephen Curry – averaged 7.76m viewers and peaked with about 8.32m viewers toward the end of the contest, the league said.

Those numbers represent the most-watched NBA regular season game in five years.

Wednesday’s numbers pushed NBA viewership for the season across ESPN platforms to up 4% over last season. The league also saw more than 500m video views on its social media platforms Wednesday, a new record.

For the NBA, those are all good signs amid cries that NBA viewership is hurting.

“Ratings are down a bit at beginning of the season. But cable television viewership is down double digits so far this year versus last year,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said earlier this month. “You know, we’re almost at the inflection point where people are watching more programing on streaming than they are on traditional television. And it’s a reason why for our new television deals, which we enter into next year, every game is going to be available on a streaming service.”

Part of that new package of television deals that the NBA is entering into next season also increases the number of regular season games broadcast on television from 15 to 75.

Under the 11-year agreement, ESPN and ABC will continue air the Christmas Day games.