President-elect Donald Trump has urged the US supreme court to pause implementation of a law that would ban popular social media app TikTok or force its sale, arguing he should have time after taking office to pursue a “political resolution” to the issue.

The court is set to hear arguments in the case on 10 January.

The law would require TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the platform to an American company or face a ban. The US Congress voted in April to ban it unless ByteDance sells the app by 19 January.

TikTok, which has over 170 million US users, and its parent company have sought to have the law struck down. But if the court does not rule in their favor and no divestment occurs, the app could be effectively banned in the United States on 19 January, one day before Trump takes office.

Trump’s support for TikTok is a reversal from 2020, when he tried to block the app in the US and force its sale to American companies because of its Chinese ownership.

It also shows the significant effort by the company to forge inroads with Trump and his team during the presidential campaign.

“President Trump takes no position on the underlying merits of this dispute,” said D John Sauer, Trump’s lawyer who is also the president-elect’s pick for US solicitor general.

“Instead, he respectfully requests that the Court consider staying the Act’s deadline for divestment of January 19, 2025, while it considers the merits of this case, thus permitting President Trump’s incoming administration the opportunity to pursue a political resolution of the questions at issue in the case,” he added.

Trump previously met with Shou Zi Chew, the TikTok CEO, in December, hours after the president-elect expressed he had a “warm spot” for the app and that he favored allowing TikTok to keep operating in the United States for at least a little while.

The president-elect also said he had received billions of views on the social media platform during his presidential campaign.

TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The company has previously said the justice department has misstated its ties to China, arguing its content recommendation engine and user data are stored in the US on cloud servers operated by Oracle while content moderation decisions that affect US users are made in the country as well.

Free speech advocates separately told the supreme court on Friday the US law against TikTok evokes the censorship regimes put in place by the US’ authoritarian enemies.

The justice department has argued Chinese control of TikTok poses a continuing threat to national security, a position supported by most US lawmakers.

Austin Knudsen, the Montana attorney general, led a coalition of 22 attorneys general on Friday in filing an amicus brief asking the supreme court to uphold the national TikTok divest-or-ban legislation.

Bitter in-fighting has broken out between the tech billionaire Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s hardline Make America great again (Maga) base after the US president-elect chose an Indian-born entrepreneur to be his adviser on artificial intelligence.

The row has pitted Musk and his fellow entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy against diehard supporters including the far-right activist Laura Loomer and Matt Gaetz, the former Congress member and abortive nominee for attorney general. The spat threatens to open up a chasm among Trump’s supporters over immigration, a key issue in his election victory.

Presaging what has been called a “Maga civil war”, Musk went on the offensive after Loomer attacked the choice of Sriram Krishnan, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, as the nascent administration’s AI policy adviser as “deeply disturbing”.

Loomer, a renowned anti-immigration provocateur widely credited for persuading Trump to highlight false rumors about Haitian immigrants eating pets in last September’s presidential debate with Kamala Harris, criticised Krishnan on social media for supporting the extension of visas and green cards for skilled workers. She said it was in “direct opposition” to Trump’s agenda.

Her comments provoked a riposte from Musk, the Space X and Tesla billionaire who is Trump’s most influential supporter and himself an immigrant from South Africa.

“There is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent. It is the fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley,” Musk posted on X, the social media platform he owns, on Christmas Day.

In a later post, he wrote: “It comes down to this: do you want America to WIN or do you want America to LOSE. If you force the world’s best talent to play for the other side, America will LOSE. End of story.”

Musk’s stance was supported by Ramaswamy, his partner in the fledgling “department of government efficiency” (Doge), an informal agency Trump claims he will create, under which the two men will be charged with the task of cutting government spending.

In a lengthy social media post, Ramaswamy – the son of immigrants from India – argued that the US was doomed to decline without high-skilled foreign workers and suggested American culture had become geared towards “mediocrity”.

“The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over ‘native’ Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit,” he wrote.

“A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture.

“Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long. That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.

“A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers. ‘Normalcy’ doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.”

The arguments were met by a fierce backlash from Maga exponents, led by Loomer, who delved into racist arguments.

“@VivekGRamaswamy knows that the Great Replacement is real,” she wrote. “It’s not racist against Indians to want the original MAGA policies I voted for. I voted for a reduction in H1B visas. Not an extension.

“The tech billionaires don’t get to just walk inside Mar-a-Lago and stroke their massive checkbooks and rewrite our immigration policy so they can have unlimited slave laborers from India and China who never assimilate.

“You don’t even know what MAGA immigration policy is.”

Ramaswamy’s argument also came under fire from the pro-Trump podcaster Brenden Dilley, who posted: “I always love when these tech bros flat out tell you that they have zero understanding of American culture and then have the gall to tell you that YOU are the problem with America.”

And even Nikki Haley, the former Republican presidential contender and Trump critic whose parents were also Indian immigrants, posted: “There is nothing wrong with American workers or American culture. All you have to do is look at the border and see how many want what we have. We should be investing and prioritizing in Americans, not foreign workers.”

The arguments appeared to portend a battle for the ear of Trump, who has based his political appeal on an anti-immigration message and who, during his first presidency, restricted access to the H-1B visas, arguing they were open to abuse.

But in his recent presidential campaign, the president-elect indicated that he was open to the legal immigration of educated workers, saying he wanted to grant permanent residence status to foreign nationals who graduate from university in the US.

“If you graduate or you get a doctorate degree from a college, you should be able to stay in this country,” he told the All In podcast last June.

Samuel Hammond, a senior economist at the Foundation for American Innovation, said the row flagged up the likelihood of future conflict within Trump’s administration. “It’s a sign of future conflicts,” he told the Washington Post. “This is like the pregame.”

Julián Castro, the former US housing secretary, has accused Donald Trump’s incoming border enforcement chief of ushering in “cruelty part two” towards migrants arriving in America under the president-elect’s planned border policies.

Speaking on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Castro sharply criticised Tom Homan, Trump’s newly appointed “border czar”, over his comments about family detention centers and the separation of migrant families.

“It just shows you, again, the heart of cruelty, the dark heart that he and the Trump administration folks have for these migrants,” Castro said on Friday. “They like to dehumanize them.”

Homan, who previously served as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, recently outlined plans that could see the return of family detention centres – a practice ended under the Biden administration. He suggested undocumented parents of US-born children would need to make their own decisions about keeping families together.

Castro, a Democrat, argued instead that migrants often flee desperate conditions including violence and hunger.

“They’re not picking up and leaving and moving somewhere thousands of miles away just on a whim,” he said.

Castro took issue with Homan’s “clinical and bureaucratic” approach to immigration enforcement, describing it as “disconnected from the real life of these people, of these human beings”.

While Homan has indicated that any new detention facilities would be “open-air campus” settings with childcare and education provisions, he has also repeated the incoming administration’s commitment to ending “catch-and-release” policies for all migrants, including families.

The Biden administration is pledging to approve fresh military aid to Ukraine in the coming days, including crucial air defense systems, as North Korean forces face mounting casualties in their first major deployment to a European conflict.

John Kirby, the US national security communications adviser, told reporters on Friday that in just the last week North Korean troops had suffered more than 1,000 casualties in what he referred to as failed “human wave” assaults near the Kursk border-region, which confirms similar figures reported by South Korea.

According to Kirby, there are also reports of North Korean soldiers taking their own lives rather than surrendering.

“These human wave tactics that we’re seeing haven’t really been all that effective,” Kirby said. “Russian and North Korean military leaders are treating these troops as expendable and ordering them on hopeless assaults against Ukrainian defenses.”

The promised US security assistance package is expected to be announced “in the next couple of days”, Kirby said, though it is unclear when that will be and how much it will include.

The aid surge comes weeks after the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, met
Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian president’s office, in Washington to pledge extensive support including a planned delivery of hundreds of thousands of artillery rounds, thousands of rockets and hundreds of armored vehicles by mid-January.

That package also included a training for new Ukrainian troops at sites outside the country and finalizing $20bn in loans backed by immobilized Russian assets.

The accelerated aid packages come as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to become the country’s commander-in-chief next month. Trump has signaled a stark departure from current US policy on Ukraine, including his team reportedly developing a peace proposal that would sideline Ukraine’s Nato membership aspirations and potentially cede territory to Russia.

Trump has repeatedly claimed he could end the conflict within 24 hours without offering much detail.

The North Korean deployment follows a mutual defense pact signed between the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and the North Korean supreme leader, Kim Jong-un, at a summit in Pyongyang in June.

It is estimated that up to 12,000 North Korean troops have been deployed to support Russian forces in Ukraine, according to a previous tally from US and South Korean officials.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, claimed earlier this week that North Korean casualties in the Kursk region had exceeded 3,000, though this figure could not be independently verified.

The involvement of North Korean troops follows extensive material support from Pyongyang, which has reportedly sent more than 10,000 containers of artillery rounds and other military equipment to Russia.

South Korean military officials say North Korea is using the Ukraine conflict to modernize its warfare capabilities, raising concerns about increased military threats in the Korean peninsula.

• North Korean troops deployed in Russia’s Kursk region are suffering heavy losses and being left unprotected by the Russian forces they are fighting alongside, according to Ukraine, while the US says Russian and North Korean generals see the soldiers as “expendable”. Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday that said Russian troops were sending the North Koreans into battle with minimal protection and that the North Koreans were taking extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner. “Their losses are significant, very significant,” the Ukrainian president said in his nightly video address. “We see that neither the Russian military nor their North Korean overseers have any interest in ensuring the survival of these North Koreans.” Zelenskyy said “several” wounded North Korean soldiers had died after being captured by Ukrainian forces. In Washington, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said troops sent by Pyongyang were killing themselves rather than risking capture. A “human wave” of North Korean soldiers were being sent to their deaths in “hopeless” attacks by generals who saw them as expendable, he said, estimating that Pyongyang suffered more than 1,000 killed or wounded in just the past week, which confirms similar figures reported by South Korea.

• The Biden administration pledged to approve fresh military aid to Ukraine, including crucial air defence systems. Kirby said the promised US security assistance package was expected to be announced “in the next couple of days”, though it was unclear how much it will include. The aid surge comes weeks after the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, met the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, Andriy Yermak, in Washington to pledge extensive support including a planned delivery of hundreds of thousands of artillery rounds, thousands of rockets and hundreds of armoured vehicles by mid-January.

• Slovakia has confirmed its readiness to host any peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, despite Kyiv’s accusation that it is playing into the hands of Vladimir Putin. The Russian president on Thursday called it “acceptable” for the country to become a “platform” for dialogue over the conflict, which US president-elect Donald Trump has said he could end after he takes office in January. That prospect has raised concerns in Kyiv that a settlement could be imposed on terms favourable to Moscow, as Ukraine struggles on the battlefield. The Slovak prime minister, Robert Fico, said on Facebook late on Friday: “If someone wants to organise peace talks in Slovakia, we will be ready and hospitable.”

• Ukraine has received its first batch of liquefied natural gas from the US, a deal that Kyiv says will boost Ukrainian and European energy security as a major gas transit deal with Russia ends. Despite the war, Moscow has continued to pump gas across Ukraine to Europe under a multibillion-euro deal, an agreement Kyiv has long said it will not renew when it expires at the end of this year. “Dtek, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, has today taken delivery of its first cargo of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the United States,” the company said on Friday. The consignment was of about 100m cubic metres of gas, it told Agence France-Presse.

• A Russian court has sentenced a singer who burned his passport in protest against Moscow’s Ukraine war to five-and-a-half years in prison. Eduard Sharlot, 26, was found guilty of “publicly insulting” the religious feelings of believers and “rehabilitating nazism” by a court in the Volga city of Samara in a case over videos he published online, the state news agency RIA Novosti reported. The singer had posted a video in June 2023 in which he burned his Russian passport in protest against the military campaign. In another video he nailed a photograph of Patriarch Kirill, the head of Russia’s Orthodox church that has staunchly backed the offensive, to a crucifix. Sharlot initially left Russia for Armenia after the offensive but was arrested at St Petersburg airport in November 2023 upon his attempted return to Russia.

A court in China has sentenced a man to death for killing 35 people last month by driving into a crowd, in an attack that raised national concern about mass killings.

Fan Weiqiu was venting his anger because he was unhappy with his divorce settlement, the court in the southern city of Zhuhai said in handing down the sentence on Friday. The victims were exercising at a sports centre at the time of the attack. Fan pleaded guilty to endangering public safety by dangerous means, a court statement said.

Fan’s “criminal motive was extremely despicable, the nature of the crime was extremely vile, the means of the crime were particularly cruel, and the consequences of the crime were particularly severe, resulting in great social harm”, the court said.

In front of some of the victims’ families, officials and members of the public, Fan pleaded guilty, the court statement said.

The attack was one of several in China in late October and November and spurred the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, to order local governments to take steps to prevent future “extreme cases”. His order prompted vows from local leaders to examine personal disputes that could trigger aggression, from marital troubles to disagreements over inheritance.

Fan’s sentence was the second one handed down in quick succession just weeks after the recent attacks, much faster than court cases normally take in China.

A court earlier this week gave a suspended death sentence with a two-year reprieve to a driver who injured 30 people when he drove into elementary school students and parents in Hunan province. Such sentences are usually commuted to life in prison.

The court in the city of Changde said the driver was taking out his frustrations after losing money he had invested.

Such attacks on crowds, with a vehicle or a knife, are not new in China, but a spate in recent months and the high number of victims in the Zhuhai attack has renewed the focus on what are known as “revenge on society” crimes, where attackers destructively vent their anger over a personal matter.

Chinese authorities keep a tight lid on any reports about the attacks, censoring videos and witness accounts posted on social media and releasing only basic information, often many hours afterwards.

The death toll in Zhuhai wasn’t announced until 24 hours after the attack. In addition to the 35 people killed, another 43 were injured, police said. The driver, Fan, who was 62 years old, was found in his vehicle trying to stab himself with a knife, a police statement said.

Police set up barricades the day after the attack and barred people from entering the sports complex. Members of the public left bouquets of flowers by an adjacent square instead.

Greg Gumbel, a longtime CBS sportscaster, has died from cancer, according to a statement from family released by CBS on Friday. He was 78.

“He leaves behind a legacy of love, inspiration and dedication to over 50 extraordinary years in the sports broadcast industry; and his iconic voice will never be forgotten,” his wife Marcy Gumbel and daughter Michelle Gumbel said in a statement.

In March, Gumbel missed his first NCAA Tournament since 1997 due to what he said at the time were family health issues. Gumbel was the studio host for CBS since returning to the network from NBC in 1998. Gumbel signed an extension with CBS last year that allowed him to continue hosting college basketball while stepping back from NFL announcing duties.

In 2001, he announced Super Bowl XXXV for CBS, becoming the first Black announcer in the US to call play-by-play of a major sports championship.

David Berson, president and CEO of CBS Sports, described Gumbel as breaking barriers and setting standards for others during his years as a voice for fans in sports, including in the NFL and March Madness.

“A tremendous broadcaster and gifted storyteller, Greg led one of the most remarkable and groundbreaking sports broadcasting careers of all time,” said Berson.

Gumbel had two stints at CBS, leaving the network for NBC when it lost football in 1994 and returning when it regained the contract in 1998.

He hosted CBS’ coverage of the 1992 and 1994 Winter Olympics and called Major League Baseball games during its four-year run broadcasting the national pastime. In 1995, he hosted the World Figure Skating Championships and the following year hosted NBC’s daytime coverage of the Olympic Summer Games in Atlanta.

But it was football and basketball where he was best known and made his biggest impact. Gumbel hosted CBS’ NFL studio show, ‘The NFL Today’ from 1990 to 1993 and again in 2004.

He also called NFL games as the network’s lead play-by-play announcer from 1998 to 2003, including Super Bowl XXXV and XXXVIII. He returned to the NFL booth in 2005, leaving that role after the 2022 season.

“Like all who knew and loved him, I too am saddened by his death, yet also so very grateful to have known him in my life,” Clark Kellogg, a CBS Sports college basketball game and studio analyst, said in a statement. “What a gift to be touched by such a good man and partner.”

Gumbel, the older brother of sportscaster Bryant Gumbel, grew up in Chicago and graduated from Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa, in 1967 with a degree in English. He won local Emmy Awards during his long career and was the recipient of the 2007 Pat Summerall Award for excellence in sports broadcasting.

Outside of his career as a sportscaster, he was affiliated with the March of Dimes for three decades, including as a member of its board of trustees. He also was a member of the Sports Council for St Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital for 16 years.

Indonesia has received an official request from France to transfer a French death row inmate imprisoned on drugs charges since 2005, a senior Indonesian minister said on Saturday.

“We have received a formal letter requesting the transfer of Serge Atlaoui on 19 December 2024. The letter was sent on behalf of the French minister of justice,” senior Indonesian law and human rights minister Yusril Ihza Mahendra told Agence France-Presse.

He added that the request would be discussed in “early January” after the holidays.

Serge Atlaoui, a 61-year-old welder, was arrested in 2005 in a drugs factory outside Jakarta where authorities accused him of being a “chemist”.

In recent weeks, the Indonesian government has agreed to transfer a series of high-profile foreign detainees on death row, including Mary Jane Veloso, a Filipina domestic helper, and the last five members of the so-called “Bali Nine” drug ring, raising hopes for others who remain in jail.

Reports began to emerge last month that France had requested the repatriation of Atlaoui, who was due to be executed alongside eight other drug offenders in 2015 but won a temporary reprieve after Paris stepped up pressure. Indonesian authorities agreed to let an outstanding appeal run its course.

The father of four has maintained his innocence, claiming that he was installing machinery in what he thought was an acrylics plant.

He was initially sentenced to life in prison, but the supreme court in 2007 increased the sentence to death on appeal.

Indonesia has some of the world’s toughest drug laws, including the death penalty for traffickers, and has executed foreigners in the past.

Despite ongoing negotiations for prisoner transfers, the Indonesian government recently signalled that it will resume executions – on hiatus since 2016 – of drug convicts on death row.

The French embassy in Jakarta declined AFP’s request for comment.

With Agence France-Presse

Indonesia has received an official request from France to transfer a French death row inmate imprisoned on drugs charges since 2005, a senior Indonesian minister said on Saturday.

“We have received a formal letter requesting the transfer of Serge Atlaoui on 19 December 2024. The letter was sent on behalf of the French minister of justice,” senior Indonesian law and human rights minister Yusril Ihza Mahendra told Agence France-Presse.

He added that the request would be discussed in “early January” after the holidays.

Serge Atlaoui, a 61-year-old welder, was arrested in 2005 in a drugs factory outside Jakarta where authorities accused him of being a “chemist”.

In recent weeks, the Indonesian government has agreed to transfer a series of high-profile foreign detainees on death row, including Mary Jane Veloso, a Filipina domestic helper, and the last five members of the so-called “Bali Nine” drug ring, raising hopes for others who remain in jail.

Reports began to emerge last month that France had requested the repatriation of Atlaoui, who was due to be executed alongside eight other drug offenders in 2015 but won a temporary reprieve after Paris stepped up pressure. Indonesian authorities agreed to let an outstanding appeal run its course.

The father of four has maintained his innocence, claiming that he was installing machinery in what he thought was an acrylics plant.

He was initially sentenced to life in prison, but the supreme court in 2007 increased the sentence to death on appeal.

Indonesia has some of the world’s toughest drug laws, including the death penalty for traffickers, and has executed foreigners in the past.

Despite ongoing negotiations for prisoner transfers, the Indonesian government recently signalled that it will resume executions – on hiatus since 2016 – of drug convicts on death row.

The French embassy in Jakarta declined AFP’s request for comment.

With Agence France-Presse

The British-Canadian computer scientist often touted as a “godfather” of artificial intelligence has shortened 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%” 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%.”

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 the technology, 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”.

An Italian journalist has been arrested while reporting in the Iranian capital, Tehran, and held in solitary confinement for a week, according to Italy’s foreign ministry.

Cecilia Sala, 29, a war correspondent and reporter who works for the newspaper Il Foglio and the podcast company Chora Media, was detained on 19 December, the ministry said, but her arrest was only made public on Friday.

She was in the country on a regular journalist visa and had published several reports on the shifting landscape in Iran after the fall of the Assad regime in Syria.

“Following orders from foreign minister Antonio Tajani, the embassy and consulate in Tehran are monitoring the case with utmost attention from the outset,” Italy’s foreign ministry said in a statement. “Working in coordination with the council presidency, we are engaged with Iranian authorities to clarify Sala’s legal situation and verify the conditions of her detention.”

Sala is being held in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, which mostly holds detainees facing security charges. It has long been criticised by western rights groups and was blacklisted by the US government in 2018 for “serious human rights abuses”.

The foreign ministry said Sala had been allowed to make two phone calls to her relatives. The Italian ambassador, Paola Amadei, visited Sala in prison on Friday, and Tajani said the journalist was “in good health condition”.

Chora Media said in a statement: “The independent voice of Cecilia has been silenced. Italy and Europe cannot tolerate this arbitrary arrest. Cecilia Sala must be immediately released.”

Il Foglio said in article: “Journalism is not a crime. We decided to share Cecilia’s story after receiving assurances from the heads of our diplomacy that informing our readers about her arrest would not slow down the diplomatic efforts to bring her home.”

Sala has nearly half a million followers on Instagram and is a regular guest on Italian talkshows. She has covered among other topics the fall of Kabul and the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the crisis in Venezuela, the war in Ukraine and the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Elly Schlein, the leader of the centre-left opposition Democratic party, urged the government to act swiftly. “We immediately call on the government to take every useful initiative to shed light on this matter, to clarify the reasons for this detention and, above all, to bring Cecilia Sala back to Italy as soon as possible,” she said.

Iran has not acknowledged detaining Sala. However, it can take weeks before authorities announce such arrests. Since the 1979 US embassy crisis, when dozens of hostages were released after 444 days in captivity, Iran has used prisoners with western ties as bargaining chips in negotiations with other countries.

The last major health facility in northern Gaza has been put out of service, the World Health Organization has said, after an Israeli military operation targeting sites near the Kamal Adwan hospital.

“Initial reports indicate that some key departments were severely burnt and destroyed during the raid,” the WHO said in a statement on X.

Israel’s military claimed in a statement that the hospital had become a “key stronghold for terrorist organisations and continues to be used as a hideout for terrorist operatives” since Israeli forces began broader operations in northern Gaza in October.

The WHO said 60 health workers and 25 patients in critical condition, including those on ventilators, reportedly remain in the hospital. The patients in moderate to severe condition were forced to evacuate to the destroyed and non-functional Indonesian hospital, the UN health agency said, adding that it was “deeply concerned for their safety”.

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. He added that he was threatened with arrest by Israeli forces.

“The occupation army is burning all the operating departments in the hospital while we are still there,” Abu Safiya posted on Instagram. “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.” He added that much of the hospital building and equipment was damaged.

Eid Sabbah, the head of the nursing department at Kamal Adwan, told the Guardian that Israeli forces raided the courtyards of the hospital with tanks and bulldozers. He said they were given only 15 minutes to clear the hospital. “We do not know the fate of most of the staff, patients and their companions, or the direction the occupation army took them in,” said Sabbah. He said some were taken to a nearby wedding hall and al-Fakhoura school.

In a voice message shared by Abu Safiya, a member of the medical staff said: “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.”

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.

The Israel Defense Forces said it was 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 Kamal 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”.

Elsewhere in Gaza, Israeli strikes killed at least 25 people, including 15 people in a single house in Gaza City, medics and the civil emergency service said.

Much of the area around the northern towns of Jabaliya, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya has been cleared of people and systematically razed, fuelling speculation that Israel intends to keep the area as a closed buffer zone after the fighting in Gaza ends.

Israel says its campaign is to prevent Hamas militants from regrouping but that it will retain full security control of Gaza after the war.

Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza has killed more than 45,300 Palestinians, according to health officials in the territory. Most of the population of 2.3 million has been displaced and much of Gaza is in ruins.

The war was triggered by Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken to Gaza as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

The aircraft that crashed in Kazakhstan on Christmas Day, killing 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 the aircraft 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 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 had lost their lives, speculation has swirled about the cause of the crash. The White House said on Friday that the US had seen early indications that the jet was possibly brought down by Russian air defence systems, echoing claims by Ukrainian officials and sources in Azerbaijan.

“There’s an ongoing investigation right now” involving Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, John Kirby, the White House spokesperson, told reporters on a call. “We have offered our assistance to that investigation, should they need it.”

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 said.

Images of the crash appear to show the plane plummeting to the ground where it burst into flames on impact.

A passenger on the plane told Reuters that he 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 were drunk – not the same plane any more.”

Rakhimov also spoke to the Russian state broadcaster RT and said it seemed as though the explosion took place outside the plane and that shrapnel 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 plane 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 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 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 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”.

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

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

A newly declassified US Senate report found that the CIA’s handling of mysterious health incidents known as Havana syndrome has been flawed and marred by inconsistent medical care, delayed compensation and communication failures – all while foreign adversaries remain “very unlikely” to be responsible.

Many cases of the syndrome have been reported, mostly among US officials posted abroad, and the phenomenon has led to theories they had been targeted by a hitherto unknown weapon using directed energy of some sort wielded by a hostile power.

While concluding that it was unlikely the illnesses stem from foreign adversaries, the report warns that there are “many unanswered questions” due to research gaps, and that “US adversaries are likely developing directed energy technologies that may plausibly explain some of the reported symptoms.”

The 18-page Senate intelligence committee report, released on Friday, revealed that nearly 100 CIA-affiliated individuals who reported these so-called “anomalous health incidents” (AHI) often faced “delayed, denied or pre-conditioned care” and struggled to access benefits.

The report particularly criticized the agency’s shift away from supporting affected personnel more than a year before its official conclusion that foreign adversaries were probably not responsible.

“Many AHI reporters experienced a significant moral injury as a result of how they perceived CIA’s treatment of them,” the report states, noting that medical providers observed this affecting patients’ recovery due to “increased stress about not being believed”.

According to the legislators, CIA employees who reported symptoms had lower success rates in obtaining workers’ compensation compared with other government agencies, with only 21% of CIA applicants approved versus 67% from other agencies. The report found the CIA chose to contest claims more aggressively than other departments, often declining to confirm basic facts about reported incidents.

Reports of the illness first began to percolate among US personnel in Havana in 2016. Affected individuals reported symptoms including headaches, dizziness and cognitive issues, sometimes accompanied by unusual sensory experiences.

But two National Institutes of Health studies published in March in the Journal of the American Medical Association found no significant physical differences between affected individuals and control groups.

According to the now-defunct NIH studies, which examined approximately 80 current and former US officials through brain imaging and clinical assessments, researchers found no significant differences in brain structure or function between affected individuals and control participants.

However, the studies did note higher rates of imbalance, fatigue, post-traumatic stress and depression among those reporting symptoms.

Those studies have since been shuttered after an internal investigation revealed some participants had been coerced to join.

As of earlier this year, a Government Accountability Office report found that 334 Americans had qualified for care in the military health system, though many struggled to access treatment. The Department of Defense has developed a trauma registry to collect patient data, but has only entered information for 33 patients thus far, the report noted.

Despite more than 1,500 reports of Havana syndrome globally, the underlying cause remains unclear – which gives the committee pause when it comes to widespread denials and challenges in health benefits.

“It can take years or even decades for some medical mysteries to be solved,” the report writes. “This committee does not want the [intelligence community] to repeat previous [US government] mistakes of withholding medical care and other support because it does not yet fully understand the mysterious health conditions its personnel are reporting.”