Denmark has said it is open to dialogue with Donald Trump about his legitimate security concerns after the incoming US president said he was prepared to use economic tariffs or military force to seize control of Danish-administered Greenland.

Lars Løkke Rasmussen, the experienced Danish foreign minister, insisted he did not see a political crisis, but said it was in everyone’s interests to lower the temperature in the discussions.

“We are open to a dialogue with the Americans on how we can possibly cooperate even more closely than we do to ensure that the American ambitions are fulfilled.”

He added: “I have my own issues with Donald Trump and I also know that you shouldn’t say everything you think out loud.”

But he played down the possibility that Greenland would ever become part of the US: “We fully recognise that Greenland has its own ambitions. If they materialise, Greenland will become independent, though hardly with an ambition to become a federal state in the United States.”

At the same time he praised the French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, who told France Inter radio: “There is no question of the EU letting other nations in the world, whoever they may be, attack its sovereign borders.”

Barrot added that, while he did not believe the US “would invade” Greenland, “we have entered an era that is seeing the return of the law of the strongest”.

In Berlin, Steffen Hebestreit, the German government spokesperson, said in response to Trump’s remarks that “as always, the firm principle applies … that borders must not be moved by force”.

Denmark is caught in a double bind confronted by the increasingly serious threats from Trump to take over the island for US geostrategic reasons, but also growing demands from Greenland’s political class for full independence from Denmark.

In his new year remarks, Greenland’s prime minister, Múte B Egede, said that Greenland was now ready to take the next big step in the effort to break the “chains of colonialism”. A self-government act has already been passed that opens the way to a referendum on independence but the likelihood that the great powers Russia, the US and China, which are circling Greenland’s strategic importance and critical minerals, would not object to the country and its 56,000-strong population gaining full independence seems unlikely.

Local elections are due to be held in April that could turn into a test of opinion on Greenland’s constitutional future.

The president-elect’s son, Donald Trump Jr, flew briefly to Greenland on Tuesday in a trip coinciding with his father’s call for the US to run Greenland, and returned trying to stoke a mood for it to be sold to Washington.

He said: “These are people who feel they’ve been exploited. They haven’t been treated fairly by Denmark. They’re being held back from exploiting their natural resources, whether it’s coal, uranium, rare earths, gold or diamonds. It’s really a great place”.

The Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, did not rule out independence, saying:“If Greenland, at some point, makes a decision of some character, then we will address that as the Danish government.” Referencing Greenland’s status within the Danish kingdom, she urged calm adding: “I don’t doubt for a second that we’re stronger together.”

She said :”There is a lot of support among the people of Greenland that Greenland is not for sale and will not be in the future either”.

In 2019 she had called Trump’s demand that Greenland was put for sale “absurd”, but there has been a collective decision by Danish government to try to soothe emotions.

Greenland was a Danish colony until 1953 but is now a self-governing territory of Denmark and in 2009 achieved the right to claim independence through a vote.

Danish politicians are hoping a confrontation can be avoided by a meeting between senior officials from Denmark and the US to discuss any update required to the many post second world war security agreements signed by the two countries. The US has a military base in Greenland, Pituffik space base (formerly Thule base) first established in 1941. It provides critical early warning systems necessary to monitor Russian activity. Other bases were abandoned in the 1970s. But with the melting of the ice around Greenland, the possibility of new trade routes opening has transformed the Arctic’s importance.

Denmark has increased its Nato spend to more than 2 % of GDP and in per capita terms is one of the largest EU contributors to Ukraine.

In an hour-long press conference on Tuesday, Trump refused to rule out using military force to take the Panama canal and Greenland and also suggested he intended to use “economic force” to make Canada part of the US.

Greenland is the world’s biggest island. Since 2009 it has had the right to hold a referendum to decide whether it wishes to be independent. Egede, a member of the pro-independence Community of the People (IA) party, said last week Greenland “is not for sale and will never be for sale”.

Egede was scheduled to meet the Danish king on Wednesday at 2pm Danish time (1pm GMT) and it was expected that Trump’s threats and advances on Greenland will be discussed.

Arriving at Copenhagen airport late on Tuesday night, Egede responded to Trump’s refusal to rule out military or economic coercion in order to gain control of Greenland, saying they were “serious statements”.

“The things that have come out, I think, are some serious statements. But we’ll take it from there,” he told the Danish broadcaster DR.

His original meeting with the king, scheduled for earlier in the day, was cancelled at the last minute, with Egede’s office citing “diary gymnastics”. But Donald Trump Jr’s visit to Greenland on Tuesday led to the cancellation being viewed by some as a snub and embarrassment to the king, who recently changed the royal coat of arms to more prominently include symbols of Greenland and the Faroe Islands, which are both autonomous territories of Denmark.

Aki-Matilda Høegh-Dam, the Greenlandic MP who represents the Siumut party in the Danish parliament, told the Guardian she took Trump’s comments about coercion as “directed more toward Panama than Greenland”. But, she said, his comments “underscore the growing geopolitical importance of Greenland”.

She added: “It also highlights a critical need for constructive dialogue. While I do not interpret his remarks as a threat of military force against Greenland or Denmark, they do suggest the United States may feel compelled to act if the Kingdom of Denmark is unable to address security concerns effectively.”

Donald Trump is refusing to rule out using American military force to retake control of the Panama Canal and seize Greenland, citing economic security as a driving factor.

Speaking at a Tuesday press conference at Mar-a-Lago, the incoming US president explicitly declined to give assurances against using military or economic coercion when pressed about his plans regarding Panama and Greenland.

“I can’t assure you on either of those two,” Trump said in response to a reporter’s question. “But I can say this, we need them for economic security.”

The remarks came during a rambling session with journalists at his Florida resort home and will probably set off diplomatic alarm bells around the world as Trump prepares to return to the White House later this month with an agenda of muscular American nationalism.

Trump claimed the Panama Canal, which was transferred to Panamanian control in 1999 under a 1977 treaty, was being “operated by China”, an assertion that comes amid his repeated calls for the strategic waterway to be returned to US control.

“The Panama Canal was built for our military,” Trump said. “Look, the Panama Canal is vital to our country. It’s being operated by China. China! And we gave the Panama Canal to Panama, we didn’t give it to China.”

When it came to Greenland, Trump threatened economic retaliation against Denmark, noting that if that country resisted his territorial ambitions he “would tariff Denmark at a very high level”.

His tough talk also extended due north, as he reiterated his interest in using “economic force” to make Canada into a US state and criticized US military support for one of its closest allies.

Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, rejected Trump’s comments, saying: “There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States.

Trump was speaking as his son, Donald Trump Jr, touched down in Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, where he reportedly distributed “Make Greenland Great Again” hats despite claiming to be visiting purely as a tourist.

Video footage showed the former US president addressing a group over lunch during a call to his son’s phone, saying, “We’re going to treat you well.”

The dual focus on Panama and Greenland represents a cryptic attempt to expand US territorial control in the name of national and economic security. While the Panama Canal was previously under US control, Greenland remains an autonomous territory of Denmark that has repeatedly rejected American overtures.

Trump’s comments follow a series of increasingly confrontational statements about the canal, including a recent threat that the US would “demand that the Panama Canal be returned to the United States of America – in full, quickly and without question”.

Panama’s president, José Raúl Mulino, rejected Trump’s demands, declaring that “every square metre” of the canal would remain under Panamanian sovereignty.

The exchange marks a dramatic escalation in rhetoric over the crucial maritime passage, which the US originally built in 1914 and operated for most of the 20th century. The confrontational stance echoes the tensions that led to the 1989 US invasion of Panama.

His comments are sparking particular concern given the United States’ history of military intervention in Panama.

In December 1989, the US launched Operation Just Cause, deploying 9,000 troops to join 12,000 US military personnel already in the country to overthrow the Panamanian military dictator Manuel Noriega. The invasion, which resulted in the deaths of 23 US service members and an estimated 500 Panamanian civilians, was condemned by the Organization of American States and the European Parliament as a violation of international law.

It also resulted in the removal of Noriega, who would later be sentenced on drug-trafficking charges to 40 years in US prison.

Trump has simultaneously ramped up pressure on other territories, suggesting Canada could become “the 51st state” and mockingly referring to the exiting prime minister, Justin Trudeau, as “governor”.

In an X post on Tuesday afternoon, Trudeau pushed back strongly on Trump’s suggestion, saying: “There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States. Workers and communities in both our countries benefit from being each other’s biggest trading and security partner.”

Trump Jr’s Greenland visit included appearances at controversial colonial landmarks and meetings with local residents, though officials declined to specify the purpose of these encounters. There was no apparent official meeting with anyone from the Greenland government.

Trump posted on social media about his son’s trip.

“Don Jr and my Reps landing in Greenland,” Trump wrote. “The reception has been great. They, and the Free World, need safety, security, strength, and PEACE! This is a deal that must happen. MAGA. MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN!” Supporters later posted video of Trump speaking by phone to locals.

The Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said on Tuesday that the future of Greenland would be decided by its people. “Greenland is not for sale,” Frederiksen said.

During a press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday, the incoming US president Donald Trump refused to rule out using American military force to seize Greenland. He also threatened economic retaliation against Denmark, noting that if that country resisted his territorial ambitions for Greenland he “would tariff Denmark at a very high level”.

“I can’t assure you,” Trump said in response to a reporter’s question. “But I can say this, we need them [the Panama Canal and Greenland] for economic security.”

We would like to hear your reaction to what Trump has said about Greenland. What do you think of his territorial ambitions?

The Nobel peace prize winner Maria Ressa has said Meta’s decision to end factchecking on its platforms and remove restrictions on certain topics means “extremely dangerous times” lie ahead for journalism, democracy and social media users.

The American-Filipino journalist said Mark Zuckerberg’s move to relax content moderation on the Facebook and Instagram platforms would lead to a “world without facts” and that was “a world that’s right for a dictator”.

“Mark Zuckerberg says it’s a free speech issue – that’s completely wrong,” Ressa told the AFP news service. “Only if you’re profit-driven can you claim that; only if you want power and money can you claim that. This is about safety.”

Ressa, a co-founder of the Rappler news site, won the Nobel peace prize in 2021 in recognition of her “courageous fight for freedom of expression”. She faced multiple criminal charges and investigations after publishing stories critical of the former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte.

Ressa rejected Zuckerberg’s claim that factcheckers had been “too politically biased” and had “destroyed more trust than they’ve created”.

“Journalists have a set of standards and ethics,” Ressa said. “What Facebook is going to do is get rid of that and then allow lies, anger, fear and hate to infect every single person on the platform.”

The decision meant “extremely dangerous times ahead” for journalism, democracy and social media users, she said.

Zuckerberg, the founder and chief executive of Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said on Tuesday he would remove factcheckers in the US and replace them with a crowd-sourced moderating service similar to the “community notes” feature on the rival social media platform X.

He added that Meta would also “get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse” and “work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more”.

Meta has said it has “no immediate plans” to remove factcheckers outside the US, although the rest of the changes will be implemented worldwide.

Ressa said she would do everything she could to “ensure information integrity”. “This is a pivotal year for journalism survival,” she said. “We’ll do all we can to make sure that happens.”

In October, the human rights group Amnesty International claimed that authorities in the Philippines were using Facebook to “red-tag” young activists, a term referring to the labelling of campaigners and others as alleged “communist rebels” and “terrorists”.

In 2021 a Meta whistleblower, Frances Haugen, claimed there was a lack of safety controls in non-English language markets, such as Africa and the Middle East, and that Facebook was being used by human traffickers and armed groups in Ethiopia.

“I did what I thought was necessary to save the lives of people, especially in the global south, who I think are being endangered by Facebook’s prioritisation of profits over people,” she told the Observer.

At the time, Meta, then operating under the corporate brand of Facebook, said the premise that it prioritised profit over safety was “false” and that it had invested $13bn (£11bn) in protecting users.

In 2018, after the massacre of Rohingya Muslims by the military in Myanmar, Facebook admitted that the platform had been used to “foment division and incite offline violence”. Three years later, the human rights group Global Witness claimed that Facebook was promoting content that incited violence against political protesters in Myanmar. Facebook said it had proactively detected 99% of the hate speech removed from the platform in the country.

The co-chair of Meta’s oversight board said the company’s systems had become “too complex”, as the chief executive of Elon Musk’s X welcomed its decision to scrap factcheckers.

Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the co-chair of the social media company’s oversight board and the former prime minister of Denmark, has said she and the departed president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, had agreed “Meta systems have been too complex”, adding that there had been “over-enforcement”.

On Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg made the surprise announcement that the Facebook owner would move away from using third-party checkers to flag misleading content in favour of notes from other users.

The 40-year-old billionaire said that, starting in the US, Meta would “get rid of factcheckers and replace them with community notes similar to X”, as the company moves to prioritise free speech in the run-up to Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

The move came only days after Clegg, Britain’s former deputy prime minister, left Meta after six years at the company, most recently in the role of president of global affairs. In a departure post on Facebook, Clegg said he was proud of having worked on “new forms of governance”.

During his time at Meta, he helped to establish the Facebook oversight board, an independent board that makes decisions on the social network’s moderation policies.

Thorning-Schmidt told the BBC: “There are huge problems in what Mark Zuckerberg has announced yesterday and that’s why the existence of an oversight board is so important. We welcome looking into factchecking. We welcome that message, looking into the complexity and perhaps over-enforcement.

“We’re very concerned about gender rights, LGBTQ+ rights, trans people’s rights on the platforms because we are seeing many instances where hate speech can lead to real-life harm, so we will be watching that space very carefully.”

Clegg will be replaced by Joel Kaplan, who previously served as the deputy chief of staff for policy under the former president George W Bush, months after Trump’s election victory. Thorning-Schmidt said Clegg had “talked about leaving for a long time”.

Her comments came as Linda Yaccarino, the head of X, welcomed Meta’s decision, saying “welcome to the party” during an appearance at the CES technology show in Las Vegas, hours after Zuckerberg announced the policy shift.

The change will mean the social network moves away from third-party checkers to flag misleading content in favour of user-based notes. These have been introduced widely in recent years on X, formerly known as Twitter, particularly after Musk cut content moderators amid mass sackings after he bought the company in 2022.

The decision by Meta, which also owns Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads, has been widely criticised by online safety campaigners and commentators, who said it would enable the flow of misinformation and harmful content.

Yaccarino described Meta’s decision as “really exciting” during an onstage question and answer session at CES. She said X’s community notes were “good for the world” and the system was “the most effective, fastest factchecking, without bias”.

She said: “Think about it as this global collective consciousness, keeping each other accountable at global scale in real time. And it couldn’t be more validating than to see that Mark and Meta realised that.”

Yaccarino added: “Human behaviour is inspired because when a post is noted, it’s dramatically shared less, so that’s the power of community notes.”

Wearing a rare Swiss watch, reportedly worth almost $900,000 (£722,607), Zuckerberg called Meta’s current moderation system “too politically biased”, although he admitted that changes to the way the company filtered content would mean “we’re going to catch less bad stuff”.

Residents of Los Angeles have fled wildfires engulfing the suburbs of the west coast megalopolis, as firefighters struggled to contain the flames overnight amid fears they would worsen on Wednesday morning.

California officials ordered more than 30,000 people to evacuate their homes as hillside infernos ripped through the coastal Pacific Palisades neighbourhood. People escaped by car and on foot.

Two inland fires in the LA vicinity were also spreading fast: one in Altadena, near Pasadena, and one in Sylmar, in the San Fernando Valley, north-west of LA. Further east, a new fire, named the Tyler fire, began overnight. All four fires were 0% contained, according to officials from California’s department of forestry and fire protection.

The governor of California, Gavin Newsom, has declared a state of emergency. Before daybreak on Wednesday morning, he released a statement saying the state had deployed more than 1,400 firefighting personnel “to combat these unprecedented fires in LA”.

The city’s mayor, Karen Bass, said overnight that the wind speed could increase on Wednesday morning, which would further fan the fire. “Angelenos should be advised that the windstorm is expected to worsen through the morning and to heed local warnings, stay vigilant and stay safe,” she said.

The National Weather Service (NWS) had previously issued its highest alert for extreme fire conditions for much of Los Angeles county until Thursday. Low humidity and dry vegetation due to a lack of rain meant the conditions were “about as bad as it gets in terms of fire weather”, the NWS said.

In a Wednesday update, the service warned of “the most extreme conditions expected this morning”.

Gusts could reach speeds of 100mph (160km/h), the NWS said. The powerful winds have grounded Air Force One in LA, forcing a change in the travel plans of the president, Joe Biden.

Human-caused climate breakdown is supercharging extreme weather across the world, driving more frequent and more deadly disasters from heatwaves to floods to wildfires.

The region has been experiencing warmer than average temperatures in January, in part due to recent blasts of dry air, including the notorious Santa Ana winds. Southern California has not recorded more than 0.1in (2.5mm) of rain since early May.

Jeff Monford, a power utility spokesperson, said it was not always possible to give advanced notice to customers of power shutoffs, telling the Los Angeles Times: “This is a phenomenon of the increasing effects of climate change on weather. We have more weather extremes that can change more quickly than we might be accustomed to.”

More than 220,000 homes and businesses in Los Angeles county were without power late on Tuesday, data from PowerOutage.us showed.

No fatalities have been announced, but local media reported patients with burns. Videos shared by people online showed flames licking homes through the canyons, thrashing trees blowing in the wind and plumes of black smoke billowing into the sky.

As the fire rapidly spread, severe gridlock on narrow streets led many to leave their cars, some of which were subsequently engulfed in flames. With ditched vehicles blocking first responders, authorities were forced to use bulldozers to them.

In Altadena, the flames from the Eaton fire spread so rapidly that staff at a senior living centre had to push residents in wheelchairs and hospital beds down the street to a parking lot, the Associated Press reported.

The residents waited there in their bedclothes as embers fell around them until ambulances and buses arrived to take them to safety. One was a as old as 102, the agency reported.

Evacuees described harrowing escapes, including one woman who recounted to ABC7 how she abandoned her vehicle and fled with her cat in her arms. She said: “I’m getting hit with palm leaves on fire … It’s terrifying. It feels like a horror movie. I’m screaming and crying walking down the street.”

The blazes also reached the grounds of the Getty Villa, an art museum by the Malibu coast. Some vegetation on the property burned, but museum officials said no structures had been affected and that the galleries and staff were protected by a range of prevention measures.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting

Fast-moving wildfires raging through Los Angeles have left Hollywood movie actors and reality TV stars fleeing their hillside mansions, as wind-whipped blazes devastated affluent neighbourhoods along the coast.

More than 30,000 people have been put under evacuation orders in LA, and a state of emergency has been declared as the infernos swept through the Pacific Palisades, a ritzy area near Malibu popular with celebrities.

Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, said he was evacuated from Malibu and told people in the area to “stay safe”. On his social media, he said there were small fires on both sides of the road as he fled.

The reality TV star Heidi Montag and her husband, Spencer Pratt, lost their home to the flames. The couple were primary cast members of The Hills, the reality TV hit that chronicled the lives of young socialites, and married in 2009.

Pratt had filmed the fire spreading on Instagram, showing arid hills and black smoke. His sister, Stephanie, later confirmed her brother’s house had been destroyed, saying the wind was so strong that it was impossible to save the building.

In LA, film premieres were cancelled, including the British singer Robbie Williams’s biopic Better Man, and the Screen Actors Guild awards cancelled an in-person nominations announcement planned for Wednesday morning.

The actor Eugene Levy​ from American Pie and the TV show Schitt’s Creek evacuated on Tuesday, telling the Los Angeles Times while stuck in traffic, “The smoke looked pretty black and intense.”

Chet Hanks, the son of Tom Hanks, wrote on Instagram: “The neighbourhood I grew up in is burning to the ground.”

Human-caused climate breakdown is supercharging extreme weather across the world, driving more frequent and more deadly disasters, from heatwaves to floods to wildfires. Climate breakdown has increased the wildfire season by about two weeks on average across the globe.

The actor James Woods, who had roles in Casino and Once Upon a Time in America, posted a series of videos of flames near his home in the Palisades.

“Standing in my driveway, getting ready to evacuate,” the Golden Globe winner said in a short video on X, adding firefighting planes were flying over and dropping water. Later he wrote: “It tests your soul, losing everything at once, I must say.”

The Palisades neighbourhood is filled with hilltop homes along winding roads looking over the sea. Some fleeing residents were forced to abandon their cars in traffic jams on the road and continue on foot.

The actor Steve Guttenberg, who lives in the Palisades and starred in the 1987 comedy Three Men and a Baby, urged people who abandoned their cars to leave their keys behind so they could be moved to make way for fire engines.

In a street clouded with smoke, he told the TV station KTLA: “What’s happening is people take their keys with them, as if they’re in a parking lot. This is not a parking lot. We really need people to move their cars.”

In the past few months, Jon Oei’s parents, who live in the highlands of the Pacific Palisades, have received multiple wildfire evacuation orders, the most recent in the early hours of New Year’s Eve, he said.

So on Tuesday, when a wildfire began not far from the family’s home, they did not immediately evacuate.

By 10.30 am however, they could see “smoke coming over the top of the hill,” the 35-year-old said. The fire, ignited as a ferocious windstorm whipped the region, was rapidly growing.

Oei was staying with his parents, and he knew the one main road going out of their neighborhood would be snarled with traffic following the first evacuation order. Soon, videos showed long traffic jams as residents tried to evacuate, empty cars lining some roads as people gave up the wait and continued on foot.

“I think a lot of people ignore the first call,” he said. “You get stuck. There you see people abandoning their cars.”

Meanwhile, the wind was also pushing the fire in the opposite direction from his parents’ home, Oei said. So they waited.

It was not until after 5pm, he said, that they finally decided to flee. The family could see the fire coming over the Malibu side of the hills, which meant that the single road out of the community risked being cut off by fire.

“The decision most people made: how long can I stay before I can’t really drive the one road out any more?” Oei said. “By the time my family did it, it was close to the end.”

Many other neighbors had left by that point, he said, but he recalled “six or seven” other cars leaving at the same time.

By the time they drove down towards the ocean, there was not much traffic on Palisades drive. But it was dark, and the power was out across the area. “There were no lights, and everything was on fire,” Oei said. During parts of the drive, the land on both sides of the road was ablaze.

The family made it safely to Oei’s apartment in Santa Monica,, he said.

Many residents of the Pacific Palisades, an affluent community in the north of Los Angeles, told similar stories. The natural beauty the seaside enclave is known for – tucked between pristine Pacific beaches and the green hills of the Santa Monica mountain range – is also what makes it susceptible to rapidly spreading wildfires. And what makes it tricky to evacuate.

Nearby Malibu witnessed similar scenes in December, when the so-called Franklin fire forced thousands to evacuate there.

Pacific Palisades resident Kelsey Trainor told the Associated Press the only road in and out of her neighborhood was completely blocked. Ash fell all around them while fires burned on both sides of the road.

“We looked across and the fire had jumped from one side of the road to the other side of the road,” Trainor said. “People were getting out of the cars with their dogs and babies and bags, they were crying and screaming. The road was just blocked, like full-on blocked for an hour.”

Longtime Palisades resident Will Adams told the news service embers flew into his wife’s car as she tried to evacuate. “She vacated her car and left it running,” Adams said. She and many other residents walked down toward the ocean until it was safe.

He watched as the sky turned brown and then black as homes started burning. He could hear loud popping and bangs “like small explosions,” which he said he believes were the transformers exploding.

“It is crazy, it’s everywhere, in all the nooks and crannies of the Palisades. One home’s safe, the other one’s up in flames,” Adams said.

Oei said that while some people might find his family’s experience deeply shocking, he has found repeated exposure to wildfires makes people who live in the area accustomed to responding. His parents have lived in their home for more than three decades.

“We were largely prepared to evacuate,” he said. If he hadn’t been staying with them, his parents, who are in their late 60s and early 70s, “probably would have waited a lot longer to leave.”

“I’d be very surprised if people in the area didn’t have go bags already set up,” he said. “This has happened. We’re used to it.”

The Associated Press contributed reporting

Pedro Sánchez has hit out at Elon Musk and his allies for “openly attacking our institutions, inciting hatred and openly calling for people to support the heirs of nazism”, saying the politics of division, disinformation and hatred risk ushering in a new age of authoritarianism.

Speaking in Madrid on Wednesday as Spain prepares to mark the 50th anniversary in November of the death of General Franco and the country’s subsequent return to democracy, the Spanish prime minister said hard-won, basic freedoms could not, and should not, be taken for granted.

“When you’ve spent your life under its protective veil, it’s easy to forget the enormous strengths of democracy and to let yourself be seduced by those who promise people order, security and wealth in exchange for robbing us of the most precious thing a person can have, which is the power to choose our own destiny,” he said.

The socialist leader said it was clear that autocratic regimes and values of the last century were on the rise again across the world – not least in the shape of Musk and his ilk.

“The fascism that we thought we’d left behind is now the third biggest political force in Europe,” said Sánchez. “And, as President Macron [of France] said only a few days ago, the international reactionary movement – or the international far-right movement that we’ve been warning about for years in Spain – which is being led in this case by the richest man on the planet, is openly attacking our institutions, inciting hatred and openly calling for people to support the heirs of nazism in Germany in the forthcoming elections that will be held in Europe’s most important economy.”

If history teaches us anything, he said, it is that “freedom is never won on a permanent basis” and that democracy could be snuffed out again in parts of the world.

Sánchez said the best way to defend and strengthen Spain’s democracy was to build “a more prosperous, cohesive, free and tolerant society” and to fight lies and fake news. “Lies and disinformation are the main weapons of the enemies of democracy,” he said.

Sánchez is the latest European leader to speak out against Musk’s attempts to influence the continent’s political direction.

Emmanuel Macron said on Monday: “Ten years ago, who would have imagined that the owner of one of the world’s largest social networks would be supporting a new international reactionary movement and intervening directly in elections, including in Germany.”

The British prime minister, Keir Starmer, has also condemned Musk’s attacks on the government, suggesting his “lies and misinformation” on grooming gangs were amplifying the “poison” of the far right.

Sánchez, announcing a year-long programme of events to mark the beginning of Spain’s return to democracy, said the idea was to celebrate the country’s transformation over the past five decades, to honour all those who made it possible and to teach young people about the importance of democracy.

“Fifty years ago, Spain began to work towards freedom, emerging from the ashes of the last dictatorship in western Europe,” he said. “Our mothers and fathers, our grandmothers and grandfathers – and we ourselves – helped forge one of the most complete and prosperous democracies on the planet, the democracy we are today. Let’s celebrate it and let’s use it to build another 50 years of progress and freedom.”

The recently announced initiative, however, has failed to secure universal political support. Wednesday’s launch was boycotted by the conservative People’s party (PP) and the far-right Vox party, both of which have accused Sánchez of playing politics with the past to distract from the corruption allegations his administration faces.

The PP’s leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, pointedly skipped the event in favour of a visit to the eastern region of Valencia, which is still recovering from the disastrous floods late last year in which 232 people died. The PP, which rules the region, has been heavily criticised for its handling of the disaster, and for the fact that the regional president enjoyed a three-hour lunch with a journalist on the day the floods devastated many towns and villages.

“Sánchez is with Franco, Feijóo is with the people of Valencia,” PP sources said.

Vox has accused the government of squandering public money on the anniversary and using the past to partisan ends. “We won’t take part in this absurd necrophilia that divides Spaniards,” the party said.

King Felipe, whose father, Juan Carlos, helped steer Spain back to democracy despite being groomed as Franco’s successor, was also absent from the launch as he was receiving the credentials of six new ambassadors.

Pedro Sánchez has hit out at Elon Musk and his allies for “openly attacking our institutions, inciting hatred and openly calling for people to support the heirs of nazism”, saying the politics of division, disinformation and hatred risk ushering in a new age of authoritarianism.

Speaking in Madrid on Wednesday as Spain prepares to mark the 50th anniversary in November of the death of General Franco and the country’s subsequent return to democracy, the Spanish prime minister said hard-won, basic freedoms could not, and should not, be taken for granted.

“When you’ve spent your life under its protective veil, it’s easy to forget the enormous strengths of democracy and to let yourself be seduced by those who promise people order, security and wealth in exchange for robbing us of the most precious thing a person can have, which is the power to choose our own destiny,” he said.

The socialist leader said it was clear that autocratic regimes and values of the last century were on the rise again across the world – not least in the shape of Musk and his ilk.

“The fascism that we thought we’d left behind is now the third biggest political force in Europe,” said Sánchez. “And, as President Macron [of France] said only a few days ago, the international reactionary movement – or the international far-right movement that we’ve been warning about for years in Spain – which is being led in this case by the richest man on the planet, is openly attacking our institutions, inciting hatred and openly calling for people to support the heirs of nazism in Germany in the forthcoming elections that will be held in Europe’s most important economy.”

If history teaches us anything, he said, it is that “freedom is never won on a permanent basis” and that democracy could be snuffed out again in parts of the world.

Sánchez said the best way to defend and strengthen Spain’s democracy was to build “a more prosperous, cohesive, free and tolerant society” and to fight lies and fake news. “Lies and disinformation are the main weapons of the enemies of democracy,” he said.

Sánchez is the latest European leader to speak out against Musk’s attempts to influence the continent’s political direction.

Emmanuel Macron said on Monday: “Ten years ago, who would have imagined that the owner of one of the world’s largest social networks would be supporting a new international reactionary movement and intervening directly in elections, including in Germany.”

The British prime minister, Keir Starmer, has also condemned Musk’s attacks on the government, suggesting his “lies and misinformation” on grooming gangs were amplifying the “poison” of the far right.

Sánchez, announcing a year-long programme of events to mark the beginning of Spain’s return to democracy, said the idea was to celebrate the country’s transformation over the past five decades, to honour all those who made it possible and to teach young people about the importance of democracy.

“Fifty years ago, Spain began to work towards freedom, emerging from the ashes of the last dictatorship in western Europe,” he said. “Our mothers and fathers, our grandmothers and grandfathers – and we ourselves – helped forge one of the most complete and prosperous democracies on the planet, the democracy we are today. Let’s celebrate it and let’s use it to build another 50 years of progress and freedom.”

The recently announced initiative, however, has failed to secure universal political support. Wednesday’s launch was boycotted by the conservative People’s party (PP) and the far-right Vox party, both of which have accused Sánchez of playing politics with the past to distract from the corruption allegations his administration faces.

The PP’s leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, pointedly skipped the event in favour of a visit to the eastern region of Valencia, which is still recovering from the disastrous floods late last year in which 232 people died. The PP, which rules the region, has been heavily criticised for its handling of the disaster, and for the fact that the regional president enjoyed a three-hour lunch with a journalist on the day the floods devastated many towns and villages.

“Sánchez is with Franco, Feijóo is with the people of Valencia,” PP sources said.

Vox has accused the government of squandering public money on the anniversary and using the past to partisan ends. “We won’t take part in this absurd necrophilia that divides Spaniards,” the party said.

King Felipe, whose father, Juan Carlos, helped steer Spain back to democracy despite being groomed as Franco’s successor, was also absent from the launch as he was receiving the credentials of six new ambassadors.

The EU executive has been too slow in enforcing a major law intended to ensure good behaviour of social media companies, MEPs have said, amid growing concern about the aggressive forays of Elon Musk into European politics.

Pressure on the European Commission to act is growing as Musk, the X owner and world’s richest man, prepares to host a livestream conversation on the platform on Thursday with the leader of the far-right Alternative for Deutschland, Alice Weidel.

The conversation with Musk, whose website claims he has 211.4 million followers, is seen as handing a significant advantage to the AfD as Germany prepares for elections on 23 February.

Damian Boeselager, an MEP, co-founder of the pan-European Volt party and candidate for the Bundestag in the German election, has written to the Commission urging it to examine Musk’s “interference” in European elections.

The MEP wants the Commission to investigate whether X’s apparent promotion of Musk’s tweets is legal under the EU’s Digital Services Act, which came into force in 2022.

Speaking to the Guardian, Boeselager said the system used to amplify Musk’s tweets was “probably illegal under the DSA”, because he believes it fails to meet the law’s transparency requirements.

He became aware that the X algorithm had been reconfigured to promote Musk’s tweets after a report in tech news site Platformer last February that Musk later appeared to confirm, by posting a meme about forcing followers to consume his tweets.

The MEP told the Guardian he had become more concerned about the issue recently after Musk waded into European politics, for example with a post last month when he said “only the AfD can save Germany”.

The MEP said: “I don’t understand why people believe that free speech is not affected by the concentration of opinion-making power in the hands of the few. For me, that has rather illiberal, autocratic tendencies, rather than liberal tendencies, when one voice is so much more powerful than all the others.”

On Wednesday France’s foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, added to pressure on the Commission to use EU law in a tougher way. “Either the European Commission applies with the greatest firmness the laws that exist to protect our unique space or it does not and in that case it should think about giving the capacity to do so back to the member states of the European Union, to France,” he said.

The DSA, which came into force in 2022, is meant to clamp down on companies “too big to care” and imposes duties to remove illegal content, tackle disinformation and protect elections.

Companies found to have broken the DSA can be fined up to 6% of global turnover or banned from operating in the EU.

After an initial investigation, the Commission last July accused X of violating the DSA in three areas, including by “deceiving users” by allowing anyone to buy so-called blue-tick “verification”, which has opened the door to scammers. The Commission, since last month under new leadership on tech policy, has yet to conclude the investigation, which was launched in December 2023.

Arba Kokalari, a Swedish centre-right lawmaker who was involved in drafting the DSA, told the Guardian that the commission was “very slow or too slow” in investigating social media platforms, including X.

Referring to X and other social media companies, she said: “There is a spread of disinformation and so much illegal content and these platforms are not respecting the DSA and our rules. So I think the Commission could do more in the framework that we have given them as legislators.”

Christel Schaldemose, a Social Democrat vice-president of the European parliament, said the Commission needed to “step up” enforcement of the DSA, and “do things faster” and “more proactively” to ensure platforms were doing enough to protect against a “systemic risk against democracy”.

Referring to Musk, she asked: “Is it fair that one person can adjust his algorithms in a way that makes him and his politics and opinions more prevalent than others? Is it OK? Is it risky? Is it in line with the DSA?”

The former EU commissioner Thierry Breton, who clashed with colleagues over how to handle X, has suggested that Musk’s support for the AfD constitutes foreign interference, and described his forthcoming conversation with Weidel as handing “a significant and valuable advantage” to the AfD leader.

The Commission said earlier this week that its investigation was ongoing, without indicating when it might be complete: “We are talking about a private business and we need to make sure our position is well founded,” a spokesperson said.

The Commission, the spokesperson said, would “carefully analyse” the Weidel-Musk conversation. “Nothing in the DSA prohibits such a live stream,” the spokesperson said. “What we want, however, is that the owner of the platform … or the provider of the platform make sure that the platform is not misused or giving a preferential treatment to certain types of content, or an increased visibility to just one type of content.”

X did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Spain added its voice on Wednesday to the governments of the UK, France and Germany, which have criticised Musk’s hostile and often misleading tweets about European politics and society. In one of his latest salvoes, Musk reposted an account that contained a screenshot of rape convictions in Catalonia.

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, accused Musk of heading an “international reactionary movement” that “openly attacks our institutions, stirs up hatred and openly calls for the support of the heirs of Nazism in Germany’s upcoming elections”.

Additional reporting by Sam Jones in Madrid

Cecilia Sala, an Italian journalist detained in solitary confinement in Iran, has been freed and is heading back to Italy.

A plane carrying the 29-year-old took off from Tehran after “intensive work on diplomatic and intelligence channels”, a statement from the office of the prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, said. The flight is due to arrive at Rome’s Ciampino airport at 3.30pm local time.

Sala, a reporter for Il Foglio, was arrested on 19 December on charges of breaching Islamic law – three days after she arrived in the country on a journalist visa.

Her plight had become intertwined with that of Mohammad Abedini Najafabadi, an Iranian engineer arrested at Milan’s Malpensa airport on a US warrant a few days before Sala was detained.

Najafabadi is accused of supplying drone components to Tehran. Prosecutors in Milan on Tuesday denied a request for house arrest from Najafabadi’s defence lawyers. A hearing is scheduled on 15 January. As of Wednesday morning, it was unclear how Sala’s release would influence Najafabadi’s case.

Iran on Monday denied there was a link between Sala’s arrest and that of Abedini. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmaeil Baqaei, said Sala had been arrested for “violating the law of the Islamic republic” during her reporting trip.

The journalist’s release comes a few days after Meloni made a flying visit to Donald Trump’s Florida golf club, during which she reportedly “pressed hard” on Sala’s case.

Daniele Raineri, Sala’s boyfriend, told the news agency Ansa: “I have heard from her … she was excited and very happy.”

Sala’s father, Renato Sala, told Ansa: “I’ve only cried three times in my life. I believe our government has done an exceptional job. I will tell her I am proud of her and of her ability and composure.”

During a phone call to her parents last week, Sala described the harsh conditions of her detainment in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, including having to sleep on the floor of her cell without a mattress and being given food through a crack in the door.

The prison is known for the detainment of opponents of the Iranian regime, journalists and foreign citizens.

Among its recent prisoners is Narges Mohammadi, the Iranian 2023 Nobel peace prize laureate, who said in an interview published by the French magazine, Elle, last week that Evin was a place “where political prisoners die”.

She said there were 70 prisoners in the women’s wing “from all walks of life, of all ages and of all political persuasions”, including journalists, writers, women’s rights activists and people persecuted for their religion.

One of the most commonly used “instruments of torture” was isolation, said Mohammadi, who shared a cell with 13 other prisoners before being released on temporary medical leave on 4 December.

Mohammadi has personally documented cases of torture and serious sexual violence against her fellow prisoners.

She had been due to go back to jail on 25 December when the three-week leave period expired but her Iranian legal team asked for an extension, a move backed by a medical committee but which has yet to be approved by prosecutors.

For now, Mohammadi remains at liberty but in a state of limbo in the absence of a response by Iranian authorities to the request, the France-based lawyer for her family, Chirinne Ardakani, told Agence France-Presse on Monday. “This is a cruel strategy deployed deliberately by the authorities,” she said.

The sister of the OpenAI chief executive, Sam Altman, has filed a lawsuit alleging that he regularly sexually abused her for several years, starting when they were children.

The lawsuit filed on 6 January in a US district court in the Eastern District of Missouri alleges that the abuse began when Ann Altman was three and Sam Altman was 12. The filing alleges that the last instance of abuse took place when he was an adult but his sister, known as Annie, was still a child.

The chief executive of the ChatGPT developer posted a joint statement on X, which he had signed along with his mother, Connie, and his younger brothers, Max and Jack, denying the allegations and calling them “utterly untrue”.

“Our family loves Annie and is very concerned about her wellbeing,” the statement said. “Caring for a family member who faces mental health challenges is incredibly difficult.”

It added: “Annie has made deeply hurtful and entirely untrue claims about our family, and especially Sam. This situation causes immense pain to our entire family.”

Ann Altman has previously made similar allegations against her brother on social media platforms.

In the court filing, her lawyers said she had experienced mental health issues as a result of the alleged abuse. The lawsuit is requesting a jury trial and damages in excess of $75,000 (£60,000) as well as legal fees.

The family statement said Ann Altman had made “deeply hurtful and entirely untrue claims” about the family and accused her of demanding more money.

They added that they had offered her “monthly financial support” and “attempted to get her medical help” but that she “refuses conventional treatment”.

The family said they had previously decided not to respond publicly to the allegations, but had chosen to do so after her decision to take legal action.

Sam Altman, 39, is one of the most prominent leaders in the technology sector, and co-founded OpenAI, which is best known for ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, which was launched in 2022.

The billionaire was briefly fired as chief executive in November 2023 by the then board of directors, which accused him of “being not consistently candid in his communications”. Nearly all the workforce threatened to resign and he was hired again to the post the following week.

The sister of the OpenAI chief executive, Sam Altman, has filed a lawsuit alleging that he regularly sexually abused her for several years, starting when they were children.

The lawsuit filed on 6 January in a US district court in the Eastern District of Missouri alleges that the abuse began when Ann Altman was three and Sam Altman was 12. The filing alleges that the last instance of abuse took place when he was an adult but his sister, known as Annie, was still a child.

The chief executive of the ChatGPT developer posted a joint statement on X, which he had signed along with his mother, Connie, and his younger brothers, Max and Jack, denying the allegations and calling them “utterly untrue”.

“Our family loves Annie and is very concerned about her wellbeing,” the statement said. “Caring for a family member who faces mental health challenges is incredibly difficult.”

It added: “Annie has made deeply hurtful and entirely untrue claims about our family, and especially Sam. This situation causes immense pain to our entire family.”

Ann Altman has previously made similar allegations against her brother on social media platforms.

In the court filing, her lawyers said she had experienced mental health issues as a result of the alleged abuse. The lawsuit is requesting a jury trial and damages in excess of $75,000 (£60,000) as well as legal fees.

The family statement said Ann Altman had made “deeply hurtful and entirely untrue claims” about the family and accused her of demanding more money.

They added that they had offered her “monthly financial support” and “attempted to get her medical help” but that she “refuses conventional treatment”.

The family said they had previously decided not to respond publicly to the allegations, but had chosen to do so after her decision to take legal action.

Sam Altman, 39, is one of the most prominent leaders in the technology sector, and co-founded OpenAI, which is best known for ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, which was launched in 2022.

The billionaire was briefly fired as chief executive in November 2023 by the then board of directors, which accused him of “being not consistently candid in his communications”. Nearly all the workforce threatened to resign and he was hired again to the post the following week.

A body found in the search for two missing British walkers in the Dolomites is believed to be that of Sam Harris, Italy’s alpine rescue service said.

The 35-year-old’s body was found buried in deep snow at the foot of a cliff at about 2,600 metres above sea level in the area of the Conca pass in the Adamello nature park.

Harris’s body was recovered by helicopter and transferred to Spiazzo in Trento. “The dynamics of the accident are still being examined by the police but it is possible that the mountaineer fell from a height,” the rescue service said in a statement.

The discovery came after two rucksacks and other equipment were found in a refuge on Wednesday. The location of Harris’s body was traced through his mobile phone.

Harris’s family who are in Italy helping with the search are believed to have been informed.

The land and air search for his friend Aziz Ziriat, 36, was stalled on Wednesday afternoon due to wind, fog and the risk of avalanches.

“As soon as a window of good weather permits, the search for the second climber will resume,” the rescue service said.

Ziriat and Harrishave been missing since New Year’s Day, when they last sent messages home. The pair, both from London, did not check in to their flight home on 6 January. Their relatives have travelled to Italy.

On Tuesday, Crystal Palace’s official charity, Palace for Life, where Ziriat worked, appealed for anyone who knew the area where they went missing and could help to call 999 with the reference: CAD 0197/07 Jan25.

The search on Tuesday was hampered by bad weather.

The men’s last known location was near a mountain hut called Casina Dosson, close to the town of Tione Di Trento, near Riva Del Garda, on Lake Garda.

Joe Stone, a university friend of Ziriat, told the PA news agency the pair were experienced hikers who liked to go off the grid, but “alarm bells were raised” when they failed to check in for their return flight.

He said: “They are experienced hikers and they go a couple of times a year. It wasn’t surprising that they had no signal as they like going off the grid. Alarm bells were raised though when they didn’t turn up for their flight.”

Ziriat’s girlfriend and friends of the hikers are in Italy helping to coordinate the search with local authorities.

Stone praised the public response and said they had seen a “nice side of humanity” since asking for help. He added: “The response from the local authorities has been fantastic and people from all walks of life have been trying to help, both in Italy and in the UK.”

A musical about a Mexican cartel boss who fakes their death, transitions and is reborn as a heroine searching for the forcibly disappeared is sweeping international film awards, but prompted amusement and outrage in Mexico.

Emilia Pérez, directed by Jacques Audiard, has been largely praised by international critics, though some noted it risked trivialising extremely sensitive issues. It scooped the jury prize at Cannes before winning four Golden Globes on Sunday, including those for best musical or comedy and best non-English language film.

People in Mexico won’t be able to see it until later this month, and most of them were unaware of it until clips started circulating online of Selena Gomez delivering bizarre sexual lines in stilted Mexican Spanish.

Eugenio Derbez, a Mexican actor, described Gomez’s acting as “indefensible”, before apologising when his comments blew up online and Gomez responded that she had tried her best.

But then Mexicans began observing that Emilia Pérez was a film about Mexico where just one main actor was Mexican, made by a French director who speaks no Spanish, shot in France, scripted with unnatural-sounding dialogue, and heavy with stereotypes.

Comments online were by turns amused and annoyed, but also baffled that the film was being garlanded at international film awards.

“Emilia Pérez makes history as the first winner of Best Motion Picture – Non-English Language written with Google Translate!” one user wrote on X.

Karla Sofía Gascón, the Spanish transgender woman who plays Emilia Pérez, shot back on X saying the “unjustified hate” was coming from “a few people with their own interests”.

“It’s a pity that they use so many profiles to (uselessly) attack a film with such a beautiful message and representation, instead of using them to support Mexican films and creators,” said Gascón. “It’s a pity they don’t use these same bots and paid attacks to demand justice and a fairer society in the world.”

Mexicans responded to the idea that it represented their country with ridicule. One account quipped that Gascón must be “the first winner of a Golden Globe to have blocked half of Mexico.”

Activists have also questioned the film’s trans representation, noting its use of trans identity as an “inherently redemptive” tool for its criminal protagonist.

Glaad, an LGBTQ+ advocacy organisation, described the film as a “profoundly retrograde portrayal of a trans woman” and a “step backward for trans representation”.

But the aspect of the film that sparked most outrage in Mexico is the frivolity with which it treats the issues of violence and the disappeared. Gaby Meza, a film critic, told the BBC it had been perceived in Mexico as “exploiting a current tragedy … to generate an entertainment product”.

There are roughly 30,000 homicides a year in Mexico, and more than 100,000 people are missing. Organised crime, the police and the army have all been implicated. Impunity is almost absolute.

“I didn’t study [Mexico] much,” admitted Audiard in an interview. “What I needed to know I already knew a little bit.”

“That [Emilia Pérez] wins the Golden Globe for best foreign film, in the midst of a human rights crisis for trans women in Mexico, transfemicides, drug trafficking, thousands of disappearances and victims, is NOT VISIBILITY,” wrote Natalia Lane, a transgender activist in Mexico.

Hot off its success at the Golden Globes, Emilia Pérez is a favourite for the Oscars next month – where it has been put forward as France’s entry for best international feature film.

In any case, Mexicans will be thrilled to know that Audiard has already teased a prequel.

Paris Jackson, the daughter of the late pop star Michael Jackson, has revealed, upon announcing she has reached five years of sobriety, that she is in recovery from heroin and alcohol addiction.

She made a frank post on Instagram with a video and described herself as an alcoholic and a drug addict, while expressing her gratitude at emerging from those dependencies, People magazine reported.

“Today marks five years clean and sober from all drugs and alcohol, to say that I’m thankful would be a poor euphemism,” she said.

Paris Jackson, a singer-songwriter, 26, added in the post, on Tuesday: “Gratitude hardly scratches the surface. It’s because I’m sober that I get to smile today. I get to make music. I get to experience the joy of loving my dogs and cat. I get to feel heartbreak in all its glory. I get to grieve. I get to laugh. I get to dance. I get to trust.”

Jackson’s video clip begins with images of her drinking alcohol, partying and weeping, progressing to more joyous scenes, such as dancing with friends, and then adds a message of thanks.

Her aunt, La Toya Jackson, an older sister of Michael Jackson, posted, saying: “Congratulations, Paris. I’m so, so proud of you and your growth, strength and accomplishments.”

She praises her niece’s efforts at “helping others that are going through this” and sends Paris love.

Michael Jackson died in Los Angeles in 2009.

Doctors are failing to diagnose women with a potentially deadly heart condition because tests rely on outdated studies from the 1970s and do not account for natural differences in sex and body size.

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is a genetic condition where the muscular wall of the heart becomes thickened, making it harder for the heart to pump blood around the body. It affects one in 500 people, and can cause cardiac arrest and sudden death.

But research funded by the British Heart Foundation found current guidelines for diagnosing the condition were wholly inadequate. The findings were published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Two in three people diagnosed with HCM are men, but researchers said women were just as likely to have the condition.

HCM is diagnosed using a variety of tests and scans, such as measuring the thickness of the wall of the left ventricle, the heart’s main pumping chamber.

For the past five decades, the threshold for diagnosing HCM has been 15mm for everyone. If the muscle is thicker than this, the patient is considered likely to have HCM.

Research found this was inadequate and did not account for natural differences in sex and body size. The study included 1,600 patients with HCM whose condition was examined using a new method, taking account of age, sex and size.

Researchers found that the new method, which included AI reading thousands of heart scans, was particularly beneficial for women, increasing identification of HCM by 20 percentage points.

Further testing was carried out on data from more than 43,000 people on the UK Biobank. When the new personalised thresholds were applied, the overall number of people identified with HCM was lower, suggesting fewer misdiagnoses.

There was also a more even split between men and women, with women making up 44% of those identified, reflecting the belief that women have been missing out on diagnosis.

Dr Hunain Shiwani, a clinical research fellow at University College London and St Bartholomew’s hospital, who led the research, said the current threshold was based on studies from the 1970s and needed to be reconsidered.

He said: “Having the same cut-off for everyone regardless of age, sex or size completely ignores the fact that heart wall thickness is strongly influenced by these factors.

“Our research provides a long-overdue update showing that a personalised approach improves the accuracy of diagnosis.

“Effective treatments for HCM are starting to be used for the first time, making it more important than ever that we can correctly identify those who need them.”

Dr Sonya Babu-Narayan, a clinical director at the British Heart Foundation and a clinical cardiologist, said: “Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is a severe, potentially life-threatening condition, and missed diagnosis means people that might benefit from new and effective treatments could slip through the net.

“At the same time, a diagnosis is itself a life-changing event and we should be making every effort to prevent misdiagnosing people.

“By updating the traditional one-size-fits-all approach, this study redefines abnormal heart wall thickness, a key contributor to the diagnosis of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

“As a result, more women and small individuals were identified who would otherwise be underdiagnosed.”