Fast-moving wildfires tore through several neighborhoods of Los Angeles, killing at least five people, incinerating more than 1,500 buildings and leaving firefighters across the region spread thin.

Winds were easing and firefighters from across the state were relieving exhausted crews, but the danger was far from over. As officials provided an update on the fires, a new blaze broke out in the Hollywood Hills, and evacuation orders were also extended to Santa Monica.

More than 1,000 structures, mostly homes, have been destroyed, and over 130,000 people are under evacuation orders in the metropolitan area, from the Pacific coast inland to Pasadena, a number that continues to shift as new fires – six were burning as of Wednesday evening – erupt.

“We are absolutely not out of danger yet,” LA city fire chief Kristin M Crowley said.

‘Devastating and terrifying nights’

The disaster began on Tuesday afternoon, when a powerful windstorm fanned the flames of a fire in the scenic Pacific Palisades neighborhood, quickly forcing thousands to flee.

The emergency intensified overnight as firefighters struggled to contain the flames in the extreme winds, during what one official described as among the “most devastating and terrifying nights” in city history.

By morning, authorities had dispatched crews from across California to help tackle at least four blazes besieging the region, and Oregon reported it would send firefighters.

Officials say the flames have injured many, and UCLA said its hospitals had treated over 20 patients.

The LA county fire chief, Anthony Marrone, said on Wednesday morning there were “not enough firefighters in LA county to address four separate fires of this magnitude”. The county was prepared for “one or two brushfires, but not four, especially given these sustained winds and low humidities”, he said. Later that evening, that had grown to six.

One of the fires, the Palisades fire, has been deemed the most destructive in the modern history of Los Angeles, and preliminary estimates of damages and economic losses from the disasters exceeded $50bn.

The fires are also straining the region’s water resources. Firefighters have struggled with reduced water pressure and fire hydrants that have run dry in some areas due to the increased demand, the city’s water and power department reported. Officials have urged residents to conserve water.

‘It blew me back’

In some parts of Los Angeles, the flames moved so quickly residents were forced to abandon their cars and flee on foot, later leading to jammed roads that first responders had to clear with bulldozers. In the Pacific Palisades, Sheriece Wallace said she was unaware there was a fire burning around her until her sister called as a helicopter made a water drop overhead.

“I was like: ‘It’s raining,’” Wallace said. “She’s like: ‘No, it’s not raining. Your neighborhood is on fire. You need to get out.’”

She added: “As soon as I opened my door, it was like right there. The first thing I did was looked at the trees to see where the wind was blowing. Because it hit me. It blew me back.” She was able to leave.

The Palisades fire was wholly uncontained as of Wednesday afternoon and prompted evacuation orders for roughly 37,000 residents, extending into some densely populated neighborhoods north of the city’s famous pier.

Other inland wildfires in Los Angeles were also spreading fast, including the major Eaton fire in Altadena, near Pasadena. That blaze exploded in size and has grown to 10,600 acres and was expected to become the largest California wildfire to burn during the month of January in the past 41 years.

As many as 500 structures have been impacted or destroyed, at least five Altadena school campuses have suffered substantial fire damage and roughly 100,000 people have been ordered to evacuate in the Eaton fire.

Two smaller fires were also reported, including the Hurst fire, in Sylmar, in the San Fernando Valley, north-west of Los Angeles, and one that began on Wednesday named the Woodley fire, near the Van Nuys neighborhood. By Wednesday afternoon, a brush fire, called the Lidia fire, had begun burning into the Angeles national forest.

All fires were 0% contained, according to officials from California’s department of forestry and fire protection. A fire to the east of the city, named the Tyler fire, began overnight but was largely contained.

A state of emergency

The fires have consumed a total of about 42 sq miles (108 sq km) – nearly the size of the entire city of San Francisco.

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

Newsom cancelled plans to attend Jimmy Carter’s funeral because of the disaster. Donald Trump used the fires as an opportunity to criticize Joe Biden andNewsom in a rambling post on Truth Social in which he said the governor was to blame for the disaster because of his policies related to the endangered smelt fish.

Meanwhile, residents in the sprawling suburbs and rural enclaves braced for another day of brutal winds. Gusts across the southern California region peaked at 100mph, with swaths of the area seeing between 50-80mph winds over the last two days.

Trees thrashed and debris was strewn across yards in Chatsworth, California, a neighborhood at the foot of the Santa Susana mountains, throughout a sleepless night on Tuesday. Residents anxiously kept watch on the glowing horizons and billowing smoke pluming over the mountains above wondering if new ignitions would start in the night.

Wind-whipped fires are difficult to stop and can move incredibly fast, especially through these parched landscapes.

“It was very surreal,” said Patty Robinson, a resident, after trees thumped against her roof and the gusts howled. “To hear this wind and know the effect it is having and the damage that it can bring makes my hackles rise,” she added. “My little lizard brain is freaking out.”

Displaced residents have sought shelter at local evacuation centers. The city has opened several facilities to take in those escaping the flames, and are providing hot meals and food for dogs and cats. In Pasadena several hundred people, many of whom were elderly and from assisted living facilities, were at an evacuation center on Wednesday afternoon. They sat wheelchair-to-wheelchair.

Donald Fisher, 78, said he was first to be wheeled onto the bus at the Camellia Gardens Care Center to be taken to the shelter around 8am.

“I can stand up but I can’t walk,” Fisher said. “I think that the city of Pasadena did a marvelous job.”

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.

The service warned the most extreme conditions were expected on Wednesday morning.

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.”

As of Wednesday afternoon, more than 153,000 homes and businesses were suffering power outages, according to PowerOutage.us.

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.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting

As firefighters battled three wildfires raging across Los Angeles in the early hours of Wednesday morning, the water tanks supplying Pacific Palisades – where the largest of the fires broke out – ran dry.

Janisse Quiñones, chief engineer and CEO of the Los Angeles department of water and power, told reporters that by 3am Wednesday, the three 1m-gallon tanks serving the Palisades had been depleted.

“We had a tremendous demand on our system in the Palisades. We pushed the system to the extreme,” Quiñones said during an early Wednesday morning press conference. “Four times the normal demand was seen for 15 hours straight, which lowered our water pressure.”

Although all 114 water tanks serving the city of Los Angeles were completely filled before the fire, water use in the Palisades caused the first of three tanks to run dry at 4.45pm on Tuesday, followed by the second at 8.30pm and the third at 3am Wednesday. As those tanks – located in the high-elevation Palisades – emptied, it became more difficult to refill them from lower-elevation reserves.

“Those tanks help with the pressure on the fire hydrants in the hills of Palisades,” Quiñones said. “Because we were pushing so much water in our trunk line, and so much water was being used before it [went] to the tanks, we were not able to fill the tanks fast enough. So the consumption of water was faster than we can provide water in our trunk line.”

She urged Los Angeles residents “across the entire system to conserve water so the fire department can use the urban water system to fight this fire” while the utility sends 20 water tanks to support firefighters.

“We’re fighting a wildfire with urban water systems, and that is really challenging,” Quiñones said.

Urban water systems are not designed to fight wildfires, Mark Pestrella, director of the Los Angeles county department of public works, told the Associated Press. “That’s why air support is so critical to the firefight. And unfortunately, wind and air visibility have prevented that support.”

All firefighting aircraft were grounded by 7pm Tuesday due to high winds that evening, according to the Los Angeles fire department chief, Kristin Crowley, who said she had never seen such high winds as when the Palisades fire broke out on Tuesday morning.

Karen Bass, the Los Angeles mayor, announced that air operations had resumed by Wednesday afternoon, allowing LAFD helicopters to drop water on the fire. With wind conditions slightly improving, Joe Biden directed the defense department to provide air support to the state of California.

On Truth Social, Donald Trump criticized California’s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom for the water-supply issues in the Palisades.

“Governor Gavin Newscum refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way,” Trump wrote. “I will demand that this incompetent governor allow beautiful, clean, fresh water to FLOW INTO CALIFORNIA! He is to blame for this.”

When Trump was president in 2019, his administration presented a plan to pump water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta to Central valley farms – but the plan fell through after environmentalists and state officials noted that it threatened endangered salmon, smelt and steelhead species.

In a press release Wednesday, Newsom’s office shared on X: “There is no such document as the water restoration declaration – that is pure fiction. The Governor is focused on protecting people, not playing politics, and making sure firefighters have all the resources they need.”

Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to end factchecking on Facebook and Instagram in the US already has factchecking journalists bracing for cuts at their organizations, given the size of Meta’s funding.

The social media giant has provided more than $100m for outside organizations certified by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) to conduct factchecks on its social networks since 2016, which would result in posts receiving accuracy ratings and having their reach reduced if false. Major outlets like USA Today and Reuters have partnered with the social media company for these factchecks, as have factcheck specific sites like FactCheck.org. In all, 10 outlets are listed by Meta as current partners in the US.

Several of the partner organizations have confirmed they’re taking a financial hit that will likely lead to fewer employees. Lead Stories, one of Meta’s factcheck partners, confirmed its staff would take a hit as a result of the decision. “Lead Stories will see a drop in revenue with the loss of the Meta contract, which will result in a staffing reduction,” cofounder Alan Duke said in an email. Lead Stories employs about 80 people globally and performs factchecks for ByteDance, parent company of TikTok, as well as Meta.

Jesse Stiller, managing editor of Check Your Fact, an affiliate of the conservative Daily Caller outlet co-founded by Tucker Carlson, said: “We are shocked at the decision and we are uncertain about the future.” A spokesperson told CNN that Check Your Fact’s work would be “impacted greatly and our operations will be grounded to a halt”.

Meta is listed as a funder who has provided more than 5% of PolitiFact’s total revenues in the previous calendar year. The factchecking organization said it is “unavoidable that there will be some financial impact to PolitiFact and other factchecking journalists”.

Agence France-Presse (AFP), a Meta factcheck partner and a major news organization, said it learned the news yesterday alongside the public. “It’s a hard hit for the factchecking community and journalism. We’re assessing the situation,” a spokesperson for AFP said.

The abrupt news comes in stark contrast to a Meta blogpost from 2022 in which the company boasted: “We have built the largest global fact-checking network of any platform and have contributed more than $100 million to programs supporting our fact-checking efforts since 2016.” These efforts included $1m emergency grants for factchecking health misinformation during the early days of the covid-19 pandemic, a $1m grant to fight lies about the climate crisis and a grant for Black factcheckers.

The partner organizations have pushed back on the assertion from Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, that the factchecks they produced were biased. The Meta partner organizations come from different ideological backgrounds, and they say they would have been dropped from the program if they were inserting political beliefs into their work.

The pull-back deals a significant blow to this style of journalism. It is unclear if the media companies will be able or willing to fill in the funding gaps that losing Meta partnerships will leave, especially at a time when factchecking and the press are under attack.

Lead Stories said it would not cease operations altogether, however. “We will continue to operate. The majority of our business was non-Meta,” said Duke.

Aaron Sharockman, executive director of PolitiFact, likewise said that his organization would continue its fight for the truth: “PolitiFact will continue to do what it has always done – factcheck stories, posts or claims to provide people additional, high-quality information. On Facebook, and off.”

Meta’s rewritten policies on “hateful conduct” mean users will now be able to say different types of things on its platforms, Facebook, Instagram and Threads. After Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement of sweeping changes to oversight of content on its platforms, multiple edits have been made to its policies.

Among them are:

• A specific injunction against calling transgender or non-binary people “it” has been deleted. A new section has been added making clear that “we do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation”. It said this was a reflection of “political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like ‘weird’”. It also says the policies are designed to allow room for types of speech including people calling “for exclusion or [using] insulting language in the context of discussing political or religious topics, such as when discussing transgender rights, immigration or homosexuality”.

• Meta’s policies are unchanged in saying that users should not post content targeting a person or group of people on the basis of their protected characteristics or immigration status with dehumanising speech with comparisons to animals, pathogens or sub-human life forms such as cockroaches and locusts. But the changes suggest it may now be possible to compare women to household objects or property and to compare people to faeces, filth, bacteria, viruses, diseases and primitives.

• It should also be possible now to say transgender people “do not exist”.

• Meta has deleted warnings against self-admission of racism, homophobia and Islamophobia. It has also deleted warnings against expressions of hate, such as calling people “cunt”, “dick” and “asshole”.

• The changes may also mean it is acceptable to post about the “China virus”, a term the US president-elect, Donald Trump, has frequently used in relation to coronavirus.

Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s president, has responded to Donald Trump’s proposal to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America with a counter-proposal to rename North America.

Standing before a global map in her daily press briefing, Sheinbaum proposed dryly that the continent should be known as “América Mexicana”, or “Mexican America”, because an 1814 founding document that preceded Mexico’s constitution referred to it that way.

“That sounds nice, no?” she added with a sarcastic tone. She also noted that the ocean basin bounded by the US Gulf coast, Mexico’s eastern states and the island of Cuba has been known as the Gulf of Mexico since 1607.

Trump, who will be sworn in for a second term on 20 January, said on Tuesday he planned to rename the Gulf as “the Gulf of America, which has a beautiful ring”.

“It’s appropriate. And Mexico has to stop allowing millions of people to pour into our country,” he said.

He also claimed that the US’s southern neighbour was run by drug cartels, to which Sheinbaum gave a terse response: “In Mexico, the people rule.”

The exchange has started to answer a larger question lingering over the bilateral relationship between the two regional powers: how would newly elected Sheinbaum handle Trump’s strong-handed diplomatic approach, as well as promises of mass deportations and devastating taxes on trading partners like Mexico?

Sheinbaum’s predecessor and political mentor Andrés Manuel López Obrador (Amlo) – who hailed from a similar strain of class populism as Trump, even though he leaned left – was able to build a relationship with Trump as an ally, and his government began to block people from migrating north under US pressure, a boon to Trump.

But it was unclear whether Mexico’s first female president, a scientist and leftist lacking the folksy populism that rocketed López Obrador into power, would be able to build the same relationship.

While Wednesday’s joke quickly ricocheted across social media feeds, it also set the tone for what a Sheinbaum-Trump relationship could look like in the coming years.

“Humor can be a good tactic. It projects strength, which is what Trump responds to. It was probably the right choice on this issue,” said Brian Winter, vice-president of the New York-based Council of the Americas. “Although, President Sheinbaum knows it won’t work on everything – Trump and his administration will demand serious engagement from Mexico on the big issues of immigration, drugs and trade.”

Sheinbaum’s remarks come after other stern but collaborative responses regarding Trump’s proposals.

On Trump’s pitch to slap 25% tariffs on Mexican imports, Sheinbaum warned that if the new US administration imposes tariffs on Mexico, her administration will respond with similar measures. She said any sort of tax was “not acceptable and would cause inflation and job losses for the United States and Mexico”.

She’s taken a more concessionary tone on immigration, falling in line with years of Mexican efforts to block people from migrating north.

After originally saying her government would push the Trump administration to deport people directly back to their own countries, in January she said Mexico would be open to accepting deportees from other countries, but that Mexico could limit deportees to certain nationalities or request compensation.

With reporting by Associated Press and Agence France-Press

Donald Trump has shared inflammatory video content calling Benjamin Netanyahu a “deep, dark son of a bitch” just weeks after the Israeli leader claimed the two had a “very friendly, warm” discussion about hostage negotiations and Syria policy.

The president-elect posted the clip to Truth Social featuring economist Jeffrey Sachs, who accuses Netanyahu of manipulating US foreign policy and orchestrating “endless wars” in the Middle East.

In the video, Sachs – who is being interviewed by Tucker Carlson – claims Netanyahu has pursued a systematic strategy since 1995 to eliminate Hamas and Hezbollah by targeting their supporting governments in Iraq, Iran and Syria.

“[Netanyahu’s] gotten us into endless wars and because of the power of all of this in US politics, he’s gotten his way,” Sachs says in the interview, referring to the influence of pro-Israel lobbying groups.

Trump’s aim in promoting the video was not immediately clear.

The president-elect has a history of re-posting clips and images that criticize establishment policies in Washington, but the repost comes amid intensive diplomatic efforts by Egypt, Qatar and the current US administration to broker a truce deal that would include hostage releases.

Trump’s decision to amplify Sachs’s comments also comes as he assembles what Israeli settlers are dubbing a “dream team” of hardline supporters of the state.

His pick for secretary of state, the Florida senator Marco Rubio, opposes a Gaza ceasefire and has called for Israel to “destroy every element” of Hamas. His choice for UN ambassador, the New York representative Elise Stefanik, has dismissed the United Nations as a “cesspool of antisemitism” for its criticism of civilian deaths in Gaza.

Trump’s selection for ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, has rejected the common diplomatic terminology regarding occupied Palestinian territories. “There’s no such thing as a West Bank,” Huckabee said during a 2017 visit to Israel. Huckabee, an evangelical Christian, had previously said “there’s no such thing as a Palestinian”.

Trump’s pick for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, is also an evangelical Christian whose tattoos of crusader-associated symbols have raised eyebrows in diplomatic circles.

Trump himself has said there will be “hell to pay” if Hamas does not release its hostages before he takes office.

Roughly 100 hostages remain in Gaza after 15 months of conflict, with two-thirds presumed alive. More than 45,000 Palestinians are believed to have been killed since the war broke out, with a majority of the 2.3 million in Gaza displaced and enduring brutal winter weather.

The relationship between Trump and Netanyahu has historically been one of mutual benefit, though it has been unpredictable and, at times, transactional.

During Trump’s first term, he delivered significant diplomatic wins for Netanyahu, including recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights in 2019 and supporting the Abraham accords with Gulf states. This past summer, Trump hosted Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago during the prime minister’s US trip.

But when Trump lost the 2020 elections, he blasted Netanyahu for congratulating Biden, telling an Axios reporter: “I haven’t spoken to [the Israeli leader] since. Fuck him.”

Trump’s return to office could, however, prove advantageous for Netanyahu’s expansionist policies, particularly regarding settlement expansion and potential annexation in the West Bank.

The Israeli government did not immediately respond to the repost.

Sachs told the Guardian that while he was not advising Trump, he hoped it signaled a shift in US foreign policy.

“I do not know Trump’s disposition on these issues, but I do very much hope that he frees US foreign policy from the grip of the cruel, ineffective, illegal and destructive policies of Netanyahu,” he said.

Germany and France have warned Donald Trump against any attempt to “move borders by force” after the incoming US president said he was prepared to use economic tariffs or military might to seize control of Danish-administered Greenland.

In a hastily called televised statement, Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said Trump’s remarks had triggered “incomprehension” among European leaders. “The principle of the inviolability of borders applies to every country – regardless of whether it is east of us or to the west – and every state must respect that, regardless of whether it is a small country or a very powerful state.”

Earlier, the French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, said that Europe would stand up in defence of international law. “There is no question of the EU letting other nations in the world, whoever they may be, attack its sovereign borders.”

Barrot added on France Inter radio, 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”.

Denmark has said it is open to dialogue with Trump about working together to address his legitimate security concerns when it comes to Greenland, while rejecting any threat of force or coercion.

Lars Løkke Rasmussen, the experienced Danish foreign minister, said it was in everyone’s interests to lower the temperature in the discussions.

“I have my own experiences with Donald Trump and I also know that you shouldn’t say everything you think out loud,” he said. He also played down the possibility that Greenland would ever become part of the US, adding: “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.”

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.

Greenland’s prime minister, Múte B Egede, held talks with the Danish king in Copenhagen on Wednesday, a day after Trump’s remarks thrust the fate of the mineral-rich and strategically important island into the spotlight.

In his new year remarks Egede had said that Greenland was now ready to take the next big step in the effort to break the “shackles of colonialism”. A self-government act has already been passed that opens the way to a referendum on independence. 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 the island, 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, said on Tuesday that she could not imagine Trump’s ambitions leading to US military intervention in Greenland. In 2019 she had called Trump’s demand that Greenland be put up for sale “absurd”. Since then there has been a collective decision by the 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.

In Berlin, Scholz said that Russia’s “brutal war of aggression” against Ukraine had prompted Germany as the EU’s top economy to strongly increase defence spending to 2% of GDP, amounting to it more than doubling in the last seven years. He noted that his country had worked closely with the US to protect Ukraine’s national “sovereignty and integrity”. “Borders must not be moved by force,” he said.

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.

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”.

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

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”. 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 mulling over the idea to declare a national economic emergency to impose widespread tariffs, CNN reports, as the president-elect escalates threats to seize the Panama Canal, acquire Greenland and force Canada into becoming a US state.

The emergency powers move would allow Trump to implement broad tariff measures against both allies and adversaries through the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, according to four sources familiar with the discussions.

The emergency powers would give Trump significant latitude in constructing a new tariff programme without having to demonstrate traditional national security justifications, the sources told CNN. “Nothing is off the table,” one source familiar with the matter told the network, confirming that robust discussions about declaring a national emergency have taken place.

The exploratory consideration comes amid mounting international backlash after Trump refused to rule out using military or economic coercion regarding Panama and Greenland during a rambling press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday.

Trump claimed the Panama Canal was “being operated by China” and demanded its return to US control. “The Panama Canal was built for our military,” Trump said. “Look, the Panama Canal is vital to our country.”

The president-elect also threatened Denmark with punitive tariffs over Greenland, warning he “would tariff Denmark at a very high level” if the country resisted his territorial ambitions. His comments coincided with his son Donald Trump Jr’s arrival in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, where he reportedly distributed “Make Greenland Great Again” hats while claiming to be visiting as a tourist.

Allied leaders swiftly rejected Trump’s positions. Panama’s president, José Raúl Mulino, insisted “every square metre” of the canal would remain under Panamanian sovereignty. The Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, reiterated that “Greenland is not for sale”, emphasising the territory’s future would be decided by its people.

Trump’s aggressive stance extended to Canada, with suggestions of using “economic force” to make it a US state. The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, dismissed the idea, saying there “isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States”.

Some Trump advisers attempted to downplay the rhetoric, telling the Wall Street Journal the comments were negotiating tactics rather than literal policy positions. Alexander Gray, a former Trump White House national security council chief of staff, characterised the approach as part of a broader strategy to “defend the western hemisphere against great power competitors”.

US financial markets fell in morning trading but ended the day broadly flat.

North Korea is benefiting from its troops fighting alongside Russia against Ukraine, gaining experience that makes Pyongyang “more capable of waging war against its neighbours” a senior US official has warned.

Russia has forged closer diplomatic and military ties with North Korea since Moscow’s full invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

More than 12,000 North Korean troops are in Russia and last month began fighting against Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk region, Dorothy Camille Shea, the deputy US ambassador to the UN, told the UN security council.

North Korea “is significantly benefiting from receiving Russian military equipment, technology and experience, rendering it more capable of waging war against its neighbours”, Shea told the 15-member council, which met over what Pyongyang said was a test of a new intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile on Monday.

“In turn, the DPRK will likely be eager to leverage these improvements to promote weapons sales and military training contracts globally,” she said, using the acronym for North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

North Korea’s UN ambassador, Kim Song, justified Monday’s missile test as part of a plan to enhance the country’s defence capabilities. He accused the US of double standards.

“When the civilian death toll exceeded 45,000 in Gaza, United States embellished Israel’s nefarious mass killing atrocity as the right to self-defence … Meanwhile, it takes issue with legitimate exercise of the right to self-defence of the DPRK,” Kim told the security council.

Russia’s UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, repeated Moscow’s longstanding accusation that the US, South Korea and Japan provoke North Korea with military exercises. He also rejected as “wholly unsubstantiated” a US allegation that Russia intends to share satellite and space technology with Pyongyang.

“Such statements are the latest example of baseless conjecture which is geared towards smearing bilateral cooperation between the Russian Federation and the friendly nation of the DPRK,” said Nebenzia, who also congratulated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on his birthday on Wednesday.

South Korea’s UN ambassador, Joonkook Hwang, told the council that North Korea’s soldiers were “essentially slaves to Kim Jong-un, brainwashed to sacrifice their lives on faraway battlefields to raise money for his regime and secure advanced military technology from Russia”.

North Korea has been under UN sanctions since 2006, and the measures have been steadily strengthened over the years with the aim of halting Pyongyang’s development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Russia has veto power on the 15-member body, so any further council action is unlikely.

North Korea is benefiting from its troops fighting alongside Russia against Ukraine, gaining experience that makes Pyongyang “more capable of waging war against its neighbours” a senior US official has warned.

Russia has forged closer diplomatic and military ties with North Korea since Moscow’s full invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

More than 12,000 North Korean troops are in Russia and last month began fighting against Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk region, Dorothy Camille Shea, the deputy US ambassador to the UN, told the UN security council.

North Korea “is significantly benefiting from receiving Russian military equipment, technology and experience, rendering it more capable of waging war against its neighbours”, Shea told the 15-member council, which met over what Pyongyang said was a test of a new intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile on Monday.

“In turn, the DPRK will likely be eager to leverage these improvements to promote weapons sales and military training contracts globally,” she said, using the acronym for North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

North Korea’s UN ambassador, Kim Song, justified Monday’s missile test as part of a plan to enhance the country’s defence capabilities. He accused the US of double standards.

“When the civilian death toll exceeded 45,000 in Gaza, United States embellished Israel’s nefarious mass killing atrocity as the right to self-defence … Meanwhile, it takes issue with legitimate exercise of the right to self-defence of the DPRK,” Kim told the security council.

Russia’s UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, repeated Moscow’s longstanding accusation that the US, South Korea and Japan provoke North Korea with military exercises. He also rejected as “wholly unsubstantiated” a US allegation that Russia intends to share satellite and space technology with Pyongyang.

“Such statements are the latest example of baseless conjecture which is geared towards smearing bilateral cooperation between the Russian Federation and the friendly nation of the DPRK,” said Nebenzia, who also congratulated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on his birthday on Wednesday.

South Korea’s UN ambassador, Joonkook Hwang, told the council that North Korea’s soldiers were “essentially slaves to Kim Jong-un, brainwashed to sacrifice their lives on faraway battlefields to raise money for his regime and secure advanced military technology from Russia”.

North Korea has been under UN sanctions since 2006, and the measures have been steadily strengthened over the years with the aim of halting Pyongyang’s development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Russia has veto power on the 15-member body, so any further council action is unlikely.

• The US is expected to announce $500m in military aid for Ukraine on Thursday at a final gathering of President Joe Biden’s weapons pledging conferences, meetings Kyiv says have been critical to its defence against Russia. The Ukraine Defense Contact Group (UDCG), comprised of about 50 allies who usually meet every few months at Ramstein airbase in Germany, was started in 2022 by US defense secretary Lloyd Austin to speed and synchronise the delivery of arms to Kyiv. The group’s future is unclear with president-elect Donald Trump set to take office on 20 January. Advisers to Trump have floated proposals to end the Ukraine war that would cede large parts of the country to Russia for the foreseeable future.

• Ahead of the meeting, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy played down concerns over comments by Trump that he understood why Russia does not want Ukraine to join the Nato defence alliance. Zelenskyy, who has pushed for an invitation to join Nato before Trump’s return to the presidency, cautioned against making assumptions on the US position and said he would discuss the issue with Trump. “Don’t draw conclusions about the policy of the US right away,” Zelenskyy said. “We need to work and do everything possible to ensure that Ukraine receives decent security guarantees, worthy of our people, that could stop Putin. We will work on this.”

• North Korea is benefiting from its troops fighting alongside Russia against Ukraine, gaining experience that makes Pyongyang “more capable of waging war against its neighbours” a senior US official has warned. More than 12,000 North Korean troops are in Russia and last month began fighting against Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk region, Dorothy Camille Shea, the deputy US ambassador to the UN, told the UN security council. North Korea “is significantly benefiting from receiving Russian military equipment, technology and experience, rendering it more capable of waging war against its neighbours”, Shea told the 15-member council, which met over what Pyongyang said was a test of a new intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile on Monday.

• A daytime Russian missile attack on the southern Ukraine city of Zaporizhzhia killed at least 13 civilians and wounded about 30 others on Wednesday, officials said. Footage posted on Zelenskyy’s Telegram channel shows civilians lying in a city street littered with debris. The post shows them being treated by emergency services and taken away on gurneys. Russian troops started launching the glide bombs at Zaporizhzhia in the middle of the afternoon, and at least two bombs struck residential buildings in the city, regional governor Ivan Fedorov said.

• More than 12,300 civilians have been killed in the Ukraine war since Russia invaded nearly three years ago, a UN official said on Wednesday, noting a spike in casualties due to the use of drones, long-range missiles and glide bombs. Russia, which is making territorial gains in Ukraine’s east, has conducted regular attacks on faraway cities in recent months using such weapons. This contributed to a 30% rise in civilian deaths to 574 in Ukraine between September-November 2024 compared to the previous year, according to UN data.

• Ukraine launched an overnight strike deep inside Russia that set fire to an oil depot that serves an airbase for Russian nuclear bomber planes, the Ukrainian military said on Wednesday. Russian regional governor Roman Busargin said the cities of Engels and Saratov, on opposite sides of the Volga river, had been subject to a “mass drone attack” and fire had broken out in Engels at an industrial site, which he did not name. He later posted on Telegram that the blaze had spread and two firefighters had died trying to put it out. He declared a state of emergency in Engels, which has a population of 200,000.

• The UN voiced alarm Wednesday at a recent surge in alleged Russian executions of Ukrainian prisoners of war, saying it had verified 68 cases since the start of the war. “I call on the Russian authorities to halt the summary executions of Ukrainian prisoners of war,” Nada Al-Nashif, the deputy UN rights chief told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. “Summary executions constitute a war crime,” she said, urging Russia to “condemn such acts, and to prosecute those responsible”.

• Zelenskyy and Moldovan President Maia Sandu on Wednesday discussed using Ukrainian coal to ease the energy crisis which has subjected Moldova’s separatist Transnistria region to blackouts and a heating shortage. Pro-Russian Transnistria, which broke away from Moldova in the final days of Soviet rule, has long relied on supplies of Russian gas. But flows to the region through Ukraine were halted on 1 January after Ukraine refused to renew an agreement allowing gas to transit through its territory.

A member of the Japanese criminal underworld has pleaded guilty to handling nuclear material sourced from Myanmar and seeking to sell it to fund an illicit arms deal, US authorities have said.

Yakuza leader Takeshi Ebisawa and a co-defendant had previously been charged in April 2022 with drug trafficking and firearms offences, and both were remanded.

He was then additionally charged in February 2024 with conspiring to sell weapons-grade nuclear material and lethal narcotics from Myanmar, and to purchase military weaponry on behalf of an armed insurgent group, prosecutors said.

The military weaponry to be part of the arms deal included surface-to-air missiles, the indictment alleged.

“As he admitted in federal court today, Takeshi Ebisawa brazenly trafficked nuclear material, including weapons-grade plutonium, out of Burma,” acting US attorney Edward Kim said on Wednesday, using another name for Myanmar.

“At the same time, he worked to send massive quantities of heroin and methamphetamine to the United States in exchange for heavy-duty weaponry such as surface-to-air missiles to be used on battlefields in Burma.”

Prosecutors alleged that Ebisawa, 60, “brazenly” moved material containing uranium and weapons-grade plutonium, alongside drugs, from Myanmar.

From 2020, Ebisawa boasted to an undercover officer he had access to large quantities of nuclear materials that he sought to sell, providing photographs of materials alongside Geiger counters registering radiation.

During a sting operation including undercover agents, Thai authorities assisted US investigators in seizing two powdery yellow substances that the defendant described as “yellowcake.”

“The (US) laboratory determined that the isotope composition of the plutonium found in the Nuclear Samples is weapons-grade, meaning that the plutonium, if produced in sufficient quantities, would be suitable for use in a nuclear weapon,” the Justice Department said in its statement at the time.

One of Ebisawa’s co-conspirators claimed they “had available more than 2,000 kilograms (4,400 pounds) of Thorium-232 and more than 100 kilograms of uranium in the compound U3O8 – referring to a compound of uranium commonly found in the uranium concentrate powder known as ’yellowcake’.”

The indictment claimed Ebisawa had suggested using the proceeds of the sale of nuclear material to fund weapons purchases on behalf of an unnamed ethnic insurgent group in Myanmar.

Ebisawa faces up to 20 years’ imprisonment for the trafficking of nuclear materials internationally.

Prosecutors describe Ebisawa as a “leader of the Yakuza organised crime syndicate, a highly organised, transnational Japanese criminal network that operates around the world (and whose) criminal activities have included large-scale narcotics and weapons trafficking.”

Sentencing will be determined by the judge in the case at a later date, prosecutors said.

Four men have been jailed over the homophobic murder of a young gay man whose killing almost four years ago shocked Spain and led to nationwide protests.

Samuel Luiz, a 24-year-old nursing assistant, was out with friends in the Galician city of A Coruña in the early hours of Saturday 3 July 2021 when an argument started outside a nightclub.

Luiz’s friends said he had stepped out of the club to make a video call when two passersby accused him of trying to film them on his phone. Luiz explained he was talking to a friend by video, but he was attacked by one of the passersby and left with a badly bruised face.

Five minutes later, the assailant returned with others who kicked and punched Luiz until he lost consciousness. He was taken to hospital, where he died the same morning.

In November last year, a jury found the four men guilty of Luiz’s murder at the end of a trial in A Coruña.

On Wednesday, a court in the city sentenced three of the convicted men – Diego Montaña, Alejandro Freire and Kaio Amaral – to terms of 24 years, 20 years, and 20 years and six months for their respective roles in the murder. A fourth man, Alejandro Míguez, who did not hit Luiz, was given a 10-year sentence for being an accomplice to murder.

In her sentencing remarks, the presiding judge, Elena Fernanda Pastor Novo, noted the severity of the crime and the pain it had caused Luiz’s family, who had experienced “significant psychological suffering beyond the pain inherent in the loss of a son and a brother”.

Montaña, the judge added, had shown “an absolute lack of empathy and a cruelty that warrant a more severe sentence”. She also took into account the behaviour of the killers immediately after the attack and the fact that Luiz had been left “unconscious and with a bloody face in the middle of a roundabout”.

The judge referred to the fact that Montaña had threatened Luiz using homophobic language, saying: “Stop filming, or I’ll kill you, faggot.” Montaña’s animosity towards Luiz because of his sexual orientation then “triggered a totally aggressive reaction against Samuel … [who was] pounced on and kicked and punched, mainly in the head and face”. A postmortem found more than 30 separate injuries.

The sentence, which can be appealed in Galicia’s high court, also ordered the killers to pay Luiz’s family compensation of €303,000 (£253,000).

The attack prompted revulsion across Spain and led to demonstrations the following week in cities including A Coruña, Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Salamanca, Bilbao and Zaragoza. Demonstrators carried signs with slogans such as “your homophobia is killing us”.

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, denounced the killing and offered his condolences to Luiz’s friends and family. “It was a savage and merciless act,” he said. “We will not take a step backwards when it comes to rights and freedoms and Spain will not tolerate this.”

Jay-Z filed a new motion on Wednesday seeking to dismiss the lawsuit brought by a woman who alleges that he and Sean “Diddy” Combs sexually assaulted her in 2000 when she was 13 years old.

In the court filing, filed on Wednesday, the rapper and his lawyers reference what they claim are inconsistencies in the woman’s account of the events from that night. They also requested that the judge impose a monetary sanction on the woman’s lawyer, Anthony Buzbee, claiming that he failed to adequately investigate the woman’s allegations before filing the suit.

The allegations against Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, were made in an amended lawsuit filed last year. The woman alleges that in 2000, when she was 13 years old, she was drugged and raped by both Carter and Combs at an afterparty hosted by Combs after the MTV Music Awards, which took place in New York.

Carter has repeatedly denied the allegations against him, and criticized the lawsuit, calling it a “blackmail attempt” by the plaintiff’s lawyer.

Combs has denied all of the allegations against him, including this one. He is currently in jail on federal sex trafficking charges, to which he has pleaded not guilty.

In the new filing, Carter’s lawyers cited an interview the woman gave with NBC News in December, in which she stood by her allegations but admitted that she had “made some mistakes” in parts of her account around corroborating witnesses.

“Honestly, what is the clearest is what happened to me and [the] route that I took to what happened to me,” she said. “Not all of the faces there are as clear, so I have made some mistakes. I may have made a mistake in identifying.”

Among the passages from the NBC News story referenced was that the woman claimed that her father picked her up after the alleged sexual assault, but her father said that he did not recall picking her up; the woman also mentioned speaking to a musician at the afterparty, but a representative for that musician said that the musician was not in New York at the time.

Elsewhere in the filing, Carter’s attorneys pointed to alleged impossibilities in the woman’s story such as her description of Combs’s home, and argued that “by any objective measure, the fact that nearly every step in Plaintiff’s narrative – from her arrival at the VMAs to her interactions with the limousine driver and celebrities to the ride with her father – turns out to be false or highly unlikely casts considerable doubt on Plaintiff’s allegation that Mr. Carter raped her, which he did not.”

In addition to attempting to have the case dismissed, Carter’s lawyers also requested that the judge impose a monetary sanction on the woman’s lawyer, Buzbee, who they allege did not subject the woman’s allegations to “even the most rudimentary diligence”.

“To sign a pleading accusing someone of such a horrific crime without adequately vetting the allegation – particularly when the defendant’s prominence means that the allegation will be repeated in headlines across the world – is deeply wrong and unethical,” Carter’s lawyer states in the filing.

“If lawyers do not face consequences for such a cavalier effort to destroy another person’s reputation and inflict emotional harm on his loved ones, that tactic will proliferate.”

The monetary sanction, Carters lawyers say, would “ensure some measure of deterrence of this sort of conduct in the future”.

Buzbee said in a statement to Rolling Stone on Wednesday that he would not be “bullied or intimidated” by Carter or his team.

Carter’s attorney and his firm “are paid by the hour, so, they file a lot of junk with the Court”, Buzbee told Rolling Stone. “With each frantic filing, his team reeks of desperation. He and his team think the laws and rules don’t apply to them. They are flat wrong. They also think they can bully or intimidate counsel for victims by filing meritless and frivolous pleadings full of lies and half-truths. Again, they are dead wrong … We will address the utter lack of merit with his filing with the Court, rather than with the press.”

Buzbee told NBC News in December that the woman’s case was “referred to our firm by another, who vetted it prior to sending it to us”, adding that his client “remains fiercely adamant that what she has stated is true, to the best of her memory”.

“We will continue to vet her claims and collect corroborating data to the extent it exists,” he told the network. “Because we have interrogated her intensely, she has even agreed to submit to a polygraph. I’ve never had a client suggest that before.”

He added: “We always do our best to vet each claim made, just as we did in this case.”

The new filing comes after the judge overseeing the case denied an earlier effort made by Carter and his team to dismiss the case.

Judge Analisa Torres wrote in the court order in December: “Carter’s lawyer’s relentless filing of combative motions containing inflammatory language and ad hominem attacks is inappropriate, a waste of judicial resources, and a tactic unlikely to benefit his client.”

Torres also said the court “will not fast-track the judicial process merely because counsel demands it”.

Separately, Carter is suing Buzbee in California for extortion and defamation. Buzbee has launched his own lawsuit against Carter’s company, Roc Nation, claiming that the company and its lawyers are using “shadowy operatives” to unlawfully entice former clients of Buzbee to file “frivolous” claims against him.

Jay-Z filed a new motion on Wednesday seeking to dismiss the lawsuit brought by a woman who alleges that he and Sean “Diddy” Combs sexually assaulted her in 2000 when she was 13 years old.

In the court filing, filed on Wednesday, the rapper and his lawyers reference what they claim are inconsistencies in the woman’s account of the events from that night. They also requested that the judge impose a monetary sanction on the woman’s lawyer, Anthony Buzbee, claiming that he failed to adequately investigate the woman’s allegations before filing the suit.

The allegations against Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, were made in an amended lawsuit filed last year. The woman alleges that in 2000, when she was 13 years old, she was drugged and raped by both Carter and Combs at an afterparty hosted by Combs after the MTV Music Awards, which took place in New York.

Carter has repeatedly denied the allegations against him, and criticized the lawsuit, calling it a “blackmail attempt” by the plaintiff’s lawyer.

Combs has denied all of the allegations against him, including this one. He is currently in jail on federal sex trafficking charges, to which he has pleaded not guilty.

In the new filing, Carter’s lawyers cited an interview the woman gave with NBC News in December, in which she stood by her allegations but admitted that she had “made some mistakes” in parts of her account around corroborating witnesses.

“Honestly, what is the clearest is what happened to me and [the] route that I took to what happened to me,” she said. “Not all of the faces there are as clear, so I have made some mistakes. I may have made a mistake in identifying.”

Among the passages from the NBC News story referenced was that the woman claimed that her father picked her up after the alleged sexual assault, but her father said that he did not recall picking her up; the woman also mentioned speaking to a musician at the afterparty, but a representative for that musician said that the musician was not in New York at the time.

Elsewhere in the filing, Carter’s attorneys pointed to alleged impossibilities in the woman’s story such as her description of Combs’s home, and argued that “by any objective measure, the fact that nearly every step in Plaintiff’s narrative – from her arrival at the VMAs to her interactions with the limousine driver and celebrities to the ride with her father – turns out to be false or highly unlikely casts considerable doubt on Plaintiff’s allegation that Mr. Carter raped her, which he did not.”

In addition to attempting to have the case dismissed, Carter’s lawyers also requested that the judge impose a monetary sanction on the woman’s lawyer, Buzbee, who they allege did not subject the woman’s allegations to “even the most rudimentary diligence”.

“To sign a pleading accusing someone of such a horrific crime without adequately vetting the allegation – particularly when the defendant’s prominence means that the allegation will be repeated in headlines across the world – is deeply wrong and unethical,” Carter’s lawyer states in the filing.

“If lawyers do not face consequences for such a cavalier effort to destroy another person’s reputation and inflict emotional harm on his loved ones, that tactic will proliferate.”

The monetary sanction, Carters lawyers say, would “ensure some measure of deterrence of this sort of conduct in the future”.

Buzbee said in a statement to Rolling Stone on Wednesday that he would not be “bullied or intimidated” by Carter or his team.

Carter’s attorney and his firm “are paid by the hour, so, they file a lot of junk with the Court”, Buzbee told Rolling Stone. “With each frantic filing, his team reeks of desperation. He and his team think the laws and rules don’t apply to them. They are flat wrong. They also think they can bully or intimidate counsel for victims by filing meritless and frivolous pleadings full of lies and half-truths. Again, they are dead wrong … We will address the utter lack of merit with his filing with the Court, rather than with the press.”

Buzbee told NBC News in December that the woman’s case was “referred to our firm by another, who vetted it prior to sending it to us”, adding that his client “remains fiercely adamant that what she has stated is true, to the best of her memory”.

“We will continue to vet her claims and collect corroborating data to the extent it exists,” he told the network. “Because we have interrogated her intensely, she has even agreed to submit to a polygraph. I’ve never had a client suggest that before.”

He added: “We always do our best to vet each claim made, just as we did in this case.”

The new filing comes after the judge overseeing the case denied an earlier effort made by Carter and his team to dismiss the case.

Judge Analisa Torres wrote in the court order in December: “Carter’s lawyer’s relentless filing of combative motions containing inflammatory language and ad hominem attacks is inappropriate, a waste of judicial resources, and a tactic unlikely to benefit his client.”

Torres also said the court “will not fast-track the judicial process merely because counsel demands it”.

Separately, Carter is suing Buzbee in California for extortion and defamation. Buzbee has launched his own lawsuit against Carter’s company, Roc Nation, claiming that the company and its lawyers are using “shadowy operatives” to unlawfully entice former clients of Buzbee to file “frivolous” claims against him.

Weeks after its first ever pro-independence government collapsed, New Caledonia has named a French loyalist as its new president as the territory seeks to rebuild from deadly riots and destruction that battered the economy.

Alcide Ponga, from the Le Rassemblement party, was elected president by the newly installed executive in Congress on Wednesday. Ponga’s party is affiliated with French right-wing party LR, Les Républicains. The loyalists are in favour of keeping New Caledonia within France.

“What I feel first and foremost is the weight of responsibility,” Ponga said on Wednesday.

“We all know the situation New Caledonia has been in for the past seven months. What Caledonians expect today is for us to be able to work together and give a signal of hope,” he said.

Ponga, 49, is Kanak and comes from Kouaoua, a mining village in the north of the archipelago. He made his career in the nickel industry before entering politics in 2014.

The appointment brings some political stability to New Caledonia, a territory of France which lies in the Pacific Ocean, after its government fell on 24 December 2024.

The recent political turmoil comes as the territory continues to grapple with the aftermath of deadly riots in May, which erupted in reaction to a constitutional law aimed at enlarging the electorate and increasing the number of French nationals eligible to vote.

The plans from Paris angered Kanaks – who make up about 41% of the population – over fears it would dilute their electoral power and undermine longstanding efforts to secure independence. Thirteen people, mostly Kanaks, and including two police officers, have been killed and nearly 3,000 people arrested over the violence. The bill was later dropped.

The previous pro-independence government led by Louis Mapou had survived several major trials – including Covid and a referendum on full sovereignty – but the deadly riots in 2024 damaged the Congress and was a factor in its collapse.

“It’s a dirty political blow to the country,” said leader Mapou after the government fell in December.

Mapou’s tenure will be remembered for a series of reforms which helped to turn around the country’s economy, which had been damaged by Covid and mining crises, and above all for working with all sides of politics.

“Our work has shaken up the pro-independence and non-independence movements,” he said the day after the announcement of the government’s collapse.

“We did this work in the general interest. We have shown that it is possible to work together.”

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.

“I feel the sun on my skin and it’s warm. I’ve found that life keeps happening regardless of whether I’m sober or not, but today I get to show up for it,” she added.

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 praised her niece’s efforts at “helping others that are going through this” and sent Paris love.

Other celebrities also chimed in on Jackson’s post, with the American socialite and media figure Paris Hilton writing: “So proud of you sis.” The American actor Lucy Hale wrote: “You’re amazing amazing amazing.”

Michael Jackson died in Los Angeles in 2009. Following his death, the Los Angeles county coroner ruled it a homicide and stated that Jackson died of “acute propofol intoxication”. Propofol is an anesthetic and sedative commonly administered intravenously during medical procedures in a clinical setting, but Jackson was using it at home to help him sleep. A variety of other potent prescription drugs were found in his system when he died.

At the time of her father’s death, Paris Jackson was 11, while her brothers Prince Jackson and Bigi (formerly known as Blanket) Jackson were 12 and seven years old, respectively.

In a 2021 interview with British model Naomi Campbell, Jackson opened up about her father’s influence on her life, saying: “My dad was really good about making sure we were cultured, making sure we were educated, and not just showing us, like, the glitz and glam – like hotel hopping, five-star places.”

Jackson, who released her debut studio album Wilted in 2020, called herself a “fan of his music”, adding: “I feel like every part of my childhood will always influence how I am today, whether it’s experiences or all of the music we listened to … He loved classical music, jazz and hip-hop and R&B and, obviously, the Motown stuff, but also radio’s Top 40. He loved rock music, soft rock, the Beatles.”

The late pop star’s personal doctor, the former cardiologist Conrad Murray, served two years in jail after being found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in Jackson’s death.

The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker organization that advocates for peace, said on Monday the group cancelled a planned advertisement in the New York Times in response to the paper refusing to allow it to refer to Israel’s actions in Gaza as a genocide.

“The refusal of The New York Times to run paid digital ads that call for an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza is an outrageous attempt to sidestep the truth,” said Joyce Ajlouny, general secretary for the AFSC, in a press release. “Palestinians and allies have been silenced and marginalized in the media for decades as these institutions choose silence over accountability. It is only by challenging this reality that we can hope to forge a path toward a more just and equitable world.”

The group claimed a representative with the advertising team at the New York Times suggested they use the word “war” instead of “genocide”.

According to the AFSC press release, when the group refused, the New York Times responded with an email that read, in part: “Various international bodies, human rights organizations, and governments have differing views on the situation. In line with our commitment to factual accuracy and adherence to legal standards, we must ensure that all advertising content complies with these widely applied definitions.”

The AFSC cited groups such as the Center for Constitutional Rights, the University Network for Human Rights, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and several Palestinian human rights groups that have deemed that Israel is committing genocide or acts of genocide in Gaza.

“New York Times Advertising works with parties submitting proposed ads to ensure they are in compliance with our acceptability guidelines,” a spokesperson for the New York Times said in response to questions from the Guardian. “This instance was no different, and is entirely in line with the standards we apply to all ad submissions.”

The AFSC has been supporting humanitarian efforts in Gaza and lobbying in the US for a “permanent cease-fire, full humanitarian access, release of all who are held captive, and an end to US military funding for Israel”.

The group also pointed to an ad taken out by Amnesty International in the Washington Post this past weekend that characterized Israel’s actions as genocide.

The New York Times has previously run advertisements using the term. In 2016, it published an ad from the Armenian Educational Foundation thanking Kim Kardashian for opposing denial of the Armenian genocide. In 2008, presidential candidates Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain co-signed a letter advertisement in the New York Times calling out the genocide in Darfur.

The Times’ advertising guidelines state that its “advertising space is open to all points of view” and that submissions may be subjected to factchecking. It reserves the right to reject an ad if it is found to be deceptive or inaccurate.

An alleged arsonist has had to shed their burning pants after seeking to set a Melbourne fast-food business alight on Christmas morning.

Victoria police said emergency services were called to a blaze at a strip of shops off Doncaster Road in Doncaster East at about 2.40am on 25 December.

Police said two people had earlier driven a Toyota Tarago to a fast-food outlet in Melbourne’s east and allegedly poured flammable liquid on the store before trying to set it alight.

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“The liquid caught fire, as did the clothing of one of the [alleged] offenders who stripped off their burning garments as they ran back to the Tarago along with the other [alleged] offender who had collected the jerry can,” police said in a statement on Thursday.

CCTV footage of the incident shows one of the alleged offenders walking towards the door, before being obscured by a wall. Within seconds, they are seen leaping back into view with their pants engulfed in flames.

The pair are then seen running off – one with their pants still on fire – before they stop and an attempt is made to take off the flaming garment. The person is then seen running down the street with their burning pants seemingly caught around one ankle.

“The Tarago, which is believed to have been driven by a third [alleged] offender, was last seen headed east on Doncaster Road,” police said.

Detectives from Manningham crime investigation unit released the CCTV vision of “two people they believe may be able to assist with their inquiries”.