Weather forecasters in Los Angeles were expecting fast, dry winds to return towards the end of the weekend, threatening to fuel wildfires that have already destroyed 10,000 structures and killed 16 people.

Urgent “red flag” alerts – meaning critical fire weather conditions – announced by the US National Weather Service (NWS) said moderate to strong wind and low humidity would continue on Friday morning, as five fires raged across the metropolis.

Barbara Bruderlin, head of the Malibu Pacific Palisades Chamber of Commerce, described the impact of the fires as “total devastation and loss”.

“There are areas where everything is gone. There isn’t even a stick of wood left. It’s just dirt,” Bruderlin said.

Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass has come under intense criticism for her absence from the city during the first 24 hours of the crisis, when she was in Ghana, as part of an official White House delegation for the inauguration of that country’s president. She was assailed by political rivals on the right, including Rick Caruso, who ran against Bass in the 2022 mayoral election, but also faced criticism from left, which accused the mayor of cutting the budget for firefighting to pay for increased policing.

“The consistent defunding of other city programs in order to give the LAPD billions a year has consequences,” Ricci Sergienko, a lawyer and organizer with People’s City Council LA, told the Intercept. “The city is unprepared to handle this fire, and Los Angeles shouldn’t be in that position.”

In an interview with Fox LA, Los Angeles fire chief Kristin Crowley said that a cut of $17m in funding for her department, and problems with the water supply to hydrants in the Palisades, had undercut firefighters’ abilities to respond to the fires.

“My message is the fire department needs to be properly funded,” Crowley said. “It’s not.” Fox LA reporter Gigi Graciette then asked Crowley three times: “Did the city of Los Angeles fail you?” After the third time, Crowley responded simply: “Yes.”

One public official who has chosen not to criticize Bass during the crisis is Los Angeles city controller Kenneth Mejia, whose office drew attention to cuts to the firefighting budget in October in a widely circulated chart showing a massive increase in spending on the police department and cuts to other public services including the fire department.

As his work was being cited by critics of the mayor, Mejia, an activist accountant, wrote in a social media post: “As the City’s Accountant, we enact the budget, account for your taxes, & know the details of the City’s finances. We will gladly break down any questions about how all this works. BUT for now, we must focus on ensuring we can get through these catastrophic fires.”

Officials estimate the Palisades fire wiped away at least 5,000 structures, including many homes in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, where mansions lining the yellow beaches were hollowed out and homes in the neighborhoods’ canyons reduced to dust.

Further east near Altadena, the streets, too, were littered with fallen branches while entire blocks of homes are simply gone. In some areas, the destruction appeared almost random, one resident said, with one house leveled while a neighboring still stood.

The dead include four men who were unable to leave or had stayed behind to defend their homes in Altadena, a community near Pasadena that is home to working- and middle-class families, including many Black residents living there for generations. Two of them were Anthony Mitchell, a 67-year-old amputee, and his son, Justin, who had cerebral palsy. They were waiting for an ambulance to come when the flames roared through, Mitchell’s daughter, Hajime White, told the Washington Post.

“He was not going to leave his son behind. No matter what,” White said. White – who lives in Warren, Arkansas, and is Justin’s step-sister – said her father called her on Wednesday morning and said they had to evacuate from approaching flames. “Then he said: ‘I’ve got to go – the fire’s in the yard,’” she said.

In another incident, Shari Shaw told the local media outlet KTLA that she tried to get her 66-year-old brother, Victor Shaw, to evacuate but he wanted to stay and fight the fire. His body was found with a garden hose in his hand.

Rodney Nickerson died in his bed in his Altadena home. The 82-year-old had lived through numerous fires and felt that he would be OK waiting it out at home, his daughter, Kimiko Nickerson, told KTLA.

Briana Navarro, who lived in Altadena with her grandmother, Erliene Kelley, told NBC News that Kelley had died there after deciding not to evacuate the home she had lived in for more than 40 years with the rest of the family. “We made the choice to evacuate on Tuesday night, however my grandmother decided she wanted to stay”, Navarro wrote in a GoFundMe post. “After we left, I asked my dad to go to the house to check on her … and again, she said she was going to stay at home. She said ‘It’s in God’s hands.’”

CNN reported that Annette Rossilli, who was 85, died in the Palisades fire after refusing to leave her home and pets, according to Luxe Homecare, a company that provided in-home care to her three times a week.

Officials have said they expect the death toll to rise.

Winds were likely to diminish on Friday afternoon, the NWS said, but warned that an “extended period of elevated to potentially critical fire weather conditions are in the forecast for Sunday through Wednesday”.

While the cause of the fires has yet to be determined, the New York Times reported that power lines near the Eaton and Palisades fires had not been turned off before those blazes started, “which energy experts said was concerning because electrical equipment has often ignited infernos during periods of high wind in California and elsewhere”.

Officials said on Friday afternoon that they had some success in battling the Kenneth fire, which ignited on Thursday and grew to 1,000 acres. About 400 firefighters remained at the location overnight to guard against the fire spreading, and it was about 50% contained by Friday.

Firefighting efforts in such tough conditions, with effectively no rain for months and none forecast in the days ahead, have stretched crews and left the country’s second-largest city reeling.

The largest of the fires burning in the LA area, the Palisades fire, obliterated neighbourhoods in the scenic hilltops. According to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection website, that blaze has burned over 21,300 acres and been only 8% “contained”.

Containment, according to the Western Fire Chiefs Association, refers to a “control line” around a portion of the fire that flames should not be able to cross. So if a wildfire is described as 25% contained, then firefighters have created control lines – usually wide trenches – around 25% of the fire’s perimeter. Once a fire is 100% contained, firefighters can begin extinguishing it.

To the east, the Eaton fire near Pasadena has burned more than 5,000 structures – a term that includes homes, apartment buildings, businesses, outbuildings and vehicles – across nearly 14,000 acres, and is just 3% contained.

The Hurst fire in the hills above Sylmar, which threatened the San Fernando Valley, was about 37% contained on Friday morning and firefighters reported that they had “successfully contained the fire north of the I-210 Foothill Freeway, establishing control lines”.

The Los Angeles fire department lifted an evacuation order in Granada Hills, north-west of downtown Los Angeles, on Friday afternoon, after “firefighters combined with the aggressive attack by LAFD air ops” swiftly brought the Archer fire, which broke out on Friday morning, under control before any structures were damaged.

Human-caused climate breakdown is supercharging extreme weather across the world, including wildfires. In California, the fire season now begins earlier and ends later.

More than 150,000 people remained under evacuation orders, and the fires have consumed about 57 sq miles, an area larger than the city of San Francisco.

At least 20 arrests have been made for looting. Officials have imposed a mandatory curfew in evacuation zones as well as in the city of Santa Monica, which is next to Pacific Palisades.

The Associated Press contributed reporting

Gavin Newsom, California’s Democratic governor, appeared briefly to put his long-running feud with Donald Trump to one side on Friday, when he invited the president-elect to Los Angeles to survey devastation from the wildfires and meet with first responders, firefighters and the “Americans” affected.

“In the spirit of this great country, we must not politicize human tragedy or spread disinformation from the sidelines,” Newsom wrote in a letter to Trump on Friday. “Hundreds of thousands of Americans – displaced from their homes and fearful for the future – deserve to see all of us working in their best interests to ensure a fast recovery and rebuild.”

The détente lasted less than 24 hours. By Saturday, Newsom, who is in contention to become the Democratic party leader in time for 2028, had returned to a more familiar, oppositional stance.

In an interview with Pod Save America, he rejected Trump’s claim that water is being withheld from southern California to save an endangered fish, the delta smelt, calling the president-elect’s messaging on the issue “delusional” and part of a “consistent mantra from Trump going back years and years, and it’s reinforced over and over within the right wing … and it’s profoundly ignorant ”.

Newsom said Californians’ fears that Trump could try to withhold federal relief funds was reasonable, notwithstanding the governor’s outreach a day earlier; Newsom said Saturday evening Trump had yet to return his call about wildfire response.

“He’s done it in the past, not just here in California,” Newsom told the podcasters, pointing to Tump’s prior actions in Puerto Rico, Utah, Connecticut and Georgia. “The rhetoric is very familiar, it’s increasingly acute, and obviously we all have reason to be concerned about it.”

The politicization of the Los Angeles fires could be showing signs of intensifying. To opposing political factions, the ruin of parts of Los Angeles offers an inviting but deadly tableau on which to lay out their contrary agendas.

To Democrats, the intensity with which the fires took hold, propelled by the late-season Santa Ana winds, is evidence of climate change that some Republicans deny as a political hoax. To some Republicans, including Trump, the fires are evidence of mismanagement under Democrats’ racial- and gender-equity drives.

Even before the extent of the devastation became clear last week, Trump had assailed Newsom as “Newscum”, and called on the governor to resign.

Addressing the governor in a post on his Truth Social website, Trump said: “One of the best and most beautiful parts of the United States of America is burning down to the ground. It’s ashes, and Gavin Newscum should resign. This is all his fault!!!”

Trump blamed Newsom for refusing to sign a water-restoration declaration “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”.

On the Republican sidelines, Warren Davidson, an Ohio representative, called on Friday for federal disaster relief to be withheld from California unless the state reforms its forestry management practices.

The feud between the two political leaders over environmental issues has been percolating since at least 2018, after wildfires devastated Malibu and Paradise, when Trump accused Newsom and Democratic state leaders of “gross mismanagement” of forests by failing to make firebreaks or clear flammable undergrowth.

At the time, Newsom defended California’s wildfire-prevention efforts while criticizing the federal government for not doing enough to help protect the state. “You don’t believe in climate change. You are excused from this conversation,” Newsom told Trump in a post on X.

That dispute was revived earlier last year when Trump appeared to confuse the former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown with the former governor Jerry Brown, saying he’d nearly crashed in a helicopter while assessing wildfire damage with (governor) Brown.

A spokesperson for Newsom, who had been on the flight, said there had been no issues, no emergency landing and no disparaging conversation about Kamala Harris, as Trump had claimed.

Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign spokesperson, later responded that “the president has a lot of amazing stories from his life”.

The ties, and potential fissures, run deeper than politics. Newsom was married to Kimberly Guilfoyle from 2001 to 2006. Guilfoyle subsequently dated Trump’s eldest son, Don Jr, and was recently appointed US ambassador to Greece after leading a fundraising division of Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign.

The chafing between the two looks set to continue, although, according to Politico, an unnamed Trump official downplayed the idea that he would withhold aid to the state.

Joe Biden has already approved a disaster declaration for the southern California fires, committing the federal government to covering all of the fire management and debris removal costs for six months.

“We are with you,” Biden pledged. “We are not going anywhere.”

Newsom thanked Biden – his fellow Democrat – for having “approved our major disaster declaration”. According to Politico, in his letter to Trump, Newsom wrote Biden’s action had been “a strong indication of the partnership California needs and appreciates with any federal administration”.

“However,” Newsom added, “the threat to lives and property remains acute.”

Late Friday, Trump announced on Truth Social that he had appointed Ed Russo – who describes himself as a “dirt-kisser tree hugger” and has described Trump as an “environmental hero” – to an environmental advisory group.

Trump wrote in the post: “Together, we will achieve American Energy DOMINANCE, rebuild our Economy, and DRILL, BABY, DRILL.”

That comes as Newsom has moved in lock step with the California state legislature and the outgoing Biden administration to thwart Trump’s “America first” energy agenda before Trump’s inauguration in 10 days.

Newsom has said California’s legislative efforts are precautionary in nature and he would approach the return president with an “open hand, not a closed fist”.

But Trump made future disaster funds to California an issue during his 2024 campaign when, in September, he demanded Newsom reform water policy to divert more water to California’s farmers if he wanted the flow of federal funds to continue.

“If he doesn’t sign those papers, we won’t give him money to put out all his fires,” Trump said.

At least 16 people have died in the wildfires surging across the Los Angeles area, the largest of which are burning about 25 miles west and north of downtown, plunging the second-largest city in the US into shock and fear.

On Friday, officials attributed five deaths to the Palisades fire and six to the Eaton fire, while the family of a 12th victim came forward about the loss of their loved one in the Palisades fire.

The Los Angeles county medical examiner’s department said that identifying victims might take weeks because the huge Eaton and Palisades blazes were still raging and there were extreme safety concerns. The department added that traditional means of identification such as fingerprinting or visual identification might not be available.

With evacuation orders in place for about 180,000 people across the region, about 10,000 homes and buildings gutted by fire so far and emergency services stretched to the limit, the names of those who have died will be slow to emerge.

This is what we know about eight of the Los Angeles residents killed in some of the worst wildfires to hit the western city in its history.

Palisades fire

The Palisades fire has been described as the worst in the city’s history, beginning a catastrophe that is one of the most destructive ever witnessed in southern California as several other huge and fierce wildfires ignited across LA county, the most populous county in the US, fanned by hurricane-strength dry winds.

Randall Miod, 55

A longtime Malibu resident, artist and surfer Randall Miod, who was known among friends as “Crawdaddy” or “Craw”, has been identified as a victim of the Palisades fire.

Miod, 55, had lived in a house he nicknamed the Crab Shack, which he had shared with his cat The Bu, since 1993.

“He loved Malibu. That was his life,” friend Corina Cline told the Washington Post. “He wasn’t rich. He lived in that little red shack that was kind of run-down.”

“[His home] was his prized possession. That’s the one and only house he ever owned,” his mother, Carol Smith, told CNN. “He just felt so blessed to be able to live in Malibu. That was his dream come true because he’d been surfing since he was a teenager.”

His determination to protect the home led him to stay even after the fires began, Smith said. She added that detectives had found human remains in the home as they inspected the burn zone.

Rory Sykes, 32

Australian former child actor Rory Sykes, 32, died after his mother was unable to evacuate him. Sykes, who was born blind and had cerebral palsy, was living in a cottage on his family’s Malibu estate. His mother, Shelley Sykes, who was recovering from a broken arm, said she couldn’t move him.

“He said: ‘Mom, leave me.’ And no mom could leave their kid,” she told Australian news outlet 10 News First.

She said she called 911 for help, but the phone lines were down – so she drove to the local fire station for help. But they told her “we’ve got no water”.

“When the fire department brought me back, his cottage was burnt to the ground,” Shelley Sykes said.

Rory Sykes is not yet part of the official death toll, as officials have been unable to formally identify his remains yet.

Annette Rossilli, 85

Annette Rossilli, 85, died in the Palisades fire, the home health company caring for her told CNN.

A caregiver as well as neighbors urged Rossilli to evacuate, but she wanted to stay with her pets, including a dog, canary, two parrots and a turtle, Fay Vahdani, president of Luxe Homecare, told the news outlet. On Wednesday, firefighters discovered Rossilli’s body in her car.

Rossilli ran a long-standing plumbing business in Pacific Palisades and was well liked by neighbors, the company said. She is survived by a daughter and son.

Eaton fire

The Eaton fire has ravaged the neighborhood of Altadena, a diverse residential community near Pasadena that is home to working- and middle-class families, including many Black residents who have lived there for generations.

Victor Shaw, 66

Victor Shaw, 66, was the first of the fatalities to be named, after he died in the Eaton fire raging to the north-east of LA while attempting to extinguish flames at his home of 55 years in Altadena.

His younger sister Shari Shaw reportedly tried to get him to evacuate as the Eaton fire spread through their neighborhood, but she was forced to leave him behind when he refused to come with her. She fled just as the blaze engulfed their home.

“When I went back in and yelled out his name, he didn’t reply back, and I had to get out because the embers were so big and flying like a firestorm – I had to save myself,” she told the local TV station KTLA.

Victor’s badly burned body was discovered by a family friend the next day lying on the road next to his home, still clutching a garden hose in his hand. “It looks like he was trying to save the home that his parents had for almost 55 years,” the friend, Al Tanner, told KTLA.

When his sister Shari heard the news, she said, “I fell to the ground, and I didn’t know – I didn’t want to look at him. They just told me that he was lying on the ground and that he looked serene, as if he was at peace,” she told KTLA.

“I’ll miss talking to him, joking about, traveling with him and I’ll just miss him to death,” she added, to CBS. “I just hate that he had to go out like that.”

Anthony Mitchell, 67, and Justin Mitchell, early 20s

Anthony Mitchell, 67, who was an amputee, and his son Justin, who had cerebral palsy, were identified as two of the wildfire victims in Altadena. They died as they were waiting for an ambulance, according to Mitchell’s daughter, Hajime White.

“They didn’t make it out,” said White, the Associated Press reported.

“He was not going to leave his son behind. No matter what,” added White, who lives in Arkansas.

She said authorities told the family Mitchell was found by the side of his son’s bed. The Washington Post reported the family believes Mitchell was trying to save his son, who was in his early 20s.

Another son, also in his 20s, lived with the pair but was in the hospital, and no caregivers were on hand, White said, adding: “It’s very hard. It’s like a ton of bricks just fell on me.” Mitchell was a father of four, grandfather of 11 and great-grandfather of 10.

Rodney Nickerson, 82

Rodney Nickerson, 82, also of Altadena, died in his home, according to his daughter, Kimiko Nickerson, who said he thought he would be OK waiting the fire out in his house after living through several fires in his 57 years in the home.

“He was gathering some things, packing up his car a bit and he said that he was going to gather up his stuff, but he said he was going to stay here too … he said that he felt this was going to pass over and that he would be here,” Kimiko told KTLA.

Kimiko said her father purchased the house with a $5 downpayment in 1968. The last thing her father said to her was “I’ll be here tomorrow”, she told CBS. She confirmed to the outlet that she had found her father’s body in the wreckage.

Erliene Kelley

Erliene Kelley, a retired pharmacy technician in Altadena who lived very close to Shaw and Nickerson, also died at home in the Eaton fire, the New York Times reported, citing relatives.

Rita and Terry Pyburn, who lived on the same block as Kelley, described her to the newspaper as an angel, saying the longtime resident in the close community had been “so, so, so sweet”.

Terry Pyburn said he had often had brief chats with Kelley about gardening and local news, and often left small Christmas gifts for her and other neighbors in the tight-knit community.

They described a frenzy as residents thought they had dodged the fire until it suddenly descended on the neighborhood and people fled under possibly belated emergency alerts and evacuation orders, without a chance to check on others.

As it appeared Kelley might be among the dead, her granddaughter Briana Navarro told the Los Angeles Times Kelley had been “adamant” she did not want to evacuate. Kelley and her late husband had purchased their home in the late 1960s and fires had never reached it before.

The Associated Press contributed reporting

A Republican US congressman from Ohio has called for federal disaster relief to be withheld from California unless the state reforms its forestry management practices that some blame for the rapid spread of wind-fanned fires that broke on Tuesday.

Warren Davidson’s remarks to Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo on Friday came as California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, urged officials to avoid politicizing the response to the blazes which had killed people and destroyed thousands of homes.

Davidson’s comments came in the context of a spending bill that Congress would need to pass before March to prevent a government shutdown would include disaster relief for California.

Davidson pointed to the American Relief Act, 2025 – passed in December – that contributed $110bn to disaster relief for areas affected by Hurricanes Milton and Helene, including North and South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. Other disaster-affected areas were also included.

The congressman said that Congress will “need to address fires” as it had with the previous hurricane damage, “but … if they want the money, then there should be consequences where they have to change their policies” with respect to forestry management.

“I mean, we support the people that are plagued by disaster, but we have to put pressure on the California government to change course here.”

The politicization of the Los Angeles fires, which started almost as soon as they took hold, show signs of intensifying in the aftermath. Donald Trump – who begins a second presidency on 20 January – weighed in, alluding to his having accused state leaders of “gross mismanagement” of forests in 2018 after wildfires devastated Malibu and Paradise, California.

At the time, Newsom defended California’s wildfire prevention efforts while criticizing the federal government for not doing enough to help protect the state. “You don’t believe in climate change. You are excused from this conversation”, Newsom told Trump in a post on X.

Trump more recently blamed the Democratic-controlled state of withholding water from northern parts of the state to southern California as part of environmental efforts to help protect a small fish – the Delta smelt – and blamed environmentalists for hampering the state’s fire response.

But Friday, Newsom temporarily sought to put that dispute to one side, inviting Trump to visit areas affected by the fire disaster and to meet with first responders, firefighters and “Americans” affected by the catastrophe.

“In the spirit of this great country, we must not politicize human tragedy or spread disinformation from the sidelines,” Newsom wrote in a letter to Trump on Friday. “Hundreds of thousands of Americans – displaced from their homes and fearful for the future – deserve to see all of us working in their best interests to ensure a fast recovery and rebuild.”

But hours later, Newsom amplified comments critical of Trump in an interview with Pod Save America in which he rejected Trump’s claim that water is being withheld to save the endangered fish, calling the messaging “delusional” and “a consistent mantra from Trump going back years and years, and it’s reinforced over and over within the right wing … and it’s profoundly ignorant”.

Newsom said fears that Trump could try to withhold federal relief funds from California was reasonable. “He’s done it in the past, not just here in California,” he said, and pointed to prior efforts in Puerto Rico, Utah, Connecticut and Georgia. “The rhetoric is very familiar, it’s increasingly acute, and obviously we all have reason to be concerned about.”

Newsom added that Trump’s assertions about a state water project and the delta smelt were a “salad, it’s the form and substance of a fog, it’s made-up, it’s delusional”.

Trump’s claims, Newsom added, were “sort of an indelible misinformation that’s he sort of manifested, a falsehood, and he decided to bring it into this crisis in a profoundly demeaning and damaging way”.

Joe Biden has already approved a disaster declaration for the southern California fires, committing the federal government to covering all of the fire management and debris removal costs for six months. But with days left in Biden’s presidency, the federal recovery assistance that California receives will soon be up to Trump and a Congress controlled by his fellow Republicans.

Newsom thanked Biden – his fellow Democrat – for having “approved our major disaster declaration”. According to Politico, in his letter to Trump, Newsom wrote Biden’s action was “a strong indication of the partnership California needs and appreciates with any federal administration”.

“However,” Newsom added, “the threat to lives and property remains acute. Higher-than-normal winds of up to 70 miles per hour are still forecast for the next several days, and more extreme winds are likely early next week, with no change to dry conditions.”

According to Politico, an unnamed Trump official downplayed the idea that he would withhold aid to the state.

Researchers fear that thousands of government documents about the late queen and Prince Philip due for release in the next two years could be censored.

The files are scheduled to be made public in 2026 and 2027, five years after the royal couple’s deaths, and internal discussions have begun in Whitehall about how to process them and what should remain secret.

The papers are likely to include records of the highs and lows of Elizabeth II’s 70-year reign, correspondence between the royal household and government departments, and accounts of royal overseas tours, births, marriages, deaths, divorces and other momentous events in the second Elizabethan age.

Most public records considered to be of historical significance are released after 20 years, but there are numerous exemptions for government papers, including for national security reasons, disclosures that might affect international relations, and those involving members of the royal family. Separately, the royal family’s own archives at Windsor are not deemed public records, nor covered by the Freedom of Information Act.

Papers involving communications with the monarch are kept secret until five years after their death.

Members of the Advisory Council on National Records and Archives, the statutory body that advises government departments on disclosure of public records, will ask for a briefing from civil servants on how the large number of files now likely to be disclosed will be dealt with, amid concerns about an already substantial backlog of disputed cases involving the royal family.

This weekend, Dr Bendor Grosvenor, an art historian who resigned from the council in 2018 in protest at the government’s refusal to publish papers on the Profumo scandal, called for a radical overhaul of the way records are treated when an application is made to prevent their release. Grosvenor said it was often junior civil servants, not permanent secretaries and other senior officials, who made the decisions. He said they could be more risk-averse, and chose vague and dubious reasons to retain files in their department.

“The Cabinet Office are the knee-jerk ones who react all the time,” Grosvenor said. “The system does need to be changed, because the advisory council has on it people who really know what they are talking about and they should be trusted.”

The advisory council should be involved if a government department asks to retain files instead of handing them over to the National Archives and when a Freedom of Information Act request is made to disclose documents. But Grosvenor said members of the council are often unable to see the documents in detail and make an informed decision. He and other critics have singled out the Cabinet Office, which has a particularly close working relationship with the royal household, as the main bottleneck.

Last year, the council, which is chaired by the Master of the Rolls Sir Geoffrey Vos and includes academics and former intelligence officials among its members, wrote to the culture secretary, copying in the Cabinet Office and the royal household, in an effort to remind civil servants of the guidelines in assessing whether royal files should be released. The aim of the letter was to seek a more uniform and transparent approach in Whitehall following frustrations that documents mentioning members of the royal family are often kept secret for spurious reasons and held in limbo for years.

Five years after the deaths of Philip and Elizabeth II, staff at the National Archives will also have to reassess previously closed royal files in its collection, but critics say it is often too keen to keep royal documents secret.

Dr Alison McClean, a researcher at the Centre for Academic Language and Development at the University of Bristol, said: “There seems to be an increasing reluctance to release any historical public records relating to members of the royal family and a worrying trend of withdrawing access from records that have previously been released.

“During the past few years, the National Archives has re-closed or redacted a number of royal records, including cabinet papers relating to the 1953Regency Act 1953 and prime ministerial records concerning the investiture of the Prince of Wales.”

A spokesperson for the National Archives said: “Under the Public Records Act 1958, those ­responsible for public records must make arrangements for the selection of those records which ought to be permanently preserved and so any government department or public body planning on releasing documents related to the late queen should follow the selection and transfer guidance.”

A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: “All records are released in line with the Public Records Act.”

• Ukraine said it was interrogating two North Korean soldiers after capturing the pair in Russia’s Kursk region – the first time it has announced the capture of North Korean soldiers alive since their entry into the war last year. The president, Volodymyr Zelensyy, said on X on Saturday the soldiers were captured by Ukraine’s special forces and were being interrogated by the SBU domestic intelligence agency in Kyiv. The SBU released a video showing the two men in hospital bunks, one with bandaged hands and the other with a bandaged jaw. It said their questioning was being done in Korean with the help of South Korea’s NIS intelligence agency. Neither Russia nor North Korea immediately reacted to the announcement.

• The SBU said the two captured North Korean men had told interrogators they were experienced army soldiers, and one said he was sent to Russia for training, not to fight. It said one PoW carried a Russian military ID card “issued in the name of another person” while the other had no documents. The SBU showed an ID issued to a 26-year-old man from Russia’s Tyva region bordering Mongolia, adding that he was a rifleman born in 2005 and had been in the North Korean army since 2021. The other man, who wrote his answers because of his injured jaw, said he was born in 1999, had joined the army in 2016 and was a scout sniper, the SBU said.

• Zelensyy said it was difficult to capture North Koreans alive because “Russians and other North Korean soldiers finish off their wounded” to cover up “evidence of the participation of another state, North Korea, in the war”. He said he would provide media access to the prisoners of war because “the world needs to know what is happening”. Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andriy Sybiga, wrote online: “We need maximum pressure against regimes in Moscow and Pyongyang.”

• Russia said its army had gained control of a village near the eastern Ukrainian logistical centre of Pokrovsk, a key target in its advance through the Donetsk region. Ukraine’s military made no mention of the village of Shevchenko in its latest account of frontline activity, but said Russia had launched more than 50 attacks against its forces’ positions near Pokrovsk in the past 24 hours. The Russian military report said its troops launched strikes with aircraft, drones and missiles on Ukrainian military airfields and energy infrastructure that service its army. Ukraine’s general staff said its forces repelled 46 of 56 Russian attacks around about a dozen towns in the Pokrovsk sector. Ten clashes were continuing. The governor of the part of Donetsk region held by Ukrainian forces, Vadym Filashkin, said one resident was killed and four injured when a village north of Pokrovsk came under Russian shelling.

• Russia launched 74 drones at Ukraine overnight, Kyiv’s air force said early on Saturday, adding it had downed 47 of them, while 27 others disappeared from radar without reaching their targets. The air force said buildings and vehicles in seven different regions were damaged by falling debris from downed drones, but there were no casualties.

• Ukraine launched drone attacks across several regions of Russia, striking two houses in the Tambov region and injuring several people, Russia said on Saturday. Ukraine denies attacking civilian targets in Russia. The regional head, Evgeny Pervyshov, said on Telegram that people were treated for injures resulting from shattered windows as drones hit two houses in the town of Kotovsk, 480km (300 miles) south-east of Moscow. The Russian defence ministry said it intercepted and destroyed 85 Ukrainian drones overnight in several regions of the country, including 31 drones over the Black Sea, 16 each in the Voronezh and Krasnodar regions and 14 over the Azov Sea.

• Vladimir Putin awarded Russia’s highest honour for bravery on Saturday to Cpl Andrei Grigoryev after a widely posted video showed him killing a Ukrainian opponent in hand-to-hand combat. Ukrainian media identified the soldier killed as Dmytro Maslovsky from the southern Odesa region.

A close friend of a British hiker who has been missing in the Dolomites since New Year’s Day has said “there is an acceptance that it won’t be good news” as search efforts continued.

Sam Harris, 35, and Aziz Ziriat, 36, from London, last sent messages home on 1 January and the pair did not check in to their flight home on 6 January. Friends and relatives have travelled to Italy.

The body of Harris was found on Wednesday buried in deep snow at the foot of a cliff about 2,600 metres (8,500ft) above sea level in the area of the Conca pass in the Adamello nature park.

Joe Stone, a university friend of Ziriat, told the PA Media news agency that the authorities were “trying everything” to find the 36-year-old, who has now been missing for 10 days.

“There is an acceptance among us that it’s not going to be good news,” Stone said on Saturday. “But it would be really nice to find him and be put out of this limbo.”

The pair’s last known location had been a mountain hut called Casina Dosson, close to the town of Tione di Trento, near Riva del Garda on Lake Garda.

Italy’s national alpine cliff and cave rescue corps said on Saturday that the search for Ziriat, who works for the Crystal Palace FC charity Palace for Life, had resumed at first light.

About 40 rescuers were airlifted to high altitudes and were digging into the snow to search for Ziriat in the area where Harris’s body was found.

On Wednesday, the alpine rescue service said ground teams had found a body “sadly deceased, buried under the snow” in the area of Passo di Conca.

The rescue teams had been searching the area after tracking a “phone of one of the two mountaineers”.

They said the “dynamics of the accident are still being examined by the police but it is possible that the mountaineer fell from a height”.

Palace for Life posted on X: “We are aware of reports that the body of Sam Harris has been recovered.

“We are devastated to receive this news and our thoughts and deepest sympathies go out to his loved ones.

“No further information is currently available regarding the whereabouts of Aziz.”

A spokesperson for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said on Friday: “We are supporting the family of a British man who has died in northern Italy and are in contact with the local authorities.”

A bus accident on a motorway in north-eastern Germany on Saturday left two people dead and another four seriously injured, police said.

The accident happened on an exit from the A11 motorway that leads to a car park close to an interchange near Prenzlau, north-east of Berlin, German news agency dpa reported. Seven people were slightly injured.

The bus ended up on its side. No other vehicle was believed to be involved and the cause of the accident, which happened in wintry conditions, was not immediately clear. The two people killed were a 29-year-old woman and a 48-year-old man.

A Brandenburg state police spokesperson, Beate Kardels, said the bus operated by Flixbus, Germany’s dominant long-distance bus operator, was heading toward Poland.

The company said it was en route from Berlin to the Polish city of Szczecin, a roughly 150km (93-mile) trip, with 13 passengers and a driver on board.

A bus accident on a motorway in north-eastern Germany on Saturday left two people dead and another four seriously injured, police said.

The accident happened on an exit from the A11 motorway that leads to a car park close to an interchange near Prenzlau, north-east of Berlin, German news agency dpa reported. Seven people were slightly injured.

The bus ended up on its side. No other vehicle was believed to be involved and the cause of the accident, which happened in wintry conditions, was not immediately clear. The two people killed were a 29-year-old woman and a 48-year-old man.

A Brandenburg state police spokesperson, Beate Kardels, said the bus operated by Flixbus, Germany’s dominant long-distance bus operator, was heading toward Poland.

The company said it was en route from Berlin to the Polish city of Szczecin, a roughly 150km (93-mile) trip, with 13 passengers and a driver on board.

Throughout Roger Thiberville’s long life, he never once visited the Normandy town that gave him his last name. Descended from a family of vineyard owners, he inherited property in Paris from his parents and worked as a meteorologist.

But when Thiberville died in August at the age of 91 leaving no descendants, the mayor of the town (population 1,773) received a phone call. Thiberville the man had left Thiberville the town most of his estimated €10m fortune.

Guy Paris, the mayor of Thiberville, said astonished and delighted locals and officials were now considering how to spend the unexpected windfall, which is five times the municipality’s annual budget. “It’s an exceptional sum of money. Obviously the amount is beyond imagination,” Paris told the local radio station, France Bleu. “We don’t yet know what we will do with it.

“We’re not going to spend it all. We’re going to manage this dowry as we’ve always done with our municipal budget – with prudence and responsibility.”

The French commune is now looking to pay off a bank loan of more than €400,000 used to build a new primary school. Because the town is a public body it will not have to pay any inheritance tax.

Paris said it appeared Thiberville’s only link with the town was his name and that he understood the town’s benefactor had lived “humbly in Paris”, where he owned four apartments in the city’s south-eastern 15th arrondissement. Perhaps surprisingly, there are no known photographs of him. Thiberville’s only stated wish was for his ashes to be placed in a memorial in the commune’s cemetery.

“Monsieur Thiberville did not demand anything in return for his legacy, but we owe him at least that,” the mayor said.

Thiberville is an unremarkable town boasting a late-19th-century château and a former ribbon factory, but little else to mark it out from other Norman communes.

The nearest major attraction is the grand Basilica at Lisieux – 16km to the west – constructed in honour of Saint Thérèse and opened in the 1950s.

Paris said: “We have projects: a public garden with a play area, a boules ground with solar panels that will serve as shade, the renovation of the elementary school, a synthetic football pitch…”

While Thiberville celebrated its good fortune, the neighbouring villages of Le Planquay and La Chapelle-Hareng may be regretting a decision not to merge with the town in order to receive subsidies reserved for communes with more than 2,000 inhabitants. The plan was rejected by neighbouring councillors, meaning Thiberville will not be sharing its inheritance.

More than half of voters think Elon Musk is having a negative effect on British politics following his criticism of Keir Starmer and Nigel Farage, according to the latest Opinium poll for the Observer.

The South African-born billionaire has spent much of the past week using his social media platform X to attack Starmer and the Labour government for their opposition to another national inquiry into grooming gangs. He accused Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, of being a “rape genocide apologist” and falsely claimed Starmer was “deeply complicit in the mass rapes in exchange for votes”. Despite strong suggestions that Musk is preparing to make a large donation to Reform UK, he also recently tore into Nigel Farage, saying he was not up to the job of leading the party.

In one post on X Musk asked his 212 million followers whether America should “liberate” the UK from its “tyrannical government” under Starmer.

Last week the Financial Times reported that he had been discussing with allies ways to remove Keir Starmer from Downing Street.

But when Opinium asked for views on Musk, it found that 53% of voters believed Musk was having a negative impact on British politics, compared to just 12% who thought he was having a positive one. On his comments about grooming gangs specifically, 47% said they thought Musk was being “unhelpful”, compared to 26% who thought the opposite.

Reform UK supporters were unimpressed by his claim that Farage should stand down as party leader, with 71% saying the Clacton MP was the best leader they could have now.

Adam Drummond, head of political and social research at Opinium, said a “lack of enthusiasm about a foreign billionaire involving himself in British politics” was “one area of agreement” among the public. Farage has said that he disagrees with Musk over his support for far-right activist Tommy Robinson and that he has spoken to Musk since his comments about him not being up to the job. Farage says he does not believe that any lasting damage has been done to their relationship.

Opinium found that the public was split on the issue of holding another national inquiry into grooming gangs, with 36% backing the idea. A total of 28% thought local councils should hold their own inquiries while the government focused on implementing the recommendations of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse that reported in 2022.

Drummond said: “If you ask voters ‘Should there be an inquiry into an important issue’ the answer will be ‘yes’. It sounds like doing something about the problem and doesn’t really consider opportunity costs. So it’s not surprising that the numbers are more nuanced when we put actual courses of action in front of people.”

Approval of the Labour government’s handling of the issue was a net minus 17%, but approval of the previous Conservative government’s approach was even lower at minus 27%. There was little support for the Tories’ current approach either, which scored a net approval rating of minus 11%.

Opinium surveyed 2,050 UK adults online between 8 and 10 January.

Joe Biden has pushed back on Meta chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to replace Facebook factchecking departments with company-moderated community notes, calling the decision a “really shameful” choice.

“The whole idea of walking away from factchecking as well as not reporting anything having to do with discrimination regarding … I find it to be contrary to American justice,” the outgoing president told reporters during a press call on Friday. “Telling the truth matters.”

Zuckerberg said last week that the decision to end the factchecking practice on Facebook, Instagram and Threads was made because Facebook’s factchecking, brought in December 2016, had done more harm than good in terms of public trust.

“The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritizing speech,” Zuckerberg said. “So we’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms.”

The dispute between the Meta CEO and Biden – who leaves office on 20 January as Donald Trump begins a second presidency – comes as Zuckerberg has, like most tech titans, signaled his willingness to do business with the incoming administration. For Zuckerberg, that includes contributing to Trump’s record-setting second inauguration fund.

Zuckerberg claimed during an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience released on Friday that Biden administration officials had pressured Facebook to remove certain content from the social media platform. In a letter last year to Jim Jordan, the Republican chairperson of the US House judiciary committee, Zuckerberg said that the White House “repeatedly pressured” Facebook to remove “certain Covid-19 content including humor and satire”.

In his conversation with Rogan, Zuckerberg said: “Basically, these people from the Biden administration would call up our team and, like, scream at them and curse. It just got to this point where we were like, ‘No, we’re not gonna, we’re not gonna take down things that are true. That’s ridiculous.’”

Zuckerberg said he was not against vaccines per se. But he said that while the Biden administration was “trying to push” the Covid-19 vaccination program, “they also tried to censor anyone who is basically arguing against it”.

He said that Facebook had “at times” bended to the administration’s bidding and made decisions that “with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today”.

The tech giant informed workers on Friday that it was abandoning its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) team and rolling back related programs, citing the evolving “legal and policy landscape” in the US. The move echoed those by companies including Walmart and Ford that had also rolled back DEI programs.

After Zuckerberg made the call to for his company to abandon its formal factchecking service, the White House said the administration had “encouraged responsible actions to protect public health and safety”.

“Our position has been clear and consistent: we believe tech companies and other private actors should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people, while making independent choices about the information they present,” it added.

But the decision by Zuckerberg to place Meta’s social media factchecking in the hands of other users, in keeping with the practice on Elon Musk’s X platform, comes as information control – or lack thereof – and the spread of “misinformation” become paramount political issues.

Biden said during an interview with USA Today published on Wednesday that the biggest regret of his presidency was a failure to counter misinformation, including assertions by Trump.

During Biden’s press call on Friday, likely to be the last of his lone term as president, he said Zuckerberg’s decision to drop factchecking on Meta’s social media sites in favor of free speech while maintaining prohibitions on content that crossed into illegality was irresponsible.

“I don’t know what that’s all about – it’s completely contrary to what America is about,” Biden said. “We want to tell the truth. The idea that a billionaire can buy something and say that they won’t factcheck, and then you have millions of people reading it – I think it’s really shameful.”

Germany is battling to secure a heavily loaded tanker stranded off its northern coast, which it says is part of Russia’s sanctions-busting “shadow fleet”.

The 274-metre-long Eventin was sailing from Russia to Egypt with almost 100,000 tonnes of oil on board when its engine failed and it lost the ability to manoeuvre overnight Thursday to Friday, according to Germany’s central command for maritime emergencies.

As the vessel drifted in coastal waters Friday, the foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, criticised Russia’s use of “dilapidated oil tankers” to avoid sanctions on its oil exports, calling it a threat to European security.

Three tugs have linked up with the Eventin and are attempting to steer it north-east, away from the coast and towards a safer area where there is “more sea space”, the command said.

On Saturday morning it said the Eventin and the accompanying tugs were “still north of [the island of] Ruegen and moving eastwards”.

The whole convoy was “travelling slowly” at a rate of about 1-2 knots, or 2.5 km/h, to safer waters north-east of Ruegen’s Cape Arkona, the command said.

It added that there were winds of 6 to 7 on the Beaufort scale in the area and that “stormy gusts” were expected to continue, while waves were about 2.5 metres (8ft) high.

“Once the position has been reached the convoy will wait out the strong winds,” the statement said.

No oil leaks were detected by several surveillance overflights, the authorities said on Friday.

Although the tanker was navigating under the Panamanian flag, the German foreign ministry linked it to Russia’s “shadow fleet” that is used to avoid western sanctions on its oil exports over its invasion of Ukraine.

Baerbock said “by ruthlessly deploying a fleet of rusty tankers, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is not only circumventing the sanctions, but is also willingly accepting that tourism on the Baltic Sea will come to a standstill” in the event of an accident.

Western countries have hit Russia’s oil industry with an embargo and banned the provision of services to ships carrying oil by sea. In response, Russia has relied on tankers with opaque ownership or without proper insurance to continue lucrative exports.

The number of ships in the “shadow fleet” has exploded since the start of the war in Ukraine, according to the Atlantic Council, a US thinktank.

In addition to direct action against Russia’s oil industry, western countries have moved to impose sanctions on individual ships thought to be in the shadow fleet.

The EU has so far imposed sanctions on more than 70 ships thought to be ferrying Russian oil.

The US and Britain on Friday moved to impose restrictions on about 180 more ships in the shadow fleet.

Democrats are harboring strong feelings of stress and gloom as the new year begins. And many are questioning whether their party’s commitment to diverse candidates – especially women – may lead to further political struggles as Donald Trump is sworn in for a second presidency on 20 January.

A recent poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that a significant number of Democrats believe that it may be decades before the United States will get its first female president.

Specifically, about four in 10 Democrats said it’s “not very likely” or “not at all likely” that a woman will be elected to the nation’s highest office in their lifetime, according to the poll. That’s compared with about one-quarter of Republicans who feel the same.

While despondency is hardly unique for a political party after a high-profile loss, that finding reflects the deep depression that has set in among Democrats about the country and their party after Trump soundly defeated Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.

Such concerns may already be shaping the Democratic National Committee (DNC)’s search for a new leader. For the first time in more than a decade, the top candidates for the job are all white men.

And looking further ahead, the party’s pessimism is influencing early conversations about the contest for the 2028 presidential nomination.

“We knew men hated women. The last election showed, for some of us, that we underestimated the extent to which some women hate other women,” said Gilda Cobb-Hunter, a Democratic state representative from South Carolina and former president of the National Black Caucus of State Legislators. “America is as racist and misogynist as it has always been.”

Democrats have nominated a woman to run against Trump in two of the past three presidential elections. In both cases, Trump won decisively, over Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Harris in 2024. The Democrat who unseated Trump – Joe Biden in 2020 – was a white man.

Adding insult to injury for many Democrats was the long list of allegations brought by women against Trump. He was found liable in civil court for sexual abuse and convicted of felonies in a hush-money case involving an adult film star. He was once caught on tape bragging that he could grab women’s genitals without consent because he was a celebrity.

Still, Trump narrowly carried every key swing state in November. Harris had the advantage among women, winning 53% to Trump’s 46%, but that margin was somewhat narrower than Biden’s. Trump’s support held steady among white women, with slightly more than half supporting him, similar to 2020.

Most Democrats – about seven in 10 – believe 2025 will be a worse year for the US than 2024, the AP-NORC poll found. That’s compared with about four in 10 US adults who feel that way.

The poll also found that Democrats were less likely to be feeling “happy” or “hopeful” about 2025 for them personally. Instead, about four in 10 Democrats said “stressed” described their feelings extremely or very well, while roughly one-third of Democrats said this about the word “gloomy.”

Meanwhile, majorities of Republicans and conservatives said “happy” described how they feel about 2025. A similar share said the same about “hopeful”.

“It’s so dark out there right now,” said poll respondent Rachel Wineman, a 41-year-old Democrat from Murrieta, California. “My family and I are circling the wagons, trying to keep our heads down and survive.”

There are early signs that this loss has triggered questions about a core commitment of the modern-day Democratic party to support minority groups, including women, while pushing diverse candidates into positions of power.

Some Democratic leaders fear that Trump’s strong success with working-class white voters – and his modest gains among Blacks and Latinos in the election – may signal a political realignment that could transform the political landscape for years to come unless the party changes its approach.

The vote for a DNC chairperson offers the first clue as to the direction of the party during the second Trump administration. The election is three weeks away, and the leading candidates are Ben Wikler, the Wisconsin state party chair, and Ken Martin, the Minnesota state party chair.

Either would be the first white man in the job since Virginia US senator Tim Kaine left the position in 2011, five years before he was Clinton’s running mate.

Martin and Wikler are considered the strong frontrunners in a field of eight candidates who qualified for a DNC candidate forum Saturday, the first of four such gatherings before the 1 February election at the committee’s winter meeting in suburban Washington.

Two candidates are women: former presidential contender Marianne Williamson and Quintessa Hathaway, a former congressional candidate, educator and civil rights activist.

The outgoing chair, Jaime Harrison, who is Black, said in a statement that the committee will be well positioned to compete in future elections and push back against Trump’s policies.

“Democrats stand ready to hold him accountable,” Harrison said. “We will continue to invest in all 50 states to build power from the local level on up and elect Democrats across the country.”