A ski lift has collapsed at a Spanish resort, injuring dozens of people, nine of them very seriously and eight seriously, the regional government has said.

About 80 people remained trapped, hanging in the chairlift at the ski resort of Astún, in the region of Aragon, according to the state channel TVE.

“It’s like a cable has come off, the chairs have bounced and people have been thrown off,” one witness told TVE.

The cause of the cable failure remains unknown. Images and video footage on social media appeared to show people lying on the snow under the lift.

The ski resort’s management declined to comment and were not immediately able to say if foreign nationals were among the injured.

Several helicopters had been deployed to rescue skiers who were still trapped on the chairlift and to transfer the injured to nearby hospitals.

Spain’s Guardia Civil shared a video of a helicopter flying past the scene before landing with emergency workers to help the rescue effort.

Dozens of people were still hanging from the 15 metre-high chairlift, reported one of Spain’s public broadcasters.

The prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said he was shocked by the reports. “All our affection to the injured and their families,” he wrote on X.

One witness, Jamie Pelegri, said on social media that the Canal Roya chairlift was the one that had collapsed.

“Luckily we are fine but there are injured people, we have seen several stretchers coming down,” he said.

The region’s president, Jorge Azcón, was travelling to the resort.

Azcón wrote on X: “All the necessary services of the [government] are working to assist the affected and injured people.”

The Astún ski resort, mainly popular among Spanish skiers, is close to the Spanish border with France in the Pyrenees.

The meeting was billed as an opportunity for the voters of Saginaw, Michigan to ask elected Democrats difficult questions about why Donald Trump, and not Kamala Harris, is moving into the White House on Monday.

Vincent Oriedo, a biotechnology scientist, had just such a question. What lessons have been learned, he asked, from Harris’s defeat in this vital swing county in a crucial battleground state that voted for Joe Biden four years ago, and how are the Democrats applying them?

As the town hall with Michigan’s secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, and the local representative in the state legislature, Amos O’Neal, came to an end, Oriedo said he was disappointed with their answers, which amounted to bland statements about politicians “listening” to the voters.

“They did not answer the question,” he said.

“It tells me that they haven’t learned the lessons and they have their inner state of denial. I’ve been paying careful attention to the influencers within the Democratic party. Their discussions have centred around, ‘If only we messaged better, if only we had a better candidate, if only we did all these superficial things.’ There is really a lack of understanding that they are losing their base, losing constituencies they are taking for granted.”

Trump’s decisive victory in Saginaw, a bellwether county that he won in 2016 and then lost four years later, came as a shock to the local Democratic party but not to many of its supporters.

Community leaders in some of the poorest parts of Saginaw, where voter turnout dropped, repeatedly warned that the Harris campaign’s focus on attacking Trump as unfit for office and winning the support of middle class white women, particularly over abortion rights, was alienating a large part of the Democratic constituency simply struggling to pay the bills and looking for economic reform.

Carly Hammond, a Saginaw city councillor and former trade union organiser who campaigned for Harris, said she sees little evidence the Democratic party has learned the lessons of her defeat, let alone how to apply them. She said the party’s national leadership does not understand that it is facing a generational political realignment n places such as Saginaw across the US.

“It’s hard to find a good way to look at it. I’ll say the national Democratic party has really put themselves in a position of loss for a generation because I believe that this election was securing, not just starting but securing, a political realignment that’s been happening for decades now,” she said.

“We have set ourselves up for generational loss because we keep promoting from within leaders that that do not criticise the moneyed interests. They refuse to take a hard look at what Americans actually believe and meet those needs.”

After the meeting, O’Neal told the Guardian that he believes Harris lost in Saginaw because her campaign was too focused on abortion rights which was less of an issue in Michigan after voters amended the state constitution in 2022 to protect access.

“We already fought the race of women’s rights. What we missed were the table top issues that people were dealing with. They couldn’t afford to go into the grocery store, can’t buy food, trying to make ends meet. We didn’t talk about that economics. We missed it,” he said.

O’Neal blamed the national party for failing to listen to local voices.

“The policy was decided nationally. I’ve been in politics for over 20 years and I didn’t get much communication from them. Just using myself, for example, I could have been much more impactful. Had I been engaged early, I could have been out and been a voice and advocating for the message,” he said.

Hammond said that is partly the result of the Democrats’ reliance on polling over policy.

“The problem is that the consultant class has led every politician to believe that if they just have the right formula, they can put in any candidate, churn them through the machine, and people will vote for that candidate. And that’s not true,” she said.

“The Democrats have shown that they don’t have any principles, that they will follow the polls, that if they just talk about the economy and kitchen-table issues in such a way that they don’t actually have to promise anything, then they’ll win next time. But they will lose.”

Hammond said that the Democratic leadership erroneously thought it could gloss over core issues, such as anger over the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza, and a thirst for structural economic change which helped drive support for Trump. That’s a view backed by a YouGov poll released on Wednesday, which found that 29% of people who voted for Biden in 2020 but not for Harris last year said the Gaza war was the main reason why. Another 24% cited economic policy.

Pat Parker, who has campaigned for Democratic presidential candidates in Saginaw through five elections, is one of those who is trying to forge a change in the party’s electoral strategies by forcing it to listen to local voices.

“We were screaming locally at the Harris campaign: ‘This isn’t working. We’re putting a lot of energy in, and there’s something off.’ We had a huge team working really hard, but they might have been just throwing dirt in a new pile. It didn’t produce the desired result at all,” said Parker, a clinical social worker.

“The things Harris said, like she was going to give $25,000 for people to buy their first home, there were a lot of people said she was giving their money away to people who didn’t deserve it. It cost her votes. We were trying to tell her that.”

In the weeks since Trump’s victory, Parker gathered together groups sidelined by the Democratic establishment, including Black community leaders, trade unions and local party activists in an attempt to drive a bottom up approach to future elections. She said the local party leadership has engaged with them.

But Hammond is not optimistic that the national leadership will listen.

“I think that the Liberal ideology, with a capital L, is what is being revolted and rebelled against at a very fundamental level by a majority of America. But the Democrats can’t see it,” she said.

“A lot of people on the ground level, a lot of community organisers, a lot of people who were giving the warnings are exhausted of trying to save the Democratic party from itself. They’re the ones who have been shown the door long ago as the party systematically excised criticism from its midst. The leadership actually don’t want a big tent, they want a very top down small tent.”

Hammond said there is one other legacy of the campaign that the Democrats may come to regret for more than just failing to get Harris elected.

A large part of the Harris ad blitz in Michigan was dedicated to attacking Trump as a convicted criminal and a front for Project 2025, the authoritarian plan to impose rightwing control across the entire US government.

“The national party has made it so that they’ve set up a standard where if Donald Trump doesn’t literally ruin democracy in a very visible way that people feel, then they’re proven wrong. It wasn’t as bad as we thought, so they’re liars again. They have set themselves up for failure,” said Hammond.

Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, will attend Donald Trump’s inauguration as US president, joining other European far-right figures including Éric Zemmour, a one-time French presidential candidate known for his xenophobia.

Meloni’s attendance at the event in Washington DC on Monday was confirmed by her office and will be seen as further cementing relations with the US president-elect.

The Italian leader made a flying visit to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago golf club in Florida earlier this month, during which Trump described her as “a fantastic woman” who is “really taking Europe by storm”.

The pair first met in Paris in early December for the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral. Meloni, who leads Brothers of Italy, a party with neofascist origins, has been a longtime supporter of Trump. Before coming to power in October 2022, she regularly travelled to his political gatherings and praised his brand of politics as a model for Italy.

She was also savvy in building good relations with Joe Biden and bolstering Italy’s Atlanticist credentials. During a recent press conference, she said she had a “very solid relationship” with Trump and an “excellent relationship” with Biden. “But having two conservative leaders can further strengthen convergence. It’s added value for Italy and the EU,” she said.

Observers have said that common views on issues ranging from immigration to abortion, alongside Meloni’s strong relationship with Trump’s billionaire ally Elon Musk, could result in her becoming his main interlocutor in Europe.

Trump broke with tradition by inviting several foreign leaders to his inauguration ceremony, which will take place inside the Capitol due to cold temperatures.

From Europe, Meloni will be joined by Zemmour, an ultranationalist, xenophobic polemicist who has convictions for hate speech and is an exponent of the far-right “great replacement” theory, as well as Tom Van Grieken of Belgium’s far-right Vlaams Belang party, and Mateusz Morawiecki of Poland’s national-conservative Law and Justice party (PiS).

The attendance of Tino Chrupalla, a co-leader of Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), was confirmed by the party on Thursday. The invitation followed Musk’s endorsement of the party and a discussion with the co-leader Alice Weidel on his social media platform, X, which raised further concerns about his ambition to influence European politics.

Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK anti-immigration Reform party, will also be present. Hungary’s nationalist prime minister, Victor Orbán, another Trump supporter, was invited but will not be attending, while Argentina’s populist leader, Javier Milei, who visited Rome in December for Atreju, the annual festival organised by Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, will be there.

During the recent press conference, Meloni defended both Trump and Musk. Asked about Trump’s remarks on Greenland and the Panama canal, Meloni said she believed they were intended as messages to other global powers rather than hostile claims against the two countries.

In response to the attacks by Musk on several European leaders, in particular the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, and the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, Meloni rejected a suggestion that his comments constituted “dangerous interference”.

“The problem is when wealthy people use their resources to finance parties, associations and political exponents all over the world to influence the political choices of nation states,” Meloni said. “That’s not what Musk is doing.”

Even as Donald Trump says he will battle for America’s workers, the acting secretary of labor, Julie Su, is voicing fears that Trump will undo many of Joe Biden’s pro-worker policies, which include protecting workers from extreme heat and extending overtime pay to millions more workers.

In an interview with the Guardian, Su said that Trump might fall far short on delivering for workers considering the first Trump administration’s many anti-worker policies and in light of his having Elon Musk and other billionaires advising him. “It’s one thing to say you’re pro-worker, and it’s quite another thing to do it,” Su said. “You can’t be pro-billionaire and pro-working class. You can’t be pro-Elon Musk and pro-worker.”

Musk, who has become one of Trump’s top advisers, is vehemently anti-union and seeking to have the National Labor Relations Board declared unconstitutional. He once said: “I disagree with the idea of unions.”

Su expressed concern that the Trump administration, with all its billionaires and business magnates, might give short shrift to poor and working-class Americans. “When you look at the track record of some of the people in the next administration, and then you look at the lack of representation of working-class and middle-class folks, I’m worried that the perspectives of those who struggle, of those who rely on government to act not just in the interest of the privileged, are not well-represented – while union-busters are.”

Su – who became acting labor secretary nearly two years ago after serving as deputy labor secretary – voiced pride in the Biden administration’s accomplishments for workers. She pointed to the $1tn infrastructure bill, Biden’s strong backing of unions, the regulation to protect workers’ lungs from silicon dust, the increase in factory jobs and the first-ever regulation to protect workers from dangerous heat. (With the senator Joe Manchin opposing her, she never got a Senate majority to confirm her as labor secretary.)

As for other achievements, Su pointed to her behind-the-scenes role in helping secure good union contracts for Boeing workers and dock workers on the east and west coasts. She also cited her department’s enforcement efforts – since Biden took office, it has collected more than $1bn for workers victimized by wage theft.

“This president has prioritized working people in everything that he’s done,” she said. “This president has had a very strong commitment to unions.”

Su warned that the second Trump administration might be as anti-union as the first. “The first time they were here, they had a virulently anti-union NLRB,” Su said. “In order to do what they said they’re going to do this time, which is to be pro-worker and pro-union, they’re going to have to do a 180-degree U-turn from what they did last time.”

Peter Robb, who served as the NLRB’s aggressively pro-business general counsel during Trump’s first term, is heading Trump’s transition efforts for the labor board. Trump’s pick for labor secretary, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, has had far more support from unions than most Republicans; several unions endorsed her last fall when she ran unsuccessfully for re-election to Congress from Oregon.

Su had some advice for her successor: “The American people need and deserve a strong labor department. There are places in this country where vulnerable workers depend on this department to breathe life into labor laws, and there are 15,000 career people who wake up every day and want to do that work. Having the support of the labor secretary to do that and use the full authority they’ve been given to make life better for workers, is really important. It’s also important to be a voice for workers.”

As for Musk’s ambitious plan to make $2tn in budget cuts, Su said her department already did not have enough money and further cuts would undermine its mission. “We do not have the resources that we need for this department’s important mission after the cuts of the last Trump administration,” Su said. She added that the department needed adequate resources “when workers tell us they weren’t paid the $7.25-an-hour minimum wage, when 13-year-olds work in dangerous jobs and 16-year-olds work on dangerous equipment, when firefighters seek workers comp after a whole career of saving people’s lives, but are denied it”.

Su fears that Trump’s appointees will scrap the Biden administration’s first-ever national regulation to protect workers against extreme heat. Similarly, she worries that the Trump administration will reverse a rule that makes it harder for businesses to misclassify construction workers and others as independent contractors, often to skirt overtime and other laws.

Su, who won high praise for her innovative policies as California’s labor commissioner, vigorously denied that Biden’s loss in November meant that voters had rejected his pro-worker policies. Su said policies to ramp up manufacturing, build clean energy and rebuild infrastructure will take years to complete, and many voters didn’t yet feel the benefit. “We needed more time,” she said.

“President Biden wanted to fundamentally change the playbook of how the economy works for working people,” Su said. “He called the lie on the decades-old con of trickle-down economics.”

As labor secretary and as California’s top labor official, Su often devoted herself to helping the most vulnerable workers. “Too many workers continue to struggle, and a lot of those are workers of color and immigrants,” she said. “The rhetoric about immigrants, the flat-out lies about what immigrants and immigrant communities bring and contribute – those lies are terribly damaging. Anti-immigrant policies are anti-worker.”

Su condemned Trump’s talk of mass deportations: “You can’t be behind a mass-deportation policy and be pro-worker. Those policies make workers afraid and much more exploitable.”

Discussing the Los Angeles wildfires, Su – who grew up in Los Angeles county – said immigrant workers usually do the work cleaning up and rebuilding after hurricanes, fires and other disasters. “There is going to be a herculean effort needed in light of the devastating fires that are still raging in my home state,” she said. “Those workers who have done cleanup and rebuilding before are going to be the ones we rely on, and they, like all workers, should be treated with the dignity and respect they deserve.

“A policy of mass deportations,” she added, “will get in the way of that important work and make the people doing that work more vulnerable.”

If Trump is serious about helping workers, Su maintained, he should continue her department’s efforts to enforce labor laws aggressively, whether minimum wage, child labor or occupational safety laws.

“The last administration slashed the Department of Labor’s enforcement capacity. You can’t eliminate and slash [the Occupational Safety and Health Administration] and wage-and-hour and mine inspectors and keep workers healthy and safe,” Su said. Trump’s nominees “say we’re going to cut red tape and regulation, but the people who rely on strong regulation are the most vulnerable people in our communities, including working people,” she said.

Su voiced frustration that conservative judges have overturned labor department regulations, including Biden’s rule extending overtime pay to 4 million more workers. She complained that those who “benefit from the gap between the rich and the poor” have “figured out a way to stymie progressive and worker-friendly actions”.

She talked of one worker she met who said that thanks to Biden’s overtime expansion, she was going to receive a pay increase that would enable her to pay her rent and have a little left over for her daughter. But a federal judge in Texas, a Trump appointee, overturned Biden’s overtime expansion.

“Much of what we put in place are fundamental policies to lift up people who are struggling to get by,” Su said. “I think about these people who think it’s a game to strategize and take away these kinds of protections. It’s a tragedy.”

Su decried the repeated efforts by Republicans, business lobbyists and conservative thinktanks to block efforts to raise the federal minimum wage, which has been frozen at $7.25 for 15 years.

“Industry lobbyists continually challenge policies that are good for working people,” Su said. “You can’t say you’re pro-worker and support them. It’s unconscionable to stand in the way of policies that put more wages into workers’ pockets.”

A police volunteer has been found guilty of the rape and murder of a trainee doctor who was on duty in Kolkata, a crime that sparked protests across India amid concern about violence against women and girls.

The outcry over the killing of the 31-year-old physician in August led to the trial being fast-tracked through the legal system.

Judge Anirban Das said the sentence for Sanjay Roy, 33, would be announced on Monday. His punishment could range from life imprisonment to the death penalty.

Police discovered the body of the woman in the RG Kar medical college and hospital’s seminar hall on 9 August. An autopsy found she had been strangled and that a sexual assault had taken place.

Roy was arrested a day after the crime. He has maintained his innocence and pleaded not guilty in court.

The case was initially investigated by the Kolkata police but the court handed it to federal investigators after state government officers were accused of mishandling the investigation.

After the attack, doctors and medical students across India held protests and rallies demanding justice and better security. Thousands of women also protested on the streets, demanding justice for the victim as they participated in Reclaim the Night marches. Some protesters called for the perpetrator to be given the death penalty.

The attack prompted the supreme court to set up a national taskforce to suggest ways to enhance safety measures in government hospitals.

Many cases of crimes against women go unreported in India due to the stigma surrounding sexual violence, as well as a lack of faith in the police. Women’s rights activists say the problem is particularly acute in rural areas, where people sometimes shame the victims of sexual assault and families worry about their social standing.

The number of recorded rape cases in India has increased in recent years. In 2022, police recorded 31,516 reports of rape – a 20% jump from 2021, according to the National Crime Records Bureau.

In 2012, the gang-rape and killing of a 23-year-old student on a Delhi bus galvanised huge protests. It inspired lawmakers to order harsher penalties for such crimes, as well as the creation of fast-track courts dedicated to rape cases. The government also introduced the death penalty for repeat offenders.

The rape law was amended in 2013 to criminalise stalking and voyeurism and to lower the age when a person can be tried as an adult, from 18 to 16.

The diaries of an antisemitic British socialite who was obsessed with Adolf Hitler and struck up a personal relationship with the Nazi leader have been discovered, according to the Daily Mail.

The leather-bound journals, which had been lost to historians and unseen for eight decades, appear to reveal the extent of Unity Mitford’s relationship with the dictator.

Despite the infamous “Hitler diaries” incident, in which Sunday Times journalists were duped into publishing forged accounts, several historians believe this discovery is genuine.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, which claims to have unearthed the journals, the historian Andrew Roberts said: “It is extremely rare in modern times for the diaries of a well-known figure of the Nazi movement to be discovered and published.”

One of the world’s foremost scholars on Unity Mitford, David Pryce-Jones, said: “I am confident they are genuine.”

The diaries detail how the aristocrat harboured a fascination with Hitler and stalked him when she moved to Munich at the age of 20. The handwritten entries expose Unity – one of the well-known Mitford sisters – as a Nazi worshipper, sharing Hitler’s hatred of Jewish people.

Spanning the years between 1935 and 1939, she recorded an account in February 1935 as “the most wonderful day of my life” when Hitler summoned her to join his table at the Osteria Bavaria restaurant.

She wrote: “Lunch Osteria 2.30. THE FUHRER comes 3.15 after I have finished lunch. After about 10 minutes he sends the Wirt [owner] TO ASK ME TO GO TO HIS TABLE.

“I go and sit next to him while he eats his lunch and we talk. THE MOST WONDERFUL DAY OF MY LIFE. He writes on a postcard for me. After he goes, Rosa [waitress] tells me he has never invited anyone like that before.”

Born in London, Mitford managed to integrate herself into Hitler’s inner circle to such an extent that her presence reportedly caused Hitler’s lover, Eva Braun, to grow jealous of their relationship.

In total, the journals chronicle 139 meetings with the Nazi leader, whom she consistently refers to as “the Führer”. She later describes him as “very sweet and gay”.

Her final entry in the diary is on 1 September 1939, the day Germany invaded Poland, with war declared two days later. Unity – then 25 – later attempted suicide.

Apparently distraught at the prospect of Britain and Nazi Germany going to war against each other, she shot herself in Munich’s English Garden park.

The attempt was unsuccessful but Unity was left brain-damaged and the bullet remained lodged in her skull. She returned to Britain, where she died in 1948, aged 33.

A British man living in Italy has admitted stabbing his partner to death, claiming he did it after she accused him of cheating on her.

Michael Whitbread, 75, told a court he could not remember how many times he stabbed fellow Briton Michele Faiers, 66, in October 2023.

The couple had been living in a renovated cottage in Verratti, a remote village in Abruzzo, at the time of the killing, the Times reported.

Whitbread fled the scene and drove back to the UK but his daughter alerted police to his whereabouts when Faiers’s body was discovered. He was extradited to Italy for the trial.

In his first statement on Friday, the former diving instructor from Torquay alleged Faiers had accused him of having an affair over several months after she saw him patting a woman’s bottom at a party in 2022.

Whitbread, who has denied cheating, told the courthouse in Lanciano that the couple would have violent arguments about the incident. “It was an odd clip round the head, then it got worse.”

He said that on the evening of 28 October 2023, Faiers woke him and started hitting him, saying: “I wish you were dead.”

Whitbread said he took a knife from the kitchen, gave it to her and said: “Kill me. I have had enough.”

“It was after 10 months of being accused of something I did not do,” he continued.

“She kicked me in the intimate parts and was trying to push me down the stairs. I thought: she’s going to cut me. That is when I grabbed the knife in panic.”

Faiers was found by Italian police lying in bed with seven stab wounds to the back. “I stabbed her, I don’t remember how many times,” Whitbread told the court.

He claimed that Faiers’s behaviour before her death had led him to attempt suicide.

The court heard Whitbread had been married three times previously, with two of those marriages ending as a result of his affairs.

Faiers’s three adult daughters attended the hearing, consoling each other as Whitbread described how he killed their mother.

The daughters’ lawyer, Nadia Germanà Tascona, said after the hearing: “It’s important he’s confessed; something he has never done. That was really important for Michele’s daughters because it is a way to begin again.”

The trial continues, with the judge having commissioned a psychological assessment of Whitbread.

A British man living in Italy has admitted stabbing his partner to death, claiming he did it after she accused him of cheating on her.

Michael Whitbread, 75, told a court he could not remember how many times he stabbed fellow Briton Michele Faiers, 66, in October 2023.

The couple had been living in a renovated cottage in Verratti, a remote village in Abruzzo, at the time of the killing, the Times reported.

Whitbread fled the scene and drove back to the UK but his daughter alerted police to his whereabouts when Faiers’s body was discovered. He was extradited to Italy for the trial.

In his first statement on Friday, the former diving instructor from Torquay alleged Faiers had accused him of having an affair over several months after she saw him patting a woman’s bottom at a party in 2022.

Whitbread, who has denied cheating, told the courthouse in Lanciano that the couple would have violent arguments about the incident. “It was an odd clip round the head, then it got worse.”

He said that on the evening of 28 October 2023, Faiers woke him and started hitting him, saying: “I wish you were dead.”

Whitbread said he took a knife from the kitchen, gave it to her and said: “Kill me. I have had enough.”

“It was after 10 months of being accused of something I did not do,” he continued.

“She kicked me in the intimate parts and was trying to push me down the stairs. I thought: she’s going to cut me. That is when I grabbed the knife in panic.”

Faiers was found by Italian police lying in bed with seven stab wounds to the back. “I stabbed her, I don’t remember how many times,” Whitbread told the court.

He claimed that Faiers’s behaviour before her death had led him to attempt suicide.

The court heard Whitbread had been married three times previously, with two of those marriages ending as a result of his affairs.

Faiers’s three adult daughters attended the hearing, consoling each other as Whitbread described how he killed their mother.

The daughters’ lawyer, Nadia Germanà Tascona, said after the hearing: “It’s important he’s confessed; something he has never done. That was really important for Michele’s daughters because it is a way to begin again.”

The trial continues, with the judge having commissioned a psychological assessment of Whitbread.

When Angelica Oung received the notification that her Xiaohongshu account had been blocked for violating the social media app’s code of conduct, her mind started racing.

The only picture she had posted on her account, apart from her profile headshot, was of herself wearing an inflatable polar bear suit, holding a sign saying: “I love nuclear”. What could be the problem with that, wondered Oung, a clean energy activist in Taiwan.

Was it because, at a glance, her picture looked like someone holding a placard at a protest? Was it because her costume looked a bit like the white hazmat suits worn by China’s Covid prevention workers during the pandemic, who became a widely reviled symbol of the lockdown? Or was it because in the background was Taipei 101, Taiwan’s iconic skyscraper?

Oung never found out. “It is really opaque,” she said. “My theory is that Xiaohongshu just got slammed with so many new accounts.”

More than 3million US users signed up to Xiaohongshu last week, according to Reuters. “TikTok refugees” have fled to the app, also known as RedNote, as TikTok faces being banned in the US on 19 January if it does not divest from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance.

On Friday, the US supreme court upheld the ruling, rejecting an appeal against the ban from TikTok, which has more than 170million American users. Founded in 2013 as an online community focused on shopping and travel tips, the Shanghai-based Xiaohongshu has more than 300million, predominantly female, users. It is reportedly valued at $17bn.

The surge of new users it is experiencing has forced Xiaohongshu’s moderators to scramble to keep the content on the platform in line with Beijing’s censorship requirements. Unlike TikTok, which is an international subsidiary and has a sister app for Chinese users, Xiaohongshu is a purely Chinese operation.

TikTok’s detractors argue that it is a danger to national security because the users’ data is at risk of being compromised by China. Some lawmakers have also raised concerns that the content on the platform is manipulated to suit Beijing’s interests.

TikTok denies both of those accusations.

But fearful of losing access to their favourite app – and perhaps just jumping on a new trend – users have defied the lawmakers’ concerns about the Chinese Communist party and flocked to another Chinese platform.

Like all Chinese social media, Xiaohongshu’s content is strictly censored in line with Beijing’s laws, which prohibit content deemed counter to the government’s interests.

In 2022 a leaked internal document revealed how Xiaohongshu censored “sudden incidents” on its platform, such as discussion of natural disasters and political disturbances.

But its existing guidelines are for Chinese-language content. This week, the hashtag “Red Note is urgently recruiting English content moderators” trended on Weibo, and job listings for English-language Xiaohongshu moderators have been appearing on recruitment websites. Chinese officials have reportedly told the company to ensure that China-based users can’t see posts from US users.

While Chinese internet users are adept at finding their ways round censorship, they are also used to self-censorship, avoiding certain topics that could get them blocked. On Xiaohongshu, they have tips for the American newcomers.

“DON’T mention sensitive topics,” counselled a lifestyle influencer. “Don’t talk about religion or politics,” said one British user in China, who said he has been posting on the platform for five years.

Christine Lu, an entrepreneur based in Los Angeles, was also blocked from Xiaohongshu last week. As a test of the app’s censors, she had posted pictures that featured the Tibetan flag and the Taiwan flag – both topics that are considered “sensitive” in China. “As suspected, it’s going to be impossible to have fully self-expressed conversations with Chinese people in China via this app,” Lu said on X.

Eric Liu, a former content moderator for Weibo, said: “It is still very difficult for Chinese internet companies to conduct English censorship … censors mainly rely on the understanding of China’s political correctness that is cultivated in school and in ideological and political courses … you can’t just rely on translation software.”

Liu said Xiaohongshu’s lack of English-language capacity meant that censorship was likely to be “rough and indiscriminate … giving priority to satisfying the requirements of the authorities”.

The censorship, and banning of users, may pour cold water on the idea that the app could be a place for Chinese and US internet users to communicate and share jokes and memes.

“I do think it is an unalloyed good that people who are in countries that are geopolitically at odds, and perhaps for good reason, just get to connect with each other,” said Oung.

But there will be a “rude awakening eventually”.

Oung says: “It’s a really interesting test of whether the Chinese government feels confident enough to actually let it continue.”

Chenchen Zhang, an assistant professor at Durham University, said that the current enthusiasm for the uniting power of social media is a “surreal” throwback to the utopian ideals of the internet in the 1990s.

Few items of clothing have come to exemplify American far-right nationalism in the 21st century as much as the red “Make America Great Again” hats worn and sold by Donald Trump. But this week, the beloved – and reviled – headwear appeared to have met its match.

Before a high-stakes meeting with Canadian leaders in preparation for American tariffs, the Ontario premier, Doug Ford, strode into the summit wearing a hat emblazoned with a defiant message: “CANADA IS NOT FOR SALE”.

Canadian leaders are still scrambling to come up with a response to the threat of a trade war with the country’s closest ally if Trump makes good on his promise to inflict punishing tariffs on all Canadian goods and services.

And in the depths of a national crisis, the novelty hat has emerged as an unlikely expression of unity.

For the hat’s creators, “it’s been a wild and surreal few days”.

Liam Mooney, who runs a design firm in Ottawa with his fiancee Emma Cochrane, said the hat came about as a direct rebuttal to a viral Fox news segment in which the host Jesse Watters taunted Ford about Trump’s threat to annex Canada.

“If I were a citizen of another country and I was a neighbour of the United States, I would consider it a privilege to be taken over by the United States of America,” Watters told the Ontario leader.

Mooney and Cochrane were “shocked” at the hostile interview and spent the next few hours coming up with the “creative rebuttal” to the Trumpian threats.

The result was a cap with a Canadian-designed typeface and a simple but firm message. “It was a small act of patriotism to respond to these big threats and this big bluster,” said Mooney.

Online sales grew steadily, but the momentum surged after Ford wore his cap to a meeting of regional leaders on Wednesday – and later posted a link to the online store.

Since then, the couple have sold more than 45,000 hats. More than 150 have been purchased in the United States.

The Conservative Ontario leader’s appearance with the hat prompted praise from his political rivals in Canada, including the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, and the foreign minister, Mélanie Joly.

“I WANT THIS HAT!!!!!!!!” the country’s former Liberal environment minister Catherine McKenna posted on X. “And thank you Doug Ford for being a leader on #TeamCanada.”

Even the Manitoba premier, Wab Kinew – a progressive often at odds with Ford – quipped that he loved it: “Great hat, I hope they make that in an orange.”

(Mooney, keen to capitalize on the moment, said he had spent hours trying to ensure Kinew receives a hat that matches the colours of his leftwing New Democratic party.)

The threat of a devastating trade war has forced Canada’s political leaders to set aside policy and ideological rifts, with most projecting a unified front.

“Canadian pride is something we can really lean on right now. And there are few things that unite Canadians more, for better or for worse, than our neighbour to the south,” said Kinew after the premiers met with Trudeau.

But the need for a unified front has taken on fresh urgency after the rightwing premier of the oil-rich western province of Alberta appeared to go rogue, refusing to sign on to a joint communique from other leaders and the prime minister.

Danielle Smith did not join the Ottawa meeting in person, instead joining virtually; she was also absent from the press conference with Trudeau and the other premiers.

Canada remains the largest supplier of energy to the US, shipping roughly 60% of its crude oil – nearly all of which comes from Alberta. Federal ministers and provincial leaders including Ford have weighed blocking energy exports – including natural gas, oil and electricity – as a retaliatory measure. Federal ministers have also suggested Canada could impose tariffs on exports of critical minerals to the United States, including uranium, potash, germanium, zinc, nickel, copper and graphite.

Smith, whose provincial economy is tied to oil exports to the United States, has come out forcefully against the idea.

“Until these threats cease, Alberta will not be able to fully support the federal government’s plan in dealing with the threatened tariffs,” she wrote online. “Alberta will simply not agree to export tariffs on our energy or other products, nor do we support a ban on exports of these same products. We will take whatever actions are needed to protect the livelihoods of Albertans from such destructive federal policies.”

The position has divided Conservative leaders, with Ford, who oversees a C$1tn economy, expressing mounting frustration over Smith’s refusal to entertain the idea of halting energy exports.

“That’s her choice. I have a little different theory: protect your jurisdiction but country comes first,” he told reporters, warning “we cannot have division” in the country.

“You can’t let someone hit you over the head with a sledgehammer without hitting him back twice as hard.”

A doorbell camera on a Canadian home has captured rare video and sound of a meteorite striking Earth as it crashed into a couple’s walkway.

When Laura Kelly and her partner returned home after an evening walk, they were surprised to find their walkway littered with dust and strange debris, according to the Meteoritical Society, which posted the video with its report.

They checked their security camera and saw something slamming against their entranceway, producing a cloud of smoke and a crackle.

The pair reported what they found to the University of Alberta’s Meteorite Reporting System and the curator, Chris Herd, examined samples of the debris to confirm its interstellar origins.

Meteorites are bits of space rock that hit Earth after surviving a trip through its scorching atmosphere. About 43 tonnes (43,500kg) of similar debris strike Earth every day, according to Nasa, but is much more likely to plunge into an ocean than on to someone’s front stoop.

The space rocks also streak the night sky as shooting stars during meteor showers, which happen several times a year.

The footage from July is believed to be a first. While cameras have captured meteors streaking through the sky, it is rare to capture the sound of a complete meteorite strike on video.

The space rock, officially registered on Monday, was named Charlottetown after the city on Prince Edward Island in eastern Canada where it struck.

Scotland’s largest haggis maker is creating a “compliant” recipe of the nation’s most famous dish to circumvent strict American food regulations after more than 50 years in exile.

The decision by Macsween of Edinburgh comes after traditional haggis was banned by the US authorities in 1971, taking issue with the sheep’s-lung component of the recipe, which was then prohibited for use as human food by federal regulation.

Traditional haggis contains about 15% sheep lung. The 1971 law made it illegal in effect to import or sell traditional haggis, making it difficult for Scottish-Americans to access Scotland’s most famous dish.

Over the years, petitions to end the decades-old ban have been made by former environment secretaries and there have been stories of smuggled, bootleg and blackmarket haggis.

Macsween is to substitute sheep lung with sheep heart, according to the Telegraph. But those with Scottish ancestry hoping to celebrate Burns Night with the substitution will have to wait another year, as the company is now testing the product with the aim of launching in January 2026.

A US launch would be a “significant opportunity”, said James Macsween, the managing director of Macsween of Edinburgh, adding that the industry was losing nearly £2m annually in potential sales with the existing ban.

“In response to this longstanding ban, we have been innovating to create a compliant version of haggis without compromising the dish’s authentic flavours and texture,” Macsween said.

It’s familiar territory for a company that has also created vegetarian versions of its haggis for the US in recent years. It has also already made adjustments to comply with regulations set by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, substituting the lung with lamb heart and fat, which have since made Canada Macsween’s largest overseas market.

In recent years, appetite for haggis has risen, according to government figures from 2020, which revealed that, over the past decade, the total export value of haggis was £8.8m with a 136% increase in tonnage of haggis shipped across the world, including a growth of exports in Greece, Hong Kong and Ghana.