More than 70 pro-Palestinian demonstrators were arrested in central London on Saturday on suspicion of breaching protest conditions after some allegedly broke through a police line as they marched from a rally in Whitehall.

Thousands of people had gathered to protest Israel’s 15-month war in Gaza, a day after a ceasefire deal was agreed with Hamas, with signs saying “Stop arming Israel” and “Free Palestine”.

The crowds were initially blocked from marching up Whitehall towards Trafalgar Square by a line of police, but some protesters broke through to advance toward the London landmark.

Footage posted on X appeared to show the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and former shadow chancellor John McDonnell among the protesters passing by officers as the crowd moved towards Trafalgar Square.

The Metropolitan police said a total of 77 people were arrested.

According to the PA news agency, police blocked entrances in and out of the square to contain the protest.

The Muslim Association of Britain criticised the Met’s decision to block the march, calling it “an outrageous assault on democracy, freedom of assembly, and freedom of expression”.

Earlier, seven people were arrested, four on suspicion of public order offences, and two others on suspicion of breaching conditions for the protest, according to the Met. One of the conditions prevents those participating from entering a specific area around Portland Place.

A seventh individual was also arrested on suspicion of holding a placard suggesting support for banned organisations, the Met said.

One of those arrested was a member of the Stop the War coalition, the peace group said. It called for the release of Chris Nineham, the chief steward of the national Palestine marches.

The group said 10 police officers came to the front of the march on the pretext of discussing the march with Nineham and then jumped on him, forcing him on the ground, while protestors attempted to defend him.

Stop the War said: “This is an outrageous assault on the Palestine movement. It is an unacceptable assault on civil liberties. Chris Nineham must be released without charge. We refuse to be intimidated.”

The Met did not comment in response to the allegation.

Met commander Adam Slonecki, who led the policing operation, said: “This is the highest number of arrests we have seen, in response to the most significant escalation in criminality.

“We could not have been clearer about the conditions in place. Protesters were to remain in Whitehall with no march towards the BBC.

“Our relationship with protest organisers has to be based on trust and good faith. If they say they will act responsibly and lawfully we need to be able to know those are genuine assurances.”

Slonecki added: “I am quite confident this was a coordinated breach with the intention being to reach the BBC at Portland Place in defiance of the conditions. There is video footage of one of the organisers clearly inciting the crowd to join a march and one of the organisations involved has released a statement this evening confirming as much.

“At the same time as the group was attempting to force its way past police lines, camera crews were seen arriving in Portland Place. It is unlikely that the timing was simply a coincidence.”

At the rally, The Crown actor Khalid Abdalla said in an address: “Tomorrow phase one of the ceasefire begins. It remains to be seen if the ceasefire will hold or if the blood shed since it was announced augurs what it will become.

“But still we will have cause to celebrate whatever its shape for the respite in this genocide, for the return of the hostages, for the release of prisoners.”

The demonstrations, which began days after the 7 October attack in 2023 and have continued weekly as the war stretched on – becoming one of the biggest protest movements in recent British history – have called for the end of the conflict that has killed more than 46,000 Palestinians inside Gaza by Israeli attacks, according to health officials in the territory.

“For 15 months we have marched, we have rallied, we have protested in towns and cities across the UK with one of our central demands being that there be a ceasefire and now we stand on the brink of a ceasefire that promises to bring an end to the immediate, catastrophic killing of the Palestinian people,” said the Palestine Solidarity Campaign director, Ben Jamal.

On Friday, the Israeli government ratified a ceasefire deal to exchange dozens of hostages held by Hamas for Palestinians in Israeli jails and to pause the war for an initial six weeks. The deal will take effect on Sunday.

Last week, the Met banned the march from gathering outside the BBC’s London headquarters, owing to its proximity to a synagogue. Protesters were planning to gather outside Broadcasting House before marching to Whitehall.

The Palestinian Forum in Britain said they “categorically rejected” a Met attempt to relocate the protest to Russell Square, with threats of arrest for individuals assembling elsewhere. The organisations said after “immense public pressure” the protest was able to proceed at Whitehall as planned.

Two judges have been killed in a shooting on Saturday at the supreme court building in Tehran, Iranian state media have reported.

“This morning, a gunman infiltrated the supreme court in a planned act of assassination of two brave and experienced judges. The two judges were martyred in the act,” the judiciary’s Mizan Online website reported.

Mizan said the assailant killed himself after the “terrorist” act. The state news agency, IRNA, said one other person was wounded.

The two slain judges have been identified by Mizan as Ali Razini and Mohammad Moghisseh, both of whom handled cases “fighting crimes against national security, espionage and terrorism”.

The judiciary spokesperson Asghar Jahangir said on state television that “a person armed with a handgun entered the room” of the two judges and shot them.

“Individuals have been identified, summoned or arrested in connection with the incident,” he added, without providing further details.

The motive behind the killings was not immediately clear, but Mizan said the assailant was not involved in any cases before the supreme court.

Authorities said an investigation into the attack was under way.

President Masoud Pezeshkian expressed his condolences over the deaths, calling on the authorities to act swiftly.

He said: “I strongly urge the security and law enforcement forces to take the necessary measures as soon as possible by examining the dimensions and angles of this reprehensible act and to identify its perpetrators.”

Moghisseh, 68, was sanctioned by the US in 2019 for having “overseen countless unfair trials, during which charges went unsubstantiated and evidence was disregarded”, according to the US Treasury.

Razini, 71, held several important positions in Iran’s judiciary and was previously targeted in a 1998 assassination attempt by assailants “who planted a magnetic bomb in his vehicle”, according to Mizan.

Though attacks targeting judges are rare, Iran has seen a number of shootings targeting high-profile figures in recent years.

In October, a Shiite Muslim preacher was shot dead in the southern city of Kazerun after leading Friday prayers.

In April 2023, a powerful cleric identified as Abbas Ali Soleimani was shot dead at a bank in the northern province of Mazandaran.

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 fuel tanker exploded after flipping over in central Nigeria on Saturday, killing 70 people who had scrambled to take the fuel.

Kumar Tsukwam, the head of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) in Niger State, said a truck carrying 60,000 litres of gasoline had an accident at about 10am at the Dikko junction on the road linking the capital city, Abuja, to the northern city of Kaduna.

“Most of the victims were burnt beyond recognition,” Tsukwam said. “We are at the scene to clear things up.”

An FSRC statement said a “large crowd of people gathered to scoop the fuel [when] suddenly the tanker burst into flames, engulfing another tanker.

“So far 60 corpses recovered from scene, the victims are mostly scavengers,” it said.

In 2023, President Bola Tinubu abolished a fuel subsidy, sending prices of essentials and other goods soaring, triggering protests.

The price of gasoline has increased fivefold in 18 months, leading many to risk their lives to recover fuel during tanker truck accidents, which are common in Africa’s most populous country.

The Niger state governor, Umaru Bago, said in a statement that the explosion was “worrisome, heartbreaking and unfortunate”.

He said an undisclosed number of people also experienced various degrees of burns.

In October, more than 170 people died in a similar incident in Jigawa State, in northern Nigeria.

In 2020, the FRSC listed 1,531 fuel tanker accidents, which claimed more than 535 lives.

A fuel tanker exploded after flipping over in central Nigeria on Saturday, killing 70 people who had scrambled to take the fuel.

Kumar Tsukwam, the head of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) in Niger State, said a truck carrying 60,000 litres of gasoline had an accident at about 10am at the Dikko junction on the road linking the capital city, Abuja, to the northern city of Kaduna.

“Most of the victims were burnt beyond recognition,” Tsukwam said. “We are at the scene to clear things up.”

An FSRC statement said a “large crowd of people gathered to scoop the fuel [when] suddenly the tanker burst into flames, engulfing another tanker.

“So far 60 corpses recovered from scene, the victims are mostly scavengers,” it said.

In 2023, President Bola Tinubu abolished a fuel subsidy, sending prices of essentials and other goods soaring, triggering protests.

The price of gasoline has increased fivefold in 18 months, leading many to risk their lives to recover fuel during tanker truck accidents, which are common in Africa’s most populous country.

The Niger state governor, Umaru Bago, said in a statement that the explosion was “worrisome, heartbreaking and unfortunate”.

He said an undisclosed number of people also experienced various degrees of burns.

In October, more than 170 people died in a similar incident in Jigawa State, in northern Nigeria.

In 2020, the FRSC listed 1,531 fuel tanker accidents, which claimed more than 535 lives.

A South Korean court has extended the detention of the impeached president Yoon Suk Yeol on Sunday citing concerns he could destroy evidence linked to his martial law declaration, enraging his supporters, who attacked the court building.

Hundreds of pro-Yoon protesters smashed windows and broke down doors to enter the court after the decision was announced, chanting the name of the president, who plunged South Korea into its worst political chaos in decades with his bid to suspend civilian rule.

AFP reporters saw hundreds of police entering the building, and one officer from Seoul’s Mapo district separately told AFP it was an “unfolding” situation.

Footage showed protesters blasting fire extinguishers at officers guarding the front entrance before they swarmed inside, destroying furniture and computers.

Police, who restored order a few hours later, said they had so far arrested 46 protesters.

“We will track down till the end more of those who committed illegal acts or instigated and assisted,” the Seoul Metropolitan Police said in a statement.

There were around 40 minor injuries sustained during the chaos but no serious injuries reported, an emergency responder near the court said.

Yoon had argued that he be released from custody before a court in Seoul. The Seoul western district court said it approved the detention warrant requested by the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO).

The reason for the approval was “concern that the suspect may destroy evidence”, the court said in a statement. Under the new warrant, Yoon can be detained for up to 20 days. He is being held at the Seoul detention centre.

So far, Yoon has stonewalled efforts by the CIO to interrogate him, refusing to attend questioning. It was unclear if Yoon will cooperate with investigators during his extended detention.

His appearance at the Seoul western district court caused chaotic scenes in nearby streets, where thousands of his fervent supporters rallied for hours calling for his release.

They clashed with police, who detained about 40 protesters, including about 20 who climbed over a fence in an attempt to approach the court. At least two vehicles carrying anti-corruption investigators were damaged as they left the court after arguing for Yoon’s arrest.

Yoon has been in detention since being seized in a large law enforcement operation at his residence on Wednesday. He has been accused of orchestrating a rebellion after his declaration of martial law in December last year, which triggered South Korea’s most serious political crisis since its democratisation in the late 1980s.

Yoon’s lawyers said he spoke for about 40 minutes to the judge during the nearly five-hour closed-door hearing. His legal team and anti-corruption agencies presented opposing arguments about whether he should be held in custody. The lawyers did not share his specific comments.

Yoon was transported to the court from a detention centre in Uiwang, near Seoul, in a blue justice ministry van escorted by police and the presidential security service.

The motorcade entered the court’s basement parking space as thousands of Yoon’s supporters gathered in nearby streets despite a heavy police presence. Some protesters broke through the police lines and tapped on the windows of his van approaching the court. Yoon did not speak to reporters.

After its investigators were attacked by protesters, the anti-corruption agency asked media companies to obscure the faces of its members attending the hearing.

It had not been clear whether Yoon would attend the hearing on Saturday but he appeared to have accepted advice from his legal team to appear before the judge in person.

Seok Dong-hyeon, one of Yoon’s lawyers, said the court’s decision was “really hard to understand” but asked supporters to be calm.

“Such expressions of anger are understandable, but if they go too far and continue to be violent, they could be caught up in targeted attacks or counter-attacks by leftist forces,” he said. “We need to stay calm,” he said in a Facebook post.

Yoon’s ruling People Power party called the court’s decision a “great pity”. “There’s a question whether repercussions of detaining a sitting president were sufficiently considered,” the party said in a statement.

The major opposition Democratic party called the court’s approval on the warrant a “cornerstone for rebuilding the collapsed constitutional order”.

Nine people, including Yoon’s defence minister, police chief, and several top military commanders, have been arrested and indicted for their roles in the enforcement of martial law.

Under South Korean law, orchestrating a rebellion is punishable by life imprisonment or the death penalty.

Yoon’s lawyers have argued there is no need to detain him during the investigation, saying he does not pose a threat to flee or destroy evidence.

Investigators responded that Yoon had ignored several requests to appear for questioning, and that the presidential security service blocked an attempt to detain him on 3 January. His defiance has raised concerns about whether he would comply with criminal court proceedings if he was not under arrest.

AFP, Reuters and Associated Press contributed reporting

Ten people have been hurt, two of them seriously, after a ski lift collapsed at a resort in north-east Spain, hurling dozens of passengers into the snow below.

Although initial reports said 35 people had been injured on Saturday at the Pyrenean resort of Astún, in the Aragón region, the figures were later revised down.

By 4pm local time, the regional emergency services said 30 people had been involved in the accident, of whom 10 were taken to hospital. They said two people had been badly injured, two others had required urgent attention, and six more were being treated. Twenty others were given the all-clear at the accident site.

Miguel Ángel Clavero, the head of Aragón’s emergency services, said the accident appeared to have been caused by “a failure in the ski lift return system, which produced a breakdown in tension”.

Clavero said rescuers were still on the scene, trying to get stranded people down. “In the first instance, as people are still on the lift, Guardia Civil officers, firefighters and ski station workers are trying to get them down and to safety,” he told Aragón TV.

Clavero added that the ski station was closed and asked everyone “to leave the centre so as to leave the car park free”.

Some of those involved in the accident told reporters how they had crashed into the ground beneath them.

“Suddenly we heard a sound and we fell straight to the ground, inside the chair,” María Moreno told the public broadcaster TVE. “We bounced up and down about five times and our backs were quite sore or we were hurt, but there were people who fell out of the chairs.”

Moreno added that she thought some people must have been seriously injured because “the chair hit them directly” when it collapsed.

“It’s like a cable came loose and suddenly all the chairs started to bounce and people went flying,” a young man told TVE.

Five helicopters, 14 ambulances and a mobile medical centre were scrambled to the resort as soon as news of the accident was received.

Jorge Azcón, the regional president of Aragón, said he was travelling to the site, while Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, offered his thoughts and assistance.

“Shocked by the news of the accident at the Astún resort,” he wrote on X. “I’ve spoken to Jorge Azcón to offer the government’s full support. “We send all our love to the injured and to their families.”

Authorities ordered the shutdown of a Mexican recycling plant that processes hazardous waste exported from the US, after an investigation by the Guardian and Quinto Elemento Lab that revealed heavy metals contamination in nearby homes and schools.

The federal agency described the closure as “temporary”, and said it would conduct an inspection lasting several days that would verify the factory’s compliance with environmental regulations. Days earlier, a state government agency said it had identified problems with the plant’s emissions control equipment.

These actions follow a story published on Tuesday that traced how US steel companies ship contaminated dust left over from recycling scrap metal to the Zinc Nacional plant, where it is processed in furnaces to reclaim zinc.

The reporting team collaborated with Martín Soto Jiménez, a toxicology researcher at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Unam), who took soil and dust samples in homes and schools surrounding the plant, in a heavily populated part of the Monterrey metropolitan area.

Samples showed high levels of lead, cadmium and arsenic – including one elementary school that had 1,760 times the US action level for lead dust in its window sills.

Zinc Nacional’s own emission reports to the federal government show the company emits these same heavy metals into the air.

Environmental regulators from the federal agency in charge of environmental inspection and enforcement, known by its acronym, Profepa, arrived at the plant on Friday. The shutdown was announced on Saturday, when Profepa said in a statement that the plant did not have authorization for 15 pieces of equipment that control emissions into the atmosphere. It said its inspection was occurring “as a result of information that has been made public through a journalistic investigation”.

A team from the environmental agency of the Mexican state of Nuevo León had visited the plant on Thursday.

During the visit, officials found evidence of “deficiencies in the emission control systems” and dust from the plant in soil, said the agency in a press release. It ordered the shutdown of two furnaces “as a precautionary measure”.

Zinc Nacional did not respond to questions from the Guardian and Quinto Elemento Lab, a non-profit reporting group, about the shutdown and other reactions in Monterrey to the study findings. In a press release shared with reporters after the initial shutdown of two furnaces, the company said: “Oversight by state and federal authorities, along with various independent audits conducted by customers, suppliers, and international certifiers, demonstrate Zinc Nacional’s compliance with applicable regulations and the implementation of the international standards under which it operates.”

It said: “In the event that areas for improvement are identified in our operations, we shall make the necessary adjustments to strengthen the work safety conditions for employees, collaborators and neighboring communities.

The Guardian and Quinto Elemento Lab investigation has been featured prominently in the local and national press, generating front page stories in a major regional newspaper, El Norte, for the last four days.

The director of regional nursery schools – which included one school where Soto Jiménez found high levels of arsenic – called for a government health investigation.

Residents from the municipality of San Nicolás de los Garza, the Monterrey-area municipality where the plant is located, are organizing a signature-gathering drive for a complaint about the pollution.

“The objective is simply to stop the pollution because the lungs and health of San Nicolás residents and those in surrounding areas are not for sale,” said Roberto Chavarría, a neighbor who lives near the plant and is helping organize neighbors. He said a peaceful protest was planned for Friday, 24 January.

“We are not the garbage dump of the United States or anyone else.”

Susana de la Torre Zavala, the mother of two children who attend a school next to the Zinc Nacional plant, said the company invited parents to visit the facility for a tour and meeting on Thursday. But she said the company provided little concrete information.

“No one showed us any data; they just limited themselves to telling us, ‘It’s not true, everything is fine,’” said Torre Zavala. “We need certainty, transparency – we need extra studies.”

Authorities ordered the shutdown of a Mexican recycling plant that processes hazardous waste exported from the US, after an investigation by the Guardian and Quinto Elemento Lab that revealed heavy metals contamination in nearby homes and schools.

The federal agency described the closure as “temporary”, and said it would conduct an inspection lasting several days that would verify the factory’s compliance with environmental regulations. Days earlier, a state government agency said it had identified problems with the plant’s emissions control equipment.

These actions follow a story published on Tuesday that traced how US steel companies ship contaminated dust left over from recycling scrap metal to the Zinc Nacional plant, where it is processed in furnaces to reclaim zinc.

The reporting team collaborated with Martín Soto Jiménez, a toxicology researcher at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Unam), who took soil and dust samples in homes and schools surrounding the plant, in a heavily populated part of the Monterrey metropolitan area.

Samples showed high levels of lead, cadmium and arsenic – including one elementary school that had 1,760 times the US action level for lead dust in its window sills.

Zinc Nacional’s own emission reports to the federal government show the company emits these same heavy metals into the air.

Environmental regulators from the federal agency in charge of environmental inspection and enforcement, known by its acronym, Profepa, arrived at the plant on Friday. The shutdown was announced on Saturday, when Profepa said in a statement that the plant did not have authorization for 15 pieces of equipment that control emissions into the atmosphere. It said its inspection was occurring “as a result of information that has been made public through a journalistic investigation”.

A team from the environmental agency of the Mexican state of Nuevo León had visited the plant on Thursday.

During the visit, officials found evidence of “deficiencies in the emission control systems” and dust from the plant in soil, said the agency in a press release. It ordered the shutdown of two furnaces “as a precautionary measure”.

Zinc Nacional did not respond to questions from the Guardian and Quinto Elemento Lab, a non-profit reporting group, about the shutdown and other reactions in Monterrey to the study findings. In a press release shared with reporters after the initial shutdown of two furnaces, the company said: “Oversight by state and federal authorities, along with various independent audits conducted by customers, suppliers, and international certifiers, demonstrate Zinc Nacional’s compliance with applicable regulations and the implementation of the international standards under which it operates.”

It said: “In the event that areas for improvement are identified in our operations, we shall make the necessary adjustments to strengthen the work safety conditions for employees, collaborators and neighboring communities.

The Guardian and Quinto Elemento Lab investigation has been featured prominently in the local and national press, generating front page stories in a major regional newspaper, El Norte, for the last four days.

The director of regional nursery schools – which included one school where Soto Jiménez found high levels of arsenic – called for a government health investigation.

Residents from the municipality of San Nicolás de los Garza, the Monterrey-area municipality where the plant is located, are organizing a signature-gathering drive for a complaint about the pollution.

“The objective is simply to stop the pollution because the lungs and health of San Nicolás residents and those in surrounding areas are not for sale,” said Roberto Chavarría, a neighbor who lives near the plant and is helping organize neighbors. He said a peaceful protest was planned for Friday, 24 January.

“We are not the garbage dump of the United States or anyone else.”

Susana de la Torre Zavala, the mother of two children who attend a school next to the Zinc Nacional plant, said the company invited parents to visit the facility for a tour and meeting on Thursday. But she said the company provided little concrete information.

“No one showed us any data; they just limited themselves to telling us, ‘It’s not true, everything is fine,’” said Torre Zavala. “We need certainty, transparency – we need extra studies.”

Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s former deputy prime minister, kicked off her bid to lead Canada by boasting: “Donald Trump doesn’t like me very much” in a campaign video that quickly went viral.

For Freeland, who led Canada’s re-negotiation of the North American Free Trade agreement (Nafta) with the United States and Mexico during Trump’s first term, video of Trump disparaging her for being a tough negotiator is a selling point.

Trump’s plans to impose massive tariffs, and open musing about incorporating Canada into the United States, has stirred nationalist resentment across the political spectrum in the country, with even the Conservative leader of Ontario, Doug Ford, recently photographed wearing a “Canada Is Not For Sale” cap.

Continuing the theme, Freeland said later in the video that Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative leader she would face as Liberal party leader in a general election this year, would “bow down to Trump, and sell us out”.

Freeland, a former journalist who also led Canada’s tough trade talks with the European Union, in English and French, made her anti-Trump humblebrag the centerpiece of her case to French-speaking Canadian voters as well.

Both the English and French versions of the campaign video amplify the patriotic theme by closing with a graphic that renders the candidate’s name as “Free Land” in the red and white of the Canadian flag, with the shadow of a maple leaf over the letter A.

A Queensland man has been charged with attempted murder for allegedly setting fire to a woman in a horrific act of domestic violence in a home south of Brisbane.

After being treated by paramedics at the scene in the Logan suburb of Kingston on Saturday morning, the 34-year-old woman was rushed to the Royal Brisbane and Women’s hospital in a serious condition. Police say she sustained serious burns.

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The 36-year-old Kingston man was charged with attempted murder on Saturday night, as well as common assault and breach of domestic violence.

Police said authorities were called to the Kingston Court house at about 7.45am with reports of an “altercation” between a man and a woman, where they found the woman with burns to her body. They will allege the man had “produced a lighter and lit [her] on fire”.

The property where the woman was found was declared a crime scene, police said, with “secondary” crime scenes at Gould Adams Park on Kingston Road and the Kingston train station.

Police opposed bail and the man is expected to appear in Beenleigh magistrates court on Monday.

The Queensland premier, David Crisafulli, addressed the alleged murder attempt, telling reporters on Sunday that while the allegations may yet be contested before court, Queensland was in a state of sorrow for the young woman who remains in hospital.

“To everyone, to her family, to her neighbours, to the first responders, to every Queenslander: these are the kind of incidents that rock communities, and our thoughts and prayers are with everyone involved,” Crisafulli said.

The alleged attempted murder came as the Queensland government announced a number of measures aimed at cracking down on domestic violence, including GPS tracking of perpetrators with a history of breaching domestic violence orders.

The prevention of domestic and family violence minister, Amanda Camm, stood beside the premier at Parliament House on Sunday morning to announce that work had begun on that pledge the LNP government took to the October election, which it won on the back of a tough on crime campaign.

Camm committed to rolling out 150 GPS trackers this year before meeting its target of up to 500 ankle monitors on the highest risk offenders in the state.

“It is used to really front-load the system to ensure that there are 24/7 eyes on perpetrators so that they know that there is constant accountability to their whereabouts, to their interactions with victims and to make sure that they are following the letter of the law,” the minister said.

She said the system was modelled on a Tasmanian program and would help Queensland police who were “overwhelmed with the demand in domestic violence”.

Camm said the state’s DV connect crisis line was also “not meeting the demand”, with reports of calls going unanswered or not being followed up.

The minister said she had commissioned a report into the service with an interim report due in March, as well as an expert panel to oversee and guide domestic and family violence reforms that sought to put a “focus on perpetrators and perpetrator accountability”.

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.

Bob Dylan’s typewritten drafts for his 1965 song Mr Tambourine Man sold for more than £400,000 at auction on Saturday.

The two yellow sheets of paper contain three progressive drafts of the lyrics with annotations on the third draft of the song.

They went under the hammer in Nashville, Tennessee, with an estimated price tag of $400,000 to $600,000, eventually selling for $508,000 (£417,000).

The lyrical drafts were among 60 items that were up for sale in the dedicated auction for the singer at the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum, with 50 pieces from the personal collection of American music journalist Al Aronowitz.

In March 1964, Aronowitz awoke to find Dylan, then 22, asleep on his sofa and the lyrics to Mr Tambourine Man crumpled up in his bin.

He had spent the night writing and rewriting his new song on a typewriter at Aronowitz’s home in New Jersey before discarding the early drafts.

A 1968 oil painting created and signed by Dylan went for $260,000. The artwork, which depicts a figure in bold colours and a cubist style, was produced by the American songwriter at the beginning of his artistic endeavours after his first wife, Sara, gave him oil paints for his 27th birthday.

The executive director and co-founder of Julien’s Auctions, Martin Nolan, described it as a “fantastic auction with outstanding sales”.

Nolan added: “We’re honoured to highlight this truly unique collection with so many historic Bob Dylan items from the grandfather of rock journalism, Al Aronowitz.

“Today’s white glove auction just reinforces the extraordinary impact and everlasting love that people have for Dylan, which transcends generations.”

Among the other high value lots was a 1983 Fender Telecaster electric guitar that was owned and played by Dylan before he gave it to famed amplifier technician and musician Cesar Diaz.

The instrument surpassed its estimate of $80,000 to $120,000 to sell for $222,250.

A number of sketches by Dylan also soared past their estimated price tags, including one of a hand on a memo pad from the Plaza hotel in New York City.

It was expected to sell for $1,500 to $2,500 but was eventually sold for $88,900.

A Levi’s denim jacket hand embellished with velvet, lace and other patches worn by the singer in the 1987 musical drama film Hearts of Fire went for $25,400.

The sale also included a 1963 handbill from his first major headline performance at Town Hall in New York City, early vintage photographs and a signed harmonica.

The collection of 60 items brought in nearly $1.5m in sales, according to Julien’s Auctions.