Donald Trump has described attacks on police officers at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 as “very minor incidents” as he sought to defend his decision to pardon the insurrectionists.

The US president hinted that those who put him through “four years of hell” via criminal prosecutions should themselves be investigated, adding ominously that his predecessor Joe Biden made a mistake by not pardoning himself.

Trump was giving the first televised interview of his second term to Sean Hannity, a longtime friend and Fox News host, in the Oval Office at the White House on Wednesday.

Among the topics was Trump’s move on Monday to pardon, commute the prison sentences or dismiss the cases of all of the 1,500-plus people charged with crimes in the effort to overturn his 2020 election defeat. Hannity asked why people who were violent towards police were included.

Trump claimed that they had suffered unduly harsh prison conditions then falsely claimed that the 2020 election was stolen despite courts, officials and his own attorney general finding otherwise. “They were protesting the vote because they knew the election was rigged and they were protesting the vote and you should be allowed to protest the vote,” he said.

Often criticised as a Trump sycophant and propagandist, Hannity nevertheless objected that protesters should not be able to invade the Capitol building.

The president responded: “Most of the people were absolutely innocent. OK. But forgetting all about that, these people have served, horribly, a long time. It would be very, very cumbersome to go and look – you know how many people we’re talking about? 1,500 people.”

Vice-President JD Vance has previously stated that those who committed violence on January 6 “obviously” should not receive pardons. But media accounts suggest that Trump lost patience with the idea of going through the cases individually and wanted maximum impact on his first day in office. The Axios website reported: “Trump just said: ‘F–k it: Release ’em all,’” an adviser familiar with the discussions said.”

Those pardoned include more than 250 people who were convicted of assault charges, some having attacked police with makeshift weapons such as flagpoles, a hockey stick and a crutch. Many of the attacks were captured on surveillance or body-camera footage that showed rioters engaging in hand-to-hand combat with police as officers desperately fought to beat back the angry crowd.

Yet in his interview with Hannity, Trump claimed: “Some of those people with the police – true – but they were very minor incidents, OK, you know, they get built up by that couple of fake guys that are on CNN all the time. They were very minor incidents and it was time.”

He then pivoted without providing context to assert: “You have murderers in Philadelphia. You have murderers in Los Angeles that don’t even get any time. They don’t even collect them and they know they’re there to be collected. And then they go on television and act holier than thou about this one or that one. You had 1,500 people that suffered. That’s a lot of people.”

Trump’s sweeping pardons have provided an early loyalty test for the Republican party. While a handful of senators including former leader Mitch McConnell have condemned the move, most have backed the president or performed verbal contortions. Two major police unions said they were “deeply discouraged” by the pardons and commutations.

On Wednesday night the president went on: “This was a political hoax. And you know what? Those people – and I’m not saying in every single case – but there was a lot of patriotism with those people.”

Trump then boasted that he provided a voiceover for Justice for All, a version of the Star-Spangled Banner sung by a group of January 6 defendants over a prison phone line. “It was the number one selling song, number one on Billboard, number one on everything for so long. People get it. They wanted to see those people.”

Hannity tried to move on to questions about the economy but Trump was not done. He criticised Biden for issuing, in his final hours as president, a flurry of pre-emptive pardons to Gen Mark Milley, Dr Anthony Fauci and members of Congress who served on the committee investigating the January 6 attack.

Hannity asked if Congress or the attorney general should investigate. Trump, who has long vowed retribution against his political enemies, replied: “You know, I was always against that with presidents and Hillary Clinton. I could have had Hillary Clinton – a big number done on her.”

The host interjected: “Have you changed your mind?”

Trump, who faced multiple criminal cases and was convicted in one of them, said: “Well, I went through four years of hell by this scum that we had to deal with. I went through four years of hell. I spent millions of dollars in legal fees. And I won. But I did it the hard way. It’s really hard to say that they shouldn’t have to go through it all.”

Biden had received bad advice, Trump added darkly. “Joe Biden has very bad advisers. Somebody advised Joe Biden to give pardons to everybody but him … Joe Biden had very bad advice.”

Trump also used the prime-time interview to discuss his barrage of executive orders, dismiss security concerns over the Chinese-owned app TikTok (“Is it that important for China to be spying on young people, on young kids watching crazy videos?”) and discuss the possibility of cutting off federal funds to so-called “sanctuary cities” that shield undocumented immigrants from federal detention requests.

The president also floated the idea of ending federal disaster relief and leaving states to fend for themselves during emergencies. With Los Angeles scorched by wildfires and the eastern US still recovering from two devastating hurricanes, Trump falsely accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) of turning its back on victims.

“Fema has not done their job for the last four years. You know, I had Fema working really well. We had hurricanes in Florida, we had Alabama tornadoes. But unless you have certain types of leadership, it gets in the way. And Fema is going to be a whole big discussion very shortly, because I’d rather see the states take care of their own problems.”

Trump is set to make his first presidential trip on Friday to view storm damage in North Carolina after last year’s Hurricane Helene, and then on to Los Angeles to view the response to ongoing wildfires.

The international criminal court’s chief prosecutor said on Thursday he was seeking arrest warrants against senior Taliban leaders in Afghanistan over the persecution of women, a crime against humanity.

Karim Khan said there were reasonable grounds to suspect that the Taliban’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, and the chief justice, Abdul Hakim Haqqani, “bear criminal responsibility for the crime against humanity of persecution on gender grounds”.

Khan said that Afghan women and girls, as well as the LGBTQ community, were facing “an unprecedented, unconscionable and ongoing persecution by the Taliban”.

He added: “Our action signals that the status quo for women and girls in Afghanistan is not acceptable.”

ICC judges will now consider Khan’s application before deciding whether to issue an arrest warrant – a process that could take weeks or even months.

The court, based in The Hague, was set up to rule on the world’s worst crimes, such as war crimes and crimes against humanity. It has no police force of its own and relies on its 125 member states to carry out its arrest warrants – with mixed results. In theory this means that anyone subject to an ICC arrest warrant cannot travel to a member state for fear of being detained.

Khan said that he would soon be seeking additional applications for other Taliban officials and noted that other crimes against humanity were being committed as well as persecution.

“Perceived resistance or opposition to the Taliban was, and is, brutally repressed through the commission of crimes including murder, imprisonment, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, enforced disappearance, and other inhumane acts,” he said.

Human Rights Watch said that the prosecutor’s actions should put the Taliban’s exclusion of women and girls from public life back on the international community agenda. Liz Evenson, the organisation’s international justice director, said: “Three years after the Taliban retook power, their systematic violations of women and girls’ rights … have accelerated with complete impunity.”

After sweeping back to power in August 2021, the Taliban authorities pledged a softer rule than their first stint in power from 1996 to 2001. But they quickly imposed restrictions on women and girls that the United Nations has labelled “gender apartheid”.

Edicts in line with their interpretation of Islamic law handed down by Akhundzada, who rules by decree from the movement’s birthplace in southern Kandahar, have squeezed women and girls from public life.

The Taliban government barred girls from secondary school and women from university in the first 18 months after they ousted the US-backed government, making Afghanistan the only country in the world to impose such bans.

The authorities imposed restrictions on women working for non-governmental groups and other employment, with thousands of women losing government jobs – or being paid to stay at home.

Beauty salons have been closed and women blocked from visiting public parks, gyms and baths as well as travelling long distances without a male chaperone. A “vice and virtue” law announced last summer ordered women not to sing or recite poetry in public and for their voices and bodies to be “concealed” outside the home.

The few remaining female TV presenters wear tight headscarves and face masks in line with a 2022 diktat by Akhundzada that women cover up fully in public, including their faces, ideally with a traditional burqa. Most recently, women were suspended from attending health institutes offering courses in midwifery and nursing, where many had flocked after the university ban.

Rights groups and the international community have condemned the restrictions, which remain a key sticking point in the Taliban authorities’ pursuit of official recognition, which it has not received from any state.

The Taliban authorities have consistently dismissed international criticism of their policies, saying all citizens’ rights are provided for under Islamic law.

Best picture

Anora
The Brutalist
A Complete Unknown
Conclave
Dune: Part Two
Emilia Pérez
I’m Still Here
Nickel Boys
The Substance
Wicked

Best actor

Adrien Brody, The Brutalist
Timothée Chalamet, A Complete Unknown
Colman Domingo, Sing Sing
Ralph Fiennes, Conclave
Sebastian Stan, The Apprentice

Best actress

Cynthia Erivo, Wicked
Karla Sofía Gascón, Emilia Pérez
Mikey Madison, Anora
Demi Moore, The Substance
Fernanda Torres, I’m Still Here

Best supporting actor

Yura Borisov, Anora
Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain
Edward Norton, A Complete Unknown
Guy Pearce, The Brutalist
Jeremy Strong, The Apprentice

Best supporting actress

Monica Barbaro, A Complete Unknown
Ariana Grande, Wicked
Felicity Jones, The Brutalist
Isabella Rossellini, Conclave
Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez

Best directing

Sean Baker, Anora
Brady Corbet, The Brutalist
James Mangold, A Complete Unknown
Jacques Audiard, Emilia Pérez
Coralie Fargeat, The Substance

Best adapted screenplay

A Complete Unknown
Conclave
Emilia Pérez
Nickel Boys
Sing Sing

Best original screenplay

Anora
The Brutalist
A Real Pain
September 5
The Substance

Best international feature

I’m Still Here
The Girl With the Needle
Emilia Pérez
The Seed of a Sacred Fig
Flow

Best animated feature

Flow
Inside Out 2
Memoir of a Snail
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
The Wild Robot

Best documentary feature

Black Box Diaries
No Other Land
Porcelain War
Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat
Sugarcane

Best editing

Anora
The Brutalist
Conclave
Emilia Pérez
Wicked

Best cinematography

The Brutalist
Dune: Part Two
Emilia Pérez
Maria
Nosferatu

Best production design

The Brutalist
Conclave
Dune: Part Two
Nosferatu
Wicked

Best costume design

A Complete Unknown
Conclave
Gladiator II
Nosferatu
Wicked

Best original score

The Brutalist
Conclave
Emilia Pérez
Wicked
The Wild Robot

Best original song

El Mal, Emilia Pérez
The Journey, The Six Triple Eight
Like a Bird, Sing Sing
Mi Camino, Emilia Pérez
Never Too Late, Elton John: Never Too Late

Best live action short

A Lien
Anuja
I’m Not a Robot
The Last Ranger
The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent

Best animated short

Beautiful Men
In the Shadow of the Cypress
Magic Candies
Wander to Wonder
Yuck!

Best documentary short

Death By Numbers
I Am Ready, Warden
Incident
Instruments of a Beating Heart
The Only Girl in the Orchestra

Best makeup and hairstyling

A Different Man
Emilia Pérez
Nosferatu
The Substance
Wicked

Best sound

A Complete Unknown
Dune: Part Two
Emilia Pérez
Wicked
The Wild Robot

Best visual effects

Alien: Romulus
Better Man
Dune: Part Two
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
Wicked

Lukhanyo Calata’s first memory of his father was the funeral. His mother sobbing, the earth beneath his feet shaking from the number of people gathered at the graveside, and the fear he felt aged three as the red box holding his father, Fort, was lowered into the ground.

Fort Calata was one of four men stopped at a roadblock in June 1985 by security officers. The Cradock Four were beaten, strangled with telephone wire, stabbed and shot to death in one of the most notorious killings of South Africa’s apartheid era.

In 1999, the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) denied six security officers amnesty for their role in the killings. They were never prosecuted and have all since died.

Now, as part of a group of 25 families and survivors of apartheid-era deaths and violence, Lukhanyo Calata is suing South Africa’s government for failing to bring his father’s alleged killers to court.

“Losing my father has impacted every fibre of my being,” Calata said. “We were ultimately betrayed by the people that we trusted to lead us into a new society.”

Calata’s case, filed at the high court in Pretoria this week, demands an inquiry to establish why there were no prosecutions. It also asks for “constitutional damages” of 167m rand (£7.3m) to fund further investigations, litigation, memorials and public education.

A spokesperson for South Africa’s justice minister, who was named as a respondent in the case, said: “Our legal section is reviewing the documents and will respond accordingly, adhering to due process. We will collaborate closely with the National Prosecuting Authority and the presidency on this matter.”

The justice ministry reopened an inquest into the Cradock Four killings last year, but proceedings were delayed until June.

“The TRC cases were deliberately suppressed following a plan or arrangement hatched at the highest levels of government,” Calata alleged in court papers.

In 2021 a supreme court of appeal judgment found that “from 2003 to 2017, investigations into the TRC cases were stopped as a result of an executive decision” and that “this was indeed interference with the NPA”. The court added that there was an “absence of detail as to why it occurred”.

Thabo Mbeki, who was South Africa’s president from 1999 to 2008, said in a statement in March 2024: “During the years I was in government, we never interfered in the work of the NPA. Instead of propagating falsehoods, the NPA must investigate and prosecute the cases referred to it by the TRC.”

Nombuyiselo Mhlauli was reluctant to speak about the new legal case. She preferred to talk about her husband, Sicelo Mhlauli, who was killed alongside Fort Calata, Matthew Goniwe and Sparrow Mkonto, and the impact his loss had had on her and their two children.

“We were so close to each other,” she said. “I depended on him so much.”

“He was such a friendly person, who liked to joke a lot, full of laughter all the time,” said Mhlauli, who like her husband was a teacher. “Wherever you find him he is laughing and the other people around him are laughing a lot.”

After her husband’s killing, Mhlauli was harassed by security forces, who would regularly kick down her door at night, until she fled in 1989 to Cape Town, where she still lives.

So, when Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990, before going on to be South Africa’s first black president, Mhlauli was excited.

But the fact that the Cradock Four case has not been prosecuted while Mandela’s African National Congress party has been in government “left us so hurt and bitter”, she said. “I wish the government would come forward and tell us: why did they delay the process?”

Lukhanyo Calata’s first memory of his father was the funeral. His mother sobbing, the earth beneath his feet shaking from the number of people gathered at the graveside, and the fear he felt aged three as the red box holding his father, Fort, was lowered into the ground.

Fort Calata was one of four men stopped at a roadblock in June 1985 by security officers. The Cradock Four were beaten, strangled with telephone wire, stabbed and shot to death in one of the most notorious killings of South Africa’s apartheid era.

In 1999, the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) denied six security officers amnesty for their role in the killings. They were never prosecuted and have all since died.

Now, as part of a group of 25 families and survivors of apartheid-era deaths and violence, Lukhanyo Calata is suing South Africa’s government for failing to bring his father’s alleged killers to court.

“Losing my father has impacted every fibre of my being,” Calata said. “We were ultimately betrayed by the people that we trusted to lead us into a new society.”

Calata’s case, filed at the high court in Pretoria this week, demands an inquiry to establish why there were no prosecutions. It also asks for “constitutional damages” of 167m rand (£7.3m) to fund further investigations, litigation, memorials and public education.

A spokesperson for South Africa’s justice minister, who was named as a respondent in the case, said: “Our legal section is reviewing the documents and will respond accordingly, adhering to due process. We will collaborate closely with the National Prosecuting Authority and the presidency on this matter.”

The justice ministry reopened an inquest into the Cradock Four killings last year, but proceedings were delayed until June.

“The TRC cases were deliberately suppressed following a plan or arrangement hatched at the highest levels of government,” Calata alleged in court papers.

In 2021 a supreme court of appeal judgment found that “from 2003 to 2017, investigations into the TRC cases were stopped as a result of an executive decision” and that “this was indeed interference with the NPA”. The court added that there was an “absence of detail as to why it occurred”.

Thabo Mbeki, who was South Africa’s president from 1999 to 2008, said in a statement in March 2024: “During the years I was in government, we never interfered in the work of the NPA. Instead of propagating falsehoods, the NPA must investigate and prosecute the cases referred to it by the TRC.”

Nombuyiselo Mhlauli was reluctant to speak about the new legal case. She preferred to talk about her husband, Sicelo Mhlauli, who was killed alongside Fort Calata, Matthew Goniwe and Sparrow Mkonto, and the impact his loss had had on her and their two children.

“We were so close to each other,” she said. “I depended on him so much.”

“He was such a friendly person, who liked to joke a lot, full of laughter all the time,” said Mhlauli, who like her husband was a teacher. “Wherever you find him he is laughing and the other people around him are laughing a lot.”

After her husband’s killing, Mhlauli was harassed by security forces, who would regularly kick down her door at night, until she fled in 1989 to Cape Town, where she still lives.

So, when Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990, before going on to be South Africa’s first black president, Mhlauli was excited.

But the fact that the Cradock Four case has not been prosecuted while Mandela’s African National Congress party has been in government “left us so hurt and bitter”, she said. “I wish the government would come forward and tell us: why did they delay the process?”

Republicans are reportedly prepared to cut Medicaid funding to pay for Donald Trump’s promised crackdown on immigration and to fund tax cuts that would mostly benefit the wealthy.

The GOP in the House and Senate have floated a series of ideas – many of which would target lower-income Americans – to cover the cost of extending tax cuts passed by Trump in 2017, the New York Times reported.

Among the proposals is a plan to reduce access to Medicaid, the government scheme which provides health insurance to low-income Americans, in a move which would cause 600,000 people to lose access to healthcare.

Trump has touted the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act as a key achievement of his first term. The legislation, which reduced the top corporate income tax rate from 35% to 21%, is set to expire at the end of 2025, and the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated extending it would add $4.6tn to the deficit.

On the campaign trail Trump repeatedly promised to make the 2017 tax cuts permanent, but with the 2025 deadline looming, Republicans are scrambling to find a way to fund that pledge – along with the money required for Trump’s desired crackdown on immigration.

Along with the Medicaid cut, which would introduce work requirements that would effectively strip 600,000 people of their healthcare coverage, Republicans are considering ending Medicaid for non-US citizens, and repealing Biden-era tax credits which are designed to reduce health costs, the New York Times reported.

A 50-page document being circulated among congressional Republicans also proposes taxing income from scholarships and fellowships, rolling back climate change efforts passed under the Biden administration, and raising taxes on people who can use a free gym in the workplace.

Another proposal outlines changes to the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, which would reduce coverage for some lower-income Americans, Newsweek reported.

The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center reported in July that households making about $450,000 or more would receive nearly half of the benefits of the extended tax cuts. The median household income in the US is $80,610, and 95% of American households make less than $400,000 a year.

Biden had promised to extend the tax cuts only for families making $400,000 or less a year.

Pope Francis has warned global leaders in Davos that artificial intelligence raises “critical concerns” about humanity’s future and it could exacerbate a growing “crisis of truth”.

Francis said governments and businesses must exercise “due diligence and vigilance” to navigate the complexities of AI.

In a written address at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Switzerland on Thursday, the pope said AI could fuel the “growing crisis of truth in the public forum”, as its output was almost indistinguishable from those of humans.

“This technology is designed to learn and make certain choices autonomously, adapting to new situations and providing answers not foreseen by its programmers, thus raising fundamental questions about ethical responsibility, human safety, and the broader implications of these developments for society,” he said in a statement read to Davos delegates by Cardinal Peter Turkson, a Vatican official.

The pope has first-hand experience of artificial intelligence’s ability to distort the truth – he is a popular subject in AI-generated deepfake images, including one of him embracing the singer Madonna and a second in a Balenciaga puffer jacket.

“Unlike many other human inventions, AI is trained on the results of human creativity, which enables it to generate new artefacts with a skill level and speed that often rival or surpasses human capabilities, raising critical concerns about its impact on humanity’s role in the world,” the pope said.

AI has been a hot topic at Davos this year, with many shops along the ski resort’s promenade taken over by technology firms promoting their products.

Expectations for AI are sky-high among some delegates. Marc Benioff, the head of Salesforce, said he believed the current generation of chief executives would be the last ones to only manage humans.

“From this point forward, we will be managing not only human workers, but also digital workers. And that is just incredible,” he told business leaders.

AI can also radically improve healthcare and save lives, according to Ruth Porat, the chief investment officer of Alphabet, Google’s parent company.

She said in Davos that Google’s AlphaFold AI programme predicted the structures of all 200m proteins on the planet, and then open sourced the work – a move expected to accelerate drug discovery, as 2.5 million scientists have now accessed the information.

Last year, Britain’s Demis Hassabis, the co-founder of the AI startup DeepMind, which was bought by Google in 2014, was awarded the Nobel prize for chemistry for this work.

Arguing the case for AI, Porat said she had had cancer twice, and was “very fortunate” to have had early diagnosis. “I spoke to my oncologist about it, and he said the only way to democratize healthcare is with AI, because it means anyone, anywhere will be able to have the same high-quality early detection that I had,” she added.

The Irish parliament has elected Micheál Martin as prime minister, 24 hours after chaotic scenes in the Dáil caused the cancellation of his formal appointment.

​Martin’s return to the role of taoiseach comes after a group of regional independent TDs (members of parliament), who are propping up his government, agreed a compromise to delay talks to resolve the dispute that derailed what should have been a set-piece ceremony on Wednesday.

With calm replacing the previous day’s rancour on opposition benches, Martin pledged to “remain open to constructive ideas” as leader of the centre-right coalition government.

He said: “As I look at Ireland today, it is clear that there can be a degree of cynicism towards politics and too often we dismiss the motivation of others, especially those we disagree with. I reject this. I believe in the good faith of those who seek to serve their communities in elective office – and I believe that politics remains a force for good, a force for positive change.”

Parliamentarians voted 95 to 76 in support of the nomination of the Fianna Fáil leader as taoiseach.

High on the agenda for the new government is the chronic housing crisis that has dominated local politics for the past few years, along with health, education, infrastructure and the economy.

On the international front, Ireland faces an urgent need to launch a diplomatic offensive in Washington to head off any threat from the Trump administration to repatriate jobs and taxes paid by US multinationals with European headquarters in Ireland, including Apple, Microsoft, Meta, X and Pfizer.

The new cabinet will be confirmed later on Thursday but few surprises are expected in the coalition, which is made up from Martin’s centre-right Fianna Fáil party and Fine Gael, led by the outgoing taoiseach, Simon Harris.

In a repeat of the novel rotating taoiseach deal Harris’s predecessor Leo Varadkar had struck with Fianna Fáil, Martin will remain in the role for three years, with Harris taking over in November 2027. Martin last served as taoiseach from 2020 to 2022.

Harris will become the deputy prime minister, with a strengthened foreign affairs ministerial role to include international trade – a role already being nicknamed “minister for Trump”.

Paschal Donohoe, a veteran of the government and the president of the EU’s Eurogroup of finance ministers, is widely expected to return to the role of finance minister.

Helen McEntee, another TD well known on the international stage having burnished her credentials as Europe minister during the Brexit crisis, is expected to become the education minister.

Just four ministerial roles are expected to go to women after November’s election resulted in the lowest proportion of female parliamentarians in western Europe, with a 75:25 ratio of men to women.

The way was paved for the new government after opposition leaders hammered out a deal with Harris and Martin to avert a second day of rebellion in the Dáil.

In a historic show of unity, Sinn Féin, Labour, Social Democrats and others had derailed the formal election of Martin on Wednesday amid rancorous protests over an attempt by independent TDs propping up the government to sit on opposition benches.

It meant Martin’s big day was left in tatters, with a ceremony involving the president, Michael D Higgins, having to be abandoned.

In angry clashes, Martin accused the opposition parties of a “subversion of the Irish constitution” while the enraged Sinn Féin leader, Mary Lou McDonald, accused Martin and Harris of a “cynical ruse” to take power.

Independents, who have propped up the government but who were not earmarked for ministerial roles, protested that they had a legitimate right to sit among the opposition in order to represent their constituents.

A woman who refuses to have sex with her husband should not be considered “at fault” by courts in the event of divorce, Europe’s highest human rights court has said, condemning France.

The European court of human rights (ECHR) sided on Thursday with a 69-year-old French woman whose husband had obtained a divorce on the grounds that she was the only person at fault because she had stopped having sexual relations with him.

The ECHR held, unanimously, that there had been a violation of the woman’s right to respect for private and family life as part of the European convention on human rights.

It ruled against France, saying a woman who refuses to have sex with her husband should not be considered “at fault” by courts in the event of divorce.

The court identified the woman only by the initials HW, saying she lived in Le Chesnay in the western suburbs of Paris. The woman did not contest the divorce, which she had also sought, but rather complained about the grounds on which it had been granted by a French court.

The Strasbourg-based ECHR said any concept of marital duties needed to take into account “consent” as the basis for sexual relations.

“The court concluded that the very existence of such a marital obligation ran counter to sexual freedom, [and] the right to bodily autonomy,” a court statement said. “The applicant’s husband could have petitioned for divorce, submitting the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage as the principal ground, and not, as he had done, as an alternative ground.”

The ECHR decided domestic courts had not struck a fair balance between the competing interests at stake.

The woman and her husband, JC, married in 1984 and had four children, including a disabled daughter who needed the constant presence of a parent, a role her mother had taken on.

Relations between husband and wife deteriorated when their first child was born. The woman began experiencing health problems in 1992.

In 2002, her husband began abusing her physically and verbally, the court said. In 2004, she stopped having sex with him and in 2012 petitioned for divorce.

In 2019, an appeals court in Versailles dismissed the woman’s complaints and sided with her husband, while the court of cassation dismissed her attempt to appeal without giving specific reasons.

She took the case to the ECHR in 2021.

Her case has been supported by two women’s rights groups in France: the Fondation des Femmes (Women’s Foundation) and Collectif féministe contre le viol (Feminist Collective against Rape).

In a joint statement when the case was brought in 2021, the two groups said: “Marriage is not and must not be sexual servitude.”

They said that French judges continued to impose their own “archaic vision of marriage” even though there was no longer an obligation of “marital duty” under French law, and no law obliged spouses to have sexual relations.

The groups said it was crucial that French judges did not impose on women – directly or indirectly – an obligation to have sexual relations. They said if judges let an idea continue in society that there was some form of “marital duty”, this could provide a means of intimidation for sexual attackers or rapists inside relationships when in fact marital rape is a crime in France.

Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

Kemi Badenoch has told shadow ministers she wants a period of silence from Liz Truss, as the Conservative leader seeks to distance herself from her predecessor’s economic legacy.

Badenoch told the shadow cabinet last week that she wished Truss would stop intervening in British politics after the former prime minister wrote a “cease and desist” letter to Keir Starmer demanding he stop saying she crashed the economy.

With the Tory leader hoping to draw a line under the party’s recent political failures, several sources said she had expressed exasperation about Truss’s letter, which one shadow cabinet minister described as “absurd”.

The person said: “Kemi said it would be best if Liz would shut up for a while.” Referring to Truss’s letter to Starmer, they added: “It was absurd. I think she’s gone nuts.”

A second shadow cabinet minister added: “The thrust of it was Liz should stop making unhelpful interventions … that it would be much more helpful if Liz wasn’t as vocal.”

Badenoch made her comments during a meeting of the shadow cabinet after last Wednesday’s session of prime minister’s questions, according to several people who attended the meeting.

With UK borrowing rates surging and economists predicting the government could soon breach its fiscal rules, the Tory leader had tried to use PMQs to highlight the government’s economic difficulties.

Starmer responded by brandishing the letter sent by Truss’s lawyers just days earlier. The prime minister told the Commons: “She was complaining that saying she had crashed the economy was damaging her reputation. It was actually crashing the economy that damaged her reputation.”

One source close to Badenoch said: “There was agreement around the table [at the meeting] on the need to show Kemi was different to what had come before and a discussion held on how best to show we were moving on from the past.”

A spokesperson for Badenoch said she had not used the phrase “shut up”, but did not deny the main message of her comments. A spokesperson for Truss has been contacted for comment.

Badenoch has promised to use this year to tackle the Tories’ legacy from their time in power and to rebuild trust with voters. The day after the shadow cabinet meeting, the Conservative leader gave a speech in which she said the Tories made mistakes on immigration, exiting the EU without a growth plan, and pursuing net zero.

Some in the shadow cabinet are pushing her to be more explicit in her rejection of Truss’s economic agenda, in what they are saying would be a “Krushchev moment”, referring to the former Russian leader’s denunciation of Stalinism in 1956.

They are urging Badenoch to reject the economic philosophy behind Truss’s “mini-budget”, which contained such large unfunded tax cuts that the markets rapidly lost faith in the UK and sent the country’s borrowing rates soaring.

So far Badenoch has steered clear of criticising Truss, but tensions between the two were revealed in this week’s edition of the Spectator. The magazine reported that Truss told one of its journalists in Washington that she believed Badenoch to be a “[Michael] Gove plant”, referring to the former cabinet minister and now the magazine’s editor.

Some senior Tories believe Badenoch should continue to avoid talking about Truss’s economic policy, not least because their party is now more trusted than Labour on the economy. The most recent poll by YouGov shows 22% of voters say they would most trust the Conservatives to handle the economy, while only 16% say Labour. The survey found 27% did not know.

One shadow cabinet minister said: “There is no need to speak at length about Truss and the mini budget. We already tackled that during Rishi Sunak’s time, and it might deflect attention from the government’s economic policies.”