The international criminal court (ICC) has condemned Donald Trump for imposing sanctions on its staff, which it said were intended to harm vital work to investigate the world’s gravest atrocities, including crimes against humanity and genocide.

The US president signed an executive order on Thursday authorising aggressive economic sanctions against the ICC and travel bans on its staff, accusing the body of “illegitimate and baseless actions” targeting the US and its ally Israel.

Trump’s order cited an ICC-issued arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged war crimes relating to the Gaza war as a reason for the decision. Netanyahu visited Washington this week and praised Trump as Israel’s “greatest friend”.

Responding on Friday, the ICC called on its member states to stand up against sanctions, describing Washington’s move as an attempt to “harm its independent and impartial judicial work”.

It said: “The court stands firmly by its personnel and pledges to continue providing justice and hope to millions of innocent victims of atrocities across the world,” and it urged its 125 member states “to stand united” for justice and human rights.

World leaders and rights groups have rushed to defend the court. The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, criticised the sanctions, which he said would “jeopardise an institution that is supposed to ensure that the dictators of this world cannot simply persecute people and start wars”.

The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said the ICC gave “a voice to victims worldwide” and it “must be able to freely pursue the fight against global impunity”.

In London, a spokesperson for the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, said Britain supported the independence of the ICC and had no plans to place sanctions on its officials.

In Geneva, a United Nations rights body said Trump’s decision should be rescinded. “We deeply regret the individual sanctions announced yesterday against court personnel, and call for this measure to be reversed,” said Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the UN human rights office.

In his order, Trump said the ICC had “abused its power” by issuing the warrants for Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant, which he claimed “set a dangerous precedent” that endangered US citizens and its military personnel. Netanyahu strongly applauded Trump’s move, calling it bold.

The ICC was established in 2002 to prosecute serious crimes committed by individuals when member states are unwilling or unable to do so themselves. While the US and Israel are not parties to the statute, their citizens can fall under its jurisdiction. Israel has other allies such as the UK, Germany and France who would be obliged to arrest Netanyahu if he were to travel to those countries.

The warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant were approved by a three-judge panel elected by state parties, and the prosecutor has also investigated Palestinian militants including Hamas.

An arrest warrant has been issued for the Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif, whose whereabouts are unknown. In 2021, the ICC ruled that it had jurisdiction in Palestine and could investigate crimes there, despite Israeli objections.

It was unclear if the Trump administration would announce the names of specific individuals targeted by the sanctions. ICC officials have prepared for sanctions to affect senior figures at the court including its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan.

Amnesty International’s secretary general, Agnès Callamard, said the order “sends the message that Israel is above the law and the universal principles of international justice”.

She said on Thursday: “Today’s executive order is vindictive. It is aggressive. It is a brutal step that seeks to undermine and destroy what the international community has painstakingly constructed over decades, if not centuries: global rules that are applicable to everyone and aim to deliver justice for all.”

Other activists said imposing sanctions on court officials would have a chilling effect and run counter to US interests in other conflict zones where the court is investigating.

Charlie Hogle, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s national security project, said: “Victims of human rights abuses around the world turn to the international criminal court when they have nowhere else to go, and President Trump’s executive order will make it harder for them to find justice.

“The order also raises serious first amendment concerns because it puts people in the United States at risk of harsh penalties for helping the court identify and investigate atrocities committed anywhere, by anyone.”

After ICC judges issued the arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant in November, the court braced itself for retaliatory moves by the incoming Trump administration. Officials at the court, which is headquartered in The Hague, fear the sanctions could pose an existential threat to the judicial body.

Several ICC sources told the Guardian last month that sanctions against senior court figures would be difficult but manageable, but institution-wide sanctions would pose an threat as they would block the court’s access to services on which it depends to function.

In 2020, under a separate but similar executive order, Trump imposed travel bans and asset freezes on the ICC’s former prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, who is Gambian, and one of her top officials.

The measures were launched in response to decisions made by Bensouda in war crimes investigations in Afghanistan and the occupied Palestinian territories. At the time, Bensouda was conducting a preliminary inquiry into allegations of crimes committed by Israel’s armed forces and Hamas.

In 2021, Bensouda upgraded the case to a formal criminal investigation. Khan inherited the inquiry and later accelerated it after the Hamas-led 7 October attacks and Israel’s ensuing destruction of Gaza.

In the week that Donald Trump called for what has been described as an “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians from Gaza to rebuild it as a US “riviera” – an idea as unworkable as it is unhinged – the issues of how, if and when Gaza will be reconstructed have returned to the fore.

The reality is that, for all the promises to rehabilitate the coastal strip after previous conflicts, reconstruction – when it has happened – has at best been very partial and always subordinated to Israel’s demands.

One of the most striking cases in point was the aftermath of the Gaza war in 2014, when a complex system was put in place to monitor the distribution of materials for rebuilding in the strip.

After Israel’s objection that Hamas would redirect concrete, steel and other resources to tunnel building, a UN oversight process known as the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism was put in place.

Vetted projects and contractors would present themselves at monitored warehouses. Papers and IDs checked, they could take away what they had been allocated.

Hugely overcomplicated, under-resourced and ultimately set up for failure, the GRM never functioned properly. Instead it allowed a hidden market to quickly emerge, sometimes at the very doors of the secure warehouses where deals would be done for bags of cement.

All of which explains some of the enormous complexities facing the rebuilding of Gaza. It is not simply a physical problem, huge though that undertaking is. It is a political problem as well.

The experience of past reconstruction in Gaza, and Israel’s veto on the process, as academics have noted, has been used as a vehicle for sustaining domination and ultimately conflict.

A ban on building materials entering the Gaza Strip has been a feature of Israel’s blockade since it was put in place in 2007. Hundreds of items, from drilling equipment and epoxy to concrete moulds, asphalt and wiring, have been designated as dual-use items.

This time the task, and Palestinian needs, will be almost immeasurably larger.

In the first instance there is the question of rubble. According to an estimate from UN-Habitat and the UN Environment Programme, there were 50m tons of rubble and debris in Gaza in December, 17 times more than all the debris generated by other hostilities in the territory since 2008.

The rubble, if collected in one place, would cover five square kilometres. UNEP estimates that disposing of it will take up to 20 years and cost $909m (£730m).

After previous conflicts, Palestinians in Gaza relied heavily on recycling concrete rubble, processing it in sites in open areas, a bone of contention because Israel has said Hamas has taken advantage of recycled concrete for military purposes.

How long reconstruction may take is another issue. While some experts have suggested several decades, the reality is that it entirely depends on political conditions.

After the second world war, German cities – with the benefit of the Marshall plan – were reconstructed in about a decade, although some rebuilding continued until the 1990s.

With a quarter of all structures in Gaza destroyed or severely damaged – including schools and hospitals – and 66% of buildings sustaining at least some damage, the first issue will be to survey what is salvageable and identify the potentially 1 million people in need of long-term shelter and support.

Setting aside Trump’s calls to permanently displace Palestinians from Gaza, one risk in reconstruction – experienced in London’s East End after the blitz – is the social damage that can be done in moving communities with close social networks.

One successful UN innovation in Jordan’s refugee camps during the Syrian civil war was the deployment of mobile shelters, which residents were allowed to reposition to preserve communities and social structures.

In many ways, however, housing may not be the most serious issue. Gaza’s water and sanitation system – on the brink of failure even before the onset of the war – has collapsed. It is estimated that up to 70% of water, sanitation and hygiene facilities in north Gaza have sustained damage.

In Gaza City, damage to those same facilities exceeds 90% including to the desalination plants in a coastal strip where residents rely on electric pumps to supply roof tanks and where the power system is also badly damaged.

Beyond the physical infrastructure there is other, less obvious, damage. More than half of Gaza’s critical agricultural land has been degraded by conflict and 95% of cattle have been slaughtered along with nearly half the sheep.

That suggests something like a Marshall plan will be required, although almost certainly without the involvement of the Trump administration, which has indicated that it will not pay and has wound up USAid, its development agency.

All of which raises multiple questions including how, with Hamas still a presence in Gaza, a mechanism can be found to allow large-scale rebuilding while holding off Israel and the Trump White House. Only that will bring the nightmare of Palestinians in Gaza to an end.

In the week that Donald Trump called for what has been described as an “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians from Gaza to rebuild it as a US “riviera” – an idea as unworkable as it is unhinged – the issues of how, if and when Gaza will be reconstructed have returned to the fore.

The reality is that, for all the promises to rehabilitate the coastal strip after previous conflicts, reconstruction – when it has happened – has at best been very partial and always subordinated to Israel’s demands.

One of the most striking cases in point was the aftermath of the Gaza war in 2014, when a complex system was put in place to monitor the distribution of materials for rebuilding in the strip.

After Israel’s objection that Hamas would redirect concrete, steel and other resources to tunnel building, a UN oversight process known as the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism was put in place.

Vetted projects and contractors would present themselves at monitored warehouses. Papers and IDs checked, they could take away what they had been allocated.

Hugely overcomplicated, under-resourced and ultimately set up for failure, the GRM never functioned properly. Instead it allowed a hidden market to quickly emerge, sometimes at the very doors of the secure warehouses where deals would be done for bags of cement.

All of which explains some of the enormous complexities facing the rebuilding of Gaza. It is not simply a physical problem, huge though that undertaking is. It is a political problem as well.

The experience of past reconstruction in Gaza, and Israel’s veto on the process, as academics have noted, has been used as a vehicle for sustaining domination and ultimately conflict.

A ban on building materials entering the Gaza Strip has been a feature of Israel’s blockade since it was put in place in 2007. Hundreds of items, from drilling equipment and epoxy to concrete moulds, asphalt and wiring, have been designated as dual-use items.

This time the task, and Palestinian needs, will be almost immeasurably larger.

In the first instance there is the question of rubble. According to an estimate from UN-Habitat and the UN Environment Programme, there were 50m tons of rubble and debris in Gaza in December, 17 times more than all the debris generated by other hostilities in the territory since 2008.

The rubble, if collected in one place, would cover five square kilometres. UNEP estimates that disposing of it will take up to 20 years and cost $909m (£730m).

After previous conflicts, Palestinians in Gaza relied heavily on recycling concrete rubble, processing it in sites in open areas, a bone of contention because Israel has said Hamas has taken advantage of recycled concrete for military purposes.

How long reconstruction may take is another issue. While some experts have suggested several decades, the reality is that it entirely depends on political conditions.

After the second world war, German cities – with the benefit of the Marshall plan – were reconstructed in about a decade, although some rebuilding continued until the 1990s.

With a quarter of all structures in Gaza destroyed or severely damaged – including schools and hospitals – and 66% of buildings sustaining at least some damage, the first issue will be to survey what is salvageable and identify the potentially 1 million people in need of long-term shelter and support.

Setting aside Trump’s calls to permanently displace Palestinians from Gaza, one risk in reconstruction – experienced in London’s East End after the blitz – is the social damage that can be done in moving communities with close social networks.

One successful UN innovation in Jordan’s refugee camps during the Syrian civil war was the deployment of mobile shelters, which residents were allowed to reposition to preserve communities and social structures.

In many ways, however, housing may not be the most serious issue. Gaza’s water and sanitation system – on the brink of failure even before the onset of the war – has collapsed. It is estimated that up to 70% of water, sanitation and hygiene facilities in north Gaza have sustained damage.

In Gaza City, damage to those same facilities exceeds 90% including to the desalination plants in a coastal strip where residents rely on electric pumps to supply roof tanks and where the power system is also badly damaged.

Beyond the physical infrastructure there is other, less obvious, damage. More than half of Gaza’s critical agricultural land has been degraded by conflict and 95% of cattle have been slaughtered along with nearly half the sheep.

That suggests something like a Marshall plan will be required, although almost certainly without the involvement of the Trump administration, which has indicated that it will not pay and has wound up USAid, its development agency.

All of which raises multiple questions including how, with Hamas still a presence in Gaza, a mechanism can be found to allow large-scale rebuilding while holding off Israel and the Trump White House. Only that will bring the nightmare of Palestinians in Gaza to an end.

More than a dozen people have been caught making the hazardous crossing into Canada, renewing focus on the closely watched – and seasonally perilous – border with the United States.

Police in Alberta this week intercepted two groups attempting to cross into Canada illegally, including one which included five children who were ill-prepared for the cold which can plunge as low as -30C (-22F) at this time of year.

Assistant Commissioner Lisa Moreland told reporters in Edmonton that nine people from Venezuela were found trudging through the snow and dragging suitcases. The group was bound for Alberta and made the journey in “incredibly cold” weather. A second group, composed of six adults from Jordan, Sudan, Chad and Mauritius, was found in a forest near Manitoba’s border with the US after an RCMP plane using thermal cameras detected them. Neither group had clothing suitable for the frigid conditions.

Moreland said the people might have succumbed to a “heartbreaking situation” similar to the freezing death of the Patel family, the Indian couple who died alongside their toddler and 11-year-old near the border in 2022. “There’s the cross-border piece, but also the humanity piece,” she said. “[There have been] incidents where people did not make it.”

Underscoring the deadly realities of the northern border in the winter, a man extradited from Canada was arraigned in New York state on human smuggling charges on Thursday over the death of a 33-year-old pregnant woman from Mexico. Searchers found footprints in the snow leading to a New York river, where Ana Vasquez-Flores drowned in December 2023.

Ever since he was elected, Donald Trump has turned his focus to Canada’s border with the United States, alleging it is the source of vast amounts of fentanyl and illegal migration – neither of which is borne out by evidence.

US Customs and Border Protection says 23,721 people were apprehended last fiscal year crossing its northern border, up from the 2,238 caught two years prior. But border agents made 1.5 million apprehensions at the border with Mexico last year.

Still, to appease the president, Canada’s federal government has promised Trump C$1.3bn (US$900m) in spending along the border, including two Black Hawk helicopters and drones. Provincial premiers have also committed new resources. Earlier this year, Alberta’s premier, Danielle Smith, said her province would create a new sheriff patrol unit, with 50 armed sheriffs, 10 cold weather surveillance drones and several drug detection dogs at a cost of C$29m.

Moreland said police were “doing our part to secure the border” but none of the apprehensions are linked to new border efforts.

Trump’s victory last year – and a promise to enact the country’s largest mass deportation – initially prompted concern among political leaders in Canada that the country could experience a surge of immigrants fleeing north and crossing unpatrolled areas of the 5,500-mile border – as happened during Trump’s first term.

“What we saw in the days and weeks after Trump won was fearmongering,” said Abdulla Daoud of the Refugee Centre in Montreal. “And none of that – the idea that hundreds of thousands would come to the border – has ever come to fruition.”

During Trump’s first term in office, tens of thousands of Haitians fled to Canada after the president ended temporary protected status for the group.

In January 2017, Trudeau posted on social media: “To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada.”

In 2022, nearly 40,000 people entered Canada at Roxham Road, an informal crossing in the forests of upstate New York that has become a political flashpoint in recent years. The following year, Canada overhauled an agreement with the United States on the border, in effect shutting down Roxham Road as a point of entry.

The closure shut off irregular crossings but asylum claims at ports of entry have since increased. “The data shows that many of them – 83% – are successful in court. The majority of people coming to claim asylum are actually in danger and are seeking safety from persecution,” said Daoud.

Even in the face of crackdowns and the threat of deportation, no notable uptick of irregular crossings into Canada has been recorded.

Daoud said the wave of people that fled for Canada in 2017 were those using the United States as a transition because there was no way for them to claim asylum.

“But now Trump is targeting individuals in the United States who have been there for decades. Some were even born there. It’s a totally different profile of person now.”

Under the current rule, a person can make an asylum claim if they remain undetected in Canada for 14 days, incentivizing risky and possibly deadly crossings.

“The current rules, and the landscape, are very much a deterrent to most people,” said Daoud. “But we’ll still see people crossing because the reality is, that it’s not a deterrent for those with no options left.”

Donald Trump’s plans to make dramatic cuts to the United States’ international aid budget could be a “big strategic mistake” that allows China to step in and further its global influence, the UK foreign secretary has said.

David Lammy cautioned that Britain’s own experience of merging the Department for International Development into the Foreign Office, announced by Boris Johnson in 2020, was a serious blow to Britain’s “soft power” in developing countries and beyond.

Thousands of USAid employees have already been laid off and programmes shut down worldwide, including in Ukraine, after the new administration imposed a sweeping freeze on foreign aid, ahead of consolidating it into the state department, a move decried by critics as a huge foreign policy blunder.

Aid agencies have warned of a profound impact on the global development sector with a risk of escalating disease, famine and conflict, as the US accounts for $4 out of every $10 spent globally on humanitarian aid. Security experts have said China could capitalise on the move.

In an interview with the Guardian on a trip to Kyiv, Lammy said: “What I can say to American friends is it’s widely accepted that the decision by the UK with very little preparation to close down DfiD, to suspend funding in the short term or give many global partners little heads up, was a big strategic mistake.

“We have spent years unravelling that strategic mistake. Development remains a very important soft power tool. And in the absence of development … I would be very worried that China and others step into that gap.

“We were hugely critical of the way that the last government handled the decision. So I would caution US friends to look closely at what went wrong in the United Kingdom as they navigate this decision.”

Ukraine is reeling from the shock decision to pause all US foreign aid programmes immediately, with projects in the country from military veteran rehabilitation programmes to independent media and anti-corruption initiatives effectively stopped overnight.

“We will do what we can to ameliorate those decisions but clearly the United Kingdom hasn’t got the resources available to the United States,” Lammy said. He added it was “not yet clear” to him whether Trump was planning to withdraw entirely from the development arena, or to absorb some of it back into the state department.

It comes as Trump signed an executive order to authorise aggressive economic sanctions against the international criminal court (ICC), accusing the body of “illegitimate and baseless actions” targeting the US and Israel, after it issued arrest warrants for Israeli ministers for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

After meeting president Zelenskyy and senior Ukrainian officials in Kyiv, Lammy said there would be no imminent end to fighting despite the US administration promising to broker a swift end to the conflict, with talks beginning at the Munich security conference next week.

“I am not sure we are weeks away from peace talks. And I say that because our assessment, which I’m quite sure the US shares, is that Putin shows absolutely no appetite for negotiation and to bring this war to an end,” he told the Guardian.

“We are still very much in the depths of winter. The truth is the young men and women that make up the Ukrainian force are fighting for their country’s future on the ground, and that will go on for a number of months …

“The Ukrainians are pretty clear there can be no ceasefire before negotiations. So I don’t anticipate a ceasefire in this war anytime soon. I’m very clear that Putin at the moment shows no desire to negotiate. And therefore, sadly, I think this war of attrition will go on for some months yet.”

Keir Starmer, who has said the UK will “play a full part” in any future security guarantees, has not ruled out sending British troops into Ukraine to act as peacekeepers in the event of a ceasefire with Russia.

But the foreign secretary said that discussions with European and G7 allies over what type of guarantees might be necessary would “run for some months yet”, adding it was “premature” to anticipate what role the UK would play.

“In navigating what those security guarantees are, they are always bespoke to the theatre that you were engaged in … it will have to be a set of guarantees that really work.”

He pointed to an international monitoring mission along Ukraine’s 1,200km border with Russia that ended in 2022 after repeated breaches by Russian forces. “That cannot happen again.”

Zelenskyy has called on European allies to urgently step up defence spending to boost their own security during this dangerous geopolitical moment, while the Trump administration has demanded Nato members spend 5% of GDP on defence.

“As foreign secretary, I’m really clear that we have to increase defence spending,” Lammy said. “It’s important that we play our role and that means that we must increase defence spending.”

However, he refused to guarantee that Labour would hit its own 2.5% target this parliament, saying only that the government would set out a pathway “in the next few months”, before the June spending review, and that he was aware that defence spending had to be weighed against domestic priorities.

After promising in opposition to rebuild the UK as a reliable development partner, the Labour government announced fresh cuts to international aid in the autumn budget. It has also warned that the economic conditions required to return aid spending to 0.7% of GDP, up from 0.5%, were unlikely to be met before the next election.

Donald Trump’s administration is reportedly planning to keep just more than 600 essential workers at USAid, according to a notice sent to employees of the US foreign aid agency on Thursday night.

The notice, shared with Reuters by an administration official on Friday, reportedly stated that 611 essential workers would be retained at USAid, which had more than 10,000 employees globally.

Earlier, it was reported that the administration intended to retain fewer than 300 staff members at USAid.

The USAid staff reductions are set to take effect at midnight on Friday, as indicated on the agency’s website. But, a lawsuit filed on Thursday by the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) seeks to prevent the administration from dismantling USAid, which was established as an independent agency by a law passed by Congress in 1998.

The unions claim that these actions are “unconstitutional and illegal” and have created a “global humanitarian crisis”. The lawsuit contends that the dissolution of USAid exceeds Trumps’s authority as president under the US constitution.

The plaintiffs are seeking both a temporary and a permanent court order to restore the agency’s funding, reopen its offices, and prevent further actions to dissolve the agency.

According to a statement on the agency’s website, beginning on Friday 7 February at 11.59pm ET, “all USAID direct hire personnel will be placed on administrative leave globally, with the exception of designated personnel responsible for mission-critical functions, core leadership and specially designated programs”.

Essential personnel who are expected to continue working were to be notified by Thursday, it added.

For USAid personnel posted outside the US, it stated that the agency, in coordination with missions and the department of state, was “preparing a plan, in accordance with all applicable requirements and laws, under which the agency would arrange and pay for return travel to the US within 30 days”.

“The agency will consider case-by-case exceptions and return travel extensions based on personal or family hardship, mobility or safety concerns, or other reasons,” it added.

On Friday morning, Trump continued to blast the agency on social media, stating: “USAID IS DRIVING THE RADICAL LEFT CRAZY, AND THERE IS NOTHING THEY CAN DO ABOUT IT BECAUSE THE WAY IN WHICH THE MONEY HAS BEEN SPENT, SO MUCH OF IT FRAUDULENTLY, IS TOTALLY UNEXPLAINABLE.”

He added: “THE CORRUPTION IS AT LEVELS RARELY SEEN BEFORE. CLOSE IT DOWN!”

As of 2023, the Congressional Research Service reports that USAid, which distributes humanitarian aid globally, employs more than 10,000 people worldwide. Approximately two-thirds of its workforce is stationed abroad.

That year, the agency managed more than $40bn in funding, delivering aid to 130 countries. Additionally, in 2024, USAid provided 42% of all humanitarian aid tracked by the United Nations.

Trump’s extensive cutbacks to the agency have upended and disrupted the global aid system. The cuts are one of several initiatives part of Trump’s “America first” policy his administration is implementing – spearheaded by the billionaire Elon Musk and his so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) – which aims to significantly reduce the number of federal employees and cut federal spending.

Earlier in February, the Trump administration removed two top security officials at USAid after they tried to stop members of Musk’s Doge team from accessing sensitive data and restricted areas of the building, sources told the Guardian.

On Monday, Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, declared that he would be the acting administrator of the agency after employees found themselves locked out of the agency’s headquarters in Washington DC. Meanwhile, the White House confirmed plans to merge USAid into the state department.

The FBI has complied with a US justice department demand for a list of names of agents who worked on investigations related to the 6 January 2021 insurrection, ending a weeklong standoff and further raising fears among bureau employees of retaliation from Donald Trump’s second presidential administration.

The acting FBI director, Brian Driscoll, said in an email reported by CNN that he had warned the department of the consequences of not keeping the names private.

“I want to be clear that as of now we do not have information indicating the Department of Justice intends to disseminate these lists publicly, and they are fully aware of the risks we believe are inherent in doing so,” he wrote.

“We will let you know immediately if we learn the department’s intentions regarding these lists changes.”

The FBI on Tuesday handed over particulars, excluding names, of 5,000 to 6,000 agents who worked on various cases related to the January 6 attack and Trump’s illegal efforts to stay in power after losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden.

The data, submitted to at least partially comply with an order from the acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, last month demanding information, included employee numbers, job titles and job roles.

Two groups of unnamed agents filed a lawsuit against the justice department the same day seeking to block it from collecting and disseminating personal details they alleged would breach privacy protections and lead to retaliation by Trump and his allies after he won the presidency back in November.

They noted that the president had previously personally ordered the firing of more than a dozen prosecutors who worked on now collapsed criminal cases against him – and expressed their belief they were likely to be terminated “in the very near future”.

The lawsuit seeks a restraining order against the justice department from publicly releasing the names, which they say would amount to doxing. The case will continue in Washington DC on Friday when the district court judge Jia Cobb will determine whether to extend a temporary order.

Bove, in an email on Wednesday, said the purpose of requesting the information was not for retaliation, but to ensure proper procedures and practices were followed during the course of the investigations.

“Let me be clear: No FBI employee who simply followed orders and carried out their duties in an ethical manner with respect to January 6 investigations is at risk of termination or other penalties,” he wrote.

“The only individuals who should be concerned about the process initiated by my January 31, 2025, memo are those who acted with corrupt or partisan intent, who blatantly defied orders from department leadership, or who exercised discretion in weaponizing the FBI.”

He also accused FBI leadership of “insubordination” in refusing to identify “the core team in Washington DC” that handled the prosecutions of Trump and his associates.

Driscoll, in his email, acknowledged to agents he had “concerns for the safety of our personnel, and the risks posed to you and your families should these lists become public”.

The Guardian reported this week that Driscoll has refused to endorse any effort to start mass purges at the FBI, according to people familiar with the matter. But his own position might be under scrutiny, given that he and his deputy, Robert Kissane, both worked on January 6-related cases.

The lawsuit also revealed details of a questionnaire sent to FBI agents by the justice department seeking knowledge of their roles and ranks, and any specific responsibilities they had.

It included questions about whether they had arrested suspects, helped with evidence collection, submitted or reviewed grand jury subpoenas, interviewed witnesses, led a search warrant, or testified at trial, among other actions.

Sweden’s government has announced plans to strengthen its gun laws, including by restricting access to semi-automatic weapons, after the country’s worst mass shooting.

On Tuesday, a gunman killed 10 people at an education centre in Örebro, west of Stockholm. Police have not said what type of weapon he used but they have said he had a licence to own four weapons – three of which were found beside him.

“The horrific act of violence in Örebro raises several key questions about gun legislation,” the centre-right coalition government, which relies on the support of the far-right Sweden Democrats, said. As well as tightening legislation, it said it wanted to improve the way that people considered “medically unsuitable” for weapons possession were reported.

“We have to ensure that only the right people have guns in Sweden,” Ulf Kristersson, Sweden’s prime minister, said during a visit to Latvia.

Police have not yet named the victims or the perpetrator, who also died, but they have said they include “multiple nationalities, different genders and different ages”. The Guardian understands that the victims include a Syrian man, an Eritrean woman and an Iranian woman. Police are investigating whether the shooting was racially motivated.

Swedish hunters, of whom there are hundreds of thousands, are able to apply for licences for semi-automatic weapons. In August 2023, the environmental protection agency lifted a ban on military-style models, meaning guns such as the AR-15 were permitted for hunting.

The government said on Friday it wanted to reimpose restrictions that existed before 2023 and develop a strategy to seize military-style weapons. “The AR-15 is an example of a weapon that is compatible with large magazines and can cause a lot of damage in a short time,” it said.

The government said a recent report found that several of the requirements that should be taken into account when assessing a person’s suitability for a weapons permit were not clearly stated in weapons regulations, and that they should be set out in law. These include age, knowledge, skills, some medical factors and how law-abiding a person is.

It also plans to add provisions on doctors’ reporting obligations in relation to weapons and the police’s ability to revoke permits.

The main opposition party, the Social Democrats, said it welcomed the government’s announcement, but called for all weapons licences to be reviewed. It also said there should be a review of how registers between authorities were cross-checked.

The decision has attracted public criticism from several high-profile Sweden Democrats.

The Syrian embassy in Stockholm has said its citizens were among the dead.

The suspect, who apparently killed himself, has been named in media reports as Rickard Andersson, 35, a former student of the school who lived locally. He is understood to have attended maths classes at the school a few years ago and had been unemployed for a decade.

Among the victims was Salim Iskef, 28, who phoned his fiancee, Kareen Elia, 24, from the school and told her he had been shot. “He called me and said: ‘I’ve been shot, they shot us.’ He said he loves me and that’s the last thing I heard,” she said in an interview.

Iskef, who fled the war in Syria 10 years ago, was studying care, and was soon to sit his exams, while working in elderly care. Members of their church said there was standing room only at a memorial service for Iskef on Thursday night.

Fr Jacob Kasselia, a priest at St Maria Örebro, the Syrian Orthodox church attended by Iskef, said the community was reeling. “We have our doors open for everybody. You can see that everybody is affected. A dark cloud has come over us all. But despite that we say that we must look for the light,” he said.

Kasselia said he knew of two others who were killed. One of them, he said, was a woman from Eritrea, who looked after her four children alone, and the other was a woman aged between 45 and 50 from Iran.

The number of non-Swedish victims would affect Örebro and the whole country, said Kasselia, who went to the remembrance service attended by the prime minister and the king and queen on Wednesday. “It is dark over us all.”

The Bosnian Islamic Community in Örebro said the organisation had been advised to increase security since the shootings and had hired security guards to watch the mosque.

Elia Xincher, 20, a student and member of a Syrian Orthodox church young people’s association, said many members of the community went to Campus Risbergska to improve their grades so they could go to university or improve their employment prospects.

Some of his friends were forced to hide in a classroom during the attack. “I saw one of them yesterday and still to this day she is shaking,” he said. “You cannot forget about it for your whole life.”

Sudan’s brutal civil war appears to be approaching a decisive phase as the country’s military reported sweeping gains in the symbolic battle for the capital.

As a ruinous conflict, often characterised by bloody stalemate, nears its two-year anniversary, the Sudanese armed forces (SAF) declared a string of rapid advances across the country against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Most notable were developments in the capital, Khartoum, where military forces are closing in on the RSF-held Republican Palace.

To the south, separate SAF units made advances alongside the Blue Nile, heading towards a strategic entry point to Khartoum at such speed that it prompted speculation the RSF might withdraw from the city.

Analysts say an RSF retreat would constitute a profound recalibration of the conflict. Khartoum has largely been in the control of the RSF since the opening salvoes of the war in April 2023.

Battlefield updates indicate a shift in momentum, with one army source confirming its troops were “close to reaching the centre of Khartoum”.

Babikir Elamin, the head of mission at the Sudanese embassy in London, said he expected the SAF to recapture the entire capital in a matter of days.

He said: “There are just pockets [of RSF] in Khartoum, some in an area we call the eastern Nile. It will be a matter of days before Khartoum is cleared of RSF.”

In nearby Omdurman, Sudan’s second largest city, home to about 2.4 million people, clashes have escalated including an incident last weekend in which the RSF killed at least 54 civilians in an attack on a market.

Elamin said: “Omdurman is almost free of RSF and Khartoum North is free of RSF.”

The war between the army and RSF has been calamitous for Africa’s third largest country, killing tens of thousands of people, forcing 12 million to leave their homes and pushing regions into famine. In Khartoum alone, at least 3.6 million residents have fled the violence.

The battlefield developments come days after the Sudanese military broke an RSF siege of its headquarters in Khartoum, allowing the army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan to visit for the first time since the war began.

That in turn followed the SAF recently recapturing the strategically vital city of Wad Madani, the capital of Sudan’s breadbasket, about 110 miles (180km) south of Khartoum.

The advances potentially set up the prospect of Darfur, the sprawling region of western Sudan, providing the backdrop for the final battles of the war. Intelligence indicates that many of RSF fighters have already retreated to the western Darfur region, where the paramilitary group hails from.

Except for the North Darfur capital, El Fasher, which is under sustained attack and siege by the RSF, the group controls the region.

Last week, teams from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Darfur and Khartoum said they were coping with “mass influxes of war-wounded patients”, confirmation of the escalating violence in both areas.

Experts say the dire humanitarian situation in Sudan will be amplified by Donald Trump’s intention to close the US’s lead international aid agency, USAid.

Sudan’s brutal civil war appears to be approaching a decisive phase as the country’s military reported sweeping gains in the symbolic battle for the capital.

As a ruinous conflict, often characterised by bloody stalemate, nears its two-year anniversary, the Sudanese armed forces (SAF) declared a string of rapid advances across the country against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Most notable were developments in the capital, Khartoum, where military forces are closing in on the RSF-held Republican Palace.

To the south, separate SAF units made advances alongside the Blue Nile, heading towards a strategic entry point to Khartoum at such speed that it prompted speculation the RSF might withdraw from the city.

Analysts say an RSF retreat would constitute a profound recalibration of the conflict. Khartoum has largely been in the control of the RSF since the opening salvoes of the war in April 2023.

Battlefield updates indicate a shift in momentum, with one army source confirming its troops were “close to reaching the centre of Khartoum”.

Babikir Elamin, the head of mission at the Sudanese embassy in London, said he expected the SAF to recapture the entire capital in a matter of days.

He said: “There are just pockets [of RSF] in Khartoum, some in an area we call the eastern Nile. It will be a matter of days before Khartoum is cleared of RSF.”

In nearby Omdurman, Sudan’s second largest city, home to about 2.4 million people, clashes have escalated including an incident last weekend in which the RSF killed at least 54 civilians in an attack on a market.

Elamin said: “Omdurman is almost free of RSF and Khartoum North is free of RSF.”

The war between the army and RSF has been calamitous for Africa’s third largest country, killing tens of thousands of people, forcing 12 million to leave their homes and pushing regions into famine. In Khartoum alone, at least 3.6 million residents have fled the violence.

The battlefield developments come days after the Sudanese military broke an RSF siege of its headquarters in Khartoum, allowing the army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan to visit for the first time since the war began.

That in turn followed the SAF recently recapturing the strategically vital city of Wad Madani, the capital of Sudan’s breadbasket, about 110 miles (180km) south of Khartoum.

The advances potentially set up the prospect of Darfur, the sprawling region of western Sudan, providing the backdrop for the final battles of the war. Intelligence indicates that many of RSF fighters have already retreated to the western Darfur region, where the paramilitary group hails from.

Except for the North Darfur capital, El Fasher, which is under sustained attack and siege by the RSF, the group controls the region.

Last week, teams from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Darfur and Khartoum said they were coping with “mass influxes of war-wounded patients”, confirmation of the escalating violence in both areas.

Experts say the dire humanitarian situation in Sudan will be amplified by Donald Trump’s intention to close the US’s lead international aid agency, USAid.

North Korean troops sent to fight alongside Russia in its war against Ukraine have not been seen in battle for several weeks, raising speculation that they have been withdrawn after suffering heavy losses, according to South Korea’s spy agency.

The National Intelligence Service in Seoul this week confirmed media reports that North Korean troops had been pulled from the frontline around the middle of January.

North Korea began sending an estimated 11,000 troops to the Russian Kursk region in late 2024, soon after the North’s ruler, Kim Jong-un, and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, agreed a mutual defence pact designed to strengthen their alliance against what they called a US-led “western hegemony”.

Their involvement has come at a heavy price. Intelligence officials in South Korea said about 300 North Koreans had been killed and about 2,700 wounded. In January the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, posted a clip showing two captured North Korean soldiers, one of whom said his commanders had told him he was being sent on a “training exercise”.

The North’s soldiers, who had not seen combat before being deployed, were said to have been unprepared for the harsh realities of warfare in unfamiliar terrain and particularly vulnerable to Ukrainian drones.

Intelligence officials in the South claimed notes had been found on dead North Korean soldiers indicating that the regime expected them to kill themselves rather than be taken prisoner.

The arrival of North Korean troops triggered fears that the war could take a dangerous turn for Ukraine, amid claims by military officials in South Korea that the regime in Pyongyang was preparing to send even more troops.

In return for sending personnel, weapons and ammunition, the North is hoping to gain access to sophisticated Russian satellite technology and earn foreign currency to fund its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.

The South’s intelligence service said the large number of casualties was a factor in the apparent decision to withdraw North Korean soldiers from Kursk, where Ukrainian forces launched a surprise offensive in August 2024.

Seth Jones of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington estimated this week that as many as half of the North Korean troops sent to Ukraine had been killed or injured in Russia’s “war of attrition”.

“The casualty rates were significant,” Jones said during a podcast appearance, according to the Yonhap news agency. “By most accounts we were able to take a look at somewhere between a third and probably on the real high end, maybe 50% casualties among the North Korean forces.

“Again, [it’s] hard to know exactly what reality is … with as many as 1,000 killed. Those are pretty staggering casualties for a force of 11,000 [to] 12,000.”

North Korea has not publicly acknowledged its role in the war, but in October Putin did not deny that the North’s forces had arrived in Russia. North Korean vice-foreign minister Kim Jong-gyu said any such deployment would be in line with international law.

Azerbaijan is escalating its rare standoff with the Kremlin as the fallout from the downing of an Azerbaijani passenger jet continues, highlighting Russia’s diminishing influence across the former Soviet Union.

Thirty-eight people were killed when an Azerbaijan Airlines plane crashed on 25 December near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan after rerouting across the Caspian Sea from southern Russia.

After the incident, Azerbaijan’s authoritarian president, Ilham Aliyev, accused Russia of accidentally shooting down the plane with its air defence and criticised Moscow for trying to “hush up” the issue for days, which he said caused “surprise, regret and rightful indignation” in Baku. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, soon issued a rare apology for the “tragic incident”, but stopped short of admitting Russia was responsible.

In the weeks since, Moscow has struggled to defuse tensions with the oil-rich nation on its southern border.

On Wednesday, the APA news agency, which has ties to the Azerbaijani government, reported that Baku was preparing to appeal to “an international court” over Russia’s alleged downing of the plane.

“Facts and evidence are being collected, and preparations are under way to appeal to an international court,” APA wrote in an article laced with scathing accusations of Moscow’s attempts “to evade responsibility”.

The identity of those who gave the order to fire and those who opened fire is known to the Azerbaijani side … The Russian side intends to create a ‘Malaysia Boeing-2’ situation,” the article continued, referencing Russia’s efforts to deny responsibility for the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, which investigators concluded was shot down over eastern Ukraine by pro-Russian militias.

APA added that unless Moscow openly admitted guilt and took responsibility, Baku would take further steps.

The article, which observers believe could have been published only with approval from local authorities in tightly controlled Azerbaijan, came a day after a report by Kazakh officials that said the plane had sustained external damage and was riddled with holes in its fuselage.

The report was cautiously worded and did not say what had caused the damage, including to the plane’s stabilisers, hydraulics and trim systems.

Western experts have previously said the aircraft was probably shot at from Russia.

Commenting on the Kazakh report, the Kremlin said it was too early to draw conclusions.

Moscow’s continued silence has frustrated officials in Azerbaijan. “We would have expected Russia to publicly take responsibility for shooting down the plane and compensate the victims,” said a source in the Azerbaijani foreign policy establishment who asked for anonymity so he could speak freely.

“Instead, Russia just ignores the crash, hoping it would go away. It is condescending, they are looking down on us,” the source added.

On Thursday, tensions further spilled out in the open when Azerbaijan ordered Moscow to shut down the Russian House cultural centre in Baku. The venue is operated by Rossotrudnichestvo, a Russian federal agency widely seen as a vehicle for Russian soft power and often suspected of doubling as a front for espionage and covert operations.

Simultaneously, Azerbaijani state media reported that Baku had sent a rare shipment of non-military aid to support Ukraine.

Moscow’s spat with Baku comes at a time when Russia is starting to lose its hold on its former backyard. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has heightened fears of Russian aggression in some countries and forced even its allies to reconsider Moscow’s role as a stable partner.

Weakened and preoccupied with its war in Ukraine, Russia is also increasingly seen as an unreliable ally and security guarantor.

Azerbaijan’s longtime rival, Armenia, publicly broke with the Kremlin after Russian peacekeeping forces failed to prevent Azerbaijan from sending its troops in 2023 to seize control of Nagorno-Karabakh, a small, ethnic-Armenian enclave inside Azerbaijan.

Armenia became the first country to leave the Russia-led military alliance, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), turning to the west and Iran for support. Last week, the Armenian prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, even signalled his intention to pursue EU membership.

In neighbouring Georgia, the third Caucasus country, tens of thousands of people have been taking to the streets for months over the government’s perceived closeness to Moscow.

For a long time, Azerbaijan appeared to defy the trend, with Aliyev and Putin growing closer, united by their authoritarian and illiberal outlook. However, Moscow’s response to the plane crash “seriously strained relations”, said the source within Azerbaijan’s foreign policy establishment.

At the same time, Azerbaijan’s assertive rhetoric signals that, buoyed by its 2023 victory over Armenia, Baku is increasingly willing to challenge Moscow, the once-dominant regional power.

Azerbaijan’s confidence is also fuelled by its economic returns from the west’s rejection of Russian energy, as the EU has turned to Azerbaijan to help reduce its reliance on Moscow’s fossil fuels.

Nevertheless, Azerbaijan and Russia remain deeply intertwined economically and politically, and observers warn against declaring a definitive split.

Azerbaijan has strengthened its economic ties with Russia in recent years, with Moscow relying increasingly on Azerbaijan as a crucial transit hub. Located on the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan serves as a vital transit hub for Moscow, facilitating the shipment of goods to and from Iran and Persian Gulf ports as Russia seeks new markets and ways to bypass western sanctions.

Highlighting their shared interests, some in Moscow believe that an earnest Russian apology could defuse the tensions.

“Azerbaijan is not entirely satisfied with the response of the Russian authorities to the plane crash. The fact is, it is absolutely clear that the plane was shot down by Russian air defences – by mistake, of course – but still shot down,” said Sergei Markov, a Russian political analyst close to the Kremlin. “If Russia apologises, Azerbaijan will gladly put the issue to rest,” he added.

Others are not so sure. “It is evident that Baku will continue to look for reasons to escalate tensions with Russia,” wrote Mikhail Zvinchuk, a Russian military analyst with links to the defence ministry. “The crash of the Azal plane has merely served as a pretext to reinforce previously hidden grievances.”

The UK government has demanded that Apple creates a backdoor in its encrypted cloud service, in a confrontation that challenges the US tech firm’s avowed stance on protecting user privacy.

The Washington Post reported on Friday that the Home Office had issued a “technical capability notice” under the Investigatory Powers Act (IPA), which requires companies to assist law enforcement in providing evidence.

The demand, issued last month, relates to Apple’s Advanced Data Protection (ADP) service, which heavily encrypts personal data uploaded and stored remotely in Apple’s cloud servers, according to the Post, which said this was a “blanket” request that applied to any Apple user worldwide. The ADP service uses end-to-end encryption, a form of security that means only the account holder can decrypt the files and no one else can – including Apple.

Apple declined to comment. However, in a submission to parliament last year it flagged its concerns about the IPA, saying it provided the government with “authority to issue secret orders requiring providers to break encryption by inserting backdoors into their software products”.

Apple touts privacy as one of its “core values” and describes it as a “fundamental human right”.

The Apple document refers to the ADP feature, claiming that “reporters and technical experts across the globe” welcomed it as an “invaluable protection” for private data.

The submission also indicates that Apple would refuse to cooperate with a request, saying the company would “never build a backdoor” and would rather withdraw “critical safety features” from the UK market.

However, the submission also points out that the IPA allows the UK government to impose requirements on companies based in other countries that apply to users globally.

Alan Woodward, a professor of cybersecurity at Surrey University, said the UK government had “lit the blue touch paper on a truly enormous fight in the never-ending saga of the encryption debate”.

He added: “I don’t see how this is to be resolved, as Apple has made such a big point of privacy for users. If they accede to this technical notice their reputation will be in tatters. They’re bound to challenge it.”

End-to-end encryption has become a battleground between successive UK governments and tech companies, with ministers arguing that the technology prevents law enforcement agencies from tackling criminals, including child abusers.

Companies are also barred from revealing whether they have received a technology capability notice under the IPA. The Washington Post reported that by the time Apple made its submission in March last year the US-based company had been informed that a notice might be served on it. The newspaper said the Biden administration had been tracking the matter since the UK government told Apple it might demand access, and Apple had said it would refuse.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “We do not comment on operational matters, including, for example, confirming or denying the existence of any such notices.”

The submission related to amendments to the IPA passed last year under Rishi Sunak’s government and included giving ministers power to clear in advance any product changes that could alter the UK government’s ability to access users’ data.

One expert warned that the multinational nature of the order could lead to a clash with the EU, which has an agreement with the UK allowing the free flow of personal data between the EU and UK – such as a company in Europe using a datacentre in the UK. The agreement comes up for review this year.

“This may provide a backdoor for access to European citizen data which could go against our ability to retain the rights to share personal data without restriction between the UK and Europe,” said Ross McKenzie, a data protection partner at the UK law firm Addleshaw Goddard.