Donald Trump’s proposed “land grabs” mean the US is no longer perceived as “an anchor of stability, but rather a risk to be hedged against”, the organisers of the Munich Security Conference have said in their pre-summit report.

The report, which takes as its theme the shift from a US-led, unipolar post-cold war era towards a multipolar world in which no single ideological outlook dominates, will form the backdrop to this year’s conference.

Since his inauguration, the US president has mooted acquiring land for the US in Greenland and Panama, and suggested Canada could be a 51st US state. The signals from Washington increasingly indicate that the US no longer wants to be the guardian of the liberal international order, but it is far from clear which other countries may be willing and able to provide much-needed global public goods.

The report’s authors suggest a US withdrawal from a global leadership role has implications beyond issues of war and peace: “Without global leadership of the kind provided by the United States for the past several decades, it is hard to imagine the international community providing global public goods like freedom of navigation or tackling even some of the many grave threats confronting humanity.”

The authors also say the US president’s effort to assert a new form of US primary will be undermined by the “multipolarisation” trend. Their report includes survey data showing the trend is more likely to be welcomed as a force for good in countries such as Brazil, India, South Africa and China.

The conference, which opens on Friday, is seen as the most important forum for discussions between international security policy decision-makers. It will include the first meetings between a Trump delegation, led by the US vice-president, JD Vance, and European political and military figures since Trump’s inauguration.

Vance will be accompanied by the US defence secretary, Peter Hegseth, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and the US special envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg. They are likely to be asked about a future US leadership role and their proposed terms for a ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia. Kellogg has denied reports he is planning to unveil a completed peace plan to the conference.

European leaders will press Vance to do more to weaken Vladimir Putin before any negotiations, and will ask whether the US – either via Nato or independently – is prepared to provide badly needed backup to a possible European-led stabilisation force inside Ukraine after a ceasefire.

The conference coincides with Trump’s threat to place unspecified “reciprocal tariffs” on the EU.

The MSC report predicts a world in which “a greater number of states are vying for influence”, meaning “the future order may be much messier”.

It says: “We may be living in a world where multiple orders coexist or compete and where little is left of near-universal rules, principles, and patterns of cooperation. In such a ‘multi-order’ or ‘multiplex’ world, the liberal order may not necessarily disappear. But its reach will increasingly be restricted to the west, or what is left of it.”

The authors also warn that Russia is not just interested in neutralising Ukraine as a military threat, but is working towards a Russian-led Eurasian order, as outlined in the new security treaties Moscow proposed to the US and Nato in late 2021.

They implicitly urge Trump to realise the possibility and wider ramifications of a defeat for Putin. “Faced with economic uncertainty, imperial overstretch, and a highly attritional war, it is uncertain if Russia can continue its imperialist endeavours,” they write. “This will in part depend on the international community, which has to decide whether it will give Russia space to do so or instead pressure it into respecting the rules based international order.”

US efforts to hamstring China are likely to intensify – but Beijing could also benefit from US withdrawal from international commitments or Washington’s alienation of longstanding partners. The survey, for instance, shows that in every G7 country the risk represented by the US has increased more than the perceived risk posed by Russia. The environment, including extreme weather events, is perceived as a greater risk in every country surveyed except the UK and Germany.

The authors say peaceful coexistence between the new different orders “is rather unlikely, given that it is far from clear whether the major ordering poles can agree on at least some rules, principles, and structures of cooperation to manage inter-order relations”.

Rubio seemed to embrace the prospect of a more multipolar world while giving evidence to the Senate foreign relations committee last month. “It’s not normal for the world to simply have a unipolar power,” he said. “That was an anomaly. It was a product of the end of the cold war, but eventually you were going to reach back to a point where you had a multipolar world, multi-great powers in different parts of the planet. We face that now with China and to some extent Russia, and then you have rogue states like Iran and North Korea you have to deal with.”

Israeli police have raided a leading Palestinian-owned bookshop in Jerusalem and detained two of its owners, citing a children’s colouring book as evidence of incitement to terrorism.

The police ransacked two branches of the Educational Bookshop on Sunday afternoon, using Google Translate to examine the stock then detaining Mahmoud Muna, 41, and his nephew Ahmed Muna, 33, on suspicion of “violating public order”.

On Monday a magistrate ordered another night’s detention and five days of house arrest for the two men. Police said they had seized eight books and needed time to investigate further, including reading the books.

“They took any book that had a Palestinian icon or Palestinian flag, and tried to translate it using Google Translate,” Morad Muna, brother of Mahmoud, told the Guardian. “They even took a copy of Haaretz [an Israeli newspaper] as part of the search.”

Other books examined by the police included the artist Banksy’s Wall and Piece, Gaza in Crisis by the US academic Noam Chomsky and the Israeli scholar Ilan Pappé, and Love Wins by the Canadian film-maker and photographer Afzal Huda.

Rights groups and prominent intellectuals called for the men’s immediate release, describing the arrests as part of a broader attack on Palestinian cultural identity.

Protesters gathered outside the courthouse on Monday morning to support the Munas, including the Pulitzer prize winning author Nathan Thrall, who launched his book A Day in the Life of Abed Salama at the Educational Bookshop.

“[Israeli authorities] are creating a climate of fear for Palestinians in East Jerusalem,” he said. The arrests were particularly chilling because the bookstore was so well known, he added. “To go after someone who … has all kinds of connections in the diplomatic community and on the Israeli left, will send an even stronger message.”

The family-owned shop has been at the heart of cultural life in Jerusalem for more than four decades. Its broad collection of books by Palestinian, Israeli and international authors is popular with residents and tourists, and its cafe hosts regular literary events.

It has three branches – two on Salah al-Din Street, the main shopping road in East Jerusalem – which were raided on Sunday.

The third is in the American Colony, a Jerusalem hotel popular for decades with visiting leaders and celebrities from Mikhail Gorbachev and Tony Blair to Bob Dylan and Uma Thurman.

Diplomats from nine countries, including the UK, Brazil and Switzerland, attended the hearing. Germany’s ambassador to Israel Steffen Seibert said he was “concerned”, describing himself as a regular customer of the bookshop.

“I know … the Muna family, to be peace-loving proud Palestinian Jerusalemites, open for discussion and intellectual exchange. I am concerned to hear of the raid and their detention in prison,” he said in a statement on X.

Mahmoud and Ahmed Muna’s lawyer lodged an appeal to the district court to demand his clients’ immediate release. Nasser Oday described the detentions as an “extremely dangerous” attack on cultural life in the city and warned they would set a new legal precedent.

“(The arrests are) part of a new policy followed by Israeli police in Jerusalem to suppress freedom of expression and Palestinian thought, and prevent learning and education,” he told journalists after the hearing.

He placed the raid in a long historical line of attacks on books and education in the region, dating back at least to the 13th century Mongol attack on Baghdad.

The police came about 3pm and stayed for around an hour, ransacking shelves and the stockroom, Morad Muna said. Mahmoud’s 11-year-old daughter was helping in the shop at the time, and saw her father being taken away.

“They want to make us afraid. Not just us, they want to send a message to all Palestinian people,” Morad Muna said. “We are now going to reopen both branches of the bookshop. I think this is the best reaction that we can do to such a situation.”

A police statement said “detectives encountered numerous books containing inciteful material with nationalist Palestinian themes, including a children’s colouring book titled From the River to the Sea.”

All prosecutions relating to freedom of speech have to be approved by the attorney general’s office, but police can carry out arrests on suspicion of violations of public order on their own authority.

The rights group B’Tselem called for the immediate release of the two men, and an end to the persecution of Palestinian intellectuals. “The attempt to crush the Palestinian people includes the harassment and arrest of intellectuals,” the group said in a statement. “Israel must immediately release [Mahmoud and Ahmed Muna] from detention and stop persecuting Palestinian intellectuals.”

Last year police arrested and interrogated Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, a leading Palestinian legal scholar based at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. There have also been widespread detentions of Palestinian citizens of Israel who publicly criticised the war in Gaza.

Amanda Palmer, the musician and former partner of Neil Gaiman, has denied allegations of human trafficking and negligence made in a civil lawsuit filed by a woman who previously worked for the couple in New Zealand.

“I will not respond to the specific allegations being made against me except to say that I deny the allegations and will respond in due course,” wrote Palmer in an Instagram post on Friday, adding that her “heart goes out to all survivors”.

On 3 February, Scarlett Pavlovich filed a lawsuit to district courts in Wisconsin, New York and Massachusetts accusing Gaiman of repeated rape and sexual assault, and Palmer of “procuring and presenting” her to Gaiman “for such abuse”.

Nine women have now accused Gaiman of sexual misconduct, eight of which were interviewed for a New York Magazine piece published on 13 January.

The following day, Gaiman published a statement on his website stating that he had “never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Ever.”

Palmer and Gaiman, who married in 2011 and had a child together in 2015, announced in 2022 that they had decided to divorce.

On 15 January, Palmer said in an initial Instagram statement that because of ongoing custody and divorce proceedings, she was unable to offer public comment on the allegations. A representative for Palmer told NME that she “is profoundly disturbed” by the allegations against Gaiman.

The lawsuit states that Pavlovich met Palmer in Auckland in 2020, when Pavlovich was 22, and the two became acquaintances. Pavlovich would sometimes run errands for Palmer, and eventually became the couple’s nanny.

The lawsuit alleges that Gaiman repeatedly sexually assaulted Pavlovich while she was working without pay during a “three-week indenture”. At the time, she was “broke and homeless”, and Gaiman and Palmer “intentionally withheld” pay to keep her “trapped, vulnerable, and penniless”, it claims.

Pavlovich said when she went to Palmer about the assaults, Palmer told her that other women had previously come to her about abusive sexual encounters with Gaiman.

The lawsuit states that Palmer “knowingly approached and procured the services of Scarlett with reckless disregard for the fact that Gaiman would force Scarlett to engage in commercial sex acts” with him.

“I thank you all deeply for continuing to respect my recent request for privacy as I navigate this extremely difficult moment”, Palmer wrote in her post on Friday. “I must protect my young child and his right to privacy.”

The Euclid space telescope has captured a rare phenomenon called an Einstein ring that reveals the extreme warping of space by a galaxy’s gravity.

The dazzling image shows a nearby galaxy, NGC 6505, surrounded by a perfect circle of light. The ring gives a glimpse of a more distant galaxy, sitting directly behind NGC 6505, whose starlight has been bent around the foreground galaxy.

“This is a beautiful, extraordinary, thrilling and lucky find in our first data,” said Prof Stephen Serjeant, an astronomer at the Open University. “An Einstein ring as perfect as this is extremely rare. We get to see a background galaxy through the warped space and time of a very nearby foreground galaxy.”

Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity predicts that light will bend around massive objects in space, meaning that galaxies can act as vast lenses. Einstein rings are a powerful tool for astronomers because they reveal objects that would otherwise be obscured from view and indicate the mass of the intermediate galaxy – including any hidden mass in the form of dark matter.

In this case, astronomers estimate that the foreground galaxy comprises roughly 11% dark matter. This is a relatively small fraction given that dark matter is believed to dominate the overall mass content of the universe.

Uncovering the secrets of dark matter and dark energy, which together make up 95% of the universe, is the central aim of the European Space Agency’s €1bn (£850m) mission. Ultimately the telescope, which can detect galaxies out to 10bn light years, is aiming to create the largest cosmic 3D map ever made. This will allow astronomers to infer the large-scale distribution of dark matter and reveal the influence of dark energy, a mysterious force that is accelerating the expansion of the universe.

The telescope will capture images of objects up to 10bn light years away, but the latest image shows its unmatched ability for razor-sharp observations is revealing new structures in the nearby universe, too. The NGC 6505 galaxy is about 590m light-years from Earth – a stone’s throw away in cosmic terms – and the unnamed background galaxy is 4.42bn light years away.

“I find it very intriguing that this ring was observed within a well-known galaxy, which was first discovered in 1884,” said Dr Valeria Pettorino, ESA Euclid project scientist. “The galaxy has been known to astronomers for a very long time. And yet this ring was never observed before. This demonstrates how powerful Euclid is, finding new things even in places we thought we knew well.”

Donald Trump has said he will announce new 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminium imports into the US on Monday that would affect “everybody’, including its largest trading partners Canada and Mexico, in another major escalation of his trade policy overhaul.

Trump’s pre-announcement came as China’s retaliatory tariffs, announced last week, came into effect. The measures target $14bn worth of products with a 15% tariff on coal and LNG, and 10% on crude oil, farm equipment and some vehicles.

The US president, speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Sunday, also said he would announce reciprocal tariffs – raising US tariff rates to match those of trading partners – on Tuesday or Wednesday, which would take effect “almost immediately”. “And very simply, it’s, if they charge us, we charge them,” Trump said of the reciprocal tariff plan.

Monday’s tariffs would come on top of existing metals duties.

The largest sources of US steel imports are Canada, Brazil and Mexico, followed by South Korea and Vietnam, according to government and American Iron and Steel Institute data.

By a large margin, Canada is the largest supplier of primary aluminium metal to the US, accounting for 79% of total imports in the first 11 months of 2024. Mexico is a major supplier of aluminium scrap and aluminium alloy.

The move on steel and aluminium brought a swift reaction from Doug Ford, the premier of the Canadian province of Ontario, who accused the US president of “shifting goalposts and constant chaos” that would put the economy at risk.

During his first term, Trump imposed tariffs of 25% on steel and 10% on aluminium, but later granted several trading partners duty-free quotas, including Canada, Mexico and Brazil.

Joe Biden extended these quotas to Britain, Japan and the European Union, and US steel mill capacity utilization has dropped in recent years. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said that the new tariffs would come on top of the existing duties on steel and aluminium.

Trump’s rollout of tariffs has been widely criticised and prompted volatile market reactions and fears of more to come. Beijing has lodged a complaint with the World Trade Organization, but otherwise has been muted in its response. The tariffs imposed by Trump are far below the level he had threatened during the election campaign, and analysts have said China was prepared for them.

Beijing’s actions – which also include investigations into several US companies including Google – were seen by analysts as measured and allowing room for negotiation.

Amid wider pushback against Trump’s economic heavy-handedness, French President Emmanuel Macron warned in an interview broadcast on Sunday that he was willing to go “head-to-head” on tariffs with the US president. “I already did so, and I will did [sic] it again.”

Macron told CNN that the EU should not be a “top priority” for the US, saying: “Is the European Union your first problem? No, I don’t think so. Your first problem is China, so you should focus on the first problem.”

Macron said tariffs would harm European economies but also the US, given the level of economic ties. “It means if you put tariffs on a lot of sectors, it will increase the costs and create inflation in the US. Is it what your people want? I’m not so sure,” he said.

He said the EU must be ready to react to US actions, but stressed that the 27-nation bloc should mainly “act for ourselves”. “This is why, for me, the top priority of Europe is competitiveness agenda, is defence and security agenda, is AI ambition, and let’s go fast for ourselves.

“If in the meanwhile, we have [a] tariff issue; we will discuss them and we will fix it.”

Trump has long complained about the EU’s 10% tariffs on auto imports being much higher than the US car rate of 2.5%. He frequently states that Europe “won’t take our cars” but ships millions west across the Atlantic every year.

The European Commission said on Monday it would react to protect EU interests, but said it would not respond until it had detailed or written clarification of the measures. “The EU sees no justification for the imposition of tariffs on its exports. We will react to protect the interests of European businesses, workers and consumers from unjustified measures,” the commission said in a statement.

German economy minister Robert Habeck said on Monday: “Europe must and can only react unitedly and decisively to unilateral trade restrictions. And we are prepared for this.”

A spokesman for Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, said the UK had not seen details of the proposed tariffs but was prepared for all developments. Industry body UK Steel said any tariffs would represent a “devastating blow” to the sector, harming high-end steel exports to the US, which is Britain’s second largest export market after the European Union.

Trump has also flagged tariffs against Taiwan’s semiconductor industry – which he has repeatedly and without evidence accused of stealing US business. Taiwan now appears to be scrambling to prevent that happening. This week senior economic officials will fly to the US to meet their counterparts. Taiwan’s government and state-run petroleum company are also reportedly taking steps to buy more US gas and oil to reduce Taiwan’s trade surplus – a key factor cited by Trump in enacting tariffs.

Financial markets were mostly muted in response to Trump’s comments but gold reached a record high and aluminium prices rose on Monday. The spot price of gold increased by more than 1% to $2,896 (£2,336) an ounce, while aluminium rose 0.3% to $2,635 (£2,122) a tonne.

Reuters contributed to this report

Donald Trump has said he will announce new 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminium imports into the US on Monday that would affect “everybody’, including its largest trading partners Canada and Mexico, in another major escalation of his trade policy overhaul.

Trump’s pre-announcement came as China’s retaliatory tariffs, announced last week, came into effect. The measures target $14bn worth of products with a 15% tariff on coal and LNG, and 10% on crude oil, farm equipment and some vehicles.

The US president, speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Sunday, also said he would announce reciprocal tariffs – raising US tariff rates to match those of trading partners – on Tuesday or Wednesday, which would take effect “almost immediately”. “And very simply, it’s, if they charge us, we charge them,” Trump said of the reciprocal tariff plan.

Monday’s tariffs would come on top of existing metals duties.

The largest sources of US steel imports are Canada, Brazil and Mexico, followed by South Korea and Vietnam, according to government and American Iron and Steel Institute data.

By a large margin, Canada is the largest supplier of primary aluminium metal to the US, accounting for 79% of total imports in the first 11 months of 2024. Mexico is a major supplier of aluminium scrap and aluminium alloy.

The move on steel and aluminium brought a swift reaction from Doug Ford, the premier of the Canadian province of Ontario, who accused the US president of “shifting goalposts and constant chaos” that would put the economy at risk.

During his first term, Trump imposed tariffs of 25% on steel and 10% on aluminium, but later granted several trading partners duty-free quotas, including Canada, Mexico and Brazil.

Joe Biden extended these quotas to Britain, Japan and the European Union, and US steel mill capacity utilization has dropped in recent years. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said that the new tariffs would come on top of the existing duties on steel and aluminium.

Trump’s rollout of tariffs has been widely criticised and prompted volatile market reactions and fears of more to come. Beijing has lodged a complaint with the World Trade Organization, but otherwise has been muted in its response. The tariffs imposed by Trump are far below the level he had threatened during the election campaign, and analysts have said China was prepared for them.

Beijing’s actions – which also include investigations into several US companies including Google – were seen by analysts as measured and allowing room for negotiation.

Amid wider pushback against Trump’s economic heavy-handedness, French President Emmanuel Macron warned in an interview broadcast on Sunday that he was willing to go “head-to-head” on tariffs with the US president. “I already did so, and I will did [sic] it again.”

Macron told CNN that the EU should not be a “top priority” for the US, saying: “Is the European Union your first problem? No, I don’t think so. Your first problem is China, so you should focus on the first problem.”

Macron said tariffs would harm European economies but also the US, given the level of economic ties. “It means if you put tariffs on a lot of sectors, it will increase the costs and create inflation in the US. Is it what your people want? I’m not so sure,” he said.

He said the EU must be ready to react to US actions, but stressed that the 27-nation bloc should mainly “act for ourselves”. “This is why, for me, the top priority of Europe is competitiveness agenda, is defence and security agenda, is AI ambition, and let’s go fast for ourselves.

“If in the meanwhile, we have [a] tariff issue; we will discuss them and we will fix it.”

Trump has long complained about the EU’s 10% tariffs on auto imports being much higher than the US car rate of 2.5%. He frequently states that Europe “won’t take our cars” but ships millions west across the Atlantic every year.

The European Commission said on Monday it would react to protect EU interests, but said it would not respond until it had detailed or written clarification of the measures. “The EU sees no justification for the imposition of tariffs on its exports. We will react to protect the interests of European businesses, workers and consumers from unjustified measures,” the commission said in a statement.

German economy minister Robert Habeck said on Monday: “Europe must and can only react unitedly and decisively to unilateral trade restrictions. And we are prepared for this.”

A spokesman for Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, said the UK had not seen details of the proposed tariffs but was prepared for all developments. Industry body UK Steel said any tariffs would represent a “devastating blow” to the sector, harming high-end steel exports to the US, which is Britain’s second largest export market after the European Union.

Trump has also flagged tariffs against Taiwan’s semiconductor industry – which he has repeatedly and without evidence accused of stealing US business. Taiwan now appears to be scrambling to prevent that happening. This week senior economic officials will fly to the US to meet their counterparts. Taiwan’s government and state-run petroleum company are also reportedly taking steps to buy more US gas and oil to reduce Taiwan’s trade surplus – a key factor cited by Trump in enacting tariffs.

Financial markets were mostly muted in response to Trump’s comments but gold reached a record high and aluminium prices rose on Monday. The spot price of gold increased by more than 1% to $2,896 (£2,336) an ounce, while aluminium rose 0.3% to $2,635 (£2,122) a tonne.

Reuters contributed to this report

Ecuador’s conservative president, Daniel Noboa, will face the leftist former congresswoman Luisa González in an election runoff on 13 April after a better than expected first-round performance by his challenger.

With more than 92% of the ballot boxes counted, Noboa was on 44.31%, just ahead of González, with a difference of only 45,000 votes in an electorate of 13.7 million registered voters.

To secure victory in the first round, candidates needed to obtain more than 50% of the votes or exceed a 40% share as well as a lead of at least 10 points over the runner-up.

The presidential election is seen as an assessment of Noboa’s brief time in office – essentially a “caretaker” term after the previous president stepped down in 2023.

Noboa’s 15 months in office have been marked by a mano dura (iron fist) security policy to tackle drug trafficking, which international organisations have widely criticised for its human rights violations.

The first-round result has been celebrated by the left because most polls had forecast a much bigger margin of victory for Noboa.

González, a 47-year-old lawyer, told elated supporters in Quito, the country’s capital, that they had achieved a “great victory” by forcing what she called a “statistical tie”.

“This victory belongs to you,” she said. “Daniel Noboa represents fear, we represent hope, the change to transform this country.”

Noboa, who chose not to go to a hotel in Quito on Sunday night where his ministers and supporters were waiting for him to deliver a speech, posted on social media that he “won the first round against all the parties of the Old Ecuador”.

The president, presenting himself as an outsider despite holding power, celebrated the seats won by his party in Congress, although neither he nor González will have a majority. He also thanked the voters. He said: “Thank you for the hope and the courage to believe again that this country can be different. Now, let’s keep fighting.”

In April, Noboa and González will repeat the 2023 runoff election. In that contest, the then little-known congressman trailed González in the first round but defeated her in the final vote.

According to the National Electoral Council, this weekend’s election day in Ecuador passed without significant incidents. Several international observers monitored the vote, including representatives from the EU and the Organization of American States. Turnout was 83.4% – in Ecuador voting is mandatory for citizens aged 18 to 65.

Noboa and González were shadowed at public events by a phalanx of special forces, hoping to avoid a repeat of the 2023 election, when a leading candidate was assassinated.

The election once again highlighted the polarisation between Correísmo – named after former leftist president Rafael Correa, who governed from 2007 to 2017 and backs González’s candidacy – and the anti-Correísmo camp, in which Noboa is the leading figure. Despite there being 16 candidates, votes were primarily concentrated between Noboa and González – the third-place candidate received only 5%.

The heir to a banana fortune, Noboa, 37, became Ecuador’s youngest president in 2023 after unexpectedly winning a snap election to complete the term of former president Guillermo Lasso, who had dissolved congress and resigned to avoid impeachment.

In January 2024, Noboa declared an “internal armed conflict” and placed the military at the heart of his security policy, tackling criminal gangs – primarily drug-trafficking groups – that had turned one of Latin America’s most peaceful countries into one of its most violent in just a few years.

Although Ecuador does not produce cocaine, it has become a major exporter – mainly through the port of its largest city, Guayaquil – of the drug, which is produced in Colombia and Peru, to the US and Europe.

Although Noboa won a plebiscite last April in which most of the population endorsed his security measures, reports of human rights violations began to pile up – including the killing of four black boys from Guayaquil after they were detained by the air force.

While crime rates fell initially, they soon returned to previous levels, and experts have deemed Noboa’s approach ineffective in reducing violence in the long term. Other crimes, such as abductions and kidnappings, continued to rise.

Noboa’s presidency has also been marred by an energy crisis, which has caused scheduled blackouts of up to 14 hours, and repeated violations of the constitution – including a standoff with his vice-president, Verónica Abad, whom he barred from assuming office while he took leave.

In 2024 alone, the country was under a state of emergency for 250 days, allowing measures such as warrantless home searches and bans on public gatherings, which he defended as necessary in the fight against organised crime.

Noboa also refused to comply with electoral rules requiring candidates to step down for the 30-day campaign period, which led González to tell the press , after casting her vote, that “Noboa has violated the law and the constitution”.

The impact of artificial intelligence on the environment and inequality have featured in the opening exchanges of a global summit in Paris attended by political leaders, tech executives and experts.

Emmanuel Macron’s AI envoy, Anne Bouverot, opened the two-day gathering at the Grand Palais in the heart of the French capital with a speech referring to the environmental impact of AI, which requires vast amounts of energy and resource to develop and operate.

“We know that AI can help mitigate climate change, but we also know that its current trajectory is unsustainable,” Bouverot said. Sustainable development of the technology would be on the agenda, she added.

The general secretary of the UNI Global Union, Christy Hoffman, warned that without worker involvement in the use of AI, the technology risked increasing inequality. The UNI represents about 20 million workers worldwide in industries including retail, finance and entertainment.

“Without worker representation, AI-driven productivity gains risk turning the technology into yet another engine of inequality, further straining our democracies,” she told attenders.

On Sunday, Macron promoted the event by posting a montage of deepfake images of himself on Instagram, including a video of “him” dancing in a disco with various 1980s hairstyles, in a tongue-in-cheek reference to the technology’s capabilities.

Although safety has been downplayed on the conference agenda, some in attendance were concerned about the pace of development.

Max Tegmark, the scientist behind a 2023 letter calling for a pause in producing powerful AI systems, cautioned that governments and tech companies were inadvertently re-enacting the ending of the Netflix climate crisis satire Don’t Look Up.

The film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence uses a looming comet, and the refusal by the political and media establishment to acknowledge the existential threat, as a metaphor for the climate emergency – with the meteor ultimately wiping out the planet.

“I feel like I have been living that movie,” Tegmark told the Guardian in an interview. “But now it feels l like we‘ve reached the part of the film where you can see the asteroid in the sky. And people are still saying that it doesn’t exist. It really feels like life imitating art.”

Tegmark said the promising work at the inaugural summit at Bletchley Park in the UK in November 2023 had been partly undone. “Basically, asteroid denial is back in full swing,” he said.

The Paris gathering has been badged as the AI action summit, whereas its UK cousin was the AI safety summit. Macron is co-chairing the summit with India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi. The US vice-president, JD Vance, and Chinese vice-premier, Zhang Guoqing, are among the other political attenders, although the UK prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, is not attending.

Existential concerns about AI focus on the development of artificial general intelligence, the term for systems that can match or exceed human intellectual capabilities at nearly all cognitive tasks. Estimates of when, and if, AGI will be reached vary but Tegmark said based on statements from industry figures “the asteroid is going to strike … somewhere between one and five years from now.

Developments in AI have accelerated since 2023, with the emergence of so-called reasoning models pushing the capabilities of systems even further. The release of a freely available reasoning model by the Chinese company DeepSeek has also intensified the competitive rivalry between China and the US, which has led AI breakthroughs.

The head of Google’s AI efforts, Demis Hassabis, said on Sunday the tech industry was “perhaps five years away” from achieving AGI and safety conversations needed to continue. “Society needs to get ready for that and … the implications that will have.”

Speaking in Paris before the summit, Hassabis added that AGI carried “inherent risk”, particularly in the field of autonomous “agents”, which carry out tasks without human intervention, but those concerns could be assuaged.

“I’m a big believer in human ingenuity. I think if we put the best brains on it, and with enough time and enough care … then I think we’ll get it right.”

A computer expert who has battled for a decade to recover a £600m bitcoin fortune he believes is buried in a council dump in south Wales is considering buying the site so he can hunt for the missing fortune.

James Howells lost a high court case last month to force Newport city council to allow him to search the tip to retrieve a hard drive he says contains the bitcoins.

The council has since announced plans to close and cap the site, which would almost certainly spell the end of any lingering hopes of reaching the bitcoins. The authority has secured planning permission for a solar farm on part of the land.

Howells, 39, said on Monday it had been “quite a surprise” to hear of the closure plan. He said: “It [the council] claimed at the high court that closing the landfill to allow me to search would have a huge detrimental impact on the people of Newport, whilst at the same time they were planning to close the landfill anyway.

“I expected it would be closed in the coming years because it’s 80/90% full – but didn’t expect its closure so soon. If Newport city council would be willing, I would potentially be interested in purchasing the landfill site ‘as is’ and have discussed this option with investment partners and it is something that is very much on the table.”

When he appeared at Cardiff civil justice centre, represented by lawyers working pro bono, Howells described how in the summer of 2013 he accidentally put the hard drive containing his bitcoin wallet in a black bag during an office sort-out and left it in the hall of his house. His then partner is said to have mistaken the bag for rubbish and taken it with her on a trip to the dump, where it has been lost.

Howells quickly realised the mistake and ever since has been asking the council to help him retrieve the hard drive, even offering to share the money with the authority, to no avail.

The council has resisted Howells’ attempts to allow him to search, insisting that the hard drive had become its property when it entered the landfill site.

Sitting as a high court judge, Judge Keyser KC said in January that he accepted the council’s argument that Howells was not entitled to try to retrieve it.

Newport city council declined to comment.

A countrywide power outage in Sri Lanka has been blamed on a monkey that clambered into a power station south of Colombo.

The blackout, which began around midday on Sunday, left many people sweltering in temperatures exceeding 30C (86F).

“A monkey came into contact with our grid transformer, causing an imbalance in the power system,” the energy minister, Kumara Jayakody, told reporters.

Engineers scrambled to restore power in the island nation of 22 million people, prioritising critical facilities such as hospitals and water purification plants. While some areas regained electricity within hours, many households without generators remained in the dark well into the night.

On social media, Sri Lankans likened the incident to a slapstick comedy, while others highlighted the fragility of Sri Lanka’s power grid. “One monkey = total chaos. Time to rethink infrastructure?” one user wrote. “Only in Sri Lanka can a monkey knock out the entire nation’s electricity,” another joked.

Beyond the internet memes, the outage underscored Sri Lanka’s ongoing struggles with energy security. Experts have long warned that the country’s power grid is outdated and vulnerable to disruptions.

“The national power grid is in such a weakened state that frequent island-wide power outages may be expected if there is a disturbance in one of our lines,” an unnamed senior engineer was quoted as saying by the Daily Mirror.

Sri Lanka is no stranger to power shortages. In 2022, amid a deep economic crisis, rolling blackouts became a grim reality as fuel shortages forced authorities to ration electricity for up to 13 hours a day.

The Ceylon Electricity Board issued an apology for the Sunday blackout but did not explain how one incident could have had such widespread repercussions. There was no word on the fate of the monkey.

Monkeys have become an increasing problem in Sri Lanka due to their booming numbers. As humans encroach on forested areas, the animals raid villages in search of food and destroy crops. The endemic toque macaque is estimated to number between 2 and 3 million on the island.