European powers, including Britain, France and Germany, have said they have to be part of any future negotiations on the fate of Ukraine, underscoring that only a fair accord with security guarantees would ensure lasting peace.

“Our shared objectives should be to put Ukraine in a position of strength. Ukraine and Europe must be part of any negotiations,” seven European countries and the European Commission said in a joint statement after a foreign ministers meeting in Paris.

“Ukraine should be provided with strong security guarantees. A just and lasting peace in Ukraine is a necessary condition for a strong transatlantic security,” the statement said, adding that the European powers were looking forward to discussing the way ahead with their American allies.

The meeting took place after US President Donald Trump said he had spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin and that the pair were ready to immediately begin negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine.

The rapid developments have worried Europe, with Putin and Trump appearing to be negotiating the future of the continent’s security over the heads of European leaders themselves. US defence secretary Pete Hegseth is due to meet with dozens of Nato ministers in Brussels on Thursday, after meeting a Ukraine contact group of defence ministers in Brussels on Wednesday.

“There will be no just and lasting peace in Ukraine without the participation of Europeans,” French foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot said at the meeting of ministers from France, Britain, Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain, Ukraine and the European Commission on Wednesday.

Germany’s Annalena Baerbock and Spain’s Jose Manuel Albares Bueno both told the meeting that no decision on Ukraine could be made “without Ukraine” and called on EU countries to show unity on this question.

Albares Bueno added: “We want peace for Ukraine but we want an unjust war to end with a just peace.”

Poland’s foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski meanwhile said that “continued cooperation with the US” was a topic of discussion at the meeting. “There is no better guarantee for the security of our continent than close transatlantic cooperation,” Sikorski said.

When asked if any European countries would be involved in peace talks, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “I don’t have any European nations who are involved currently to read out for you.”

The Paris meeting , scheduled weeks ago, aimed at outlining the bloc’s defence strategy, discussing how to strengthen Ukraine, planning for future peace talks and discussing how to approach talks with the US administration when they meet at a security conference in Munich this weekend.

But it was derailed after Hegseth delivered the bluntest public statements from the Trump administration on its approach to the nearly three-year war between Ukraine and Russia at a meeting with Ukraine’s international backers in Brussels on Wednesday.

He said a return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders was unrealistic and the US did not see Nato membership for Kyiv as part of a solution to the war. “Chasing this illusory goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering,” he said.

Hegseth’s comments were followed by a call by between Trump and Putin, after which Trump said their teams had agreed to start negotiations immediately. European powers had not been made aware of the call beforehand and were surprised by the bluntness of Hegseth’s position, diplomats said.

Having ruled out Nato membership for Ukraine, Hegseth said peace would instead have to be secured by “capable European and non-European troops”, who he stressed would not come from the US.

Any British or European troops deployed in Ukraine would not be covered by part of a Nato mission or covered by the alliance’s article 5 guarantee, Hegseth added, meaning they would in effect be reliant on help from participating states.

UK defence secretary John Healey said London had heard Hegseth’s “call for European nations to step up. We are and we will.” After a bilateral meeting with Hegseth earlier in the day, he announced the UK will spend £4.5bn on military aid for Ukraine this year, the Times reported.

Earlier this week, Zelenskyy, told the Guardian that Europe was not able to offer resilient security guarantees to Kyiv without the involvement of the US. “Security guarantees without America are not real,” he said.

A multinational deterrence force based in Ukraine after a ceasefire would need to be 100,000 to 150,000 strong, Zelenskyy said, though that would be far smaller than the 600,000-plus Russian troops in occupied Ukraine.

“Europe cannot field a force like this right now,” one senior European diplomat told the Guardian. “But we cannot force the US [to commit troops]. So we must accept this and figure out what we can do.”

Another senior European diplomat called the US position outlined by Hegseth a premature surrender, asking what there would be left to negotiate. The person also said that the readiness to offer concessions from Ukraine would encourage Russia to demand more in the upcoming negotiations.

Donald Trump has said that he and Vladimir Putin have agreed to begin negotiations to broker a ceasefire in Ukraine, later adding that it was unlikely Kyiv would win back all its territory or join Nato if a deal is to be reached.

Trump said that he was “OK” with Ukraine not having Nato membership and that it was “unlikely” that Ukraine would take much land back in the negotiations.

Russia “took a lot of land, and they fought for that land and they lost a lot of soldiers”, he told reporters later in the Oval Office.

Trump said he was not closely concerned with which territories were handed over.

“I’m just here to try and get peace,” he said. “I don’t care so much about anything other than I want to stop having millions of people killed.”

The rapid entry into negotiations with Russia and open demands that Ukraine concede land will have set alarm bells ringing in Kyiv and among its European allies that the Trump administration will offer minimal resistance to Putin’s demands in order to cut a deal as quickly as possible.

In a social media post, Trump said he held a “lengthy and highly productive phone call” with Putin and that they agreed to “have our respective teams start negotiations immediately”.

He said that he and Putin had agreed to visit each other’s countries, later telling reporters that their first meeting would take place in Saudi Arabia.

“As we both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the War with Russia/Ukraine,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “President Putin even used my very strong Campaign motto of, ‘COMMON SENSE.’ We both believe very strongly in it. We agreed to work together, very closely, including visiting each other’s Nations.”

The Kremlin confirmed the call and the mutual invitations for the leaders to visit each other’s countries in what would be the first visits by an American president to Russia since 2009 and the first by Putin to the US since 2015.

In its readout, the Kremlin also maintained a maximalist position, with Putin saying he “mentioned the need to eliminate the root causes of the conflict and agreed with Trump that a long-term settlement could be achieved through peaceful negotiations”.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy – at least in public – offered support for the talks on Wednesday, saying he and Trump had held a “meaningful” conversation by phone. “No one wants peace more than Ukraine,” he wrote. “Together with the US, we are charting our next steps to stop Russian aggression and ensure a lasting, reliable peace. As President Trump said, let’s get it done.”

Trump told reporters that the US would seek to “secure” future military aid against Ukrainian rare earth minerals and other natural resources.

Trump said he was not concerned about freezing out Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy of the talks, saying: “I don’t think so as long as he’s there.”

But, he said, “sometime [Ukraine’s] going to have to have elections too … His poll numbers aren’t particularly great.”

Trump said Zelenskyy would meet on Friday with the vice-president, JD Vance, and the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, on the sidelines of the Munich security conference.

Earlier on Wednesday, the US negotiating position was outlined in Brussels, where secretary of defence Pete Hegseth delivered public remarks that Kyiv must acknowledge that it cannot win back all the land occupied by Russia.

“We must start by recognising that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective,” Hegseth said, sketching out an initial position for any peace negotiations with Russia.

“Chasing this illusory goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering,” he added, though this could be interpreted as in effect acknowledging the annexation of Crimea, and large parts of the Donbas, by Russia.

Kyiv would only achieve peace through “robust security guarantees”, but Hegseth ruled out Nato membership for Ukraine. Instead, peace would have to be secured by “capable European and non-European troops”, who he stressed would not come from the US.

Any British or European troops deployed in Ukraine would not be covered by part of a Nato mission or covered by the alliance’s article 5 guarantee, Hegseth added, meaning they would in effect be reliant on help from participating states.

Though Hegseth set out some positions for achieving peace in Ukraine, few experts believe there has been any serious diplomatic progress. Russia, which has been gaining ground on the battlefield, remains keen to press home its advantage and has demanded that Ukraine cede further territory and in effect be demilitarised as part of a deal.

Russia’s demands could mirror those made on the eve of its full-scale invasion in 2021: that Ukraine adopt a neutral status and that Nato cease deploying weapons to member states that joined after 1997, when the alliance began accepting former communist nations. That includes much of eastern Europe, including Poland and the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

In December, Putin also stated that he would insist on Ukraine adopting a neutral status and implementing some degree of demilitarisation, while also demanding that the west lift its sanctions on Russia.

Kyiv has rejected those demands in the past and the Biden administration had said that it would be up to Ukraine to decide when to hold peace talks.

Earlier this week, Zelenskyy told the Guardian that Europe was not able to offer resilient security guarantees to Kyiv without the involvement of the US. “Security guarantees without America are not real,” he said.

A multinational deterrence force based in Ukraine after a ceasefire would need to be 100,000 to 150,000 strong, Zelenskyy said, though that would be far smaller than the 600,000-plus Russian troops in occupied Ukraine.

“Europe cannot field a force like this right now,” one senior European diplomat told the Guardian. “But we cannot force the US [to commit troops]. So we must accept this and figure out what we can do.”

Another senior European diplomat called the US position outlined by Hegseth a premature surrender, asking what there would be left to negotiate. The person also said that the readiness to offer concessions from Ukraine would encourage Russia to demand more in the upcoming negotiations.

In his readout of their call, Zelenskyy also suggested that Ukraine was reviewing a deal with the US regarding a new “security, economic cooperation, and resource partnership”. That followed a meeting between Zelenskyy and the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, who had visited Kyiv to discuss US access to rare earth minerals, energy resources and energy assets, according to Reuters.

The US has suggested that it would seek access to rare earth minerals, which are strategic metals essential for industries developing computers, batteries and cutting-edge energy technology in exchange for providing military aid to Ukraine in the future.

The rapid developments have worried Europe that Putin and Trump appear to be negotiating the future of the continent’s security over the heads of the Europeans themselves.

“If Europe is responsible for Ukraine’s security and could even provide troops [under a ceasefire agreement], then we should have a seat at the table and be consulted with the Americans,” said one European official. “And we have not been consulted.”

European foreign ministers declared their support for Ukraine during a meeting of the country’s allies in Paris on Wednesday. The German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, said that Ukraine’s interests must be protected in the upcoming negotiations between Moscow and Washington. The French foreign minister, Jean Noël-Barrot, called for Europe’s direct participation in the talks, saying that there “will be no just and lasting peace in Ukraine without the participation of Europeans”.

A spokesperson for the British foreign office expressed support for Trump’s desire to bring the war to an end, but added: “Russia could do this tomorrow by withdrawing its forces and ending its illegal invasion. We have always said we will support Ukraine to achieve a just and lasting peace. Our priority right now is to put Ukraine in the strongest possible position.”

Trump’s announcement followed a prisoner swap involving Marc Fogel, a US teacher who was arrested in Moscow on drug charges, and Alexander Vinnik, who was arrested in 2017 in Greece on cryptocurrency fraud charges and then extradited to the US.

The deal was arranged by Steve Witkoff, Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, one of the president’s closest allies on the team that will lead negotiations with the Russians.

The US negotiating team would include the secretary of state, Marco Rubio; the director of the CIA, John Ratcliffe; the national security adviser, Michael Waltz; and Witkoff.

Notable for his absence from the negotiating team was Gen Keith Kellogg, whom Trump had earlier named his special envoy to Ukraine and Russia and who was in the process of meeting with European leaders to discuss the upcoming negotiations.

Yet few were convinced he spoke directly for Trump, and he offered few concrete details beyond his “deep faith” that Trump was the best person to negotiate the deal, one official said.

Donald Trump’s newly appointed defence secretary told allies on his first international trip that the US was no longer “primarily focused” on European security and that Europe would have to take the lead in defending Ukraine.

Pete Hegseth, speaking to defence ministers at a lunchtime meeting in Brussels, said Europe had to provide “the overwhelming share” of future military aid to Kyiv – and recognise that restoring Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders was unrealistic.

The Pentagon chief said he was “here today to directly and unambiguously express that stark strategic realities prevent the United States of America from being primarily focused on the security of Europe”, though the language was notably toned down from a draft briefed in advance to the press.

That had said the US was no longer “the primary guarantor of security in Europe” and appeared to suggest a recasting of the 75-year-old Nato alliance, created after the second world war to protect western Europe from the Soviet bloc.

But in a speech to the Ukraine contact group of defence ministers in Brussels, chaired by the UK’s defence secretary, John Healey, he softened the language – a day before he is due to attend his first Nato summit of defence ministers.

Hegseth said the US was shifting its military priorities to defending its homeland and deterring China, and he called on European Nato members to hike defence budgets to 5% of GDP to better defend the continent.

As an example, Hegseth said Europe “must provide the overwhelming share of future lethal and nonlethal aid to Ukraine” in the future – though he did not say the US would halt all its military aid, which has been critical in helping Kyiv resist the Russian invasion.

He also reiterated Trump’s position that “stopping the fighting and reaching an enduring peace” in Ukraine is a top priority – and that Kyiv must recognise that it cannot win back all the land occupied by Russia.

“We must start by recognising that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective,” Hegseth said, sketching out an initial position for any peace negotiations with Russia.

“Chasing this illusory goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering,” he added, though this could be interpreted as effectively acknowledging the annexation of Crimea, and large parts of the Donbas by Russia.

Kyiv would only achieve peace through “robust security guarantees”, but Hegseth ruled out Nato membership for Ukraine. Instead, peace would have to be secured by “capable European and non-European troops”, who he stressed would not come from the US.

Any British or European troops who did end up deployed in Ukraine would not be covered by part of a Nato mission or covered by the alliance’s article 5 guarantee, Hegseth added, meaning they would in effect be reliant on help from participating states.

Though Hegseth set out some positions for achieving peace in Ukraine, few experts believe there has been any serious diplomatic progress. Russia, which has been gaining ground on the battlefield, remains keen to press home its advantage and has demanded that Ukraine cede further territory and effectively be demilitarised as part of a deal.

Earlier this week, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, told the Guardian that Europe was not able to offer resilient security guarantees to Kyiv without the involvement of the US. “Security guarantees without America are not real,” he said.

A multinational deterrence force based in Ukraine after a ceasefire would need to be 100,000- to 150,000-strong, Zelenskyy said, though that would be far smaller than the 600,000-plus Russian troops in occupied Ukraine.

With many European militaries, including the UK, facing recruitment difficulties, it is not clear if it would be possible to constitute a force of that size without US involvement.

Departing from a pre-prepared text, Hegseth also emphasised that the US wanted to Nato allies spend 5% of their GDP on defence, and praised Poland for reaching this level. That would mean a doubling for the UK of defence spending – its budget is currently 2.33% of GDP.

Hegseth explained that the shift away from Europe was necessary because the US “faces consequential threats to our homeland” and was focused on border security. At the same time, he added: “We also face a peer competitor in the communist Chinese” able to threaten the American mainland and “core national interests in the Indo-Pacific”.

“The US is prioritising deterring war with China in the Pacific, recognising the reality of scarcity, and making the resourcing trade-offs to ensure deterrence does not fail. As the United States shifts its attention to these threats, European allies must lead from the front,” he added.

Hegseth’s positioning reflects priorities repeatedly stated by the US president that Europe must increase defence budgets and contribute to its own security, though they fall short of saying the US would not protect a Nato member if attacked.

Nato’s article 5 states that if one member state comes under attack, others have to be prepared to come to its aid. It has only been invoked once in the alliance’s history, when the US was attacked on 9/11.

The Kremlin has said that Russia will never consider exchanging occupied Ukrainian land for parts of its Kursk region, dismissing a proposal outlined by Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Guardian.

Zelenskyy revealed in an hour-long interview earlier this week that he intended to propose a straightforward territorial exchange with Russia to facilitate an end to the war, including the transfer of Ukrainian-held pockets of Kursk.

“We will swap one territory for another,” Zelenskyy said, adding that he did not know which part of Russian-occupied territory Ukraine would ask for back. “I don’t know, we will see. But all our territories are important, there is no priority,” he said.

Responding on Wednesday to the proposed exchange, Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, stressed that Moscow strongly rejected all offers to trade territory.

“This is impossible,” he told reporters at a daily briefing. “Russia has never discussed and will not discuss the exchange of its territory.”

Peskov added: “Ukrainian units will be expelled from this territory. All who are not destroyed will be expelled.”

Ukraine seized approximately 500 sq miles (1,300 sq km) in the Kursk region last summer in a surprise incursion that dealt a major embarrassment to Putin. In response, Russia has deployed tens of thousands of troops, including North Korean forces, in an effort to reclaim the territory.

According to open-source monitor groups, Russia has since reclaimed about half of the lost territory in the Kursk region while still controlling just under 20% of Ukraine’s land.

The two armies are engaged in a fierce and bloody battle for control of the Kursk region, now a key battleground in the latest phase of the war. Much of the fighting is centred around the town of Sudzha, which remains under Ukrainian control.

An estimated 2,000 Russian civilians are believed to be living under Ukrainian rule in the Kursk region, their fate largely unknown due to the lack of phone and internet signals, which has cut off communication with the outside world.

Observers believe Moscow is eager to reclaim territory in Kursk as it seeks to enter expected US-brokered peace talks from a position of strength.

During his annual call-in with the nation in December, Putin assured Russians that their troops would eventually expel Ukrainian forces from Kursk but declined to specify a timeline.

Meanwhile, Ukraine has redeployed some of its most experienced troops to the region, aiming to hold on to the land as a bargaining chip.

Arab mediators are scrambling to save the Gaza ceasefire as the Israeli military bolsters troop and tank deployments to the strip’s periphery in advance of the possibility the truce breaks down this weekend.

A Hamas delegation arrived in Cairo on Wednesday to “discuss ways to end the current crisis”, the Palestinian militant group said. Meanwhile, Egyptian and Qatari mediators were working “intensively” to compel Israel to address Hamas’s new demands before Saturday’s scheduled release of three Israeli hostages, Egypt’s state-run al-Qahera television reported.

Mahmoud Mardawi, a senior Hamas official, said there were “positive signals” that the hostage handover would go ahead as planned, but added it had “yet to receive Israel’s commitment to implement the full terms of the deal, especially the humanitarian protocol”. There was no immediate comment from Israeli authorities.

The future of the three-week-old ceasefire agreement was thrown into jeopardy on Monday when Hamas’s armed wing announced it would postpone freeing the next group of captives. It citied alleged Israeli violations of the truce, including the continued killing of Palestinians, blocks on aid, including tents, and delays in allowing displaced people to return to the north of the strip.

It said it had announced its stance early in order to give mediators enough time to pressure Israel to “comply and compensate for the past weeks” before the scheduled weekend handover.

Israel denies the Hamas allegations, but claimed responsibility for an airstrike in the Rafah area on Wednesday that killed two people who the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said were flying a drone.

The surprise announcement by the US president, Donald Trump, last week that the US would take over and “develop” the Gaza Strip appeared to be central to the group’s decision, although it did not directly mention it in its statement. Hamas reportedly no longer believes Washington’s guarantees for the ceasefire will hold and it does not think Israel is serious about implementation.

The crisis, however, escalated sharply after Trump responded to Hamas’s delay by threatening “hell is going to break out” unless it released all of the Israeli hostages it was holding on Saturday.

After a lengthy cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, appeared to be keeping the option to continue the ceasefire open and a statement from his office did not explicitly back Trump’s call for “all” 76 of the remaining hostages to be freed this weekend.

His defence minister, Israel Katz, echoed the deliberately ambiguous language on Wednesday, saying: “If Hamas does not release the Israeli hostages by Shabbat, the gates of hell will open on them, just as the US president promised. The new Gaza war will be different in intensity from the one before the ceasefire – and will not end without the defeat of Hamas and the release of all the hostages.”

Hamas’s spokesperson, Hazem Qassem, said on Wednesday that Israel was “evading implementation of several provisions of the ceasefire agreement” and reiterated the group’s stance that hostages could only be released through diplomatic means. “Our position is clear, and we will not accept the language of American and Israeli threats,” he said.

Talks on the second stage of the ceasefire, which is supposed to begin in early March, were due to start last week, but an Israeli team sent by Netanyahu to Qatar lacked a mandate to discuss matters not related to stage one, and returned on Sunday night.

Egyptian and Qatari mediators are now trying to persuade Israel to meet the demands Hamas made on Monday, including “implementing the humanitarian protocol … and beginning negotiations for the second phase”, a Palestinian diplomatic source told Agence-France Presse.

The head of the UN, António Guterres, has urged Hamas to proceed with the planned release and “avoid at all costs resumption of hostilities in Gaza”.

The first stage of the truce, in which Israeli captives are released in batches in exchange for Palestinians in Israeli custody, has come under increasing strain as both sides accuse the other of violations.

Last week’s release of three emaciated hostages sparked anger in Israel and beyond. The Gaza health ministry says Israeli fire has killed at least 92 Palestinians and wounded more than 800 others since the fragile ceasefire took hold on 19 January. The IDF says it has fired on people who approach its forces or enter certain areas in alleged violation of the truce.

Trump has doubled down on his proposal to build a “riviera of the Middle East” in Gaza and to relocate its population of 2.3 million people to Egypt and Jordan, a plan international law experts say amounts to ethnic cleansing.

The Arab world has flatly rejected the idea, which could destabilise the region and put Israel’s peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan at risk.

Jordan’s King Abdullah met Trump at the White House on Tuesday, saying in social media posts he “reiterated Jordan’s steadfast position against the displacement of Palestinians”.

Egypt said on Wednesday that it planned to present an alternative vision backed by Arab states for reconstruction of the Palestinian territory that will ensure Gaza’s residents remain on their land.

The ceasefire halted 15 months of fighting in the strip, during which about 48,000 Palestinians were killed, sparking a devastating humanitarian crisis and reducing the occupied territory to ruins. The war was triggered by Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, in which about 1,200 were killed and another 250 taken hostage.

Hamas is facing hard choices as the Israeli military bolsters troop numbers in and around the Gaza Strip and the three-week-old ceasefire falters.

The Palestinian militant group unexpectedly announced on Monday that it was postponing the next planned release of three Israeli hostages over the weekend, citing alleged Israeli violations of the truce: delaying the return of Palestinians to northern Gaza, blocking the arrival of aid and attacking civilians. It stressed, however, that it wants the ceasefire to continue, emphasising that mediators had five days before the handover to ensure Israel “complies and compensates for the past weeks”.

There are also two unspoken reasons for the group’s decision.

Hamas officials are astute observers of Israeli politics and media; they took careful note of the furore caused by the emaciated condition of the three hostages released last weekend, which the hostage families forum likened to images of Holocaust survivors.

If the group is releasing the healthiest captives first, and the next to be freed are in even worse shape, Hamas commanders may be worried about pushing Israeli public opinion towards resuming hostilities in revenge for their treatment.

Secondly, Hamas is as vulnerable as the rest of the world to Donald Trump’s tendency to make up policy on the fly.

The militant group did not mention the president’s ill-considered proposal that the US take over and “develop” Gaza in its statement on Monday, but the president has essentially already torpedoed the next two phases of the ceasefire – an end to the war, and talks on future governance of the strip. He has left Hamas with dwindling options.

Trump’s response to the delay of the next hostage release raised the stakes even higher. In an attempt to back the group into a corner, he has now demanded that Hamas releases “all” of the remaining Israeli hostages on Saturday, although he has acknowledged that the decision ultimately lies with Israel. For his part, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has deliberately fudged his position in order to keep his options open, not explicitly backing Trump’s most recent statement.

Hamas has dismissed Trump’s new deadline, saying that “the language of threats has no value and only complicates matters”, but the group now appears to have three courses of action.

It can cut its losses and carry out its threat to delay Saturday’s planned hostage release, which will mean a return to fighting. While resuming hostilities is likely to trigger another mass exodus of Palestinian civilians to southern Gaza and dramatically worsen the strip’s humanitarian crisis, this is a way for Hamas to save face without giving up any more hostages, which remain its main leverage over Israel.

It could also call Trump and Israel’s bluff by releasing more than three hostages. While it is logistically unlikely that the group could deliver all 76 – at least 30 of whom are dead – in one go, it could feasibly release the eight living captives due to come home in the first stage of the deal, in effect forcing talks to begin on implementing the second and third phases of the ceasefire ahead of schedule.

Hamas also knows that if it does deliver the three hostages scheduled for release on Saturday, as planned, Israel is unlikely to withdraw from the agreement. This route would keep the truce alive, and to some extent defang Trump’s threats, although the president is unlikely to suffer such humiliation lightly.

Which path the group will take will become clear on Friday night, when Hamas is supposed to deliver the names of the three hostages before their release. If they do not materialise, Israel will have ample justification to resume the war, with Trump’s blessing – an outcome that will let Netanyahu, the ultimate political Houdini, keep his rightwing coalition government intact.

The ceasefire in the Gaza Strip is hanging by a thread after just three weeks, which does not bode well for its future. More than 2 million people in Gaza, and hundreds of Israelis still desperate for captive loved ones to return, have no choice but to hold their breath.

Flanked by Donald Trump in the Oval Office this week, Elon Musk claimed his much-vaunted, but ill-defined, “department of government efficiency” (Doge) was providing “maximum transparency” on its blitz through the federal government.

Its official website was empty, however – until Wednesday, when it added elements including data from a controversial rightwing thinktank recently sued by a climate scientist.

New elements include Doge’s feed from X, Musk’s social network, and a blank section for savings identified by the agency, promised to be updated “no later than” Valentine’s Day.

At the top of the website’s regulations page, Doge used data published by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a libertarian thinktank that claims to fight “climate alarmism”.

The CEI’s “unconstitutionality index”, which it started in 2003, compares regulations or rules introduced by government agencies with laws enacted by Congress.

The CEI claims to fight “climate alarmism”, and has long worked to block climate-focused policies, successfully lobbying against the ratification of the international climate treaty the Kyoto protocol in 1997, as well as the enactment of the 2009 Waxman-Markey bill, which aimed to place a cap on greenhouse gas emissions.

The thinktank ran ads to counter Al Gore’s 2006 documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, claiming in one ad: “The Antarctic ice sheet is getting thicker, not thinner … Why are they trying to scare us?” In a second ad, the thinktank said carbon dioxide was “essential to life”, adding: “They call it pollution. We call it life.” The campaign incited pushback from a scientist who said their research was misrepresented in the ads.

During Trump’s first term, the organization also successfully pushed him to pull the US from the 2015 Paris climate treaty. Today, it regularly publishes arguments against the mandatory disclosure of climate-related financial risks and increased efficiency regulations on appliances.

Last January, the CEI lost a lawsuit filed against it by the climate scientist Dr Michael Mann for $1m in punitive damages.

The thinktank has extensive ties to the far-right network formed by the fossil fuel billionaire Charles Koch and his late brother David. In 2020, the network provided some $900,000 to CEI, public records show – a number that is likely an underestimate, as it does not include “dark money” contributions which need not be disclosed. CEI also accepted more than $640,000 from the Koch network between 1997 and 2015.

Its other donors have included the nation’s top oil and gas lobbying group, American Petroleum Institute, and the fossil fuel giant Exxon. The thinktank is also an associate member of ultraconservative State Policy Network, which has also received funding from Koch-linked groups and whose members have fought to pass punitive anti-pipeline protest laws.

The White House and CEI were contacted for comment.

Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman who has been publicly questioned over her affinity for foreign dictators and promoting conspiracy theories, has been confirmed as director of national intelligence by the US Senate.

The Senate voted 52 to 48, with just one Republican – Mitch McConnell of Kentucky – voting against her confirmation.

After being sworn in at a ceremony in the Oval Office, Gabbard promised to “refocus our intelligence community” and repeated a common Donald Trump talking point that the US intelligence agencies had been used as political tools.

“Unfortunately, the American people have very little trust in the intelligence community, largely because they’ve seen the weaponization and politicization of an entity that is supposed to be purely focused on ensuring our national security,” she said.

She added: “I look forward to being able to help fulfill that mandate that the American people delivered to [Trump] very clearly in this election to refocus our intelligence community by empowering the great patriots who have chosen to serve our country in this way and focus on ensuring the safety, security and freedom of the American people.”

Watching the ceremony, Trump spoke briefly about Gabbard and called her “an American of extraordinary courage and patriotism”.

Gabbard, 43, faced a tense confirmation hearing last month that saw her respond to questions from Republicans and Democrats over her past comments sympathetic to Russia and her defense of the government of the former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, who she visited in 2017 while he was under US sanctions.

During the hearing, Gabbard refused to call the whistleblower Edward Snowden a “traitor”, partially recanted her views that Russia was provoked into invading Ukraine, and insisted she had “no love” for Assad.

Republicans have since rallied behind Gabbard despite initial doubts over the 43-year-old former Democrat’s lack of significant intelligence experience.

Lisa Murkowski, a Republican senator from Alaska and a potential swing vote, said on Monday that she would vote to confirm Gabbard, noting that despite “concerns about certain positions she has previously taken” she believed Gabbard “brings independent thinking and necessary oversight to her new role”.

Gabbard, a former presidential candidate and military veteran who served in Iraq, has ruthlessly criticised the US intelligence community she will now lead.

As director of national intelligence, she will oversee 18 intelligence agencies – including the CIA and FBI – that employ more than 70,000 people engaged in collating and safeguarding the country’s most sensitive secrets.

After Gabbard’s confirmation vote, the Senate immediately moved to a procedural vote on Robert F Kennedy Jr’s nomination for health and human services secretary.

Several federal watchdogs fired by Donald Trump have filed a lawsuit against his administration to get their jobs back.

In the suit filed on Wednesday, eight former inspectors general from eight government departments – including defense, veterans affairs, health and human services, state, agriculture, education and labor – and the Small Business Administration said they were seeking “redress for their unlawful and unjustified purported termination” by Trump and their respective agency heads.

The lawsuit states that just four days into his second term, Trump, “acting through a two-sentence email sent by the director or deputy director of the office of presidential personnel, purported to remove from office (supposedly on account of ‘changing priorities’) nearly a score of IGs”.

It also says that the fired officials were “appointed by and/or served under presidents of both parties”, including Trump during his first term.

Altogether, the inspectors general who were fired were responsible for conducting and facilitating oversight of more than $5tn of appropriated funds annually and more than 3.5 million federal employees, or 80% of the federal workforce.

The lawsuit alleges: “Despite the obvious illegality of these purported terminations, the head of each affected agency – including the eight heads of plaintiffs’ respective agencies – effectuated and continue to effectuate the purported removals.”

It adds that the eight federal agencies removed the inspectors general from their access to their government email accounts and computer systems, government-issued phones, personal ID cards and computers.

The inspectors general were also alleged to have been banned from entering the government buildings where they worked, with the lawsuit stating that “these actions have had their intended effect of making it impossible for the IGs to perform their lawful duties”.

“Because the purported removals were illegal and hence a nullity, the actions just described constituted illegal interference with the IGs’ official duties,” the lawsuit says, adding that “neither President Trump nor anyone else in his administration has claimed that the purported removals complied with the IG Act”.

“Instead, President Trump falsely claimed after the fact that such removals were ‘a very common thing to do’ and ‘a very standard thing to do’,” the lawsuit says, alleging that Trump is “wrong to claim these actions were ‘common’ or ‘standard’”.

As part of the lawsuit, the plaintiffs are seeking a declaration that their purported removals were legally invalid and so they remain as inspectors general of their agencies unless and until the president lawfully removes them in compliance with statutory procedures. Additionally, the plaintiffs are seeking injunctive relief prohibiting the defendants or anyone working in concert with them from impeding the lawful exercises of the duties of their office, the lawsuit says.

Wednesday’s lawsuit follows Trump’s sacking of 18 inspectors general less than a month after he returned to the White House.

Hannibal “Mike” Ware, one of the plaintiffs in Wednesday’s lawsuit and the former inspector general for the Small Business Administration, told MSNBC last month: “This is not about any of our individual jobs. We acknowledge that the president has the right to remove any of us that he chooses. But the protections that were baked into the act is everything, absent having to provide a real reason. We’re looking at what amounts to a threat to democracy, a threat to independent oversight, and a threat to transparency in government.”

Similarly, Mark Greenblatt, the former inspector general of the interior department, told CNN that the firings “should be setting off alarm bells”.

“The whole construct of inspectors general, it’s based on us being independent, that we’re not beholden to a political party of any stripe, that we are there as the taxpayers’ representatives to call balls and strikes without any dog in the fight. And so the question is: what will President Trump do with these positions? Is he going to nominate watchdogs or is he going to nominate lapdogs?” said Greenblatt.

Two senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officials have been reassigned amid frustration that deportation and arrest numbers were not increasing fast enough to meet Donald Trump’s targets.

Russell Hott and Peter Berg, the two highest-ranking members of Ice’s enforcement agency, were removed from their positions, the Washington Post first reported, citing three people with knowledge on the moves. Hott was reassigned to Ice’s local office in Washington DC, and Berg to St Paul, Minnesota.

Todd Lyons, a senior executive from Ice’s Boston office, will now take over as the acting head of Ice’s enforcement and removal operations, the Post reported.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, confirmed the reassignments in a statement to the Post: “Ice needs a culture of accountability that it has been starved of for the past four years. We have a president, DHS secretary, and American people who rightfully demand results, and our Ice leadership will ensure the agency delivers.”

During his campaign, Trump promised to carry out “millions and millions” of deportations of undocumented immigrants. But arrests under Ice have slowed down in February compared with 800-1,200 arrests a day in late January, Reuters reported. Ice has also stopped posting daily arrest figures.

Trump was reportedly “angry” at deportation and arrest levels, NBC News reported last week.

“It’s driving him nuts they’re not deporting more people,” one person with knowledge on Trump’s thinking told NBC.

Trump’s “border czar”, Tom Homan, who previously led Ice, also said he was “not satisfied” with the number of Ice arrests, in comments to the press on Tuesday.

“Sanctuary cities are putting roadblocks up. We’ve got leaks. So we need to increase the arrests of illegal aliens, especially those with criminal convictions. So we’re going to continue,” he said.

Ice has also released detainees as some detention centers exceeded their maximum capacity, much to Trump officials’ ire.

To boost figures, Trump officials have issued new arrest quotas, with Ice expected to carry out at least 1,200 to 1,500 arrest a day and 75 arrests a day for Ice field offices, the Post reported. Experts have warned that such strategies will probably lead to the arrest of undocumented people without criminal records.

China’s energy production is putting coal and renewables in competition with each other, according to a new analysis that found continuing approval of coal-fired projects in 2024 undermined the “unprecedented” surge in clean energy production.

The analysis of China’s 2024 energy production – released on Thursday by two thinktanks, the Global Energy Monitor and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) – found China’s major advances in energy production were being held back by a commitment to coal power.

China is the world’s biggest carbon emitter but also its biggest producer of renewable energy. The government has pledged to peak carbon emissions before 2030 and reach carbon neutrality by 2060. But experts fear those targets will remain out of reach as long as it keeps approving new coal production and prioritising coal-fired power.

“Coal-fired power generation could decline, yet the coal industry continues to expect growth, setting the stage for an increasingly unsustainable conflict between coal investments and the need to decarbonise the power system,” the report said. It found China had shown an “unprecedented pace” of renewables production in 2024, adding 356GW of wind and solar capacity. The figure was almost equal to the US total for the same year, and about 4.5 times that of the EU.

Despite solar and wind soaring, and helping drive China’s ailing economy in 2023-2024, its usage inexplicably dropped off in the later part of the year, CREA said.

“The record decline in solar output and the unexpected drop in wind utilisation was not explained by weather conditions, indicating rising curtailment – much of which may be unreported,” it said. Qi Qin, lead author of the report and China analyst at CREA, said curtailments were driven largely by long-term power purchase agreements that set minimum quotas for coal power bought by local governments.

“China started to do [these agreements] in 2020 for energy security, to ensure there will be enough power throughout the year at reasonable price,” said Qin.

“More solar and wind should be integrated into the power grid, but the fact is it wasn’t [because of these agreements].”

China’s rate of approvals for new coal energy was also of concern, the report said.

In 2024 China also approved 66.7GW of new coal-fired capacity, started construction on 94.5GW of new coal power projects – the most in one year since 2015 – and resumed construction on 3.3GW of suspended construction projects. One gigawatt is the equivalent of a large coal power plant. The report said China accounted for 93% of global construction starts for coal power in 2024.

The approvals, while lower than previous years, sped up in the latter half of 2024, dampening hopes that an earlier slowdown – just 9GW worth of power plants were given permits in the first half of 2024 – signalled China was turning a corner.

The amount of actual coal power capacity brought online in 2024 – about 30GW – was far below the government’s target of 80GW, but Qin said the new construction signalled China would more than make up for it over the next two to three years, with a “substantial” number of new plants on track to start production.

Qin said some of the figures in their analysis were positive “but it’s not good enough”.

“China knows that it has two carbon goals, and it knows they have to stop increasing coal consumption by 2025. With the abundance of renewables, China has the capacity to move even faster.”

The concurrent growth in clean energy production and continued pursuit of coal-fired power created a “conflicting dynamic” and worked against a principle of winding down the fossil fuel industry as renewables came onboard, including by limiting the full integration and use of the new renewable power, CREA said.

“Coal and clean energy are increasingly competing for space in China’s power system,” it said. “Despite record-breaking clean energy additions, Chinas power sector remains structurally misaligned with its decarbonisation goals. The parallel expansion of coal and renewables risks undermining China’s clean energy transition.”

Twelve people were wounded when a grenade was thrown into a bar in the city of Grenoble in south-eastern France, officials said on Wednesday.

The attacker entered the bar, which was packed with customers, and threw a grenade before fleeing without saying a word, said prosecutor Francois Touret-de-Courcy. Investigators had not yet identified a motive but did not believe it was a terrorist attack

Magistrate Christophe Barret said the attacker appeared to be carrying a Kalashnikov-type assault rifle but did not use it.

The incident took place in the Olympic Village neighbourhood, built when the city hosted the 1968 Winter Olympics, said Touret-de-Courcy.

The wounded included two people in critical condition, said Touret-de-Courcy, but that figure was later raised to six by local Isère official Catherine Séguin.

“I condemn in the strongest possible terms this criminal act of extraordinary violence,” the local mayor, Eric Piolle, wrote on X, thanking the emergency services for their work.

Police confirmed the explosion had been caused by a thrown grenade.

With Agence France-Presse

Donald Trump’s buyout program for federal employees can proceed, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday. The move paves a path forward for the 65,000 government workers who have volunteered to resign under the president’s plan to shrink the federal workforce.

The US district judge George O’Toole Jr in Boston – who halted the so-called “Fork in the Road” program last week, before its 6 February deadline, to assess whether it was legal – found that the unions who had sued on behalf of their employees did not have legal standing to challenge the resignation offer because it would not directly affect them. O’Toole did not rule on the legality of the program itself.

It was a significant legal victory for the Republican president after a string of courtroom setbacks.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told the Associated Press: “This goes to show that lawfare will not ultimately prevail over the will of 77 million Americans who supported President Trump and his priorities.”

Everett Kelly, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 800,000 federal workers, told Reuters: “Today’s ruling is a setback in the fight for dignity and fairness for public servants. But it’s not the end of that fight.”

In a statement, Kelley added that the union’s lawyers were evaluating the decision and assessing next steps.

The union maintains that requiring US citizens to make a decision about “whether to uproot their families and leave their careers for what amounts to an unfunded IOU from Elon Musk” is illegal.

The deferred resignation program has been spearheaded by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who is serving as Trump’s top adviser for reducing federal spending. Under the plan, employees can stop working and get paid until 30 September.

Officials have been told to prepare staff cuts of up to 70% at some agencies, sources told Reuters. The 65,000 federal employees who have signed up for the buyouts, according to a White House official, equal about 3% of the total civilian workforce.

Labor unions argued the plan is illegal and asked for O’Toole to keep it on hold and prevent the office of personnel management, or OPM, from soliciting more workers to sign up. The administration said the program is now closed to new applicants.

The resignation offer is one of several tactics Trump and Musk have taken to gut the federal workforce in recent weeks, alongside massive cuts to foreign aid and the Department of Education. After Musk spent $250m to re-elect Trump, the president named the tech billionaire head of a newly minted, so-called “department of government efficiency”, designed to slash federal spending.

Donald Trump’s buyout program for federal employees can proceed, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday. The move paves a path forward for the 65,000 government workers who have volunteered to resign under the president’s plan to shrink the federal workforce.

The US district judge George O’Toole Jr in Boston – who halted the so-called “Fork in the Road” program last week, before its 6 February deadline, to assess whether it was legal – found that the unions who had sued on behalf of their employees did not have legal standing to challenge the resignation offer because it would not directly affect them. O’Toole did not rule on the legality of the program itself.

It was a significant legal victory for the Republican president after a string of courtroom setbacks.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told the Associated Press: “This goes to show that lawfare will not ultimately prevail over the will of 77 million Americans who supported President Trump and his priorities.”

Everett Kelly, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 800,000 federal workers, told Reuters: “Today’s ruling is a setback in the fight for dignity and fairness for public servants. But it’s not the end of that fight.”

In a statement, Kelley added that the union’s lawyers were evaluating the decision and assessing next steps.

The union maintains that requiring US citizens to make a decision about “whether to uproot their families and leave their careers for what amounts to an unfunded IOU from Elon Musk” is illegal.

The deferred resignation program has been spearheaded by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who is serving as Trump’s top adviser for reducing federal spending. Under the plan, employees can stop working and get paid until 30 September.

Officials have been told to prepare staff cuts of up to 70% at some agencies, sources told Reuters. The 65,000 federal employees who have signed up for the buyouts, according to a White House official, equal about 3% of the total civilian workforce.

Labor unions argued the plan is illegal and asked for O’Toole to keep it on hold and prevent the office of personnel management, or OPM, from soliciting more workers to sign up. The administration said the program is now closed to new applicants.

The resignation offer is one of several tactics Trump and Musk have taken to gut the federal workforce in recent weeks, alongside massive cuts to foreign aid and the Department of Education. After Musk spent $250m to re-elect Trump, the president named the tech billionaire head of a newly minted, so-called “department of government efficiency”, designed to slash federal spending.

Google’s executives gave details on Wednesday on how the tech giant will sunset its diversity initiatives and defended dropping its pledge against building artificial intelligence for weaponry and surveillance in an all-staff meeting.

Melonie Parker, Google’s former head of diversity, said the company was doing away with its diversity and inclusion employee training programs and “updating” broader training programs that have “DEI content”. It was the first time company executives have addressed the whole staff since Google announced it would no longer follow hiring goals for diversity and took down its pledge not to build militarized AI. The chief legal officer, Kent Walker, said a lot had changed since Google first introduced its AI principles in 2018, which explicitly stated Google would not build AI for harmful purposes. He said it would be “good for society” for the company to be part of evolving geopolitical discussions in response to a question about why the company removed prohibitions against building AI for weapons and surveillance.

Parker said that, as a federal contractor, the company has been reviewing all of its programs and initiatives in response to Donald Trump’s executive orders that direct federal agencies and contractors to dismantle DEI work. Parker’s role has also been changed from chief diversity officer to the vice-president of Googler Engagement.

“What’s not changing is we’ve always hired the best person for the job,” she said, according to a recording of the meeting the Guardian reviewed.

Google’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, said the company had always “deeply cared” about hiring a workforce that represents the diversity of its global users but that the firm had to comply with the rules and regulations of where it operates.

“Our values are enduring, but we have to comply with legal directions depending on how they evolve,” Pichai said.

Pichai, who was speaking from Paris while attending an international AI summit, and other executives were responding to questions employees posted in an internal forum. Some of these questions were part of a coordinated effort among worker activist groups such as No Tech for Apartheid to force company executives to answer for the tech giant’s drastic move away from its previous core values.

Employees had submitted 93 questions about the company’s decision to remove its pledge not to build AI weapons and more than 100 about Google’s announcement that it was rolling back DEI pledges, according to screenshots the Guardian reviewed. The company recently shifted to using AI to summarize similar questions employees had ahead of regularly scheduled staff meetings, which are known as TGIF.

Last week, Google joined Meta and Amazon in shifting away from an emphasis on a culture of inclusivity in favor of policies molded in the image of the Trump administration. In addition to removing mentions of its commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) from filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said it would no longer set hiring targets for people from underrepresented backgrounds. The company also removed language from its publicly posted AI principles that stated it wouldn’t build AI for harmful purposes including weaponry and surveillance.

“We are increasingly being asked to have a seat at the table in some important conversations, and I think it’s good for society that Google has a role in those conversations in areas where we do specialize – cybersecurity, or some of the work around biology, and many more,” Walker, the chief legal officer, said. “While it may be that some of the strict prohibitions that were in [the first version] of the AI principles don’t jive well with those more nuanced conversations we’re having now, it remains the case that our north star through all of this is that the benefits substantially outweigh the risks.”

Google has long attempted to give the impression that it was toeing the line between its stated corporate and cultural values and chasing government and defense contracts. After employee protests in 2018, the company withdrew from the US Defense Department’s Project Maven – which used AI to analyze drone footage – and released its AI principles and values, which promised not to build AI for weapons or surveillance.

In the years since, however, the company has started working with the Pentagon again after securing a $9bn Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability contract along with Microsoft, Amazon and Oracle. Google has also had active contracts to provide AI to the Israel Defense Forces. The tech giant had worked over time to distance the contract, called Project Nimbus, from the military arm of the Israeli government, but the Washington Post revealed documents that showed the company not only worked with the IDF but rushed to fulfill new requests for more AI access after the 7 October attacks. It is unclear how the IDF is using Google’s AI capabilities but, as the Guardian reported, the Israeli military has used AI for a number of military purposes including to help find and identify bombing targets.

In a statement a Google spokesperson, Anna Kowalczyk, said the company’s work with the Israeli government was not “directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services”.

Organizers at No Tech for Apartheid said the DEI and AI announcements were deeply related. The “SVP of People Operations Fiona Cicconi communicated internally that the move to dismantle DEI programs was made to insulate government contracts from ‘risk’,” the group wrote in a worker call to action published on Tuesday. “It is important to note that the bulk of government spending on technology services is spent through the military.”

For each category of question from employees, Google’s internal AI summarizes all the queries into a single query. The AI distilled the questions about the development of AI weapons to: “We recently removed a section from our AI principles page that pledged to avoid using the technology in potentially harmful applications, such as weapons and surveillance. Why did we remove this section?”

While the company does not make all of the questions that were posted visible, the list gives a snapshot of some of them. Questions that employees asked included how the updated AI principles would ensure the company’s tools “are not misused for harmful purposes” and asked executives to “please talk frankly and without corp speak and legalese”.

The third-most-popular question employees asked was why the AI summaries were so bad.

“The AI summaries of questions on Ask are terrible. Can we go back to answering the questions people actually asked?” it read.

Attorneys representing a collection of news organizations said in a legal filing submitted on Tuesday that video evidence used during the sentencing of a rioter involved in the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol had vanished from an online government platform.

Nine videos related to the case against Glen Simon, who pleaded guilty to a count of disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, have disappeared and are no longer available in the database, according to the filing.

Simon pleaded guilty in 2022 and was sentenced to eight months behind bars.

Prosecutors said that he used a metal bike rack against law enforcement officers who were trying to control the crowd at the Capitol. He also recorded himself inside the Capitol building declaring: “This is what a revolution looks like” and “We gotta show these fuckers we ain’t fucking around. It’s the only way to get it done. Fear!”

The judge overseeing his case said that Simon had “helped incite the crowd” and had lied to the FBI about his actions that day.

The filing states that as of Tuesday, it appears that only video files related to Simon’s case have disappeared from the database. It remains to be seen whether the Department of Justice removed the files intentionally.

A spokesperson for the US attorney’s office for the District of Columbia declined to comment to NPR – which first reported the story – citing ongoing litigation.

The Guardian has also contacted the justice department and the US attorney’s office for the District of Columbia.

The justice department has reported that about 140 police officers from the US Capitol police and the DC police were injured during the January 6 Capitol riot.

After Donald Trump took office on 20 January he issued pardons for about 1,500 individuals convicted of offenses related to January 6, including some convicted of violent acts.

Trump also granted commutations for more than a dozen cases and directed the attorney general to dismiss all pending indictments against people related to January 6.

During the January 6 criminal cases, media organizations fought for and successfully gained access to court exhibits, including video files.

However, per Tuesday’s filing, an attorney representing the press coalition recently noticed that nine video files from Simon’s case were no longer available.

“Although the prosecutions and related criminal proceedings against individuals convicted of assaulting police officers, vandalizing the Capitol, and obstructing justice on January 6 have been dismissed, the public continues to have a powerful interest in the judicial records submitted in the Capitol Cases, including the Video Exhibits,” the filing states.

The press coalition say that on 10 February, it contacted the government to request the restoration of the missing evidence, an explanation of what occurred and confirmation that no records would be removed without notice.

The filing states that although the government’s lawyers assured them that a prompt response would follow, as of 11 February, no explanation was given.

In light of this, the press coalition is now petitioning the court to order the government to restore the video exhibits within 48 hours and ensure that all records related to the January 6 cases remain accessible to the press and public unless the court orders otherwise.

“That right of access does not dissipate merely because all of the Capitol Case defendants have been pardoned,” it adds in the filing. “To the contrary, the public interest in ensuring that the video exhibits remain available in the future is all the greater, given that these videos ‘are immutable and represent the truth, no matter how the events of January 6 are described by those charged or their allies.’”

Former prosecutors involved in January 6 cases told NPR that they fear the Trump administration may attempt to erase records of the violence that occurred that day.

“A lot of politicians’ careers now depend on the record of the attack on the Capitol being rewritten,” Brendan Ballou, a former federal prosecutor who worked on January 6 cases, said. “Making these exhibits widely available will make it harder for people to hide the history of what happened on January 6.”

The filing also alleges that in the days after Trump took office, the “Department of Justice also began removing important information about the Capitol Cases from its website”.

Danish film-maker Lars von Trier, who has Parkinson’s disease, has been admitted to a care centre, his production company said on Wednesday.

One of the biggest names in contemporary auteur cinema, Von Trier has directed more than 14 feature films, often disturbing and violent.

“Lars is currently associated with a care centre that can provide him with the treatment and care his condition requires,” Zentropa producer Louise Vesth posted on Instagram.

“It’s a complement to his own private accommodation. Lars is doing well under the circumstances,” she added, lamenting the “need to pass on very personal information” following speculation in the Danish media.

Von Trier made public his diagnosis in 2022, when he was aged 66. The director sparked outrage by telling a 2011 Cannes film festival press conference for his film Melancholia that he was a Nazi who understood Adolf Hitler and sympathised “with him a little bit”.

He was immediately banned, but his film remained in competition and its star Kirsten Dunst won an award for best actress. He later apologised for the comment.

Von Trier had previously won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2000 for Dancer in the Dark.

The father of four wrote in a now-deleted Instagram post in 2023 that “with any luck I should still have a few decent movies left in me”.

In September, a project von Trier was set to direct, titled After, had been granted 1.3 million Danish kroner ($192,000) by the Danish Film Institute (DFI), according to a listing published by the DFI.

Revenge, they say, is a dish best served cold. And for an endangered owl breeding program in Canada, it’s also a dish best served dead.

For the price of a coffee, spurned and disgruntled lovers can revel in the satisfaction of having a dead rat named after an ex, before it is fed to a northern spotted owl.

The British Columbia-based breeder is running its No regRATS campaign ahead of Valentine’s Day, promising a photo and video of one’s rat, named after a former lover – or arch-enemy – and the owl it has been fed to in exchange for at least a C$5 donation.

Before industrial logging in south-west British Columbia, there were nearly 1,000 spotted owls in the old-growth forests. But they have vanished in recent decades, victims of habitat destruction.

Activists have tried in vain to hold the government to account, alleging protected species laws have failed to prevent the extirpation of the owls.

In February 2023, the federal environment minister, Steven Guilbeault, said the spotted owl was facing “imminent threats to its survival” and told environmental groups he would recommend an emergency order to block further destruction of its habitat in British Columbia.

Months later, however, Canadian cabinet ministers rejected Guilbeault’s plea to save the endangered owl.

Efforts to revive the population have failed, with a pair of owls released from the breeding program dying within months. The lone female in the wild is also believed to have died.

The breeding program, which operates with limited funds, is seen as the last hope of returning the owls to the wild and reviving a population widely seen as a barometer for the health of old-growth ecosystems.

Predictably, the campaign has angered rat fans.

After teasing the campaign on Instagram, users chimed in that it was unfair to equate “noble” and “clever” animals to a former flame.

“How dumb and cruel. What you are feeding is a bad opinion about rats. Completely undeserved. What about ticks or mosquitoes instead?”

The breeding program says rodents make up most of the owls’ diet. “They’re going to be eating the rats anyway. We’re just trying to have a little fun and fundraise so we can continue caring for the owls,” it wrote. “Don’t get us wrong, we love rats too.”

Others, however, were more than happy to fork over the cash.

“The satisfaction of naming a rat after someone who has hurt you and having said rat get eaten!!!! And then to get a picture? Priceless,” wrote on user. “Love this more than I should. Perfect fundraiser. Money well spent.”