The US vice-president, JD Vance, has launched a brutal ideological assault on Europe, accusing its leaders of suppressing free speech, failing to halt illegal migration and running in fear from voters’ true beliefs.

In a chastising speech on Friday that openly questioned whether current European values warranted defence by the US, he painted a picture of European politics infected by media censorship, cancelled elections and political correctness.

Arguing that the true threat to Europe stemmed not from external actors such as Russia or China, but Europe’s own internal retreat from some of its “most fundamental values”, he repeatedly questioned whether the US and Europe any longer had a shared agenda. “What I worry about is the threat from within,” Vance said.

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, the vice-president had been expected to address the critical question of the Ukraine war and security differences between Washington and Europe. Instead, he widely skated over these to give a lecture on what he claimed was the continent’s failure to listen to the populist concerns of voters.

Vance said of Donald Trump’s re-election: “There is a new sheriff in town.” He said: “Democracy will not survive if their people’s concerns are deemed invalid or even worse not worth being considered.”

The blistering and confrontational remarks were met with shock at the conference and were later condemned by the EU and Germany, while drawing praise from Russian state television. They signalled a deepening of the transatlantic chasm beyond different perceptions of Russia to an even deeper societal rupture about values and the nature of democracy.

Vance said: “If you are afraid of the voices, the opinions and the conscience that guide your very own people … If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you, nor for that matter is there anything you can do for the American people.”

Accusing European politicians, and the organisers of the Munich Security Conference, of refusing to address issues such as migration, he urged a shocked and largely silent hall in Munich to realise they should not exclude politicians representing populist parties.

In Germany, a firewall has long existed preventing mainstream parties from engaging with the far-right Alternative für Deutschland owing to its Nazi origins. But Vance said there was no room for such barriers.

“People dismissing voters’ concerns, shutting down their media, protects nothing. It is the most surefire way to destroy democracy.”

He described “old entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet-era words like misinformation and disinformation” to impose censorship.

Many in the hall were swift to say that Vance had still refused to accept that Trump lost the US presidential election in 2020, a refusal that ultimately resulted in a mob of the president’s supporters attacking the US Capitol.

Vance said: “For years we have been told everything we fund and support is in the name of our shared democratic values, everything from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship is billed as a defence of democracy, but when we see European courts cancelling elections and senior officials threatening to cancel others we ought to ask ourselves if we are holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard.”

Banning politicians representing populist parties was wrong, he argued. “We do not have to agree with everything or anything people say, but when political leaders represent an important constituency it is incumbent on us to listen.”

After the speech it was confirmed that JD Vance privately met the AfD leader, Alice Weidel, for 30 minutes. In a breach of previous protocol, he had declined the offer to meet the SPD leader and current chancellor, Olaf Scholz.

His attack on mainstream European politicians drew a stern response from German and EU officials. The German defence minister, Boris Pistorius, said he could not let the speech go without comment. “If I understood him correctly, he is comparing conditions in parts of Europe with those in authoritarian regimes,” Pistorius said. “That is unacceptable, and it is not the Europe and not the democracy in which I live and am currently campaigning.”

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said allies should be focusing on bigger threats such as Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. “Listening to that speech, they try to pick a fight with us and we don’t want to a pick a fight with our friends,” Kallas said at the Munich event.

Kallas later invited EU foreign ministers to meet on Sunday to discuss Ukraine – and relations with the Trump administration. “The aim of the meeting will be to share information and take stock of the latest contacts with United States administration representatives and with Ukraine at the Munich Security Conference,” said the invitation to the meeting, which was seen by Reuters.

The speech drew effusive praise on Russian state TV, where a correspondent, Asya Emelyanova, said on Rossiya 1: “It was very nice to hear Vance’s very strong speech. It was a public caning, I can’t call it anything else.”

In remarks that will delight the German far right days before elections there, Vance said: “Of all the pressing challenges that the nations represented here face, I believe there is nothing more urgent than mass migration.”

His speech came a day after a 24-year-old Afghan man was arrested in Munich over a car-ramming attack that injured 36 people. Vance seized on the case to reinforce his point. “How many times must we suffer these appalling setbacks before we change course and take our shared civilisation in a new direction?” he asked.

Instead, he claimed, “in Britain and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat”. He listed a string of cases that he claimed were evidence of this, railing against Romania for cancelling presidential elections and Sweden for arresting a man for burning a Qur’an in public. Britain was singled out for arresting a man praying near an abortion clinic.

Attempting to underplay Moscow’s role in the rise of the populist right, he said it was wrong for Russia to buy social media to influence European elections, but “if your democracy can be destroyed by a few thousand dollars of digital media from a foreign country it was not very strong to begin with”.

Before Vance’s speech, the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, accused Trump and tech barons of being willing to destroy democracy. He said: “It is clear that the new American administration holds a worldview that is very different from our own. One that shows no regard for established rules, for partnerships or for the trust that has been built over time. But I am convinced that it is not in the interest of the international community for this worldview to become the dominant paradigm.”

In JD Vance’s confrontational and pugnacious speech at the Munich Security Conference, the vice-president ran through a series of examples to highlight his claims that Europe has gone off the rails. Here, we look at what he said – and whether it stacks up.

United Kingdom

Speaking about “our very dear friends, the United Kingdom”, Vance claimed a “backslide away from conscience rights” had “placed the basic liberties of religious Britons in particular in the crosshairs”.

The British government, he said, had charged Adam Smith-Conner, a physiotherapist and an army veteran, with the “heinous crime of standing 50 metres from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes, not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own”.

Vance claimed that Conner told an “unmoved” law enforcement officer that he was praying for an unborn son that he and a former girlfriend had aborted years before. “Adam was found guilty of breaking the government’s new ‘buffer zones law’, which criminalises silent prayer and other actions that could influence a person’s decision within 200 metres of an abortion facility,” Vance said. “He was sentenced to pay thousands of pounds in legal costs to the prosecution.”

Fact check

Smith-Connor was convicted of breaching a safe zone in October last year, after refusing repeated requests to move away from outside an abortion clinic in Bournemouth in November 2022.

The 51-year-old told the council the day before he would be carrying out a silent vigil as he had on previous occasions. On the day, a community officer spoke to him for an hour and 40 minutes and asked him to leave – but he refused. Smith-Connor was handed a two-year conditional discharge and ordered to pay more than £9,000 costs after the case was brought by Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council.

Smith-Connor is receiving legal support from Alliance Defending Freedom International, an American conservative Christian legal advocacy group that states it “champions religious freedom through … advocacy efforts”. ADF International said it would be supporting Smith-Connor to appeal against the decision in July.

Smith-Connor’s case was brought after a public space protection order was introduced outside the Bournemouth clinic in October 2022, which banned activity including protests, harassment and vigils.

October last year saw the introduction of the Public Order Act 2023 in England and Wales, which introduced buffer zones of 150 metres around abortion clinics to stop women being harassed with leaflets, shown pictures of foetuses, or having to pass by vigils.

Scotland

The Scottish government was said to have begun distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay “within so-called safe access zones, warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law”. He went on: “The government urged readers to report any fellow citizens suspected guilty of thought crime in Britain and across Europe.”

Fact check

The Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) (Scotland) Act, introduced last year, introduced safe access zones within 200 metres of abortion clinics, banning harassing, alarming or distressing actions.

“Silent prayer” is listed among the banned activities to prevent mass silent vigils that have been used by large groups of US anti-abortion protesters such as 40 Days for Life who gather outside clinics to pressure women entering not to have an abortion.

A Conservative US TikToker erroneously claimed that silent prayer at home could break the law in Scotland. However the law states that the actions are banned if they are likely to cause alarm or distress to someone accessing abortion services. Silent prayer in a home which caused no distress and alarm to other would not fall under this category.

A Scottish government spokesperson said: “The vice-president’s claim is incorrect. Private prayer at home is not prohibited within safe access zones and no letter has ever suggested it was.”

Romania

Vance told the Munich security conference that a former European commissioner had “sounded delighted” that an “entire election” in Romania had been annulled. Vance added: “He warned that if things don’t go to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany too … But when we see European courts cancelling elections and senior officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we’re holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard.”

Fact check

The US vice-president was referring to comments by the former European commissioner Thierry Breton. The former French minister had been speaking after the decision by Romania’s constitutional court in December to annul the early results of the country’s presidential election.

The court had intervened after declassified intelligence documents pointed to what was described as a massive and “highly organised” campaign for the independent candidate Călin Georgescu, on the TikTok platform that was probably orchestrated by a “state actor”. Georgescu has committed to stop all Romanian political and military support for Ukraine if elected.

Commenting on the case, Breton had said: “Let’s keep calm and enforce our laws in Europe when they are at risk of being circumvented … We did it in Romania, and we will obviously do it if necessary in Germany.”

Elon Musk intervened at the time on X, referring to “the staggering absurdity of Thierry Breton as the tyrant of Europe”. Breton responded: “Tyrant of Europe? Wow! But No Elon Musk: the EU has NO mechanism to nullify any election anywhere in EU. Not at all what is said in the video below related only to the application of the [Digital Services Act] and its moderation obligations. Lost in translation… or another fake news?”

Brussels

Vance said that in Brussels “EU Commission commissars” had warned citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest at “the moment they spot what they’ve judged to be “hateful content”. In Germany, he claimed police had carried out “raids against citizens suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online as part of ‘combating misogyny’ on the internet”.

Fact check

Under the Digital Services Act, the European Commission can ask a digital services coordinator in an EU member state to ask a judge to assess an application for a temporary restriction on access within the EU to a large online platform or search engine. The commission does also have the power to bypass the judge-led process in an “urgent situation”. The commission has said that such an extreme measure must “follow the due process” and “would be limited in time”.

Restrictions on services can only be enforced where there is evidence of criminal offences involving threat to people’s life or safety. Should the commission use its enforcement powers, its decisions are subject to judicial redress at the European court of justice.

German police carried out raids last March on the homes of people suspected of posting misogynistic hate speech on the internet, including those advocating rape or sexual assault. Police raided homes and interrogated 45 suspects in 11 states. None of the suspects were detained.

Sweden

Vance said “the government” had “convicted a Christian activist for participating in Qur’an burnings that resulted in his friend’s murder”. He went on: “And as the judge in his case chillingly noted, Sweden’s laws to supposedly protect free expression do not, in fact, grant – and I’m quoting – a ‘free pass’ to do or say anything without risking offending the group that holds that belief.”

Fact check

Salwan Najem was given a suspended sentence and a fine by a court over statements he made in connection with four incidents of Qur’an burning in Stockholm. He had carried out the book burning with Salwan Momika, who was subsequently shot dead during a TikTok broadcast last month. Najem, who came to Sweden from Iraq in 1998 and has been a Swedish citizen since June 2005, told the court that his actions were legitimate criticisms of religion protected by Sweden’s freedom of expression laws. Göran Lundahl, the judge in the case, said freedom of expression did not constitute a “free pass to do or say anything”.

Germany

Vance cited the recent attack in Munich as reason for a “new direction”, suggesting the attack was typical. “An asylum seeker, often a young man in his mid-20s, already known to police, rammed a car into a crowd and shatters a community”, he said.

Fact check

German police and prosecutors have said that an Afghan suspect in a car ramming in central Munich that injured at least 36 people was believed to have had an “Islamist” motive and will answer to charges of attempted murder. They have not found links to a jihadist organisation such as the Islamic State group nor any accomplices.

According to the latest EU terrorism situation and trend report from Europol, there were a total of 120 terrorist attacks (98 completed, nine failed and 13 foiled) in seven EU member states in 2023. The highest number of terrorist attacks were perpetrated by separatist terrorists (70, all completed), followed by leftwing and anarchist actors (32, of which 23 completed). There were 14 jihadist terrorist attacks of which five were completed. Two rightwing terrorist attacks were foiled.

A federal judge has ordered Donald Trump’s administration to temporarily lift a funding freeze that has shut down US humanitarian aid and development work around the world, and he has set a five-day deadline for the administration to prove it is complying.

The judge’s ruling late on Thursday cited the financial devastation that the near-overnight cutoff of payments has caused suppliers and non-profits that carry out much of US aid overseas.

The ruling was the first to challenge the Republican administration’s funding freeze. It comes amid a growing number of lawsuits by government employees’ groups, aid groups and government suppliers asking courts to roll back the administration’s fast-paced dismantling of the US Agency for International Development, or USAid, and US foreign assistance overall.

Trump and his aide Elon Musk say the six-decade-old aid agency and much of foreign assistance overall is out of line with the Republican president’s agenda.

Administration officials “have not offered any explanation for why a blanket suspension of all congressionally appropriated foreign aid, which set off a shockwave and upended” contracts with thousands of non-profit groups, businesses and others, “was a rational precursor to reviewing programs”, Judge Amir H Ali said in his ruling.

Contractors, farmers and suppliers in the US and around the world say the Trump administration’s funding freeze has stiffed them on hundreds of millions of dollars in pay for work already done, has forced them to lay off staff and is rapidly putting many near the point of financial collapse.

Farmers and other suppliers and contractors describe fortunes in undelivered food aid rotting in ports and other undelivered aid at risk of theft.

The judge ordered the administration to notify every organization with an existing foreign-aid contract with the federal government of his temporary stay. He set a Tuesday deadline for the administration to show it had done so and was otherwise complying with the order.

There was no immediate public response from the Trump administration.

The judge issued the temporary order in the US in a lawsuit brought by two organizations, the Aids Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and the Global Health Council, representing health organizations receiving US funds for work abroad.

In his order, the judge noted that the Trump administration argued it had to shut down funding for the thousands of USAid aid programs abroad to conduct a thorough review of each program and whether it should be eliminated.

However, lawyers for the administration had failed to show they had a “rational reason for disregarding … the countless small and large businesses that would have to shutter programs or shutter their businesses altogether”, the judge added.

The ruling also bars the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and other Trump officials from enforcing stop-work orders that the Trump administration and Musk have sent to the companies and organizations carrying out foreign aid orders.

The judge also rejected the Trump administration’s argument that it was buffering the impact of the funding freeze and offering waivers to allow funding to keep flowing to some aid partners. He cited testimony that no such waiver system yet existed and that the online payment system at USAid no longer functioned.

In a separate ruling in another lawsuit on Thursday, a judge said his temporary block on a Trump administration order that would pull all but a fraction of USAid staffers off the job worldwide would stay in place at least another week.

US district judge Carl Nichols closely questioned the government about how it could keep aid staffers abroad safe on leave despite the administration’s dismantling of USAid. When a justice department attorney could not provide detailed plans, the judge asked him to file court documents after the hearing.

USAid staffers who until recently were posted in Congo had filed affidavits for the lawsuit describing the aid agency as all but abandoning them when looting and political violence exploded in the country’s capital last month, leaving them to evacuate with their families.

The Trump administration is making a big bet on Europe’s hard right.

Speaking at a conference of Europe’s leaders in Munich on Friday, the US vice-president JD Vance stunned the room by delivering what amounted to a campaign speech against Germany’s sitting government just one week before an election in which the anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim AfD is set to take second place.

As Vance accused foreign leaders of suppressing free speech, failing to halt illegal migration and running in fear from voters’ true beliefs, a whisper of “Jesus Christ” and the squirming in chairs could be heard in an overflow room.

Hours later he met with Alice Weidel, the leader of the AfD, breaking a taboo in German politics called the “firewall against the far-right”, meant to kept the anti-immigrant party with ties to extremists out of the mainstream and of any ruling coalition.

“It’s an incredibly controversial thing for him to do,” said Kristine Berzina, the managing director of the German Marshall Fund’s Geostrategy North, who was at the Munich Security Conference.

The backing of Vance – or Elon Musk, who recently gave a video address at an AfD party summit – is unlikely to tilt the result of Germany’s elections, said Berzina. And it’s unlikely to browbeat the ruling Christian Democratic Union, which should win next week’s vote, into allowing AfD to enter any coalition.

But the US right under Trump does have its eyes set on a broader transformation in Europe: the rise of populist parties that share an anti-immigration and isolationist worldview and will join the US in its assault on globalism and liberal values. They see those leaders in Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Giorgia Meloni in Italy, as well as the UK’s Reform party and Marine Le Pen in France.

“It is personal and it is political in terms of far-right political alignment,” she said. “It also opens the door to what other unprecedented things are we going to see in terms of the US hand in European politics.”

Could the US president even threaten serious policy shifts like tariffs based on an unsatisfactory German coalition? “That would be normally unthinkable,” she said in response to that question. “But in 2025, very little is unthinkable.”

Trump has claimed a broad mandate despite winning the popular vote by a smaller margin than any US leader since the early 2000s. And he seeks to remake politics at home and redefine the US relationship with its allies abroad, many of whom attacked him personally in the wake of the January 6 insurrection and his second presidential campaign.

Vance also wanted to antagonise Europe’s leaders on Friday. He refused to meet with Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor who should be among the US’ key partners in negotiations with Russia over the future of the war in Ukraine. “We don’t need to see him, he won’t be chancellor long,” one former US official told Politico of the Vance team’s approach.

That speaks to a trend in the Trump administration’s thinking: that voters abroad will handle what his negotiations and alliances cannot. As Vance stunned the European elite on Friday, he told them that “if you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you”.

“You need democratic mandates to accomplish anything of value in the coming years,” he said.

This is something that Vladimir Putin, who waited years for the return of a Trump administration, knows well regarding his war in Ukraine: sometimes you have to bide your time until conditions are right.

And it’s something that Trump intimated about Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy as he riffed on his plan to end the war through negotiations that would cede Ukrainian territory and give up Kyiv’s designs on Nato membership.

“He’s going to have to do what he has to do,” Trump said of Zelenskyy agreeing to a deal. “But, you know, his poll numbers aren’t particularly great.”

• The widow of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny has warned there is “no point trying to negotiate” with Vladimir Putin. “Just remember: he will lie,” Yulia Navalnaya told the Munich Security Conference on Friday two days before the first anniversary of her husband’s death. “He will betray,” she said about the Russian president. “He will change the rules at the last moment and force you to play his game. There are only two possible outcomes for any deal with Putin. If he remains in power, he will find a way to break the agreement. If he loses power, the agreement will become meaningless.”

• Navalnaya was joined on a panel discussion by the exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who said “by helping Ukraine, you’re helping the whole region”. Tikhanovskaya warned if Ukraine did not come out on top after the war, “Putin will be still strong enough to keep his influence on Belarus”. “By putting Ukraine in a strong position during these negotiations, you put also Belarus, Moldova and other countries in a strong position.”

• Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said during a meeting with the US vice-president, JD Vance, that his country wants “security guarantees” and a joint US-Ukrainian peace plan before he enters into any talks with Putin to end the war in his country. In their first meeting on Friday on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, Vance said Washington sought to secure a “a durable, lasting peace, not the kind of peace that’s going to have eastern Europe in conflict just a couple years down the road”. Both men hailed it as a “good conversation” and agreed that further talks were required to see if they could reach a common understanding.

• Ukraine has a low chance of surviving Russia’s assault without US support, Zelenskyy said in an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press with Kristen Welker. “Probably it will be very, very, very difficult. And of course, in all the difficult situations, you have a chance. But we will have low chance – low chance to survive without support of the United States,” the Ukrainian president said in the interview, which is to be broadcast on Sunday.

• The French president, Emmanuel Macron, said he assured his Ukrainian counterpart that it’s “Ukrainians alone who can drive the discussions for a solid and lasting peace” with Russia. “We will help them in this endeavour,” Macron wrote on X on Friday after a phone call with Zelenskyy, adding if Trump “can truly convince President Putin to stop the aggression against Ukraine, that is great news”. Macron earlier warned against a peace deal over the Ukraine war that would amount to “capitulation” as Trump suggested Russia might not make any concessions in negotiations.

• The talks between Zelenskyy and Vance ended without an announcement of a critical minerals deal that is central to Kyiv’s push to win the backing of Donald Trump. Kyiv came back to the US earlier with a revised draft agreement of the deal that could open up its vast resources of key minerals to US investment. “Our teams will continue to work on the document,” Zelenskyy wrote on X. Two members of the Ukrainian delegation told Reuters that “some details” still needed to be worked out. The minerals in question would include rare earth varieties, as well as titanium, uranium and lithium.

• A Russian drone caused significant damage to the radiation containment shelter at the disused Chornobyl nuclear power plant overnight on Friday, the Ukrainian president has said. The drone struck the radiation shelter, causing a fire that was then extinguished, Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram. “According to initial assessments, the damage to the shelter is significant,” he said. Zelenskyy and the UN’s atomic energy watchdog both said that radiation levels remained normal after the incident. Ukraine’s SBU security service showed pictures of what it said was the drone, which it said had been carrying a high-explosive warhead. It said the Iranian-designed Shahed drone intended to hit the reactor enclosure.

• Chornobyl’s chief engineer, Oleksandr Tytarchuk, said emergency crews were working to minimise the aftermath of the incident. “The barrier which was supposed to prevent the spread of radioactive substances has ceased to function according to its original design,” Tytarchuk told reporters at the plant. He said the drone “hit the outer cover, pierced it, fell into the system and exploded there”. Had the explosion occurred 15-20 metres further away, he said, “it would have directly hit the old shelter, which is 40 years old”.

• Russian forces have taken control of two frontline settlements in eastern Donetsk region. The Russian defence ministry said on Friday its forces had captured the village of Zelene Pole located between Pokrovsk, the focal point of Russian attacks in the region, and Velyuka Novosilka, a settlement that Russia’s military said it captured late last month. Also captured, according to the Russian report, was the village of Dachne, west of the town of Kurakhove. The town had been subjected to weeks of heavy fighting. The Ukrainian general staff, in a late evening report, said both villages were among 11 settlements that had come under Russian attack in the Pokrovsk sector. But it made no mention of them coming under Russian control.

A Russian drone carrying a high-explosive warhead struck the protective containment shell of the Chornobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine overnight, the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has said.

The attack came hours before the start of the Munich Security Conference, where discussions were dominated by the war in Ukraine and the announcement this week by Donald Trump that he would begin peace talks with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.

Zelenskyy said the damage to the shelter was “significant” and had started a fire, but he added that radiation levels at the plant had not increased. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the strike had not breached the plant’s inner containment shell.

The Ukrainian president said in a post on Telegram that the Chornobyl strike showed “Putin is certainly not preparing for negotiations”.

“The only state in the world that can attack such facilities, occupy the territory of nuclear power plants, and conduct hostilities without any regard for the consequences is today’s Russia. And this is a terrorist threat to the entire world,” he wrote. “Russia must be held accountable for what it is doing,” he added.

Andriy Yermak, the head of Zelenskyy’s presidential office, said Ukraine planned to provide detailed information to the US about the Chornobyl strike.

Without attributing blame, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director general, Rafael Grossi, said on X that the Chornobyl strike and the recent increase in military activity near another nuclear plant in Zaporizhzhia “underline persistent nuclear safety risks”, adding that the IAEA remained “on high alert”.

Concerns have repeatedly been raised during the conflict over the safety of Ukraine’s four nuclear plants, especially the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant – the largest in Europe and among the world’s 10 biggest.

The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, denied Moscow was responsible for the attack. Without presenting evidence, he said Ukrainian officials wanted to thwart efforts to end the war through negotiations between Trump and Putin.

“The Russian military doesn’t do that. They don’t. This is most likely just another provocation,” Peskov said. “That’s exactly what the Kyiv regime like to do, and sometimes, in fact, does not shy away from doing.”

Ukrainian emergency services published a photograph that showed a searchlight illuminating a ragged hole in the roof of the plant’s damaged sarcophagus.

Zelenskyy is in Munich, where he will hold talks with the US vice-president, JD Vance, that may offer some insight into Trump’s vision for a negotiated settlement to the war.

The US president told reporters at the White House on Thursday that he trusted Putin’s assurances that he wanted peace, further heightening Kyiv’s concerns. Ukraine was already on edge after Trump’s phone call with the Russian leader earlier this week.

Palestinian militant groups have named the three hostages they plan to free on Saturday in return for the release of 369 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, raising hopes that the January ceasefire agreement will survive its latest crisis.

However, the longer-term prospects of the truce remain in doubt and the uncertainty has been deepened by the US president, Donald Trump, who made surprise territorial claims over Gaza.

Saudi Arabia is reportedly planning to host a summit next week to try to agree an alternative plan for Gaza’s future, a week before an emergency Arab League meeting in Cairo to discuss the situation.

The hostages due to be released on Saturday have been named as Argentinian-born Iair Horn; a dual US-Israeli citizen, Sagui Dekel-Chen; and a Russian-Israeli, Sasha Troufanov. They were all abducted from the Nir Oz kibbutz, near Gaza, in the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023. Two were held by Hamas and one by Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The identities of the Palestinians due to be freed have not been published, but they are expected to include 333 people taken prisoner in Gaza since the start of the war and 36 inmates serving life prison sentences.

Israel and global human rights groups expressed outrage at the frail, emaciated state of the three hostages freed a week ago, their accounts of brutality in captivity, and the handover event staged by Hamas in which the three men had to thank their captors in front of a line of masked, armed gunmen.

An Israeli-American hostage released two weeks ago, Keith Siegel, has given a chilling account of his experiences. “I was held for 484 days in unimaginable conditions, every single day felt like it could be my last,” he said in a video message. “I was starved and I was tortured, both physically and emotionally.”

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which has facilitated the exchanges, said in a statement: “The latest release operations reinforce the urgent need for ICRC access to those held hostage. We remain very concerned about the conditions of the hostages.” It called on Hamas to ensure future handovers were conducted in privacy and with dignity.

If Saturday’s hostage release goes ahead, it will bring to 19 the number of Israelis exchanged for about 1,100 Palestinians. Five Thai citizens have also been released. By the end of the first six-week phase, another 14 hostages (six live and the remains of eight who have died in captivity) are due to be freed in exchange for another 800 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.

A second phase is due to begin on 1 March, in which both sides plan to release all remaining hostages and prisoners, and Israel would complete its military withdrawal from Gaza. But so far, Benjamin Netanyahu has not empowered his negotiators to start talks on how this second phase would proceed, and Israeli analysts question the prime minister’s readiness to stick to the agreement.

“It’s no secret that Netanyahu doesn’t want the deal to continue and wants to stop it before the second phase,” Haaretz’s military analyst, Amos Harel, wrote, adding that if the truce ended, there could be “a year or even longer” of fighting to come.

The truce agreement appeared in danger of collapse this week after Hamas announced there would be an indefinite delay to the release of the next three hostages owing to Israel’s alleged violations of the deal. Soon after, Trump suggested that Israel should demand that the remaining hostages be freed by noon on Saturday or “all hell is going to break out”.

Israel massed troops around the edge of the Gaza Strip, deepening fears the ceasefire would come to an abrupt end. On Thursday, however, the immediate crisis appeared to recede with Hamas confirming three Israelis would be freed and Netanyahu’s office clarifying that it was not demanding the liberation of all the remaining hostages.

However, Trump’s shocking proposal the US would claim possession of Gaza, which would be emptied of its 2.2 million Palestinian inhabitants and developed into a “Riviera” resort coastline, has clouded the prospects for the ceasefire’s survival over the coming weeks.

Egypt and Jordan have made it clear to Trump’s administration that they are not prepared to host hundreds of thousands of Palestinians ethnically cleansed from Gaza.

The two Arab states, joined by Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, are expected to take part in the Saudi-hosted summit on 20 February, according to sources quoted by Agence France-Presse. The meeting is reportedly intended to hammer out a development plan for Gaza to present as an alternative option to Trump’s proposal.

As Donald Trump continues to threaten to take control over the Gaza Strip, an unlikely consensus has emerged across hardcore jihadist and far-right circles: both strongly oppose any new US military actions in the territory.

Now experts are warning that Trump’s plan is galvanizing two of the most dangerous and organized extremist movements with track records of domestic terrorist attacks.

What initially began as an impromptu proposal during a White House visit with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, now appears to be the makings of serious policy: the president wants to turn Gaza into a sort of American resort on the Mediterranean, despite widespread condemnation from the global community.

“We’re going to take it,” said Trump last week. “We’re going to hold it.”

The United Nations chief called Trump’s plan “ethnic cleansing” while two key regional allies, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, have outright rejected it. Since the 7 October attacks in 2023, at least 46,000 Palestinians in Gaza (many of whom are women and children) have died.

But any hypothetical takeover of war-torn Gaza – still teeming with thousands of Hamas fighters – undoubtedly requires American troops to be deployed to the Middle East on a mission of occupation for the first time since the failed Iraq war. Of course, the Islamic State (IS), originally an offshoot of al-Qaida in Iraq, was spawned out of that conflict.

Already, some of its propagandists and supporters are vowing to fight Trump’s plans for Gaza.

“Islamic State knew that the [Americans] will takeover Gaza and displace the Palestinian [Muslims] to Sinai and other nearby countries and now we have Trump [infidel] who is talking about taking Gaza and displacing its population,” said one IS propagandist on an internal RocketChat, the group’s choice encrypted messaging service that it uses for recruitment.

Trump is demanding that Egypt and Jordan, along with the other Arab League countries, take in Palestinian refugees he intends to displace during his rebuilding of Gaza.

Another IS propaganda image spreading online through its media wing shows a picture of Trump pointing to Gaza on a map with the message: “The [infidels] will never succeed.”

“It is a Jewish project under American sponsorship that aims to fire the last bullet of mercy on the so-called ‘issue’ of the Arab-Palestinian conflict and the Israeli conflict,” wrote another unknown IS operative about Trump’s plans, in one of its recent monthly magazines to followers.

Lucas Webber, a senior threat intelligence analyst at Tech Against Terrorism and a research fellow at the Soufan Center, pointed out that “Islamic State supporters have taken to social media and messaging applications to capitalize on these comments and frame them as confirming the organization’s already-developing narratives about US support for Israel and its policies”.

Webber says it’s a continuation of a highly successful campaign after 7 October to “tap into sentiments stirred up by the Israeli military response to Hamas’s attack to gain support, recruit, fundraise and incite violence”.

He also noted that IS has newly active cells all over the world and has made concerted efforts to inspire followers in the US, such as the recent mass casualty event in New Orleans over the holidays.

“The recent statement provides fodder for [IS] to continue leveraging this potent issue,” said Webber.

On the other side of the spectrum, white nationalists of almost every ilk have gone against the Trump administration’s designs on Gaza. For accelerationist neo-Nazis, the kinds that preach coordinated bombings and other attacks to bring down the US government, they are undoubtedly inspired by their antisemitic hatred for Israel.

“TRUMP TO SEND WHITES TO DIE FOR JEWS IN OCCUPATION OF GAZA,” said one prominent neo-Nazi account on Telegram in a post with over 2,000 views. “At present, our race is under the direction of hostile foreign tribes.”

That account promised to “organize our people” against any Gaza war and the government.

“They still want to genocide western white men,” said another user in response to that post. “Don’t be fooled by certain concessions the system will try to make.”

“They still very much hate you, but need you to fight their war.”

Many have also pointed out that if any potential occupation of Gaza looks anything similar to the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, it means the deaths of American soldiers.

“If Trump actually tries to follow through, there will be a war in which Americans will be expected to fight,” said one of the most influential neo-Nazi accounts on Telegram. “Are you going to go fight and die so Trump can give Gaza to Israel?”

Joshua Fisher-Birch, a terrorism analyst at the non-profit Counter Extremism Project, said that a prospective Gaza occupation has angered the far right “more than any other issue has in 2025 so far”.

“White supremacist online propagandists have reacted to Trump’s idea to take over Gaza with disgust and have stated that it is an act of betrayal,” he said. “The proposal is being portrayed as Trump sending white Americans to die on behalf of Israel.”

One common theme emerging is that veterans of the “war on terror”, some of whom are operating these far-right Telegram accounts, are denouncing wars in far-off countries.

“Our war is here,” said one popular far-right account that is run by a US military veteran. “Not in Ukraine, not in Gaza, but right here on the North American continent.”

Fisher-Birch said he had seen that account and those of other veterans who are deeply unhappy.

“Several Telegram channels run by individuals who claim to be [global war on terrorism] veterans have condemned Trump’s Gaza takeover plan,” he said. “Other channels have stated that the extreme risks associated with the plan are a good reason why white men should avoid the military and seek training elsewhere.”

Mexico’s president has warned US gunmakers they could face fresh legal action as accomplices of organized crime if Washington designates the country’s cartels as terrorist groups.

The Latin American country, which is under mounting pressure from Donald Trump to curb illegal drug smuggling, wants its neighbor to crack down on firearms trafficking in the other direction.

“If they declare these criminal groups as terrorists, then we’ll have to expand our US lawsuit,” Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, said at a daily press conference.

A new charge could include alleged complicity of gunmakers with terror groups, she said.

“The lawyers are looking at it, but they could be accomplices,” Sheinbaum warned.

She said the US justice department itself has recognized that “74% of the weapons” used by criminal groups in Mexico come from north of the border.

On Thursday, the New York Times reported that the US state department plans to classify criminal groups from Mexico, Colombia, El Salvador and Venezuela as “terrorist organizations”.

They include Mexico’s two main drug-trafficking organizations, the Jalisco New Generation and Sinaloa cartels, the report said.

Trump signed an executive order on 20 January creating a process for such a designation, saying that the cartels “constitute a national security threat beyond that posed by traditional organized crime”.

Mexico says that between 200,000 and 750,000 weapons manufactured by US gunmakers are smuggled across the border from the United States every year, many of which are found at crime scenes.

Last August, a US judge dismissed a $10bn lawsuit brought by the Mexican government against six gun manufacturers based in the United States that sought to hold them responsible for deaths from guns trafficked into Mexico.

The suit was thrown out based on a lack of jurisdiction, though Mexico said at the time that its lawsuit against two manufacturers, Smith and Wesson and Interstate Arms, would continue.

Another suit brought in the border state of Arizona seeks sanctions against dealers that sold guns used in serious crimes over the border.

Mexico tightly controls firearm sales, making them practically impossible to obtain legally.

Even so, drug-related violence led to the deaths of about 480,000 people in Mexico since the government deployed the army to combat trafficking in 2006, according to official figures.

Earlier this month, Sheinbaum angrily rejected an accusation by the United States that her government was allied with drug cartels.

“We categorically reject the slander made by the White House against the Mexican government about alliances with criminal organizations,” the president wrote on social platform X at the time.

“If there is such an alliance anywhere, it is in the US gun shops that sell high-powered weapons to these criminal groups,” she added.

Tensions between the closely connected neighbors soared after the White House said Trump would slap tariffs of 25% on Mexican and Canadian goods because of illegal immigration and drug smuggling.

The threatened tariffs have since been halted for 30 days.

The US has sent undocumented immigrants from several Asian countries whose governments have refused to accept them to Panama, in a move signalling an intensification of the Trump administration’s deportation effort.

A military plane carrying 119 immigrants from countries including Afghanistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, China, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Pakistan flew from California to Panama City on Wednesday in what was expected to be the first of three migrants flights to the country.

The revelation that Panama has become a destination for immigrants from countries whose governments have not agreed to take them back follows repeated threats by Donald Trump to seize the Panama canal, whose ownership was handed to the Panamanian government in 1999 under the terms of a treaty signed with the US.

The agreement to accept migrants appears to have resulted from a visit to Panama last week by Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state.

José Raúl Mulino, Panama’s president, told reporters that the country had received “119 people from diverse nationalities of the world”.

The immigrants were being accommodated at a local hotel before being transported to a shelter near the Darién Gap, a jungle area in southern Panama, in a process managed by the International Organization for Migration.

“We hope to get them out of there as soon as possible,” Mulino said. “This is another contribution Panama is making on the migration issue.”

He said the migrants would eventually be transferred to their countries of origin on flights funded by the US.

Panama is the latest Central American nation to agree to accept immigrants of other countries expelled from the US after El Salvador and Guatemala offered similar arrangements.

CBS reported that a second flight containing Asian and African deportees was scheduled to have left for Panama on Thursday. The network, citing internal government documents, said the flight would include citizens from Cameroon.

The Darién Gap, dividing Panama from Colombia, has become a busy transit route for immigrants making their way through Central America en route to the US. In 2023, more than half a million immigrants, mostly from Venezuela, crossed the Darién jungle into Panama. The number reduced to 300,000 last year.

From her 1975 “gay cowboys” T-shirt to pioneering catwalk collections that challenged gender norms, the late Vivienne Westwood has long been heralded as an LGBT+ icon.

But the fashion house she built over five decades faces serious questions about whether the late designer’s values have endured, after allegations about homophobic bullying by its chief executive, Carlo D’Amario, were upheld by an independent investigation, the Guardian understands.

The Italian executive was accused by an employee in 2023 of using frequent homophobic slurs, bullying and discriminatory behaviour, it can be revealed.

An independent investigation by an employment barrister, which concluded in June 2023 after interviewing eight witnesses, upheld five of the complaints and found that D’Amario had likely broken employment law.

Yet, while the alleged victim of the bullying has left the company, D’Amario remains at the helm of the fashion house and enjoys a six-figure salary, company accounts suggest.

Vivienne Westwood Ltd did not return multiple requests for comment addressed to D’Amario and the company.

‘It looks too gay’

Questions over D’Amario’s performance as the steward of the Vivienne Westwood brand first came to the fore in November last year, when Westwood’s granddaughter – the designer and model Cora Corré – sensationally quit the company.

In her resignation letter, first reported by the Times, Corré accused D’Amario of misusing her grandmother’s designs and contesting trademarks in a way that prevented the Vivienne Foundation – a not-for-profit organisation set up by the designer in 2019 that is separate from the business – from raising charitable funds.

Corré claimed that her grandmother had been “deeply unhappy” about how D’Amario was running the company and wanted him removed as its chief executive but that the Italian had “bullied” Westwood, who died in 2022.

The company did not comment on the allegations at the time.

Now, documents seen by the Guardian raise fresh questions about D’Amario’s conduct, including allegations of bullying behaviour towards staff, discrimination and frequent use of homophobic language.

New allegations about the fashion executive’s behaviour have surfaced after a gay employee, who the Guardian has chosen not to identify, raised an internal grievance about D’Amario’s conduct.

D’Amario, 79, who has run Vivienne Westwood for almost four decades, had given the employee nicknames based on his sexuality, he claimed. The names included Mary Poppins, Mary Fairy and Homo Pomo, it was alleged.

The company called in Paul Livingston, an employment law specialist from Outer Temple Chambers, to conduct an internal investigation.

During interviews conducted by the lawyer, other staff stated that D’Amario had routinely used homophobic nicknames and language.

One said they had heard the term “homo pomo” used regularly, considered it homophobic at the time and “didn’t think it was meant affectionately”.

On another occasion, two witnesses said, D’Amario criticised displays in the company’s shops, saying they looked “too gay”. This comment had “horrified” some staff, according to one witness.

In interviews with Livingston, D’Amario denied all allegations of using homophobic language, saying: “No, in my position the question of gay is the last thing in my brain.”

One witness defended D’Amario, saying that he had never felt him to be homophobic, that “too gay” was commonly used in the fashion industry to mean overly flamboyant and that the Italian had come to his own gay wedding.

The employee suggested that the language barrier could be a factor in “misunderstandings”.

Another said they did not think D’Amario was homophobic.

Ultimately, the independent investigator upheld five allegations against D’Amario and said that the chief executive’s own denials of the alleged behaviour were not “persuasive”.

The lawyer also said that D’Amario had expressed a desire to take witnesses to court or speak to them and at one point asked who was paying for the investigation and what would happen if the company decided it did not want to pay for it.

“I have some concern that this was an attempt by [D’Amario] to put pressure on me as an investigator,” he said.

The report included witness testimony that the investigator did not offer an opinion about because it was not directly relevant to the claim by the employee.

That testimony included further allegations about D’Amario’s behaviour towards his employees.

D’Amario, said one witness, was “about as politically incorrect as you could ever get”.

He would, the witness said, say things such as “all these gay men in the company … you can’t trust them” and “all these gay men, they have no responsibilities”.

Another witness said that D’Amario used the phrase “gay parade” to describe people in the office who were well dressed.

A third alleged that D’Amario had also used racist language when talking about Chinese customers.

“I’m not racist but all your clients are members of the mafia,” D’Amario is alleged to have said to one staff member.

D’Amario denied making the mafia comment in interviews with Livingston. Vivienne Westwood Ltd declined to respond to multiple requests by the Guardian for comment addressed to the company itself and to D’Amario.

‘Excellent’ equality policies – but lack of action?

Westwood’s knack for shaking up the world of fashion was forged on London’s Kings Road, from the shop that she opened in 1971 with punk icon Malcolm McLaren, the manager of bands including the Sex Pistols.

Over five decades, Westwood built an empire that is among the most loved and respected in the fashion industry. It is also among the most profitable.

Based in a studio in south-west London, Vivienne Westwood Ltd has more than 300 employees and reported pre-tax earnings of £44m on £133m of revenues in 2023, according to Companies House records.

As the company’s boss since 1986, first as managing director and latterly as chief executive, D’Amario – a close confidant of Westwood’s – presided over this meteoric growth.

That corporate success went hand in hand with a strong commitment to Westwood’s own values, including activism on the climate crisis and human rights, espoused on the company’s website.

The label has also worn queer allyship on its sleeve, most recently via last year’s partnership with the non-binary singer Sam Smith.

Smith walked the catwalk at Westwood’s show for Paris fashion week in March 2024, showing off its fall/winter collection, to rave reviews from LGBT media outlets.

But the independent investigation into D’Amario’s conduct raises questions about whether the company’s apparent support for the LGBT+ community translated into firm action when it came to its leadership.

In his report, Livingston found that D’Amario’s behaviour in relation to two of the allegations constituted harassment under section 26 of the Equality Act 2010, as well as a breach of the company’s own internal equality policy.

Executives were supposed to complete training on equality, diversity and inclusion, as well as unconscious bias for managers, the report found.

Yet many of the company’s top executives – including D’Amario and Westwood herself – never completed the training because they were not “computer skilled”, the report found.

Vivienne Westwood Ltd’s equality policy was an “excellent” one and would be a “useful starting point” for any future training, Livingstone added.

“It is a matter for the company as to what action should be taken following this report,” he wrote.

The company’s action stopped short of dismissing or demoting D’Amario.

Instead, he appears to have earned a six-figure salary for the year when the report was written, according to company accounts, which state the company’s highest-paid director earned £493,697 for the year to the end of 2023.

Vivienne Westwood Ltd did not respond to questions about what disciplinary measures had been taken against the chief executive.

From her 1975 “gay cowboys” T-shirt to pioneering catwalk collections that challenged gender norms, the late Vivienne Westwood has long been heralded as an LGBT+ icon.

But the fashion house she built over five decades faces serious questions about whether the late designer’s values have endured, after allegations about homophobic bullying by its chief executive, Carlo D’Amario, were upheld by an independent investigation, the Guardian understands.

The Italian executive was accused by an employee in 2023 of using frequent homophobic slurs, bullying and discriminatory behaviour, it can be revealed.

An independent investigation by an employment barrister, which concluded in June 2023 after interviewing eight witnesses, upheld five of the complaints and found that D’Amario had likely broken employment law.

Yet, while the alleged victim of the bullying has left the company, D’Amario remains at the helm of the fashion house and enjoys a six-figure salary, company accounts suggest.

Vivienne Westwood Ltd did not return multiple requests for comment addressed to D’Amario and the company.

‘It looks too gay’

Questions over D’Amario’s performance as the steward of the Vivienne Westwood brand first came to the fore in November last year, when Westwood’s granddaughter – the designer and model Cora Corré – sensationally quit the company.

In her resignation letter, first reported by the Times, Corré accused D’Amario of misusing her grandmother’s designs and contesting trademarks in a way that prevented the Vivienne Foundation – a not-for-profit organisation set up by the designer in 2019 that is separate from the business – from raising charitable funds.

Corré claimed that her grandmother had been “deeply unhappy” about how D’Amario was running the company and wanted him removed as its chief executive but that the Italian had “bullied” Westwood, who died in 2022.

The company did not comment on the allegations at the time.

Now, documents seen by the Guardian raise fresh questions about D’Amario’s conduct, including allegations of bullying behaviour towards staff, discrimination and frequent use of homophobic language.

New allegations about the fashion executive’s behaviour have surfaced after a gay employee, who the Guardian has chosen not to identify, raised an internal grievance about D’Amario’s conduct.

D’Amario, 79, who has run Vivienne Westwood for almost four decades, had given the employee nicknames based on his sexuality, he claimed. The names included Mary Poppins, Mary Fairy and Homo Pomo, it was alleged.

The company called in Paul Livingston, an employment law specialist from Outer Temple Chambers, to conduct an internal investigation.

During interviews conducted by the lawyer, other staff stated that D’Amario had routinely used homophobic nicknames and language.

One said they had heard the term “homo pomo” used regularly, considered it homophobic at the time and “didn’t think it was meant affectionately”.

On another occasion, two witnesses said, D’Amario criticised displays in the company’s shops, saying they looked “too gay”. This comment had “horrified” some staff, according to one witness.

In interviews with Livingston, D’Amario denied all allegations of using homophobic language, saying: “No, in my position the question of gay is the last thing in my brain.”

One witness defended D’Amario, saying that he had never felt him to be homophobic, that “too gay” was commonly used in the fashion industry to mean overly flamboyant and that the Italian had come to his own gay wedding.

The employee suggested that the language barrier could be a factor in “misunderstandings”.

Another said they did not think D’Amario was homophobic.

Ultimately, the independent investigator upheld five allegations against D’Amario and said that the chief executive’s own denials of the alleged behaviour were not “persuasive”.

The lawyer also said that D’Amario had expressed a desire to take witnesses to court or speak to them and at one point asked who was paying for the investigation and what would happen if the company decided it did not want to pay for it.

“I have some concern that this was an attempt by [D’Amario] to put pressure on me as an investigator,” he said.

The report included witness testimony that the investigator did not offer an opinion about because it was not directly relevant to the claim by the employee.

That testimony included further allegations about D’Amario’s behaviour towards his employees.

D’Amario, said one witness, was “about as politically incorrect as you could ever get”.

He would, the witness said, say things such as “all these gay men in the company … you can’t trust them” and “all these gay men, they have no responsibilities”.

Another witness said that D’Amario used the phrase “gay parade” to describe people in the office who were well dressed.

A third alleged that D’Amario had also used racist language when talking about Chinese customers.

“I’m not racist but all your clients are members of the mafia,” D’Amario is alleged to have said to one staff member.

D’Amario denied making the mafia comment in interviews with Livingston. Vivienne Westwood Ltd declined to respond to multiple requests by the Guardian for comment addressed to the company itself and to D’Amario.

‘Excellent’ equality policies – but lack of action?

Westwood’s knack for shaking up the world of fashion was forged on London’s Kings Road, from the shop that she opened in 1971 with punk icon Malcolm McLaren, the manager of bands including the Sex Pistols.

Over five decades, Westwood built an empire that is among the most loved and respected in the fashion industry. It is also among the most profitable.

Based in a studio in south-west London, Vivienne Westwood Ltd has more than 300 employees and reported pre-tax earnings of £44m on £133m of revenues in 2023, according to Companies House records.

As the company’s boss since 1986, first as managing director and latterly as chief executive, D’Amario – a close confidant of Westwood’s – presided over this meteoric growth.

That corporate success went hand in hand with a strong commitment to Westwood’s own values, including activism on the climate crisis and human rights, espoused on the company’s website.

The label has also worn queer allyship on its sleeve, most recently via last year’s partnership with the non-binary singer Sam Smith.

Smith walked the catwalk at Westwood’s show for Paris fashion week in March 2024, showing off its fall/winter collection, to rave reviews from LGBT media outlets.

But the independent investigation into D’Amario’s conduct raises questions about whether the company’s apparent support for the LGBT+ community translated into firm action when it came to its leadership.

In his report, Livingston found that D’Amario’s behaviour in relation to two of the allegations constituted harassment under section 26 of the Equality Act 2010, as well as a breach of the company’s own internal equality policy.

Executives were supposed to complete training on equality, diversity and inclusion, as well as unconscious bias for managers, the report found.

Yet many of the company’s top executives – including D’Amario and Westwood herself – never completed the training because they were not “computer skilled”, the report found.

Vivienne Westwood Ltd’s equality policy was an “excellent” one and would be a “useful starting point” for any future training, Livingstone added.

“It is a matter for the company as to what action should be taken following this report,” he wrote.

The company’s action stopped short of dismissing or demoting D’Amario.

Instead, he appears to have earned a six-figure salary for the year when the report was written, according to company accounts, which state the company’s highest-paid director earned £493,697 for the year to the end of 2023.

Vivienne Westwood Ltd did not respond to questions about what disciplinary measures had been taken against the chief executive.

JD Vance has met with the leader of Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland party, breaking a taboo in German politics as the Trump administration continues to court and promote far-right populist parties across Europe.

At the meeting in Munich on Friday, the US vice-president and AfD leader, Alice Weidel, reportedly discussed the war in Ukraine, German domestic politics and the so-called brandmauer, or “firewall against the right”, that prevents ultra-nationalist parties like AfD from joining ruling coalitions in Germany.

Vance met with Weidel just weeks before a German election in which the anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim party appears poised to take second place on a wave of growing anti-establishment sentiment.

The meeting was not the first contact between the party and a figure close to Donald Trump. Elon Musk, the billionaire now leading a purge of the US federal government, has repeatedly claimed that “only the AfD can save Germany” and last month hosted Wiedel in a 75-minute live conversation on his social media platform, X.

Vance did not meet with Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor who should be among the US’ key partners in negotiations with Russia over the future of the war in Ukraine. “We don’t need to see him, he won’t be chancellor long,” one former US official told Politico of the Vance team’s approach.

Addressing the Munich security conference earlier on Friday, Vance admonished Europe’s leaders for refusing to work with their far-right parties.

“If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you,” said Vance. “You need democratic mandates to accomplish anything of value in the coming years.”

The move sent shockwaves through German political circles as the Trump administration appeared to be making a large bet on some of the continent’s most toxic parties in opposition to the sitting governments in the UK, Germany and other major allies.

“I expressly reject what US Vice President Vance said at the Munich Security Conference,” said Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, in a post on X. “From the experience of National Socialism, the democratic parties in Germany have a common consensus: this is the firewall against extreme right-wing parties.”

German courts have ruled that the AfD can be classified as a suspected threat to democracy, paving the way for the country’s domestic intelligence agency to spy on the opposition party.

In May, the AfD was expelled from a pan-European parliamentary group of populist far-right parties after a string of controversies, including a comment by the senior AfD figure that the Nazi SS had been “not all criminals”.

In a speech likely to further drive a wedge between the US and Europe as they struggle to find a single policy on the war in Ukraine, Vance also accused the European leaders of “hiding behind ugly Soviet-era words like ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’”.

“Listening to that speech, they try to pick a fight with us and we don’t want to pick a fight with our friends,” said Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign policy chief, at the Munich event.

Boris Pistorius, the German defense minister, said he couldn’t let the speech go without comment.

“If I understood him correctly, he is comparing conditions in parts of Europe with those in authoritarian regimes. That is unacceptable, and it is not the Europe and not the democracy in which I live and am currently campaigning,” he said.

An anonymous woman who accused Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter and Sean “Diddy” Combs of raping her in 2000 when she was 13 dismissed her civil lawsuit on Friday against the hip-hop moguls.

A filing in federal court in Manhattan said the plaintiff, referred to as Jane Doe, voluntarily dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning she cannot bring it again.

Tony Buzbee, a lawyer for the woman, declined to comment.

Combs is in a Brooklyn jail awaiting a scheduled 5 May criminal trial on racketeering and sex-trafficking charges.

He still faces dozens of other civil lawsuits by women and men, including many represented by Buzbee’s firm, who have accused him of sexual assault and other misconduct.

Combs has pleaded not guilty in the criminal case, and maintained his innocence in all of the cases.

The Doe lawsuit was the only one to name Carter as a defendant, and he had vociferously denied the woman’s claims.

“Today is a victory,” Carter said in a statement posted online by his entertainment company Roc Nation. “The frivolous, fictitious and appalling allegations have been dismissed. This civil suit was without merit and never going anywhere.”

Carter said the case also had caused trauma for his wife, Beyoncé, and their children.

In a joint statement, Combs’s lawyers maintained that their client had never sexually assaulted or trafficked anyone.

“We will continue to fight these baseless claims and hold those responsible,” the lawyers said. “This is just the first of many that will not hold up in a court of law.”

Doe had accused Carter and Combs of raping her at an afterparty following the 2000 MTV Video Music awards.

She said the alleged incident caused depression that led to post-traumatic stress disorder and her being “largely withdrawn from society”.

The popular celebrity venue Chiltern Firehouse in London will remain closed until further notice after a fire forced about 100 people to evacuate on Friday lunchtime.

The London fire brigade (LFB) said 125 firefighters and 20 fire engines attended the blaze at the restaurant and luxury hotel on Chiltern Street in Marylebone after a 999 call was made at 2.52pm.

The fire started on the ground floor in the ducting of the Grade II-listed building, one of London’s first purpose-built fire stations, and spread to the second and third floors and the roof.

It raged for six hours before a firefighter near the scene said it was “completely under control”, adding that the four-storey hotel will probably need a “large refurbishment”.

André Balazs, the owner of Chiltern Firehouse, confirmed no one had been hurt in the fire, and said it was “fully contained” by 9.30pm. “Our guests and staff safely evacuated.”

In a statement, the LFB said the cause of the fire was not yet known: “Crews worked hard over a number of hours in challenging circumstances in a complex historic building and successfully contained the fire to one property, preventing it from spreading to neighbouring properties.

“Firefighters will remain on scene throughout the night, damping down hotspots.”

The restaurant is on the ground floor of the building, and an eyewitness said they had been told the fire had “started in the kitchen” and then “went upstairs”.

“The restaurant was emptied and there [were] lots of very glamorous people milling around outside, shivering,” the witness added. “They were very smartly dressed and I don’t think they expected to be waiting in the cold … You can smell the smoke outside but I did not see any flames.”

Another eyewitness, who works nearby, said he saw “the whole street full of smoke”.

“There was really thick smoke and it got into the other street as well … the visibility was awful,” Guy Fischman, 23, from Richmond, London, told PA.

By 5pm, the road had been closed off, he said, because of the number of fire engines trying to fight the fire.

“[The fire] definitely got bigger than expected. I didn’t expect it to get so big seeing as the fire brigade got there quite early,” he said. “The whole street was shut off and you could see the smoke from quite far away … it was crazy.”

He added that he was “in complete shock” about seeing the thick smoke and flames: “My coat stinks of smoke right now … I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that in the UK or in London.”

Crews of firefighters from across London were deployed to the scene, including from Euston, Kensington and Chelsea, Paddington, Soho and West Hampstead fire stations.

By 5.30pm, about two hours after the fire started, thick black smoke was billowing from the roof and firefighters began using an aerial platform to pump water on to the area.

Videos on social media showed flames at the top of the building being doused by fire officers on a crane, while smoke comes out of the roof.

LFB firefighters said a cordon was likely to be in place overnight, preventing access to the streets surrounding the five-star hotel.

Shortly after it opened in 2014, the restaurant was reported to be “single-handedly feeding the celebrity sections of the tabloids”, a place where paparazzi “loll and glower, ready to pounce on the luminaries who swarm [there] like candle-crazed moths”.

It was given 5/10 for value for money and 7/10 for food by restaurant reviewer Marina O’Loughlin, and described as a place that “seems to be almost permanently accessorised by Kate Moss”.

Bill Clinton, Bono, David Cameron, Keira Knightley and Lindsay Lohan have been photographed at the venue in the past. Madonna and Naomi Campbell are also among its celebrated clientele.

Balazs said: “It is with heartfelt gratitude and appreciation that we watched a remarkable 120 firefighters from [more than] 14 stations rapidly descend on what they told me was a hugely sentimental building for so many of them.

“We know in fact one of those who rushed to the Chiltern Firehouse this evening had been stationed in the building when it was a fire station 30 years ago. I am truly grateful to all of them as I am sure that this is not the Valentine’s Day evening they had in mind.”

The family of a young Irish woman raped and murdered in India eight years ago have said justice has finally been achieved after a man was convicted in Goa.

Danielle McLaughlin, from Buncrana in County Donegal, was found dead in a field in Canacona, an area of Goa popular with holidaymakers, in March 2017.

The 28-year-old backpacker had travelled to Goa with a female Australian friend, and the pair were staying in a beach hut before the attack happened. They had been celebrating Holi – a Hindu spring festival – at a nearby village.

Vikat Bhagat, then 24, a local man who knew McLaughlin, was found guilty on Friday of her rape and murder at the district and sessions court in south Goa, her family’s solicitor said. He will be sentenced on Monday.

After the verdict, McLaughlin’s mother and sister said they had endured eight years of torment trying to bring the perpetrator to justice, which had “finally been achieved”.

McLaughlin had previously spent time in India as a volunteer in an orphanage and had come back planning to learn to teach yoga while travelling.

Bhagat was arrested within hours of McLaughlin’s body being discovered.

The body of the former Liverpool John Moores University student was returned to Ireland after her death, with a postmortem examination finding brain damage and strangulation as the cause of death.

Her mother, Andrea Brannigan, and sister, Joleen McLaughlin, said in a statement issued by the family’s solicitor Desmond Doherty: “There was no other suspect or gang involved in Danielle’s death and Bhagat was solely responsible for cruelly ending her beautiful life.

“We have endured what has been effectively an eight-year murder trial with many delays and problems, right until the end, all taking place thousands of miles away from Danielle’s home.”

Her family said the trial had been very tiring but that they were glad it was over.

Last year, the family’s representatives told how the case had been brought to court on more than 250 occasions with hearings sometimes lasting only half an hour on any given day. On more than one occasion they have been adjourned due to the unavailability of the suspect.

Ireland’s foreign minister, Simon Harris, paid tribute to the family, praising Brannigan’s “determination and resilience in the face of unimaginable tragedy”.

Thanking lawyers in both countries, the family said that the quest for truth and justice had been “no easy matter”, but they were content that there had been “judicial confirmation in public of what we already sadly knew”.

The family said: “We now hope not only that Danielle can rest in peace, but that we as a family can have some peace and comfort knowing that the person who brutally raped and murdered our precious Danielle has been convicted.”

Harris said: “While nothing can ease the pain of their loss, I hope that this verdict represents some closure for the family. My thoughts will remain with them as they continue to grieve the loss of their beloved daughter and sister.”

A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood could face trial after a DNA test indicated the blood was hers.

Gisella Cardia, who also claimed that the statue was transmitting messages to her, was last year declared a fraud by the Roman Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on supernatural phenomena.

Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened their own fraud investigation into Cardia in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the statue, which at the time was placed in a glass case on a hill in Trevignano Romano, a town overlooking Lake Bracciano, near Rome, had come from a pig.

Some people alleged they were defrauded by Cardia, who created a foundation to collect donations that she said would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.

Prosecutors ordered the lab tests from Emiliano Giardina, a forensic geneticist who worked on the case of Yara Gambirasio, a teenager murdered in 2010, Corriere della Sera reported. The newspaper said the tests, completed on Thursday, attributed the blood stains to Cardia’s genetic profile. The result is expected to be handed to prosecutors on 28 February.

Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchignoli, suggested that the presence of Cardia’s DNA did not rule out a supernatural phenomena.

“The DNA stain warrants further investigation,” Marchignoli told Corriere. “We are waiting to find out whether it’s a mixed or single profile.” She argued that while it was obvious there would be traces of Cardia’s DNA because she had “kissed and handled the statue”, it could have been mixed up with others, possibly even that of the Virgin Mary. “Who can say? Do you know the Madonna’s DNA?”

Cardia, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Medjugorje in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It later became the centrepiece of the pilgrimage site she created in Trevignano Romano, with people from across Italy flocking to the town for monthly worship, much to the irritation of local residents.

Cardia reportedly left Trevignano, but it is unclear where she is now. Marchignoli said: “I don’t know where she’s currently praying, but I know for a fact that she is moved by a deep faith and has nothing to gain from this.”

Apparitions of the Virgin Mary and weeping statues have been part of Catholicism since time immemorial, but since last May only the pope has the final word on what constitutes a supernatural event. Before then, self-styled prophets and local bishops had the power to endorse such an occurrence.