The French president, Emmanuel Macron, was on Saturday night seeking to convene an emergency meeting of European leaders, including the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, as concerns grew over Donald Trump’s attempts to seize control of the Ukraine peace process.

Speaking at the Munich security conference, Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, said he was “very glad that President Macron has called our leaders to Paris” to discuss “in a very serious fashion” the challenges posed by Trump.

“President Trump has a method of operating which the Russians call razvedka boyem – reconnaissance through battle: you push and you see what happens, and then you change your position … and we need to respond,” the Polish minister said.

The meeting, likely to be held on Monday, is expected to discuss US efforts to exclude European leaders from the peace talks, the position Europe should adopt on Ukraine’s future membership of Nato and how Ukraine can be offered security guarantees, either through Nato or some European force.

Downing Street confirmed on Saturday it had heard about the proposed meeting and officials made clear that Starmer would attend and take messages from the meeting to Washington this week, when he will meet President Trump. UK sources said they believed those invited to Paris by Macron would be the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, and the leaders of Germany, Italy, the UK and Poland.

Starmer said: “This is a once-in-a-generation moment for our national security where we engage with the reality of the world today and the threat we face from Russia. It’s clear Europe must take a greater role in Nato as we work with the United States to secure Ukraine’s future and face down the threat we face from Russia. The UK will work to ensure we keep the US and Europe together. We cannot allow any divisions in the alliance to distract from the external enemies we face.”

Macron’s speed in trying to unite European leaders behind a joint response shows the extent of anxiety in Europe about US efforts both to control the process and exclude European governments from any detailed negotiations between the US and Russia.

The prospect of Starmer’s involvement also highlights how the UK prime minister is becoming drawn into a European response, despite the UK having left the EU. With European leaders expected to convene in Paris, it is anticipated that Russian and US officials will meet in Saudi Arabia this week to map out what they intend to be the peace process.

The Europeans’ anxieties intensified on Saturday when Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, said it was not realistic for Europe’s leaders to be involved. “It may be like chalk on the blackboard, it may grate a little bit, but I am telling you something that is really quite honest,” said Kellogg at the Munich conference.

“And to my European friends, I would say: ‘Get into the debate, not by complaining that you might, yes or no, be at the table, but by coming up with concrete proposals, ideas, ramp up [defence] spending.’”

Kellogg said he was working on “Trump time”, and an agreement was expected in weeks and months.

The US is also reported to have sent a letter to European states, asking what troops they are willing to supply to a peacekeeping force.

One European diplomat said that “it appears Europe is going to be asked to police a deal that it had no direct hand in negotiating. In the meantime, Donald Trump is seeking to take 50% control of Ukraine’s rare minerals”.

Annalena Baerbock, the German foreign minister, said the world was experiencing a “moment of truth” as possible negotiations to end the war in Ukraine approached. “Everyone in the world has to decide whether they are on the side of the free world or on the side of those who are fighting against the free world.”.

In an assertion of Europe’s right to be present at the talks, she added that there can be “no long-term peace if there is no European peace”.

European sources said the serious concern was that Trump may negotiate the terms of the ceasefire that was intended to be a long-term deal, but that he would quickly wash US hands of any role in Ukraine’s future security.

The UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, said it was vital to guard against the possibility of future Russian breaches of any agreement. He said: “We need a guarantee that, if the agreement is violated, we can act, and this is a sufficient threat for the Russian Federation not to violate this guarantee.”

He also urged the US not to disengage from Ukraine, saying the best security guarantee for the country against future Russian aggression was binding US industry, business and defence capability into its future. “That is what will make Putin sit up and pay attention, and that is what’s attractive to a US president who knows how to get a good deal.”

Kellogg said one reason previous peace talks had failed was because too many countries were involved. “We are not going to get down that path,” he said on the margins of the Munich security conference.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, had earlier used his speech to the conference to warn that Europe was likely to be excluded from the negotiations. He urged Europe to step up and form a European army in which Ukraine would play a central role.

Zelenskyy told Europe to avoid being abandoned at the negotiation table by Trump. “Let’s be honest – now we can’t rule out that America might say no to Europe on issues that threaten it. Many leaders have talked about a Europe that needs its own military – an army of Europe. I believe the time has come. The armed forces of Europe must be created.

“A few days ago, President Trump told me about his conversation with Putin. Not once did he mention that America needs Europe at that table. That says a lot. The old days are over – when America supported Europe just because it always had.

“Ukraine will never accept deals made behind our backs without our involvement. And the same rule should apply to all of Europe. No decisions about Ukraine without Ukraine. No decisions about Europe without Europe.”

With many European nations facing increasingly Eurosceptic electorates, his ideas about integration are unlikely to take off, but his remarks may galvanise the continent into more detailed discussions about what military role it can play in Ukraine, including by putting troops on the ground to protect a ceasefire.

European leaders went into Saturday’s session of the Munich conference already reeling from the confrontational speech on Friday by the US vice-president, JD Vance, in which he scolded them for ignoring popular concerns over immigration and accused them of suppressing free speech.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, characterised Vance as “trying to pick a fight” with Europe, home to some of the US’s closest allies.

The Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, responded on social media, saying: “Europe urgently needs its own plan of action concerning Ukraine and our security, or else other global players will decide about our future. Not necessarily in line with our own interest … This plan must be prepared now. There’s no time to lose.”

• US and Russian officials are set to meet in Saudi Arabia next week to start talks aimed at ending Moscow’s nearly three-year war in Ukraine, Reuters and AFP reported citing US officials. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, the national security adviser, Mike Waltz, and the Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, will form the US delegation at the meeting, which may pave the way for a potential leaders’ summit as soon as the end of the month, the news agencies reported. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Ukraine had not been invited to the talks and that Kyiv would not engage with Russia before consulting with strategic partners.

• Rubio and the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, discussed the situation in Ukraine in a call on Saturday, as well as the removal of “unilateral barriers” set by previous US administration, according to Moscow. “The two sides expressed their mutual willingness to interact on pressing international issues, including the settlement around Ukraine,” the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement. Moscow said the pair agreed on regular contacts to prepare for a meeting between the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and his US counterpart, Donald Trump.

• Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, said Europe will be consulted – but ultimately excluded – from the talks between Russia, Ukraine and the US. “To my European friends, I would say: ‘Get into the debate, not by complaining that you might, yes or no, be at the table, but by coming up with concrete proposals, ideas, ramp up [defence] spending’,” Kellogg said at the Munich security conference on Saturday.

• Zelenskyy told the Munich conference that the time had come for a European army to be created. “Our army alone is not enough, we need your support,” he said on Saturday, adding that the “old days” when the US supported Europe “just because it always had” are over. He also told leaders and officials that he would not take Nato membership for Ukraine off the table and insisted that no decisions should be taken on ending Russia’s war without Kyiv and Europe.

• The French president, Emmanuel Macron, was on Saturday night seeking to convene an emergency meeting of European leaders, including the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, as concerns grew over Trump’s attempts to seize control of the Ukraine peace process. The meeting, likely to be held on Monday, is expected to discuss US efforts to exclude European leaders from the peace talks, the position Europe should adopt on Ukraine’s future membership of Nato and how Ukraine can be offered security guarantees, either through Nato or some European force.

• Finland’s president, Alexander Stubb, said “Europe needs to talk less and do more”, in response to the prospect of being shut out of talks. “There’s no way in which we can have discussions or negotiations about Ukraine, Ukraine’s future or European security structure, without Europeans,” Stubb told reporters in Munich. “But this means that Europe needs to get its act together.”

• The UK foreign minister, David Lammy, said he would encourage Trump and Zelenskyy to deepen their partnership in the future. Speaking at the Munich conference on Saturday, Lammy said the best security guarantee for Ukraine against future Russian aggression was binding US industry, business and defence capability into its future.

• The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said the war between Ukraine and Russia would only truly end with peace if Ukrainian sovereignty is secured. “We will also not accept any solution that leads to a decoupling of European and American security. Only one person would benefit from this: President Putin,” Scholz said on Saturday.

• Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, and Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, have discussed Kyiv’s vision of a path to peace with China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi. Sybiha said on X the meeting that took place on the sidelines of the Munich conference was to “reaffirm mutual respect for territorial integrity”. On Friday, Wang told the conference that China believes all stakeholders in the Russia-Ukraine conflict should participate in the peace talks, underscoring Europe’s role in them.

• Trump’s administration has proposed to Ukraine that the US be given 50% of the wartorn country’s rare earth minerals, NBC has reported. Instead of paying for the minerals, the agreement would be a way for Ukraine to pay back the multi-billion-dollar weapons and aid packages that the US has provided to it since Russia’s invasion in 2022. Zelenskyy said the rare earth mineral deal proposed by the US did not contain security provisions that Ukraine needed. Upon being asked by reporters what the issue was with the US document, Zelenskyy said on Saturday: “It’s not in our interest today, not in the interest of sovereign Ukraine.”

Mykola Vashchuk may be thousands of miles from Kyiv, his home town, but life has never been busier.

He runs pierogi food businesses here in Cleveland and back in Ukraine, works part-time for a local charity, while studying for a law degree at Cleveland State University. His wife works at a daycare and the couple is raising two sons. He and his family have built a new life on the shores of Lake Erie, having fled Ukraine after a Russian bomb blew out two windows of their Kyiv apartment in December 2022.

“There was no electricity, no water, so we decided to come to the US,” he says.

But the Trump administration’s threats to end programs that have allowed Ukrainians to live and work legally in the US has cast a pall over all his efforts.

“I applied for TPS [Temporary Protected Status] five days ago, but who knows [what will happen]. Our applications are still pending,” he says.

Three years since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have forged a new life in the US. One of the largest communities – about 15,000 people – has come to Cleveland, a city that’s been hemorrhaging residents for decades.

Shortly after taking office, Trump paused application decisions for the Uniting for Ukraine (U4U) parole sponsorship program that allowed about 150,000 Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion to enter and work legally in the US for up to two years. Many fear the program could be permanently shut down.

Last month, the Biden administration extended TPS for more than 100,000 Ukrainians already in the US for 18 months until October next year. Trump has since ordered a review of the wider TPS program, which could affect the residency statuses of about a million people from 17 countries who have fled violence, unrest and environmental disasters.

JD Vance, the US vice-president, has for several years repeatedly called for ending support for Ukraine, and many fear he may push Kyiv to agree to a settlement with Russia that would see Moscow keep some or all of the Ukrainian territory it currently occupies. Last week comments by the Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth – and Trump himself – appeared to embrace that stance and undermine Ukraine’s bargaining position in any peace talks to potentially end the war.

The ties that bind Cleveland and Ukraine go back more than a century. The first Ukrainian immigrants settled in the Tremont area of the city in the 1880s, working in the region’s booming manufacturing industries. Thousands more were drawn to Cleveland after the first world war.

Today, Parma, a city south of downtown Cleveland, is home to the Ukrainian Village neighborhood where half a dozen Ukrainian churches and cathedrals, several built in the stunning Byzantine architectural style, are found. Its main thoroughfares are lined with Ukrainian flags and Ukrainian is the language heard in many local stores and cafes.

With one in 10 of all Ukrainians in the US through TPS living in north-east Ohio, Cleveland has served as a key center for Ukrainians, some of whom have been employed as medical experts at Cleveland Clinic.

“Over the past three years I’ve seen cleaning companies, flower shops, design shops open up. I’ve had coffee at brand new Ukrainian coffee shops. I’ve seen new Ukrainian stores open in Parma,” says Zachary Nelson, the program director at Global Cleveland, a non-profit that works with immigrants, including dozens of Ukrainian families through the Uniting for Ukraine program.

“There are Amazon resell places where 80% of the staff are U4U recipients. They are our rust remover in the Rust belt. They are our buffing agent.”

Midwestern states such as Ohio have struggled to maintain or grow their populations for decades, with recent research suggesting that declining numbers have only been held off due to the presence of immigrants.

Nelson says several Ukrainians have shared their fear that their immigration status may be canceled. “They’re asking: ‘Will we have to leave within two months? Are they going to arrest us and send us to Guantánamo Bay?’” he says.

“When they are getting all their information from Facebook or Twitter, the stress is real.”

Although other global events have overtaken much of the coverage of the war in Ukraine, the conflict there continues unabated.

“I speak to my parents and sister in Kyiv,” says Tetiana, a mother of one living in Cleveland who asked not to be fully identified as her husband serves in Ukraine’s special forces. “There are still attacks every day.”

This winter, as in previous years, Ukrainians have suffered from rolling blackouts due to Russia’s bombing of power plants and other key infrastructure. The US State Department currently has a level 4 “do not travel” warning for Ukraine, and Moscow is expected to up its attacks across the country in the coming weeks as the third anniversary of its full-scale invasion approaches.

Now in Cleveland for almost two and a half years, Tetiana says her six-year-old son has settled well in school and has even become a fan of the Cleveland Browns, who he watches on TV every Sunday during the NFL season.

“We go to church in Parma,” she says. “There is a really great community here.”

But recent weeks have created panic among her – she came to the US through U4U and has also applied for TPS – and her relatives.

“Now I’m very worried about what will happen because the war is continuing – the war hasn’t stopped and we don’t know what will happen here tomorrow,” she says.

“Maybe the government will close this program – I heard they can stop it immediately – and tell us to go home, but it’s still dangerous in Ukraine. I only have TPS until April; it’s very soon. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

She says her son wants to stay in the US because it’s safe. “He hears every day that there is still a war in Ukraine,” she says.

“I’m worried about my son’s life.”

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A 14-year-old boy has died and five other people have been injured in a knife attack in southern Austria on Saturday, according to police, who said they had arrested a 23-year-old suspect.

The suspect was detained in the city of Villach, where the attack took place, police said on Saturday. He is a Syrian national with legal residence in Austria, they said.

The victims were all men. Two were seriously injured, according to police.

A police spokesperson, Rainer Dionisio, said a motive was not immediately known. He added that police were investigating the attacker’s personal background. “We have to wait until we get secure information,” he said.

A 42-year-old man who works for a food delivery company, and who is also from Syria, witnessed the incident from his car, police said. He drove toward the suspect and helped to prevent things from getting worse, Dionisio told Austria’s public broadcaster, ORF.

Peter Kaiser, the governor of the Austrian province of Carinthia, expressed his condolences to the family of the 14-year-old victim.

“This outrageous atrocity must be met with harsh consequences. I have always said with clarity and unambiguously: those who live in Carinthia, in Austria, have to respect the law and adjust to our rules and values.”

Erwin Angerer, a lawmaker for the far-right Freedom party, said his party had been warning about the situation in Austria as a result of the country’s “disastrous asylum policy”.

Austria’s interior minister, Gerhard Karner, was expected in Villach on Sunday morning.

Police said it wasn’t clear whether the suspect acted on his own and continued to search for potential additional suspects.

Several European countries, among them Austria, said in December they are suspending decisions on asylum claims by Syrian nationals because of the unclear political situation in their homeland following the fall of Bashar al-Assad.

Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

The US Forest Service is firing about 3,400 recent hires while the National Park Service is terminating about 1,000 workers under Donald Trump’s push to cut federal spending and bureaucracy, according to a report on Friday.

The terminations target employees who are in their probationary employment periods, which includes anyone hired less than a year ago, according to Reuters, and will affect sites such as the Appalachian trail, Yellowstone, the birthplace of Martin Luther King Jr and the Sequoia national forest.

The cuts represent about 10% of the Forest Service workforce and about 5% of National Park Service employees, but excludes firefighters, law enforcement and certain meteorologists, as well as 5,000 seasonal workers, from the cutbacks.

“Allowing parks to hire seasonal staff is essential, but staffing cuts of this magnitude will have devastating consequences for parks and communities,” the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) president, Theresa Pierno, said in a statement.

The association warned in a statement this month that staffing levels were not keeping pace with increasing demands on the national park system, which saw 325m visits in 2023 alone – an increase of 13m from 2022.

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Kristen Brengel, the NPCA’s senior vice-president of government affairs, warned that visitors from around the world expecting a once-in-a-lifetime experience could now be faced with “overflowing trash, uncleaned bathrooms and fewer rangers to provide guidance”.

Like other government agencies, the National Park Service was taken by surprise by a late January order from the White House office of management and budget pausing federal grants. The administration rescinded the order two days later and is re-evaluating it.

Across the federal government, about 280,000 employees out of the 2.3 million-member civilian federal workforce were hired in the last two years, with most still on probation and easier to fire, according to government data.

In addition to the visits to national parks, about 159 million people visit national forests annually. The Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service, said it could not comment on personnel matters.

The agriculture department said in a statement that protecting people and communities, as well as infrastructure, businesses and resources, remains “a top priority”.

“Our wildland firefighter and other public safety positions are of the utmost priority,” it added.

However, the federal funding freeze is affecting programs meant to mitigate wildfire risk in western states as well as freezing the hiring of seasonal firefighters.

The reduction in resources for wildfire prevention comes a month after devastating blazes in Los Angeles that are expected to be the costliest in US history.

The Oregon-based Lomakatsi Restoration Project non-profit said its contracts with federal agencies, including the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, to reduce hazardous fuels in Oregon, California and Idaho have been frozen.

“The funding freeze has impacted more than 30 separate grants and agreements that Lomakatsi has with federal agencies, including pending awards as well as active agreements that are already putting work on the ground,” the project’s executive director, Marko Bey, said in a letter to the senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon.

A spokesperson for the interior department, the parent agency of the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service, said it was reviewing funding decisions.

Senate Democrats have called on the administration to unlock fire-mitigation funding, and separately have asked interior and agriculture department leadership to exempt seasonal firefighters from a broad federal hiring freeze.

Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, an advocacy group for federal firefighters, said its members have been unable to hire the hundreds of firefighters that are typically brought on at this time of year to gear up for the summer fire season.

“The agencies already have had a recruitment and retention problem,” Riva Duncan, vice-president of the Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, said in an interview. “This just exacerbates that problem.”

The US agency charged with overseeing nuclear weapons is looking to contact workers who were fired on Thursday as part of the Trump administration’s federal cost-cutting measures, but are now needed back.

Officials with the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) attempted to notify some probationary employees who had been let go that they are due to be reinstated – but they struggled to find them because their contact information was missing.

“The termination letters for some NNSA probationary employees are being rescinded, but we do not have a good way to get in touch with those personnel,” the agency said in an email, obtained by NBC News.

“Please work with your supervisors to send this information (once you get it) to people’s personal contact emails,” the notice added.

The NNSA, which sits within the department of energy, oversees the Lawrence Livermore national laboratory in California, which is responsible for the safety and reliability of nuclear warheads; the Los Alamos national laboratory in New Mexico; the Pantex plant in Texas; the Y-12 national security complex in Tennessee, a source of enriched uranium nuclear weapon components; and other sites.

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The agency runs off a $25bn annual budget, and is now overseeing a weapon modernization program. It currently employs more than 65,000 federal and contract employees nationwide. The US is projected to spend approximately $756bn on nuclear forces between 2023 and 2032, according to a congressional budget office report.

Last year, the Biden administration approved a US nuclear strategy to prepare for possible coordinated nuclear confrontations with Russia, China and North Korea. Two years earlier, the same administration amended the longstanding “no first use” policy.

The 2022 US nuclear posture review said the US nuclear arsenal “is intended to complicate an adversary’s entire decision calculus, including whether to instigate a crisis, initiate armed conflict, conduct strategic attacks using non-nuclear capabilities, or escalate to the use of nuclear weapons on any scale”.

Last week, Trump said he wants all countries to move toward denuclearization once “we straighten it all out” in the Middle East and Ukraine.

“There’s no reason for us to be building brand-new nuclear weapons. We already have so many,” Trump said on Thursday at the White House. “You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons.”

“We’re all spending a lot of money that we could be spending on other things that are actually, hopefully, much more productive,” he said.

As of September 2023, the US maintains 3,748 nuclear warheads, a decrease from the stockpile of 22,217 nuclear warheads in 1989 and 31,255 in 1966, according to the Department of Energy.

Russia has an estimated stockpile of 4,380 nuclear warheads, and China boasts an arsenal of roughly 600, according to the Federation of American Scientists.

Trump signaled his interest in denuclearization talks with Russia and China at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last month.

“Tremendous amounts of money are being spent on nuclear, and the destructive capability is something that we don’t even want to talk about today, because you don’t want to hear it,” Trump said on 23 January.

The Trump administration fired 20 immigration judges without explanation, a union official said on Saturday amid sweeping moves to shrink the size of the federal government.

On Friday, 13 judges who had yet to be sworn in and five assistant chief immigration judges were dismissed without notice, said Matthew Biggs, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, which represents federal workers. Two other judges were fired under similar circumstances in the last week.

It was unclear whether they would be replaced. The US Department of Justice’s executive office for immigration review, which runs the courts and oversees its roughly 700 judges, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.

Immigration courts are backlogged with more than 3.7m cases, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, and it takes years to decide asylum cases. There is support across the political spectrum for more judges and support staff, though the first Trump administration also put pressure on some judges to decide cases more quickly.

The Trump administration earlier replaced five top court officials, including Mary Cheng, the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s acting director. Sirce Owen, the current leader and previously an appellate immigration judge, has issued a slew of new instructions, many reversing policies of the Biden administration.

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Last month, the justice department halted financial support for non-governmental organizations to provide information and guidance to people facing deportation but restored funding after a coalition of non-profit groups filed a federal lawsuit.

The firings touch on two top Trump priorities: mass deportations and shrinking the size of the federal government. On Thursday, it ordered agencies to lay off nearly all probationary employees who had not yet gained civil service protection, potentially affecting hundreds of thousands of workers. Probationary workers generally have less than a year on the job.

Biggs, the union official, said he didn’t know whether the judges’ firings were intended to send a message on immigration policy and characterized them as part of a campaign across the federal workforce.

“They’re treating these people as if they’re not human beings,” he said. “It’s bad all around.”

Muhsin Hendricks, considered the world’s “first openly gay imam”, has been shot dead near the southern city of Gqeberha, South African police have said.

The imam, who ran a mosque intended as a safe haven for gay and other marginalised Muslims, was in a car with another person on Saturday when a vehicle stopped in front of them and blocked their exit, police said.

“Two unknown suspects with covered faces got out of the vehicle and started firing multiple shots at the vehicle,” the Eastern Cape force said in a statement.

“Thereafter they fled the scene, and the driver noticed that Hendricks, who was seated at the back of the vehicle was shot and killed.”

A police spokesperson confirmed to AFP the authenticity of a video on social media that purported to show a targeted killing in Bethelsdorp near Gqeberha, formerly known as Port Elizabeth.

“The motive for the murder is unknown and forms part of the ongoing investigation,” police said, urging anybody with information to come forward.

The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association denounced the killing.

“The ILGA World family is in deep shock at the news of the murder of Muhsin Hendricks, and calls on authorities to thoroughly investigate what we fear may be a hate crime,” the executive director, Julia Ehrt, said in a statement.

Hendricks, involved in various LGBTQ+ advocacy groups, came out as gay in 1996. Two years later he started hosting meetings in his home city for LGBTQ+ Muslims, who treated him like their community imam. “I opened my garage, put a carpet down and invited people to have tea and talk,” he told the Guardian in 2022.

In 2011 Hendricks bolstered his role as an imam figure by setting up a mosque space after a friend endured a local sermon condemning homosexuality. “I said, ‘Maybe it’s time we started our own space, so people can pray without being judged’.”

He ran the Al-Ghurbaah mosque at Wynberg near his birthplace, Cape Town. The mosque provides “a safe space in which queer Muslims and marginalised women can practise Islam”, its website states.

Hendricks, the subject of a 2022 documentary called The Radical, had previously alluded to threats against him.

He told the Guardian he had been advised to hire bodyguards but said he never feared attacks and insisted that “the need to be authentic” was “greater than the fear to die”.

Hendricks, who had worked as an Arabic language teacher and fashion designer, was 29 when he came out to his mother. Born into a Muslim family, he married a woman, had children, then divorced before revealing his sexuality to his family, eight years after his father died.

South Africa has one of the world’s highest murder rates, with 28,000 murders in the year to February 2024, according to police data.

Muhsin Hendricks, considered the world’s “first openly gay imam”, has been shot dead near the southern city of Gqeberha, South African police have said.

The imam, who ran a mosque intended as a safe haven for gay and other marginalised Muslims, was in a car with another person on Saturday when a vehicle stopped in front of them and blocked their exit, police said.

“Two unknown suspects with covered faces got out of the vehicle and started firing multiple shots at the vehicle,” the Eastern Cape force said in a statement.

“Thereafter they fled the scene, and the driver noticed that Hendricks, who was seated at the back of the vehicle was shot and killed.”

A police spokesperson confirmed to AFP the authenticity of a video on social media that purported to show a targeted killing in Bethelsdorp near Gqeberha, formerly known as Port Elizabeth.

“The motive for the murder is unknown and forms part of the ongoing investigation,” police said, urging anybody with information to come forward.

The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association denounced the killing.

“The ILGA World family is in deep shock at the news of the murder of Muhsin Hendricks, and calls on authorities to thoroughly investigate what we fear may be a hate crime,” the executive director, Julia Ehrt, said in a statement.

Hendricks, involved in various LGBTQ+ advocacy groups, came out as gay in 1996. Two years later he started hosting meetings in his home city for LGBTQ+ Muslims, who treated him like their community imam. “I opened my garage, put a carpet down and invited people to have tea and talk,” he told the Guardian in 2022.

In 2011 Hendricks bolstered his role as an imam figure by setting up a mosque space after a friend endured a local sermon condemning homosexuality. “I said, ‘Maybe it’s time we started our own space, so people can pray without being judged’.”

He ran the Al-Ghurbaah mosque at Wynberg near his birthplace, Cape Town. The mosque provides “a safe space in which queer Muslims and marginalised women can practise Islam”, its website states.

Hendricks, the subject of a 2022 documentary called The Radical, had previously alluded to threats against him.

He told the Guardian he had been advised to hire bodyguards but said he never feared attacks and insisted that “the need to be authentic” was “greater than the fear to die”.

Hendricks, who had worked as an Arabic language teacher and fashion designer, was 29 when he came out to his mother. Born into a Muslim family, he married a woman, had children, then divorced before revealing his sexuality to his family, eight years after his father died.

South Africa has one of the world’s highest murder rates, with 28,000 murders in the year to February 2024, according to police data.

At least 15 people have died in a crush at a railway station in India’s capital when surging crowds scrambled to catch trains to the world’s largest religious gathering, officials have said.

The Kumbh Mela attracts tens of millions of Hindu faithful every 12 years to the northern city of Prayagraj, and has a history of crowd-related disasters – including one last month, when at least 30 people died in another crush at the holy confluence of the Ganges, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati rivers.

The rush at the train station in New Delhi on Saturday appeared to break out as crowds struggled to board trains for the ongoing event, which will end on 26 February.

The death toll included 10 women and three children, local media said.

Dr Ritu Saxena, deputy medical superintendent of Lok Nayak Hospital in New Delhi, told Agence France-Presse: “I can confirm 15 deaths at the hospital. They don’t have any open injury. Most [likely died from] hypoxia or maybe some blunt injury but that would only be confirmed after an autopsy.

“There are also 11 others who are injured. Most of them are stable and have orthopaedic injuries.”

Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, said on X: “My thoughts are with all those who have lost their loved ones. I pray that the injured have a speedy recovery. The authorities are assisting all those who have been affected by this stampede.”

Authorities ordered an inquiry into the incident and said the situation was now under control.

The defence minister, Rajnath Singh, said he was “extremely pained by the loss of lives due to stampede” at the New Delhi railway station.

“In this hour of grief, my thoughts are with the bereaved families. Praying for the speedy [recovery] of the injured,” Singh said in a social media post.

The governor of the capital, Vinai Kumar Saxena, said disaster management personnel had been told to deploy and “all hospitals are in readiness to address related exigencies”.

The railways minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw, said additional special trains were being run from New Delhi to clear the rush of devotees.

The six-week Kumbh Mela is the single biggest milestone in the Hindu religious calendar, and officials said about 500 million devotees have already visited the festival since it began last month.

More than 400 people died after they were trampled or drowned on a single day of the festival in 1954, one of the largest tolls in a crowd-related disaster globally.

Another 36 people were crushed to death in 2013, the last time the festival was staged in Prayagraj.

A two-year-old girl and her mother died on Saturday from injuries suffered in the car-ramming attack in Munich on Thursday that left 37 others injured, police said.

“Unfortunately, we have to confirm the deaths today of the two-year-old child and her 37-year-old mother,” a police spokesperson told AFP.

An Afghan man was arrested on suspicion of deliberately driving a car into a trade union demonstration on Thursday.

Police said the 24-year-old asylum seeker, identified by German media as Farhad N, may have had Islamist extremist motives for the attack.

After the incident, the suspect uttered the words “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest) to police officers and also prayed, prosecutor Gabriele Tilmann said on Friday.

The attack came shortly before Germans head to the polls for a 23 February election where immigration is a key issue, following several attacks blamed on migrants.

A two-year-old girl and her mother died on Saturday from injuries suffered in the car-ramming attack in Munich on Thursday that left 37 others injured, police said.

“Unfortunately, we have to confirm the deaths today of the two-year-old child and her 37-year-old mother,” a police spokesperson told AFP.

An Afghan man was arrested on suspicion of deliberately driving a car into a trade union demonstration on Thursday.

Police said the 24-year-old asylum seeker, identified by German media as Farhad N, may have had Islamist extremist motives for the attack.

After the incident, the suspect uttered the words “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest) to police officers and also prayed, prosecutor Gabriele Tilmann said on Friday.

The attack came shortly before Germans head to the polls for a 23 February election where immigration is a key issue, following several attacks blamed on migrants.

At least 48 people have been killed in the collapse of an illegally operated goldmine in western Mali, authorities and local sources have said.

Mali is one of Africa’s leading gold producers, and mining sites are regularly the scene of deadly landslides and accidents.

Authorities have struggled to control unregulated mining of the precious metal in the country, which is among the world’s poorest.

“The toll at [6pm] today [Saturday] is 48 dead following the collapse,” said a police source.

“Some of the victims fell into the water. Among them was a woman with her baby on her back.”

A local official confirmed the cave-in, while the Kenieba goldminers’ association also put the death toll at 48.

The search for victims was ongoing, the head of an environmental organisation said.

Saturday’s accident took place at an abandoned site formerly operated by a Chinese company, sources told AFP.

In January, a landslide at a goldmine in southern Mali killed at least 10 people and left many others missing, most of them women.

Just over a year ago, a tunnel collapsed at a goldmining site in the same region as Saturday’s landslide, killing more than 70 people.

Jannik Sinner has agreed to accept an immediate three-month doping ban from the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) – a decision that was quickly met with criticism from inside the game, with Nick Kyrgios calling it “a sad day for tennis”.

Sinner, who successfully defended his Australian Open title last month, tested positive for the anabolic agent clostebol last year which he said had entered his system from a member of his support team through massages and sports therapy.

The men’s world No 1 was initially cleared by an independent tribunal after being provisionally suspended, however Wada had appealed against that decision to the court of arbitration for sport (Cas). On Saturday it emerged that a deal had been reached that would see Sinner banned from 9 February to 4 May – with Wada accepting the Italian player had not deliberately cheated, and allowing him to return before the French Open begins on 25 May.

“Wada accepts that Mr Sinner did not intend to cheat and that his exposure to clostebol did not provide any performance-enhancing benefit and took place without his knowledge as the result of negligence of members of his entourage,” Wada said in a statement. “However, under the Code and by virtue of Cas precedent, an athlete bears responsibility for the entourage’s negligence.”

The case was set to be heard by Cas in April and Sinner was in danger of being banned for up to two years.

“This case had been hanging over me now for nearly a year and the process still had a long time to run with a decision maybe only at the end of the year,” Sinner said in a statement. “I have always accepted that I am responsible for my team and realise Wada’s strict rules are an important protection for the sport I love. On that basis I have accepted Wada’s offer to resolve these proceedings on the basis of a three-month sanction.”

However Kyrgios was among those to raise their eyebrows at the news, writing on X: “Obviously Sinner’s team have done everything in their power to just go ahead and take a three-month ban, no titles lost, no prize money lost. Guilty or not? Sad day for tennis. Fairness in tennis does not exist.”

The British player Liam Broady also expressed his surprise, writing: “Didn’t realise you could reach a settlement regarding a doping ban … Interesting. Back in time for the French Open I guess?”

Meanwhile the former British No 1 Tim Henman also criticised the ban as “too convenient” and warned it would leave fans of the sport with a “pretty sour taste”.

“First and foremost I don’t think in any way he has been trying to cheat at any stage, I don’t believe that,” said the four-time Wimbledon semi-finalist. “However, when I read this statement this morning it just seems a little bit too convenient. When you’re dealing with drugs in sport it very much has to be black and white, it’s binary, it’s positive or negative, you’re banned or you’re not banned.

“When you start reading words like settlement or agreement, it feels like there’s been a negotiation and I don’t think that will sit well with the player cohort and the fans of the sport.”

However, Sinner’s lawyer Jamie Singer said Wada had confirmed the facts determined by the independent tribunal. “It is clear that Jannik had no intent, no knowledge, and gained no competitive advantage. Regrettably, errors made by members of his team led to this situation,” Singer said.

Sinner is the second high-ranked player to accept a doping ban in recent months after women’s world No 2 Iga Swiatek accepted a one-month suspension in November having tested positive for banned substance trimetazidine (TMZ).

On Friday, Sinner had posted a video on Instagram of him training in Doha at the Qatar Open, which starts next week. The earliest he could now return is at his home tournament, the Italian Open in Rome, which starts on 7 May.

The Italian Tennis and Padel Federation president, Angelo Binaghi, declared that while the case was “a shameful injustice”, the ban will mark “the end of a nightmare” for Sinner. Binaghi added that the settlement “demonstrates Jannik’s innocence” and that “all of Italy” will welcome him back at the Italian Open.

With the US federal government expected to shut down in one month unless Congress approves a funding bill, Democratic lawmakers are wrestling with just how far they are willing to go to push back against Donald Trump’s radical rightwing agenda that has thrown American politics into turmoil.

Specifically, Democrats appear divided on the question of whether they would be willing to endure a shutdown to demonstrate their outrage over the president’s attempted overhaul of the federal government.

The stakes are high; unless Congress passes a bill to extend funding beyond 14 March, hundreds of thousands of federal employees may be forced to go without pay at a time when they already feel under attack by Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency”. And given Trump’s eagerness to flex his presidential authority, the fallout could be particularly severe, depending on how the office of management and budget (OMB) handled a shutdown.

To be sure, Republicans are taking the lead on reaching a funding deal, as they control the White House and both chambers of Congress, but party leaders will absolutely need Democrats’ assistance to pass a bill. While Republicans hold a 53-to-47 advantage in the Senate, any funding bill will need the support of at least 60 senators to overcome the filibuster.

In the House, Republicans hold a razor-thin majority of 218 to 215, and hard-right lawmakers’ demands for steeper spending cuts will likely force the speaker, Republican Mike Johnson, to also rely on Democratic support to pass a funding bill.

“There’s no reasonable funding bill that could make its way through the Senate that wouldn’t cause uproar in the Republican party on the House side,” said Ezra Levin, co-founder and co-executive director of the progressive group Indivisible. “That is the fault of the Republicans in the House, not anybody else. But because of that, it is something that is giving Democrats in the House leverage.”

In recent weeks, a bipartisan group of congressional appropriators from both chambers have met to hash out the details of a potential funding agreement, but Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, suggested on Thursday that Johnson had instructed his conference members to “walk away” from the talks.

“At this moment, there is no discussion because the speaker of the House has apparently ordered House Republican appropriators to walk away from the negotiating table,” Jeffries told reporters. “They are marching America toward a reckless Republican shutdown.”

Johnson shot back that Democrats appeared “not interested in keeping the government funded”, adding: “So we will get the job done. We’re not going to shut the government down. We’ll figure out a path through this.”

The dynamics of the funding fight have empowered some Democrats to suggest that the negotiations could become a powerful piece of political leverage as they scramble to disrupt Trump’s efforts to freeze federal funding, unilaterally shutter the foreign-aid agency USAid and carry out mass firings across the government.

“I cannot support efforts that will continue this lawlessness that we’re seeing when it comes to this administration’s actions,” Andy Kim, a Democratic senator of New Jersey, said on NBC’s Meet the Press last weekend. “And for us to be able to support government funding in that way, only for them to turn it around, to dismantle the government – that is not something that should be allowed.”

Progressive organizers have called on Democratic lawmakers to hold the line in the negotiations to ensure Congress passes a clean funding bill that Trump will be required to faithfully implement.

On Monday, prominent congressional Democrats rallied with progressive groups outside the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in Washington, and 15 of them pledged to withhold their support from a funding deal until Trump’s “constitutional crisis” comes to an end.

“We’re not just looking for statements. We’re not looking for protest votes. We’re also asking them to identify where they have power, where they have leverage and use that power,” Levin said. “And because of the nature of this funding fight, this is a clear opportunity.”

Other Democrats have appeared much more cautious when it comes to the possibility of a shutdown, even as they insist that Republicans should shoulder the blame for any funding lapse.

The senator Cory Booker, a Democrat of New Jersey, argued that Democrats must now embrace their role as “a party of protecting residents, protecting veterans, protecting first responders, protecting American safety from [Trump’s] illegal actions”.

“The Republican party has shown year after year that they’re the party of shutdowns. They’re the party of government chaos,” Booker said on CNN’s State of the Union last weekend. “So we’re not looking to shut down the government. We’re looking actually to protect people.”

The political fallout of past shutdowns may give Democrats pause as well.

The last shutdown occurred during Trump’s first term and began in December 2018, eventually stretching on for 35 days and becoming the longest shutdown in US history. It started after Trump demanded that Congress approve billions of dollars in funding to construct a wall along the US-Mexico border, and it ended with Trump signing a bipartisan bill that included no money for the wall. At the time, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed 50% of Americans blamed Trump for the shutdown, while 37% said congressional Democrats were responsible.

“Historically, I think it has been the case that shutdowns are costly, and they’re disruptive. When they conclude, you look back and wonder, what did we get for all of that? The answer is usually nothing,” said Gordon Gray, executive director of Pinpoint Policy Institute and a former Republican staffer for the Senate budget committee. “For people who have to interact with the government during a shutdown [and] for the workforce, there’s real downsides. Politically, there just seems to be more downside than upside.”

This shutdown, if it occurs, could be unlike any other.

Trump has shown an extraordinary willingness to test the bounds of executive power, and while past presidents have taken steps to alleviate the pain caused by shutdowns, he may choose not to do so. Considering his apparent fixation on eliminating government “waste”, some fear Trump and the new OMB director, Russell Vought, might use the shutdown as an opportunity to sideline federal agencies and departments that the president deems unimportant.

“There’s a tremendous degree of discretion that OMB can exert in its interpretation of this,” Gray said. “Clearly this administration is willing to contemplate its discretion more expansively than we’ve seen. It would not surprise me if we saw novel developments under Trump.”

Levin agreed that it is entirely possible Trump and some of his congressional allies may want to “shut down the government so that they can more easily steamroll” federal agencies. He expects some House Republicans to propose funding provisions that will be absolute non-starters with Democrats, such as eliminating the health insurance program Medicaid, to potentially derail negotiations.

“I absolutely think it’s possible that the Republicans’ plan is to drive us into shutdown. I think that it is giving them the benefit of the doubt to say that they are interested in making any kind of deal,” Levin said. “Democrats have some amount of leverage here, but if we head into shutdown, there should be no illusion of who benefits and whose grand plan this is.”

In a neoclassical building in Athens on the oldest street of one of the oldest neighbourhoods in the western world, residents gathered last week with much on the minds.

Items on the agenda included noise pollution, congestion and other modern afflictions, but there was one that was met with instant relief: Haris Doukas, the city’s mayor, had decided to set up a taskforce to save Plaka, the ancient quarter at the heart of the capital’s historic centre.

“It was the news we had all wanted to hear,” says Lydia Carras, who presides over The Society for the Environment and Cultural Heritage, Ellet, on whose premises the residents frequently assemble. “Finally, measures are being taken.”

A battle has been launched at the foot of the Acropolis as Greece prepares for another bumper tourist season. For Carras, who founded the heritage society 50 years ago with her late Anglo-Greek shipowner husband, Costas, it’s a battle redolent of older struggles. More than four decades after the “neighbourhood of the gods” survived being overrun by nightclubs and terrace bars, its discovery by developers, avaricious investors and global real estate firms, is again posing an existential threat. On the back of the tourist boom, entire buildings had fallen prey to the short-term rental industry and Airbnb. The few shops that have held out are, like residents, on the brink of extinction.

“Plaka is meant to be protected as it’s so unique,” says Carras. “Thanks to special zoning laws enshrined in presidential decrees it was saved all those years ago. The reality now is that residents are leaving and not only because laws are being violated; the crowds, the noise, the chaos have made their lives unbearable.”

Visitors, she said, did not want to experience “lifeless stage sets” but inhabited areas that felt authentic and real. “This is a small neighbourhood. It was built for residents, not what we’re seeing today.”

In his cavernous city hall office Doukas does not disguise his consternation. The projections of tourist arrivals are nothing short of pleasing – further proof that Athens is no longer a pit stop for travellers en route to the islands. But at record highs the forecasts are also replete with risk.

This year, 10 million visitors, two million more than in 2024, are predicted to descend on the capital, many for city breaks that have made it so popular. If only a fraction head towards Plaka, there will be “intolerable pressure” on its labyrinthine network of alleys and streets.

“Of the 35 million tourists Greece is set to receive, 10 million, nearly equal to Greece’s entire population, will visit Athens,” he says. “For the first time we’ll be Greece’s top destination, but it’s unsustainable. Plaka, in particular, is oversaturated. It can’t go on.”

A recent “carrying capacity” study commissioned by the municipality and drafted by the university of Piraeus, urged authorities to take immediate action if Athens wanted to avoid becoming a victim of its own success.

“There’s not a day to lose. We have to act if we don’t want to become the next Barcelona, which is why the task force, with the support of the municipal police, will have every service at its disposal,” explained Doukas, a professor of energy policy before the centre-left Pasok party fielded him for the post.

Citizens, he said, could call the force anonymously if they spotted infractions. “Based on complaints we’ll be knocking on doors. It’s already happened several times with short-term rentals.”

Few neighbourhoods in Europe have been lived in as continuously as Plaka. Nestled on the northern and eastern slopes of the Acropolis, its mansions and two-storey buildings, wrapped around the Agora and other archaeological sites, it is an area that has been inhabited since neolithic times. For Greeks the quarter is not just a window on the classical world but an unbreakable link with antiquity.

“When inhabitants leave, places die,” says Giorgos Zafeiriou, an architect who heads Plaka’s residents association. “We’ve seen it time and again.”

The situation had become “desperate” for the district’s diminishing community, long forced into a fragile coexistence with the owners of cafes, restaurants and bars. In summer the influx put extraordinary pressure on Plaka’s antiquated infrastructure, he said, especially its sewage system. Worries about overtourism were such that residents joined the network of Mediterranean Historical Cities to exchange experiences on how to deal with the issues.

“What we’re seeing,” says Zafeiriou, “is a fight for the soul of Plaka. But there’s cause for optimism, too.”

One ray of hope is an upcoming, potentially landmark ruling from the Council of State, Greece’s highest administrative court, on the legality of 16 buildings being converted into Airbnb units in Plaka, given its protected residential status. Brought by Ellet, the action will be pivotal in determining whether land use regulations, enforced to preserve the neighbourhood’s character, have been contravened. If the judges rule in favour a precedent will be set.

“The two presidential degrees establishing Plaka’s particular urban planning rules were specific. Hotels could exist but only in selected spots,” notes Dimitris Melissas, a professor of law representing Ellet at the 5 March hearing. “Here we have buildings acting as clandestine hotels, offering accommodation and breakfast and meals on terraces, where commercial activity is also strictly banned. That we argue is unconstitutional.”

With soaring rents fuelling an incipient housing crisis, the centre-right government recently banned new, short-term rental registrations on online platforms in central Athens.

Passed in January the legislation has raised hopes that hedge funds and developers, who moved in a decade ago, snapping up property at rock bottom prices during Greece’s debt crisis, will also begin to move on.

“Foreign investors see Athens as some kind of El Dorado. They’re reaping the profits, not Greeks,” says Doukas, warning many could end up with stranded assets if they continue to defy the decrees protecting Plaka. “First, they attempted to get around the ban on hotels in the neighbourhood through Airbnb and now they’re trying to get around the ban on Airbnb by advertising properties as ‘serviced apartments’, thanks to an oversight in the new law that clearly needs to be amended.”

The message, he says, is simple. Investors should “forget it” if they want to invest in short-term rentals in the neighbourhood of the gods.

“Go elsewhere! Plaka is our connection with antiquity. It’s integral to the strength of Athens. We’re not going to allow it to become some tourist luna park, an endless shopping mall, denuded of residents and destroyed.”