European powers have made a plea at the G20 in South Africa to countries in the global south that they show unambivalent support for the international rules-based order, including the sovereignty of Ukraine.

Writing in the Guardian, the French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, said the real line of geopolitical division was not between north and south but between those who supported the international rules-based order and those who did not.

Barrot wrote: “The discussion we should be having, at G20 meetings and everywhere else, is not the clash between north and south, but between those who support the law and those who support power by force.”

Some western governments have faced accusations of double standards over their full-throated support for Ukraine and lower-key criticism of Israeli breaches of humanitarian law in Gaza.

Barrot rejects the charge, writing: “France does not use doublespeak. In France, our moral compass is not guided by north or south, but by justice. We do not avert our eyes from any crisis or violation of international law. A country under attack is a country under attack, and an aggressor country is an aggressor country – this distinction does not change based on whether the country is in the north or the south.

“That is why France at once condemns violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza and the West Bank, the 7 October terrorist attacks against Israel, the war of aggression led by Russia against Ukraine, and the atrocities perpetrated by the Sudanese armed forces and the RSF in Sudan. That is why it is fully committed to maintaining the ceasefire in Lebanon, after working towards its adoption alongside the United States.”

Thursday’s meeting of foreign ministers from the G20 – an intergovernmental forum comprising 19 sovereign countries, the European Union, and the African Union – will not be attended by the Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, in a sign of the Trump’s administration’s antipathy towards multilateral institutions. Instead the US is sending a relatively junior diplomat.

Rubio said he was not attending due to what he described as the G20’s anti-American agenda. He told the press: “My job is to advance America’s national interests, not waste taxpayer money or coddle anti-Americanism. I think the whole topic of the G20 gathering is one that I don’t think we should be focused on, talking about global inclusion, equity, and these sorts of things.”

The US has also declined to send Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, to a meeting of G20 finance ministers next week. Bessent said on X that he would not participate in the event because of obligations in Washington.

Barrot said the task of the G20 was to strengthen international law, including through a reform of global governance.

He said: “Every second we waste on the path to multilateralism reform fuels claims its institutions are illegitimate. France would like to see crucial projects for the future of peace and global governance to be completed between now and 2026, when our country will hold the presidency of the G7.”

David Lammy, the UK foreign secretary, is also expected to focus on Ukraine in his remarks, as well calling for stability in the Middle East and action on the conflicts in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

If Russia had not invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Volodymyr Zelenskyy would have faced a re-election campaign in spring 2024. But after Vladimir Putin sent his troops across the border, the country quickly entered a state of martial law. That meant that both presidential and parliamentary elections were postponed. Donald Trump has escalated his attacks on Zelenskyy, calling the Ukrainian president “a dictator” in light of postponed elections.

European powers have made a plea at the G20 in South Africa to countries in the global south that they show unambivalent support for the international rules-based order, including the sovereignty of Ukraine.

Writing in the Guardian, the French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, said the real line of geopolitical division was not between north and south but between those who supported the international rules-based order and those who did not.

Barrot wrote: “The discussion we should be having, at G20 meetings and everywhere else, is not the clash between north and south, but between those who support the law and those who support power by force.”

Some western governments have faced accusations of double standards over their full-throated support for Ukraine and lower-key criticism of Israeli breaches of humanitarian law in Gaza.

Barrot rejects the charge, writing: “France does not use doublespeak. In France, our moral compass is not guided by north or south, but by justice. We do not avert our eyes from any crisis or violation of international law. A country under attack is a country under attack, and an aggressor country is an aggressor country – this distinction does not change based on whether the country is in the north or the south.

“That is why France at once condemns violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza and the West Bank, the 7 October terrorist attacks against Israel, the war of aggression led by Russia against Ukraine, and the atrocities perpetrated by the Sudanese armed forces and the RSF in Sudan. That is why it is fully committed to maintaining the ceasefire in Lebanon, after working towards its adoption alongside the United States.”

Thursday’s meeting of foreign ministers from the G20 – an intergovernmental forum comprising 19 sovereign countries, the European Union, and the African Union – will not be attended by the Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, in a sign of the Trump’s administration’s antipathy towards multilateral institutions. Instead the US is sending a relatively junior diplomat.

Rubio said he was not attending due to what he described as the G20’s anti-American agenda. He told the press: “My job is to advance America’s national interests, not waste taxpayer money or coddle anti-Americanism. I think the whole topic of the G20 gathering is one that I don’t think we should be focused on, talking about global inclusion, equity, and these sorts of things.”

The US has also declined to send Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, to a meeting of G20 finance ministers next week. Bessent said on X that he would not participate in the event because of obligations in Washington.

Barrot said the task of the G20 was to strengthen international law, including through a reform of global governance.

He said: “Every second we waste on the path to multilateralism reform fuels claims its institutions are illegitimate. France would like to see crucial projects for the future of peace and global governance to be completed between now and 2026, when our country will hold the presidency of the G7.”

David Lammy, the UK foreign secretary, is also expected to focus on Ukraine in his remarks, as well calling for stability in the Middle East and action on the conflicts in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

If Russia had not invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Volodymyr Zelenskyy would have faced a re-election campaign in spring 2024. But after Vladimir Putin sent his troops across the border, the country quickly entered a state of martial law. That meant that both presidential and parliamentary elections were postponed. Donald Trump has escalated his attacks on Zelenskyy, calling the Ukrainian president “a dictator” in light of postponed elections.

The remains of two young children, their mother, and an elderly man taken hostage by Hamas have been returned to Israel in what onlookers described as one of the “hardest days” for Israelis since the Palestinian militant group attack that ignited the war in Gaza.

A convoy carrying the bodies of Shiri Bibas, 32, her sons Ariel and Kfir, four years and nine months old respectively, and 85-year-old Oded Lifshitz, all from the Nir Oz kibbutz, arrived at a forensics centre in Tel Aviv on Thursday for DNA checks and autopsy procedures.

Armed Hamas militants wearing black and camouflage placed four black coffins on a stage in a cemetery in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis before handing them over to the Red Cross. The Israeli army held a ceremony attended by a rabbi upon receiving the bodies, and then transferred them to caskets draped in the Israeli flag before they were driven to Tel Aviv.

The transfer of the four bodies marks the first release of bodies in the fragile month-old ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. In its first stage, which expires in early March, 33 living and dead Israeli hostages are supposed to be exchanged for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.

Bibas and her children – who Hamas claims were killed in an Israeli airstrike in the early days of the war – became an indelible symbol of the attack of 7 October 2023. Without Israeli confirmation of their deaths, relatives clung to hope, marking Kfir’s first and second birthdays and his brother’s fifth. Shiri Bibas’s parents were killed in the Hamas offensive, and her husband, Yarden, was taken captive and released earlier this month.

Lifshitz, a peace activist and retired journalist, had not previously been confirmed as dead. His wife, Yocheved Lifshitz, was released by Hamas in November 2023.

Israelis lined the road in the rain near the Gaza border to pay their respects as the convoy carrying the coffins drove by. In Tel Aviv, people gathered, some weeping, at what has come to be known as Hostages Square outside Israel’s defence headquarters.

“This is one of the hardest days, I think, since 7 October,” said a museum manager, Tania Coen Uzzielli, 59, who had gathered in the square with about 100 others. “I think the feeling of personal guilt is something each of us carries – that maybe we could have done more, that maybe we didn’t do enough to prevent this tragedy.”

In a statement, Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, said: “The hearts of an entire nation lie in tatters.”

“On behalf of the state of Israel, I bow my head and ask for forgiveness. Forgiveness for not protecting you on that terrible day. Forgiveness for not bringing you home safely,” he said.

Lifshitz’s son, Yizhar, told Israel’s Army Radio: “The release of my father … is part of the terrible tragedy of those who went in alive and were murdered inside. To the people who prayed for my father and wanted a different end [I say]: continue. There are still a lot of living people inside whom we need to pray and work for.”

Hamas has said it will release six living hostages on Saturday, and another four bodies next Thursday, speeding up the conclusion of the first stage of the truce. Amid fears over the ceasefire’s future after a near-collapse last week, the Palestinian group said on Wednesday it was ready to release all of the remaining hostages in a single exchange if the truce agreement moved forward to a second phase next month.

The offer came as the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, signalled his readiness to talk about a second phase of the Gaza ceasefire after an extended delay, by appointing one of his closest advisers, Ron Dermer, a US-born cabinet minister and former ambassador to Washington, to lead the Israeli delegation to the talks.

Netanyahu has long resisted any talk about the second phase of the agreement, which would involve a complete military withdrawal from Gaza and effectively end the war. Much of his far-right coalition government adamantly opposes such a step if it leaves Hamas as a significant force inside the strip.

About 48,000 people have been killed in Israel’s war in Gaza, which has caused a devastating humanitarian crisis and levelled much of the territory to rubble. About 1,200 people were killed in the 7 October attack, and 250 taken hostage.

With agencies

A corporate conglomerate now running the US government’s immigration detention center at the Guantánamo Bay naval base on a lucrative contract has been the subject of critical audits and a civil rights complaint over conditions at three other migrant lockups it has run within the US, documents reviewed by the Guardian show.

In one example, a federal audit report on a migrant facility run by the company in Miami found multiple incidents of alleged “inappropriate use of force” – including guards pepper-spraying a man in solitary confinement even though he posed no threat to them, the report said.

Akima, the Virginia-headquartered company running the Guantánamo Bay migrant lockup, has over 40 subsidiaries and more than 2,000 contracts with the US government. From IT maintenance to armed security, with work stretching from Saudi Arabia to Arizona, Akima provides government contracting services to dozens of federal agencies.

Last year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) awarded a contract to one of Akima’s subsidiaries to run the Guantánamo migrant operations center. The government has for years run a migrant detention center at the naval base but it became a focal point last month when Donald Trump announced that his administration was going to detain many more immigrants there.

In August of 2024, Akima Infrastructure Protection was given a $163.4m contract by the Biden administration to run the migrant detention facility at Guantánamo through June of 2029. Now, as Trump expands migrant detention there, Akima’s role is drawing attention.

The Ice detention center at Guantánamo now operated by Akima is separate from the military prison used to hold terrorism suspects. Since 2021, the migrant facility has detained few migrants, averaging between four and 40 people at any given time, although it was used for tens of thousands of migrant detainees in the 1990s. The Guantánamo Bay US naval base is located on leased land on the south-eastern coast of Cuba, roughly 430 miles (700km) south-east of Miami, and separated from the Republic of Cuba.

“The Guantánamo Bay military base is seared in the minds of the world as a dark site of torture and impunity,” said Jesse Franzblau, senior policy analyst with the National Immigrant Justice Center.

“There is no rational justification for shipping off immigrants to Guantánamo Bay, which should not be used to detain any human beings. Sending people there now without any due process or access to counsel flies in the face of US and international law.”

On 29 January, Trump signed an executive order instructing the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security to expand the Guantánamo migrant detention center to accommodate up to 30,000 migrants.

Since then, new tent cities have been set up there by homeland security and military officials. According to the US navy, sailors have helped erect tents, with the “first phase of expansion” increasing the capacity to hold 2,000 migrants.

So far, the Trump administration has sent more than 150 migrant men to Guantánamo on flights from the US, marking the first time that migrants previously on US soil have been sent to the military base. Previously it was used for people picked up at sea.

A spokesperson for the Pentagon’s southern command redirected all questions about Akima’s contract to Ice.

Ice, the Department of Homeland Security, Akima, and multiple attorneys representing Akima in a lawsuit and in contract disputes did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

According to contracting records reviewed by the Guardian, the migrant facility is split into two, one section controlled by Ice and a lower-security section under the control of the US state department and the United Nations’ international organization for migration, with little known about their occupants.

“This long-running program is an important element of US efforts to deter and disrupt dangerous, illegal maritime migration in the Caribbean,” a state department spokesperson said in a statement to the Guardian, and redirected all other questions, including about sending people to Guantánamo from the US interior in recent weeks, to homeland security officials. The UN international organization for migration did not respond to a request for comment.

Ice awarded Akima Infrastructure Protection a government contract to run the stricter detention section of the migrant facility. The company was required to guarantee they could quickly expand capacity at the site for up to 400 migrants with the construction of a “tent city”, according to a US government contracting website.

“Guantánamo is an example of how immigration enforcement is expanding past Ice – it is involving the Department of Defense, it is going offshore, in a remote location, to a place that is a place symbolic of abuse and torture,” said Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director at Detention Watch Network.

She added: “It is that much more infuriating to know that there are massive corporations profiting off of people’s lives and the abuse that people are experiencing in immigration detention.”

The Trump administration has not released details on how many migrants are currently detained at Guantánamo or how long they will be there. A military spokesperson told the Guardian that, as of last Friday morning, there were 62 “high-threat illegal aliens” at the terrorism-related military prison, and 50 other migrants held at the migrant operations center.

Reports claim that all of the latest migrants at the facility are originally from Venezuela.

Although the Trump administration has accused the migrant men of being the “worst of the worst” – members of a Venezuelan prison gang, Tren de Aragua – CBS reported “low-risk” migrants, with no criminal record, can also be sent there. Subsequent reports said family members of some of the men claim they are innocent and not members of the gang.

Earlier this month, a federal judge in New Mexico blocked the potential transfer of three other men to Guantánamo. One of those three Venezuelan men said he feared being taken there because it is a “black hole”.

“I also see that human rights are constantly violated at Guantánamo, so I fear what could happen to me if I get taken there,” Abrahan Barrios Morales said in his statement. The three men were later deported.

Additionally, a group of civil rights organizations filed a lawsuit last Wednesday, demanding that the Trump administration allow migrant detainees access to lawyers.

Records reviewed by the Guardian show that Akima Infrastructure Protection has so far received more than $9m for its Guantánamo operations since August, out of the total $163.4m they were awarded. The biggest portion of that, $7.9m, was given to the company on 7 February, records show.

Elsewhere, a review of documents shows that Akima’s subsidiaries contract with agencies within the departments of defense, energy, interior and others. Some of Akima’s subsidiaries provide government buyers with IT services, equipment maintenance and other services. Akima contractors also maintain US military helicopters in Saudi Arabia and provide training to Saudi military forces.

In 2022, Akima Global Services, one of the company’s subsidiaries, operated a now closed facility in Texas for unaccompanied migrant children, according to court records reviewed by the Guardian.

In other instances, Akima subsidiaries run immigration jails for Ice. Akima Global Services runs at least five migrant detention centers, the Guardian found. These include the Buffalo detention center in New York, the Port Isabel facility in Texas, the North Krome service processing center in Florida and the Florence service processing center in Arizona. This subsidiary, the Guardian learned, also runs guard operations at three migrant detention spaces in Puerto Rico.

Last year, a group of immigrant rights organizations filed a civil rights complaint, alleging that officials at the Buffalo detention facility retaliated against 40 hunger strikers protesting against a lack of free phone calls to family and prolonged lockups, with physical force and solitary confinement. It is unknown whether the homeland security civil rights office launched an investigation or reached any conclusion.

Last October, Ice extended Akima Global Services’ contract through the end of this month to run the Krome North service processing center in Miami, despite criticism for its treatment of migrants. Last year, the DHS inspector general released a report that found Akima guards did not comply with use-of-force standards. In one case, the report found, guards pepper-sprayed a detainee through a solitary confinement cell door slot. “The officers were not under threat, and the detainee was not a threat to himself or others,” the report said.

In response, Ice agreed with most of the inspector general’s findings, and added that staffers “who might have been involved in a use-of-force incident” were “re-trained in de-escalation techniques and mental health assistance”.

In 2023, the DHS inspector general released an audit of the Port Isabel service processing center in Texas, finding there were significant issues at the facility that threatened the health and safety of migrant detainees. The audit documented violations related to use of force. They also found conditions inside the solitary confinement unit to be so unsafe they recommended the building be condemned.

As the Guardian reported in December, the contract with Akima was extended and officials began searching for contractors to demolish the solitary unit, design and build a new one.

The world of federal contracting can be murky, with subsidiaries of subsidiaries often receiving federal government contracts. Akima, the parent company of Akima Infrastructure Protection, is itself a subsidiary, owned by an even larger company, the Nana Regional Corporation.

In the 1970s, to settle longstanding land claims by Alaskan natives, 13 regional Alaskan Native corporations were created. These are all owned by indigenous Alaskan shareholders, with dozens of subsidiaries. The corporations’ status means company stocks cannot be sold or traded, making them exempt from certain oversight by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Nana Regional Corporation, which owns Akima, is one of these Alaskan Native corporations, and despite belonging to a giant conglomerate, Nana and Akima subsidiaries are classified as “small businesses”, regularly receiving federal government contracts reserved for small and minority-owned companies.

Akima has so many contracts through its subsidiaries that the company recently boasted of being worth $2bn.

Despite being headquartered in Virginia, Akima capitalizes on its links to Native tribes – its website includes videos and images of Iñupiat Indigenous people and the snowy Alaskan tundra. Although Akima’s staff are not all Alaskan Natives, a portion of the earnings go to Native shareholders in Alaska.

It is unclear what the Guantánamo situation looks like currently and what it means, legally, for migrants. DHS secretary Kristi Noem said “due process will be followed” for migrants there.

The facility is extremely secretive. Contracting documents reviewed by the Guardian mention migrants under Ice custody are to be transported around the base in “black-out vans” with “hand restraints and black-out goggles to obscure their vision”. Recent photos released of the Guantánamo migrant detention operations do not show use of black-out goggles, but they do show the use of blacked-out buses.

“I’m very concerned that as we move on to detaining people at Guantánamo, there will be less and less visibility for the American public as to what is going on there,” Bianca Tylek, founder and executive director of Worth Rises, a non-profit advocacy that tracks for-profit companies in the US detention system, said.

Access to information about activities at Guantánamo Bay is especially difficult for advocates or the media.

“Conditions are awful throughout the web of Ice detention in the US. People are subject to abuse, food is often rotten, they don’t have access to water. There are places with sewage problems, there is medical neglect and abuse – all of this is endemic, it’s part of the Ice detention system,” said Ghandehari of Detention Watch Network.

She concluded: “So there’s no reason to think Guantánamo will be any different. But because we don’t have the same level of access, it is going to be hard for us to document how bad it really is.”

They may be the footwear of choice for Hollywood A-listers and pop stars, but Birkenstock sandals are not works of art, Germany’s top court ruled on Thursday.

The German sandal maker had sought a ruling that its footwear, known for its cork and latex soles, could be classified as art and thus afforded strong copyright protections.

The company, whose sandals have over the years transformed from unglamorous footwear to coveted fashion items, wanted to stop three of its competitors from selling similar products.

It had wanted the products sold by the German retailers Tchibo and shoe.com, as well as the Danish retailer Bestseller, to be pulled from the shelves and destroyed.

But the federal court of justice in Karlsruhe sided with the judgment of a lower court, ruling that Birkenstock’s sandals could not be considered “copyrighted works of applied art”. The court added: “For copyright protection to apply, there must be such a degree of design that the product displays some individuality.

The court said that “pure craftsmanship using formal design elements” was not enough, in a judgment that brought to a close the legal saga that began in May 2023.

Despite the ruling, Birkenstock defended bringing the case. “We want to ensure that copycats can no longer make money at the expense of our brand,” said the company spokesman Jochen Gutzy.

Founded in 1774 in a small community in south-west Germany as a firm focused on making orthopaedic footwear, Birkenstock has grown into a globally recognised brand.

Its sandals are popular among celebrities, with the singers Katy Perry and Britney Spears seen wearing the shoes in recent years. They also appeared in the 2023 movie Barbie, when Margot Robbie’s character swapped high heels for a pink pair.

In 2021 the Birkenstock family sold its majority stake in the group to the LVMH-linked equity firm L Catterton and the French billionaire Bernard Arnault’s family holding fund Financière Agache.

It launched an international public offering on the New York Stock Exchange in 2023.

Village officials in the Philippines are handing out cash rewards to residents who capture mosquitoes in a bid to combat an outbreak of dengue.

At the Wednesday launch, residents from the village of Addition Hills in metropolitan Manila lined up with plastic cups and bags containing their captures as they waited to receive their bounty: one Philippine peso (1.7 US cents) for every five mosquitoes.

Organisers handed out coins to participants and used an ultraviolet mosquito zapper to kill off live mosquitoes. One resident walked away with nine pesos, worth approximately 15 US cents, for the 45 larvae he turned over.

Village chair Carlito Cernal said in a social media post that the village had organised the programme due to an increase in dengue cases in the area.

Cases of the potentially deadly viral infection have been increasing across the country. The department of health recorded more than 28,000 cases in January, an increase of 40% compared with the same time period last year.

Earlier this week, the department announced a “concerning rise” in dengue in nine areas in the Philippines. Quezon City, the country’s most populous city, declared a dengue outbreak on Saturday after 10 deaths since the beginning of the year.

However, there are concerns the village bounty programme may inadvertently backfire, if people start propagating mosquitoes to reap the rewards, department spokesperson Albert Domingo said.

Domingo said he was not condemning the move, but added: “If you are willing to give prize money for something, maybe we could consider contests for cleanliness,” with neighborhoods competing to clear away areas with stagnant water.

The project also sparked concern on social media, with commenters warning of potential mosquito farming for profit. “We must make sure that our solutions are sustainable and have no unintended consequences,” read one comment on one of Cernal’s posts about the initiative. “Reevaluate this project because I don’t find it effective” another comment read.

In response to the criticisms, Cernal emphasised in a Facebook post that he had “no ill intentions” with the programme.

Luis Rubiales, the former president of the Spanish Football Federation, has been found guilty of sexually assaulting the footballer Jenni Hermoso by kissing her on the lips against her will after Spain’s women’s team won the 2023 World Cup.

A judge at Spain’s national court convicted Rubiales of sexual assault but acquitted him of attempting to coerce Hermoso into playing down the unsolicited and unwanted kiss.

The former football chief, who had been facing a possible two-and-a-half year jail sentence, was ordered to pay fines and compensation totalling more than €13,000 (£10,800), forbidden to go within 200 metres of Hermoso for a year, and told to refrain from contacting her for 12 months.

Three other people who had been tried for allegedly putting pressure on Hermoso to say the kiss was consensual were cleared of coercion. They are the former head coach of the women’s national team Jorge Vilda; the former Spanish football federation sporting director Albert Luque; and the federation’s former marketing chief Rubén Rivera.

The episode, which overshadowed the team’s triumph at the World Cup final in Sydney and prompted a national and international debate on sexism and consent, resulted in Hermoso receiving death threats and eventually led Rubiales to resign as the head of the federation.

Rubiales, 47, has always insisted the kiss on Hermoso’s lips after the final in Sydney was consensual. “I am absolutely sure that she gave me her permission,” Rubiales told the court in Madrid earlier this month. “In that moment it was something completely spontaneous.”

The judge disagreed, however. In Thursday’s verdict, José Manuel Clemente Fernández-Prieto ruled Rubiales sexually assaulted Hermoso when he “grabbed the player’s head with both hands and, then, in a sudden manner and without her consent and acceptance, kissed her on the lips”.

The judge added: “This action of kissing a woman on the lips has a clear sexual connotation and is not the way people greet those with whom they are not in an emotional relationship.” He also noted that Rubiales had congratulated other members of the victorious team by hugging them and kissing them on the cheek.

Fernández-Prieto said Hermoso had made it abundantly clear in her evidence that she had never consented to the kiss, adding that given her previously good professional relationship with Rubiales, the player had no reason to lie.

The judge gave Rubiales – whose annual salary at the federation was €675,000 – 10 days to appeal against the sentence before the same court. His lawyer has confirmed that he will lodge an appeal.

The verdict was welcomed by Spain’s equality minister, Ana Redondo, who said it had sent out a clear message. “I think the important thing here is to underline that a non-consensual kiss is a sexual assault,” Redondo said, adding: “A victim’s words have to be heard and respected, and not questioned.”

The Podemos MEP and former equality minister Irene Montero said feminism was changing things. “It’s not so long ago that it would have been unthinkable for the judicial system to recognise a non-consensual kiss as sexual assault”. However, she added, the fines and damages imposed should have been higher.

Giving evidence on the first day of the trial, Hermoso was adamant she had never consented to being kissed by Rubiales, adding that he had not sought her permission to do so.

“I felt it was totally out of place and I then realised my boss was kissing me, and this shouldn’t happen in any social or workplace setting,” she said. “I felt disrespected. One of the happiest days of my life was tarnished.”

Hermoso told the court the kiss and its fallout had turned her life upside down and severely affected her family. “I’m a world champion but it seems that even to this day my life has been on standby,” she said. “I honestly haven’t been able to live freely.”

In his evidence, Rubiales acknowledged that he had made an error of judgment but maintained that the kiss had been consensual. “It’s obvious now that I made a mistake,” he told the court. “It was spontaneous. I behaved like a sportsperson, like I was one more member of the team. I should have been more cold-blooded and adopted a more institutional role.”

Rubiales denied trying to coerce Hermoso into making a statement playing down the incident, saying he had suggested they make a joint statement to calm the situation. Hermoso refused but the federation still released a statement on her behalf.

The player said the statement made her feel “that I was participating in something I hadn’t done and in which I didn’t want to participate”. The court heard testimony from Hermoso’s brother Rafael, who said Vilda had asked him on the flight back from Australia to “convince” his sister to record a video with Rubiales to show she was not bothered by the kiss.

Rubiales initially attempted to brush off the controversy, dismissing critics of his actions as “idiots and stupid people”. But the incident provoked global outrage, led to his being provisionally suspended by Fifa, and prompted Hermoso to make a criminal complaint.

Days later, amid mounting outrage over the kiss – as well as over Rubiales grabbing his crotch while standing next to Queen Letizia of Spain and her 16-year-old daughter, Infanta Sofía, as the team won the World Cup – the federation demanded that he resign.

It also sacked Vilda, who was one of many officials to have applauded a defiant speech Rubiales made to the federation in which he said “I will not resign” five times and hit out at “false feminism” while also seeking to portray himself as a victim and recast the kiss as “a peck”.

James Bond has fallen into the hands of a billionaire’s business empire, after Amazon revealed that it has acquired “creative control” of the spy franchise from the Broccoli dynasty.

Amazon MGM Studios said on Thursday it had struck a deal with Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson, heirs to the film producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli and longtime stewards of the Bond films.

A spokesperson for Amazon said the financial terms of the deal were for their eyes only.

But the world’s second largest corporation, by revenue, confirmed that it had formed a new joint venture with Wilson and Broccoli to house the James Bond intellectual property, with Amazon assuming “creative control”.

The agreement could open the door to production starting on a long-awaited new film and to a potentially limitless avalanche of spin-off TV shows for the Amazon Prime streaming service.

The deal is not thought to be related to a Dubai-based property developer’s audacious attempt, revealed by the Guardian last week, to seize the James Bond trademark across a range of goods and services.

Amazon, founded by the world’s second richest man, Jeff Bezos, has had a financial interest in James Bond since 2022, when it paid $8.5bn for MGM, acquiring 007 as part of a catalogue of more than 4,000 films and 17,000 TV shows. The MGM deal gave Amazon the right to distribute all the James Bond films but it will now gain the power to press ahead with new instalments, kickstarting a production line that has stalled in recent years.

In the earlier years of Bond, the franchise was a regular, even annual, fixture in the calendar, with 16 films released between Dr No in 1961 and Licence to Kill in 1989. The subsequent six-year gap until Goldeneye was the longest break in the history of Bond.

It has been four years since the 2021 release of No Time To Die and, with no new film in production, the current hiatus is on course to become 007’s longest ever holiday.

Gaining creative control will give Amazon the power to move forward without approval from Wilson and Broccoli, who have acted as careful guardians of the integrity of a character originally created in 1953 by author Ian Fleming.

Mike Hopkins, head of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, said: “Since his theatrical introduction over 60 years ago, James Bond has been one of the most iconic characters in filmed entertainment.”

He said Amazon was grateful to Wilson and Broccoli “for their unyielding dedication and their role in continuing the legacy of the franchise that is cherished by legions of fans worldwide.

“We are honoured to continue this treasured heritage, and look forward to ushering in the next phase of the legendary 007 for audiences around the world.”

Wilson, 83, said he was ending his film-making activities. “With my 007 career spanning nearly 60 incredible years, I am stepping back from producing the James Bond films to focus on art and charitable projects. Therefore, Barbara and I agree, it is time for our trusted partner, Amazon MGM Studios, to lead James Bond into the future.”

Broccoli, 64, added: “My life has been dedicated to maintaining and building upon the extraordinary legacy that was handed to Michael and me by our father, producer Cubby Broccoli. I have had the honour of working closely with four of the tremendously talented actors who have played 007 and thousands of wonderful artists within the industry. With the conclusion of No Time to Die, and Michael retiring from the films, I feel it is time to focus on my other projects.”

Broccoli is the daughter of Cubby Broccoli, who co-founded the series with fellow producer Harry Saltzman. She began working on the Bond films as a teenager in minor roles, before acting as assistant director on Octopussy in 1983 and associate producer on The Living Daylights in 1987. Her first full Bond producer credit was on Goldeneye in 1995.

Wilson is Cubby Broccoli’s stepson. A qualified lawyer, he joined Broccoli’s Eon Productions in 1972 and became executive producer on Moonraker in 1979, and moved to producer for A View to a Kill in 1985.

Together the pair built Bond into one of the most successful franchises in cinema history, having grossed more than $7.8bn worldwide, behind only the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Star Wars, Harry Potter and Spider-Man. The most successful Bond film remains Skyfall, released in 2012, with a worldwide gross of $1.1bn.

Eon has been reluctant to spread the Bond name too thin through the kind of spin-offs that have proved fruitful for streaming services, which have cashed in on the popularity of films such as Star Wars or zombie TV show The Walking Dead.

A rare foray outside the Bond films was the creation of 007: Road to a Million, a reality competition series released on Amazon Prime Video that features nine teams competing for a £1m prize.

Delta Air Lines is offering passengers of a jet that caught fire and flipped over on a Toronto runway $30,000 each – “no strings attached”.

Flight 4819 crashed after touching down at Toronto’s Pearson airport on Monday afternoon. Videos of the crash were captured by witnesses and then passengers inside the plane.

Twenty-one of the plane’s 80 passengers and crew were initially transported to the hospital after the incident. All were released by Thursday, according to a statement from Delta. The flight was operated by Delta subsidiary Endeavor Air. Canadian and American authorities are investigating the incident.

“It’s horrifying when you look at the video,” the Delta CEO, Ed Bastian, told CBS Mornings. “You can imagine when I received the text minutes after it happened, hearing there was a regional jet upside down on an active runway.

“The reality is safety is embedded into our system. Air travel in the United States is the safest form of travel.”

A spokesperson for Delta told CBS News that the $30,000 “gesture has no strings attached and does not affect rights”.

One of the passengers onboard the plane, paramedic Pete Carlson of Minnesota, told local news station KMSP: “For at least a brief period of time I thought, ‘I’m not getting off this plane.’

“The next thing I know, I’m upside down and my seatbelt was still belted,” he said.

The crash followed a large storm in Toronto that dumped 20in of snow on the city, with the airport struggling to catch up with a backlog of canceled and delayed flights.

The crash comes after a high-profile disaster in Washington DC, where a passenger plane collided mid-air with a Black Hawk helicopter, killing 67 people and sending both into the Potomac River. The crash was the worst air disaster in the US since 2001. The crash also highlighted years of warnings from air traffic controllers, who highlighted how employees in towers were understaffed and overworked.

In spite of the disaster, the Trump administration has sought to fire Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) safety workers and announced employees of SpaceX would consult at the agency, alarming European aviation experts.

SpaceX is owned by billionaire Elon Musk, an adviser to Trump leading the unofficial “department of government efficiency” (Doge). The FAA ordered an investigation into the breakup if a SpaceX rocket just a few days before Trump took office. The FAA is leaderless, after Musk called on the former head to resign.

The Eurovision song contest is several months away but the drama has already begun, with calls from Italy for Estonia’s catchy pick for the competition to be scrapped due to lyrics poking fun at Italian stereotypes of being coffee-drinking, spaghetti-eating mafiosi.

Espresso Macchiato, by the rapper Tommy Cash, is sung in a blend of broken English and Italian and depicts a life of sweet indulgence. “Ciao bella, I’m Tomaso, addicted to tobacco. Mi like mi coffè very importante,” the first verse begins.

He goes on to sing: “Mi money numeroso, I work around the clocko. That’s why I’m sweating like a mafioso,” and: “Life is like spaghetti, it’s hard until you make it.”

Cash won the Eesti Laul, Estonia’s Eurovision selection process, on Saturday and will represent the country in the contest in Basel in May – unless Italy gets its way.

Codacons, a consumer association, has lodged an appeal to the European Broadcasting Union questioning whether “it’s appropriate to allow a song that offends a country and an entire community” to be part of the competition.

“Notwithstanding the freedom of artistic expression that must characterise events such as Eurovision, we cannot help but raise doubts about the inclusion of a song that is offensive to a plurality of individuals in a competition followed by audiences all over the world,” Codacons said in a statement.

“Indignation has been expressed by numerous citizens [over a song] whose lyrics contain stereotypes about Italy and Italians – the usual cliches of coffee and spaghetti, but above all the mafia and the ostentation of luxury, which conveys a message of a population tied to organised crime.”

Gian Marco Centinaio, a senator with the far-right League, has produced a party flyer featuring a screenshot of Cash drinking coffee from a paper cup in the video for the song and the caption “whoever insults Italy must stay out of Eurovision”.

Centinaio wrote on Instagram: “This singer should come to Italy to see how good people work before writing such stupid songs full of stereotypes.”

However, the indignation appeared to be outweighed by bemusement and appreciation by Italians who commented beneath the song’s video on YouTube. “I will vote for Estonia!” wrote one.

Repeating some of the lyrics, another wrote: “‘No stresso, no stresso, don’t need to be depresso’ – as an Italian, I think I’m going to get this tattooed.”

Another wrote: “As an Italian I am amused but also confused but also offended but also honoured.”

Others said the song was better than Italy’s potential entry for Eurovision, a ballad by the singer Olly that won last week’s Sanremo music festival.

The festival usually determines who represents Italy at Eurovision, although winners can then decide if they want to participate. Olly is keeping Italy on tenterhooks, saying on Wednesday that he needed time to rest and to make a decision “with a clear mind” as he was still processing his Sanremo victory.